Theory of Change podcast

The future is a funny thing. It's always around the corner, and yet it never quite arrives. That's certainly true when speaking about the technology industry. As the personal computer revolution and the internet began spreading around the world, commentators and entrepreneurs made fortunes telling everyone that we were going to have a technological utopia in which everything was possible. It was a parallel to what was happening in the political world, where the collapse of the Soviet Union inspired writers and politicians to declare that humanity had reached the “End of History,” a singular moment in time in which we could have the freedom of social democracy as smiling and benevolent billionaires provided everything we could ever want at unimaginably low prices. In the years since, however, all of these promises have failed to materialize. While we can indeed get more stuff than ever before, wages have been stagnant, millions have abandoned the labor force, and the supposedly benevolent billionaires have openly allied themselves with religious fundamentalists in the hopes of preserving the massive wealth they've extracted from the world economy. One person who perhaps saw this coming is Richard Barbrook, our guest on this episode of Theory of Change. He's the co-author of a 1995 essay called “The Californian Ideology,” which was a rare contemporary dissent from what later became known as neoliberalism and also the emerging techno-libertarianism. Years later, he wrote a 2007 re-examination of the subject in a book called “Imaginary Futures: From Thinking Machines to the Global Village.” SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help! Theory of Change on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theory-of-change-podcast/id1486920059 AUDIO TRANSCRIPT (Patreon membership required for full text) https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2023/01/richard-barbrook-californian-ideology-libertarianism-neoliberalism/ GUEST INFO Richard Barbrook's Website: http://www.imaginaryfutures.net/ On Twitter: https://twitter.com/richardbarbrook "The Californian Ideology" essay: https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/californian-ideology Imaginary Futures book: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745326603/imaginary-futures/ ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield about larger trends and intersections of politics, religion, media, and technology. It's part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield

Comedy has always been about pointing out the absurd and unjust things in life, but lately, a lot of veteran comedians have taken to complaining about their business more than anything else. Long-time standup comics like Dave Chapelle and Ricky Gervais are oftentimes at war with their own audiences, accusing them of being intolerant of dissent and killing off comedy. Is there anything at all to that critique? Or is it mostly about older comedians not wanting to update their material? Joining us to discuss is Lisa Curry, she's a standup comedian who's performed in 13 different countries, written on Comedy Central's Jiff Jeffries Show, and she's the host of “Long Story Long” a weekly show on SiriusXM radio. AUDIO TRANSCRIPT https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2023/01/why-are-so-many-older-comedians-attacking-the-audience-rather-than-updating-their-material/ GUEST INFO Website: https://lisa-curry.squarespace.com/ Instagram: http://instagram.com/olympianlisacurry Twitter: https://twitter.com/lisa_curry Long Story Long podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/long-story-long/id1547748537 ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield about larger trends and intersections of politics, religion, media, and technology. It's part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help! Theory of Change on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theory-of-change-podcast/id1486920059

One of the biggest social changes since the 1960s has been the empowerment of women to make personal choices, to control who they date, whether they're married, and when or if they have children. While society and popular culture aimed at women seem to have embraced many of these changes, the unfortunate reality is that popular culture aimed at men has not kept pace. Instead of encouraging adaptation and teaching new social and professional skills, cultural influencers who aim for the male media market have mostly been offering the same old advice—which simply doesn't work in a world in which divorce is common and dating apps have made things easier but also more complicated. Male friendship has also declined. A 2021 study from the Survey Center on American Life found that 15 of male respondents said they had no close friends. Obviously the COVID-19 pandemic played an important role in this, but there are other factors as well, such as pop culture that encourages men to avoid new friendships or discussing their feelings. As a result, many men have not been able to resolve these struggles. So-called “deaths of despair,” such as drug or alcohol overdoses and deliberate suicides are much higher among men than women. Further compounding the negative situation has been the proliferation of “men's rights” activists and other far-right political actors such as the “incel” movement who have been radicalizing millions of young men to blame others for their problems, instead of learning from mistakes or improving their outlook. Is there a crisis of masculinity in America? In this episode, we're featuring Brandon Bradford, he's a political consultant who also serves as a men's support group leader in his spare time. AUDIO TRANSCRIPT (Patreon membership required for full text): https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2023/01/masculinity-is-in-crisis-as-male-popular-culture-hasnt-changed-with-the-world/ GUEST INFO Brandon Bradford on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrandonLBradfor BOOKS MENTIONED The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-body-keeps-the-score-brain-mind-and-body-in-the-healing-of-trauma-bessel-van-der-kolk/6679040 The Prophet https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-prophet-kahlil-gibran/14794867?ean=9780394404288 The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials Into Triumph https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-obstacle-is-the-way-the-timeless-art-of-turning-trials-into-triumph-ryan-holiday/7678327?ean=9781591846352 The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-art-of-happiness-a-handbook-for-living-dalai-lama/14671107?ean=9781573227544 ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help! Theory of Change on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theory-of-change-podcast/id1486920059

We've talked a lot on this program about the growing threat of political extremism and how far-right activists are leveraging religion and business connections to build power over the minds of millions of Americans. And yet, despite all of that, it's also the case that people can change. No matter how strong they hold their viewpoints today, no one was born with their opinions. The process usually is a gradual one, but it's real. The results of the 2022 elections in the United States are proof of this. Almost everywhere, Republicans who actively put forward Donald Trump's election lies lost their races. And interestingly enough, many of those losses seem to have been caused in part by people who supported Republicans who didn't promote Trump's election lies. In Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and lots of places in-between, millions of Republican-leaning voters couldn't bring themselves to support Trump's dangerous sore-loser campaign. Joining the show in this episode to discuss what's going on is Melissa Peltier, she's the director and writer of a documentary called “The Game Is Up: Disillusioned Trump Voters Tell Their Stories.” It's a film that closely profiles several people who supported Donald Trump in 2016 and then decided to change their minds—and why they did so. AUDIO TRANSCRIPT (Patreon membership required for full text): https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2022/12/some-trump-supporters-changed-their-minds-about-him-can-anything-be-learned-from-them/ GUEST INFO Melissa Peltier on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MelissaJPeltier Watch "The Game Is Up" on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Game-Up-Disillusioned-Voters-Stories/dp/B0B6SVXWLX/ Watch "The Game Is Up" on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mgLbdGIepc ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help! Theory of Change on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theory-of-change-podcast/id1486920059

When you turn on your news app, YouTube, or television, chances are you're going to be deluged with content about “cancel culture,” an amorphous term that no one ever actually defines, but seems to be about private citizens criticizing other private citizens. What you're much less likely to hear about is that right now, America is facing an epidemic of censorship--actual government officials using their power to ban speech or content that they don't like. According to the free expression and literary human rights group PEN America, since 2021, there have been 185 educational gag orders in 41 states targeting authors and teachers from teaching specific books and topics. Censorship advocates are also coming after the nation's public libraries, trying to block and remove materials they deem inappropriate based on their religious opinions. In this episode, we're joined by Jonathan Friedman who is the director of free expression and education programs at PEN America. AUDIO TRANSCRIPT (Patreon membership required for full text): https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2022/12/americas-public-libraries-are-facing-an-epidemic-of-censorship/ GUEST INFO Jonathan Friedman on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jonfreadom PEN America website: https://pen.org/ PEN report, "Banned in the USA" https://pen.org/report/banned-usa-growing-movement-to-censor-books-in-schools/ ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help! Theory of Change on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theory-of-change-podcast/id1486920059

Just as the 2020 elections were fading into America's rear view mirror, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, cast the political and media worlds into chaos by taking ownership control over Twitter. Most people don't use Twitter because they find it too weird and disjointed, but it is actually the place online where most of America's political junkies: activists, politicians, and journalists come to talk. It all seems to have started as a joke however. Musk offered to buy Twitter at a price of $54.20 per share, 420 being the very, very old reference to marijuana. After his Tesla stock price went south dramatically, Musk tried to get out of the deal but was forced into it by a lawsuit from Twitter. Since then, Musk has brought the site into complete chaos, reinstating a number of accounts that had been banned for promoting hatred and violence and disinformation, including, most famously, Donald Trump. While he appears to have had no real plan for Twitter beforehand, what has become very evident is that Elon Musk has become radicalized by the far right, a path that has become increasingly common in recent years for wealthy white libertarian men who just a few decades ago actually saw themselves on the political left, before the re-emergence of populists like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. There's a lot to talk about Musk and Twitter and how he fits into the larger tradition of the libertarian right within Silicon Valley and the American political right as a whole. We're pleased to feature two panelists to discuss this topic. Jacob Silverman is the co-author of the forthcoming book “Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud,” which he's co-writing with the actor Ben McKenzie. We're also joined by Chris Lehmann, who is the Washington Bureau Chief of The Nation magazine and the former editor of The New Republic. AUDIO TRANSCRIPT: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2022/11/elon-musk-ideology-libertarian-effective-altruism-far-right/ GUEST INFO Jacob Silverman on Twitter: https://twitter.com/silvermanjacob Pre-order “Easy Money:” https://store.abramsbooks.com/products/easy-money Chris Lehmann on Twitter: https://twitter.com/lehmannchris ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help! Theory of Change on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theory-of-change-podcast/id1486920059

