On August 15, 1971, US President Richard Nixon ended the gold convertibility of the US Dollar and simultaneously ended the Bretton Woods System, which had governed international monetary policy since the end of the Second World War.
The system which replaced Bretton Woods wasn’t built on formal treaties and conferences. It was a highly informal system that, for the most part, still exists today.
Learn more about the petrodollar system, how it came to be, and how it works on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
You know, how teachers unions kept schools closed for more than a year? Or how some on the left cast aside free speech in the face of a tragedy? Mary Katharine and Vic know it's all in good faith....
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00:12 - Segment: Welcome to the Show
15:56 - Segment: The News You Need to Know
16:03 - Coronavirus lockdowns continue in Shanghai
21:58 - House holds a hearing on UFO sightings
28:56 - Russia miscalculates Ukraine invasion; Finland, Sweden, Switzerland consider joining NATO
32:04 - Mass shootings over the weekend kill ten in Buffalo, one in Southern California
Immigration is one of the most fraught, and possibly most misunderstood, topics in American social discourse—yet, in most cases, the things we believe about immigration are based largely on myth, not facts. Using the tools of modern data analysis and ten years of pioneering research, Streets of Gold: America's Untold Story of Immigrant Success (Public Affairs, 2022) provides new evidence about the past and present of the American Dream, debunking myths fostered by political opportunism and sentimentalized in family histories. They make a powerful case for four key facts:
Children of immigrants from nearly every country, especially those of poor immigrants, do better economically than children of U.S.-born residents.
Immigrants accused of lack of assimilation (such as Mexicans today and the Irish in the past) actually assimilate fastest.
Immigration changes the economy in unexpected positive ways and staves off the economic decline that is the consequence of an aging population.
Closing the door to immigrants harms the economic prospects of the U.S.-born—the people politicians are trying to protect.
Using powerful story-telling and unprecedented research employing big data and algorithms, interviewee Leah Boustan and her co-author Ran Abramitzky are like dedicated family genealogists but millions of times over. They provide a new take on American history with surprising results, especially how comparable the “golden era” of immigration is to today, and why many current policy proposals are so misguided.
In Affect, Ecofeminism, and Intersectional Struggles in Latin America: A Tribute to Berta Cáceres (Peter Lang, 2020), Irune del Rio Gabiola examines the power of affect in structuring decolonizing modes of resistance performed by social movements such as COPINH (Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras). Despite a harsh legacy of colonialism, indigenous communities continue suffering from territorial displacements, dispossession, and human rights abuses due to extractivist projects that are violently destroying their land and, therefore, the environment. In particular, the Lenca communities in Honduras have been negatively affected by Western ideas of progress and development that have historically eliminated ancestral knowledges and indigenous ecological cosmologies while reinforcing Eurocentrism. Nevertheless, by reflecting on and articulating strategies for resisting neoliberalism, COPINH and its cofounder Berta Cáceres' commitment to environmental activism, ecofeminism, and intersectional struggles has contributed affectively and effectively to the production of democratic encounters in pursuit of social justice. In homage to Berta, who was brutally assassinated for her activism in 2016, this book takes the reader on an affective journey departing from the violent affects experienced by the Lencas due to colonial disruption, contemporary industrialization, and criminalization, towards COPINH's political and social intervention fueled by outrage, resistance, transnational solidarity, care, mourning, and hope. In this way, subaltern actors nurture the power to--in line with Brian Massumi's interpretation of affect--transform necropolitics into natality with the aim of creating a fairer and better world
The important new book by Alicia Puglionesi, In Whose Ruins: Power, Possession and the Landscapes of American Empire(Scribner, 2022), is a fat sampler of episodes that show how origin stories get made, what happens when white-supremacist origin stories are mistaken for empirical fact, and how the political impacts persist. The book is decidedly anti-capitalist; resoundingly anti-colonial. It is an invitation not to jettison story-work, but to imagine, collectively, origin stories of the present that might bring into being a more just future.
In Whose Ruins could easily be categorized as Environmental History or Native Studies. But Puglionesi forges a book that is more than either field could accomplish alone. The “power” of the book’s subtitle has a double meeting: political power and the energy sources of a capitalist economy (oil, hydropower, and nuclear energy).
