POPULARITY
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: The Times writes, “Mr. Kirk would arrive at colleges ready for rhetorical combat, willing to engage on the thorniest topics from abortion rights to race. the topic of race.” Ah, that “topic” of race. Right. His opinion on the "topic" of race was that black people were inherently mentally inferior to white people and only owed their current position in society to organized efforts to disadvantage white people. The Times writes, “his campus visits regularly provoked impassioned protests from students who disagreed with Mr. Kirk's stances, like his criticism of transgender rights and endorsement of the so-called Great Replacement Theory, which claims that non-white immigrants will displace white Americans.” Yes, that would be the Great Replacement Theory that has inspired multiple massacres. But you know, the important thing is the healthy exchange of opinions. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Shooting a retreating unarmed vessel and then making sure to massacre any survivors, would be absolutely illegal in a war, which again, is not what this was. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
David talks to Lea Ypi about her new book Indignity: A Life Reimagined, which tells the story of her grandmother's extraordinary life and in doing so uncovers the hidden history of mid-twentieth-century Europe. But it is also a book about the different philosophies of dignity and how those ideas can shape, make and break individual human lives. A conversation about death and displacement, identity and betrayal, secrecy and salvation. Indignity: A Life Reimagined by Lea Ypi is out now – get it wherever you get your books. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/458930/indignity-by-ypi-lea/9780241661925 The 2nd film in our autumn season of Films of Ideas at the Regent Street cinema is coming up on Thursday 25th September: a screening of My Dinner with Andre, followed by a live recording of PPF with playwright and screenwriter Lee Hall, creator of Billy Elliot. Tickets are available now https://bit.ly/4fWDa7V Next up, the start of a new series: Fixing Democracy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Donald Trump's participation in Jeffrey Epstein's sleazy birthday book makes its way onto the front page in a NEWS ANALYSIS piece. “Epstein Revelations Hindering Trump's Attempts to Turn Page.” It's illustrated with an infographic, “Signature With a Characteristic Flourish. The president has denied signing a birthday message to Jeffrey Epstein, but his signatures from that time are close matches.” It features six annotated copies of the name Donald, one from the Epstein birthday book and five others from authenticated Trump signatures. They're completely identical. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Way inside the paper, on page A16, down at the bottom, the headline is “Drawing for Epstein, apparently signed by Trump, is released.” “Key congressional committee on Monday,” the Times writes, “obtained a note and sexually suggestive drawing, apparently signed by Donald J. Trump, and included in a book for the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday in 2003. A drawing that Mr. Trump has insisted is fake.” The story includes a picture of the document, a center-justified poem or imaginary dialogue between Trump and Epstein, with the torso and remarkably small breasts of a female figure drawn around the words and with Trump's signature, "Donald," in his familiar spiky style, centered at the bottom right around the pubic area. The drawing seems to be in line with other pages from Epstein's birthday book that were released, which were characterized reasonably accurately by the Bluesky user and state level democratic organizer going by the handle “Bobby Big Wheel” who posted "For decades everyone on the list argued they only knew Epstein in a professional capacity while all the notes to him are "I sure love being pedophiles together with you, my friend Jeffrey Epstein" Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: “In the three weeks since President Trump flooded the streets of Washington with hundreds of troops and federal agents,” the Times writes, ”there have been only a few scattered protests and scarcely a word from Congress, which has quietly gone along with the deployment.” Actually, the AP reports there were thousands of people out in the streets of Washington, D.C. on Saturday, precisely to protest Trump's incursion on the city, but the online version of this story went up on Saturday, and what are going to do? Get someone to revise it before you print it in Monday's paper? Anyway. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
Today's episode is the first in a three-part conversation with philosopher and writer Lea Ypi about the idea of dignity and its role in the history of ideas and in the story of our lives. What is the difference between dignity and dignitas? How does our conception of dignity shape the ways that we think about death? And why is Kant so important for showing what the idea of dignity is capable of? Out tomorrow on PPF+: Part 2 of this conversation, in which David and Lea explore the role of dignity in human rights and in identity politics and ask how much it matters that our politics has become so undignified. To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up now to PPF+ https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus Lea Ypi's new book is Indignity: A Life Reimagined – get it wherever you get your books. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/458930/indignity-by-ypi-lea/9780241661925 Tickets are available now for a special recording of PPF Live at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on Wednesday 15th October: Who Rules The World? Trump, Tech and the Fight for the Future. David will be talking to writer, philosopher and ex-politician Bruno Macaes plus a special guest to be announced about where the power really lies. Get your tickets now https://www.cheltenhamfestivals.org/events/who-rules-the-world-trump-tech-and-the-fight-for-the-future Next time: Lea Ypi talks about her remarkable new book Indignity: A Life Reimagined Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
