Joe Biden tries to rally the world to save the planet while Joe Manchin is still holding up his climate agenda back home, Donald Trump wades into the final days of the Virginia gubernatorial contest, and NYU Law Professor Melissa Murray joins to talk about today’s Supreme Court oral arguments over the Texas abortion law.
It's Election Day in Virginia, and no issue has captured the attention of voters in the Old Dominion more than education.
Battles between school boards and frustrated parents have attracted national attention, and led to a close race for governor.
Ian Prior, a Loudoun County, Virginia, father and executive director of parents-based grassroots organization Fight for Schools, feels the enthusiasm that parents engaged in their children's education are bringing to the election.
"Parents have this burning fire inside of them to protect their children, and it's almost a bit of a hero's journey, like Joseph Campbell, where they have really risen to the occasion and have found skills and strength within them that they may not have known that they've had, and that is really what this movement is about," he says. "It's about parents that have found that inner strength and are willing to put it all on the line."
Prior joins the show to discuss how education took center stage in the race, and implications for parents’ rights in their child’s education.
We also cover these stories:
President Joe Biden warns that unless immediate and definitive collective action is taken by the world, the “existential threat” of climate change could destroy people’s lives and livelihoods.
Demonstrators for and against abortion stand outside the Supreme Court as the justices hear arguments on Texas' heartbeat abortion law.
Philadelphia becomes the first city to end traffic stops for minor infractions.
COVID-19 has changed everything, including how we work (and to be more precise, are employed). But in order to best understand how things have changed, and hopefully to grapple with how they will be, it helps to have studied how they were. Enter Melanie Simms, professor of work and employment at the University of Glasgow ‘s Adam Smith Business School, and the author – in 2019 – of What Do We Know and What Should We Do About the Future of Work?
In this Social Science Bites podcast, Simms explains that while the idea of working from home seemed to be the dominant narrative during the pandemic, it’s only one of two “real headlines.” That’s in large part because the people who talk publicly about working from home are academics and journalists, both groups that did work from home. In fact, Simms relates, in the United Kingdom about 70 percent of workers spent some or all of their time at their workplace.
The less public headline, she notes, is that there seems to be a large group of people who have left the labor market during the pandemic – often women with children. And while improving options for childcare might see more mothers in employed positions, Simms notes a different trajectory for older workers -- almost anyone over 50 who has left the workforce in the last year-and-a-half struggles to re-enter it -- regardless of kind of work they do.
In discussion with interviewer David Edmonds, Simms details that while she does look at global trends, her research mostly focuses on the United Kingdom, and thanks to the regulatory ecosystem and a skew toward the service economy, what’s true in the UK can’t automatically be applied elsewhere.
Among the subjects Simms and Edmonds touch on are the “regrowth” of the middle class female workforce starting in the 1960s; the difficulties that a lack of childcare routinely creates for working women; the aging of the workforce as young people stay in school longer (delaying their entry into the labor marker) while at the same time older workers remain active in the labor market for longer; de-industrialization; labor unions; and the gig economy, which Simms sees as more about how work is allocated than a change in work itself.
We’re joined by Daniel Bessner, co-host of the American Prestige podcast, for a remarkably focused and thoughtful Will-less episode. We discuss Trump’s recent statement about Israel “owning” congress, Josh Hawley’s thoughts on masculinity, and the Lincoln Project’s bungled attempt at a false-flag operation to make a Republican appear more racist. Then Matt and Danny tell us about their new Chapo mini-series “Hinge Points,” which will explore some great historical “what-if” moments. Hinge Points will be posting on our Patreon for all subscribers on Fridays, starting 11/5.
DECEMBER SHOWS:
Catch us at Asbury Hall in Buffalo, NY on Wednesday, December 8th https://www.eventbrite.com/e/chapo-trap-house-tickets-201713088277
And at Warsaw in Brooklyn, NY on Thursday, December 16th (with music from 95 Bulls)
https://www.ticketweb.com/event/chapo-trap-house-warsaw-tickets/11487515?pl=warsaw
(NOTE: these ticket links will go live sometime Tuesday, 11/2. Do not complain about the links not being live now. We will make dedicated posts on Patreon and Twitter with the links when they go live.)
MERCH:
Check out new merch and restocked favorites over at shop.chapotraphouse.com. New merch goes live 9 a.m. ET on Tuesday, 11/2.
SUPPORT HOLLYWOOD FOOD COALTION:
Go to https://hofoco.org, click donate and leave the note “Mandy Challenge” to support Josh Olsen’s fundraiser.
AMERICAN PRESTIGE:
Finally, make sure you go check out Danny and Derek Davison’s podcast American Prestige:
https://www.patreon.com/americanprestige
Scientists have been trying to figure out how to eradicate malaria for decades. Globally, a child under the age of five dies from the disease every two minutes, and even for kids who do survive there can be long term complications. A big breakthrough finally came in October when the World Health Organization endorsed MoSQUIRIX, the first malaria vaccine. It has relatively low efficacy, just about 30%, but malaria researcher Winter Okoth explains how the new vaccine could still make a big difference.
The Queen of Tejano music is having a moment in pop culture once again, even 26 years after her murder. Selena Quintanilla's face not only adorns T-shirts and hoodies, but she's also the subject of a Netflix series, a podcast and a new novel by poet Melissa Lozada-Oliva. It's called Dreaming of You, and imagines what would have happened if Selena hadn't been killed when she was 23. Lozada-Oliva tells us about the story, which is written in verse, and the pop star's impact on her life since she was a child.
Amanda Holmes reads Katherine Mansfield’s poem “The Quarrel.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.
This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.
Genean and Abrar from Common Humanity Collective join us to discuss the history of their mutual aid work, building communities through organizing, and how studying the history of struggles in the Spanish Civil War and beyond helped expand and transform their work.
It's time for a good old fashioned low stakes fun legal deep dive! Get ready to learn what on Earth this episode title even means! Before that, we've got some Thomas was allegedly wrong about duck duck grey duck! And then a wildcard segment about Dan Tana's vs. Dantana's!
