Podcasts about American Life

Have a comment? Send us a text! (We read all of them but can't reply). Email us: Will@faithfulpoliticspodcast.comWhy do everyday Americans feel more divided than ever—despite living side by side?Anthropologist Anand Pandian joins Faithful Politics to explore the literal and metaphorical walls shaping American life. Drawing from his new book, Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life and How to Take Them Down, Pandian reflects on how gated communities, armored SUVs, and isolated media bubbles reinforce our moral divisions and political tribalism. From border walls to suburban surveillance, the conversation investigates how social infrastructure amplifies fear, reduces neighborly contact, and fosters moral distance.Pandian doesn't just critique—he models empathy across difference, even recounting his own experience at a Trump rally. Together with hosts Will and Josh, the episode challenges listeners to reconsider what “safety” really means and how we might rediscover shared belonging.Whether you're wrestling with polarization, cultural identity, or moral responsibility, this episode offers a hopeful reframe grounded in anthropology, faith, and civic curiosity.

James Dobson (Rest In Piss Bozo), trumpet or sax?, phones in schools, AI data centers, and the data center mine in eastern Kentucky Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

On the facets of grief, the joy in the depths, and the presence we bring.   (0:00) — Introduction and Guest Introduction   (3:23) — Rosemerry's Son Finn   (6:05) — Grief and Connection with Finn   (11:53) — Exploring Darkness and Light   (18:39) — Metaphors and Connection   (24:30) — Meadow and Listening   (28:15) — Talking to the Dead   (29:53) — Rosemerry's Work and Resources Devoted to helping others explore creative practice, Rosemerry is co-host of Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process, co-founder of Secret Agents of Change (a surreptitious kindness cabal), and co-leader of Soul Writers Circle. She directed the Telluride Writers Guild for ten years and co-hosted Telluride's Talking Gourds Poetry Club for another ten years. She teaches and performs poetry for mindfulness retreats, women's retreats, teachers, addiction recovery programs, scientists, hospice, literary burlesque and more. Clients include Craig Hospital, Business & Professional Women, Think 360, Ah Haa School, Desert Dharma, Well for the Journey, and the Women's Dermatological Society. She performs as a storyteller, including shows in Aspen at the Wheeler Opera House, at the Taos Storytelling Festival, Page Storytelling Festival and the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN. Her TEDx talk explores changing our outdated metaphors. For five years, she performed in the Telluride Literary Burlesque. She has been writing a poem a day since 2006, posting them since 2011 on her blog, A Hundred Falling Veils. In 2023, her poems can be heard daily on the Ritual app, The Poetic Path. Favorite themes include parenting, gardening, ecology, love, science, thriving/failure, grief and daily life. She has 13 collections of poetry, and her work has appeared in O Magazine, A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, American Life in Poetry, on fences, in back alleys, on Carnegie Hall Stage and on hundreds of river rocks she leaves around town. Her poems have been used for choral works by composers Paul Fowler and Jeffrey Nytch and performed around America. Her most recent collection, Hush, won the Halcyon prize. Naked for Tea was a finalist for the Able Muse Book Award. Other books include Even Now, The Less I Hold and If You Listen, a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. In 2023 she released All the Honey; Beneath All Appearances an Unwavering Peace (a book for grieving parents with artist Rashani Réa); a book of writing prompts, Exploring Poetry of Presence II; and Dark Praise, a spoken word album with Steve Law. She's won the Fischer Prize, Rattle's Ekphrastic Challenge (thrice), the Dwell Press Solstice Prize, the Writer's Studio Literary Contest (twice) and The Blackberry Peach Prize. She's widely anthologized including Poetry of Presence, How to Love the World, The Path to Kindness, Send My Roots Rain, Come Together: Imagine Peace, Dawn Songs, and To Love One Another. She's been an organic fruit grower, a newspaper and magazine editor, and a parent educator for Parents as Teachers. She earned her MA in English Language & Linguistics at UW–Madison. One-word mantra: Adjust. Three-word mantra: I'm still learning.

From Amy:The big ideas that get us all talking didn't come from nowhere. Someone started talking about them, and somewhere along the way, they got traction. Somebody or something amplified them and they resonated. And that's the big idea behind a TedX talk. It's also the idea behind the partnerships I've been nurturing ever since I decided that I was going to commit my life going forward to being an author. These are those people we encounter who contribute indelibly to our understanding of where we've been and where we want to be going forward. Keri Mangis is one of those people for me.I met Keri shortly after I had resigned my teaching job in early 2016, when I signed up for a book revision class in Minneapolis as a way to motivate myself to FINALLY get that first memoir draft finished. In theory we four participants would read through each other's manuscripts in turn and give helpful notes. In actuality, when I got the manuscript done, I gave it to my mother to read and (hint to all people writing memoirs: NEVER do that) not only did it ruin Mother's Day (yes, really, it was her Mother's Day present... seriously... do not do this... she hated my book) but the experience was so painful that I decided that I also did not trust the participants of the group to comment on my manuscript, nor the leader (who had just lost her mother... you see what a slippery slope this is) even after my mom and I started talking to each other again. Except... I really wanted Keri to be my first beta reader. And so, I quietly reached and asked her and felt comforted when she agreed.That's right. Keri read German Awakening when it still went by another name. Her comments were helpful and made me feel seen.Keri gave me names for a lot of things I didn't recognize fully back then, such as the word "Patriarchy." But I did know that in a society centered on men, certain essential truths about women get devalued at best, and often hidden. So. When Keri started talking about menopause as a liminal space, even though it's a topic we're FINALLY discussing, of course Keri had a fascinating take on menopause I'd never thought of.And as the anecdote with my mom reveals, we really should be talking about the experience of women elders in our male-normative world.It feels preordained that Keri would be selected to give a TedX Minneapolis talk. And of course we were going to podcast about it.This is the pre-talk episode, on the origins of Keri's talk and what this whole experience has meant to her so far. The show is THIS WEDNESDAY, 6:00 at Orchestra.You can buy tickets here. Keri will be back for Episode 111 to debrief with me. See you at Orchestra HallKeri Mangis is more than just an author and speaker—she's a guide for those seeking deeper meaning and transformation in a chaotic world. With over 20 years of experience as a wholeness advocate and spiritual teacher, Keri understands the frustration of feeling stuck and disconnected. Through her writing and teachings, Keri helps people break free from limiting beliefs to rediscover their true essence and align with their core values. Her spiritual and personal growth studies and certifications have run the gamut over the years from yoga, Ayurveda, energy work, and meditation. Most recently, she has taken on studying Alchemy, Jungian Psychology, archetypes, and rites of passage. She has completed several courses with Sharon Blackie, Michael Meade, and the Center of Applied Jungian Studies. Her writing has appeared in Spirituality and Health Magazine, Star Tribune, Elephant Journal, and others. Her first book, *Embodying Soul: A Return to Wholeness*, received multiple awards, including the 2020 IPA award for Mind, Body & Spirit and the 2020 Readers' Favorite Gold Medal in Non-Fiction Spiritual and Supernatural. She is currently working on her second book, an illuminating exploration of personal and collective transformation that will empower readers to evolve their consciousness for an uncertain future.Keri's Links:TedX Talk TicketsBookInstagramFacebookYouTube Amy Hallberg is the author of Tiny Altars: A Midlife Revival and German Awakening: Tales from an American Life. She is the host of Courageous Wordsmith Podcast and founder of Courageous Wordsmith Circle for Real-Life Writers. As an editor and writing mentor, Amy guides writers through their narrative journeys—from inklings to beautiful works, specifically podcasts and books. A lifelong Minnesotan and mother of grown twins, Amy lives in the Twin Cities with her husband and two cats. Get Amy's Books and AudiobooksLearn about Courageous Wordsmith Circle for Real-Life WritersWork with Amy 1:1

Making something is fun. Promoting it? Not so much… On this episode of Emerging Form, Rosemerry and Christie discuss the what happens when you put something you've created out into the world. How do you get it to your intended audience? How do encourage people to find it without feeling like an icky self-promotional nag? We also discuss the pain of realizing that your friends didn't and won't read or watch or listen to your new thing, the importance of remembering why you're doing this, and the 100 day promotion project we tried (inspired by previous Emerging Form guests Chris Duffy and Zach Sherwin) and what it taught us.Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is a poet, teacher, speaker and writing facilitator. Her daily audio series, The Poetic Path, is on the Ritual app. Her poems have appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, O Magazine, American Life in Poetry, and Carnegie Hall stage. Her most recent poetry collections are All the Honey (Samara Press, 2023) and The Unfolding (Wildhouse Publishing, 2024). In January, 2024, she became the first poet laureate for Evermore, helping others explore grief, bereavement, wonder and love through poetry.Christie Aschwanden is author of the New York Times bestseller, Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn From the Strange Science of Recovery and host and producer of Uncertain, a podcast from Scientific American. She's the former lead science writer at FiveThirtyEight and was previously a health columnist for The Washington Post. Her work has appeared in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Wired, Smithsonian, Slate, Popular Science, Discover, Science and Nature. She's received fellowships from the Santa Fe Institute, the Carter Center and the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. She lives in Cedaredge.Rosemerry's new album Risking Love on Bandcamp, Spotify and Youtube This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

There is no safe level of cigarette consumption. It causes lung cancer, heart disease, and many other problems. But there's something the U.S. Surgeon General claims is even worse for your health: loneliness. In this episode of the All Pro Dad Podcast, host Ted Lowe is joined by BJ Foster and Bobby Lewis to talk about the male loneliness epidemic and how it's impacting our kids. Loneliness increases feelings depression, dementia, stroke, anxiety, and cardiovascular illness.Why This MattersStatistically, only about half of men say they are satisfied with their friendships. This trickles down to children as well. Stats on LonelinessSurvey Center on American Life: 1 in 7 men have “no close friends.”Equimundo: Two-thirds of men ages 18–23 say "no one really knows me". Gitnux: 40% of men reported feeling lonely at least once a week.Practical Tools for DadsBuilding up social skills is a good start, but dads can do even more to facilitate healthy, strong friendships for their sons. Try these:1. Encourage extracurricular activities like sports or clubs. 2. Invite people over to your home. 3. Encourage “awkward” conversations.4. Volunteer at their school. Consider starting an All Pro Dad chapter!Important Episode Timestamps00:00 – 00:55 | Introduction: The Silent Health Threat00:56 – 02:30 | A Hidden Epidemic for Men and Boys02:31 – 04:47 | Stories from Isolation04:48 – 06:51 | Redefining Loneliness06:52 – 08:58 | Why Married Men Aren't Immune08:59 – 12:13 | The Barriers to Friendship: Time, Guilt, and Cultural Pressure12:12 – 14:52 | Your Sons Are Watching14:53 – 17:15 | Real Connection Requires Risk17:16 – 21:30 | Help Your Kids Build Friendships, Too21:31 – 23:06 | Pro Move of the WeekNo one is immune to loneliness. Prioritize connection in your life and your son's life this week. Try to make one new friend this week.Resources: Episode 62 – How To Raise Emotionally StWe love feedback, but can't reply without your email address. Message us your thoughts and contact info!Connect with Us: Ted Lowe on LinkedIn Bobby Lewis on LinkedIn BJ Foster on LinkedIn Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Get All Pro Dad merch! EXTRAS: Follow us: Instagram | Facebook | X (Twitter)Join 200,000+ other dads by subscribing to the All Pro Dad Play of the Day. Get daily fatherhood ideas, insight, and inspiration straight to your inbox.This episode's blog can also be viewed here on AllProDad.com. Like the All Pro Dad gear and mugs? Get your own in the All Pro Dad store.Get great content for moms at iMOM.com