An Arendt expert has arrived at Arendt-obsessed Recall This Book. Lyndsey Stonebridge discusses her widely praised 2024 We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt's Lessons in Love and Disobedience. Lesley sees both radical evil and the banality of evil at work in Nazi Germany and in the causes of suffering and death in Gaza today. She compares the moral idiocy of authoritarians (like the murderous Nazis and those who are starving Gaza) to that of philosophers who cannot hear the echoes of what they are doing. Lesley and John discuss Arendt's belief in the fragile ethics of the Founding Fathers, with its checks and balances and its politics based not on emotion but cool deliberation. Arendt could say that “The fundamental contradiction of [America] is political freedom coupled with social slavery,”” but why was she too easy on the legacy of imperial racism in America, missing its settler-colonial logic? Arendt read W. E. B. DuBois (who saw and said this) but perhaps, says Lesley, not attentively enough. Lyndsey is not a fan of Jonathan Glazer's Zone of Interest, because it makes the evil banality of extermination monstrous all over again (cf. her"Mythic Banality: Jonathan Glazer and Hannah Arendt.") Responsibility is crucial: She praises Arendt for distinguishing between temptation and coercion. Mentioned in the episode: Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974 one of the last great historical events in Arendt's lifetime. Lesley praises “reading while walking” and the unpacking of the totalitarian in Anna Burns's marvelous Norther Ireland novel, Milkman. Hannah Pitkin's wonderful 1998 The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt's Concept of the Social, emphasizes Arendt's idea that although we are free, we can forfeit that freedom by assuming we are rule-bound. Arendt on the challenge of identity: “When one is attacked as a Jew, one must respond not as a German or a Frenchman or a world citizen, but as a Jew.” The Holocaust is a crime agains humanity a crime against the human status, a crime "perpetrated on the body of the Jewish people".” Various books by Hannah Arendt come up: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on teh Banality of Evil. (1963). Judgement in Arendt is crucial from earliest days studying Kant and in her final works (among The Life of the Mind) she speaks of the moments when "the mind goes visiting.” Her earliest ideas about love and natality are in Love and Saint Augustine (1929, not published in English until 1996). Hannah Arendt is buried at Bard, near her husband Heinrich Blucher and opposite Philip Roth, who reportedly wanted to capture some of the spillover Arendt traffic. James Baldwin's essay “The Fire Next Time” (1963) caused Arendt to write Baldwin about the difference between pariah love and the love of those in power, who think that love can justify lashing out with power. Recallable Books Lyndsey praises Leah Ypi's (Free) forthcoming memoir about her Albanian family, Indignity. John recalls E. M Forster, Howard's End a novel that thinks philosophically (in a novelistic vein) about how to continue being an individual in a new Imperial Britain. Listen and Read here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Maybe even more than the confirmation of Pete Hegseth, as Secretary of Defense, the Kennedy confirmation certified that there was absolutely no limit on Republicans readiness to roll over for Donald Trump, no matter what principles were involved or what obvious damage would be the result. And, RFK Jr.'s behavior has amply illustrated that he knows he doesn't have to answer to anyone but Trump, which is why the reports from the hearing seem to document that the only thing that really made him squirm was his attempt to align himself with Donald Trump's own completely self-contradictory positions that the development of the mRNA COVID vaccines under Operation Warp Speed was a tremendous triumph for Donald Trump and that the anti-vax movement in general and the anti-COVID vaccination movement in particular are righteous and correct and he is their champion. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
