Month: November 2022

On this episode of “You’re Wrong,” a production of "The Federalist Radio Hour," Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway and Senior Editor David Harsanyi consider how much Twitter shifted away from its anti-free speech rampage under Elon Musk's leadership, debate why and when the GOP should investigate the Biden family corruption, discuss what House Republicans' top priorities should be now that they are in power, and share their Thanksgiving plans.

Hello from the picket lines! 

This week, Jay and Tammy report on labor actions on the streets of Berkeley and Seoul. 

[4:30] First, Jay tells us what he’s heard from striking student workers at the University of California. More than forty-five thousand UAW union members are drawing attention to their financial precarity and austerity in academia. We parse the possible fault lines among this remarkably large group of workers: the relative resources and prestige of different UC campuses, disciplinary biases, and disparate access to jobs after graduation. Why should we believe universities’ pleas of poverty, when their money so clearly goes to bloated administrative positions, campus police, and extravagant sports facilities? 

[38:58] We also discuss strikes at Starbucks, The New School, and HarperCollins, and the revived possibility of a rail strike next month. Something’s clearly in the air—will US labor law and the NLRB limit or bolster worker power? 

[45:27] Next, Tammy fills us in on the annual labor rally in Seoul, which, this year, targeted President Yoon Suk Yeol’s malfeasance and the mass deaths in Itaewon. As the new administration promises to concentrate wealth even further and avoids interacting with the public, how should the Korean working class respond? What kind of government is the Yoon administration, and what is the government for, anyway? 

[53:02] Lastly, we remember Staughton Lynd, a key leftist intellectual and organizer who passed away last week. Lynd and his wife, Alice, were key figures in movements for civil rights and labor and against incarceration and war. RIP. 

Next week, we’ll be taking a break from recording. Our next episode will be a live recording with Hua Hsu, so be sure to pick up his book—and please join us in person next week, if you’re in NYC!

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A few months ago, I had writer Freddie deBoer on the podcast for an episode we called, “Does Glorifying Sickness Deter Healing?” We talked about his experience living with severe bipolar disorder and the dangerous ways in which mental illness has gotten wrapped up in our growing cultural obsession with identity politics. It’s almost like sickness, he argued, has become chic.

We spent some of the conversation talking critically about a New York Times article by writer Daniel Bergner about a movement away from medication and more towards acceptance. A movement that replaces words like “psychosis” with “nonconsensus realities.” This article, in Freddie’s view, was exemplary of the very phenomenon he was calling out. 

A lot of people responded extremely positively to my conversation with Freddie. Others, not so much. One of those people was Daniel Bergner. So I invited him on the show.

Today’s episode is not just a debate about how society should handle the epidemic of mental illness. It’s a model for how to disagree with someone productively, respectively, honestly. It’s a reminder not only that it’s okay to come out of a conversation strongly disagreeing with someone, but that it’s of vital importance.

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