In 2016, Anand Pandian was alarmed by Donald Trump's harsh attacks on immigrants to the United States, the appeal of that politics of anger and fear. In the years that followed, he crisscrossed the country—from Fargo, North Dakota to Denton, Texas, from southern California to upstate New York—seeking out fellow Americans with markedly different social and political commitments, trying to understand the forces that have hardened our suspicions of others. The result is Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life (Stanford University Press, 2025), and How to Take Them Down, a groundbreaking and ultimately hopeful exploration of the ruptures in our social fabric, and courageous efforts to rebuild a collective life beyond them. The stakes of disconnection have never been higher. From the plight of migrants and refugees to the climate crisis and the recent pandemic, so much turns on the care and concern we can muster for lives and circumstances beyond our own. But as Pandian discovers, such empathy is often thwarted by the infrastructure of everyday American life: fortified homes and neighborhoods, bulked-up cars and trucks, visions of the body as an armored fortress, and media that shut out contrary views. Home and road, body and mind: these interlocking walls sharpen the divide between insiders and outsiders, making it difficult to take unfamiliar people and perspectives seriously, to acknowledge the needs of others and relate to their struggles. Through vivid encounters with Americans of many kinds—including salesmen, truck drivers, police officers, urban planners, and activists for women's rights and environmental justice—Pandian shares tools to think beyond the twists and turns of our bracing present. While our impasses draw from deep American histories of isolation and segregation, he reveals how strategies of mutual aid and communal caretaking can help to surface more radical visions for a life in common with others, ways of meeting strangers in this land as potential kin. Anand Pandian is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. Lilian Calles Barger is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her most recent book is entitled The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (Oxford University Press, 2018). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In 2016, Anand Pandian was alarmed by Donald Trump's harsh attacks on immigrants to the United States, the appeal of that politics of anger and fear. In the years that followed, he crisscrossed the country—from Fargo, North Dakota to Denton, Texas, from southern California to upstate New York—seeking out fellow Americans with markedly different social and political commitments, trying to understand the forces that have hardened our suspicions of others. The result is Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life (Stanford University Press, 2025), and How to Take Them Down, a groundbreaking and ultimately hopeful exploration of the ruptures in our social fabric, and courageous efforts to rebuild a collective life beyond them. The stakes of disconnection have never been higher. From the plight of migrants and refugees to the climate crisis and the recent pandemic, so much turns on the care and concern we can muster for lives and circumstances beyond our own. But as Pandian discovers, such empathy is often thwarted by the infrastructure of everyday American life: fortified homes and neighborhoods, bulked-up cars and trucks, visions of the body as an armored fortress, and media that shut out contrary views. Home and road, body and mind: these interlocking walls sharpen the divide between insiders and outsiders, making it difficult to take unfamiliar people and perspectives seriously, to acknowledge the needs of others and relate to their struggles. Through vivid encounters with Americans of many kinds—including salesmen, truck drivers, police officers, urban planners, and activists for women's rights and environmental justice—Pandian shares tools to think beyond the twists and turns of our bracing present. While our impasses draw from deep American histories of isolation and segregation, he reveals how strategies of mutual aid and communal caretaking can help to surface more radical visions for a life in common with others, ways of meeting strangers in this land as potential kin. Anand Pandian is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. Lilian Calles Barger is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her most recent book is entitled The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (Oxford University Press, 2018). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-american-studies

In 2016, Anand Pandian was alarmed by Donald Trump's harsh attacks on immigrants to the United States, the appeal of that politics of anger and fear. In the years that followed, he crisscrossed the country—from Fargo, North Dakota to Denton, Texas, from southern California to upstate New York—seeking out fellow Americans with markedly different social and political commitments, trying to understand the forces that have hardened our suspicions of others. The result is Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life (Stanford University Press, 2025), and How to Take Them Down, a groundbreaking and ultimately hopeful exploration of the ruptures in our social fabric, and courageous efforts to rebuild a collective life beyond them. The stakes of disconnection have never been higher. From the plight of migrants and refugees to the climate crisis and the recent pandemic, so much turns on the care and concern we can muster for lives and circumstances beyond our own. But as Pandian discovers, such empathy is often thwarted by the infrastructure of everyday American life: fortified homes and neighborhoods, bulked-up cars and trucks, visions of the body as an armored fortress, and media that shut out contrary views. Home and road, body and mind: these interlocking walls sharpen the divide between insiders and outsiders, making it difficult to take unfamiliar people and perspectives seriously, to acknowledge the needs of others and relate to their struggles. Through vivid encounters with Americans of many kinds—including salesmen, truck drivers, police officers, urban planners, and activists for women's rights and environmental justice—Pandian shares tools to think beyond the twists and turns of our bracing present. While our impasses draw from deep American histories of isolation and segregation, he reveals how strategies of mutual aid and communal caretaking can help to surface more radical visions for a life in common with others, ways of meeting strangers in this land as potential kin. Anand Pandian is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. Lilian Calles Barger is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her most recent book is entitled The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (Oxford University Press, 2018). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

In 2016, Anand Pandian was alarmed by Donald Trump's harsh attacks on immigrants to the United States, the appeal of that politics of anger and fear. In the years that followed, he crisscrossed the country—from Fargo, North Dakota to Denton, Texas, from southern California to upstate New York—seeking out fellow Americans with markedly different social and political commitments, trying to understand the forces that have hardened our suspicions of others. The result is Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life (Stanford University Press, 2025), and How to Take Them Down, a groundbreaking and ultimately hopeful exploration of the ruptures in our social fabric, and courageous efforts to rebuild a collective life beyond them. The stakes of disconnection have never been higher. From the plight of migrants and refugees to the climate crisis and the recent pandemic, so much turns on the care and concern we can muster for lives and circumstances beyond our own. But as Pandian discovers, such empathy is often thwarted by the infrastructure of everyday American life: fortified homes and neighborhoods, bulked-up cars and trucks, visions of the body as an armored fortress, and media that shut out contrary views. Home and road, body and mind: these interlocking walls sharpen the divide between insiders and outsiders, making it difficult to take unfamiliar people and perspectives seriously, to acknowledge the needs of others and relate to their struggles. Through vivid encounters with Americans of many kinds—including salesmen, truck drivers, police officers, urban planners, and activists for women's rights and environmental justice—Pandian shares tools to think beyond the twists and turns of our bracing present. While our impasses draw from deep American histories of isolation and segregation, he reveals how strategies of mutual aid and communal caretaking can help to surface more radical visions for a life in common with others, ways of meeting strangers in this land as potential kin. Anand Pandian is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. Lilian Calles Barger is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her most recent book is entitled The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (Oxford University Press, 2018). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

In 2016, Anand Pandian was alarmed by Donald Trump's harsh attacks on immigrants to the United States, the appeal of that politics of anger and fear. In the years that followed, he crisscrossed the country—from Fargo, North Dakota to Denton, Texas, from southern California to upstate New York—seeking out fellow Americans with markedly different social and political commitments, trying to understand the forces that have hardened our suspicions of others. The result is Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life (Stanford University Press, 2025), and How to Take Them Down, a groundbreaking and ultimately hopeful exploration of the ruptures in our social fabric, and courageous efforts to rebuild a collective life beyond them. The stakes of disconnection have never been higher. From the plight of migrants and refugees to the climate crisis and the recent pandemic, so much turns on the care and concern we can muster for lives and circumstances beyond our own. But as Pandian discovers, such empathy is often thwarted by the infrastructure of everyday American life: fortified homes and neighborhoods, bulked-up cars and trucks, visions of the body as an armored fortress, and media that shut out contrary views. Home and road, body and mind: these interlocking walls sharpen the divide between insiders and outsiders, making it difficult to take unfamiliar people and perspectives seriously, to acknowledge the needs of others and relate to their struggles. Through vivid encounters with Americans of many kinds—including salesmen, truck drivers, police officers, urban planners, and activists for women's rights and environmental justice—Pandian shares tools to think beyond the twists and turns of our bracing present. While our impasses draw from deep American histories of isolation and segregation, he reveals how strategies of mutual aid and communal caretaking can help to surface more radical visions for a life in common with others, ways of meeting strangers in this land as potential kin. Anand Pandian is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. Lilian Calles Barger is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her most recent book is entitled The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (Oxford University Press, 2018). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus content most Mondays, bonus episodes every month, ad-free listening, access to the entire 800-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ Brad Onishi sits down with Dr. Anand Pandian, author of Something Between Us, to explore the everyday “walls” that divide Americans—from SUVs and suburbs to video doorbells and noise-canceling headphones. Drawing on James Baldwin's influence, Pandian reveals how our built environments and habits foster suspicion, loneliness, and disconnection. They exacertabe the ruthlessness of our political age. Onishi and Pandian discuss how activism, like the “Aunt Flow” movement, and simple neighborly acts can help rebuild empathy and community. This episode is a powerful reminder that polarization isn't just political—it's personal, physical, and fixable. Anand Pandian's book: https://anand.studio Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC Order Brad's book: https://bookshop.org/a/95982/9781506482163 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Thursday's edition of CFTV, Jake Brend has a report from the Sukup Men's Basketball Complex for a summer media availability. Cyclone Fanatic heard from freshmen Jamarion Batemon and Dominykas Pleta as well as T.J. Otzelberger. Batemon talked about how he takes pride of his defensive abilities and Pleta is still adjusting to life in America on and off the court. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I want you to know that I didn't just throw this lesson together. And please, if you're driving, feel free to turn it up! And if you're at home, kick back, and enjoy as we dive into backyard fun.Every week, all summer long, we've been looking at how Americans live, relax, and celebrate the season. This is part of my This Week in American Life series—and today, we're talking about something simple but super common: Backyard Fun. I'm talking about lawn games, grilling, iced tea, lemonade… and just hanging out with friends and family right outside your back door.My AI English Tutor: Click HEREJoin my Podcast Learner's Study Group here: https://learn.myhappyenglish.com/transcriptVisit my website for over 3,000 free English lessons: https://www.myhappyenglish.com/

The Center for Photography at Woodstock calls Larry Fink (1941-2023) "one of the last great humanist photographers." CPW has organized an exhibition of Fink's photographs, which depict his immersion in New York's Beat scene, the Civil Rights movement, and Manhattan nightlife. "Larry Fink: Sensual Empathy," is on view at CPW in Kingston, New York through August 31. Curator Lucy Sante and CPW executive director Brian Wallis discuss the show and the importance of Fink's photographs.

From Amy:I am not a fangirl. I'm not that person who waits at the stage door to talk with famous people after a concert or someone who would approach a famous person at a restaurant to ask for an autograph. I'd rather go home and sleep than attend a loud afterparty where I have to engage in group small talk. Better still, I love to connect one on one, in a quieter setting, uninterrupted, around the stories behind the performance.Which is why this podcast episode is both surprising and not. Because it's all about connecting through creativity on genuine, human level.I've heard Jeremy Messersmith's name around the Twin Cities for years. His music is frequently played on The Current, the Minnesota Public Radio music station. Some years back, I heard that he was doing these house concerts where he played his ukulele in people's living rooms. Last summer, I attended one of these parties where I had a front row seat and interacted more with Jeremy than I would have expected. Afterwards, over catered appetizers, we got into a conversation around the parallels between his creative process and mine.Which led to this conversation around Jeremy Messersmith's creative process, and where he gets his inspiration and courage.In a world where it's loud out there and human presence feels increasingly rare, Jeremy has found a way to perform his songs and connect with people personally, much in the intimate way that a storyteller does. He's sharing this human experience. And it goes beyond performance to the creation. Jeremy interacts with fellow musicians to write his music, and his engagement with audience members reflects back meaning.And isn't that why we create?It's a good conversation. Enjoy.Travel safely, Love, AmyPS—Twin Cities real-life creatives....read below for my take on an interactive living room party for writers. Jeremy Messersmith is a singer/songwriter based in Minneapolis, MN.Instagram @jeremymessersmithJeremy's linktree Coming Sunday, August 10, 9:45–noon in St. Paul, Minnesota: Courageous Wordsmith Sunday MorningInterested in my iteration of a Courageous Wordsmith Twin Cities living room party, inspired in part by Jeremy's idea? Join us for my first-ever Courageous Wordsmith Sunday Morning, part parallel writing session, part reflective circle. Get inspired in the company of kindred writers.$25 for a session, FREE for members of the Courageous Wordsmith Circle for Real-Life Writers.Email me at amy @ amyhallberg (dot) com for the details and payment link. Amy Hallberg is the author of Tiny Altars: A Midlife Revival and German Awakening: Tales from an American Life. She is the host of Courageous Wordsmith Podcast and founder of Courageous Wordsmith Circle for Real-Life Writers. As an editor and writing mentor, Amy guides writers through their narrative journeys—from inklings to beautiful works, specifically podcasts and books. A lifelong Minnesotan and mother of grown twins, Amy lives in the Twin Cities with her husband and two cats. Get Amy's Books and AudiobooksLearn about Courageous Wordsmith Circle for Real-Life WritersWork with Amy 1:1

In this episode, Dave and Andrew go back to the events of 9/11 and listen to a piece memorializing the day. But will they find the piece moving or maudlin? And how does the piece hold up some 20+ years later? By this point, John Adams was a famous composer, but should this particular piece of his have won the prize?  If you'd like more information about John Adams, we recommend: His memoir Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life (you can read an excerpt at NPR). Dan Blim's article referenced in the show, "Disunity and the Commemoration of 9/11 in John Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls" Journal of the Society for American Music, 7, no. 4 (November 2013): 382-420. Kalle Puolakka's article "Public Art and Dewey's Democratic Experience: The Case of John Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls" The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 74, No. 4 (2016): 371-81.

