Category: 3-SometimeCommentary

At a time when too often bad manners and ill-tempers replace conversations of substance, sometimes free speech seems to have simply gone to seed – and we find ourselves wishing someone would control the din. At the same time, our society’s reaction to legitimately held and asserted opinion that differs from our own has at times become toxic and damaging in its own right. While charges of “hate speech” sprout like crabgrass on an un-mowed lawn and college students debate micro-aggressions, when a bad choice of words can tank your career, we seem to be in a societal-wide spitting match about just who is the most tediously offended.

And before we get too haughty about those who might possess a somewhat more sensitive constitution, we have to admit that as a people we seem to be doing a near-professional job of elevating being offensive to an art form. In the current age of opinion overload – when it’s usually the most despicable sentiments that break out of the pack – at a time when a graduation speaker better hew to our own beliefs or we won’t even listen, how do we walk the fine line between protecting the critical right to free speech and maintaining something quaintly reminiscent of being civilized? Is it possible that everyone has gone a wee bit too far?

Joining us for this discussion:  Jonathan Rauch and Chuck Hobbs. Facilitated by Rabbi Jack Romberg. 

This program is part of the Created Equal and Breathing Free podcast series presented in partnership with Florida Humanities.

Find this event, including speaker bios, online at The Village Square.

Paris Marx is joined by Veena Dubal to discuss how Proposition 22 and the contract status of gig workers is reminiscent of the United States’ history of racial wage codes, which codified lower wages for Black workers.
 
Veena Dubal is a Professor of Law at UC Hastings. Follow Veena on Twitter at @veenadubal. Go back to episode 10 (May 21, 2020) for Veena’s first appearance on the podcast.

🚨 T-shirts are now available!

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.
 
Also mentioned in this episode:

• If you’ve ever assigned an episode of the podcast in a college or university course, let me know by Twitter DM, email, or through this form.
• Read Veena’s essay on The New Racial Wage Code.
• Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois had opposing philosophies for Black social and economic progress.
• Robert C. Weaver and David Roediger wrote about differential wages.
• Uber put up a billboard saying, “If you tolerate racism, delete Uber.” Drivers were not happy.
• Uber and Lyft held up workers’ unemployment claims, and Lyft charged for PPE.
• After Prop 22, gig companies raised fees despite promising not to, and workers reported earning even less money.
• In August, Prop 22 was found to be unconstitutional.
• New York City recently passed new protections for delivery couriers after organizing by Los Deliveristas Unidos.
• Find out more about Rideshare Drivers United.

Support the show

Four decades ago, Glenn C. Loury became the first tenured black professor of economics in Harvard’s history. Ever since then, he has made waves for his willingness to buck the elite intellectual establishment; for his iconoclastic ideas about race and inequality; and for his incisive cultural criticism. 

He is a man of seeming contradictions: he rails against the divisiveness of woke politics from his post at Brown University, one of America’s most left wing campuses. He worries about what the death of God means for the country -- though he calls his own past religious beliefs a “benevolent self-delusion.” In the 80s, Glenn challenged his fellow black Americans to combat the “enemy from within,” while he himself battled demons like adultery and addiction. 

But Glenn’s ability to re-examine his positions and look at his own past with clear eyes is hardly a fault. Glenn is a man who, in a time of lies told for the sake of political convenience, strives to tell the truth even when the truth is hard. Or complicated. Or an affront to our feelings. Or contradicts what we wish were true.  

In today’s conversation: race, racism, Black Lives Matter, school choice, standardized tests, crack, sexual infidelity, Christianity, the Nation of Islam, neoconservatism, Harvard, groupthink, and pretty much every other hot-button subject you can imagine. Plus, Glenn’s own remarkable life story. 

Glenn's own podcast, "The Glenn Show" is available through Substack and in video form on his new Youtube channel.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As booster shots roll out across the country, Andy calls up Katherine Wu, who got a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology before joining the stellar science writing staff at The Atlantic. They discuss what we know about how the boosters will work, what to expect during our upcoming second pandemic winter, and what the future of COVID looks like. Plus, how Katherine approaches effectively communicating about science in real time. 

Keep up with Andy on Twitter @ASlavitt and Instagram @andyslavitt. 

Follow Katherine @KatherineJWu on Twitter.

Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today at bit.ly/lemonadapremium. 

Support the show by checking out our sponsors!

• Click this link for a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this show and all Lemonada shows: https://lemonadamedia.com/sponsors/ 
• Throughout the pandemic, CVS Health has been there, bringing quality, affordable health care closer to home—so it’s never out of reach for anyone. 

Learn more at cvshealth.com.

Check out these resources from today’s episode: 

• Watch President Biden get his booster shot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=188toSUMRNk 
• Read all of Katherine’s articles in The Atlantic, including the one she co-wrote with Ed Yong about winter: https://www.theatlantic.com/author/katherine-j-wu/
• Here’s the CDC statement on ACIP booster recommendations: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p0924-booster-recommendations-.html
• Find a COVID-19 vaccine site near you: https://www.vaccines.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 

Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia. 

For additional resources, information, and a transcript of the episode, visit lemonadamedia.com/show/inthebubble.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Life has gotten a lot better for a lot of people. But the story of upward movement, while true overall, is not felt equally across society. We see the consequences of that playing out in the United States, where tension over our immediate failures, not celebration over our big-picture successes, carries the day. In this episode, we speak with public intellectual John Wood Jr, a national leader at Braver Angels, an organization dedicated to depolarizing politics, about the power of inner transformation to fuel societal change and how a multiplicity of American identities and stories can be unproblematic if we develop a new national sensibility of goodwill.

What Could Go Right? is produced by The Progress Network and The Podglomerate.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello from Stuart’s Coffee in Bellingham!

This week, we welcome a special guest to talk about the immigrant rights movement and immigration policy. Plus, Andy and Tammy channel Jay Energy and answer listener questions.

(0:00): Andy and Tammy discuss Japanese food and our favorite chaebols.

(6:50): Listener Questions! What’s up with the “PI” in “AAPI?” listener SansMouton asks. We discuss the awkward origins of AAPI and why Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians shouldn’t be lumped into Asian America (cf. this random feature on Asian feelings in the NYT this weekend). But is there anything redeeming about a “Pacific” frame? And what would be the Pacific version of Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic?

* Thanks to friend of the pod Amita Manghnani for talking through the local politics of “A/P/A” and recommending “Asian American Studies and the ‘Pacific Question,’” by Wesleyan anthropologist Kehaulani Kauanui.

(25:00): How should academics balance institutional responsibilities (and annoying prestige stuff) with teaching? listener Robi asks. Andy tries to punt the question to Tammy before laying out his own materialist approach.

(31:44): Silky Shah, friend of the pod and executive director of Detention Watch Network, explains all things immigration:

* Her Truthout article on the dramatic increase in immigrant detention under Biden

* How her corner of the immigrant rights movement become abolitionist

* Why borders are b******t

* The We Are Home coalition

* Links between immigration and foreign policy

* The Dems’ obsession with “deterrence”

* Myths about immigration

* Why “Abolish ICE” isn’t nearly enough

* Recommended reads by Harsha Walia and Todd Miller.

For more on immigration policy, tune into this book event on Tuesday, Sept. 28, at noon EST, moderated by Tammy:

Thanks for listening and supporting the pod! Please keep in touch via Patreon and Substack, email (timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com) and Twitter!