Podcasts about its enemies

The Open Society as an Enemy: A critique of how free societies turned against themselves by J. McKenzie Alexander Nearly 80 years ago, Karl Popper gave a spirited philosophical defence of the Open Society in his two-volume work, The Open Society and Its Enemies. In this book, J. McKenzie Alexander argues that a new defence is urgently needed because, in the decades since the end of the Cold War, many of the values of the Open Society have come under threat once again. Populist agendas on both the left and right threaten to undermine fundamental principles that underpin liberal democracies, so that what were previously seen as virtues of the Open Society are now, by many people, seen as vices, dangers, or threats. The Open Society as an Enemy: A Critique of how Free Societies Turned Against Themselves interrogates four interconnected aspects of the Open Society: cosmopolitanism, transparency, the free exchange of ideas, and communitarianism. Each of these is analysed in depth, drawing out the implications for contemporary social questions such as the free movement of people, the erosion of privacy, no-platforming and the increased political and social polarisation that is fuelled by social media. In re-examining the consequences for all of us of these attacks on free societies, Alexander calls for resistance to the forces of reaction. But he also calls for the concept of the Open Society to be rehabilitated and advanced. In doing this, he argues, there is an opportunity to re-think the kind of society we want to create, and to ensure it is achievable and sustainable. This forensic defence of the core principles of the Open Society is an essential read for anyone wishing to understand some of the powerful social currents that have engulfed public debates in recent years, and what to do about them. The book is publicly available via the following link The Open Society as an Enemy | LSE Press J. McKenzie Alexander is a Professor in Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method in the London School of Economics. From 2012 to 2018, Professor Alexander served as one of the Academic Governors on the Council of the LSE, as well as a member of the Court of Governors. From 2018–2021, he served as the Head of Department. Before joining the department, Alexander was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of California – San Diego (between 2000 and 2001). Although J. McKenzie Alexander's original field of research concerned evolutionary game theory as applied to the evolution of morality and social norms, more recently he has worked on problems in decision theory, more broadly construed, including topics in formal epistemology. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

The Open Society as an Enemy: A critique of how free societies turned against themselves by J. McKenzie Alexander Nearly 80 years ago, Karl Popper gave a spirited philosophical defence of the Open Society in his two-volume work, The Open Society and Its Enemies. In this book, J. McKenzie Alexander argues that a new defence is urgently needed because, in the decades since the end of the Cold War, many of the values of the Open Society have come under threat once again. Populist agendas on both the left and right threaten to undermine fundamental principles that underpin liberal democracies, so that what were previously seen as virtues of the Open Society are now, by many people, seen as vices, dangers, or threats. The Open Society as an Enemy: A Critique of how Free Societies Turned Against Themselves interrogates four interconnected aspects of the Open Society: cosmopolitanism, transparency, the free exchange of ideas, and communitarianism. Each of these is analysed in depth, drawing out the implications for contemporary social questions such as the free movement of people, the erosion of privacy, no-platforming and the increased political and social polarisation that is fuelled by social media. In re-examining the consequences for all of us of these attacks on free societies, Alexander calls for resistance to the forces of reaction. But he also calls for the concept of the Open Society to be rehabilitated and advanced. In doing this, he argues, there is an opportunity to re-think the kind of society we want to create, and to ensure it is achievable and sustainable. This forensic defence of the core principles of the Open Society is an essential read for anyone wishing to understand some of the powerful social currents that have engulfed public debates in recent years, and what to do about them. The book is publicly available via the following link The Open Society as an Enemy | LSE Press J. McKenzie Alexander is a Professor in Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method in the London School of Economics. From 2012 to 2018, Professor Alexander served as one of the Academic Governors on the Council of the LSE, as well as a member of the Court of Governors. From 2018–2021, he served as the Head of Department. Before joining the department, Alexander was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of California – San Diego (between 2000 and 2001). Although J. McKenzie Alexander's original field of research concerned evolutionary game theory as applied to the evolution of morality and social norms, more recently he has worked on problems in decision theory, more broadly construed, including topics in formal epistemology. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

We try to understand simplicity a little better by looking at its antithesis. A huge thanks to Seth White for the awesome music!Thanks to Palmtoptiger17 for the beautiful logo: https://www.instagram.com/palmtoptiger17/Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/thewayfourth/?modal=admin_todo_tourYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTd3KlRte86eG9U40ncZ4XA?view_as=subscriberInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/theway4th/ Kingdom Outpost: https://kingdomoutpost.org/My Reading List Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21940220.J_G_ElliotPurity of Heart is to Will One Thing: https://www.religion-online.org/book/purity-of-heart-is-to-will-one-thing/Change Blindness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5tDChange Blindness 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRFMuGBP15UKarl Popper's "The Open Society and Its Enemies": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/240592.The_Open_Society_and_Its_Enemies?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=nG8JVtoAcj&rank=3Malcolm X "The Ballot or the Bullet": http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/malcolm_x_ballot.htmlDouglass on ballots and bullets: https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/frederick-douglass-ballot-box-jury-box-cartridge-boxMeek's "Loving to Know": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11933842-loving-to-know?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=5CIT597Ybo&rank=1Camus "The Rebel": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11990.The_Rebel?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=EmyXcHQv5S&rank=2Stalkers and Mistresses: https://www.dckreider.com/blog-theological-musings/stalkers-and-mistressesSinger on Altruism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVl5kMXz1vA&t=172s Thanks to our monthly supporters Phillip Mast patrick H Laverne Miller Jesse Killion ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

A historic shift occurred in the early 20th century when the West completely suspended any concept of reality or meaning. We adopted a new religion whose core belief was that it WASN'T a religion—agnostic liberalism that declared thousands of years of human struggle for glory and meaning "unnecessary." This tyranny greater than Rome or the Catholic Church dominates every moment of our lives while remaining invisible, creating our current "age of platitudes." SPONSORS: NetSuite:  More than 41,000 businesses have already upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle, the #1 cloud financial system bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, HR, into ONE proven platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine learning: https://netsuite.com/102 Shopify: Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide, handling 10% of U.S. e-commerce. With hundreds of templates, AI tools for product descriptions, and seamless marketing campaign creation, it's like having a design studio and marketing team in one. Start your $1/month trial today at https://shopify.com/cognitive Try High Flavanol Cocoa (Stem Cells & Nitric Oxide): (40% OFF PROMO FOR 48HR) https://blackforestsupplements.com/WHAT LINKS: Link to my second podcast on world history and interviews:    / @history102-qg5oj   Link to my Twitter-https://twitter.com/whatifalthist?ref... Link to my Instagram-https://www.instagram.com/rudyardwlyn... Bibliography: The Passion of the Western Mind by Tarnas A History of Western Philosophy of Bertrand Russell Mankind the Story of All of Us by the History Channel Maps of Meaning by Jordan Peterson The Gateway Protocol by Robert Monroe Leviathan and Its Enemies by Sam Francis The Total State by Auron Macintyre After Liberalism by Paul Gottfried The Crowd by Gustave le Bon The Revolt of the Elites by Lasch Ages of Discord by Peter Turchin Regime Change by Deneen The Economics of Discontent by Jean Michel Paul Warriors and Worriers by Joyce Benneson Fire in the Minds of Men by Billington A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell

Theologian and First Things editor R.R. Reno joins The Winston Marshall Show for a sweeping intellectual conversation on nationalism, identity, and the postwar consensus that still haunts the West.Reno argues that the true crisis isn't a conspiracy—but a consensus forged after WWII: a fear of nationalism, religion, and moral conviction, shaped by the horrors of Auschwitz and Hiroshima. He calls this the age of “weak gods”—a culture hollowed out by relativism, therapeutic liberalism, and meaning without truth.From Karl Popper and the Open Society to the cult of DEI and the rise of populist rebellion, Reno makes the case that Western civilization is suffering from a kind of civilizational PTSD—and that only the return of “strong gods” like loyalty, love, and faith can offer redemption.All this—postwar ideology, the collapse of civic trust, mass migration, shared mythos, and the spiritual malaise of modern life…-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------To see more exclusive content and interviews consider subscribing to my substack here: https://www.winstonmarshall.co.uk/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA:Substack: https://www.winstonmarshall.co.uk/X: https://twitter.com/mrwinmarshallInsta: https://www.instagram.com/winstonmarshallLinktree: https://linktr.ee/winstonmarshall----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Chapters 00:00 Introduction 1:49 Populism and Its Global Phenomenon 4:32 The Return of Strong Gods 21:58 Karl Popper's "The Open Society and Its Enemies" 28:29 The Impact of Post-War Consensus on Education 47:33 The Return of Strong Gods and the Role of Love 1:09:32 The Role of Religion and Spirituality in Society 1:14:37 The Impact of Popper's Ideas on Conservatism 1:18:31 Loyalty and Fanaticism in Sports and Society 1:21:15 Nationalism vs. Patriotism 1:23:15 Censorship and the Never Again Mentality1:27:54 The Death Throes of the Open Society Consensus 1:33:41 The Role of Strong Gods in Non-Western Countries 1:37:32 The Paradox of Western Ideologies 1:38:21 Conclusion and Final Thoughts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Adultery Act, passed into British law on 14th May, 1650, made having sex with a married woman a crime so severe it was punishable by death – but only for her.  Radical groups like the Ranters mocked Puritan prudishness, Royalists called the law joyless and tyrannical, and Presbyterians argued the law would be impossible to apply fairly. But the Puritans needed something everyone could rally around – and sexual sin was an easy target.  Those who thought the English Civil War had been divine punishment for a sinful nation believed only Old Testament-style legislation could stop society from descending into full-blown chaos. Yet, during the time the law was on the statue books, no one was actually executed. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly consider the practicalities of proving adultery in a time when no reliable records of marriage existed; explain why sex with your son's wife or daughter's husband was considered incest; and reveal how, in some form, adultery stayed on the books until 2022.... Further Reading: • ‘An Act for suppressing the detestable sins of Incest, Adultery and Fornication' (House of Parliament, 1650): https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/acts-ordinances-interregnum/pp387-389 • 'England's Culture Wars - Puritan Reformation and Its Enemies in the Interregnum, 1649-1660, By B. S. Capp' (OUP, 2012): https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/England_s_Culture_Wars/d42Z-58lIdcC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=7+Puritans+and+Sex&pg=PA132&printsec=frontcover • '60 Second Lecture Series- "The Puritans Had Sex? Why, Yes, They Did...!" - Kathy Cooke' (Quinnipiac University, 2013): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faHxWKgtkkw Love the show? Support us!  Join 

Janet speaks with Alan Elrod to explore how classical liberalism understands the role of children in a free society. They discuss the liberal view of children as future autonomous individuals, the responsibilities of both parents and the state in their development, and how education sits at the center of ongoing ideological battles. Elrod unpacks the liberal commitment to individual flourishing and critiques contemporary efforts to politicize childhood through authoritarian or illiberal frameworks.  References “Children Are the Future: Authoritarianism, Culture War and Making Model Citizens” by Alan Elrod https://www.liberalcurrents.com/children-are-the-future-authoritarianism-culture-war-and-making-model-citizens/ “Parents, Government and Children: Authority over Education in the Liberal Pluralist State” by William A. Galston (Chapter in Liberal Pluralism) https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/liberal-pluralism/parents-government-and-children-authority-over-education-in-the-liberal-pluralist-state/4FEF2172B5BD8B088A4D0558C11E1A1B The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo3619943.html Democratic Education by Amy Gutmann https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7sdfv On Liberty by John Stuart Mill https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34901 Taking Responsibility for Children edited by Samantha Brennan and Robert Noggle https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/T/Taking-Responsibility-for-Children Thanks to Our Patrons Including Kris Rondolo, Amy Willis, and Christopher McDonald. To support the podcast, visit: https://patreon.com/curioustask

In this episode of the Project Liberal podcast, Max Marty and Tyler Harris engage in a thought-provoking conversation with Virginia Postrel. Virginia introduces her framework of dynamism versus stasis—a perspective that transcends traditional left-right political divides—and explores how this lens remains relevant for understanding today's political landscape. As the "OG of the Progress and Abundance movement," Virginia offers unique insights into how innovation, decentralized knowledge, and bottom-up experimentation drive human flourishing. Topics Discussed: * The core thesis of "The Future and Its Enemies" and how it anticipated today's political realignments* How the YIMBY housing movement represents successful dynamism in action* The connections between progress studies, abundance agendas, and different political coalitions* Why progress was glamorous in the early 20th century and how it might regain that appeal* The importance of making progress tangible in everyday life rather than just elite discourse* How to build dynamic coalitions across political divides despite rising populism and reactionary politics* The role of decentralized knowledge in fields from textiles to housing policy You can find more from Virginia at: * Virginia's Substack: * Virginia's Website: https://vpostrel.com* Virginia's Book "The Future and Its Enemies": https://a.co/d/6ZtKqZC* Virginia's Book "The Fabric of Civilization": https://a.co/d/9ANJ3zr And learn more about Project Liberal at: https://projectliberal.org This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit projectliberal.substack.com

Link to Black Forest Supplements and Turkestrone: https://blackforestsupplements.com/?s... More information here: https://blackforestsupplements.com/bl... Link to my second podcast on world history and interviews:    / @history102-qg5oj   Link to my Twitter-https://twitter.com/whatifalthist?ref... Link to my Instagram-https://www.instagram.com/rudyardwlyn... RECOMMENDED PODCAST: Check out Modern Relationships, where Erik Torenberg interviews tech power couples and leading thinkers to explore how ambitious people actually make partnerships work. Founders Fund's Delian Asparouhov and researcher Nadia Asparouhova kick off the series with an unfiltered conversation about their relationship evolution. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1786227593 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5hJzs0gDg6lRT6r10mdpVg YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ModernRelationshipsPod Bibliography: The True Believer by Eric Hoffer 1984 by George Orwell On Grand Strategy by John Lewis Gaddis Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell The Dictator's Handbook by Mesquita Woke Racism by John McWhorter Leviathan and Its Enemies by Sam Francis Origins of Woke by Richard Hananai The Unabomber's Manifesto The Total State by Auron Macintyre A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell Seeing Like a State by James Scott Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder Tragedy and Hope by Carroll Quiggley On Power by Bertrand de Jouvenal On Politics by Aristotle The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu The Origins of Ideology by Todd Immanuel Sex and Power in History by Amaury de riencourt Rise of the West by William McNeill