Alex Jones, the far right talk radio host who pioneered the art of making money from internet conspiracy theories, is facing the worst moment of his career. It is quite possibly the apocalypse of Jones. After making up thousands of lies over a career spending decades, Jones is now starting to face consequences. In August, a jury in Austin, Texas, returned a damages verdict against Jones for defaming the parents of a child who was killed in a school shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, in 2012. Jones was ordered to pay $4.1 million in compensatory damages and $49 million in punitive damages. The lawyer for the plaintiffs in this case, which is one of only several, insists that this will be only the beginning of what's going to happen to Jones and his company Infowars. But is that right? Will he actually have to pay those large-scale fines? And will Jones be affected by large scale fines at all? And in the long term, are legal suits a way forward to stop the propagation of conspiracy theories in this country? Joining me to discuss in this episode is Liz Dye. She is a columnist with the legal affairs website Above the Law. And she also is a writer at Wonkette.com. This episode was recorded 8/7/2022. AUDIO TRANSCRIPT: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2022/09/will-defamation-lawsuits-be-the-apocalypse-of-alex-jones/ GUEST INFO Liz Dye on Twitter: https://twitter.com/5DollarFeminist Above the Law archive: https://abovethelaw.com/author/edye/ Wonkette archive: https://www.wonkette.com/u/five_dollar_feminist ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help! Theory of Change on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theory-of-change-podcast/id1486920059

Since the 1964 presidential election, Americans of African ancestry have voted overwhelmingly for Democratic presidential candidates. Republicans usually get in the single digits in presidential races, according to decades of opinion surveys. On the surface, it may seem like Black Americans have an undying loyalty to the Democratic party. But taking a closer look reveals a much more complicated situation. And that's because Black Americans are actually no different than any other racial group in having many different ideologies. In fact, many Black people are actually conservative—and not just on religious matters either—but don't want to vote for a Republican party that has a decades-long history of empowering and pandering to racists, especially since Donald Trump came on the political scene in 2015. But even that aspect is complicated as well, because Trump actually got more Black votes in 2020 than he did during his first presidential campaign, according to exit polling by Edison Research. In 2016, Hillary Clinton beat Trump by 69 points among Black men but four years later, Joe Biden had only a 60-point margin. A similar trend happened among Black women. In 2016, Democrats won the group by 90%. In 2020, they won by 81%. This trend parallels a similar movement among Hispanic voters which we've discussed in previous Theory of Change episodes and it raises all sorts of question. Joining me today to talk about all this is Brandi Collins-Dexter, she's the author of a book that will be coming out in September called “Black Skinhead: Reflections on Blackness and Our Political Future.” She's also a former Senior Campaign Director at Color Of Change, a progressive activism group. AUDIO TRANSCRIPT: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2022/08/many-black-americans-dont-actually-like-democrats-what-does-that-mean-for-politics-in-the-long-term/ GUEST INFO Brandi Collins-Dexter on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrandingBrandi Black Skinhead: Reflections on Blackness and Our Political Future https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250824110/blackskinhead ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help! Theory of Change on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theory-of-change-podcast/id1486920059

While radicalization of American evangelicalism has attracted at least some journalistic and scholarly attention, it's important to note that there is something very similar happening among some Roman Catholics in this country, primarily due to a TV channel called Eternal Word Television Network. Many people outside EWTN's elderly demographic have never heard of it, but the network's influence on Catholicism, in America and around the world, is substantial. By its own account, EWTN reaches 400 million households in more than 150 countries. It also owns a radio network with 380 affiliates, several news services, and the influential National Catholic Register newspaper. At its founding in 1981, EWTN didn't start off mixing a far-right political agenda with religious services, but in the years since, it's gone all in for Donald Trump and a host of extremist Catholic figures who are bent on canceling anyone with progressive views in the church—even Pope Francis himself. Joining us in this episode is Molly Olmstead, she's a staff writer with Slate who published an absolute must-read piece last month about EWTN entitled “Unholy Alliance.” AUDIO TRANSCRIPT: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2022/07/ewtn-a-tv-channel-founded-by-a-cloistered-nun-has-quietly-become-a-right-wing-media-juggernaut/ GUEST INFO Molly Olmstead on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MollyOlmstead An Unholy Alliance: A nun founded a TV station that became the “Catholic Fox News” https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/06/ewtn-catholic-media-pope-francis-fox-news.html Slate archive: https://slate.com/author/molly-olmstead ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help! Theory of Change on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theory-of-change-podcast/id1486920059

The far-right U.S. Supreme Court opinion overturning the right to abortion at the federal level was leaked to the public on May 3, but it wasn't until July 7th that President Joe Biden unveiled any sort of meaningful action to protect access to federally approved abortion medications and to prohibit states from banning people from traveling across state lines to seek the procedure. The judicial activist writing was on the wall long before this, however, when the Christian fundamentalist Amy Coney Barrett was successfully nominated to the Supreme Court to replace the recently deceased Ruth Bader Ginsburg. That's even more notable because Ginsburg herself had explicitly warned advocates of reproductive rights that they needed to do more than rely on courts to protect them. Now that Christian nationalists have firm control of the most dangerous branch of the U.S. government, a project which they publicly campaigned on for decades, Democratic elites are finally having to pay attention to the radicalism that's held control the Republican party for more than a generation. So far, the response from party leaders has been less-than-encouraging, to put it mildly. Instead of informing the public from the presidential “bully pulpit” about the many Republican Supreme Court outrages, Biden has restricted his communications to newspaper op-eds and background interviews, with occasional exhortations to “vote.” The White House seems to be under the impression that being quiet and waiting for economic inflation to simmer down will lead him to victory, as it did in 2020. But the strategy hasn't worked. In public opinion polls, Biden's approval rating is the lowest it's ever been. Will Biden step up and give people a reason to vote for his party before the mid-terms are over? Or will the series of extreme Supreme Court rulings do the job for him? Joining us to discuss is Alex Shephard, he's a staff writer at the New Republic. AUDIO TRANSCRIPT: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2022/07/politics-has-changed-drastically-in-the-past-10-years-why-are-democrats-still-running-the-same-plays/ GUEST INFO Alex Shephard on Twitter: https://twitter.com/alex_shephard New Republic archive: https://newrepublic.com/authors/alex-shephard ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help! Theory of Change on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theory-of-change-podcast/id1486920059

American democracy is in crisis, much of it the direct product of Donald Trump, a petty scammer who managed to talk his way into the White House who was willing to overthrow our government after he lost in 2020. But the crisis of the present moment is larger than Trump himself. It's also larger than the extremist political movement that calls itself “conservatism” in the United States. The political left is also in crisis, a crisis of stasis. Poll after poll has shown that Americans overwhelmingly support more progressive public policies like universal health care, paid parental leave, higher taxes on the wealthy, more oversight for corporate behemoths, and a lot stronger protections for employees. There's no doubt that reactionary Republicans have played a role in stopping these policies from becoming reality, but it is also the case that more than a few Democrats have also worked hard to block them. At the same time, however, progressive activists who do favor these policies and want to implement them for their fellow Americans have had difficulty promoting the ideas into law. What can be done about this situation? Can the political left take at least some lessons from the right on how to make change? I think so. Joining me to discuss all this is Max Berger, he's the editorial director of More Perfect Union, which is a new site featuring in-depth reporting about how corporate America abuses workers and showcasing employees who fight back. He also is the co-author of a 2018 report called “Beyond Trump: A Theory of Political Transition” that sought to give advice to progressives on a way forward. GUEST INFO Max Berger on Twitter: https://twitter.com/maxberger More Perfect Union: https://perfectunion.us/ Report, "Beyond Trump: A Theory of Political Transition" https://plantogovern.us/beyond-trump/ ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help! Theory of Change on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theory-of-change-podcast/id1486920059

