Last week, the northern California mountain town of Greenville was wiped out by the Dixie Fire, which has lasted for nearly a month and is now the largest wildfire in California history. Greenville residents have just begun to assess the damage to their homes and businesses. Is it safe to rebuild? Is it even ethical, when wildfires are only expected to get worse?
Guest: Margaret Garcia, also known as Meg Upton, reporter at Plumas News.
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There is an old saying that everything old is new again. This is certainly true with electric cars.
The recent surge in popularity of electric vehicles is technically a resurgence, because believe it or not, there was a time when electric cars were more popular than cars with internal combustion engines.
Learn more about electric cars, their history, future, as well as their benefits and drawbacks, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Richard Alba, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, has written an intriguing new book on our understanding of American demographic data, and how we, as citizens, see each other as part of the fabric of the United States. The Great Demographic Illusion: Majority, Minority, and the Expanding American Mainstream (Princeton UP, 2020) examines the long historical narrative of the experience of immigrants to the United States while also mapping out various forms of data to help us understand the actual experience of immigrants, over time, in the U.S. Part of Alba’s research in this project is highlighting the issue of what kind of assimilation actually happened in the U.S., especially in the post-World War II period. He explains that there was mass assimilation, after World War II, of the children of immigrants who had arrived in the U.S. in the earlier waves of immigration, prior to WWII. But Alba is not only interested in the immigrant experience, what he is really digging into is the experience of those who are not white, or who were not considered white initially but subsequently were seen as white citizens of the U.S. Alba is examining the reality and interrogating the narrative that has come to be associated with particular waves of immigrants to the U.S. In order to unpack the reality of these immigration narratives, Alba is also digging into the demographic data about where people live, who they marry, and the way that children are categorized according to the United States’ census.
The census generates a lot of data, which is used in a host of different ways, including in a traditional political fashion, in the allocation of goods and services. This is not the story that Alba is telling in The Great Demographic Illusion, which is mining the census data to determine what assimilation actually looks like in the U.S., and how citizens perceive themselves, and how they go on to raise their children, where they choose to live, and the kinds of communities to which they are connected. The Great Demographic Illusion also highlights the problems with the census data, in the aggregation of the data that is compiled in the survey, especially in regard to the questions of racial identification. While the census has innovated by expanding the capacity for individuals to indicate more than one race, thus adapting to the individuals who have parents of different races. In order to tease out the problems in the ways that the census data is reported, Alba compared the information from the census in terms of racial identification with what birth certificates indicate about the racial identity of parents of the child; he also compared the census data to the Pew Research data on intermarriage. This really gets at the heart of what Alba is calling the “great demographic illusion” – since the reporting of the census data is indicative of a greater and faster racial change in the country, which Alba has noted is not exactly accurate. Another dimension of the research that Alba finds particularly engaging is the sociological position of these individuals who come from mixed backgrounds, since they are socially flexible in ways that their parents and grandparents were unable to be. This is a sophisticated and multi-dimensional study of what we know, assume, and possibly are misguided about, in regard to the tapestry of the American citizenry and all those who live in the U.S.
We'll explain new developments around COVID-19 vaccines: who could soon get an extra dose, where they're now being mandated, and what experts have to say about the shots for pregnant women.
Also, how everything keeps getting more expensive and what's being done about it.
Plus, an unusual cryptocurrency hack, big advancements in the flip phone market, and two new hosts for Jeopardy!
Senators Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema say they might not support a budget bill with a $3.5 trillion price tag, but Democrats in the House won't support the bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure package unless the larger bill passes, too. We spoke with Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal about how House progressives are thinking about these two crucial bills.
America is facing two major heat waves in the Pacific Northwest and in the eastern and central U.S. Abroad, there are wildfires burning in Canada, Russia, Greece, Algeria, Turkey, and Italy, all fueled by extreme heat and dry vegetation, and causing evacuations and mass destruction.
And in headlines: rebel Tigray and Oromo forces announce an alliance against Ethiopia's government, Texas House Democrats may face arrest for their exodus, and NASA's next space suit is delayed.
Show Notes:
NYT: “Hidden Toll of the Northwest Heat Wave: Hundreds of Extra Deaths” – https://nyti.ms/2U8rREe
For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday
The stories and facts in the book, which was released in May, are important “for all people to know, to get an accurate understanding of America's past—the good, the bad, and the ugly,” Woodson says.
He adds that the “message of the book to America is, if blacks could achieve these great things of creating their own railroad, if we were able to build our own Wall Streets, if we were able to achieve in schools, and reduce the income gap … then we need to apply these old values to a new vision.”
Woodson joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to share some of his favorite true stories of American blacks' success detailed in the book and to share a bit of his own personal story.
We also cover these stories:
The Senate takes a big step toward passing Democrats' $3.5 trillion spending package.
YouTube suspends Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., from its platform for a week.
Conflicts over mask policies in Florida continue to mount.
The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.
In lieu of my usual re-runs filling out August, I’m doing something different: a full-reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, presented in three parts.This is part 2.
(Encore episode) It's another installment of our series, "Animal Slander," where we take a common phrase about animals and see what truth there is to it. The issue before the Short Wave court today: "Do cats deserve their aloof reputation?" We look at the evidence with cat researcher, Kristyn Vitale of Oregon State University.
The beef sandwich and slushy drink combo are sold together all across the South and West sides of Chicago. Reporter Monica Eng tracks down the guy who put the two together. Then, she answers a question about what those mysterious structures out on Lake Michigan actually do.
For several months, the journalist Katie Herzog has been talking to some of the country's top doctors and professors—not about COVID, or vaccines—but about a new, creeping orthodoxy that’s taken over the hospitals and medical schools where they work. Those doctors say that whole areas of research are off-limits. They say that top physicians are treating patients based on their race. That professors are apologizing for saying ‘male’ and ‘female’ and that students are policing teachers. And in more than a few alarming instances, politics has come before patients. As one doctor put it: “Wokeness feels like an existential threat."Today, Katie joins us to discuss the ideological purge happening within American medicine, where the stakes could not be higher.
If you haven't read her newsmaking stories, published in our newsletter, we highly recommend checking them out