An Arendt expert has arrived at Arendt-obsessed Recall This Book. Lyndsey Stonebridge discusses her widely praised 2024 We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt's Lessons in Love and Disobedience. Lesley sees both radical evil and the banality of evil at work in Nazi Germany and in the causes of suffering and death in Gaza today. She compares the moral idiocy of authoritarians (like the murderous Nazis and those who are starving Gaza) to that of philosophers who cannot hear the echoes of what they are doing. Lesley and John discuss Arendt's belief in the fragile ethics of the Founding Fathers, with its checks and balances and its politics based not on emotion but cool deliberation. Arendt could say that “The fundamental contradiction of [America] is political freedom coupled with social slavery,”” but why was she too easy on the legacy of imperial racism in America, missing its settler-colonial logic? Arendt read W. E. B. DuBois (who saw and said this) but perhaps, says Lesley, not attentively enough. Lyndsey is not a fan of Jonathan Glazer's Zone of Interest, because it makes the evil banality of extermination monstrous all over again (cf. her"Mythic Banality: Jonathan Glazer and Hannah Arendt.") Responsibility is crucial: She praises Arendt for distinguishing between temptation and coercion. Mentioned in the episode: Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974 one of the last great historical events in Arendt's lifetime. Lesley praises “reading while walking” and the unpacking of the totalitarian in Anna Burns's marvelous Norther Ireland novel, Milkman. Hannah Pitkin's wonderful 1998 The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt's Concept of the Social, emphasizes Arendt's idea that although we are free, we can forfeit that freedom by assuming we are rule-bound. Arendt on the challenge of identity: “When one is attacked as a Jew, one must respond not as a German or a Frenchman or a world citizen, but as a Jew.” The Holocaust is a crime agains humanity a crime against the human status, a crime "perpetrated on the body of the Jewish people".” Various books by Hannah Arendt come up: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on teh Banality of Evil. (1963). Judgement in Arendt is crucial from earliest days studying Kant and in her final works (among The Life of the Mind) she speaks of the moments when "the mind goes visiting.” Her earliest ideas about love and natality are in Love and Saint Augustine (1929, not published in English until 1996). Hannah Arendt is buried at Bard, near her husband Heinrich Blucher and opposite Philip Roth, who reportedly wanted to capture some of the spillover Arendt traffic. James Baldwin's essay “The Fire Next Time” (1963) caused Arendt to write Baldwin about the difference between pariah love and the love of those in power, who think that love can justify lashing out with power. Recallable Books Lyndsey praises Leah Ypi's (Free) forthcoming memoir about her Albanian family, Indignity. John recalls E. M Forster, Howard's End a novel that thinks philosophically (in a novelistic vein) about how to continue being an individual in a new Imperial Britain. Listen and Read here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
An Arendt expert has arrived at Arendt-obsessed Recall This Book. Lyndsey Stonebridge discusses her widely praised 2024 We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt's Lessons in Love and Disobedience. Lesley sees both radical evil and the banality of evil at work in Nazi Germany and in the causes of suffering and death in Gaza today. She compares the moral idiocy of authoritarians (like the murderous Nazis and those who are starving Gaza) to that of philosophers who cannot hear the echoes of what they are doing. Lesley and John discuss Arendt's belief in the fragile ethics of the Founding Fathers, with its checks and balances and its politics based not on emotion but cool deliberation. Arendt could say that “The fundamental contradiction of [America] is political freedom coupled with social slavery,”” but why was she too easy on the legacy of imperial racism in America, missing its settler-colonial logic? Arendt read W. E. B. DuBois (who saw and said this) but perhaps, says Lesley, not attentively enough. Lyndsey is not a fan of Jonathan Glazer's Zone of Interest, because it makes the evil banality of extermination monstrous all over again (cf. her"Mythic Banality: Jonathan Glazer and Hannah Arendt.") Responsibility is crucial: She praises Arendt for distinguishing between temptation and coercion. Mentioned in the episode: Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974 one of the last great historical events in Arendt's lifetime. Lesley praises “reading while walking” and the unpacking of the totalitarian in Anna Burns's marvelous Norther Ireland novel, Milkman. Hannah Pitkin's wonderful 1998 The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt's Concept of the Social, emphasizes Arendt's idea that although we are free, we can forfeit that freedom by assuming we are rule-bound. Arendt on the challenge of identity: “When one is attacked as a Jew, one must respond not as a German or a Frenchman or a world citizen, but as a Jew.” The Holocaust is a crime agains humanity a crime against the human status, a crime "perpetrated on the body of the Jewish people".” Various books by Hannah Arendt come up: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on teh Banality of Evil. (1963). Judgement in Arendt is crucial from earliest days studying Kant and in her final works (among The Life of the Mind) she speaks of the moments when "the mind goes visiting.” Her earliest ideas about love and natality are in Love and Saint Augustine (1929, not published in English until 1996). Hannah Arendt is buried at Bard, near her husband Heinrich Blucher and opposite Philip Roth, who reportedly wanted to capture some of the spillover Arendt traffic. James Baldwin's essay “The Fire Next Time” (1963) caused Arendt to write Baldwin about the difference between pariah love and the love of those in power, who think that love can justify lashing out with power. Recallable Books Lyndsey praises Leah Ypi's (Free) forthcoming memoir about her Albanian family, Indignity. John recalls E. M Forster, Howard's End a novel that thinks philosophically (in a novelistic vein) about how to continue being an individual in a new Imperial Britain. Listen and Read here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