On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ignored decades of settled precedent about abortion access and women's health care in a sweeping decision that rolled back the court's 1973 decision Roe v. Wade. The new ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization is the culmination of decades of anti-abortion activism. Clarence Thomas, one of the reactionary justices who joined in the new 6-3 ruling, signaled in a concurring opinion that he aims to overturn the Supreme Court's decisions protecting the rights to contraception, private consensual sex acts, and the right for people to marry someone else of the same sex. “We have a duty to ‘correct the error' established in those precedents,” Thomas wrote. “Accordingly, we should eliminate it from our jurisprudence at the earliest opportunity.” No other justices formally signed onto Thomas's opinion, but it's critical to note that the Dobbs ruling and all of the other recent SCOTUS decisions are part of a much larger political and legal movement that is extremely radical and extremely influential. Since the rise of Donald Trump, many people have become aware of right-wing extremism, but what you might not know is that the radical right is actually far more powerful in the Republican party, especially at the state and local levels of government. Joining us to discuss this is David Neiwert, he's a senior staff writer at Daily Kos and also the author of a number of books including “Red Pill, Blue Pill: How to Counteract the Conspiracy Theories That Are Killing Us.” He's also a long-time analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center. FULL TRANSCRIPT: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2022/07/extremist-groups-are-targeting-state-and-local-officials-for-harassment-and-intimidation/ GUEST INFO David Neiwert on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DavidNeiwert "Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump" https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3450-alt-america-the-rise-of-the-radical-right-in-the-age-of-trump ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help! Theory of Change on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theory-of-change-podcast/id1486920059

It's been almost 30 years since Mosaic, the first popular web browser was released in 1993. So much has changed since that time, both technologically and socially. But what has the web wrought? In its earliest days, the World Wide Web was seen as a new tool that would democratize information and greatly expand our ability to share knowledge and expressions. That certainly has happened to some degree, but humanity's power structures seem to have adapted as well—for good and ill. Three decades in, has the web been more of a technological revolution than a societal one? Have corporate monopolies and political extremists ruined the internet? And if so, what can the rest of us do about it? Joining us to discuss is Cory Doctorow, he's an author, activist, and journalist who blogs at Pluralistic.net. He also works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that works to protect digital rights. He's written many books, both fiction and non-fiction. His most recent novel is “Attack Surface,” a story of a cybersecurity expert caught between her job and justice. His most recent non-fiction book, “Chokepoint Capitalism,” is an examination of how media monopolies are using their power to exploit creators. TRANSCRIPT: Coming soon GUEST INFO Cory Doctorow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/doctorow Pluralistic https://pluralistic.net/ Attack Surface novel https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757517/attacksurface ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

Politics in the United States have been so incredibly erratic since 2015 when Donald Trump began his political career in earnest. His Much has been written and spoken about how Trump has transformed the Republican Party by empowering its large extremist faction, but it's also the case that Donald Trump transformed the complex and large advocacy media apparatus that the American right has been building for itself since the 1940s. In fact, could argue that while more than a few Republican politicians are trying to copy Trump's angry and conspiratorial rhetoric, his political ascent in the GOP actually had more of an impact on the right-wing media. While conspiracy websites, talk hosts, and writers have always found some success among American conservatives, the ultra-reactionary dynamic that now prevails in right-wing media is unparalleled in our history. Joining the show to discuss all this is Nicole Hemmer, she's a historian of American media who wrote a terrific book called “Messengers of the Right” about the emergence of right-wing media. She's also a contributor to a new book that just came out called “The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment.” And she has another book that will be released soon called “Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s.” FULL AUDIO TRANSCRIPT https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2022/07/how-right-wing-media-became-the-glue-that-holds-the-republican-party-together/ GUEST INFO Nicole Hemmer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/pastpunditry BOOK LIST "Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s" https://bookshop.org/books/partisans-the-conservative-revolutionaries-who-remade-american-politics-in-the-1990s/9781541646889 "Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics" https://bookshop.org/books/messengers-of-the-right-conservative-media-and-the-transformation-of-american-politics/9780812224306 "The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment" https://bookshop.org/books/the-presidency-of-donald-j-trump-a-first-historical-assessment-9780691228945/9780691228945 ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

We certainly have our problems, but humans have come a long way since we emerged as a distinct species roughly 300,000 years ago. Most recently, the key to our progress has been the idea that you gain more knowledge by questioning what you know to begin with. Socrates's idea of “questioning everything” was a great one. And it led to a lot more great ideas, chief among them? The scientific method of developing hypotheses and then testing them. It's worked out great for us so far. But in the last few years, the development of readily accessible mass publishing has made it so that the tools of gaining knowledge can be turned against knowledge itself. For a lot of people questioning everything has been reimagined into questioning everyone—except for yourself. Call it the “Zombie Socratic Method.” As finite mortal beings, it's always been easy for humans to delude ourselves, but now, social media has made it so that millions of people can get rich by helping us destroy knowledge rather than gain it. Joining us to discuss is Matthew Browne, he's a professor at Central Queensland University in Australia where he does research on gambling, addiction, and delusional reasoning. Those interests have also led him to be the co-host of “Decoding the Gurus,” a podcast that closely examines the techniques of a variety of individuals who have built up followings selling everything from “alternative medicine” to political conspiracies. GUEST INFO Matthew Browne on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ArthurCDent Decoding the Gurus website: https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/ ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

Like beauty, humor is in the eye of the beholder. That's especially true in regards to political humor, where many on the left and the right seem to think that the opposition is literally incapable of being funny. Right wingers say liberals are too caught up in diversity and inclusion to take a joke. And left-wingers say that reactionaries are so enthralled with stupid ideas that they can't really make fun of others. The truth, however, is that jokes which you don't think are funny can still be comedy, and they can still use comedic techniques. While it may seem absurd to study people cracking jokes, there's a lot that can be learned from that study, because comedy, especially in politics, can be a binding agent, a critical ingredient that can hold together coalitions that might otherwise hate each other. And in an age of negative partisanship where people vote less on who they like than what they don't, political comedy can make a big difference. Joining the show to discuss all of this is Matt Sienkiewicz and Nick Marx. They're the authors of a new book called That's Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them. Sienkiewicz is a media scholar, filmmaker, and professor of communication at Boston College, and Marx is an associate professor of film and media studies at Colorado State. FULL AUDIO TRANSCRIPT: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2022/06/right-wing-comedy-isnt-funny-but-its-extremely-effective-and-lucrative/ GUEST INFO That's Not Funny book site: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520382138/thats-not-funny Matt Sienkiewicz on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mediastudied Nick Marx on Twitter: https://twitter.com/marxnick ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

Big businesses and organizations are obsessed with branding—the idea of associating themselves in the public's mind with a particular thing. But the most prominent branding operation in recent decades wasn't in the commercial realm, it was in the religious realm where well-funded activists succeeded at convincing millions of Americans that to be a Christian meant you have to be on the far-right. We've talked a lot on “Theory of Change” about how this process has worked historically, but in this episode, we're going to feature a discussion with someone who is speaking out for a Christianity that includes and loves everyone. Join Matthew Sheffield for an illuminating discussion with Malynda Hale, a singer, songwriter, and activist. She's also the host of a great podcast called #WeNeedtoTalk that focuses on elevating progressive Christian voices and others who support women's rights and LGBT rights. GUEST INFO Malynda Hale official site: https://www.malyndahale.com/ https://twitter.com/MalyndaHale "God and His Gun" video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PszjLfSO8g4 "Stand" music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwTK0oyjM9M FULL AUDIO TRANSCRIPT: TBA ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

We've talked a lot on Theory of Change about the political manifestations of fundamentalist Christian viewpoints in American politics, but the religious origins of these ideas are also important to understand. And right now there is no bigger force within American Christian fundamentalism than Pentecostalism, a movement of unaffiliated churches that together represent the fastest growing Christian sect in the world. But Pentecostalism is a broad movement with no centralized authorities handing down doctrines and many church organizations with history of labeling themselves as Pentecostalism now are refusing to do so. To the extent that many people know anything about Pentecostalism , it's through ministers who are famous for scandals or for their feel-good music. Joining the program to talk in much greater depth about Pentecostalism, its origins, and its rapid growth is Elle Hardy. She's a freelance journalist whose book Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity is Taking Over the World has just been published here in the United States. GUEST INFO: Elle Hardy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ellehardy BOOK PURCHASE LINK: https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Belief-Pentecostal-Christianity-Taking/dp/1787385531 FULL TRANSCRIPT: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2022/06/how-pentecostala-christianity-is-taking-over-the-world-of-religion-and-why-it-matters/ ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