The Dressed Bookshelf has over 150 fashion history titles and counting! This week, we highlight some our favorite recent additions. Books discussed in the episode: Azzedine Alaia: A Couturier's Collection Claire McCardell:  The Designer Who Set Women Free by Elizabeth Evitts Dickenson Dress History of Korea: Critical Perspectives on Primary Sources, ed. Kyunghee Pyun and Minjee Kim Fashion & Motherhood: Image, Material, Identity, ed. by Laura Snelgrove, Lauren Downing Peters and Darnell-Jamal Lisby Fashion in American Life, ed. Hazel Clark and Lauren Downing Peters Perfection: 400 Years of Women's Quest for Beauty by Margarette Lincoln The Modern Venus: Dress, Underwear and Accessories in the late 18th Century Atlantic World by Elisabeth Gernerd The Red Dress: Conversations in Stitch by Kirstie Macleod and voices from the embroidery project  Want more Dressed: The History of Fashion?  Our website and classes Our Instagram Our bookshelf with over 150 of our favorite fashion history titles Dressed is a part of the AirWave Media network Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe now for the full episode. Don't forget to purchase our “Welcome to the Crusades” series before the price increases next week. Subscribers get a 25% discount! Richard Beck, senior writer at n+1 and author of Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life, joins the program to talk about the rise of interest in studying the far right since 2016. They discuss liberal critics' focus on the fascistic style of the current right, how the recent “rise” of the right is more of a political dealignment occurring in both parties, whether Trump has an ideology and the role of ideas in the Trump administration, the pitfalls of trying to cohere such an incoherent figure, the effect of long election cycles on liberal commentators, and whether Trump is just a symptom of a political rupture that can't be reduced to a single figure.     Read Richard's piece in n+1, “Fret, Hedge, React: On reading the right.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Local media is dying according to headlines. But that is not the case in the Bay Area. Last year the New York Times reported that San Francisco alone had 27 media outlets for its 800,000 residents. And now, four new publications can join that list: Coyote, the Bay Area Current, the Oakland Review of Books and the Approach, all helmed by local writers, reporters and authors. We'll talk to these media entrepreneurs about what they hope their publications will add to the conversation, and hear from you: What stories do you want local media to tell? Guests: Lauren Markham, writer, reporter, and founder of "The Approach," a new Bay Area publication; Markham is also the author of "Immemorial, "A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging" and "The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life". Soleil Ho, founder, "Coyote" an independent, online newsroom focusing on investigative reporting, arts and culture, and opinion pieces Aaron Bady, founder, "Orb," a new Oakland Bay Area publication Justin Gilmore, member, editorial board, The Bay Area Current, which covers working-class life and culture across the Bay Area. Gilmore is an assistant professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why do we build walls—emotional, social, ideological—and what would it take to break them down? In this thought-provoking episode of Uncomfy, anthropologist Anand Pandian joins host Julie Rose to explore the infrastructure of discomfort in America. Drawing from his new book, “Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life and How to Take Them Down,” Pandian recounts stories from his journey across America, including attending a Trump victory rally as a liberal, or choosing to reconnect with a conservative childhood friend. These experiences reveal how fear and familiarity shape our comfort zones and what happens when we choose to step beyond them. You can check out Anand Pandian's book, “Something Between Us,” here: https://www.sup.org/books/anthropology/something-between-us What walls have you built in your own life? And what might happen if you dared to peek over them? Share your story at uncomfy@byu.edu or connect on socials. And subscribe to Uncomfy for more conversations about growth, discomfort, and staying curious even when it's difficult. CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction to Uncomfy 01:29 Intro to Anand Pandian 01:48 Personal Reflections and Experiences 06:16 The Importance of Breaking Down Walls 09:46 Stories of Connection and Empathy 16:24 Organizing Against Division 19:23 Conclusion and Call to Action

Credited with inventing the "intimate documentary" style of photography, Joanne Leonard was one of the first to pivot away from street style photography adopt a more personal approach that focused on her close relationships and immediate surroundings. In this episode we delve into her unique approach that captured the daily lives of women and challenged the male gaze, her use of collage to go beyond the limits of photography, and creating work inspired by the realities of motherhood which earned her a place as a feminist art icon whose work is now celebrated in major collections worldwide. This interview coincided with Joanne's first UK solo exhibition at Hackelbury Fine Art London: Vintage Photographs and Early Collages.   Timestamps (00:00) – Introduction and welcome (02:19) – Growing up in Hollywood (05:10) – The Family of Man exhibition (07:21) – Studying photography and social sciences (08:50) – From Hollywood to Berkeley then Oakland, California (11:48) – "Intimate Documentary" approach to photography (16:37) – Exhibiting at the de Young Museum, San Francisco (19:44) – Teaching photography throughout the Bay area (20:56) – Working with Collage (22:15) – The Journal of Miscarriage (27:56) – Being part of the Feminist Art Movement (31:40) – Managing motherhood and being an artist (34:29) – Gaining recognition later in life (37:00) – Advice for photographers and artists (39:42) – Official Winter Olympic Photographer for the USA in 1972 (44:21) – The Impact of Technology on American Life, NEA Grant (48:42) – The Newspaper Diaries   Joanne Leonard is an American photographer, photo collage artist, and feminist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is known for her innovative "intimate documentary" approach to photography, focusing on family, friends, and immediate surroundings. Her work delves into often overlooked aspects of women's lives, memory, and personal history, while also engaging with larger movements in feminism, civil rights, and social justice Leonard was a professor at the University of Michigan for 31 years, retiring in 2009 after dedicating 40 years to teaching as a college professor. Her work has been included in major art history textbooks like Janson's History of Art and Gardner's Art Through the Ages, and is held in significant collections worldwide, including MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Victoria & Albert Museum. - Joanne Leonard official website: https://beinginpictures.com/   HackelBury presents the first UK solo exhibition by acclaimed artist, Joanne Leonard. Vintage Photographs and Early Collages features photographs from the 1960s and 1970s and unique early collage pieces from the 1970s and 1980s. This retrospective offers an intimate look into Leonard's artistic evolution and her innovative approach to visual storytelling.  - HackelBury Fine Art official website: https://hackelbury.co.uk/ - Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/hackelburyfineart/ - Joanne Leonard: Vintage Photographs and Early Collages: https://hackelbury.co.uk/exhibitions/127-joanne-leonard-vintage-photographs-and-early-collages/overview/   Other mentioned resources: - Hyperallergic article: https://hyperallergic.com/910133/joanne-leonard-miscarriage-collages-that-were-too-much-for-the-art-world/ - Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/jun/04/joanne-leonard-best-photograph-marriage-intimacy   This episode of Subtext & Discourse Art World Podcast was recorded on 12. June 2025 between Perth (AU) and Michigan (US) with Riverside. Portrait photo by Eleanor Rubin.    Michael Dooney official website: https://www.michaeldooney.net Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/michaeldooney/

From Amy:Timing for creative work is interesting. Sometimes you start a project that, for whatever reason, doesn't want to come together right then. Later the perfect timing arises, and you understand that this project was preparing itself to meet the moment.I recorded this conversation with Sigrid K. Nielsen two years ago; then my podcast went on a forced hiatus. (As in, my editor quit to be a musician, causing me to rework my production process.) Which meant that this and other conversations never got produced, but I kept them in reserve.Now it's Pride Month 2025; now is the moment.What I said then is equally true today: Sigrid K Nielsen lights up a room. I have spent time with her on many occasions, live and on Zoom calls, 1:1 and in groups, and she's never been anything but her most authentic, fully expressed, and yes, BLISSFUL, free self. That's a choice on her part. When you read Sigrid‘s book (forthcoming) you'll see what I mean: Sigrid is incredibly vibrant. But you don't have to wait for the book to meet her. You can listen today.Be forewarned, Sigrid will force you to rethink things you thought you were certain of. Because she sure has rethought things. Courageously so.Back to the timing: As I release this episode, it's Monday, June 23. I wanted to release it on Friday, but that just didn't want to happen, even though it was ready. All the things were conspiring to delay publication. Then on Saturday evening, we learned that bombs were illegally dropped on Iran without notice and without any justification except to make an old man feel good about himself. As with so much right now, there is so much distraction.And I'm going to say this part out loud: Othering trans people, making them scapegoats for all the harms in the world, is keeping US ALL from being who WE ALL truly are, seeing what's right there for us to see. WE ALL have it in us to be compassionate, kind, loving people, when we're not running scared from each other. But that requires awareness.We can make another choice.This othering is not a new tactic. It was there in the 30's in Germany, when trans people were targeted (we forget that part because their libraries, their history, their rich artistic culture was obliterated), and it was there in the 80's when Sigrid and I were coming of age, and only rockstars could dress as they wanted. Because it was a "costume."Performance, you see. Heaven forbid YOU be queer. Or other. Sigrid's former self knew that assignment.But that required hiding in plain sight. Even from yourself. And once you're aware of what's really there, you can't not see it. Pretending not to see is exhausting. You want to stop making believe.Isn't that true for us all?Sigrid is a trans woman who transitioned at nearly 50 years old. AND. This is who she's always been.As much as I have always recognized Sigrid's voice as powerful, her writing sublime, her presence uplifting and joyous, there has never been a moment when her message was more essential.We have solutions to find for our one small, beautiful planet's great problems. Queer people are not one of those problems. They deserve all the love.They are leading the way, ahead of their time.It's going to require all of us to face our deepest fears and embrace our most profound gifts. Our humanity. And to be abundantly clear, this doesn't mean YOU have to be TRANS. Unless you are.We need YOU to be YOU. That's our agenda.Because, as Sigrid often reminds me, though our stories may look vastly different on the surface— hers is from the perspective of a trans woman who came out at midlife, and mine is a different kind of midlife revival—our real-life stories are universal.We are all human and we are all in this together.Thanks Sigrid!Love, AmySigrid K. Nielsen stepped into her truth in May 2021 and has been living her best self ever since. Her life is better now than anything she ever imagined in her wildest dreams. She works with people and companies as a speaker, coach, and Financial Advisor. Amy Hallberg is the author of Tiny Altars: A Midlife Revival and German Awakening: Tales from an American Life. She is the host of Courageous Wordsmith Podcast and founder of Courageous Wordsmith Circle for Real-Life Writers. As an editor and writing mentor, Amy guides writers through their narrative journeys—from inklings to beautiful works, specifically podcasts and books. A lifelong Minnesotan and mother of grown twins, Amy lives in the Twin Cities with her husband and two cats. Get Amy's Books and AudiobooksLearn about Courageous Wordsmith Circle for Real-Life WritersWork with Amy 1:1

A new study finds the death rate for Native Americans — which was already higher than other groups — is much higher than previously thought. The analysis just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) finds the gap in life expectancy between Native Americans and Alaska Natives and the national average is almost three times wider than what official statistics say it is. The researchers point to the fact that more than 40% of death certificates misidentify Native Americans and Alaska Natives. One of the study's researchers says the discrepancies indicate “statistical erasure” in routine public health data has obscured the severity of a mortality crisis among Native people. We'll get a handle on the new study and what is behind the numbers.

I hope you're getting fired up for this English lesson because today, we're gonna talk about how Americans kick off the summer. This week, we're kicking off a brand new summer series that I'm calling “This Week in American Life.” Each week this season, I'll be sharing some fun facts and cultural tidbits about how Americans live, eat, and chill during the summer months. And of course, I'll throw in some English learning points, like idioms, slang, and phrasal verbs too. Join my Podcast Learner's Study Group here: https://learn.myhappyenglish.com/transcriptVisit my website for over 3,000 free English lessons: https://www.myhappyenglish.com/

From Amy:Cara Pacific Campbell was the first person who took me up on my offer of a 1:1 Book Writing Mentorship and put her trust in me. I was grateful that someone so vibrant felt drawn to working with me, but looking back, it makes perfect sense. When we are paying attention, we're drawn to our people. Cara and I are both high-performing women who worked way too hard and paid a steep price with our health. As in, our bodies made us quit our careers when our minds thought that we could—had to—power through. Instead, we were sidelined.And why did we think we had to power through? Well... how else would we have any meaningful impact in life? How else did we have value? Which is a societal misperception that has needed addressing for a very long time. What we've been through, many are going through now.Also... we are both people who communicate who we are through our colors of choice. I think of Cara in vibrant yellows and reds.These lively signature colors are very much at odds with what Cara was living with in her battle with chronic Lyme disease.There's a huge silver lining. Cara finally connected to her dreams of work in Peru, tapping into ancient knowledge that now infuses this book. And hey, I taught beginning Spanish for a few years. I've always thought that teaching Spanish was a way station on the journey to something beyond that. This book was one of those meaningful stops on the journey. Oh, and also...Pretty sure that Cara and I are going to host a Writing Revival in Peru someday.Picture yourself there with us. How awesome would that be?Meanwhile, you can actively witness the culmination of her book journey if that's calling to you, or simply take courage from hearing how it came into being. Me? I got to help Cara infuse this book with her witty, deep, infectious wisdom. I feel profoundly proud and grateful to know that I was there at Cara's beginning as an author, and that she was there at my beginning as a book writing mentor. What a beautiful testament to my vision for Courageous Wordsmith.It's a full-circle episode and it feels like that.Enjoy! Cara Pacific Campbell is a top-performing sales leader turned author, coach, and resilience expert. After a medical collapse ended her high-achieving career, she began an unexpected healing journey—one that blends neuroscience, ancient wisdom, and the gritty reality of burnout recovery. Her upcoming book is part memoir, part roadmap for ambitious women ready to succeed without self-destructing. Cara helps high performers reconnect with their power, rewrite their patterns, and rise—on their own terms.Cara's Links:www.linkedin.com/in/carapacificcampbell https://www.instagram.com/carapacificcampbell/ https://www.facebook.com/carapacific Join the book mailing list Amy Hallberg is the author of Tiny Altars: A Midlife Revival and German Awakening: Tales from an American Life. She is the host of Courageous Wordsmith Podcast and founder of Courageous Wordsmith Circle for Real-Life Writers. As an editor and writing mentor, Amy guides writers through their narrative journeys—from inklings to beautiful works, specifically podcasts and books. A lifelong Minnesotan and mother of grown twins, Amy lives in the Twin Cities with her husband and two cats. Get Amy's Books and AudiobooksLearn about Courageous Wordsmith Circle for Real-Life WritersWork with Amy 1:1