Link to my second podcast on world history and interviews:    / @history102-qg5oj   Link to my Twitter-https://twitter.com/whatifalthist?ref... Link to my Instagram-https://www.instagram.com/rudyardwlyn... RECOMMENDED PODCAST: Check out Modern Relationships, where Erik Torenberg interviews tech power couples and leading thinkers to explore how ambitious people actually make partnerships work. Founders Fund's Delian Asparouhov and researcher Nadia Asparouhova kick off the series with an unfiltered conversation about their relationship evolution. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1786227593 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5hJzs0gDg6lRT6r10mdpVg YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ModernRelationshipsPod Bibliography: The Lonely Crowd by David Riesman Thus Spake Zarathustra by Nietzche Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler The Gulag Archipelago by Solzenitsyn Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker Humanity's Ascent by Charles Eisenstein The Unabomber's Manifesto Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung Das Kapital by Karl Marx Universe 65 by Calhoun Sex and Power in History by Amaury de Riencourt Nihilism by Seraphim Rose The Passion of the Western Mind by Tarnas A Secular Age by Charles Taylor Seeing like a State by James Scott The Leviathan and Its Enemies by Sam Francis The Managerial Revolution by James Burnham The Master and His Emissary by Ian McGhilchrist Atrocities by Matthew White The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler The History of Philosophy by Will Durant The History of Philosophy by Bertrand Rusell The Web of Meaning by Jeremy Lent Envy by Helmut Schoeck The Happiness Hypothesis by John Haidt

Big changes are happening: space; energy; and, of course, artificial intelligence. The difference between sustainable, pro-growth change, versus a retreat back into stagnation, may lie in how we implement that change. Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I talk with Virginia Postrel about the pitfalls of taking a top-down approach to innovation, versus allowing a bottom-up style of dynamism to flourish.Postrel is an author, columnist, and speaker whose scholarly interests range from emerging technology to history and culture. She has authored four books, including The Future and Its Enemies (1998) and her most recent, The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World (2020). Postrel is a contributing editor for the Works in Progress magazine and has her own Substack.In This Episode* Technocrats vs. dynamists (1:29)* Today's deregulation movement (6:12)* What to make of Musk (13:37)* On electric cars (16:21)* Thinking about California (25:56)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. Technocrats vs. dynamists (1:29)I think it is a real thing, I think it is in both parties, and its enemies are in both parties, too, that there are real factional disagreements.Pethokoukis: There is this group of Silicon Valley founders and venture capitalists, they supported President Trump because they felt his policies were sort of pro-builder, pro-abundance, pro-disruption, whatever sort of name you want to use.And then you have this group on the center-left who seemed to discover that 50 years of regulations make it hard to build EV chargers in the United States. Ezra Klein is one of these people, maybe it's limited to center-left pundits, but do you think there's something going on? Do you think we're experiencing a dynamism kind of vibe shift? I would like to think we are.Postrel: I think there is something going on. I think there is a real progress and abundance movement. “Abundance” tends to be the word that people who are more Democrat-oriented use, and “progress” is the word that people who are more — I don't know if they're exactly Republican, but more on the right . . . They have disagreements, but they represent distinct Up Wing (to put it in your words) factions within their respective parties. And actually, the Up Wing thing is a good way of thinking about it because it includes both people that, in The Future and Its Enemies, I would classify as technocrats, and Ezra Klein read the books and says, “I am a technocrat.” They want top-down direction in the pursuit of what they see as progress. And people that I would classify as dynamists who are more bottom-up and more about decentralized decision-making, price signals, markets, et cetera.They share a sense that they would like to see the possibility of getting stuff done, of increasing abundance, of more scientific and technological progress, all of those kinds of things. I think it is a real thing, I think it is in both parties, and its enemies are in both parties, too, that there are real factional disagreements. In many ways, it reminds me of the kind of cross-party seeking for new answers that we experienced in the late '70s and early '80s, where . . . the economy was problematic in the '70s.Highly problematic.And there was a lot of thinking about what the problems were and what could be done better, and one thing that came out of that was a lot of the sort of deregulation efforts that, in the many pay-ins to Jimmy Carter, who's not my favorite president, but there was a lot of good stuff that happened through a sort of left-right alliance in that period toward opening up markets.So you had people like Ralph Nader and free-market economists saying, “We really don't need to have all these regulations on trucking, and on airlines, and these are anti-consumer, and let's free things up.” And we reaped enormous benefits from that, and it's very hard to believe how prescriptive those kinds of regulations were back before the late '70s.The progress and abundance movement has had its greatest success — although it still has a lot to go — on housing, and that's where you see people who are saying, “Why do we have so many rules about how much parking you can have?” I mean, yes, a lot of people want parking, but if they want parking, they'll demand it in the marketplace. We don't need to say, “You can't have tandem parking.” Every place I've lived in LA would be illegal to build nowadays because of the parking, just to take one example.Today's deregulation movement (6:12). . . you've got grassroots kind of Trump supporters who supported him because they're sick of regulation. Maybe they're small business owners, they just don't like being told what to do . .. . and it's a coalition, and it's going to be interesting to see what happens.You mentioned some of the deregulation in the Carter years, that's a real tangible achievement. Then you also had a lot more Democrats thinking about technology, what they called the “Atari Democrats” who looked at Japan, so there was a lot of that kind of tumult and thinking — but do you think this is more than a moment, it's kind of this brief fad, or do you think it can turn into something where you can look back in five and 10 years, like wow, there was a shift, big things actually happened?I don't think it's just a fad, I think it's a real movement. Now, movements are not always successful. And we'll see, when we saw an early blowup over immigration.That's kind of what I was thinking of, it's hardly straightforward.Within the Trump coalition, you've got people who are what I in The Future and Its Enemies would call reactionaries. That is, people who idealize an idea of an unchanging America someplace in the past. There are different versions of that even within the Trump coalition, and those people are very hostile to the kinds of changes that come with bottom-up innovation and those sorts of things.But then you've also got people, and not just people from Silicon Valley, you've got grassroots kind of Trump supporters who supported him because they're sick of regulation. Maybe they're small business owners, they just don't like being told what to do, so you've got those kinds of people too, and it's a coalition, and it's going to be interesting to see what happens.It's not just immigration, it's also if you wanted to have a big technological future in the US, some of the materials you need to build come from other countries. I think some of them come from Canada, and probably we're not going to annex it, and if you put big tariffs on those things, it's going to hamper people's ability to do things. This is more of a Biden thing, but the whole Nippon Steel can't buy US Steel and invest huge amounts of money in US plants because, “Oh no, they're Japanese!” I mean it's like back to the '80s.Virginia, what if we wake up one morning and they've moved the entire plant to Tokyo? We can't let them do that!There's one thing about steel plants, they're very localized investments. And we have a lot of experience with Japanese investment in the US, by the way, lots of auto plants and other kinds of things. It's that sort of backward thinking, which, in this case, was a Biden administration thing, but Trump agrees, or has agreed, is not good. And it's not even politically smart, and it's not even pro the workers because the workers who actually work at the relevant plant want this investment because it will improve their jobs, but instead we get this creating monopoly. If things go the way it looks like they will, there will be a monopoly US Steel supplier, and that's not good for the auto industry or anybody else who uses steel.I think if we look back in 2030 at what's happened since 2025, whether this has turned out to be a durable kind of pro-progress, pro-growth, pro-abundance moment, I'll look at how have we reacted to advances in artificial intelligence: Did we freak out and start worrying about job loss and regulate it to death? And will we look back and say, “Wow, it became a lot easier to build a nuclear power plant or anything energy.” Has it become significantly easier over the past five years? How deep is the stasis part of America, and how big is the dynamist part of America, really?Yeah, I think it's a big question. It's a big question both because we're at this moment of what looks like big political change, we're not sure what that change is going to look like because the Trump coalition and Trump himself are such a weird grab bag of impulses, and also because, as you mentioned, artificial intelligence is on the cusp of amazing things, it looks like.And then you throw in the energy issues, which are related to climate, but they're also related to AI because AI requires a lot of energy. Are we going to build a lot of nuclear power plants? It's conceivable we will, both because of new technological designs for them, but also because of this growing sense — what I see is a lot of elite consensus (and elites are bad now!) that we made a wrong move when we turned against nuclear power. There's still aging Boomer and older are environmentalist types who still react badly to the idea of nuclear power, but if you talk to younger people, they are more open-minded because they're more concerned with the climate, and if we're going to electrify everything, the electricity's got to come from someplace. Solar and wind don't get you there.To me, not only is this the turnaround in nuclear, to me, stunning, but the fact that we had one of the most severe accidents only about 10 years ago in Japan, and if you would have asked anybody back then, they're like, “That's the death knell. No more nuclear renaissance in these countries. Japan's done. It's done everywhere.” Yet here we are.And yet, part of that may even be because of that accident, because it was bad, and yet, the long-run bad effects were negligible in terms of actual deaths or other things that you might point to. It's not like suddenly you had lots of babies being born with two heads or something.What to make of Musk (13:37)I'm glad the world has an Elon Musk, I'm glad we don't have too many of them, and I worry a little bit about someone of that temperament being close to political power.What do you make of Elon Musk?Well, I reviewed Walter Isaacson's biography of him.Whatever your opinion was after you read the biography, has it changed?No, it hasn't. I think he is somebody who has poor impulse control, and some of his impulses are very good. His engineering and entrepreneurial genius are best focused in the world of building things — that is, working with materials, physically thinking about properties of materials and how could you do spaceships, or cars, or things differently. He's a mixed bag and a lot of these kinds of people, I say it well compared.What do people expect that guy to be like?Compared to Henry Ford, I'd prefer Elon Musk. I'm glad the world has an Elon Musk, I'm glad we don't have too many of them, and I worry a little bit about someone of that temperament being close to political power. It can be a helpful corrective to some of the regulatory impulses because he does have this very strong builder impulse, but I don't think he's a particularly thoughtful person about his limitations or about political concerns.Aside from his particular strange personality, there is a general problem among the tech elite, which is that they overemphasize how much they know. Smart people are always prone to the problem of thinking they know everything because they're smart, or that they can learn everything because they're smart, or that they're better than people because they're smart, and it's just like one characteristic. Even the smartest person on earth can't know everything because there's more knowledge than any one person can have. That's why I don't like the technocratic impulse, because the technocratic impulse is like, smart people should run the world and they tell you exactly how to do it.To take a phrase that Ruxandra Teslo uses on her Substack, I think weird nerds are really important to the progress of the world, but weird nerds also need to realize that our goal should be to create a world in which they have a place and can do great things, but not a world in which they run everything, because they're not the only people who are valuable and important.On electric cars (16:21)If you look at the statistics, the people who buy electric cars tend to be people who don't actually drive that much, and they're skewed way to high incomes.You were talking about electrification a little earlier, and you've written a little bit about electric cars. Why did you choose to write about electric cars? And it seems like there's a vibe shift on electric cars as well in this country.This is the funny thing, because this January interview is actually scheduled because of a July post I had written on Substack called “Don't Talk About Electric Cars!”It's as timely as today's headlines.The headline was inspired by a talk that I heard Celinda Lake, the Democratic pollster (been around forever) give at a Breakthrough Institute conference back in June. Breakthrough Institute is part of this sort of UP Wing, pro-progress coalition, but they have a distinct Democrat tilt. And this conference, there was a panel on it that was about how to talk about these issues, specifically if you want Democrats to win.She gave this talk where she showed all these polling results where you would say, “The Biden administration is great because of X,” and then people would agree or disagree. And the thing that polled the worst, and in fact the only thing that actually made people more likely to vote Republican, was saying that they had supported building all these electric charging stations. Celinda Lake's opinion, her analysis of that, digging into the numbers, was that people don't like electric cars, and especially women don't like electric cars, because of concerns about range. Women are terrified of being stranded, that was her take. I don't know if that's true, but that was her take. But women love hybrids, and I think people love hybrids. I think hybrids are very popular, and in fact, I inherited my mother's hybrid because she stopped driving. So I now have a 2018 Prius, which I used to take this very long road trip in the summer where I drove from LA to a conference in Wichita, and then to Red Cloud Nebraska, and then back to Wichita for a second conference.The reason people don't like electric cars is really a combination of the fact that they tend to cost more than equivalent gasoline vehicles and because they have limited range and you have to worry about things like charging them and how long charging them is going to take.If you look at the statistics, the people who buy electric cars tend to be people who don't actually drive that much, and they're skewed way to high incomes. So I live in this neighborhood in West LA, and it is full of Priuses — I mean it used to be full of Priuses, there's still a lot of Priuses, but it's full of Teslas and it is not typical. And the people in LA who are driving many, many miles are people who have jobs like they're gardeners, or their contractors, or they're insurance adjusters and they have to drive all around and they don't drive electric cars. They might very well drive hybrids because you get better gas mileage, but they're not people who have a lot of time to be sitting around in charging stations.I think what's happened is there's some groups of people who are see this as a problem to be solved, but then there are a lot of people who see it as more symbolic than not. And they let their ideal, perfect world prevent improvements. So instead of saying, “We should switch from coal to natural gas,” they say, “We should outlaw fossil fuels.” Instead of saying, “Hybrids are a great thing, great invention, way lower emissions,” they say, “We must have all electric vehicles.” And what will happen, California has this rule, it has this law, that you're not going to be able to sell [non-]electric vehicles in the state after, I think it's 2035, and it's totally predictable what's going to happen: People just keep their gasoline cars longer. We're going to end up like Cuba with a bunch of old cars.I swear, every report I get from a think tank, or a consultancy, or a Wall Street bank, for years has talked about electric cars, the energy transition, as if it was an absolutely done deal, and maybe it is a done deal over some longer period of time, I don't know, but to me it sort of gets to your point about top-down technocratic impulse — it seems to be failing.And I think that electric cars are a good example of that because there are a lot of people who think electric cars are really cool, they're kind of an Up Wing thing, if you will. It's like a new technology, there've been big advances, and exciting entrepreneurs . . . and I think a lot of people who like the idea of technological progress like electric cars, and in fact, the adoption of electric cars by people who maybe don't drive a whole lot but have a lot of money, it's not just environmental, cool, or even status, it's partly techno-lust, especially with Teslas.A lot of people who bought Teslas, they're just like people who like technology, but the top-down proclamation that you must have an electric vehicle, and we're going to use a combination of subsidies and bans to force everybody to have an electric vehicle, really doesn't acknowledge the diversity of transportation needs that people have.One way of looking at electric cars, but also the effort to build all these chargers, which has been a failure, the effort to start to creating broadband connectivity to all these rural areas — which isn't working very well — there was this lesson learned by people on the center-left, and Ezra Klein, that there was this wild overreaction, perhaps, to environmental problems in the '60s and '70s, and the unintended consequence here is that one, the biggest environmental problem may be worse because we don't have nuclear power and climate change, but now we can't really solve any problems. So it took them 50 years, but they learned a lesson.My concern is to look at what's going on with some of the various Biden initiatives which are taking forever to implement, may be wildly unpopular — will they learn the risk of this top-down technocratic approach, or they'll just memory hold that and they'll move on to their next technocratic approach? Will there be a learning?No, I'm skeptical that there will be. I think that the learning that has taken place — and by the way, I hate that: “a learning,” that kind of thing. . .That's why I said it, because it's kind of delightfully annoying.The “learning,” gerund, that has taken place is that we shouldn't put so much process in the way of government doing things. And while I more or less agree with that, in particular, there are too many veto points and it is too easy for a very small group of objectors to hold up, not just private, but also public initiatives that are providing public goods.I think that the reason we got all of these process things that keep things from being done was because of things like urban renewal in the 1960s. And no, it was not just Robert Moses, he just got the big book written about him, but this took place every place where neighborhoods were completely torn down and hideous, brutalist structures were built for public buildings, or public housing, and these kinds of things, and people eventually rebelled against that.I think that yes, there are some people on the center-left who will learn. I do not think Ezra Klein is one of them, but price signals are actually useful things. They convey knowledge, and if you're going to go from one regulatory regime to another, you'll get different results, but if you don't have something that surfaces that bottom-up knowledge and takes it seriously, eventually it's going to break down. It's either going to break down politically or it's just waste a lot of money. . . You have your own technocratic streak.Thinking about California (25:56)Everybody uses California fires as an excuse to grind whatever axe they have.But listen, they'd be the good technocrats.Final question: As we're speaking, as we're doing this interview, huge fires raging sort of north of Los Angeles — how do you feel about the future of California? You live in California. California is extraordinarily important, both the American economy and to the world as a place of culture, as a place of technology. How do you feel about the state?The state has done a lot of shooting itself in the foot over the last . . . I moved here in 1986, and over that time, particularly in the first decade I was there, things were going great, the state was kind of stupid. I think if California solves its housing problem and actually allows significant amounts of housing to be built so that people can move here, people can stay here, young people don't have to leave the state, I think that will go a long way. It has made some positive movement in that direction. I think that's the biggest single obstacle.Fires are a problem, and I just recirculated on my Substack something I wrote about understanding the causes of California fires and what would need to be done to stop them.You've got to rake that underbrush.I wrote this in 2019, but it's still true: Everybody uses California fires as an excuse to grind whatever axe they have.Some of the Twitter commentary has been less-than-generous toward the people of California and its governor.One of the forms of progress that we take for granted is that cities don't burn regularly. Throughout most of human history, regular urban fires were a huge deal, and one of the things that city governments feared the most was fire and how were they prevented. There's the London fire, and the Chicago fires, and I remember, I just looked up yesterday, there was a huge fire in Atlanta in 1917, which was when my grandparents were children there. I remember my grandparents talking about that fire. Cities used to regularly burn — now they don't, where you have, they call it the “urban wildlife,” I forget what it's called, but there's a place where the city meets up against the natural environment, and that's where we have fires now, so that people like me who live in the concrete are not threatened. It's the people who live closer to nature, or they have more money, have a big lot of land.It's kind of understood what would be needed to prevent such fires. It's hard to do because it costs a lot of money in some cases, but it's not like, “Let's forget civilization. Let's not build anything. Let's just let nature take its course.” And one of the problems that was in the 20th century where people had the false idea — again, bad technocrats — that you needed to prevent forest fires, forest fires were always bad, and that is a complete misunderstanding of how the natural world works.California has a great future if it fixes this housing problem. If it doesn't fix its housing problem, it can write off the future. It will be all old people who already have houses.On sale everywhere The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised▶ Business* Google Thinks It Has the Best AI Tech. Now It Needs More Users. - WSJ* Anduril Picks Ohio for Military Drone Factory Employing 4,000 - Bberg* A lesson for oligarchs: politics can be deadly - FT Opinion* EU Needs Deregulation to Keep Up with Trump, Ericsson CEO Says - Bberg▶ Policy/Politics* Europe's ‘super-regulator' role is under threat - FT Opinion* Biden's AI Data Center and Climate Contradiction - WSJ Opinion* After Net Neutrality: The Return of the States - AEI* China Has a $1 Trillion Head Start in Any Tariff Fight - WSJ▶ AI/Digital* She Is in Love With ChatGPT - NYT* Meta AI creates speech-to-speech translator that works in dozens of languages - Nature* AI-designed proteins tackle century-old problem — making snake antivenoms - Nature* Meta takes us a step closer to Star Trek's universal translator - Ars▶ Clean Energy/Climate* Chris Wright backs aggressive build-out of the US power grid - EEN* We Have to Stop Underwriting People Who Move to Climate Danger Zones - NYT Opinion* Has China already reached peak oil? - FT* Molten salt nuclear reactor in Wyoming hits key milestone - New Atlas▶ Space/Transportation* SpaceX catches Super Heavy booster on Starship Flight 7 test but loses upper stage - Space* Blue Origin reaches orbit on first flight of its titanic New Glenn rocket - Ars* Jeff Bezos' New Glenn Rocket Lifts Off on First Flight - NYT* Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket reaches orbit in first test - WaPo* Blue Ghost, a Private U.S. Lunar Lander, Launches to the Moon - SciAm* Human exploration of Mars is coming, says former NASA chief scientist - NS▶ Substacks/Newsletters* TikTok is just the beginning - Noahpinion* Unstable Diffusion - Hyperdimensional* Progress's First Principles - Risk & Progress* How Trump, China & Trade Wars Will Affect the Global AI Landscape in 2025 - AI Supremacy* After the Green New Deal - Slow Boring* Washington Must Prioritize Mineral Supply Results Over Political Point Scoring - Breakthrough JournalFaster, Please! is a reader-supported publication. 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The World War-era historians—Spengler, Toynbee, Quigley—operated at intellectual levels we can't match today. Despite our "progress" myth, we've intellectually regressed. These giants accurately predicted our 21st century collapse: atheism, caesarism, social alienation, population decline. Their most urgent warning? BUREAUCRACY would destroy Western civilization if left unchecked. We ignored them, and now it's devouring everything that made our civilization great, exactly as they predicted. SPONSORS: NetSuite:  More than 41,000 businesses have already upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle, the #1 cloud financial system bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, HR, into ONE proven platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine learning: https://netsuite.com/102 Shopify:  Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide, handling 10% of U.S. e-commerce. With hundreds of templates, AI tools for product descriptions, and seamless marketing campaign creation, it's like having a design studio and marketing team in one. Start your $1/month trial today at https://shopify.com/cognitive Link to Black Forest Supplements and Turkestrone: https://blackforestsupplements.com/?s... More information here: https://blackforestsupplements.com/bl... LINKS: Link to my second podcast on world history and interviews:    / @history102-qg5oj   Link to my cancellation insurance: https://becomepluribus.com/creators/20 Link to my Twitter-https://twitter.com/whatifalthist?ref... Link to my Instagram-https://www.instagram.com/rudyardwlyn... Bibliography: * means book was really important for this video The Managerial Revolution by James Burnham** Tragedy and Hope by Carroll Quiggley The Evolution of Civilizations by Carroll Quigely The Old Regime and the French Revolution by De Toqueville A New World Begins by Poptkin Fire in the Minds of Men by Billington Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber Leviathan and Its Enemies by Sam Francis** Strategy by Lawrence Freedman On Grand Strategy by John Lewis Gaddis Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler War in Human Civilization by Azar Gat Sex and Power in History by Amaury de Riencourt The Soul of China by Amaury de Riencourt The Ruling Classes by Gaetano Mosca The Fate of Empires by Hubbard The History of Philosophy by Bertrand Russel Why Nations Fail by Robinson and Acemoglu A Secular Age by Charles Taylor The Gulag Archipelago Solzenitsyn The Total State by Auron Macintyre* The Revolt of the Elites by Christopher Lasch The Storm before the Calm by George Friedman* Rise of the West by McNeil On Politics by Aristotle The Soul of India by Amaury de Riencourt The Sea and Civilization by Lincoln Payne The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson Reason and Faith by Sam Gregg The Shaping of America by Meinig Caesar and Christ by Will Durant The Life of Greece by Will Durant Destiny Disrupted Tamim Ansary Empires of the Atlantic World by Elliot The 13th Century World System by Abu Laughed Colonial Empires from the 18th century by Fieldhouse War What is it good for by Ian Morris The Lonely Crowd by David Riesman Regime Change by Deenan Atrocities by Matthew White The Road to Serfdom by Hayek

Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code WHATIFALTHIST at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: http://incogni.com/whatifalthist Link to my second podcast on world history and interviews: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0NCSdGglnmdWg-qHALhu1w Link to my cancellation insurance: https://becomepluribus.com/creators/20 Link to my Twitter - https://x.com/whatifalthist Link to my Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/rudyardwlynch/?hl=en Bibliography: The Great Wave by David Hackett Fischer Secular Cycles by Peter Turchin Ages of Discord by Peter Turchin The Economics of Discontent by Jean Michel Paul The Identity of France by Fernand Braudel The History of Civilizations by Fernand Braudel The Mediterranean at the time of Philip 2nd by Fernand Braudel The Structures of Every day life by Fernand Braudel Leviathan and Its Enemies by Sam Francis The Global Crisis by Geoffrey Parker On Hero Worship by Thomas Carlyl Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fischer Long Cycles by Goldstein The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by Paul Kennedy Generations by Strauss and Howe Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler The Coming Caesars by Amaury de riencourt Rise of the West by William McNeil The Pursuit of Power by William McNeil Tragedy and Hope by Caroll Quiggley The Great Leveler by Walter Schedule Capital by Thomas Picketty The History of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell The Middle Ages by Sidney Painter The Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman

OPEN SCIENCE & ITS ENEMIES, PART III: The Progressives in this episode i conclude my critique of - some parts of - the open science movement by focusing on the positive reforms that might actually work. keywords: open science reform critique commentary. details, sources and full transcript at the error bar [https://theerrorbar.com?e=41] https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/FZ84B

PDS Debt is offering a free debt analysis. It only takes thirty seconds. Get yours at https://PDSDebt.com/WHATIFALTHIST Link to my second podcast on world history and interviews: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0NCSdGglnmdWg-qHALhu1w Link to my cancellation insurance: https://becomepluribus.com/creators/20 Link to my Twitter - https://x.com/whatifalthist Link to my Instagram-https://www.instagram.com/rudyardwlyn... Bibliography The Ruling Classes by Gaetano Mosca The Rise of the West by McNeil The Story of the Americas by Leland Dewitt Baldwin Forgotten Continent by Michael Reid American Nations by Colin Woodard The WEIRDest people in the world by Joseph Heinrich Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu and Robinson War, Peace and War by Peter Turchin The Art of Not Being Governed by James Scott Seeing like a State by James Scott The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Shirer The History of Philosophy by Bertrand Russel Democracy the God that Failed by Herman Hoppes Atrocities by Matthew White The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama The Soul of France by Fernand Braudel A History of Civilizations by Fernand Braudel The Best of Times and Worst of Times by Michael Burleigh After Liberalism by Paul Gottfried The Leviathan and Its Enemies by Sam Francis  Politics by Aristotle The Pursuit of Power by McNeil Tragedy and Hope by Carroll Quiggley The Evolution of Civilizations by Carroll Quiggley Enlightenment Now by Stephen Pinker The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell Envy by Helmut Schoeck Dominion by Tom Holland The True Believer by Eric Hoffer The Dictators by Richard Overy Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari The Invention of Yesterday by Tamim Ansary After Liberalism by Matthew Rose Destiny Disrupted by Tamim Ansary The Master and His Emissary by Ian McGhilchrist Japan and the Shackles of the Past by Taggert Murphy The True Believer by Eric Hoffer Shadow World by Chandler The Righteous Mind by Haidt The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray Islamo Leftism by Philippe Fabry Fire in the Minds of Men by Billington Political Order and Political Decay by Francis Fukuyama War in Human Civilization by Azar Gat