As we head into the 2022 mid-term elections and further on into the 2024 presidential election, one of the hottest topics in political strategy is where will Latino voters fit into the equation. Historically, Democrats have done better among Latinos, but in 2020, former president Donald Trump improved his share among the group by 8 percent—a development that ought to signal to political observers that Latino voters are a complicated group, motivated by much more than concerns about immigration. In addition to a variety of ethnic differences, Latino Americans are starting to manifest some of the other differences that have previously been observed among White Americans. Joe Biden won 69 percent of college-degreed Latino voters, but his share dropped to 55 percent among those without a college degree. There also appears to be an emerging religious divide among Latinos with those who adhere to no religion or to Roman Catholicism being more likely to support Democrats and those who are Protestant more likely to support Republicans. In a 2020 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (https://www.prri.org/spotlight/religion-divides-hispanic-opinion-in-the-u-s/), 57 percent of the Hispanic Protestant bloc said they approved of the job then-president Trump was doing while just 27 percent of Catholics agreed. Among non-religious Latinos, his approval rating was even lower–16 percent. With Hispanic Protestants—primarily evangelicals—growing at a rapid rate, what does that mean for the future of American politics? Joining us to discuss is Gerardo Martí, he's a professor of sociology at Davidson College and also the president-elect of the Association for the Sociology of Religion. TRANSCRIPT AND VIDEO: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2022/05/latino-evangelicals-are-reshaping-american-politics-politicians-and-parties-should-take-notice/ GUEST INFO Gerardo Martí on Twitter: https://twitter.com/praxishabitus Essay: “Latinx Protestants and American Politics” https://academic.oup.com/socrel/article/83/1/1/6511777 ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

It's well-known by now that disinformation media played a significant role in enabling the political rise of Donald Trump. But the truth is that far-right media has been misinforming Americans for many decades. Fake news was a thing before Facebook in other words. A lot of times, it's hard for people who aren't familiar with the topic to understand it in the broad sense, in terms of facts and figures and statistics. That's why it can be useful often to look at an individual's story and how disinformation has impacted individuals. And that's why in this episode, we were happy to be joined by Jen Senko. She is the director producer and writer of "The Brainwashing of My Dad," which started off as a documentary and is now a book. And it chronicles how far right radio and television hosts manipulated her father into believing all sorts of false and hateful ideas. And how he was able to escape from it. GUEST INFO Jen Senko on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jen_Senko Film and book website: https://www.thebrainwashingofmydad.com/ ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

As America barrels toward the 2022 midterm elections, polls have been indicating that Democrats could be in for some very bad news in November. Party strategists now are openly contemplating the likelihood of losing both the House and the Senate, which could lead to all sorts of other consequences. As many people know, the president's party has historically done worse in off year elections, but it's worth considering the possibility that Democratic leaders are also rather responsible for the party's apparent predicament. The rules of American politics have favored small rural states since the country's beginning, and party leaders seem to have done little to counter Republicans' efforts to siphon away less-educated voters using religious controversies. Do Democrats know what they're doing? It's a question that's worth asking. In this episode, we're joined by Luke Savage, he's a writer for the socialist magazine Jacobin and the author of a new book "The Dead Center: Reflections on Liberalism After the End of History." VIDEO/TRANSCRIPT: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2022/05/have-centrist-elites-failures-contributed-growth-right-wing-extremism GUEST INFO Luke Savage on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LukewSavage Purchase “The Dead Center: Reflections on Liberalism and Democracy After The End Of History” https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/the-dead-center/ ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

Contrary to the predictions of political consultants and commentators, both of America's two major parties have continued to be politically relevant since the GOP broke a decades-long congressional losing streak in the 1994 midterm elections. The American government has been closely divided, with each party taking trifecta control of the government only a very few number of times. But even when they did have the trifecta-- that is control of the presidency Senate and the House of Representatives-- neither party passed much significant domestic policy legislation, aside from some tax cuts by Republicans and the Affordable Care by Democrats. Fast-forward to the current moment, President Joe Biden has seen his approval rating among fellow Democrats fall recently, as some of his own voters have become dissatisfied. Biden's more left-wing critics have faulted him recently for not delivering on promises, and they've cited polls showing that the public supports their ideas like free college education or universal health care coverage, but they haven't been able to enact these policy ideas. Meanwhile, on the other side of the partisan divide, the Republican party has many of its own internal divisions. And they're not just about Donald Trump, either. Polls have consistently shown that GOP voters don't really like any other Republican politicians besides Donald Trump, But other than wanting to live in the White House again, Trump himself seems to have no actual policies. In 2020, he refused to even create an official party platform for the Republican party. And more recently, the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, refused to say what sorts of policies that he would pursue if the GOP controlled the Senate. It's a confusing situation. Republicans won't talk about policy and Democrats can't enact it. So what's going on here? In this episode, we're joined by Daniel Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life, which is a non-partisan project of the American Enterprise Institute that focuses on original research and polling about cultural, political, and technological change in American society. Before that he co-founded the Public Religion Research Institute. FULL TRANSCRIPT AND VIDEO: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2022/04/party-elites-public-opinion GUEST INFO Daniel Cox on Twitter: twitter.com/dcoxpolls Survey Center on American Life: https://www.americansurveycenter.org/ ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

It's a bit hard to believe that one year ago, Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. A lot has happened during that timespan but a lot has also *not* happened. As of this week, Biden and the Democratic majority in the Senate have confirmed 41 federal judges, the most ever for a president's first year in office. He also led a successful effort to make vaccines against Covid-19 freely available everywhere in America through the American Rescue Plan Act which also ramped up funding for manufacturing and deployment of scientific testing for the SARS2 coronavirus. No Republican in Congress voted for the law in either chamber of Congress when it passed in March of 2021. Biden and Democrats also passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act which included $550 billion in new federal spending for improvements in roads, bridges, electric vehicle charging, and broadband internet. The law was originally supposed to be passed in tandem with another bill, the Build Back Better Act, which has not passed. Both bills have been under constant opposition by congressional Republicans led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who figured out decades ago that a do-nothing Congress actually helps the GOP. The Republican opposition has been greatly helped by the persistence of the Senate's filibuster rule which, as currently interpreted, makes almost all legislation face a 60-vote hurdle. Most state legislatures in America don't have filibusters and most national Democratic Senators say they want to end the outdated rule, but two of them, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have publicly committed to helping Republicans stymie President Biden, and also to opposing his more progressive proposals. Did it have to be this way, however? What could Biden have done differently? Or is that the wrong question to ask? Joining the show to discuss is Heather Digby Parton, she's a columnist for Salon.com and also one of the original bloggers on the internet. She's been operating her site, Hullabaloo, for 19 years now. FULL TRANSCRIPT AND VIDEO: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2022/01/do-joe-biden-and-his-team-realize-who-theyre-dealing GUEST INFO Heather Digby Parton on Twitter: twitter.com/digby56 Her Salon archive: https://www.salon.com/writer/heather_digby_parton Digby's Hullabaloo http://digbysblog.net/ ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

Every podcast has its “lost episodes.” Or at least that's what podcasters tell themselves. But booking, producing, and hosting a podcast all by yourself is a lot of work--and technical issues can make that especially difficult. I started “Theory of Change” in 2019 but suspended it for about a year and a half due to some problems with my recording and editing setup. In 2021, I brought the show back with a live video setup to help prevent technical problems from blocking episode from being published. So far, the response has been incredible. We've had hundreds of thousands of downloads since the re-launch. Thank you for listening, subscribing, watching, and sharing the podcast. I'm especially grateful to the people who are supporting “Theory of Change” and our new Flux.community website on Patreon. If you can afford it, we can use your help with a monthly contribution. Just go to patreon.com/discoverflux. Thanks so much. Since bringing the podcast back, I have also wanted to publish two episodes of the program that got lost in the editing bay. Today's broadcast is based on a December 14, 2019 conversation I had with Aaron Smith of the Pew Research Center about a study he and his colleagues released examining the social dynamics of Twitter and how much of the discussion that takes place is dominated by a small number of accounts. The study also found some important differences between people who use Twitter for political news and people who do not. I felt like the study, which is linked in the show notes, is so important and still relevant that I rescued the episode from a crashed laptop and am presenting it today. I hope you'll agree. And my apologies for the delay. --Matthew Sheffield GUEST INFO Aaron Smith on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aaron_w_smith Pew Research Center study mentioned in the episode: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/10/23/national-politics-on-twitter-small-share-of-u-s-adults-produce-majority-of-tweets/ A 2021 updated version: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/11/15/the-behaviors-and-attitudes-of-u-s-adults-on-twitter/ ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