#187 Podcast Episode:Reinvent While Winning: José Suquet's Story of Listening First and Leading ForwardChairman of the Board & CEO, Pan-American Life Insurance GroupHost: Bart Berkey – Most People Don't... But YOU Do! PodcastFrom escaping Cuba at age two to leading a company that protects over 7 million lives across 22 countries, José Suquet has lived a life built on resilience, purpose, and people-first leadership. In this candid and emotional conversation, José shares how lessons from his seamstress mother, early sales experience, and decades of executive leadership helped him transform Pan-American Life Insurance Group into a values-driven organization.This episode explores what it truly means to lead with humility, listen before speaking, and reinvent while you're still succeeding.1. Most People Don't Listen—But Great Leaders Do“God gave us one mouth and two ears for a reason.”By listening first—whether to clients, colleagues, or family—José learned to lead with empathy and clarity. Listening creates understanding, and understanding makes every word and action more impactful.2. You Don't Need to Be Loud to Be StrongCalm consistency and respect leave a longer legacy than control or intimidation. José credits his greatest mentor with showing him that leadership doesn't require volume—it requires alignment, resources, and kindness.3. People Over Policy: The COVID StoryDuring the pandemic, Pan-American Life Insurance Group paid over $300 million in death claims—even when reinsurance contracts excluded pandemics. José made the call: “We do. We cover them. That's who we are.”4. Don't Wait Until It's Ripe to ReinventDrawing from the Sigmoid Curve and Bart's “green banana” analogy, José emphasizes the importance of reinventing during strength—not waiting for decline. “If you sit still, you're not cruising—you're being passed.”5. Sales Isn't Pressure—It's a PromiseJosé sees selling life insurance as delivering on a deeply emotional contract: helping people when they're most vulnerable. “You're not selling a shiny gadget—you're selling a promise.”6. Broke, Not PoorRaised by a single mother who once reigned as Cuba's most beautiful woman before working as a seamstress in the U.S., José absorbed this powerful distinction:“We were broke, not poor. And if you're broke, you can always come back.”7. Title Doesn't Equal WorthWhether visiting the mailroom or the boardroom, José treats everyone with dignity. “At the end, the big guy won't ask if you were CEO or in the mailroom—just if you were a good human being.”

For the first time as a host combination, Ben, Dan, and Cameron sit down to discuss the most controversial topics in personal finance. We begin with identity and how it informs decision-making. Then, we revisit the renting versus buying debate, why this remains a highly controversial topic, the ins and outs of income investing, and understating the fervor of dividend investing. We also unpack FIRE as a branch of self-help; how it informs happiness; and how personality influences one's approach to the FIRE principle. To end, we closely examine Bill Bengen's 4% rule, and the Aftershow encourages us to maintain high podcasting standards while revealing what you can look forward to in our latest Rational Reminder t-shirt release.    Key Points From This Episode:   (0:01:25) Cameron's positive LinkedIn experience regarding insurance.  (0:08:10) How identity informs decision-making.  (0:15:24) Why renting versus buying a home remains a controversial topic.  (0:27:50) Income investing, covered calls, and the fervor of dividend investing. (0:46:34) FIRE: Financial independence, retire early. (0:54:36) Unpacking FIRE as a branch of self-help, and the role of FIRE in happiness.  (1:07:07) How personality and identity inform one's approach to FIRE. (1:10:34) Addressing the 4% rule.  (1:14:16) The Aftershow: Setting and keeping high standards, and Rational Reminder t-shirts.    Links From Today's Episode: Meet with PWL Capital — https://calendly.com/d/3vm-t2j-h3p Rational Reminder on iTunes — https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-rational-reminder-podcast/id1426530582. Rational Reminder Website — https://rationalreminder.ca/  Rational Reminder on Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/rationalreminder/ Rational Reminder on X — https://x.com/RationalRemindRational Reminder on TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@rationalreminder Rational Reminder on YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/channel/ Rational Reminder Email — info@rationalreminder.ca  Rational Reminder Merchandise — https://shop.rationalreminder.ca/ Benjamin Felix — https://pwlcapital.com/our-team/ Benjamin on X — https://x.com/benjaminwfelix Benjamin on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminwfelix/ Cameron Passmore — https://pwlcapital.com/our-team/ Cameron on X — https://x.com/CameronPassmore Cameron on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameronpassmore/  Dan Bortolotti on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-bortolotti-8a482310/  Episode 358: Eli Beracha: An Academic Perspective on Renting vs. Owning a Home — https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/358  Episode 214: Jay Van Bavel: Shared Identities and Decision Making — https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/214   Episode 260: Prof. James Choi: Practical Finance — https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/260  Episode 273: Professor Samuel Hartzmark: Asset Pricing, Behavioural Finance, and Sustainability Rankings — https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/273   Episode 95: Scott Rieckens (Playing with FIRE): Finding Financial Education, Perspective, and Freedom — https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/95  Episode 258: Prof. Meir Statman: Financial Decisions for Normal People — https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/258   Bonus Episode - Prof. Meir Statman: A Wealth of Well-Being — https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/2024/4/18/bonus-episode-prof-meir-statman-a-wealth-of-well-being   Episode 230: Prof. Robert Frank: Success, Luck, and Luxury — https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/230   Episode 135: William Bengen: The 5% Rule for Retirement Spending — https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/135  Episode 164: Comprehensive Overview: The 4% Rule — https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/164   Episode 357: AMA #6 — https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/357  Morgan Housel — https://www.morganhousel.com/   ‘Renting vs. Buying a Home: What People Get Wrong' — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4H9LL7A-nQ   MobLand — https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31510819/  Ray Donovan — https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2249007/  Animal Kingdom — https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5574490/    Books From Today's Episode:    Rich Dad Poor Dad — https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Dad-Poor-Teach-Middle/dp/1612680194    Self Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life — https://www.amazon.com/Self-Help-Inc-Makeover-American/dp/0195337263    Papers From Today's Episode:    'Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government' - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioural-public-policy/article/abs/motivated-numeracy-and-enlightened-selfgovernment/EC9F2410D5562EF10B7A5E2539063806    ‘Nevertheless, They Persist: Cross-country differences in homeownership behavior' — https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1051137721000590    ‘Rent or Buy? Inflation Experiences and Homeownership within and across Countries' — https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379974645_Rent_or_Buy_Inflation_Experiences_and_Homeownership_within_and_across_Countries     ‘Dividend Policy, Growth, and the Valuation of Shares' — https://www.researchgate.net/publication/24102112_Dividend_Policy_Growth_and_the_Valuation_Of_Shares    ‘Chapter 3 - Behavioral Household Finance*' — https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352239918300046    ‘Common Risk Factors in the Returns on Stocks and Bonds' — https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0304405X93900235     ‘The Dividend Disconnect' — https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2876373    ‘A Devil's Bargain: When Generating Income Undermines Investment Returns' — https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4580048    ‘The Financialization of Anti-Capitalism? The Case of the “Financial Independence Retire Early” Community' — https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17530350.2021.1891951    ‘High Income Improves Evaluation of Life But Not Emotional Well-Being' — https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1011492107     ‘Income And Emotional Well-Being: A Conflict Resolved' — https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208661120   

Hey, everyone. Today I wanted to share a special conversation from another Lemonada show: Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso. For those who aren’t already familiar with this great podcast, the show started all the way back in 2016 and airs every Sunday. The episode you’re about to hear is a recent one. It’s a great talk between Sam and the broadcast legend Ira Glass, from May 2025. Thirty years. Over 850 episodes. Nine Peabodys. One Pulitzer. And yet somehow, three decades in, This American Life (and its creator, Ira Glass) remains as innovative and timely as ever. We begin with a week in the life of Ira: a typical Monday at This American Life, the rigorous notes process, and how the team selects the stories it wants to tell that Sunday. Then, we unpack Trump’s ongoing threats to slash government funding for public media, Glass’ formative days as a teenage intern at NPR, and the radio mentors who shaped his ideas around narrative. On the back-half, we discuss how his taste and talent eventually converged, what makes a good interview, the guest he most identifies with, the episode he’s most proud of, and, naturally, the future of This American Life. To learn more about Talk Easy, visit talkeasypod.com and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Find Talk Easy on social: @talkeasypod and @samfragoso Follow David on Instagram at @davidduchovny. Stay up to date with Lemonada on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia. Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our shows and get bonus content. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. For a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this and every other Lemonada show, go to lemonadamedia.com/sponsors. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From Amy:When Keri and I recorded this episode in late 2022, I was still editing my second memoir for publication and she was drafting a book that's also now nearing publication. The podcast never got produced at that time, but I happened onto the recording this past winter and it caught my attention. Keri and I are still writing today. I'm starting new books and she's preparing to deliver a TED-x Talk this summer.And this conversation feels like a divinely timed gift from our former selves, and a personal invitation to you if you want it. Because yes, I absolutely am writing for my life. I know Keri still agrees.I had a stage one cancer diagnosis this past month. That's all I care to say about that right now, because this gets to be my story first. For now, I want you to know that I have emerged on the other side, and am currently cancer free with a heightened sense of awareness: One reason I need to survive IS FOR MY WRITING. I need to write this story for me. And I will share it someday.I have wisdom I am still gaining, and knowledge that people will need.I don't need to justify that impulse nor ask permission. I don't need to know now how it turns out. I am healing. I will be creating. I live into my passions.How about you? Keri Mangis is more than just an author and speaker—she's a guide for those seeking deeper meaning and transformation in a chaotic world. With over 20 years of experience as a wholeness advocate and spiritual teacher, Keri understands the frustration of feeling stuck and disconnected. Through her writing and teachings, Keri helps people break free from limiting beliefs to rediscover their true essence and align with their core values. Her spiritual and personal growth studies and certifications have run the gamut over the years from yoga, Ayurveda, energy work, and meditation. Most recently, she has taken on studying Alchemy, Jungian Psychology, archetypes, and rites of passage. She has completed several courses with Sharon Blackie, Michael Meade, and the Center of Applied Jungian Studies. Her writing has appeared in Spirituality and Health Magazine, Star Tribune, Elephant Journal, and others. Her first book, *Embodying Soul: A Return to Wholeness*, received multiple awards, including the 2020 IPA award for Mind, Body & Spirit and the 2020 Readers' Favorite Gold Medal in Non-Fiction Spiritual and Supernatural. She is currently working on her second book, an illuminating exploration of personal and collective transformation that will empower readers to evolve their consciousness for an uncertain future. Keri's Links:BookInstagramFacebookYouTube Amy Hallberg is the author of Tiny Altars: A Midlife Revival and German Awakening: Tales from an American Life. She is the host of Courageous Wordsmith Podcast and founder of Courageous Wordsmith Circle for Real-Life Writers. As an editor and writing mentor, Amy guides writers through their narrative journeys—from inklings to beautiful works, specifically podcasts and books. A lifelong Minnesotan and mother of grown twins, Amy lives in the Twin Cities with her husband and two cats. Get Amy's Books and AudiobooksLearn about Courageous Wordsmith Circle for Real-Life WritersWork with Amy 1:1

A fascinating history of one our greatest institutions.

Why does dating feel harder than ever for Gen Z? This episode features a conversation with sociologist and researcher Kelsey Eyre Hammond from the American Enterprise Institute's Survey Center on American Life to explore new data from their latest report: The State of American Romance. We break down what's fueling Gen Z's “romantic recession”—from the rise of dating apps and shifting gender norms to political polarization and digital disconnection. In this episode: The intersection of dating, politics, and gender expectations Why dating apps aren't the easy fix we thought they were How Gen Z's socialization and values are reshaping romance The intersection of dating, politics, and gender expectations What we can do to support healthier, more authentic connection Read the report from AEI here: The Romantic Recession

From Amy:I am so ridiculously proud of my latest podcast episode with Corinne Bauer of Tiny Art Maui.And I really hope you will listen to it. Everything about this conversation and how it came to be is unexpected. I met Corinne at an art show in a Hawaiian hotel lobby. But when I talk about Shiny Objects and allowing myself to play freely in their presence, this is what I'm talking about.On the surface I was drawn to Corinne's delightful Tiny Art Maui display because, as she herself says, it's so stinking cute. And because I couldn't ignore the synchronicity with my book Tiny Altars, which includes framed dollhouse art in its opening chapter. So I indulged my fascination and asked her about her dainty landscapes and frames and how they came to be. That's the draw of Shiny Objects.But underneath that whimsical façade that allowed us to connect, we quickly discovered the powerful foundational beliefs that Corinne and I both share as Gen X women who came to our artistry later in life. Namely that art is absolutely necessary for our humanity. That we are so much more creative than we give ourselves credit for being. And that we absolutely get to claim our gifts.So just as Corinne came to believe that the world needs Tiny Art Maui, I believe that the world needs to hear this gorgeous, candid, spontaneous podcast conversation. En-JOY.Love, AmyPS—The TED Talk Corinne references in our conversation is HERE. With a steady hand and an eye for intricate detail, watercolor artist, Corinne Bauer creates captivating miniature paintings that invite viewers into tiny worlds of wonder. Each piece, often smaller than a matchbox, celebrates light, color, and the power of special moments captured in time. Based on Maui, Corinne draws endless inspiration from the island's vibrant landscapes, tranquil seascapes, and lush flora. Her process involves using brushes as fine as a needle and holding her breath to achieve extraordinary precision in every stroke. These tiny masterpieces invite the viewer to slow down, lean in, and immerse themselves in the infinite beauty of Hawaii's natural world. Corinne's work has been featured in galleries, artist showcases, and private collections.Follow here:InstagramWebsite Amy Hallberg is the author of Tiny Altars: A Midlife Revival and German Awakening: Tales from an American Life. She is the host of Courageous Wordsmith Podcast and founder of Courageous Wordsmith Circle for Real-Life Writers. As an editor and writing mentor, Amy guides writers through their narrative journeys—from inklings to beautiful works, specifically podcasts and books. A lifelong Minnesotan and mother of grown twins, Amy lives in the Twin Cities with her husband and two cats. Get Amy's Books and AudiobooksLearn about Courageous Wordsmith Circle for Real-Life WritersWork with Amy 1:1