Compare news coverage. Spot media bias. Avoid algorithms. Try Ground News today and get 40% off your subscription by going to https://ground.news/whatif Link to my second podcast on world history and interviews: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0NCSdGglnmdWg-qHALhu1w Link to my cancellation insurance: https://becomepluribus.com/creators/20 Link to my Twitter - https://x.com/whatifalthist Link to my Instagram-https://www.instagram.com/rudyardwlyn... Bibliography: Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell The Vision of the Anointed by Thomas Sowell A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell The True Believer by Eric Hoffer Dominion by Tom Holland Fire in the Minds of Men by Billington Strategy by Lawrence Freeman The Leviathan and Its Enemies by Sam Francis The Unabomber's Manifesto The Revolt of the Elites by Lasch The Total State by Auron Macintyre The Culture of Critique by Kevin MacDonald The Righteous Mind by Jon Haidt Nihilism by Seraphim Rose Spiteful Mutants by Edward Dutton The Coming Caesars by Amaury de Riencourt Sex and Power in History by Amaury de Riencourt A History of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fischer Assemblywoman by Aristophanes  The Lonely Crowd by David Riesman The Future is the Past Country by Edward Dutton Witches, Feminism and the Fall of the West's by Edward Dutton Secular Cycles by Peter Turchin Ages of Discord by Peter Turchin American Nations by Colin Woodard A Secular Age by Charles Taylor A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker The Web of Meaning by Jeremy Lent Behave by Sapolsky Seeing Like a State by James Scott Coming to Our Senses by Morris German Women Deserve Less by Myron Gaines A Secret History of the World by Mark Booth Foragers, Farmers and Fossil Fuels by Ian Morris Lineages of Modernity by Todd Immanuel Cynical Theories by James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose Curt Doolittle Yuri Bezmonov Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky The Abolition of Man by CS Lewis The Storm before the Calm by George Friedman The Managerial Class by James Burnham The Ruling Class by Gaetano Mosca The Evolution of Civilizations by Carroll Quiggley Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber Maps of Meaning by Jordan Peterson The Evolutionary Psychology behind Politics  The Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn The Culture of Narcissism by Lasch After Liberalism by Paul Gottfried Shadow World by Robert Chandler Envy by Helmut Schoeck A History of Manners by Norbert Elias The Elephant in the Brain by Smiler The Story of Work by Lucassen  The Fate of Empires by Hubbard The Master and His Emissary by Ian McGhilchrist The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray

IntroductionIn this episode of Maintainable, Robby speaks with Lutz Hühnken, Head of Engineering Excellence at Upvest, about the transformative power of event-driven architecture in software development. Lutz brings his extensive experience to the table, discussing how breaking down complex systems into manageable modules and leveraging event-driven design can lead to more resilient and maintainable software.Topics Discussed[00:05:32] Introduction to Well-Maintained Software: Lutz shares his thoughts on the key characteristics of maintainable software, emphasizing modularity and simplicity.[00:10:24] Challenges with "Magic" in Code: The pitfalls of relying too much on frameworks and ORMs, including examples from Lutz's experience with Hibernate.[00:11:16] Understanding Event-Driven Architecture: Lutz explains the fundamentals of event-driven architecture and its advantages over traditional command-driven approaches.[00:13:50] The Role of Promises in Event-Driven Systems: How clear design-time responsibilities ensure reliability in event-driven communication.[00:15:43] Choreography vs. Orchestration: The debate between these two approaches to managing workflows and why Lutz favors choreography for most systems.[00:17:57] Onboarding Developers in Event-Driven Systems: Tips for effectively integrating new team members into an event-driven architecture.[00:26:52] The Role of Engineering Excellence at Upvest: Lutz discusses his new role and the importance of systems thinking in guiding architectural decisions.[00:34:55] Managing Technical Debt: Lutz offers insights into balancing feature development with addressing technical debt, emphasizing the importance of a healthy investment distribution.Key TakeawaysBreaking down large systems into smaller modules with clear boundaries can significantly enhance maintainability.Event-driven architecture offers a powerful way to decouple system components, making them more resilient and scalable.Developers should be cautious of "magic" in code, such as heavy reliance on ORMs, which can obscure underlying complexities and hinder maintainability.Choreography often provides a more scalable and maintainable approach than orchestration in managing complex workflows.Technical debt should be managed proactively, with regular investments in refactoring and productivity enhancements to maintain long-term software health.Resources MentionedLutz Hühnken's BlogEvent-Driven Architecture by Martin FowlerThe Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl PopperConnect with Lutz HühnkenLinkedInTwitterThanks to Our Sponsor!Turn hours of debugging into just minutes! AppSignal is a performance monitoring and error-tracking tool designed for Ruby, Elixir, Python, Node.js, Javascript, and other frameworks.It offers six powerful features with one simple interface, providing developers with real-time insights into the performance and health of web applications.Keep your coding cool and error-free, one line at a time! Use the code maintainable to get a 10% discount for your first year. Check them out! Subscribe to Maintainable on:Apple PodcastsSpotifyOr search "Maintainable" wherever you stream your podcasts.Keep up to date with the Maintainable Podcast by joining the newsletter.

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.Part I (00:13 - 08:11)Tropical Storm Debby Is a ‘Once Every Thousand Years' Storm? “Acts of God“ and the Remnants of Theological Language in a Secular AgePart II (08:11 - 14:00)Why Would Israel Assassinate the Leaders of Its Enemies? Deterrence and Israel's Great ChallengeWhy Israel Escalates: Risky Assassinations Are a Desperate Bid to Restore Deterrence by Foreign Affairs (Dalia Dassa Kaye)Part III (14:00 - 20:05)Israel's Existential Threats Have Changed its Politics: A Lot of Liberal Arguments Disappear After an a Savage AttackIs Israel Defensible? The cruel geostrategic logic of the Holy Land. by Claremont Review of Books (Christopher Caldwell)Part IV (20:05 - 25:04)Presidential Election Realities Come Into Focus—And There Are Massive Worldview Issues at StakeSign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

PDS Debt is offering a free debt analysis. It only takes thirty seconds. Get yours at https://pdsdebt.com/free-debt-assessment/?ref=whatifalthist Link to my second podcast on world history and interviews: https://www.youtube.com/@History102-qg5oj Link to my cancellation insurance: https://becomepluribus.com/creators/20 Link to my Twitter- https://x.com/whatifalthist Link to my Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/rudyardwlynch/?hl=en Bibliography:  Curt Doolittle's work. Available on the Propertarian Website The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama  The Decay of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama  A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia by David Christian. 2 volumes The History of Russia by Orlando Figes Europe by Norman Davies The Isles by Norman Davies  Al Muqqahdimmah by Ibn Khaldun Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung The Elephant in the Brain by Simler The Rise of the West by McNeil Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder Atrocities by Matthew White The True Believer by Eric Hoffer Sex and Power in History by Amaury de Riencourt The Origins of Ideology by Immanuel Todd The Moral Animal by Robert Wright Sex and Culture by JD Unwin The Lonely Crowd by David Riesman Very Beautiful People by Ashley Mears Envy by Helmut Schoeck The Righteous Mind by John Haidt Seeing like a State by James Scott War in Human Civilization by Azar Gat Conquests and Cultures by Thomas Sowell War and Peace and War by Peter Turchin Why Nations Fail by Robinson and Acemoglu Dominion by Tom Holland The Ancient City by Foustel de Coulanges A History of Civilizations by Fernand Braudel  War, What is it Good for by Ian Morris The Leviathan and Its Enemies by Samuel Francis A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell The Great Leveler by Walter Scheidel

Click this link to make some cash for giving your opinion! https://www.inflcr.co/SHKUj Thanks YouGov for sponsoring! Link to my second podcast on world history and interviews: https://www.youtube.com/@History102-qg5oj Link to my cancellation insurance: https://becomepluribus.com/creators/20 Link to my Twitter- https://x.com/whatifalthist Link to my Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/rudyardwlynch/?hl=en -- Bibliography: The Economics of Discontent by Jean Michel Paul Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell The Great Wave by David Hackett Fischer Secular Cycles by Peter Turchin Ages of Discord by Peter Turchin Capital by Thomas Picketty Why Nations Fail by Robinson and Acemoglu False Economy by Alan Beattie Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber Crashed by Adam Tooze The Road to Serfdom by Hayek The Rise and Fall of Nations by Ruchir Sharma The Growth Delusion by David Pilling The Great Leveler by Walter Scheidel End Times by Peter Turchin The Leviathan and Its Enemies by Sam Francis  The Origins of Woke by Richard Hanania  The Absent Superpower by Peter Zeihan Political Order and Political Decay by Francis Fukuyama The Storm before the Calm by George Friedman The Soul of France pt 1 by Fernand Braudel Lost Connections by Johann Hari The Master and His Emissary by Ian McGhilchrist

PDS Debt is offering a free debt analysis. It only takes thirty seconds. Get yours at: https://pdsdebt.com/free-debt-assessment/?ref=whatifalthist Link to my second podcast on world history and interviews: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0NCSdGglnmdWg-qHALhu1w Link to my cancellation insurance: https://becomepluribus.com/creators/20 Link to my Twitter: https://x.com/whatifalthist Link to my Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rudyardwlynch/?hl=en Bibliography: The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler Sex and Power in History by Amaury de Riencourt Tragedy and Hope by Carroll Quiggley The Tree of Culture by Ralph Linton The Civilizing Process by Norbert Elias The Age of Faith by Will Durant Leviathan and Its Enemies by Samuel Francis Europe Emerges by Reynolds The Storm Before the Calm by Friedman Why Women Deserve Less by Myron Gaines The Nice Guy's Guide to Dating by David Hamilton Woke Racism by John McWhorter The Origins of Woke by Hanania The Unabomber's Manifesto

Today's show is an open discussion on the protest demonstrations happening across the United States and the impact of propaganda on shaping perceptions. I firmly stand with Israel and believe it is a beacon of hope and progress in the region. The ongoing conflict is not only about Israel, but part of a larger agenda to divide and weaken the United States. This is not just a theory; there are facts to support it. Let's talk about George Soros and his Open Society Foundation, which has been involved in funding divisive activities around the world. It's crucial to be aware of these influences and not fall for manipulated narratives. As Americans, we must speak out against agendas that seek to distort our thinking and divide us. I encourage you to seek the truth and not be swayed by propaganda.   Follow Carl: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/toeverypageaturning/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarlBuccellatoAuthor LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carl-buccellato-60234139 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVB3YH1iQxK4IL4ya5j4-Jg Website: https://toeverypageaturning.com Book: https://www.amazon.com/Every-Page-Turning-Lifes-Journey/dp/1645435229   Resources: Campus Protests: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/03/us/politics/biden-trump-campus-protests.html Bill Gates on Reducing the Population With the Use of Vaccines: https://rumble.com/v1xzbjh-bill-gates-reduce-population-through-vaccination.html?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwouexBhAuEiwAtW_Zx5SYVzMTh-bMKuIfnzHvUWowb5N9M4_fiG3CEm6eAw9rfeVdHDXrXhoC-Z0QAvD_BwE Top Secret Meeting of the World's Richest People: https://www.irishcentral.com/news/secret-meeting-of-worlds-richest-people-held-in-new-york-45304702-237642871 The Open Society and Its Enemies: https://www.amazon.com/Open-Society-Its-Enemies-One/dp/0691158134 Russia Bans George Soros Foundation: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL1N13P22Y/

Jim talks with Robert Conan Ryan about seven ethical perspectives and why everyone should know them. They discuss why understanding ethical stances is valuable, a horseshoe spectrum, pragmatism, virtue ethics, consequentialism, deontology, elitist power, deification, social justice, stacking up ethical stances, Aristotle's golden mean, sociopaths in the military, running the polis, coherent pluralism, the multi-perspectival lens, Cornel West's positional complexity, paideia, DEI (Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion), liberal universal humanism, pragmatism vs neo-pragmatism, the long run vs the short run, the transaction cost theory of ethics, inclusive entrepreneurship, the Main Street problem, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP54 - Robert Conan Ryan on Boom & Bust Cycles "On making meanings: Curators, social assembly, and mashups," by Barry M. Mitnick & Robert C. Ryan The Open Society and Its Enemies, by Karl Popper Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals, by Saul Alinsky Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, by John McWhorter Robert Conan Ryan is a professor of business administration and emerging public intellectual. His current scholarly projects include work with a diverse roster of world-leading strategists, economists, and futurists such as Jordan Hall, Michel Bauwens, Ravi Madhavan, Barry Mitnick, Matthew McCaffrey, and Michael Rectenwald. His current papers tackle competitive industry dynamics; grey market economics; the history of technology; Neo-Schumpeterian economics; artificial vs. natural cognition; paradigmatic strategic design; and, how sensemaking systems evolve and change.

What determines our visions of the future, and how those visions change over time? How is politics shaped by conflicting visions of the future? What did the old mid-century vision of a Jetsons-style future get wrong -- and what did it get right that we are now struggling to rediscover? What are the roots of technological pessimism, and how can we encourage the growth of a culture that valorizes scientific and technological advance? On this episode of The Permanent Problem podcast, author Virginia Postrel (The Future and Its Enemies, The Fabric of Civilization, and more) joins the Niskanen Center's Brink Lindsey to discuss the ongoing and ever-changing struggle between the forces and champions of dynamism and progress and those that favor the status quo or an imagined past.