It's now been a full year since a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol with the intent of overthrowing the 2020 election so that then-president Donald Trump could illegally remain in office against the wishes of the American people. During the intervening 12 months, while hundreds of people have been indicted and convicted for their role in the events, almost nothing has emerged from the law enforcement investigations as to what Trump and his inner circle of aids were doing on that tragic day. That's because federal investigators can only reveal information connected to formal criminal indictments, they needed to form their own committee to investigate the matter fully and report to the public what happened. What is very clear, however, is that the tens of thousands of people who came to Washington that day were doing it for something much more important to them than the grievances of a snobby New York investor. They were doing it because they thought God wanted them to overthrow what they saw as a corrupt and godless system that controls America. Unfortunately, this information was out there well before the Capitol invasion, but it wasn't reported much by the mainstream press, which spends most of its time obsessing over political gossip instead of actually understanding politics. Joining the program to discuss the larger context behind the 1/6 attack is Bruce Wilson. He's a journalist and researcher who has studied Christian nationalist movements for decades and tracked their ever-growing influence on Republican politics. GUEST INFO Bruce Wilson on Twitter: https://twitter.com/brucewilson VIDEO AND FULL TRANSCRIPT https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2022/01/january-6th-capitol-attack-was-actually-decades-making ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

Polling over the decades has shown that most Republican voters are heavily motivated by white Christian identity politics. But Republican elites— politicians, writers, and many donors— were more interested in cutting spending and giving tax cuts to job creators, or rich people in other words. Over the past 60 years or so, GOP politics has been an imbalance where the base of voters wanted an agenda that promoted Christian nationalist ideas like mandatory school prayer, open discrimination against lesbians and gays, and legal obstacles to non-Christians. But Republican leaders focused more on deregulation and tax policy. Donald Trump changed all that, however. In addition to giving out tax subsidies to his rich friends, Trump also began implementing Christian nationalism by banning trying to ban Muslim immigration and undermining LGBT rights in America and around the world. He also talked frequently about how his goal was to help Christians have political supremacy and power. Trump's reorientation of Republican organizing was resistant at first by traditional Republican elites. But one person who jumped on board almost immediately was Charlie Kirk, the co-founder of Turning Point USA. The group was originally created in 2012 to spread the market fundamentalism of Republican fat cats to America's youth. But after Trump took over the Republican party, Kirk completely changed TPUSA toward being a Christian nationalist organization. Joining me today to talk about what specifically that means for Kirk and TPUSA, and the GOP embrace of open Christian nationalism is Matthew Boedy. He is a professor of rhetoric at the University of North Georgia, and he's also written several fantastic articles about Kirk for us at Flux. And he's also the president of the Georgia conference of the American Association of university professors. GUEST INFO Matthew Boedy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewBoedy Matthew's Flux archive: https://flux.community/matthew-boedy VIDEO AND FULL TRANSCRIPT https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2022/01/charlie-kirk-and-turning-point-usa-are-building-reactionary-cult-young ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

All of us are much more than what we do for a living. And yet, when we lose a job or have trouble finding another one, we feel like we're missing something important. But work is about more than just something to do with your time or to feed your family. For many people, work is an entry point into larger society. It's how many of us meet friends and form families. It's also often the only way that we can come into prolonged contact with people who are different from us. After the 2016 election, a lot of Mid-Atlantic media outlets sent journalists on expeditions to Midwestern diners to see how a man who lied constantly with a record of failed businesses and broken marriages was able to become president. Some of the stories that came out of those forays were good, but a lot of them just barely scratched the surface, or actually got things wrong. In today's episode, we feature Farah Stockman, a New York Times editorial writer who is also the author of a new book called “American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears.” It's an important look at what work means for people, and what progressives missed about free trade, manufacturing, and globalization. GUEST INFO Farah Stockman on Twitter https://twitter.com/fstockman “American Made” https://bookshop.org/books/american-made-what-happens-to-people-when-work-disappears/9781984801159 FULL TRANSCRIPT AND VIDEO https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2021/12/media-elites-missed-damage-caused-free-trade-and-how-millions-felt ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

William Faulkner's line that "the past isn't dead, it isn't even past" is certainly true in regards to today's Republican Party, which is quite literally an outgrowth of a conspiracy revolution that began in the 1940s and never really stopped. A key figure in the through-line of American reaction is Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society, a conspiracy group that he founded in 1958 which still exists today. The JBS has many interesting stories of its own that we'll discuss in this episode, but Welch and his group were also important in their placement relative to other Republicans, and how people outside the GOP have responded to them. Joining us for an in-depth conversation about this is Edward H. Miller. He's an associate teaching professor at Northeastern University and the author of "A Conspiratorial Life: Robert Welch, the John Birch Society, and the Revolution of American Conservatism" which just recently came out. He's also the author of "Nut Country: Right-Wing Dallas and the Birth of the Southern Strategy," which he published in 2015. TRANSCRIPT AND VIDEO https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2021/12/john-birch-society-and-roots-republican-rage GUEST INFO Edward H. Miller on Twitter https://twitter.com/eh_miller "A Conspiratorial Life" https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo123795778.html "Nut Country" https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/N/bo19197692.html ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://theoryofchange.show Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

Misinformation (incorrect beliefs about the world) and disinformation (deliberately constructed falsehoods) have always been a part of human history. But they are playing an increasingly important role in politics around the globe, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic. Research is showing that people on the political right and people who are inclined toward religious traditionalism are more likely to believe falsehoods about science and the world. What does that mean about the future? Perhaps related to this is that the emergence of Donald Trump as a Republican political figure seems to have accelerated a pre-existing trend of more educated people away from the GOP and less educated people away from the Democrats. Joining us to discuss all this is Will Wilkinson, he's the publisher of Model Citizen, a newsletter about politics, economics, and philosophy. Will is also a former libertarian who once worked at the Cato Institute where he was the managing editor of the magazine Cato Unbound. TRANSCRIPT AND VIDEO https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2021/12/americas-polarization-problem-ultimately-epistemic-problem GUEST INFO Will Wilkinson on Twitter: https://twitter.com/willwilkinson Model Citizen: https://modelcitizen.substack.com/ ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://flux.community/podcasts/theory-of-change Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

We don't think enough about just how much our lives have changed because of technology. If you're a millennial or older, chances are you can remember a time when payphones existed, everyone went to the movie theater, and lots of people didn't have an email address. A lot has changed for us along the way. The technology world itself has changed a lot from those early days in the late 90s as well. It's worth taking stock of what happened over years, not just to remember how things were, but how what went before is impacting us today and will be in the future. And that's because, just like history, technology doesn't repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme. In this episode, we're featuring David Adams, he's the founder and publisher of OSNews.com, a publication that covers larger technology and platform trends. He's also the chief product officer at Equiem, a software company that serves the commercial real estate market. FULL TRANSCRIPT https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2021/11/problems-social-media-are-not-technology-challenges-they-are-social GUEST INFO David Adams on Twitter: https://twitter.com/david_adams OSNews, the site founded by David: https://osnews.com/ ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://flux.community/podcasts/theory-of-change Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