It's the 55th anniversary of the killings at Kent State University. In a special encore episode, we're reposting our Kent State episode from 2020.In this episode, we commemorate the anniversary of the tragic events of May 4th, 1970 at Kent State University, where agents of the state murdered 4 students and shot 9 others. Students, who'd been told the war was winding down in Vietnam, erupted in protest at campuses all over  America when Richard Nixon  announced the U.S. invasion of Cambodia on April 30th.  At Kent State, a working-class public school in Northeast  Ohio, protesting students and other burned down an ROTC building, a common target in the Vietnam  protest era, and Ohio Governor James Rhodes, vowing a violent response, mobilized the National Guard and  sent them to Kent.  For two days the students and Guard skirmished, with the paramilitaries hurling tear gas and intimidating students.  On May 4th, the Guard, unprovoked, started shooting into the crowd of students and shot 13, killing 4, from distances beyond 300 feet.  These were extrajudicial killings and a sure sign the state would murder anyone who challenged its interests. The war had come home! Scott and Bob, who's also a historian of the Vietnam War and the 1960s and has published extensively on those subjects, talk about the background to  the protests, the official, violent response, the aftermath at places  like Jackson State, where 2 more students were killed, and the larger context of anti-state protests and their meaning, and lessons.Links//Kent State Tribunal Organization, established by Laurel Krause, sister of one of the students assassinated that day (https://bit.ly/3w2spdR);interview with Alan Canfora, one of the survivors of the shootings (https://bit.ly/3OUyjGq);The Kent State May 4th Poetry Collection; Denise Levertov, “The Day the Audience Walked Out on Me, and Why” (https://bit.ly/3kIVyFv);Governor Rhodes press conference, May 3 (https://bit.ly/37cIk0R);Robert Buzzanco, Vietnam and the Transformation  of American Life (https://bit.ly/3kB21ST).https://linktr.ee/greenandredpodcastCheck out our new website: https://greenandredpodcast.org/Support//+Become a recurring donor at  https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast+Or make a one time donation here: https://bit.ly/DonateGandRFollow Green and Red//Donate to Green and Red Podcast//This is a Green and Red Podcast (@PodcastGreenRed) production. Produced by Bob (@bobbuzzanco) and Scott (@sparki1969).  “Green and Red Blues” by Moody.  Editing by Scott.

Chasing Justice with Lt. Joe Pangaro – Lt. Joe examines the changes in our immigration practices under President Donald Trump. How Democrats wield power as opposed to how Republicans fail to wield power. How the courts are taking the place of politicians to disrupt the Trump agenda, and how it all affects America. Lt. Joe discusses crime in the country, including both new crimes and

Chasing Justice with Lt. Joe Pangaro – Lt. Joe examines the changes in our immigration practices under President Donald Trump. How Democrats wield power as opposed to how Republicans fail to wield power. How the courts are taking the place of politicians to disrupt the Trump agenda, and how it all affects America. Lt. Joe discusses crime in the country, including both new crimes and

From Amy:I always knew that I loved writing. But I'm not sure I understood—until I went through a major transition, and not by my own choice—that writing is healing. At first it's writing just for me, raw and unwieldy and terrifying, but I always have the sense that this writing is something that, when I'm ready, is meant to be shared. Because stories tell us we're not alone. And they help people find us so that we can be there for each other.Meanwhile, I let myself stay in that first stage of book writing as long as I need to, a stage I call ALLOWING. Allowing it all to be whatever it is. And that allowing makes room for the most powerful stories come through. One of the biggest compliments I ever receive as a writer, and how I know my words have landed, is when people feel inexplicably drawn to tell me THEIR stories. It comes from the deepest parts of them, as a welcome release. I can feel it. Because I've processed my hard things, I'm able to listen to theirs and that helps.And even if we never meet at all, these readers and I, stories of healing help people. Yes, we write for ourselves first, but it doesn't stop there. Memoir is not selfish. It's the most generous thing you can do. Does that make sense? Because if you take nothing else away from this episode, it's that you can write your hardest things, yes, the very worst of them, and you can transform them into beautiful writing. So the next question people ask me is: How?How to you get from that very worst moment of heartbreak to a beautiful completed book? Well...I remember when Nikki Kindred Halvorson's husband was killed by a drunk driver in March 2020, because a mutual friend reached out to let me know what had happened. Nikki would need to work with me, this mutual friend said. She didn't know when, but she wanted to let me know. And she was absolutely right. I felt called to work on this project as Nikki's mentor and editor in due time. Eventually, she reached out.After Allowing, you progress into other stages: Composing, Revision, Editing, and now Sharing. That's where I came in.(Do you see the acronym? ACRES? My shorthand for: If you're transforming a landscape, you do it acre by acre.)There was nothing expected or pretty about the loss of John Erik Halvorson—Nikki's longtime best friend and husband—a tragedy compounded by so many things. Such as the old house they were restoring together, all torn apart. A pandemic. And more.But the process of salvaging stories for a beautiful book? (Or several...) There's nothing like it.So if you're wondering how you do that, write a book about your worst nightmare and feel proud of it and even grateful?Nikki pulls back the curtain in this episode. You'll want to listen.Nikki Kindred Halvorson works as a pediatric speech-language pathologist and is active in historical preservation. She realized a lifelong dream in 2014 when she became caretaker of a great old house with her husband, Erik. Widowed in 2020 at age 32, Nikki has continued to rehab her house and has begun building a new life on the foundation of her old one as she heals. She's currently in the process of realizing another lifelong dream of becoming a published author. Amy Hallberg is the author of Tiny Altars: A Midlife Revival and German Awakening: Tales from an American Life. She is the host of Courageous Wordsmith Podcast and founder of Courageous Wordsmith Circle for Real-Life Writers. As an editor and writing mentor, Amy guides writers through their narrative journeys—from inklings to beautiful works, specifically podcasts and books. A lifelong Minnesotan and mother of grown twins, Amy lives in the Twin Cities with her husband and two cats. Get Amy's Books and AudiobooksLearn about Courageous Wordsmith Circle for Real-Life WritersWork with Amy 1:1

Send us a textIn this captivating episode of "Bridging Generations: The Cultural Impact of Baseball in Japanese American Life," hosts Koji and Michelle explore the profound connections between baseball and cultural identity within the Japanese American community. They delve into personal stories, from Koji's admiration for Hideo Nomo to Michelle's son's early baseball antics, highlighting how the sport serves as a bridge between generations. Special guest Jason Murai, president of the Japanese American Baseball Organization, shares insights into the Sansei Baseball League's vital role in fostering cultural identity and community spirit. Through engaging anecdotes and reflections, the episode underscores baseball's enduring impact on Japanese American heritage, resilience, and representation in sports, celebrating figures like Shohei Ohtani who inspire future generations.For more about the Sansei baseball league go to:  https://www.sanseibaseball.com/ To see some of JANM's baseball related programs click on this YouTube playlist https://www.youtube.com/@janmdotorg/search?query=baseball : For more information about the Japanese American National Museum, please visit our website at www.janm.org. CREDITSThe music was created by Jalen BlankWritten by Koji Steven SakaiHosts: Michelle Malazaki and Koji Steven SakaiEdited and produced by Koji Steven Sakai in conjunction with the Japanese American National Museum

From Amy:As long as I've known Sara Taylor, I've thought of her as a gifted writer who—when she gained momentum—would write volumes I want to read. Which is how she was an early participant in what has become my Circle for Real-Life Writers; I've been an up-close witness. Sara's subject matter and how she frames it fascinates me. If I'm interested in the inner working of stories around generational trauma and healing, Sara's a healing practitioner who delves deep into underlying patterns behind stories AND fearlessly applies these lessons in her own life.Her work is groundbreaking. I really believe that. But writing about such things takes time.So when Sara sent out a newsletter sharing how she gained traction on a writing practice thanks to the website 750words.com, I took note. The previous day, I'd heard a random podcast where a prolific author credited the same unknown-to-me website with her own momentum. This was a welcome synchronicity. For months, I've been looking for a way back into the earliest drafting stage of book writing. It's been a long time since I typed the early free-written content that became my two memoirs, random thoughts I saved in Pages with only the vaguest idea of what my book wanted to be (singular, I thought) in the dark forty-five minutes before I awoke my seven-year-old twins. This followed years to work up a strategy and courage to write, and only after I stole the playroom from my kids where I still write today. Initially Pages worked. Afterwards, I had all these document files to wade through and got bogged down again in subsequent stages.Writing tools have evolved since 2011; I'm a different writer too. As in, I think of myself as a writer. Sara talks about this shift too.There's no one tool to write a book. It's just what works for you. But! Within two days, two women I respect described this site as a game changer. And I was intrigued. Because knowing where you're going to write, with a simple set-up, helps calm down resistance. So I signed up for the website, to try it out for myself. The next thing I did was invite Sara to record this conversation.It's one of many tools, but it might be the one that will get you—finally—writing.Because we want you to have options for your practice too. Sara Taylor, PhD, is a neuroscientist turned generational and existential life coach who helps deep thinkers and creatives break free from inherited patterns and lingering existential unease. With a deep understanding of generational trauma, she works with those who've done extensive personal work—especially around anxiety and depression—but still feel stuck, disconnected, or like life is passing them by. She helps people recognize and shift the hidden influences shaping their lives so they can move beyond dissatisfaction into greater potential, meaning, and momentum.Follow here: IG: @sarabtaylorphd Substack: @sarabtaylorphd Amy Hallberg is the author of Tiny Altars: A Midlife Revival and German Awakening: Tales from an American Life. She is the host of Courageous Wordsmith Podcast and founder of Courageous Wordsmith Circle for Real-Life Writers. As an editor and writing mentor, Amy guides writers through their narrative journeys—from inklings to beautiful works, specifically podcasts and books. A lifelong Minnesotan and mother of grown twins, Amy lives in the Twin Cities with her husband and two cats. Get Amy's Books and AudiobooksLearn about Courageous Wordsmith Circle for Real-Life WritersWork with Amy 1:1

Today, laundry takes just a few buttons and a spin cycle—but behind that convenience lies a remarkable story of innovation and perseverance. In this episode, Procter & Gamble's historian and corporate storyteller Shane Meeker takes us on a journey through the evolution of laundry—from the gritty days of 19th-century soapmaking to the revolutionary invention of Tide, the detergent that took 14 years to create. From the company's origins in the 1800s making soap and candles, we uncover how science, storytelling, and even wartime research reshaped household routines. Plus, the unexpected role P&G played in inventing the TV soap opera, and how today's laundry labs continue to evolve with consumer habits. Tide and Downy sponsor this episode. -- Mosheh Oinounou (@mosheh) is an Emmy and Murrow award-winning journalist. He has 20 years of experience at networks including Fox News, Bloomberg Television and CBS News, where he was the executive producer of the CBS Evening News and launched the network's 24 hour news channel. He founded the @mosheh Instagram news account in 2020 and the Mo News podcast and newsletter in 2022.