Ad Verbrugge in gesprek met schrijver, onderzoeksjournalist en natuurboer Marcel van Silfhout, over zijn ervaringen tijdens de oorlog in voormalig Joegoslavië, de parallellen die hij ziet met de huidige toestand in Oekraïne en de dreigende teloorgang van Europa. "We hadden een andere afslag in de geschiedenis kunnen nemen". Bronnen en links bij deze uitzending: - Voor de producten van Marcel, of om graandeelhouder te worden, zie: https://www.graangeluk.nl/ - Het eerdere gesprek met Marcel van Silfhout: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umZ12kUc3uo - Operatie Storm, KVBK, achtergrondartikel, 1996: https://www.kvbk.nl/sites/default/files/bestanden/uitgaven/1996/1996-0058-01-0018.PDF (8:25) - Underground, Emir Kusturica, 1995, trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYTvmLvLchs (16:20) - Before the Rain, Milcho Manchevski, 1994: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psgl2JnD0F8 (17:54) - Website van de PNAC, via Webarchive: https://web.archive.org/web/20080513185419/http://www.newamericancentury.org/ (32:43) - Karen Hamaker-Zondag over de neocons en psychopathie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-ojxUBRMs0 (32:53) - Tucker Carlson interviewt Vladimir Putin, 09-02-2024: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LmH3ARlnCM (38:30) - The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl R. Popper, 1966: https://www.academia.edu/13257927/Open_Society_and_Its_Enemies (40:53) - Slaapwandelaars, Christopher Clark, 2013: https://www.debezigebij.nl/boek/slaapwandelaars/ (43:24) - George Friedman, Fear & Loathing in Ukraine, 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UcXiUYLgbo (42:36) - Voormalig NAVO generaal Harald Kujat, lezing voor het 'Eurasien Gesellschaft', 13-2-2024: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6dbonhYkDE , vertaald in Engels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U21-RrB8E6Q (46:51) - Winning Modern Wars, Gen. Wesley Clarke, 2004: https://archive.org/details/winningmodernwar00clar/page/n5/mode/2up (47:56) - Gen. Wesley Clarke, "We're Going to Take Out 7 Countries in 5 Years": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWxKn-1S8ts - Europa, mocht het ooit wakker worden, Peter Sloterdijk, 1994: https://www.deslegte.com/europa-mocht-het-ooit-wakker-worden-1299567/ (50:54) - Rutte over Wilders en steun aan Oekraïne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRKrId72xJ0 (53:50)

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are probably history's most famous folklorists. Their collection of folk tales – the Children's and Household Tales – is one of the world's most translated literary works. Living in a time of upheaval and war, the Grimm brothers were also passionate German nationalists. They insisted that Germans must reject alien regimes and only accept rulers who spoke their language and cherished their traditions.  The Brothers Grimm and the Making of German Nationalism (Cambridge UP, 2022) is the first book-length study of the Grimms' political attitudes and ideas. It shows how the Grimms believed that their groundbreaking philological knowledge of grammar and folk narratives allowed them to disentangle cultural and linguistic groups from each other, criticize imperial rule, and even counsel kings and princes. The brothers sought to revive a neglected Germanic culture for a contemporary audience, but they also wished to provide the traditional political elite with an understanding of the resurgent national collective. Through detailed analysis, Norberg reconstructs how the Grimms wished to mediate between culture and politics as well as between sovereigns and peoples. Jakob Norberg is a Professor of German at Duke University. He is the author of Sociability and Its Enemies (Northwestern University Press, 2014), The Brothers Grimm and the Making of German Nationalism (Cambridge University Press, 2022), and Schopenhauer's Politics (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). His articles have appeared in venues such as PMLA, Arcadia, Cultural Critique, New German Critique, Textual Practice, Telos, and the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought. His book on the Grimms won the 2023 Best Book award of the Brothers Grimm Society of North America and a recent article, “Schopenhauer and the Injustice of Slavery,” won the 2023 essay prize of the Schopenhauer Society. Amir Engel is currently a visiting professor at the faculty of theology at the Humboldt University in berlin. He is also the chair at the German department at the Hebrew University. Engel studied philosophy, literature, and culture studies at the Hebrew University and completed his PhD. in the German Studies department at Stanford University. He is the author of Grshom Scholem: an Intellectual biography that came out in Chicago in 2017. He also published works on, among others, Jacob Taubes, Hannah Arendt, and Hans Jonas. He is currently working on a book titled "The German Spirit from its Jewish Sources: The History of Jewish-GermanOccultism". The project proposes a new approach to German intellectual history by highlighting marginalized connections between German Occultism, its Christian sources notwithstanding, and Jewish sources, especially the Jewish mystical tradition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Die Frage wie viel Toleranz angebracht ist, beschäftigt liberale Gesellschaften seit je her. Aber ist Toleranz überhaupt das, was wir denken was sie ist? Wer hat sie erfunden und was ist das Toleranzparadoxon? All das klärt diese Folge. Viel Spaß beim Hören! Quellen:Baruch, H. (2008). Tolerance in the Age of Pluralism. HUMANISTICA, 6(6), 299-312. Forst, R. (2000). Toleranz. Philosophische Grundlagen und gesellschaftliche Praxis einer umstrittenen Tugend, Campus Verlag. Forst, R. (2003). Toleranz im Konflikt. Geschichte, Gehalt und Gegenwart eines umstrittenen Begriffs, Suhrkamp. Forst, R. (2007). Toleranz und Demokratie, In: Rainer Forst (Hrsg.), Recht auf Rechtfertigung. Elemente einer konstruktivistischen Theorie der Gerechtigkeit, 211-223. Kymlicka, W. (1992). Two models of pluralism and tolerance. Analyse & Kritik, 14(1), 33-56.Meyerson, D. (2012). Three versions of liberal tolerance: Dworkin, Rawls, Raz. Jurisprudence, 3(1), 37-70. Mill, J. S. (1977). On Liberty. Harmondsworth. Popper, K. R. (1945). The Open Society and Its Enemies, Routledge. Schmetkamp, S. (2021). Toleranz. In: Michael G. Festl (Hrsg.), Handbuch Liberalismus, 199-206. Thomassen, L. (2006). The inclusion of the other? Habermas and the paradox of tolerance. Political Theory, 34(4), 439-462. Williams, B. (1996). Toleration, a political or moral question? Diogenes, 44(176), 35-48.GEMAfreie Musik von https://audiohub.de Kontakt:Instagram: @powileaksEmail: info@powileaks.com

Jim talks with Cody Moser about the ideas and findings in his and Paul Smaldino's paper "Innovation-Facilitating Networks Create Inequality." They discuss transient diversity, group performance vs the agent level, taking an agent-based modeling approach, Derex & Boyd's group potion-mixing experiment, no free lunch theorem, random network structures, an inverse correlation between network connectivity & performance, effects of sharing intermediate results, Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection, measuring inequality with the Gini coefficient, higher performance in less equal networks, connected caveman networks, ring networks, Ashby's good regulator theorem, exploration vs exploitation, randomly allocating lifetime endowed academic chairs to 25-year-olds, institutional design, generative entrenchment, implications for internet platform design, the parochial pyramid, tribalism at the Dunbar number, and much more. Episode Transcript "Innovation-Facilitating Networks Create Inequality," by Cody Moser & Paul Smaldino Saving Twitter—A Roundtable (Jim Rutt, Bo Winegard, & Cody Moser) "Partial connectivity increases cultural accumulation within groups," by Maxime Derex & Robert Boyd The Open Society and Its Enemies, by Karl Popper Cody Moser is a PhD student in the Department of Cognitive and Information Sciences. His research examines the origins of individual and institutional behavior where he uses approaches from complex systems and evolutionary dynamics to study collective problem-solving, systems collapse, cultural evolution, and innovation. Before coming to UC Merced, he studied primatology where he worked with capuchin monkeys, dwarf and mouse lemurs, lorises, and aye-ayes. He obtained a B.S. in Anthropology with minors in statistics and biology from Florida State University, a Master's in Anthropology from Texas A&M University, and worked for two years with The Music Lab in the Harvard Department of Psychology. He is interested in the history and philosophy of science and has written for a number of popular science venues on the applications of research from his field. His favorite animal is the ring-tailed lemur, his favorite room on campus is SE2 224, and his dream job is to be a graduate student.

Our Best of 2023 series continues with Stefania Maurizi, an investigative journalist currently contributing to the major Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano after working for the last 14 years for la Repubblica, consistently rated among the top two Italian newspapers, and for the italian newsmagezine l'Espresso. She has worked with Julian Assange and his organization WikiLeaks since 2009, teaming up with large teams of international media to cover and investigate all of WikiLeaks' secret documents. Stefania speaks with host Chuck Mertz about her book "Secret Power: WikiLeaks and Its Enemies" recently published by Pluto Press: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745347615/secret-power/ After the interview, more of your answers to the Question from Hell and a Moment of Truth from Jeff Dorchen. Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access weekly bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisishell

On this edition of Parallax Views, Samuel Moyn, Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University, joins the show to discuss his new book Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times. Samuel examines and dissects the beliefs of Cold War intellectuals like Karl Popper, Judith Shklar, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lionel Trilling, Isaiah Berlin, and Hannah Arendt to argue that liberals of the Cold War in many ways ended up undermining the progressive and Enlightenment principles of the liberal tradition in their attempts to combat communism. In doing so, he makes the case, they helped paved the way not only for modern equivalents/heirs of the Cold War liberalism like Anne Applebaum, Timothy Garton Ash, Paul Berman, Michael Ignatieff, Tony Judt, and Leon Wieseltierm, but also the reigning power of the current neoliberal order and the withering of the welfare state. A note that this conversation is talking about liberals and liberalism in a very academic sense rather than it's colloquial usage. Among the topics discussed are Judith Shklar's After Utopia (and why Shklar is a guiding force throughout Liberalism Against Itself), Sigmun Freud and the politics of self-regulations, decolonization and paternalisitic racism in the Cold War era, Jonathan Chait's scathing review of Liberalism Against Itself and Samuel's response to it (excluive, thus far, to this show), Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed and Samuel's critique of the burgeoning postliberal right, thoughts on Sohrab Ahmari's Tyranny Inc., Karl Popper of The Open Society and Its Enemies fame and the problem his critique of historicism, the Mont Pelerin Society and neoliberalism, F.A. Hayek, Gertrude Himmelfarb and the Christian thinker Lord Acton, the Cold War liberals' critique of romanticism and Samuel's response to it, the Soviet Union and the idea of Progress and who lays claim to it, the concept of emancipation and the French Revolution, and much, much more!

Kip Lee is a designer and healthcare executive at University Hospitals Health System in Cleveland, OH. As Vice President of UH Ventures, he manages an innovation portfolio that supports University Hospitals' strategic initiatives and partnerships through product innovation and human-centered design. Outside of work, Kip serves on the editorial board of Design Issues, a design and innovation journal published by MIT Press. He also serves on several nonprofit boards. We talk about systems and design in healthcare.   Listen to learn about: Complex systems Design in healthcare What is the role of management? The COVID-19 pandemic's effect on healthcare innovation The interplay between design and management   Our Guest Kipum (Kip) Lee, PhD is a designer and healthcare executive at University Hospitals Health System in Cleveland, OH. As Vice President of UH Ventures, he manages an innovation portfolio that supports University Hospitals' strategic initiatives and partnerships through product innovation and human-centered design. Outside of work, he serves as an editor of Design Issues, the premier journal on design history, theory, criticism, and practice published by MIT Press, and on several non-profit boards. In addition to playing with his two kids, Kip loves used hardcover books, freshly ground coffee, low-humidity weather, and a good conversation.   Show Highlights [01:26] Kip's journey into design began with a love of drawing and visualization at a very early age. [02:36] Experiencing the New Jersey Governor's School of the Arts during high school. [04:11] Kip talks about cultural expectations and how that affected his choices as he entered university. [05:09] Why Kip chose bioengineering as an undergrad. [06:20] A brief time in architecture as a graduate student. [07:47] Carnegie Mellon's interaction design program. [08:27] Kip's revelation while attending the U.S.'s first ever service design conference. [09:40] The course that made Kip fall in love with learning again. [10:41] How Kip's studies in architecture and bioengineering have come full circle in his current work in healthcare. [13:51] Designing in complex systems. [14:00] Kip uses the military and warfare as another example of a complex system. [15:38] Looking at healthcare as a complex system. [16:54] Kip offers a pre-pandemic example of the challenges that arose in implementing a new technology. [18:26] Difficulties that can arise with terminology and in how language is used. [19:21] Vaccine hesitancy vs. vaccine readiness. [21:48] Complex systems are multidimensional, and aesthetics is often just as important as the technical. [23:02] Kip offers an example using PPE/masks during the pandemic to show why aesthetics matters. [26:06] The complexities involved in shaping and influencing people's behaviors and choices. [31:16] Dawan brings up the idea of shifting management more into performance facilitation rather than control. [32:43] A Miro Moment. [34:01] Kip likes Henry Mintzberg's idea of management as “controlled chaos,” maintaining the balance between exploration, freedom, and a sense of order. [35:43] The need for c-suite execs to stay grounded in the actual front line work of the organization. [36:46] Designers as rebels. [37:05] Kip talks about parallel developments in both design and management. [38:43] What can designers learn from management? [41:33] How the pandemic helped healthcare innovation. [42:55] Good designers and good managers both work to create the environment where healthy and exciting interactions and projects can take place. [44:46] Service design's uniqueness as a discipline. [47:09] The desire to serve is an essential aspect of what it means to be a designer. [47:39] Bruno Latour's benefits of design. [49:03] Many things that are aspects of design are also aspects of management. [51:10] Designers and managers are often doing the same work. [51:37] Dawan talks about shifting from “solutions” to “responses.” [54:28] Systems have histories and memories. [57:14] Kip offers thoughts and advice for others who want to apply their design skills in the healthcare industry. [01:04:15] Kip's last words about the design field as a whole.   Links Kip on Twitter Kip on LinkedIn Kip on Google Scholar Kip on University Hospitals Ventures Kip on ResearchGate TEDx CLE, Master Builders for the 21st Century Critique of Design Thinking in Organizations: Strongholds and Shortcomings of the Making Paradigm Hack from Home | Discovering Problems in Our Dwelling Place: A Design Thinking Approach Architekton Designing for Value in Specialty Referrals: A New Framework for Eliminating Defects and Wicked Problems, by Patrick Runnels, Heather Wobbe, Kipum Lee, Randy Jernejcic, and Peter Pronovost   Book Recommendations Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World, by General Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and Chris Fussell The Systems Approach and Its Enemies, by C. West Churchman The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think In Action, by Donald Schön A Cautious Prometheus? A Few Steps Toward a Philosophy of Design (with Special Attention to Peter Sloterdijk), keynote lecture from Bruno Latour   Other Design Thinking 101 Episodes You Might Like Healthcare Innovation + Nursing + Opportunities for Designers — DT101 E109 A Designer's Journey into Designing for Health and Healthcare with Lorna Ross — DT101 E45 Service Design in Healthcare Inside Multiple Business Contexts with Jessica Dugan — DT101 E22  

