Congress avoids a government shutdown after Kevin McCarthy caves to Democrats at the last possible minute—and now Matt Gaetz is trying to strip McCarthy of the speakership as a result. Will Democrats bail McCarthy out? Donald Trump begins his fraud trial with the unique legal strategy of threatening the judge, Joe Biden frames the 2024 election as extremism vs. democracy, and Gavin Newsom appoints Laphonza Butler as California's newest Senator. Later, Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal joins the show to talk about House Democrats' strategy as the Speaker drama unfolds.
For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.
Join the World-Wide Digital Experience "Pod Save America Live from DC" on October 19 at 8 PM ET with Co-host Symone Sanders and Special Guests Senator John Fetterman, Chef Jose Andres, and Jennifer Carroll Foy.
Jordan Banks, the protagonist of New Kid, is a seventh grade student who loves to draw and hopes to one day become a cartoonist. But the graphic novel following Jordan's arrival at a predominantly white, elite, private school has been challenged numerous times in the state of Texas by people claiming it promotes critical race theory. In today's episode, author Jerry Craft tells NPR's A Martinez how those challenges were often presented by parents who had not truly engaged with the material – and why it's crucial for him to tell coming-of-age stories for Black kids that don't involve catastrophe.
Amanda Holmes reads José Garcia Villa’s “In My Desire to Be Nude.” 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.
On his institutional web homepage at the University of California-Los Angeles’s Anderson School of Management, psychologist Hal Hershfield posts one statement in big italic type: “My research asks, ‘How can we help move people from who they are now to who they’ll be in the future in a way that maximizes well-being?”
In this Social Science Bites podcast, Hershfield and interviewer Dave Edmonds discuss what that means in practice, whether in our finances or our families, and how humans can make better decisions. Hershfield’s new book, Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today, offers a popular synthesis of these same questions.
Much of his research centers on this key observation: “humans have this unique ability to engage in what we call ‘mental time travel,’ the ability to project ourselves ahead and look back on the past and even project ourselves ahead and look back on the past while we're doing so. But despite this ability to engage in mental time travel, we don't always do it in a way that affords us the types of benefits that it could.”
Those benefits might include better health from future-looking medical decisions, better wealth thanks to future-looking spending and savings decisions, or greater contentment based on placing current events in a future-looking context. Which begs the question – when is the future?
“The people who think the future starts sooner,” Hershfield explains, “are the ones who are more likely to do things for that future, which in some ways makes sense. It's closer, it's a little more vivid. There's a sort of a clean break between now and it. That said, it is a pretty abstract question. And I think what you're asking about what counts in five years, 10 years, 20 years? That's a deeper question that also needs to be examined.”
Regardless of when someone thinks the future kicks off, people remain acutely aware that time is passing even if for many their actions belie that. Proof of this comes from studies of how individual react when made acutely aware of the advance of time, Hershfield notes. “People place special value on these milestone birthdays and almost use them as an excuse to perform sort of a meaningfulness audit. of their lives, … This is a common finding, we've actually found this in our research, that people are more likely to do these sorts of meaning-making activities as they confront these big milestones. But it's also to some degree represents a break between who you are now and some future person who you will become.”
Hershfield concludes the interview noting how his research has changed him, using the example of how he now makes time when he might be doing professional work to spend with his family. “I want my future self to look back and say, ‘You were there. You were present. You saw those things,’ and not have looked up and said, ‘Shoot, I missed out on that.’ I would say that's the main way that I've really started to shift my thinking from this work.”
We are back. What a week to take a break, huh? We catch up on Nazi officers in Canadian parliament, Sen. Bob “Goldbar” Menendez, Sen. Dianne “RIP” Feinstein, an assortment of madcap Trump statements, China repossesses its Pandas, and more.
Thank you for bearing with us through all of this. Programming should continue as usual now. Movie Mindset Halloween Edition starts this Wednesday 10/4/23, and we have some more surprise treats coming to the Patreon when that’s wrapped up in November.
If you’d like to join Will & Hesse this October 30th for screenings of The Fog and Halloween III at the Roxy Cinema in NYC, ticket links here:
The Fog: https://www.roxycinemanewyork.com/screenings/the-fog/
Halloween III: https://www.roxycinemanewyork.com/screenings/halloween-iii-season-of-the-witch/
Former President Trump on trial. California Governor Gavin Newsome selects person to fill seat of the late senator Dianne Feinstein. Pharmacy clerks and techs go on strike. CBS News Correspondent Jennifer Keiper with tonight's World News Roundup.
Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had a tenure marked by a relentless series of challenges. He served through the U.S. withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and rising tensions with China.
He also served under an American president with little regard for the norms that have historically separated politics from the U.S. military: Donald Trump.
In an interview shortly before his retirement last weekend, NPR's Mary Louise Kelly asked Milley about the relationship between the military and the executive branch — and how it was tested under Trump.
Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had a tenure marked by a relentless series of challenges. He served through the U.S. withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and rising tensions with China.
He also served under an American president with little regard for the norms that have historically separated politics from the U.S. military: Donald Trump.
In an interview shortly before his retirement last weekend, NPR's Mary Louise Kelly asked Milley about the relationship between the military and the executive branch — and how it was tested under Trump.