Five years after it was written, the so-called Steele dossier, a collection of memos compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, alleging extensive ties between Donald Trump and various Russians, is still one of the most heavily discussed pieces of writing about the ex-president. The document has come under intense scrutiny by American law enforcement and intelligence officials. And most of its sensational allegations about Trump have collapsed under examination. It's also become increasingly apparent that Russia's own intelligence officials became aware of what Steele was doing and began trying to manipulate him as he did it. And the document has become the locus of a passel of far right conspiracy theories, alleging all kinds of strange and fanciful things, even more bizarre and intricate than anything that Christopher Steele ever imagined.  How much truth is in the Trump-Russia dossier will likely never be known, but the document is actually part of a larger issue that has received almost no attention. And that is that the Steele memos were the product of multiple private intelligence services, a growing and very secretive industry that is built on the premise of collecting information at the behest of clients. And then using that to generate news coverage without disclosing to the public where it came from. In recent years, many media outlets have been slashing their budgets for independent investigative reporting. Are private spy agencies filling this gap? And what does it mean if they are?  Joining us to discuss this today is Barry Meier he's the author of "Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube, and the Rise of Private Spies." FULL TRANSCRIPT https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2021/11/how-steele-dossier-confused-public-and-ended-helping-donald-trump GUEST INFO Barry Meier official site: https://www.barrymeierbooks.com/ Barry Meier on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BarryMeier ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://flux.community/podcasts/theory-of-change Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

By now, a lot of people are aware of and concerned about the lies, hatred, and rumors that are so rampant on social media. The social media companies are definitely responsible to a large degree for letting this happen. But they don't deserve all the blame. There's another sector of the internet economy that has been promoting and even paying the merchants of hatred and lies—the advertising technology business, better known as “Ad Tech.” What is ad tech? Basically it's the software and services behind the zillions of ads that are basically inescapable on the internet through a complicated system of exchanges and instantaneous bidding. These companies are known for their practice of tracking and spying on people's browsing habits, but they also are, in many cases, lying to the advertisers themselves about their ads—who watches them and where they appear. The long and short of it is that companies who advertise are often unaware that their advertising budgets are being used to subsidize bigoted and hateful content. How this all works is very complicated but the good news is that there is something that we can all do to help stop these shady practices. In this episode, we feature Nandini Jammi and Claire Atkin, the co-founders of Check My Ads, a new organization that's working on helping organizations and individuals put an end to online bigotry. The archived video stream of our conversation is below, a transcript of the edited audio follows. FULL TRANSCRIPT https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2021/11/disinformation-economy-isnt-invincible-meet-two-women-working-end-it GUEST INFO Nandini Jammi on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nandoodles Claire Atkin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/catthekin Check My Ads website: https://checkmyads.org/ ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://flux.community/podcasts/theory-of-change Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

Every four years, the United States holds its presidential elections. But one year afterward, the states of New Jersey and Virginia hold their own gubernatorial elections. And for decades, the overwhelming trend in both states has been that the vote for the governor is opposite from the current president's party. So in other words, if the current president is a Democrat, then usually the Republicans win in both Virginia and New Jersey. Not all the votes are counted yet, but it looks like in Virginia, the historic trend has held and Republican Glenn Youngkin is on track to be the next governor. In New Jersey, however, the incumbent Democratic governor, Phil Murphy seems like he has broken the historic streak and will remain in office for another four years. In this episode, we talk about those trends and how influential they were on the results this year, but another factor worth discussing is the role played by former president Trump in these races. Youngkin try to stay away from Trump as much as possible publicly while also privately trying to work with various far-right groups like the John Birch Society. So is the Youngkin strategy going to be a model for GOP candidates going forward? Or will Trump and his followers demand explicit public loyalty? Another question to consider: How important of a role did far-right media outlets spreading disinformation play in Youngkin's apparent victory? Matthew Sheffield is joined in this episode by Jim Swift, a senior editor at The Bulwark. Swift also once worked at The Weekly Standard, the original "Never Trump" publication, a subject which also comes up in the discussion. FULL TRANSCRIPT https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2021/11/republicans-glenn-youngkin-jim-swift GUEST INFO Jim Swift on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JimSwiftDC The Bulwark website: https://www.thebulwark.com/ ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing! We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://flux.community/podcasts/theory-of-change Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

Extremist Muslims and extremist Christians hate each other, or at least they did before the meme wars. It's hard to believe, but extremist Muslims and Christians are actually starting to cheer each other online. After presidents Trump and Biden ended the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, white nationalists in this country cheered on what they called the "Chadliban" as it took back control of the country. A world away, ISIS supporters are starting to use white nationalist meme characters and phrasing, even adapting Christian nationalist images for an Islamic audience. So what's behind this strange synergy of the world's worst people? In this episode, we'll be talking about all of this with Mustafa Ayad. He's a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and an expert in Islamic extremism and online meme culture. FULL TRANSCRIPT: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2021/11/white-nationalists-and-jihadists-are-starting-realize-they-have-lot GUEST INFO Moustafa Ayad on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MoustafaAyad Essay: "Gen Z's Alt-Right Declares New Hero: the Taliban" https://www.thedailybeast.com/generation-zs-alt-right-declares-new-hero-the-taliban ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing! We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://flux.community/podcasts/theory-of-change Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Thank you very much!

It's October, and since we're all about the larger trends here at Theory of Change, we'll be celebrating the Halloween season with a brief history of Satan and a look at modern-day Christian apocalypse literature. Like it or not, many Americans are greatly concerned with these topics. A 2010 poll from the Pew Research Center found that 58 percent of white evangelical Christian adults surveyed believed that Jesus Christ will return to the earth within the next 40 years. That was significantly higher than any other religious group, just 32 percent of Catholic respondents agreed. Speculating about how the world ends is probably as old as humanity itself. It was pivotal to the early formation and growth of Christianity. Early leaders of the faith frequently suggested it was just around the corner. Over time as those hundreds of predictions failed to come true, the end times literature tradition kind of faded away in Christianity. But it came back with a vengeance in the mid-20th century, however, after the development of nuclear weapons. Christian apocalypticism really took off though after white evangelicals began to emerge as a political movement in the 1970s. In this episode, we'll be featuring Christopher Douglas, he's a Professor of English at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. We'll talking about some of the things he's learned as a scholar of Christian Right and of Biblical literature. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2021/10/far-right-american-christians-think-theyre-living-bible-story-and GUEST INFO Christopher Douglas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/crddouglas Essay: "Apocalypse Now and Then: How a Biblical Genre Shapes American Politics" https://religiondispatches.org/apocalypse-now-and-then-how-a-biblical-genre-shapes-american-politics/ Book: If God Meant to Interfere: American Literature and the Rise of the Christian Right https://www.amazon.ca/God-Meant-Interfere-Literature-Christian/dp/1501702114 Academic Site: https://www.uvic.ca/humanities/english/people/regularfaculty/douglas-christopher.php ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing! We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://flux.community/podcasts/theory-of-change Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Thank you very much!

Democrats have the narrowest of majorities in the House and Senate. And after a few months of a presidential honeymoon for Joe Biden, they really are feeling the constraints of their tiny margin for error. The Senate is split 50 50 with a tie breaking vote going to Vice President Kamala Harris, which means the Democrats there have to reach unanimous agreement in order to do anything that Republicans in the chamber are against. And with Mitch McConnell as their leader, Republican senators are pretty much against everything Democrats want to do. So what's the plan and how are they moving forward in the face of such obstruction?  And that obstruction is a formidable obstacle outside of domestic politics. Because nine months after the January sixth Capitol riot, so much about what happened on that day and why it happened is still unknown. Law enforcement officials have been conducting many investigations of various people, but none of their findings become public unless they're relevant to a trial. And after several months' delay, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi decided to launch a Select Committee to investigate what happened. In this episode of Theory of Change, we feature Greg Sargent, an opinion columnist with the Washington Post and a blogger there as well. And prior to that, he wrote for the American Prospect and Talking Points Memo and New York magazine. He's also the author of a book that came out a few years ago called "An Uncivil War, Taking Back Our Democracy in an Age of Trumpian Disinformation and Thunderdome Politics." Beyond discussing why Democrats don't talk about far-right radicalism more, host Matthew Sheffield talks about some of his own experiences in Republican politics and why he left. (00:50:00) Full transcript and links to articles mentioned in episode: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2021/10/why-far-right-obstruction-assumed-be-fact-american-politics GUEST INFO Greg Sargent on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS His column archive at the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/greg-sargent/ ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing! We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://flux.community/podcasts/theory-of-change Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Thank you very much!