The book is organized into four sections, or “sites,” that visit four evocative land features: a hulking, conical earth mound in present-day West Virginia adjacent to a decommissioned state prison; wells dug into the ground in smalltown Pennsylvania; rocks that tell stories (they’re etched with petroglyphs) along the Susquehanna River with kin fragmented elsewhere; the Sonoran Desert rich with pottery, uranium, and physicists, both white and Native. In each of these sites, people with different political projects—some announced, some implicit—have generated multiple accounts of the landscapes and ideas of value.
Within a context of shifting political power, white-settler stories about each site displaced empirical knowledge of Native labor, skill, presence, and endurance with harmful fables of white origins and of Native communities’ need for white “rescue.” Into the present day, the effect has been to justify white theft of Native land and deadly violence against tribal communities for the purposes of resource extraction. In the end, even the false white origin stories became a resource to commodify.
Puglionesi is a writer of poetry, fiction, academic scholarship, and, now, In Whose Ruins, a mass-market trade publication. She holds a PhD in History of Medicine and is a lecturer in Medicine, Science and Humanities at The Johns Hopkins University. On the page, Puglionesi has a friendly, funny, quiet presence—an affable Where’s Waldo that centers the relationships of historical actors (including spirits) and the work of scholars such as Kim TallBear, Zoe Todd, and Eve Tuck.
This conversation explores ways of living in good relation via writing; the status of truth; the relevance of singer-songwriter Prince for labor studies; and many other themes. It discusses the important book by Chadwick Allen, Earthworks Rising (Minnesota, 2022). In an unrecorded snippet, we also swap names of our favorite local indie bookstores. So check out Red Emma’s the next time you’re in Baltimore, MD (or on Bookshop.org) and Symposium, Riff Raff, and Paper Nautilus when your compass points to Providence, RI.
Laura Stark is Associate Professor at Vanderbilt University’s Center for Medicine, Health, and Society.
Our nation’s children are experiencing some of the highest levels of stress in history due to the pandemic, yet they lack the skills to properly verbalize and manage their mental health. The good news? It’s not too late for adults to lend a hand, and you don’t have to be a primary caregiver to do so. Mental health expert Dr. Nzinga Harrison teaches Andy about the seven Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) that build a child's sense of belonging, and how to help any young person in your life access them. She also reflects on the positives of the pandemic, including a decreased stigma in requesting mental health support.
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America's psychiatric emergency systems are struggling to assist those in dire need of help. The Kennedy-Satcher Center for Mental Health Equity, a subsidiary of the Satcher Health Leadership at Morehouse School of Medicine, is partnering with Beacon Health Options to establish critical guidelines for dismantling inequity through its new research and policy initiative. You can join the movement too by attending their upcoming virtual summit. Go to kennedysatcher.org to register today.
Beacon Health Options has also published a new white paper online called Reimagining Behavioral Health Crisis Systems of Care. Download it today at beaconlens.com/white-papers.
Find vaccines, masks, testing, treatments, and other resources in your community: https://www.covid.gov/
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
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President Biden traveled to Buffalo, New York, yesterday to speak with the families of victims of the white supremacist mass shooting, as well as other community members. Without invoking any particular names, Biden also referenced political and media figures who have attempted to gain from spreading the racist lie of the so-called “replacement theory.”
A judge in Michigan temporarily blocked the state’s nearly century-old abortion ban from going back into effect if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Michigan is one of nine states with one of these pre-Roe-era abortion bans on their books.
And in headlines: a senior Trump official met with two prominent activists from the ‘Stop The Steal Movement’ on January 6th, children aged 5 to 11 can now get COVID vaccine boosters, and federal lawmakers held the first congressional hearing about UFOs in over 50 years.
We're talking about President Biden's message to the nation about white supremacy that's fueling mass shootings just as the FBI started investigating yet another hate crime.
Also, we'll tell you what lawmakers learned about UFO sightings during their first public hearing on the subject in decades.
Plus, another Covid-19 shot is available for kids, a new checkout system lets you pay with a smile, and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue is making history again.
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A note on notes: We’d much rather you just went into each episode of The Memory Palace cold. And just let the story take you where it well. So, we don’t suggest looking into the show notes first.