An Arendt expert has arrived at Arendt-obsessed Recall This Book. Lyndsey Stonebridge discusses her widely praised 2024 We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt's Lessons in Love and Disobedience. Lesley sees both radical evil and the banality of evil at work in Nazi Germany and in the causes of suffering and death in Gaza today. She compares the moral idiocy of authoritarians (like the murderous Nazis and those who are starving Gaza) to that of philosophers who cannot hear the echoes of what they are doing. Lesley and John discuss Arendt's belief in the fragile ethics of the Founding Fathers, with its checks and balances and its politics based not on emotion but cool deliberation. Arendt could say that “The fundamental contradiction of [America] is political freedom coupled with social slavery,”” but why was she too easy on the legacy of imperial racism in America, missing its settler-colonial logic? Arendt read W. E. B. DuBois (who saw and said this) but perhaps, says Lesley, not attentively enough. Lyndsey is not a fan of Jonathan Glazer's Zone of Interest, because it makes the evil banality of extermination monstrous all over again (cf. her"Mythic Banality: Jonathan Glazer and Hannah Arendt.") Responsibility is crucial: She praises Arendt for distinguishing between temptation and coercion. Mentioned in the episode: Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974 one of the last great historical events in Arendt's lifetime. Lesley praises “reading while walking” and the unpacking of the totalitarian in Anna Burns's marvelous Norther Ireland novel, Milkman. Hannah Pitkin's wonderful 1998 The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt's Concept of the Social, emphasizes Arendt's idea that although we are free, we can forfeit that freedom by assuming we are rule-bound. Arendt on the challenge of identity: “When one is attacked as a Jew, one must respond not as a German or a Frenchman or a world citizen, but as a Jew.” The Holocaust is a crime agains humanity a crime against the human status, a crime "perpetrated on the body of the Jewish people".” Various books by Hannah Arendt come up: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on teh Banality of Evil. (1963). Judgement in Arendt is crucial from earliest days studying Kant and in her final works (among The Life of the Mind) she speaks of the moments when "the mind goes visiting.” Her earliest ideas about love and natality are in Love and Saint Augustine (1929, not published in English until 1996). Hannah Arendt is buried at Bard, near her husband Heinrich Blucher and opposite Philip Roth, who reportedly wanted to capture some of the spillover Arendt traffic. James Baldwin's essay “The Fire Next Time” (1963) caused Arendt to write Baldwin about the difference between pariah love and the love of those in power, who think that love can justify lashing out with power. Recallable Books Lyndsey praises Leah Ypi's (Free) forthcoming memoir about her Albanian family, Indignity. John recalls E. M Forster, Howard's End a novel that thinks philosophically (in a novelistic vein) about how to continue being an individual in a new Imperial Britain. Listen and Read here. 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
Gideon talks to Albanian academic Lea Ypi about her book Indignity. In the book, she describes how living first under the Ottoman empire, then as part of fascist Italy and later in a post-war communist state affected the lives of her grandparents. They discuss possible parallels between the first half of the 20th century and the times we are living in today and ask what lessons can be drawn from this history to avoid making the same mistakes. Clip: AQSHFFree links to read more on this topic:Kant and the case for peaceAlbania's ‘old sheriff' on course to win fourth term as prime ministerWhy the EU's migration dilemma is pushing the bloc further rightSubscribe to The Rachman Review wherever you get your podcasts - please listen, rate and subscribe.Presented by Gideon Rachman. Produced by Fiona Symon. Sound design is by Breen Turner and the executive producer is Flo Phillips.Follow Gideon on Bluesky or X @gideonrachman.bsky.social, @gideonrachmanRead a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
An Arendt expert has arrived at Arendt-obsessed Recall This Book. Lyndsey Stonebridge discusses her widely praised 2024 We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt's Lessons in Love and Disobedience. Lesley sees both radical evil and the banality of evil at work in Nazi Germany and in the causes of suffering and death in Gaza today. She compares the moral idiocy of authoritarians (like the murderous Nazis and those who are starving Gaza) to that of philosophers who cannot hear the echoes of what they are doing. Lesley and John discuss Arendt's belief in the fragile ethics of the Founding Fathers, with its checks and balances and its politics based not on emotion but cool deliberation. Arendt could say that “The fundamental contradiction of [America] is political freedom coupled with social slavery,”” but why was she too easy on the legacy of imperial racism in America, missing its settler-colonial logic? Arendt read W. E. B. DuBois (who saw and said this) but perhaps, says Lesley, not attentively enough. Lyndsey is not a fan of Jonathan Glazer's Zone of Interest, because it makes the evil banality of extermination monstrous all over again (cf. her"Mythic Banality: Jonathan Glazer and Hannah Arendt.") Responsibility is crucial: She praises Arendt for distinguishing between temptation and coercion. Mentioned