Kip Lee is a designer and healthcare executive at University Hospitals Health System in Cleveland, OH. As Vice President of UH Ventures, he manages an innovation portfolio that supports University Hospitals' strategic initiatives and partnerships through product innovation and human-centered design. Outside of work, Kip serves on the editorial board of Design Issues, a design and innovation journal published by MIT Press. He also serves on several nonprofit boards. We talk about systems and design in healthcare. Listen to learn about: >> Complex systems >> Design in healthcare >> What is the role of management? >> The COVID-19 pandemic's effect on healthcare innovation >> The interplay between design and management Our Guest Kipum (Kip) Lee, PhD is a designer and healthcare executive at University Hospitals Health System in Cleveland, OH. As Vice President of UH Ventures, he manages an innovation portfolio that supports University Hospitals' strategic initiatives and partnerships through product innovation and human-centered design. Outside of work, he serves as an editor of Design Issues, the premier journal on design history, theory, criticism, and practice published by MIT Press, and on several non-profit boards. In addition to playing with his two kids, Kip loves used hardcover books, freshly ground coffee, low-humidity weather, and a good conversation. Show Highlights [01:26] Kip's journey into design began with a love of drawing and visualization at a very early age. [02:36] Experiencing the New Jersey Governor's School of the Arts during high school. [04:11] Kip talks about cultural expectations and how that affected his choices as he entered university. [05:09] Why Kip chose bioengineering as an undergrad. [06:20] A brief time in architecture as a graduate student. [07:47] Carnegie Mellon's interaction design program. [08:27] Kip's revelation while attending the U.S.'s first ever service design conference. [09:40] The course that made Kip fall in love with learning again. [10:41] How Kip's studies in architecture and bioengineering have come full circle in his current work in healthcare. [13:51] Designing in complex systems. [14:00] Kip uses the military and warfare as another example of a complex system. [15:38] Looking at healthcare as a complex system. [16:54] Kip offers a pre-pandemic example of the challenges that arose in implementing a new technology. [18:26] Difficulties that can arise with terminology and in how language is used. [19:21] Vaccine hesitancy vs. vaccine readiness. [21:48] Complex systems are multidimensional, and aesthetics is often just as important as the technical. [23:02] Kip offers an example using PPE/masks during the pandemic to show why aesthetics matters. [26:06] The complexities involved in shaping and influencing people's behaviors and choices [31:16] Dawan brings up the idea of shifting management more into performance facilitation rather than control. [32:43] A Miro Moment. [34:01] Kip likes Henry Mintzberg's idea of management as “controlled chaos,” maintaining the balance between exploration, freedom, and a sense of order. [35:43] The need for c-suite execs to stay grounded in the actual front line work of the organization. [36:46] Designers as rebels. [37:05] Kip talks about parallel developments in both design and management. [38:43] What can designers learn from management? [41:33] How the pandemic helped healthcare innovation. [42:55] Good designers and good managers both work to create the environment where healthy and exciting interactions and projects can take place. [44:46] Service design's uniqueness as a discipline. [47:09] The desire to serve is an essential aspect of what it means to be a designer. [47:39] Bruno Latour's benefits of design. [49:03] Many things that are aspects of design are also aspects of management. [51:10] Designers and managers are often doing the same work. [51:37] Dawan talks about shifting from “solutions” to “responses.” [54:28] Systems have histories and memories. [57:14] Kip offers thoughts and advice for others who want to apply their design skills in the healthcare industry. [01:04:15] Kip's last words about the design field as a whole. Links Kip on Twitter Kip on LinkedIn Kip on Google Scholar Kip on University Hospitals Ventures Kip on ResearchGate TEDx CLE, Master Builders for the 21st Century Critique of Design Thinking in Organizations: Strongholds and Shortcomings of the Making Paradigm Hack from Home | Discovering Problems in Our Dwelling Place: A Design Thinking Approach Architekton Designing for Value in Specialty Referrals: A New Framework for Eliminating Defects and Wicked Problems, by Patrick Runnels, Heather Wobbe, Kipum Lee, Randy Jernejcic, and Peter Pronovost Book Recommendations Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World, by General Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and Chris Fussell The Systems Approach and Its Enemies, by C. West Churchman The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think In Action, by Donald Schön A Cautious Prometheus? A Few Steps Toward a Philosophy of Design (with Special Attention to Peter Sloterdijk), keynote lecture from Bruno Latour Other Design Thinking 101 Episodes You Might Like Healthcare Innovation + Nursing + Opportunities for Designers — DT101 E109 A Designer's Journey into Designing for Health and Healthcare with Lorna Ross — DT101 E45 Service Design in Healthcare Inside Multiple Business Contexts with Jessica Dugan — DT101 E22

On this edition of Parallax Views, Stefania Maurizi, an investigative journalist reporting for Italy's Il Fatto Quotidiano who has dedicated a large portion of her career to covering Julian Assange and Wikileaks, joins us to discuss her book Secret Power: Wikileaks and Its Enemies. The book details how Wikileaks related to the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the War on Terror, diplomatic cables, the War on Terror, CIA cyberweapons, and more as well as the story of Julian Assange and his eventual imprisonment at Belmarsh Prison. In this conversation Stefania and I discussed: - How Wikileaks first came under Stefania's journalistic radar in 2008 - Cryptography, protected communications, and journalistic source protection in the age of mass surveillance; PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encryption - Wikileaks publication of a manual relevant to the question of torture at the U.S.'s Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp during the War on Terror; the Pentagon vs. Wikileaks - Stefania's first contact with Julian Assange - The Wikileaks documents on Julius Baer, a Swiss bank alleged to have been involved in money laundering activities; how big financial institutions try to pressure news and media - Wikileaks and the Vault 7 documents about CIA cyberweapons; these documents detailed how the CIA was using software vulnerabilities to access smart TV, cars, phones, etc.; the CIA, Weeping Angel, and the hacking of TVs; a bit of the inside story of how Stefania covered the Vault 7 story, the fears she had covering the story, and the cautions she took while reporting on it; Mike Pompeo and the CIA's response to the Vault 7 documents; the alleged leaker of the Vault 7 documents, Joshua Schulte - Wikileaks and the public interest - Stefania discusses the Julian Assange she knows based on her years of experience with him - Stefania addresses the criticisms of Julian Assange and Wikileaks; the accusation that Wikileaks put lives in danger through its leaks; the rape allegations against Assange; accusations of Assange and Wikileaks being in bed with Russian and Donald Trump - State criminality, war crimes, and the persecution of whistleblowers - Stefania discusses her response to people that ask her if "Assange will be killed"; she argues in many ways Assange has already been "killed" in terms of the deterioration of his mental and physical well-being during his imprisonment - Wikileaks, democracy, and the freedom of the press - Assange, Chelsea Manning, the FBI informant Siggi hakkari (aka Siggi the Hacker aka Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson), and the password cracking/hacking charges against Assange - What Stefania sees as the stakes of the Julian Assange extradition case; the CIA and extraordinary rendition; Stefania's belief that Assange has no change of a fair trial in the U.S. and that his extradition would open a Pandora's box that'd have a chilling effect on freedom of the press in the U.S. and other countries as well as - Comparing and contrasting the Assange case to that of Daniel Ellsberg, who famously leaked the Vietnam War-era Pentagon Papers and was targeted by the Richard Nixon administration - The story of how Assange was targeted by the late, deep pocketed GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson's security firm UC Global; the investigation in Spain regarding UC Global - Stefania's story of being spied on and targeted while covering Julian Assange and Wikileaks; The Crown Prosecution Service and the destruction of crucial documents on the Julian Assange case - And more!

Jonathan Rauch describes the social norms and institutions that generate knowledge.Follow @IdeasHavingSexx on Twitter.Today's book: The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of TruthJonathan's website, Twitter, and author page.Braver AngelsRecommended works: The Logic of Scientific Discovery and The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper; The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt; Politics and the English language by George Orwell; Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media by Jacob Mchangama; HATE by Nadine Strossen

Stefania Maurizi is an investigative journalist currently contributing to the major Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano after working for the last 14 years for la Repubblica, consistently rated among the top two Italian newspapers, and for the italian newsmagezine l'Espresso. She has worked with Julian Assange and his organization WikiLeaks since 2009, teaming up with large teams of international media to cover and investigate all WikiLeaks' secret documents Stefania speaks with host Chuck Mertz about her book "Secret Power: WikiLeaks and Its Enemies" recently published by Pluto Press. This episode also features new responses to the Question from Hell and this week in Rotten History. https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745347615/secret-power/ https://stefaniamaurizi.it/en-idx.html https://twitter.com/SMaurizi www.fattoquotidiano.it twitter.com/fattoquotidian www.repubblica.it twitter.com/repubblica

NOTE: This interview was not produced as part of the "Unauthorized Disclosure" podcast, but it is shared here to help give Stefania and her book some additional exposure. Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi partnered with WikiLeaks and covered military reports on the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars and US diplomatic cables related to Italy and the Vatican. She met WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange multiple times. She saw firsthand how WikiLeaks worked on publications, even as the United States government ramped up its efforts to target and suppress the media organization. Now, the English-translation of Stefania's book, "Secret Power: WikiLeaks and Its Enemies," is out from Pluto Press, and she joins Shadowproof's Kevin Gosztola to discuss this chronicle centered on her time as a media partner. The book also details her efforts to pursue freedom of information lawsuits against the US, United Kingdom, Sweden, and Australia for denying her access to documents related to the prosecution of Assange. Stefania kindly endorsed Kevin's forthcoming book on the Assange case, and Kevin is pleased to be able to show his support for Stefania's work and share this interview.

Award-winning Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi talks about her award-winning book "Secret Power: WikiLeaks and Its Enemies." She touches on what it was like meeting and working with Julian Assange, debunks commonly held myths about him and wiki-leaks and shares what it was like being spied on while visiting him. She also talks about her fight for secret documents. Plus a breaking news update from Maya Garner, a Scandinavian-American human rights advocate and coordinator for international advocacy for Youth Against Settlements and Friends of Hebron, about Israel's arrest of activist Issa Amro (https://twitter.com/Issaamro.) Stefania Maurizi is an Italian investigative journalist working for the Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano, after 14 years working for the Italian newsmagazine l'Espresso and the Italian daily La Repubblica. She has worked on all WikiLeaks releases of secret documents since 2009. She is also the only journalist who has conducted multi-jurisdictional litigation to defend the right of the press to access the full documentation on Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks journalists. In addition to her work on WikiLeaks, she has partnered with Glenn Greenwald to reveal the Snowden files about Italy. She has also interviewed A.Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani atomic bomb, revealed the condolence payment agreement between the US government and the family of Italian aid worker Giovanni Lo Porto, killed in a US drone strike, and investigated the harsh working conditions of Pakistani workers in a major Italian garment factory in Karachi. In her book "Secret Power. WikiLeaks and Its Enemies" (Pluto Press, foreword by Ken Loach), she reconstructs the Assange and WikiLeaks case based on her over ten years of investigative journalism. The Italian version of her book has won two major journalistic prizes: the European Award for Investigative and Judicial Journalism, and the 2022 Premio Alessandro Leogrande for investigative journalism in narrative form. Stefania has won a number of other major journalistic prizes, including the Armenise Harvard Fellowship and the Colomba D'Oro Award conferred by Archivio Disarmo. Maya Garner is a Scandinavian-American human rights advocate and coordinator for international advocacy for Youth Against Settlements and Friends of Hebron. At the age of 19, she spent more than a year in Hebron witnessing daily human rights violations and has since campaigned internationally. She wrote her Bachelor's dissertation on the architecture and resistance in Hebron city at UCL in London. For the entire discussion, bonus content, to support independent media and to help make this program possible, please join us on Patreon at - https://www.patreon.com/thekatiehalpershow

This episode of the Popperian Podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Elyse Hargreaves. They speak about chapter 10 of Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies, the nature and often well-meaning origins of totalitarianism, the fall of Athens to Sparta, the betrayal of Socrates and Athenian democracy by Plato and the oligarchical class, and the one factor that Popper had neglected until then in his analysis – happiness, specifically the tyrannical dangers of trying to make people happy. Elyse Hargreaves is an ardent student of Popper, passionate about advancing the cause of the open society; for freedom, rationality and humanitarianism. Upon finding Popper in her early 20's, she has since been determined to popularise his ideas in whatever medium she can. Since then, she has released a free audiobook version of Popper's Conjectures and Refutations on YouTube which you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtUn6tOI13ZF4iEhzYM0Dvg and has recently released an audiobook version of Rafe Champion's Guide to the Open Society and Its Enemies which you can find on Audible here: https://www.audible.com/pd/A-Guide-to-the-Open-Society-and-Its-Enemies-Audiobook/B0BF2MZ4FJ?qid=  Support via Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/jedleahenry Support via PayPal – https://www.paypal.me/jrleahenry Shop – https://shop.spreadshirt.com.au/JLH-shop/ Support via Bitcoin - 31wQMYixAJ7Tisp773cSvpUuzr2rmRhjaW Website – The Popperian Podcast — Jed Lea-Henry Libsyn – The Popperian Podcast (libsyn.com) Youtube – The Popperian Podcast - YouTube Twitter – https://twitter.com/jedleahenry RSS - https://popperian-podcast.libsyn.com/rss *** Underlying artwork by Arturo Espinosa