Today's guest is Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He spent two years as a police officer in Baltimore. I asked him to come on and talk about his new book, Back from the Brink, Inside the NYPD and New York City's Extraordinary 1990s Crime Drop. It's one of my favorite books I've read this year (and it was one of my three book recommendations on Ezra Klein's show last week).Peter spoke with hundreds of police officers and NYC officials to understand and describe exactly how the city's leaders in the early 1990s managed to drive down crime so successfully.We discussed:* How bad did things get in the 1970s?* Why did processing an arrest take so long?* What did Bill Bratton and other key leaders do differently?* How did police get rid of the squeegee men?I've included my reading list at the bottom of this piece. Thanks to Harry Fletcher-Wood for his judicious transcript edits.Subscribe for one new interview a week.Peter, how would you describe yourself?I would say I'm a criminologist: my background is sociology, but I am not in the sociology department. I'm not so big on theory, and sociology has a lot of theory. I was a grad student at Harvard in sociology and worked as a police officer [in Baltimore] and that became my dissertation and first book, Cop in the Hood. I've somewhat banked my career on those 20 months in the police department.Not a lot of sociologists spend a couple of years working a police beat.It's generally frowned upon, both for methodological reasons and issues of bias. But there is also an ideological opposition in a lot of academia to policing. It's seen as going to the dark side and something to be condemned, not understood.Sociologists said crime can't go down unless we fix society first. It's caused by poverty, racism, unemployment, and social and economic factors — they're called the root causes. But they don't seem to have a great impact on crime, as important as they are. When I'm in grad school, murders dropped 30-40% in New York City. At the same time, Mayor Giuliani is slashing social spending, and poverty is increasing. The whole academic field is just wrong. I thought it an interesting field to get into.We're going to talk about your new book, which is called Back from the Brink, Inside the NYPD and New York City's Extraordinary 1990s Crime Drop. I had a blast reading it. Tell me about the process of writing it.A lot of this is oral history, basically. But supposedly people don't like buying books that are called oral histories. It is told entirely from the perspective of police officers who were on the job at the time. I would not pretend I talked to everyone, because there were 30,000+ cops around, but I spoke to many cops and to all the major players involved in the 1990s crime drop in New York City.I was born in the ‘90s, and I had no idea about a crazy statistic you cite: 25% of the entire national crime decline was attributable to New York City's crime decline.In one year, yeah. One of the things people say to diminish the role of policing is that the crime drop happened everywhere — and it did end up happening almost everywhere. But I think that is partly because what happened in New York City was a lot of hard work, but it wasn't that complicated. It was very easy to propagate, and people came to New York to find out what was going on. You could see results, literally in a matter of months.It happened first in New York City. Really, it happened first in the subways and that's interesting, because if crime goes down in the subways [which, at the time, fell under the separate New York City Transit Police] and not in the rest of the city, you say, “What is going on in the subways that is unique?” It was the exact same strategies and leadership that later transformed the NYPD [New York Police Department].Set the scene: What was the state of crime and disorder in New York in the ‘70s and into the ‘80s?Long story short, it was bad. Crime in New York was a big problem from the late ‘60s up to the mid ‘90s, and the ‘70s is when the people who became the leaders started their careers. So these were defining moments. The city was almost bankrupt in 1975 and laid off 5,000 cops; 3,000 for a long period of time. That was arguably the nadir. It scarred the police department and the city.Eventually, the city got its finances in order and came to the realization that “we've got a big crime problem too.” That crime problem really came to a head with crack cocaine. Robberies peaked in New York City in 1980. There were above 100,000 robberies in 1981, and those are just reported robberies. A lot of people get robbed and just say, “It's not worth it to report,” or, “I'm going to work,” or, “Cops aren't going to do anything.” The number of robberies and car thefts was amazingly high. The trauma, the impact on the city and on urban space, and people's perception of fear, all comes from that. If you're afraid of crime, it's high up on the hierarchy of needs.To some extent, those lessons have been lost or forgotten. Last year there were 16,600 [robberies], which is a huge increase from a few years ago, but we're still talking an 85% reduction compared to the worst years. It supposedly wasn't possible. What I wanted to get into in Back from the Brink was the actual mechanisms of the crime drop. I did about fifty formal interviews and hundreds of informal interviews building the story. By and large, people were telling the same story.In 1975, the city almost goes bankrupt. It's cutting costs everywhere, and it lays off more than 5,000 cops, about 20% of the force, in one day. There's not a new police academy class until 1979, four years later. Talk to me about where the NYPD was at that time.They were retrenched, and the cops were demoralized because “This is how the city treats us?” The actual process of laying off the cops itself was just brutal: they went to work, and were told once they got to work that they were no longer cops. “Give me your badge, give me your gun."The city also was dealing with crime, disorder, and racial unrest. The police department was worried about corruption, which was a legacy of the Knapp Commission [which investigated NYPD corruption] and [Frank] Serpico [a whistleblowing officer]. It's an old police adage, that if you don't work, you can't get in trouble. That became very much the standard way of doing things. Keep your head low, stay out of trouble, and you'll collect your paycheck and go home.You talk about the blackout in 1977, when much of the city lost power and you have widespread looting and arson. 13,000 off-duty cops get called in during the emergency, and only about 5,000 show up, which is a remarkable sign of the state of morale.The person in my book who's talking about that is Louis Anemone. He showed up because his neighbor and friend and partner was there, and he's got to help him. It was very much an in-the-foxholes experience. I contrast that with the more recent blackout, in which the city went and had a big block party instead. That is reflective of the change that happened in the city.In the mid-80s you get the crack cocaine epidemic. Talk to me about how police respond.From a political perspective, that era coincided with David Dinkins as [New York City's first black] mayor. He was universally disliked, to put it mildly, by white and black police officers alike. He was seen as hands off. He was elected in part to improve racial relations in New York City, to mitigate racial strife, but in Crown Heights and Washington Heights, there were riots, and racial relations got worse. He failed at the level he was supposed to be good at. Crime and quality of life were the major issues in that election.Dinkins's approach to the violence is centered around what they called “community policing.” Will you describe how Dinkins and political leaders in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s thought about policing?This is under Ben Ward, the [NYPD] Commissioner at the time. The mayor appoints the police commissioner — and the buck does stop with the mayor — but the mayor is not actively involved in day-to-day operations. That part does go down to the police department.Community policing was seen as an attempt to improve relations between the police and the community. The real goal was to lessen racial strife and unrest between black (and to a lesser extent Hispanic) communities and the NYPD. Going back to the ‘60s, New York had been rocked by continued unrest in neighborhoods like Central Harlem, East New York, and Bushwick. Community policing was seen as saying that police are partly to blame, and we want to improve relations. Some of it was an attempt to get the community more involved in crime fighting.It's tough. It involves a certain rosy view of the community, but that part of the community isn't causing the problems. It avoids the fact there are people who are actively criming and are willing to hurt people who get in their way. Community policing doesn't really address the active criminal element, that is a small part of any community, including high-crime communities.Arrests increased drastically during this era, more than in the ‘90s with broken windows policing. If the idea is to have fewer arrests, it didn't happen in the ‘80s. Some good came out of it, because it did encourage cops to be a bit more active and cops are incentivized by overtime. Arrests were so incredibly time-consuming, which kind of defeated the purpose of community policing. If you made an arrest in that era, there was a good chance you might spend literally 24 hours processing the arrest.Will you describe what goes into that 24 hours?From my experience policing in Baltimore, I knew arrests were time-consuming and paperwork redundant, but I could process a simple arrest in an hour or two. Even a complicated one that involved juveniles and guns and drugs, we're talking six to eight hours.In the ‘80s, Bob Davin, [in the] Transit Police, would say they'd make an arrest, process at the local precinct, search him in front of a desk officer, print him, and then they would have to get a radio car off patrol to drive you down to central booking at 100 Centre Street [New York City Criminal Court]. Then they would fingerprint him. They didn't have the live scan fingerprints machine, it was all ink. It had to be faxed up to Albany and the FBI to see if it hit on any warrant federally and for positive identification of the person. Sometimes it took 12 hours to have the prints come back and the perp would be remanded until that time. Then you'd have to wait for the prosecutor to get their act together and to review all the paperwork. You couldn't consider bail unless the prints came back either positive or negative and then you would have that initial arraignment and the cop could then go home. There are a lot of moving parts, and they moved at a glacial pace.The system often doesn't work 24/7. A lot of this has changed, but some of it was having to wait until 9 am for people to show up to go to work, because it's not a single system. The courts, the jails, and policing all march to their own drummer, and that created a level of inefficiency.So much of the nitty-gritty of what cops actually do is boring, behind-the-scenes stuff: How do we speed up the paperwork? Can we group prisoners together? Can we do some of this at the police station instead of taking it downtown? Is all of this necessary? Can we cooperate with the various prosecutors? There are five different prosecutors in New York City, one for each borough.There's not a great incentive to streamline this. Cops enjoyed the overtime. That's one of the reasons they would make arrests. So during this time, if a cop makes an arrest for drug dealing, that cop is gone and no cop was there to replace him. If it's a minor arrest, there's a good chance in the long run charges will be dropped anyway. And you're taking cops off the street. In that sense, it's lose-lose. But, you have to think, “What's the alternative?”Bob Davin is a fascinating guy. There's a famous picture from 1981 by Martha Cooper of two cops on a subway train. It's graffitied up and they're in their leather jackets and look like cops from the ‘70s. Martha Cooper graciously gave me permission to use the picture, but she said, "You have to indemnify me because I don't have a release form. I don't know who the cops are." I said, "Martha, I do know who the cop is, because he's in my book and he loves the picture.” Bob Davin is the cop on the right.Davin says that things started to get more efficient. They had hub sites in the late ‘80s or ‘90s, so precincts in the north of Manhattan could bring their prisoners there, and you wouldn't have to take a car out of service to go back to Central Booking and deal with traffic. They started collecting prisoners and bringing them en masse on a small school bus, and that would cut into overtime. Then moving to electronic scan fingerprints drastically saves time waiting for those to come back.These improvements were made, but some of them involve collective bargaining with unions, to limit overtime and arrests that are made for the pure purpose of overtime. You want cops making arrests for the right reason and not simply to make money. But boy, there was a lot of money made in arrests.In 1991, you have the infamous Crown Heights riot in Brooklyn. Racial tensions kick off. It's a nightmare for the mayor, there's this sense that he has lost control. The following year, you have this infamous police protest at City Hall where it becomes clear the relationship between the cops and the mayor has totally evaporated. How does all that play into the mayoral race between Dinkins and Giuliani?It was unintentional, but a lot of the blame for Crown Heights falls on the police department. The part of the story that is better known is that there was a procession for a Hasidic rabbi that was led by a police car. He would go to his wife's grave, and he got a little three-car motorcade. At some point, the police look at this and go "Why are we doing this? We're going to change it." The man who made the deal said ‘I"m retiring in a couple weeks, can we just leave it till then? Because I gave him my word." They're like, "Alright, whatever."This motor car procession is then involved in a car crash, and a young child named Gavin Cato is killed, and another girl is severely injured. The volunteer, Jewish-run ambulance shows up and decides they don't have the equipment: they call for a professional city ambulance. Once that ambulance is on the way, they take the mildly-injured Jewish people to the hospital. The rumor starts that the Jewish ambulance abandoned the black children to die.This isn't the first incident. There's long been strife over property and who the landlord is. But this was the spark that set off riots. A young Jewish man was randomly attacked on the street and was killed.As an aside, he also shouldn't have died, but at the hospital they missed internal bleeding.Meanwhile, the police department has no real leadership at the time. One chief is going to retire, another is on vacation, a third doesn't know what he's doing, and basically everyone is afraid to do anything. So police do nothing. They pull back, and you have three days of very anti-Semitic riots. Crowds chanting "Kill the Jews" and marching on the Lubavitch Hasidic Headquarters. Al Sharpton shows up. The riots are blamed on Dinkins, which is partly fair, but a lot of that's on the NYPD. Finally, the mayor and the police commissioner go to see what's going on and they get attacked. It's the only time in New York City history that there's ever been an emergency call from the police commissioner's car. People are throwing rocks at it.It took three days to realise this, but that's when they say “We have to do something here,” and they gather a group of officers who later become many of Bratton's main chiefs at the time [Bill Bratton was Commissioner of the NYPD from 1994-1996, under Giuliani]: Mike Julian, Louis Anemone, Ray Kelly, and [John] Timoney. They end the unrest in a day. They allow people to march, they get the police department to set rules. It still goes on for a bit, but no one gets hurt after that, and that's it.It was a huge, national story at the time, but a lot of the details were not covered. Reporters were taken from their car and beaten and stripped. The significance was downplayed at the time, especially by the New York Times, I would say.That's followed by the Washington Heights riots, which is a different story. A drug dealer was shot and killed by cops. There were rumors, which were proven to be false, that he was executed and unarmed. Then there were three days of rioting there. It wasn't quite as severe, but 53 cops were hurt, 120 stores were set on fire, and Mayor Dinkins paid for the victim's family to go to the Dominican Republic for the funeral. The police perspective again was, “You're picking the wrong side here.”Then there's the so-called Police Riot at City Hall. Nominally, it was about the CCRB, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, and setting up an accountability mechanism to control cops. But really it was just an anti-Dinkins protest. It was drunken and unruly. The cops stormed the steps of City Hall. I have the account of one of the cops who was on the top of those steps looking at this mob of cops storming to him, and he's getting worried he's going to be killed in a crush. There were racist chants from off-duty cops in the crowd. It did not reflect well on police officers. But it showed this hatred of David Dinkins, who was seen as siding with criminals and being anti-police. The irony is that Dinkins is the one who ends up hiring all the cops that Giuliani gets credit for.In the “Safe Streets, Safe City” program?Yes. That was because a white tourist, Brian Watkins, was killed in a subway station protecting his parents who were getting robbed. That led to the famous headline [in the New York Post] of “Dave, do something! Crime-ravaged city cries out for help.” He, with City Council President Peter Vallone, Sr., drafted and pushed through this massive hiring of police officers, “Safe Streets, Safe City.”The hiring wasn't fast-tracked. It might be because Dinkins's people didn't really want more cops. But it was a Dinkins push that got a massive hiring of cops. When the first huge class of police officers graduated, Bill Bratton was there and not David Dinkins.Some interviewees in your book talk about how there's physically not enough room in the police academies at this time, so they have to run classes 24/7. You cycle cohorts in and out of the same classroom, because there are too many new cops for the facilities.You have thousands of cops going through it at once. Everyone describes it as quite a chaotic scene. But it would have been hard to do what the NYPD did without those cops. Ray Kelly, who was police commissioner under Dinkins at the end [from 1992 to 1994] before he became police commissioner for 12 years under Bloomberg [from 2002 to 2013] probably could have done something with those cops too, but he never had the chance, because the mayoral leadership at the time was much more limiting in what they wanted cops to do.Crime starts declining slowly in the first few years of the ‘90s under Dinkins, and then in ‘93 Giuliani wins a squeaker of a mayoral election against Dinkins.One of the major issues was the then-notorious “squeegee men” of New York City. These were guys who would go to cars stopped at bridges and tunnel entrances and would rub a squeegee over the windshield asking for money. It was unpleasant, intimidating, and unwanted, and it was seen as one of those things that were just inevitable. Like graffiti on the subway in the ‘80s. Nothing we can do about it because these poor people don't have jobs or housing or whatever.The irony is that Bratton and Giuliani were happy to take credit for that, and it was an issue in the mayoral campaign, but it was solved under David Dinkins and Ray Kelly and Mike Julian with the help of George Kelling [who, with James Wilson, came up with broken windows theory]. But they never got credit for it. One wonders if, had they done that just a few months earlier, it would have shifted the entire campaign and we'd have a different course of history in New York City.It's a great example of a couple of things that several people in your book talk about. One is that disorder is often caused by a very small set of individuals. There's only like 70 squeegee men, yet everybody sees them, because they're posted up at the main tunnel and bridge entrances to Manhattan. And getting them off the streets solves the problem entirely.Another emphasis in the book is how perceptions of crime are central. You quote Jack Maple, the father of Compstat, as saying, “A murder on the subway counts as a multiple murder up on the street, because everybody feels like that's their subway.” The particular locations of crimes really affect public perception.Absolutely. Perception is reality for a lot of these things, because most people aren't victimized by crime. But when people perceive that no one is in control they feel less safe. It's not that this perception is false, it just might not be directly related to an actual criminal act.The other thing I try to show is that it's not just saying, “We've got to get rid of squeegee men. How do you do it?” They had tried before, but this is why you need smart cops and good leadership, because it's a problem-solving technique, and the way to get rid of graffiti is different to the way you get rid of squeegee men.This book is in opposition to those who just say, “We can't police our way out of this problem.” No, we can. We can't police our way out of every problem. But if you define the problem as, we don't want people at intersections with squeegees, of course we can police our way out of the problem, using legal constitutional tools. You need the political will. And then the hard work starts, because you have to figure out how to actually do it.Will you describe how they tackle the squeegee men problem?Mike Julian was behind it. They hired George Kelling, who's known for broken windows. They said, “These people are here to make money. So to just go there and make a few arrests isn't going to solve the problem.” First of all, he had to figure out what legal authority [to use], and he used Traffic Reg 44 [which prohibits pedestrians from soliciting vehicle occupants]. He talked to Norm Siegel of the NYCLU [New York Civil Liberties Union] about this, who did not want this crackdown to happen. But Norman said, “Okay, this is the law, I can't fight that one. You're doing it legally. It's all in the books.” And So that took away that opposition.But the relentless part of it is key. First they filmed people. Then, when it came to enforcement, they warned people. Then they cited people, and anybody that was left they arrested. They did not have to arrest many people, because the key is they did this every four hours. It was that that changed behavior, because even a simple arrest isn't going to necessarily deter someone if it's a productive way to make money. But being out there every four hours for a couple of weeks or months was enough to get people to do something else. What that something else is, we still don't know, but we solved the squeegee problem.So in 93, Giuliani is elected by something like 50,000 votes overall. Just as an aside, in Prince of the City, Fred Siegel describes something I had no idea about. There's a Puerto Rican Democratic Councilman who flips and supports Giuliani. Mayor Eric Adams, who at the time was the head of a nonprofit for black men in law enforcement, calls him a race traitor for doing that and for being married to a white woman. There was a remarkable level of racial vitriol in that race that I totally missed.10 years ago when I started this, I asked if I could interview then-Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams, and he said yes, and the interview kept getting rescheduled, and I said, “Eh, I don't need him.” It's a regret of mine. I should have pursued that, but coulda, woulda, shoulda.Giuliani is elected, and he campaigns very explicitly on a reducing crime and disorder platform. And he hires Bill Bratton. Tell me about Bratton coming on board as NYPD commissioner.Bratton grew up in Boston, was a police officer there, became head of the New York City Transit Police when that was a separate police department. Right before he becomes NYPD Commissioner, he's back in Boston, as the Chief of Police there, and there is a movement among certain people to get Bratton the NYC job. They succeed in that, and Bratton is a very confident man. He very much took a broken windows approach and said, “We are going to focus on crime.” He has a right-hand man by the name of Jack Maple who he knows from the Transit Police. Maple is just a lieutenant in transit, and Bratton makes him the de facto number two man in the police department.Jack Maple passed away in 2001 and I didn't know what I was going to do, because it's hard to interview a man who's no longer alive. Chris Mitchell co-wrote Jack Maple's autobiography called Crime Fighter and he graciously gave me all the micro-cassettes of the original interviews he conducted with Maple around 1998. Everyone has a Jack Maple story. He's probably the most important character in Back from the Brink.Jack Maple comes in, no one really knows who he is, no one respects him because he was just a lieutenant in Transit. He goes around and asks a basic question — this is 1994 — he says, “How many people were shot in New York City in 1993?” And nobody knows. That is the state of crime-fighting in New York City before this era. There might have been 7,000 people shot in New York City in 1990 and we just don't know, even to this day.One citation from your book: in 1993, an average of 16 people were shot every day. Which is just remarkable.And remember, shootings have been declining for two or three years before that! But nobody knew, because they weren't keeping track of shootings, because it's not one of the FBI Uniform Crime Report [which tracks crime data nationally] index crimes. But wouldn't you be curious? It took Jack Maple to be curious, so he made people count, and it was findable, but you had to go through every aggravated assault and see if a gun was involved. You had to go through every murder from the previous year and see if it was a shooting. He did this. So we only have shooting data in New York City going back to 1993. It's just a simple process of caring.The super-short version of Back from the Brink is it was a change in mission statement: “We're going to care about crime.” Because they hadn't before. They cared about corruption, racial unrest, brutality, and scandal. They cared about the clearance rate for robbery a bit. You were supposed to make three arrests for every ten robberies. It didn't matter so much that you were stopping a pattern or arresting the right person, as long as you had three arrests for every ten reported crimes, that was fine.This is a story about people who cared. They're from this city — Bratton wasn't, but most of the rest are. They understood the trauma of violence and the fact that people with families were afraid to go outside, and nobody in the power structure seemed to care. So they made the NYPD care about this. Suddenly, the mid-level police executives, the precinct commanders, had to care. and the meetings weren't about keeping overtime down, instead they were about ”What are you doing to stop this shooting?”Tell listeners a little bit more about Jack Maple, because he's a remarkable character, and folks may not know what a kook he was.I think he was a little less kooky than he liked to present. His public persona was wearing a snazzy cat and spats and dressing like a fictional cartoon detective from his own mind, but he's a working-class guy from Queens who becomes a transit cop.When Bratton takes over, he writes a letter up the chain of command saying this is what we should do. Bratton read it and said, “This guy is smart.” Listening to 80 hours of Jack Maple, everyone correctly says he was a smart guy, but he had a very working-class demeanor and took to the elite lifestyle. He loved hanging out and getting fancy drinks at the Plaza Hotel. He was the idea man of the NYPD. Everyone has a Jack Maple imitation. “You're talking to the Jackster,” he'd say. He had smart people working under him who were supportive of this. But it was very much trying to figure out as they went along, because the city doesn't stop nor does it sleep.He was a bulls***er, but he's the one who came up with the basic outline of the strategy of crime reduction in New York City. He famously wrote it on a napkin at Elaine's, and it said, “First, we need to gather accurate and timely intelligence.” And that was, in essence, CompStat. “Then, we need to deploy our cops to where they need to be.” That was a big thing. He found out that cops weren't working: specialized units weren't working weekends and nights when the actual crime was happening. They had their excuses, but basically they wanted a cushy schedule. He changed that. Then, of course, you have to figure out what you're doing, what the effective tactics are. Then, constant follow up and assessment.You can't give up. You can't say “Problem solved.” A lot of people say it wasn't so much if your plan didn't work, you just needed a Plan B. It was the idea that throwing your hands in the air and saying, “What are you going to do?” that became notoriously unacceptable under Chief Anemone's stern demeanor at CompStat. These were not pleasant meetings. Those are the meetings that both propagated policies that work and held officers accountable. There was some humiliation going on, so CompStat was feared.Lots of folks hear CompStat and think about better tracking of crime locations and incidents. But as you flesh out, the meat on the bones of CompStat was this relentless follow-up. You'd have these weekly meetings early in the morning with all the precinct heads. There were relentless asks from the bosses, “What's going on in your district or in your precinct? Can you explain why this is happening? What are you doing to get these numbers down?” And follow-ups the following week or month. It was constant.CompStat is often thought of as high-tech computer stuff. It wasn't. There was nothing that couldn't have been done with old overhead projectors. It's just that no one had done it before. Billy Gorta says it's a glorified accountability system at a time when nobody knew anything about computers. Everyone now has access to crime maps on a computer. It was about actually gathering accurate, timely data.Bratton was very concerned that these numbers had to be right. It was getting everyone in the same room and saying, “This is what our focus is going to be now.” And getting people to care about crime victims, especially when those crime victims might be unsympathetic because of their demeanor, criminal activity, or a long arrest record. “We're going to care about every shooting, we're going to care about every murder.”Part of it was cracking down on illegal guns. There were hundreds of tactics. The federal prosecutors also played a key role. It was getting this cooperation. Once it started working and Giuliani made it a major part of claiming success as mayor, suddenly everyone wanted to be part of this, and you had other city agencies trying to figure it out. So it was a very positive feedback loop, once it was seen as a success.When Bratton came on the job, he said, “I'm going to bring down crime 15%.” No police commissioner had ever said that before. In the history of policing before 1994, no police commissioner ever promised a double-digit reduction in crime or even talked about it. People said “That's crazy.” It was done, and then year after year. That's the type of confidence that they had. They were surprised it worked as well as it did, but they all had the sense that there's a new captain on this ship, and we're trying new things. It was an age of ideas and experiment.And it was a very short time.That's the other thing that surprised me. Giuliani fired Bratton in the middle of ‘96.It's remarkable. Bratton comes in ‘94, and August 1994 is where you see crime drop off a cliff. You have this massive beginning of the reduction that continues.That inflection point is important for historical knowledge. I don't address alternatives that other people have proposed [to explain the fall in crime] — For example, the reduction in lead [in gasoline, paint, and water pipes] or legalized abortion with Roe v. Wade [proposed by Stephen Dubner].Reasonable people can differ. Back from the Brink focuses on the police part of the equation. Today, almost nobody, except for a few academics, says that police had nothing to do with the crime drop. That August inflection is key, because there is nothing in a lagged time analysis going back 20 years that is going to say that is the magic month where things happened. Yet if you look at what happened in CompStat, that's the month they started getting individual officer data, and noticing that most cops made zero arrests, and said, “Let's get them in the game as well.” And that seemed to be the key; that's when crime fell off the table. The meetings started in April, I believe, but August is really when the massive crime drop began.To your point about the confidence that crime could be driven down double digits year over year, there's a great quote you have from Jack Maple, where he says to a fellow cop, “This is going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. As long as we have absolute control, we can absolutely drive this number into the floor.”One detail I enjoyed was that Jack Maple, when he was a transit cop, would camp out under a big refrigerator box with little holes cut out for eyes and sit on the subway platform waiting for crooks.For people who are interested in Jack Maple, it is worth reading his autobiography, Crime Fighter. Mike Daly wrote New York's Finest, which uses the same tapes that I had access to, and he is much more focused on that. He's actually the godfather of Jack Maple's son, who is currently a New York City police officer. But Maple and co were confident, and it turned out they were right.As well as having changes in tactics and approach and accountability across the NYPD, you also have a series of specific location cleanups. You have a specific initiative focused on the Port Authority, which is a cesspool at the time, an initiative in Times Square, the Bryant Park cleanup, and then Giuliani also focuses on organized crime on the Fulton Fish Market, and this open-air market in Harlem.I was struck that there was both this general accountability push in the NYPD through CompStat, and a relentless focus on cleaning up individual places that were hubs of disorder.I'm not certain the crime drop would have happened without reclamation of public spaces and business improvement districts. Bryant Park's a fascinating story because Dan Biederman, who heads the Corporation, said, “People just thought it was like a lost cause, this park can't be saved. The city is in a spiral of decline.” He uses Jane Jacobs' “eyes on the street” theory and then George Kelling and James Q. Wilson's broken windows theory. The park has money — not city money, but from local property owners — and it reopens in 1991 to great acclaim and is still a fabulous place to be. It showed for the first time that public space was worth saving and could be saved. New York City at the time needed that lesson. It's interesting that today, Bryant Park has no permanent police presence and less crime. Back in the ‘80s, Bryant Park had an active police presence and a lot more crime.The first class I ever taught when I started at John Jay College in 2004, I was talking about broken windows. A student in the class named Jeff Marshall, who is in my book, told me about Operation Alternatives at the Port Authority. He had been a Port Authority police officer at the time, and I had not heard of this. People are just unaware of this part of history. It very much has lessons for today, because in policing often there's nothing new under the sun. It's just repackaged, dusted off, and done again. The issue was, how do we make the Port Authority safe for passengers? How do we both help and get rid of people living in the bus terminal? It's a semi-public space, so it makes it difficult. There was a social services element about it, that was Operational Alternatives. A lot of people took advantage of that and got help. But the flip side was, you don't have to take services, but you can't stay here.I interviewed the manager of the bus terminal. He was so proud of what he did. He's a bureaucrat, a high-ranking one, but a port authority manager. He came from the George Washington Bridge, which he loved. And he wonders, what the hell am I going to do with this bus terminal? But the Port Authority cared, because they're a huge organization and that's the only thing with their name on it — They also control JFK Airport and bridges and tunnels and all the airports, but people call the bus terminal Port Authority.They gave him almost unlimited money and power and said, “Fix it please, do what you've got to do,” and he did. It was environmental design, giving police overtime so they'd be part of this, a big part of it was having a social service element so it wasn't just kicking people out with nowhere to go.Some of it was also setting up rules. This also helped Bratton in the subway, because this happened at the same time. The court ruled that you can enforce certain rules in the semi-public spaces. It was not clear until this moment whether it was constitutional or not. To be specific, you have a constitutional right to beg on the street, but you do not have a constitutional right to beg on the subway. That came down to a court decision. Had that not happened, I don't know if in the long run the crime drop would have happened.That court decision comes down to the specific point that it's not a free-speech right on the subway to panhandle, because people can't leave, because you've got them trapped in that space.You can't cross the street to get away from it. But it also recognized that it wasn't pure begging, that there was a gray area between aggressive begging and extortion and robbery.You note that in the early 1990s, one-third of subway commuters said they consciously avoided certain stations because of safety, and two thirds felt coerced to give money by aggressive panhandling.The folks in your book talk a lot about the 80/20 rule applying all over the place. That something like 20% of the people you catch are committing 80% of the crimes.There's a similar dynamic that you talk about on the subways, both in the book and in your commentary over the past couple years about disorder in New York. You say approximately 2,000 people with serious mental illness are at risk for street homelessness, and these people cycle through the cities, streets, subways, jails, and hospitals.What lessons from the ‘90s can be applied today for both helping those people and stopping them being a threat to others?Before the ‘80s and Reagan budget cuts there had been a psychiatric system that could help people. That largely got defunded. [Deinstitutionalization began in New York State earlier, in the 1960s.] We did not solve the problem of mental health or homelessness in the ‘90s, but we solved the problem of behavior. George Kelling [of broken windows theory] emphasized this repeatedly, and people would ignore it. We are not criminalizing homelessness or poverty. We're focusing on behavior that we are trying to change. People who willfully ignore that distinction almost assume that poor people are naturally disorderly or criminal, or that all homeless people are twitching and threatening other people. Even people with mental illness can behave in a public space.Times have changed a bit. I think there are different drugs now that make things arguably a bit worse. I am not a mental health expert, but we do need more involuntary commitment, not just for our sake, but for theirs, people who need help. I pass people daily, often the same person, basically decomposing on a subway stop in the cold. They are offered help by social services, and they say no. They should not be allowed to make that choice because they're literally dying on the street in front of us. Basic humanity demands that we be a little more aggressive in forcing people who are not making rational decisions, because now you have to be an imminent threat to yourself or others. That standard does need to change. But there also need to be mental health beds available for people in this condition.I don't know what the solution is to homelessness or mental health. But I do know the solution to public disorder on the subway and that's, regardless of your mental state or housing status, enforcing legal, constitutional rules, policing behavior. It does not involve locking everybody up. It involves drawing the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. It's amazing how much people will comply with those rules.That presents the idea that someone's in charge, it's not a free-for-all. You get that virtuous loop, which New York had achieved in 2014–2016, when crime was at an all-time low in the city. Then the politicians decided public order wasn't worth preserving anymore. These are political choices.I had a similar version of this conversation with a friend who was shocked that there were zero murders on the subway in 2017 and that that number was stable: you had one or two a year for several years in the mid-2010s.It was five or fewer a year from 1997 to 2019, and often one or two. Then you have zero in 2017. There were [ten in 2022]. It coincides perfectly with an order from [Mayor] de Blasio's office and the homeless czar [Director of Homeless Services Steven] Banks [which] told police to stop enforcing subway rules against loitering. The subways became — once again — a de facto homeless shelter. Getting rule-violating homeless people out of the subway in the late ‘80s was such a difficult and major accomplishment at the time, and to be fair it's not as bad as it was.The alternative was that homeless outreach was supposed to offer people services. When they decline, which 95% of people do, you're to leave them be. I would argue again, I don't think that's a more humane stance to take. But it's not just about them, it's about subway riders.There's one story that I think was relevant for you to tell. You were attacked this fall on a subway platform by a guy threatening to kill you. It turns out he's had a number of run-ins with the criminal justice system. Can you tell us where that guy is now?I believe he's in prison now. The only reason I know who it is is because I said, one day I'm going to see his picture in the New York Post because he's going to hurt somebody. Am I 100 percent certain it's Michael Blount who attacked me? No, but I'm willing to call him out by name because I believe it is. He was out of prison for raping a child, and he slashed his ex-girlfriend and pushed her on the subway tracks. And then was on the lam for a while. I look at him and the shape of his face, his height, age, build, complexion, and I go, that's got to be him.I wasn't hurt, but he gave me a sucker punch trying to knock me out and then chased me a bit threatening to kill me, and I believe he wanted to. It's the only time I ever was confronted by a person who I really believe wanted to kill me, and this includes policing in the Eastern District in Baltimore. It was an attempted misdemeanor assault in the long run. But I knew it wasn't about me. It was him. I assume he's going to stay in prison longer for what he did to his ex-girlfriend. But I never thought it would happen to me. I was lucky the punch didn't connect.Peter Moskos's new book is Back from the Brink, Inside the NYPD and New York City's Extraordinary 1990s Crime Drop.My reading listEssays:Johnny Hirschauer's reporting, including “A Failed 'Solution' to 'America's Mental Health Crisis',“ “Return to the Roots,” and “The Last Institutions.” “Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety,” by George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson. ​“It's Time to Talk About America's Disorder Problem,” Charles Lehman.Books:Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America, Jill Leovy.​Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York, and the Genius of American Life, Fred Siegel.​ Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District, Peter Moskos.​Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic, Sam Quinones.​Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub

A few months ago I made a decision that changed my life and the trajectory of Tangle for good.I was approached by a producer for a new podcast called “Question Everything,” hosted by Brian Reed (who you might know from the hit podcast S-Town). The producer, Zach St. Louis, told me they were doing a series about the state and future of journalism. They wanted to do an episode about Tangle, which I agreed to enthusiastically, and then Zach came down to the Tangle office and interviewed me for a few hours. During our interview, I mentioned to Zach that we've heard from many readers who said Tangle has helped them with their relationships with people in their family or friend groups with whom they share political disagreements. I even hear from married couples, I said, who are on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Zach was intrigued by this and ended up tracking down a few of those Tangle readers, including one couple who ended up being at the heart of the episode. A few months after Question Everything published our show, it was picked up by This American Life on NPR, which nearly doubled our readership and helped me make a few big hires at Tangle. It all happened right around the election, and was an incredibly exciting and overwhelming time. Now that the dust has settled a bit, we've decided to republish the original Question Everything episode on our own podcast feed so you all can listen to it (in the event you haven't). And, when you're done, I highly recommend going to listen to all of the Question Everything series — which is a genuinely fascinating exploration of journalism.Isaac & the Tangle teamBy the way: If you are not yet a podcast member, and you want to upgrade your newsletter subscription plan to include a podcast membership (which gets you ad-free podcasts, Friday editions, The Sunday podcast, bonus content), you can do that here. That page is a good resource for managing your Tangle subscription (just make sure you are logged in on the website!)Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to ReadTangle.com to sign up! You can also give the gift of a Tangle podcast subscription by clicking here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was hosted by Ari Weitzman and Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75 and Jon Lall. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Hunter Casperson, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sarah Peyton is a Certified Trainer of Nonviolent Communication. She teaches people how language changes relationship and the brain. She works with audiences internationally to create a compassionate understanding of the effects of relational trauma on the brain, and writes about and teaches people how words change and heal us.Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is a poet. She has 13 collections of poetry, and her work has appeared in O Magazine, A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, American Life in Poetry, on fences, in back alleys, on Carnegie Hall Stage and on hundreds of river rocks she leaves around her town of Placerville, Colorado. Her most recent collection, Hush, won the Halcyon prize. Devoted to helping others explore creative practice, Rosemerry is also co-host of Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process; co-founder of Secret Agents of Change (a surreptitious kindness cabal); and co-leader of Soul Writers Circle.In This Episode:Sarah's WebsiteYour Resonant Self: Guided Meditations and Exercises to Engage Your Brain's Capacity for Healing, by Sarah PeytonRosemerry's websiteThe Unfolding: Poems, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer---If you'd like to support The Trauma Therapist Podcast and the work I do you can do that here with a monthly donation of $5, $7, or $10: Donate to The Trauma Therapist Podcast.Click here to join my email list and receive podcast updates and other news.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-trauma-therapist--5739761/support.

