Governments’ rapid responses to a new coronavirus strain were wise. But much is still to be learned about the Omicron variant before longer-term policies can be prescribed. Vietnam’s government wants to create internationally competitive firms, and a growing new class of billionaires suggests the plan is working. And research suggests that social distancing comes naturally to bees under pathogenic threat.
Have your say about “The Intelligence” in our survey here
It’s sad girl autumn at the Supreme Court -- Melissa, Kate, and Leah preview the upcoming cases, including the frontal challenge to Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and discuss the Court’s lack of action on the S.B. 8 cases.
Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025!
Located in Vatican City, just off St. Peter’s Square lies one of the plainest and most uninteresting buildings you might ever find. It has no adornments and it is just a solid beige color. However, inside that bland structure, you will find one of humanity’s greatest artistic achievements, and to enjoy it you just might get a sore neck. Learn more about the Sistine Chapel, the building, the art, and its history, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Is it possible to ‘level up’ the economy and help struggling places halt decline and become more prosperous? Paul Swinney is Director of Policy and Research at the think tank Centre for Cities and his research focuses on city economies and their development over time. He considers what strategies might be implemented to support declining town and city centres and if the government’s Levelling Up agenda is likely to deliver concrete results.
The prize-winning poet Paul Batchelor was born in Northumberland and often explores the lost worlds of Britain’s mining communities, and the memories that have survived. The title of his new collection, The Acts of Oblivion, refers to seventeenth-century laws that required not only the pardon of revolutionary deeds, but also made discussing them illegal. His poems rebel against such restrictions, and against forgetting.
In the forest landscape of northern Varmland in Sweden lies the village of Osebol. In just five decades, the automation of the lumber industry and the draw of city-living, has seen the adult population dwindling to a mere 40 residents. Marit Kapla grew up there, and in Osebol: Voices from a Swedish Village she has returned and gathered the stories of all the inhabitants – from those whose families have lived there for generations, to the more recent arrivals. They tell of their griefs and joys, resentments and pleasures, and despite the village’s decline, life goes on.
The concept of revolution marks the ultimate horizon of modern politics. It is instantiated by sites of both hope and horror. Within progressive thought, “revolution” often perpetuates entrenched philosophical problems: a teleological philosophy of history, economic reductionism, and normative paternalism. At a time of resurgent uprisings, how can revolution be re-conceptualized to grasp the dynamics of social transformation and disentangle revolutionary practice from authoritarian usurpation?
Eva von Redecker reconsiders critical theory’s understanding of radical change in order to offer a bold new account of how revolution occurs. She argues that revolutions are not singular events but extended processes: beginning from the interstices of society, they succeed by gradually re-articulating social structures toward a new paradigm. Developing a theoretical account of social transformation, Praxis and Revolution incorporates a wide range of insights, from the Frankfurt School to queer theory and intersectionality. Its revised materialism furnishes prefigurative politics with their social conditions and performative critique with its collective force.
Von Redecker revisits the French Revolution to show how change arises from struggle in everyday social practice. She illustrates the argument through rich literary examples—a ménage à trois inside a prison, a radical knitting circle, a queer affinity group, and petitioners pleading with the executioner—that forge a feminist, open-ended model of revolution.
Praxis and Revolution: A Theory of Social Transformation (Columbia UP, 2021) urges readers not only to understand revolutions differently but also to situate them elsewhere: in collective contexts that aim to storm manifold Bastilles—but from within.
Eva von Redecker is a German critical theorist and public philosopher, currently based at the University of Verona as the recipient of a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship. She was previously a research associate at Humboldt University of Berlin and she has also taught at Goethe University Frankfurt and the New School.
Lucy Duggan is a writer and translator. She is the author of the novel Tendrils (2014).
Fulya Pinar is a PhD candidate in the department of Anthropology at Rutgers University. Her work focuses on alternative economies, refugee care, and migration in Turkey.
Kevin Bruyneel confronts the chronic displacement of Indigeneity in the politics and discourse around race in American political theory and culture, arguing that the ongoing influence of settler-colonialism has undermined efforts to understand Indigenous politics while also hindering conversation around race itself. By reexamining major episodes, texts, writers, and memories of the political past from the seventeenth century to the present, Bruyneel reveals the power of settler memory at work in the persistent disavowal of Indigeneity.