On today's show, we bring on Ken Auletta to talk about the Harvey Weinstein scandal. Links from the show:* Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence* Ken's website* Subscribe to the newsletterAbout my guest:Ken Auletta launched the Annals of Communications column for The New Yorker magazine in 1992. He is the author of twelve books, including five national bestsellers—Three blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way; Greed and Glory On Wall Street: The Fall of the House of Lehman; The Highwaymen: Warriors of the Information Super Highway; World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies; and Googled: The End Of The World As We Know It. His twelfth book, Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (And Everything Else), was published in June 2018. His thirteenth book, Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence, was published in July 2022. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dispatchesfromthewarroom.substack.com/subscribe

This episode of the Popperian Podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with James Kierstead. From The Open Society and Its Enemies, later essays, and private letters, they speak about the meaning behind Karl Popper's ‘paradox of tolerance': “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them…We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.” James Kierstead is a Senior Lecturer in Classics at Victoria University and a Research Fellow at the New Zealand Initiative. Together with Michael Johnston he co-hosts Free Kiwis!, a podcast dedicated to issues to do with freedom and free speech in a New Zealand context. He tweets @Kleisthenes2 *** The Limits of Toleration The Limits of Toleration - Open Inquiry *** Free Kiwis! (James Kierstead - YouTube). *** You can follow James Kierstead's ongoing work at: James Kierstead | Victoria University of Wellington - Academia.edu and James Kierstead Profile | Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington (wgtn.ac.nz)   Support via Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/jedleahenry Support via PayPal – https://www.paypal.me/jrleahenry Shop – https://shop.spreadshirt.com.au/JLH-shop/ Support via Bitcoin - 31wQMYixAJ7Tisp773cSvpUuzr2rmRhjaW Website – The Popperian Podcast — Jed Lea-Henry Libsyn – The Popperian Podcast (libsyn.com) Youtube – The Popperian Podcast - YouTube Twitter – https://twitter.com/jedleahenry RSS - https://popperian-podcast.libsyn.com/rss *** Underlying artwork by Arturo Espinosa