Sarah Peyton is a Certified Trainer of Nonviolent Communication. She teaches people how language changes relationship and the brain. She works with audiences internationally to create a compassionate understanding of the effects of relational trauma on the brain, and writes about and teaches people how words change and heal us.Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is a poet. She has 13 collections of poetry, and her work has appeared in O Magazine, A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, American Life in Poetry, on fences, in back alleys, on Carnegie Hall Stage and on hundreds of river rocks she leaves around her town of Placerville, Colorado. Her most recent collection, Hush, won the Halcyon prize. Devoted to helping others explore creative practice, Rosemerry is also co-host of Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process; co-founder of Secret Agents of Change (a surreptitious kindness cabal); and co-leader of Soul Writers Circle.In This Episode:Sarah's WebsiteYour Resonant Self: Guided Meditations and Exercises to Engage Your Brain's Capacity for Healing, by Sarah PeytonRosemerry's websiteThe Unfolding: Poems, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer---If you'd like to support The Trauma Therapist Podcast and the work I do you can do that here with a monthly donation of $5, $7, or $10: Donate to The Trauma Therapist Podcast.Click here to join my email list and receive podcast updates and other news.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-trauma-therapist--5739761/support.

A century ago, the United States designated its first wilderness area – a place to be forever preserved and protected from human impact. But what does “wilderness” mean in the era of smartphone technology that keeps us constantly connected and human-fueled climate change? And who gets to enjoy these “untrammeled” spaces? These are the questions posed by environmental journalist Marissa Ortega-Welch in her podcast “How Wild.” We talk with Ortega-Welch, an environmental historian, and an outdoor educator about the complex history and future of our wildest landscapes. And we hear from you: What does wilderness mean for you? Guests: Marissa Ortega-Welch, science and environmental journalist, host of the podcast "How Wild" Phoebe Young, professor of environmental history and chair of the history department, University of Colorado Boulder; author, "Camping Grounds: Public Nature in American Life from the Civil War to the Occupy Movement" Aparna Rajagopal, founding partner, The Avarna Group

On this Valentine's Day installment of the 538 Politics podcast, Galen is joined by Daniel Cox and Kelsey Eyre Hammond of the Survey Center on American Life. They discuss the troubled state of American dating life and how the country fell into a “romantic recession.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Research shows we're spending more time alone than ever before. Atlantic writer Derek Thompson says all this "me time" has a profound impact on our relationships and politics. Also, David Bianculli reviews the documentary Without Arrows.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

An examination of the Los Angeles Fire Department reveals another understanding of The Mystery. It might be stated as follows: The fundamental truths of American life have been replaced by the aspirational desires of the political class. The needs of the citizens suffer as a result. Mn finally visited by the mysterious drones. Reusse with sports and Johnny Heidt with guitar news. Heard On The Show: 4 juveniles arrested in connection with Edina YMCA attack that left boy seriously injured Trump can still vote after sentencing, but can't own a gun and will have to turn over DNA sample Wildfires latest: New evacuation order issued as Archer Fire sparks in San Fernando Valley Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An examination of the Los Angeles Fire Department reveals another understanding of The Mystery. It might be stated as follows: The fundamental truths of American life have been replaced by the aspirational desires of the political class. The needs of the citizens suffer as a result. Mn finally visited by the mysterious drones. Reusse with sports and Johnny Heidt with guitar news. Heard On The Show:4 juveniles arrested in connection with Edina YMCA attack that left boy seriously injuredTrump can still vote after sentencing, but can't own a gun and will have to turn over DNA sampleWildfires latest: New evacuation order issued as Archer Fire sparks in San Fernando Valley Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Rachel Maddow looks at how the politicization of abortion has imperiled the health of women in the United States, making all aspects of reproductive health more dangerous, and showing real-world tragic outcomes, and how Donald Trump's continued kowtowing to anti-abortion activists threatens to solidify these harmful conditions.