After the storming of the Capitol, Democrats’ victories in Georgia’s runoff Senate races sort of got lost in the shuffle. But Georgia going blue for the first time in nearly two decades is a big deal. And the state's Democratic activists say the moment is still worth recognizing.
Guest: Tiffany Roberts, civil rights attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights, Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, and Renee Montgomery, activist and player on the Atlanta Dream.
Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now.
Many patients who are hospitalized for COVID-19 continue to have symptoms of brain injury after they are discharged. For many, brain function improves as they recover, but some are likely to face long-term disability. As NPR science correspondent Jon Hamilton explains, research into all the ways the coronavirus affects the brain is ongoing but research shows it can affect everything from loss of smell to memory problems. Read Jon's piece here.
Melissa Michelson and Brian Harrison, co-authors of the book Listen, We Need to Talk: How to Change Attitudes about LGBT Rights (Oxford University Press, 2017), which focused on how people came to change their minds about same-sex marriage and LGBT rights, examine their thesis from the previous research to determine if it is applicable to transgender rights as well. What they find is that they need to look at a different kind of framework to engage individuals who are opposed to transgender rights in order to shift that thinking and provide an opening to changing hearts and minds (which is also part of the thrust of Brian Harrison’s 2020 book, A Change is Gonna Come: How to Have Effective Political Conversations in a Divided America, Oxford University Press, 2020). Transforming Prejudice: Identity, Fear, and Transgender Rights (Oxford UP, 2020) focuses on transgender and gender non-conforming rights and how American society has responded and is responding to this subsequent wave of advocacy for the rights of those within this community. Harrison and Michelson’s research indicates that people understand marriage and gender identity in very different ways, and this discrepancy is what led them to reconsider the kind of theoretical framework necessary to move towards rights advocacy for those in the gender non-conforming and transgender community. The book employed a number of different research methods to distinguish what might move people towards being more open to transgender rights. Transforming Prejudice develops the theory of gender identity reassurance as the optimal means to open up the space to changing minds, helping individuals become less afraid and more accepting of the gender non-conforming/transgender community. This is a fascinating and important analysis that also helps guide activism while contributing to political science and social movement scholarship.
The House voted to impeach Donald Trump for the second time yesterday, making him the first president to be impeached twice. Soon-to-be minority leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate won’t take up the impeachment until after Biden takes office, and whether Republicans will convict him remains unknown.
There were over 4,400 deaths from COVID-19 in the US on Tuesday, and hospitalizations are still exceeding 130,000. Experts are cautioning that the new, more transmissible variant of the virus first found in the UK could begin to become the dominant strain in the US in a couple months.
And in headlines: the Census Bureau has stopped all work on a Trump policy, SCOTUS upholds a rule making it more difficult to get the abortion pill, and a star-studded lineup is announced for the Biden-Harris inauguration.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to announce a powerful new tool to help the homeless and needy in communities across America.
The "Find Shelter" tool is designed to connect needy families and individuals with housing, food, clothing, medical, and other local resources, Carson explains. He says the web service will help to meet the practical needs of many Americans as the pandemic continues.
We also cover these stories:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls President Donald Trump a "clear and present danger" before the House’s vote to impeach him again.
Trump releases a statement calling for peace in the nation.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announces plans to end the city's affiliation with Trump businesses.
Paris Marx is joined by Salomé Viljoen to discuss existing proposals to expand individual data rights or treat it as a form of labor, why we instead need to see data governance as a collective democratic project, and how that would give us the power to decide what data is collected and what it’s used for.
Salomé Viljoen is an affiliate at Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and a joint postdoctoral fellow at NYU School of Law’s Information Law Institute and the Cornell Tech Digital Life Initiative. Follow Salomé on Twitter as @salome_viljoen_.
Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.
Proto-data egalitarian examples: Andrea Nahler’s proposal for a civic data trust, Barcelona’s civic data trust, the US Census, and learning from libraries’ management of public information.
In this week’s episode we revisit a question we first answered in 2018. What was Chicago’s response to the Civil War? Chicagoans support for the war was actually quite varied and changed as the war progressed. To answer the question we focus on the experience of Irish Americans and African-Americans and look at how the war went from popular to controversial in Chicago in just a few years.
Harris recently released another both sidesy "I'm the only rational one" podcast episode about the recent insurrection at the Capitol. While he condemns Trump and the right, he also makes a series of terrible arguments in the name of anti-wokeness. Lindsey and I are here to set him straight! *note I said 2 Capitol officers were arrested. They were only suspended.*
Rob explores thrash metal icon Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” by discussing the band’s trajectory from their early work to their mainstream turn and their wide influence thereafter.
This episode was originally produced as a Music and Talk show available exclusively on Spotify. Find the full song on Spotify or wherever you get your music