As technology has given extremist movements a much greater ability to spread their views and carry out violence, researchers are studying radicalization now more than ever. But one area that hasn't received enough attention is an examination of women who become radicalized. Understanding radicalization is important in the United States as well, which is seeing the emergence of a far-right Christian tradition that has already carried out a number of violent acts. What makes them want to risk their lives for a cause or become extreme? It's a complex question with many answers for the different militant movements that have seen large numbers of female fighters, including some that seek to restrict women's rights. Are there similarities among these women as well? More importantly, what do the answers to these questions tell us about our own society? In this episode, we feature Nimmi Gowrinathan. She's the author of "Radicalizing Her," a new book that provides a close look at the motivations of various women who have gotten involved in militant groups. She's also the founder and director of the Politics of Sexual Violence Initiative, a global research project examining the impact of rape on women's political identities in extremist movements. She's also a visiting professor at the City College of New York. GUEST INFO Nimmi Gowrinathan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nimmideviarchy Her official site: http://www.deviarchy.com/ Purchase "Radicalizing Her: Why Women Choose Violence" http://www.beacon.org/Radicalizing-Her-P1651.aspx Adi Magazine, which Gowrinathan founded: https://adimagazine.com/ ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield and is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing! We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change website: https://flux.community/podcasts/theory-of-change Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Thank you very much!

Although we usually talk about political and religious trends at Theory of Change, technological trends are also very much worth paying attention to. One of the biggest recent technology developments has been the emergence of Linux, an operating system that has taken the computing industry by storm. 30 years ago, Linux began as a college student's hobby operating system project. Today, it's a critical piece of software that powers the majority of the world's smartphones and the most powerful servers and supercomputers. Along the way, Linux managed to displace much more established versions of the Unix operating system that it was designed to be compatible with. But Linux as a technological phenomenon has been about more than what it makes computers do. It also popularized the concept of open-source development, a new way of programming where everyone has access to the underlying software code, and they can modify it and redistribute it as well. Before Linux, it was considered a threat to capitalism and society itself, but now, open-source development has become even more popular than Linux and is used almost everywhere in computing. In this episode, we feature Miguel de Icaza, a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft who played several important roles in the spread of open source, including at Microsoft, where he helped turn a company that was vehemently in favor of proprietary software into one that now embraces it and sells it in many different ways. De Icaza began using Linux while he was in college shortly after its first release in 1991. Soon thereafter, he released Midnight Commander, a powerful program for managing files that is still developed today. Several years later, he co-founded GNOME, a graphical environment for Linux and other Unix operating systems. After creating GNOME, he began working on enabling open source developers to write programs that could run on Windows, Mac, and Linux. And that eventually led him to co-found Xamarin, which was later turned into a software platform that could create code for both Android and Apple's iOS. In 2016, Xamarin was purchased by Microsoft and he has worked there ever since. In discussion, de Icaza and Theory of Change host Matthew Sheffield discuss how and why Linux became popular and also what lessons people learned along the way. De Icaza also discusses why he has stopped using Linux in favor of Apple's MacOS while still continuing to use open source software generally. FULL TRANSCRIPT https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2021/10/how-linux-and-open-source-took-computing-world-storm GUEST INFO Miguel de Icaza's website: https://tirania.org/blog/ On Twitter: https://twitter.com/migueldeicaza GitHub profile: https://github.com/migueldeicaza ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing! We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange SUPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Thanks!

The 1960s are famous in the American political memory as a time of leftist revolution. Millions marched against racial segregation and the Vietnam War, women's liberation went mainstream, and the fight for lesbian and gay rights began. But the 60s were also a time of counter-revolution, a moment when many of the radical forces that became prominent on January 6, 2021 really began to gain momentum. In Episode 15, we talked with historian Angie Maxwell about how fundamentalist white Southerners flooded into Protestant churches and seminaries but a similar radicalization process happened within LDS Mormonism, the religion that has an outsized influence on the politics of Utah, Idaho, Arizona, and other Western states. In this episode, Matthew L. Harris, a Professor of History and Director of Legal Studies at Colorado State University-Pueblo joins us to talk about the many ways that far-right activists in Mormonism influenced and intersected with counterparts in white evangelicalism. While Mormonism is often thought of as a sort of obscure sect that just does its own thing, it's actually been highly integrated into the development of American right-wing extremism. Harris's excellent book “Watchman on the Tower: Ezra Taft Benson and the Making of the Mormon Right” is featured in this episode, but he has several other ones worth checking out, including one coming soon about Mormonism and race. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2021/09/ezra-taft-benson-and-tangled-history-mormon-and-evangelical-extremism GUEST INFO Matthew Harris's website: https://matthewlharris.org/ Watchman on the Tower: https://uofupress.lib.utah.edu/watchman-on-the-tower/ ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing! We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change on Twitter: twitter.com/TheoryChange Please support Theory of Change: PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Thanks!

In a 24/7 news environment, we're all surrounded by information, some of it true, some of it false, and much of it somewhere in the middle. As social media has become universalized, we've seen a new type of journalist emerge, fact-checkers. That's a fascinating commentary on their importance because the commercial media industry has been shrinking as a whole. On this episode, we'll be speaking with Brooke Binkowski, she's the managing editor of Truth or Fiction.com, a fact-checking website that she heads up after working at another similar site, Snopes. We apologize for some audio difficulties toward the end of the episode. Brooke's connection and microphone weren't working as well as we neared completion of the show. A transcript of this episode is available here: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2021/09/fighting-disinformation-something-everyone-can-do-and-must-do-protect-our GUEST INFO Her website: https://www.truthorfiction.com/ Brooke Binkowski on Twitter: https://twitter.com/brooklynmarie BuzzFeed article about her former employer Snopes: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/deansterlingjones/snopes-cofounder-plagiarism-mikkelson ABOUT THE SHOW Theory of Change is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing! We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change on Twitter: twitter.com/TheoryChange Please support Theory of Change: PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Thanks!

People often say that we live in the Information Age. But what does that mean? It means that people living today on Earth truly do have the world's knowledge at our fingertips. We can read high-quality scientific research, even before it's published in academic journals. We can look up everything from great lasagna recipes to the latest news about Malaysian politics--and everything in-between. Having the world's knowledge digitized and made available to everyone has truly been a great thing. But it's come with a downside. Not only can we know more than ever, we can also be misled more than ever. That point has become abundantly and dangerously clear during the Covid-19 pandemic when conspiracy theories and lies about the coronavirus have spread worldwide and become believed by millions of people. Tragically, many people have died from believing falsehoods about vaccines, masks, and fake cures for Covid. But what can be done about the situation? Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. One good one, however, is to spread greater awareness of critical thinking so that we can do more than just obtain information, we can acquire knowledge. Teaching critical thinking and science literacy is not just the responsibility of our educators and schools, however, it's something that we can all share in, whether we're government officials or just people talking to our friends and family. In this episode, Matthew Sheffield speaks with Melanie Trecek-King, she's the creator of a new project called "Thinking Is Power," a great an online resource for teaching and learning about critical thinking skills. As they discuss, the website is the product of her experiences teaching biology to students at Massasoit Community College in Massachusetts. Thinking Is Power website: https://thinkingispower.com/ Thinking Is Power on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Thinkingpowers On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThinkingPowers Theory of Change is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing! We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange Please support Theory of Change: PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Thanks!

American politics is broken in a lot of ways. There are many reasons for this. A big one is what podcaster and former CNN host Michele Mitchell calls the "anger industrial complex," the way that media companies are constantly working to keep their audiences angry all the time. It's no grand conspiracy, rather it's managers pursuing the natural incentives of for-profit media to keep ratings up, no matter the cost to society. This process basically on a grand scale with the arrival of Newt Gingrich and Fox News in the mid-1990s, both of which used outrage and anger to accumulate money and power. But it's also the case that there are plenty of left-of-center media actors whose goal seems to be to create nihilism, to tell their audiences that political change is impossible and that it's better to keep watching while you wait for the revolution. In each episode of her podcast, The Cocktail Conversations, Mitchell assembles a panel of experts to talk about how the anger industrial conversation works, how polarization works, and ways that Americans can start having the difficult conversations that we need. On the web, her show is: https://www.thecocktailconversations.com/ And on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-cocktail-conversations/id1538627177 Michele Mitchell on Twitter: https://twitter.com/michelefilmat11 Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield Theory of Change is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing! We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Please support Theory of Change: PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux

A lot of people know about "The Southern Strategy," the multi-year plan of 20th century Republicans like Richard Nixon to get white voters in the South to stop voting for Democrats, but what isn't widely known is that the GOP itself was changed by the electoral coalition that it attracted. Angie Maxwell, a professor at the University of Arkansas, takes a deep look at how Republicans incorporated many aspects of Southern white Protestantism in her book "The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics." In this episode of Theory of Change, Maxwell and Matthew Sheffield discuss how the loss of the Civil War and negative media coverage of the John Scopes evolution trial in Tennessee were some of the reasons that many white Southerners felt aggrieved from the rest of the country, and how this set the stage for a politics built on that resentment. They also talk about how it's overly simplistic to say that flipping the white South was only about race or segregation. Some party switchers went to the GOP because it stopped supporting the Equal Rights Amendment and other policies they believed to be violations of traditional roles for women. Others went to Republicans because the party decided to rebuild itself into a party for Christians. Full episode transcript: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2021/08/southern-strategy-changed-how-white-southerners-voted-it-also-changed Angie Maxwell on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AngieMaxwell1 Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield Buy Angie's book here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-long-southern-strategy-9780190265960?cc=us&lang=en& Theory of Change is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing! We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet. Please support Theory of Change: PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux

While the Republican Party's embrace of authoritarianism has attracted a lot of media attention in recent years, the Democratic Party's inability to build a real political majority is a big reason that American conservatives haven't had to drop their unpopular views about government. After all, if Democrats were better at diagnosing and meeting the needs of the public, anti-government Republicans wouldn't be able to use cultural or religious controversies to win. For decades, polls have shown that millions of Americans who generally favor the Democratic Party don't typically vote. Some people, particularly supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, say it's because Democrats have turned them off by not expanding government enough to meet their needs. Other people say that reaching out to people through their race or gender identity is the way to go. In today's episode, Matthew Sheffield talks to Paul Glastris, editor of the Washington Monthly on what he's seen in 20 years of progressive journalism. They also talk about where Democrats have been and where they might go in the future. The full transcript of this episode is available here: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2021/08/democrats-are-identity-crisis-do-they-know-how-fix-it Washington Monthly website: https://washingtonmonthly.com/ Article on Democrats and moderate voters mentioned during the program: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2021/08/05/why-democrats-still-need-moderates/ Paul Glastris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/glastris Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/theorychange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield Theory of Change is part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at https://flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing! Please support the show PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux

In recent American history, the mainstream media has adhered to a "both sides" approach to covering politics. But as the Republican party has increasingly become skeptical of democracy and public participation in policy formation, this method is no longer useful as a way of determining the truth. In this episode, Eric Boehlert, founder and editor of PressRun.Media, talks with host Matthew Sheffield about where this attitude originated and why it persists. Boehlert also talks about how the rise of Donald Trump's anti-intellectualism has changed left-wing media in addition to right-wing outlets. [21:56] In recent years, several of Boehlert's former colleagues like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi have begun seeking fame and fortune among Republicans while still claiming to be left-wing. Is it all about the money? Why don't they ever debate their mainstream left critics? Finally, Boehlert and Sheffield also discuss how, after several decades of regularly losing the national presidential popular vote, some Republican Americans have begun turning against their own country. Have conservatives become an anti-American movement? [47:23] Full episode transcript here: https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/2021/08/why-obsolete-both-sides-journalism-persists-and-faux-left-pundits-who Related Links: Eric Boehlert's Twitter: https://twitter.com/EricBoehlert Press Run's homepage: https://pressrun.media/ Boehlert's essay on Republicans trying to sabotage the war on Covid: https://pressrun.media/p/traitorous-gop-emerges-as-the-fifth If you liked the show, please subscribe, give us a good review on your favorite podcasting app, and spread the word on social media. We really appreciate it! Theory of Change is part of the Flux network, a non-profit news community featuring podcasts and in-depth articles about politics, religion, science, media, and technology. Please visit us at https://flux.community Matthew Sheffield's Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

As the Covid-19 infections continue to rise among non-vaccinated people, it's worth taking a look at the history of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and unqualified media medical advice. In this episode, Theory of Change host Matthew Sheffield is joined by Richard Carpiano, a Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Riverside. Carpiano is a medical sociologist and public and population health scientist who studies how social factors, such as education, income, race-ethnicity, and social connections impact the physical and mental health of adults, children, and the communities in which they live. In the discussion, Carpiano talks about how conspiracies about medical vaccines have circulated in multiple sub-cultures through quack medical doctors, television programs of people like Oprah Winfrey, and also via Christian nationalist groups that oppose science generally. They also discuss how political-interest media commentators like Nate Silver and Zeynep Tufekci have unadvisedly expanded their output to include inexpert pronouncements about the pandemic, and in the process undermined public confidence in legitimate medical experts. Read Carpiano's essay about Covid punditry for Flux here: https://flux.community/richard-m-carpiano/2021/06/covid-influencers-pundits-misinformation-wrong Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RMCarpiano SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

Pat Bagley has become a fixture in Utah politics and one of America's best-known editorial cartoonists. In this episode of Theory of Change, he joins Matthew Sheffield to discuss American politics, the changing face of the moderate-dominated Republican Party he once knew, and how the LDS Mormon religion has changed during his lifetime. SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

Among American conservatives who came of age in the 20th century, Christian fundamentalism seems to serve as the unifying force. But among younger Republicans, is opposition to feminism what keeps the coalition together? Matthew Sheffield is joined in this episode by Robyn Pennacchia, a writer at Wonkette.com who has been covering the online misogyny space since 2012. Robyn's Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobynElyse Matthew's Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield Show website: https://theoryofchange.show/ SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

A huge part of why American politics is so messed up today is the country's for-profit media ecosystem that prioritizes controversy, eschews policy discussions, and has no understanding of how important Christian fundamentalism is to conservative ideologues. In the first video stream episode of Theory of Change, Matthew Sheffield speaks with Parker Molloy, founder of The Present Age about how bad things are and how it happened. Parker Molloy is an independent writer and podcaster who previously wrote at the progressive media watchdog group Media Matters. Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/parkermolloy Video version of this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FMmKJqzqyA Theory of Change Twitter: https://twitter.com/theorychange Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield SUPPORT THE SHOW PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/theorychange Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/discoverflux If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on your favorite podcast app. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. Thanks for your help!

The internet and the explosion of free political content that it created has had a dramatic effect on the media industry. One sector of journalism that’s been particularly harmed in recent years is editorial cartooning. Ten years ago, most major-city daily newspapers employed artists to draw their takes on the news of the day. Now, however, the ranks of editorial cartoonists have shrunk drastically. That’s why several of America’s top editorial cartoonists have joined together to form their own media outlet called Counterpoint.com dedicated solely to gathering high-quality artists from both sides of the political spectrum and presenting their work to the public. In this episode, Theory of Change host Matthew Sheffield is joined by Nick Anderson, one of Counterpoint’s co-founders who formerly worked at the Houston Chronicle. He's also joined by Nate Beeler, a veteran cartoonist who draws at Counterpoint after previously working at the Columbus Dispatch. During the conversation, they talk about Counterpoint, the newspaper industry, and cartooning during the age of the internet meme. The two artists also discuss why cartoonists expressing their opinions seem to face more anger from political opponents than people who write or speak their opinions.

If you read, listen or watch the news today it’s impossible to avoid public opinion polls. They are literally everywhere. The president’s approval rating, what people think about impeachment, even what the best fast food restaurant is. But as omnipresent as opinion surveys are, a lot of the math and science that goes into them is relatively unknown to many people. There are also a lot of questions about how polls work and how they should work. Why do most polls include more Democrats than Republicans? Do political “independents” actually exist? There are also a lot of misunderstandings about opinion surveys. Many people, think that they got the 2016 presidential election wrong. But that’s not quite true. In fact, the national polls did a pretty good job of predicting what the vote would be. But some of the state polls, did get it wrong, and the Constitution awards the presidency to the candidate with the most Electoral College votes—not the popular vote. To get to the bottom of these issues, Theory of Change host Matthew Sheffield spoke with Courtney Kennedy, the director of survey research at the Pew Research Center. In the conversation, Kennedy talks at length about the profusion of survey research companies and the rise of polling aggregation operations like those at the FiveThirtyEight, RealClearPolitics, and the New York Times. While she is skeptical about some pollsters’ practices, she also wonders whether it make sense to lump low-quality polls with those from organizations with much stricter standards. She also warns that trying to create election forecasts that assign a candidate’s percentage chance of winning based on polls may actually suppress voter turnout. Kennedy also discuss how polling operations have had to change how they conduct research in light of the rise of spam phone calls. One surprising change that the Pew Research Center has made is to go old-school by recruiting poll respondents via letters in their mailboxes.