in the episode: Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974 one of the last great historical events in Arendt's lifetime. Lesley praises “reading while walking” and the unpacking of the totalitarian in Anna Burns's marvelous Norther Ireland novel, Milkman. Hannah Pitkin's wonderful 1998 The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt's Concept of the Social, emphasizes Arendt's idea that although we are free, we can forfeit that freedom by assuming we are rule-bound. Arendt on the challenge of identity: “When one is attacked as a Jew, one must respond not as a German or a Frenchman or a world citizen, but as a Jew.” The Holocaust is a crime agains humanity a crime against the human status, a crime "perpetrated on the body of the Jewish people".” Various books by Hannah Arendt come up: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on teh Banality of Evil. (1963). Judgement in Arendt is crucial from earliest days studying Kant and in her final works (among The Life of the Mind) she speaks of the moments when "the mind goes visiting.” Her earliest ideas about love and natality are in Love and Saint Augustine (1929, not published in English until 1996). Hannah Arendt is buried at Bard, near her husband Heinrich Blucher and opposite Philip Roth, who reportedly wanted to capture some of the spillover Arendt traffic. James Baldwin's essay “The Fire Next Time” (1963) caused Arendt to write Baldwin about the difference between pariah love and the love of those in power, who think that love can justify lashing out with power. Recallable Books Lyndsey praises Leah Ypi's (Free) forthcoming memoir about her Albanian family, Indignity. John recalls E. M Forster, Howard's End a novel that thinks philosophically (in a novelistic vein) about how to continue being an individual in a new Imperial Britain. Listen and Read here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Again, this big win for Harvard is on page A19, as opposed to page A1, which is where in June, the Times ran, “Harvard is said to be open to spending up to $500 million to resolve Trump dispute.” And where in July, the Times ran, “Behind closed doors, Harvard officials debate a risky truce with Trump.” Surely New York Times standards editor Patrick Healy is already preparing his explanation of how Times editors and reporters so badly misjudged the state of play in the Harvard case. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is the Albanian-born political philosopher Lea Ypi, whose new book Indignity: A Life Reimagined reconstructs the story of her grandmother's early life amid the turbulence of the early and mid twentieth century. She talks to me about using the techniques of fiction to supply the gaps in the archive, about Albania's troubling position as a tiny power among great ones, why the fight between Kant and Nietzsche remains a live one — and how online trolls sparked her quest for a restorative account of her beloved grandmother's life. Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more.For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcastsContact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: The Times goes on to say he said the strike “occurred while the terrorists were at sea in international waters transporting illegal narcotics heading to the United States.” Before any external information has come in about exactly who was on the boat in the black and white snuff video of the airstrike that Trump put out, the administration is already unable to keep its own story straight. The online version of the Times story says that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had a different story about where the boat was heading. In a deviation from Mr. Trump's account, however, the Times writes, “Mr. Rubio said that the vessel's destination was probably Trinidad or another country in the Caribbean.” So the boat that was blown up because it was smuggling drugs to the United States was not bound for the United States. No matter how many other pieces of the story likewise end up being contested or debunked, the people on the boat are still going to be dead. Despite having done, in Trump's own version of events, nothing that would rate the death penalty if they had simply been arrested, tried, and convicted. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: "In the past several weeks, the rioters and their lawyers have pushed the Trump administration to pay them restitution for what they believe were unfair prosecutions.” And once they get that, they will demand something else because what they've learned in the past four years and eight months is that nobody is going to stop them. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: It's a big week for traitors. Donald Trump's Air Force yesterday announced that it would reverse the Biden administration's decision and offer a military funeral to Ashley Babbitt, who was shot dead by a police officer defending members of Congress as she tried to lead an attack through a broken window of the locked door to the Speaker's lobby, seeking to seize the House chamber by force and overturn the 2020 presidential election result. Babbit's status as basically the only January 6th participant to have gotten what they deserved, has been one of the great outstanding grievances of the Trump restoration movement. And now that the coup she died for has succeeded, the armed forces, in obedience to Trump, are signing on to the false account of who she was and what she was trying to do. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: The Times writes, “four other high profile CDC officials quit en masse, apparently in frustration over vaccine policy and Mr. Kennedy's leadership.” The word “apparently” is not really necessary there, given that at least one of them specifically said so. Daskalakis posted his resignation letter to x.com. In it, he wrote that he was “unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public's health. He also wrote, have never experienced such radical non-transparency, nor have I seen such unskilled manipulation of data to achieve a political end rather than the good of the American people that the administration has put people with dubious intent and more dubious scientific rigor in charge of recommending vaccine policy to a director hamstrung and sidelined by an authoritarian leader. Their desire to please a political base will result in death and disability of vulnerable children and adults.” He wrote that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should not be considered a source of accurate information and wrote of the shooting at the CDC building in Atlanta that it was the result of “the cowardice of a leader that cannot admit that his and his minions words over decades created an environment where violence like this can occur.” Again, no reason to tack apparently onto the motivations. He just out and said it. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: On the front of this morning's New York Times, all the way down at the bottom of the page is a little referral box directing the reader to page C2 to read about the news that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey are engaged to be married. If you do a search for Taylor Swift on Google, or at least when I just did one, it sets off a cascade of animated confetti and some kind of floating glyph that kind of looks like the Sacred Heart of Jesus with an animated bubble above it that is shooting off hearts and seems to be saying that something, maybe the animation itself, has 93.64 million likes. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: The New York Times did not think that the mayor, in the midst of his reelection campaign, having his people hand out cash bribes in public, was anything that its readership might need to know in a timely manner. They got scooped on the news simply because the bribery was so widespread and so blatant that another outlet, one that actually cares about reporting on the city, bumped into a bribe on its own. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: You just invented a completely fake justification for lawless behavior from the president and then appealed to the authority of experts to say that it's completely fake. The reader gains nothing from the effort to reframe completely abnormal behavior as if it were normal, followed by the conclusion that the frame just doesn't fit. The president is shaking down companies for ownership shares. Don't pretend there's some sort of case that this could be something other than what it is. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Nowhere in this story about malicious and defamatory behavior by the so-called group Libs of TikTok, the account, the Times writes, “did not respond to questions regarding its post about Mr. Paris.” Is there a single mention of the name Chaya Raichik, who runs Libs of TikTok. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: The fact that Andrew Cuomo, whose own residency in New York City is extremely tenuous and recent, even by the most charitable accounts, is trying to recover his standing by pounding away on the Hamptons fundraiser circuit, could be an embarrassing front page story in its own right. It just emphasizes that the anti-Mamdani movement, such as it is, basically represents the desires of a bunch of jerks who want to rule the city from afar, and of the people who operate the New York Times. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: The Times describes Trump's deployment of federal agents and National Guard troops in Washington, DC as “an actualization of one of his most tried and true political arguments. Democrats, often black Democrats, have let lawlessness run rampant in the cities and states they were elected to run.” Now, is that an actualization of the argument? Or is it an invitation to treat the argument as having been actualized? This declaration of what purpose Donald Trump is achieving gets as counterweight the Times writing, “among Democrats, there is widespread agreement that Mr. Trump is stoking fear for political gain and exaggerating statistics to justify a power grab.” Is Trump's relationship to the actual crime statistics something for Democrats to debate among themselves? Or is it something for a newspaper to publish as a fact? Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: “Sustained a traumatic head injury amid an Israeli shell explosion” is a fairly convoluted way of saying that Israeli forces shot a 14 year old boy with an artillery shell. And now the Free Press reports that he is completely paralyzed, so it only makes sense that he would be malnourished if you accept the premise that getting adequate nutrition to paralyzed children is an impossible challenge, rather than something doctors routinely do all over the place, or wherever there is an adequate ordinary supply of food and medical equipment and the hospitals aren't being bombed. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Once the Times has developed a rooting interest in the news, it loses all sense of proportion. Cuomo and Adams are both actually scandalous figures who are totally unfit for office. But rather than documenting that, the Times is obsessed with trying to prove that the squeaky clean Mamdani must also somehow be disqualified. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: If Donald Trump were taking Fred Trump's words literally, if Fred Trump had meant his words to be taken literally, the federal government would be sending out the National Guard with paint rollers and power washers. They'd be building housing for the homeless people so they're not living messy lives out on the street. But when Donald Trump says a place is dirty, what he means is that it has the wrong kind of people in it. And what you do in New York real estate, if you're a certain kind of person, is you chase those people out with the help of the cops, if you can get it. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: We're really getting back to the kind of presidential time wasting that came with the outbreak of the COVID pandemic, “during the 78-minute news conference, during which he was flanked by several members of his cabinet, Mr. Trump took the lectern in the White House briefing room and said he also intended to clear out the Capitol's homeless population without saying how officials would do it or detailing where those people would go.” This story is also nicely illustrated with a photograph filling the remaining four columns across the top of the page of the journalists in the briefing room, all thrusting their hands up eagerly to engage with the president's lunatic gambit. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: If I were writing a news story about the president going to the Federal Reserve to put public pressure on the chairman and having the chairman point out with cameras rolling that the president's complaint was essentially a fabrication I would make that the top of the story, an official who the president is trying to push out, despite lacking the legal authority to do so openly fighting back against the president, when subjected to a staged struggle session, seems like the noteworthy aspect of what happened, and notably that was how the Times website played it, in the collection of live blog items and squibs from which the front page story was assembled online the headline is “Powell fact-checks Trump on cost of Fed renovations” and their dispute makes it into the third paragraph, after what's otherwise the same lead as the print story and a separate live blog entry has the headline “Face to face Powell told Trump He was wrong about a construction project.” Somebody needs to let the live blog editor into the page one meeting. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: In addition to being possibly the biggest superstar of professional wrestling, Hogan was also a racist and a fraud artist whose major legacy was his willingness to commit perjury as the plaintiff serving as the front person for Peter Thiel's successful campaign to abuse the legal system and the power differential, that comes with a reactionary billionaire class, to destroy Gawker, where I worked at the time, and to set the template for the Trump administration's current omnidirectional assault on the media, higher education, and pretty much everything else. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: These are Steve Bannon's own guests, telling him on his program that they're still upset about the Epstein question, and then Bannon turns around and tells the Times and everyone else that the movement is rallying around the president and the Times prints it. That's literally the opposite of NEWS ANALYSIS. It's a press release from the permanent campaign. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: “Zoran Mamdani,” the Times writes, “is unleashing a full-scale charm offensive of private meetings, phone calls, and public promises aimed at wooing top party leaders, donors, and activists,” and runs through a list of the meetings that he's taken with influence groups and elected officials. But underneath that, it's a story about the lack of sophistication on the side that considers itself more sophisticated. “In his meetings,” the Times writes, “Mr. Mamdani has surprised some Democrats with his affability and ability to listen to their concerns, perhaps hinting at his willingness to make some concessions.” If you're expressing surprise in July of 2025, that Zoran Mamdani is friendly and a good listener, what you're saying is that your understanding of New York City politics lags considerably behind that of the 573,000 people who voted for him. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Basically, if you can imagine the stupidest and most destructive ways to either spend more money or not spend money, the bill is going to hit all of them. Despite the fact that nobody but a handful of lunatics really wants this to happen, it's on its way to happening. The easy interpretation of this is that the country is in the hands of a malevolent dictator, and it is, but there's a strange hollowness at the center of that dictatorship. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Senate Republicans chose to embrace a fake accounting maneuver in which the $3.8 trillion expense of extending Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts, past their expiration date, doesn't count as an expense since the tax cuts are in effect right now. This directly contradicts the accounting that was used to pass those tax cuts in the first place. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Nowhere in the paper is the news that 128 Democrats in the House of Representatives joined the Republicans to prevent Texas Representative Al Green from getting the House to vote on impeaching Donald Trump for his congressionally unauthorized attack on Iran. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: A big morning for newsworthy cuss words from the executive branch. I guess the job here on this podcast is to try to make sense of the news, but I gotta confess, I'm whipped. I know the potential smoldering fuse of World War III is a heck of a thing to throw up one's hands about, but it seems pretty clear that the people doing the war also have no idea what's really going on. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: the Times has a five-byline story narrating the process by which Donald Trump chose to send the bombers, and it essentially is not a story about military strategy at all. It was simply a child-minded and senescent president balancing his whims against the lobbying of his advisors and largely what he saw on television before deciding to do what seemed like the biggest most drastic and most satisfying thing. visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: “I don't reach out to persuade you,” Huckabee says, “only to encourage you. I believe you will hear from heaven. And that voice is far more important than mine or anyone else's.” And that is how the United States's current administration is approaching a military crisis precipitated by a nuclear-armed ally. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: “Today, the "Times writes, "while most Americans do not support political violence, a growing share have said in surveys that they view rival partisans as a threat to the country or even as inhuman. Mr. Trump,” the Times continues, “has had a hand in that. Since his 2016 candidacy, he has signaled at least his tacit approval of violence against his political opponents. He encouraged attendees at his rallies to ‘knock the hell' out of protesters, praised a lawmaker who body slammed a reporter, and defended the rioters on January 6th, 2021, who clamored to hang Mike Pence. One of his first acts in his second term as president was to pardon those rioters.” Yeah, I think the approval of violence is considerably more than tacit there. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Last term, people told him he couldn't have that military parade and that he couldn't send the troops to shoot protesters. But this time around, he's gotten rid of those people and with them the limits on his ability to play around with deadly force to make himself feel powerful. If you can't grasp that simple fact, you need not to be presenting yourself as an expert on defense policy or for that matter, as the editor of a major general interest magazine. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: This, it turns out, is how a violent fascist takeover manifests itself operating in the uncanny nexus between completely made up pretexts and complaints and genuine power and violence. Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth go on TV, done up like Bratz dolls of themselves and make flamboyantly idiotic and fantastic claims about reality, while somebody's real head bangs into a real curb, and they end up locked up and facing extravagant criminal punishment, in the real criminal justice system. Burning vehicles really feature prominently so far in the iconography of what's happening in LA. They make nice dramatic pictures, which is presumably a large part of why people set them on fire. And they're easier to get a nice composed shot of than the crowded, chaotic and fast moving spectacle of, say, police horses trampling protesters underfoot. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: The New York Times would not allow itself to write a news headline asserting that the president is abusing his power, but it's perfectly happy to go fishing for a quote that will say that. In this case, the fishing line is still visible, as what Trevor Potter, the president of the Campaign Legal Center and a former Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission says, specifically is, “and yes, this is an example of Trump publicly and improperly threatening,” etc. which points back to his having been asked by the reporter to affirm the proposition that Trump is abusing his power. So he got the quote, the quote goes in quotation marks, and the Times simply reports it, as a thing in the world that someone factually spoke. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: It seems like there would be several more salient reasons why someone would avoid publicly attaching their name to a story about defying the out-of-control authoritarian president, but journalistic conventions are journalistic conventions. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/
Guys, a miracle has happened - Al is happy with the weather today!On today's episode we're discussing Em's food poisoning *situation*… which miraculously didn't actually originate in the Light household. We chat about sports bras - and how much of a barrier boobs can be for women getting into exercise. And we discuss the internet's reaction to Blue Ivy - why do people feel like they can speak about a 13-year-old child in the way they do online? And if you're curious about the shared vibrator… we will never reveal our secrets. If you have any suggestions of people who we can talk to for our upcoming series looking at Trad Wives - you can email us on shouldideletethatpod@gmail.comFollow us on Instagram:@shouldideletethat@em_clarkson@alexlight_ldnShould I Delete That is produced by Faye LawrenceStudio Manager: Dex RoyVideo Editor: Celia GomezSocial Media Manager: Emma-Kirsty FraserMusic: Alex Andrew Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.