In Settler Memory: The Disavowal of Indigeneity and the Politics of Race in the United States(University of North Carolina Press, 2021), he also shows how Indigenous and Black intellectuals have understood ties between racism and white settler memory, even as the settler dimensions of whiteness are frequently erased in our discourse about race, whether in conflicts over Indian mascotry or the white nationalist underpinnings of Trumpism.
Envisioning a new political future, Bruyneel challenges readers to refuse settler memory and consider a third reconstruction that can meaningfully link antiracism and anticolonialism.
John Cable will begin a teaching appointment at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in January 2022. He earned the Ph.D. in history at Florida State University in 2020.
After One Hundred Winters: In Search of Reconciliation on America's Stolen Lands(Princeton UP, 2021) confronts the harsh truth that the United States was founded on the violent dispossession of Indigenous people and asks what reconciliation might mean in light of this haunted history. In this timely and urgent book, settler historian Margaret Jacobs tells the stories of the individuals and communities who are working together to heal historical wounds—and reveals how much we have to gain by learning from our history instead of denying it. Jacobs traces the brutal legacy of systemic racial injustice to Indigenous people that has endured since the nation’s founding. Explaining how early attempts at reconciliation succeeded only in robbing tribal nations of their land and forcing their children into abusive boarding schools, she shows that true reconciliation must emerge through Indigenous leadership and sustained relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people that are rooted in specific places and histories. In the absence of an official apology and a federal Truth and Reconciliation Commission, ordinary people are creating a movement for transformative reconciliation that puts Indigenous land rights, sovereignty, and values at the forefront. With historical sensitivity and an eye to the future, Jacobs urges us to face our past and learn from it, and once we have done so, to redress past abuses. Drawing on dozens of interviews, After One Hundred Winters reveals how Indigenous people and settlers in America today, despite their troubled history, are finding unexpected gifts in reconciliation.
Brady McCartney is a scholar of religion, history, and environmental studies at the University of Florida.
Andy and Michael Osterholm have a candid conversation about where things stand two years into the pandemic. During this live event hosted by the University of Minnesota's School of Public Health, they discuss how to reach science skeptics, the strain many states' healthcare systems are experiencing right now, and what to say to parents who aren't sure about vaccinating their young children. Plus, COVID will be with us long-term, so how do we adjust our mindset so we can learn to live in a world alongside the virus?
Keep up with Andy on Twitter @ASlavitt and Instagram @andyslavitt.
Follow Michael Osterholm on Twitter @mtosterholm.
Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today at bit.ly/lemonadapremium.
Throughout the pandemic, CVS Health has been there, bringing quality, affordable health care closer to home—so it’s never out of reach for anyone. Learn more at cvshealth.com.
Order Andy’s book, Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250770165
Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.
Scientists in South Africa announced on Thursday that they detected a new variant of the coronavirus: Omicron. Cases caused by the variant have been identified in almost a dozen countries, but not yet in the U.S. Epidemiologist and host of “America Dissected” Dr. Abdul El-Sayed gives us a better sense of what we know and the much bigger amount of things we don’t.
And in headlines: Ghislaine Maxwell’s federal trial starts today, legendary Black fashion designer Virgil Abloh died after battling cancer, and South Korea announced plans to build its own metaverse.
Show Notes:
Washington Post: “Officials: Variants ‘haunt’ world with vaccine imbalance between rich and poor nations” – https://wapo.st/3lgDGTp
Politico: “Omicron raises concerns about global vaccine equity and hesitancy” – https://politi.co/3lhIDLr
For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday
What you need to know about a new variant of COVID-19: what it's called, where it's been detected, and what the U.S. is doing to slow the spread.
Also, we have updates about two high-profile trials, and we'll tell you where more winter weather is expected this week.
Plus, what's being done about a global shortage of maple syrup, how a Broadway legend is being remembered, and today's celebrations for Hanukkah and deals for Cyber Monday.