Author Ken Auletta has been the chief political correspondent for the New York Post, a weekly columnist for the Village Voice, contributing editor at New York magazine and contributor to The New Yorker since 1977.  He is the author of twelve books, including five national bestsellers —Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way; Greed and Glory On Wall Street: The Fall of the House of Lehman; The Highwaymen: Warriors of the Information Superhighway; World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies; and Googled: The End of the World as We Know It. His latest book, Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence, serves as a biography, an examination of the circumstances that led to the abuses and the final chapter of Auletta's reporting on Weinstein that began with a New Yorker profile two decades ago. Ken Auletta and Alec discuss Auletta's upbringing in Coney Island, his early career in politics and the culture of Weinstein's many enablers.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Subscribe to Reactionary Minds: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | YouTubeReactionary Minds is a project of The UnPopulist. Hosted by Aaron Ross Powell. Produced by Landry Ayres.The following is a transcript of Reactionary Minds’ interview with Virginia Postrel, author of many books, including The Future and Its Enemies. The transcript has been lightly edited for flow and clarity.Aaron Ross Powell: I’m Aaron Ross Powell, and this is Reactionary Minds, a project of The UnPopulist. We’re used to thinking about politics as a battle between left and right, progressive and conservative. But those sides can be somewhat protean, with their positions, preferences and policies shifting in ways that make it difficult to analyze the political landscape clearly.My guest today has a different way of framing politics—one she first set out 24 years ago, and one which looks more and more prescient with every passing day. Virginia Postrel is the author of many books, including The Future and Its Enemies. Her latest is the Fabric of Civilization. The core of Postrel’s framework for understanding politics isn’t left versus right, but dynamism versus stasis.Aaron Ross Powell: What does it mean to be a “stasist,” to use your term?Virginia Postrel: What I say in The Future and Its Enemies when I’m just laying out the basic distinctions is that dynamists, which is people like me, have a central value of learning. We can talk about that later, but the contrast is important, and stasists come in a couple of varieties, but their central value is stability or control.Then I divide them into what I call reactionaries, which are the people who are more into keeping things literally the same, not necessarily the status quo. It could be going back to some imagined past or creating some utopia, but the idea of a stable society. Then technocrats, who are much more common in liberal democratic societies, who say, well, we want progress—we want things to change—but it’s got to look exactly like this. Very much an early 20th-century idea of control and planning the future, so that progress becomes something not that evolves, but that is dictated.Aaron: When you say early 20th century and the rise of the technocratic position, is that because something new happened in the 20th century, or is it because prior to the 20th century, stasis won out because we weren’t moving very quickly anyway?Virginia: That’s a very good question—not one that I really thought about when I was writing this book many years ago. But I think what happened was the rise of large business enterprises, railroads and huge manufacturing corporations, vertically integrated enterprises where you had to have a range of control to operate the business. That all happened really beginning of the 19th century, where you had these much larger organizations than had existed before.They were very successful, and people developed new and genuinely innovative and efficient ways of doing things. And that led to an idea that if you can do this at U.S. Steel or General Motors, you should be able to do it for the whole society— that, in fact, because they were run by the profit motive, these enterprises maybe were a little inefficient and wasteful and duplicative (competition was seen as wasteful and duplicative). And so that you could do something about that [inefficiency] if you could plan the society in general. There are many forms of this in the early 20th century.Obviously, you have the full-blown state socialism, state ownership of the means of production, with extreme versions in places like the Soviet Union. But there were also much more democracy-friendly versions associated with Thorstein Veblen, who’s famous for The Theory of the Leisure Class, but who also wrote a book whose title escapes me at the moment where he contrasted the good engineers with the bad financiers. The idea was that if you could just set engineering principles loose on society, you could have a much more efficient and productive society. That idea was in the air, and it came out of real business innovation that just got applied in ways that didn’t work.One of the things that’s interesting about the history of liberalism is that before Friedrich Hayek’s writing on “the use of knowledge in society” and the whole socialist calculation debate—and I don't want to get into the weeds of that—what was wrong with that theory of control wasn’t obvious. A lot of people who were basically liberal became very attracted to socialism because it seemed like a way of improving the lot of people and extending the liberal contract in certain ways.The idea that it was replacing local knowledge and even the knowledge of individual preferences with some necessarily dictatorial—even if it was being done in a democratic way—process was not obvious in 1900. It was not well articulated. I think there were people who understood it intuitively, but it had not really been fully grasped.Aaron: That raises an interesting distinction, I think, within stasism, as opposed to dynamism. What you’ve just described is an awfully let’s call it ideological or philosophical argument for stasis. You had these arguments about the way a firm runs, and we can analogize that out, and we can manage progress and so on. That’s like an intellectual approach. But a lot of stasis seems to be more of almost an aesthetic approach. So you get people like Wendell Berry—or Josh Hawley in some of his earlier, pre-political career writings is almost making an argument that the ideal America is one that always and forever looks like a Thomas Kinkade painting. Or that modern architecture is bad and what we really need is the return of the aesthetics of the Catholic church to rule us. Are these distinct things, or do they bleed together?Virginia: They are distinct things, and historically they’re distinct things because they’re very different reactions to what’s called the second industrial revolution. That is the rise of these really large enterprises, railroads being that quintessential one. In the 19th century, you also have the arts-and-crafts movement around William Morris. You have the rise of neo-Gothic architecture, which is initially a very ideologically freighted thing. It is a rejection of industrialism.The irony is that it then just—I write about this in The Substance of Style— becomes a style. Therefore, you get to a point where you have Blair Hall at Princeton University built and named for a railroad magnate in the neo-Gothic style because it associates the university with the great universities of Britain. It takes on a different meaning over time, but there is definitely in reaction to industrialism not only this kind of technocratic argument, which also takes a Marxist form; there is a medievalist argument, as well, that we are losing handcraft. We’re losing beauty. The cities are ugly. They’re crowded—of course, cities were always crowded—but [there’s] coal smoke and factories, and it is a ugly transition in many ways. Therefore, we should go back to a pastoral, hierarchical, often Catholic ideal. That is a reactionary stasis, which is very prominent in a lot of the great literature of the period—not so much in novels, but in poetry. Yes, they are two distinct, very old—at this point we’re talking 150 years; I guess that’s not old by human history, but certainly old by American history—ideals, and they take different forms.The American ideal is different from the European ideal, the reactionary ideal. Also, one thing that’s different is while there is this Wendell Berry, farmer, slightly medievalist view, there is also in the U.S. a wilderness ideal. In Europe, the cultivated landscape is always, or almost always, the ideal, whereas in the U.S., you also have a notion that untouched by human hands is ideal. That’s less common on the right than on, I don't know, I hesitate to call [it] exactly the left, but in the environmental movement.Aaron: That raises my next question, which is, Does this technocratic versus reactionary (or traditionalist or natural) by and large map onto a left-right spectrum? It certainly seems like technocrats are the left and the center left, generally speaking, and the people calling for a return to the old ways tend to be on the right.Virginia: Well, part of the point of The Future and Its Enemies is that these things do not really map onto the left and the right. They cross those divisions. It’s just that what people want is somewhat different, and so conservative technocrats might be more inclined to regulate land use so that you have single-family suburban homes or regulate immigration in a technocratic way, so that you give priority to people who have a lot of college degrees and professional skills, because they’re going to be—a Brahman from India is better than a peasant from Guatemala, because we can anticipate that.I’m just using those as examples. I describe technocracy as an ideological ideal in the early 20th century, because there was an intellectual movement there, but I don’t think it is primarily ideological. I think, for many people, it is common sense. It is common sense that somebody ought to be in charge, and people ought to make rules, and we ought to control things. And if this is dangerous, we should prohibit it, and if it’s good, we should subsidize it. This is the norm in our politics, and that wasn’t new in the 20th century.Things were subsidized and prohibited forever, but it got this patina of efficiency and rationality and modernity in the early 20th century. It took on an ideological air, but it is the norm in our politics. That’s one reason I spend a lot of time in the book talking about it. But really what interests me is [that] I think of it as the norm: That it’s what most of our political discussions are, but both reactionaries and dynamists, therefore, have to make alliances with technocrats in order to get the world they want. They’re the polar opposites, but the question is—in some ways, the technocrats decide who wins.Aaron: How totalizing are these two—are the dynamic versus the static viewpoint? Because there are lots of vectors for change. There’s technological change; there’s social; there’s political. Like we right now refer to, say, the Trumpist movement as “conservative,” but populism is on the one hand, very stasist in culture shifting too quickly—I-don't-like-it-make-it-stop!—but it’s very politically radical in terms of [saying] the systems that we have in place need to be torn down and replaced.Virginia: I describe them as if they’re these silos, but that’s just a model; that’s not reality. That’s the map, not the landscape. First of all, most people have elements of all of these things in their thinking, in their intuitions, in their politics; as you say, it takes multiple dimensions. Somebody may think that we should, even within, say, economic regulation—somebody may think that we should let people build houses more freely, but the FDA should regulate really tightly, something like that.Talking about the radical institutional aspects of populists of various types brings up the issue of rules, which is one of the things that’s the trickiest to understand and to grapple with. How do you think about rules? Let’s say you want this kind of dynamism. You want this kind of learning, bottom-up order without design, trial and error, correction, economic progress, or social learning. What sort of rules give you that? There’s very much this idea that you need nested rules, and you need certain rules that are fundamental and don’t change very often.You could call that the constitutional order, and those need to be fairly simple, and they need to be broadly applicable, and they need to allow things like recombinations and people using their own knowledge to make decisions and plans. And there’s a chapter about that, which I then, in a completely different context, reinvented in The Substance of Style; honest to God, I did it from the bottom up. I didn’t refer, because it was all about neighborhoods, where [it’s a] fact that people care about what houses look like, but on the other hand, they care about their neighbor’s house, and they will pay money to live in a planned community—but on the other hand, people want freedom, and how do you think about that?One of the issues is that you need to be able to move when rules are very prescriptive; there need to be ways to exit. What you’re seeing in this populist upsurge is a notion that the rules that we think of as not changing very much—that stable institutions, the liberal institutions that govern societies—are barriers to what populists want, and so, therefore, they need to be taken down.That does become a radical move. One of the misperceptions that was in lots of reviews of the book was the idea that dynamism equals change, and that I’m saying all change is good. First of all, even in the process of dynamism—that is, bottom-up change—not all change is good. It’s an experimental process. Sometimes you do things—whether it’s you start a company or you change your living arrangements—and it’s a bad idea. It doesn’t work, and that’s why we need criticism and competition, and that’s part of the process.Aaron: Then the goal is we want a dynamic society because it produces all of these. The book is full of all the wonderful benefits that come out of a dynamic society. But at the same time, the people who are fans of stasis—yes, a lot of them take it way too far in a reactionary direction—but. … There is something fundamentally true to the notion of wanting things to be somewhat stable and familiar. I just three weeks ago moved my whole family from Washington, D.C., to Colorado.We all know moving is incredibly stressful, and it’s not just because of all the logistics you have to deal with. Uprooting yourself is deeply stressful, and [it] takes a long time to get re-established. More people move in a dynamic society than in the past, but the world around us is changing too, in a way that feels like the same stress that I have with moving. People want [to feel] like, “My life is settled and is going to look roughly tomorrow the way it did today.” There is something very human and understandable about that. How do you get the effects of dynamism without everyone constantly feeling like they’re being uprooted?Virginia: This is a really good question, a really hard question. Part of it goes back to this idea of nested rules and also nested commitments. One of the important aspects of dynamist rules is that they allow for commitments—that you can make contracts of various kinds (to use that term), but it could also be marriage; it could be, I'm going to live in this town, and I'm going to be involved in civic institutions and volunteer institutions, and I'm going to put down roots here.That said, one of the difficult things is that one person’s stability is an intrusion on another person’s plans often. For example, I write a lot about housing, and there’s some about housing in the book, but there’s not as much as I would probably put there if I were writing it today. One thing that we see in Los Angeles, where I live, is there are a lot of veto players whenever you want to build anything, and they are people who want their neighborhood to stay the same.One result of that is that people who have grown up in Los Angeles, the children of people who lived here, cannot live here anymore because it’s too expensive. That's this kind of, I want stability [laughs]—oh, but wait a minute; I’d also like to see my grandchildren, but now they live in Texas because they couldn’t afford to live here. There’s often trade-offs with issues of trying to make stability, but human life inherently changes. Generations come and go; we grow older; people have children, et cetera.There is a certain amount of change that always is going to happen, but there is a highly nonideological issue which comes up, in fact, in my most recent book, The Fabric of Civilization, in the context of the original Luddites. The original Luddites were not ideologues [chuckles]; they were not stasists who wanted to keep medieval ways because they liked what the Middle Ages represented to their intellect.They were hand weavers who had prospered from the invention of mechanical spinning, which gave them ample supplies of thread. So they had prospered because of the technological and economic upheavals of a generation earlier, and now they were losing their jobs to power looms, and so they were mad. They were stressed. At that time, losing your job was not like losing your job in 21st century America; losing your job meant your children might starve.There was a reason to be upset. They engaged in both nonviolent civic activity, petitioning Parliament and that sort of thing—and also violent riots and smashing looms and that sort of thing. The government said, “No, you don’t get to choose.” There was a technocratic aspect of that, which is, they said, "Look, this is going to be good for society. It’s going to create new jobs and new industries. It’s going to make Britain more prosperous against its rivals.” All of these kinds of things. And so power looms went ahead, and some of the Luddites got deported to Australia (the more violent ones).That is really important in the history of economic prosperity, and the people who were the children and grandchildren and great-great-great-grandchildren of those people are far better off in basically every respect than their ancestors, but it was a true, genuine, painful transition. I don’t know what my prescription would’ve been back then other than let this go forward. In a richer society, there are things that can be done with redistribution to ease those transitions.Another thing that I think we don't emphasize nearly enough in the U.S. today is the traditional American thing of moving to different parts of the country. There's considerable evidence that people are more locked into place than they used to be, and that makes certain things more difficult. Particularly, if you are somebody who is living in Detroit, say, it might be better if you could move to Colorado or North Carolina, but you don't have the money, because moving is not just disruptive; it's expensive to do so.There may be other barriers like licensing regulations or that sort of thing, but the main barrier, aside from the psychological barrier, is the financial one. I think that that's the sort of thing you need to think about from a policy point of view. But you're right. People like change; they like the benefits of change; but only up to a point.Aaron: There's another side to it, too, I think. As I was re-reading the book in prep for our conversation, I kept thinking there's a moral imperative of dynamism when you think about it in a social context, because the story you just told is an economic and a production one. The disruption that can come from changes in economics—and we see this all the time like a lot of the reactionary movement right now is—but we're losing the old lifestyle of working in the factory in the small town and supporting your family at a middle-class level on one salary. That's gone away.That's an economic story, but I think a lot of what we're seeing today from illiberal sides is about social change. The anti-trans backlash is in a lot of respects about this: “My conceptions of gender and gender roles are that there are people who are setting those aside, living in ways that are contrary to them, but we also see the traditional family is under attack.”It's not under attack in the sense of someone is coming and trying to just tear apart my traditional family, but that there are people who are living in nontraditional ways, and it makes me uncomfortable. In that case, it seems harder to justify the stasist worldview from a moral standpoint, because what you're saying is often that people who were traditionally marginalized or oppressed are now able to get outside of—are now centered in a way that they didn't used to be, are gaining privilege in a way that they didn't used to be, have status in a way that they didn't used to have.Or are able to express themselves and author their own identities in ways that they weren’t, and I don't like that; that makes me uncomfortable. We need to shut it down; we need to punish corporations that are too “woke” in what they're expressing or what they're putting in movies and television. That one seems harder to say yes, you've got a point [to], because telling other people they can't have dynamic self-identities isn't the kind of thing that we should necessarily correct for or compromise with.Virginia: Yes and no. The way you put it, sure, but it's also the case that a lot of these fights are between two sides each of which wants to force the other one to adopt its worldview and to pay obeisance to its worldview. So that it's not just that I have to tolerate someone who has [another worldview], whether they believe that everyone who doesn't believe in Jesus will go to hell, or whether they believe that someone with male genitalia can be considered a woman.Those are two worldviews that you can live with in a society, where people hold those views, and we just tolerate them, and it's like, I don't care if you believe Mercury is in retrograde and makes your computer go crazy. I think it's stupid, but okay, sure what the hell. We can treat them like that, or we can have fights where everybody has to get on the same page. And a lot of what we're negotiating now is what is it where everybody has to be on the same page.These are the great fights that led to liberalism in the first place—[these] were the religious wars, where there was an assumption that unless everybody agreed on that [question], unless everybody in the society was of the same faith, the society would not be strong. Obviously, this is potted history, but they kept fighting over that until they were exhausted and said, “Let's have liberalism instead.” That's oversimplifying much. A lot of these fights today are about, How do you accommodate when people have radically different worldviews, live in the same society, have to know about each other's worldviews?One of the differences today versus when I was growing up in the Bible Belt is that everybody sees everything. The people I went to college with at Princeton for the most part—I was raised a liberal Presbyterian, but the assumptions I made about the people around me—I might as well have been from Mars. I could understand Renaissance literature, because it's steeped in a religious society, in a way that most of the people that I went to school with couldn't, because they had never been in a place where everybody was religious—and really religious, not just nominally.Also, that affects jokes and stuff. Supposedly, my freshman roommate got mad, she told somebody, because I had said she was going to hell. Considering I didn't believe in hell, that was impossible, but I must have made some joke that anybody who knew me in high school would've understood. Anyway, this is a long way of saying that I think that you are right, and this goes to the issue of commitments and being able to carve out your own life. Some of these fights are about that.One of the things that happened since I wrote the Future and Its Enemies is [gay marriage]. When I wrote the Future and Its Enemies, I was for gay marriage, but that was way ahead of the curve. It advanced partly because of this desire to have a commitment. I see this as a constant negotiation, and I also see the economic ideals as not being completely disconnected from it.People talk about the good old days: Let's go back to the good old days, when you could work in a factory and have a union job and raise a family on one income and all of that. Well, first of all, I'm from South Carolina, and that wasn't the case then. Even if you were white, people were poor. Yes, you could do that—you could raise a family on one income—if you were an engineer, but not if you worked in a textile mill. You would have both parents working in a textile mill and probably the teenage kids as well—and that's, again, if you were white. If you were Black, you were even worse off. So there is a kind of centering, as you say, of a particular not only ethnically narrow experience, but also even regionally narrow experience in that kind of nostalgia. I think that remembering who's left out is an important part. It goes to this issue of the knowledge problem—of the idea that dynamism allows people to operate on their local knowledge. It allows people who might not be included in the big, top-down view to force themselves to be included, because they just go through life and do their thing.Aaron: I think part of that is not necessarily stasists, or not necessarily stasists versus dynamism or change, but about pace of change. This is the point that you made about we're all aware of what each other is doing in a way that we didn't used to be. There always are subcultures; a subculture adopts a handful of things and then innovates on them very quickly and becomes weird and pops up. Suddenly everyone's goth for a little while, and goth is very different. And this shows up in fashion frequently, or in me trying to keep up with my middle schoolers slang or so on. With the social media stuff in particular, we end up in these situations where you don't even think that your subculture is a subculture anymore. You think it is the dominant culture because you've cultivated your Twitter following, and everyone you know online knows to talk this way, or that these terms are passé or shouldn't be used anymore or whatever. Then you assume that's what everyone knows and everyone talks about. I don't even know that, in a lot of cases, it is you saying, “I want to force my subculture’s views on everyone else”; it's more just you assume that that's what all of the views are.Virginia: It's like my joke about you're going to hell. I assume that you know how I mean it—oh, wait a minute, you don't, because you don't come from that subculture. It used to be that these subcultures were [overlooked]. The mainstream media—The New York Times, Time Magazine—did not know, and even Gallup polling did not know, there was such a thing as “born-again Christians” until Jimmy Carter. And they were a huge percentage of the population. It's just that they weren't the people who worked at The New York Times; they weren't the people who lived in New York, for the most part.Partly because I have this weird background of having lived in a lot of different parts of the country, I'm more aware of how many subcultures there are, and my Facebook friends come from all of them, pretty much. I think you're absolutely right that part of what happens is people assume that their norms are universal, or should be universal, and that therefore people who violate them are bad people.And there are rewards for making those assumptions. There are rewards in terms of attention. There are rewards in terms of, “You go, girl,” or whatever, and that has been corrosive. I think that it's not new in human history, but as you say, there has been an acceleration of it, and the idea that you could know about these horrible other people who think differently from you is more likely. You don't just know about them, you probably get a distorted picture of them, because it's being filtered through people who are spinning it or selectively representing it in a way that maximizes not only its strangeness, but its “evil.”Aaron: Yes. I think we also, too, don't necessarily appreciate the pace at which things change and become accepted in our subcultures. You mentioned you wrote this book—this book was published in 1998, I think it was.Virginia: Yes. Right. So I was writing it in like 1996, '97.Aaron: I was in high school in the 90s. Thinking about gay marriage—you mentioned gay marriage—how dramatic the change on acceptance of gay relationships and gay marriage has been: When I was in high school, Ellen coming out on her sitcom was, like, We're going to have a gay character on television! This was national news; everyone was talking about it. Whereas now, 30 years later, it's just like, so what, there's a gay character.It happens very quickly, and this makes me think how much of this is about—and going back to the rules, too—ambiguity versus clarity; that people want to know how things are, and how they're going to be. And a lot of rapid change is not constant. It's not uniform. It is experimentation and competing views and figuring out which is the right one, or which is the acceptable one.All of that messiness means that things are ambiguous, and that what we want is clarity. We want to know, okay, this is the rule that I'm going to have to follow tomorrow. This is what's going to be acceptable. I'm not going to get called out for this. I'm willing to change, but I want to know what it's going to be. That dynamism is inherently ambiguous.Virginia: Well, I think that is part of it. I think people do want to be able to make their own plans and structure their own lives in a way that it is going to work for them. I would argue that you're better off in a world where people aren't constantly making new rules, from their plans, to run your plans. That's one of the big Dynamist ideas. But you were talking about people wanting clarity. One of the things that I've written about over the years is clothing sizes and problems of fit. Bear with me; this is relevant. People tend to think that it would be better if there were specific clothing sizes—that if you knew that every size eight dress was for a 35-inch bust and a 28-inch waist (I'm making these up) and 40-inch hips, or something like that, that would be great, because everything would be the same. You would know exactly what you were getting. It would actually be terrible. In the ‘40s, the catalog companies actually went to the government and said, Could you please establish some standard sizes? And they did. But almost as soon as they were established, different brands started not complying with them, because it wasn't required; it wasn't a regulation. The reason is that people's bodies come in different proportions—even two people who are the same height and weight. One will have longer legs, one will have shorter arms, one will have a bigger waist, the other will have bigger hips, et cetera. What happens is that brands develop their own fit models and their own sizes. The lack of clarity actually makes it more possible for people to find what fits. I think that is an analogy to one aspect of dynamism—that is, the fact that there isn't a single model that everyone must comply with makes it more likely that people can structure their own lives in meaningful ways. Now that said, this goes back to this issue of nested rules. Hammering down on people because they express views that were perfectly normal 10 minutes ago, or worse yet, because they use a term in a nonpejorative way (they think), and suddenly, it's turned out that it's now pejorative: This is not good. This is a kind of treating as fundamental rules things that should be flexible and adjustable and tolerant. There is this idea of tolerance when we talk about tolerance as a liberal value, a liberal virtue, but there's also mechanical tolerances. I think a society needs that kind of tolerance as well. That allows for a certain amount of differentiation and pliability; that allows things to work, and it allows people not to be constantly punished. Zero tolerance is a bad idea. Anytime people are having zero tolerance, you're almost always going to be running into trouble.Aaron: You published this book 24 years ago. As I said at the beginning, I think the framework and the thesis that you articulated in it is really powerful and helpful for understanding things. But the political landscape and the cultural landscape looks rather different now than it did in the ’90s. Looking at the threats to dynamism that we see today and the rise of illiberalism, what are the lessons that we should draw from the stasist-versus-dynamist framework for countering those threats, or at least understanding them in a way that may prove helpful to ameliorating them?Virginia: Well, there are different forms of illiberalism around the world, and there are different reasons that people back them. One of the things that is striking in the rise of Trump in the U.S. is that one component of the people who voted for him—I don't know whether this would be true if he runs again, because the whole January 6 thing alters it somewhat—were frustrated dynamists. They were people who are really sick of technocracy; they're really sick of being told what they can and cannot do. They're really sick of the fact that it's hard to build things—that it's hard to create, especially with atoms, rather than bits. Peter Thiel might be a a high-profile example, but there are lots of just little guys who own plumbing companies or whatever who are in that category. The notion that you need to knock over the table to effect change: I think some of that comes from this idea that technocracy has tied down ordinary people like Gulliver and the Lilliputians.I think one thing that needs to happen—again, I don't know that this applies in Hungary, but certainly I think it's applicable in the U.S.—is that technocrats need to get their act together, at least some of them, and need to get a little more dynamism in their heads. You're seeing some of this among intellectuals like Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias on the center-left, and you definitely see it in the issues around housing. That's one thing, because dynamists can't do it alone, and we need allies; we need to peel off technocrats who will support us, many of whom are liberals or think of themselves as liberals, in the sense that they're not illiberal. As far as the people who really want to go back to the Middle Ages, part of this is that you need to tell different stories—and this is hard. Culture is hard. This is not a libertarian show, but one of the things that I say to libertarians and also to conservatives is that they always talk about culture the way leftists talk about markets: as if there's one giant lever. If I could just get my hands on that lever and pull, I could make everything the way I want it. That's a fallacy in markets, and it's a fallacy in culture as well. Whether you like it or not, it's a dynamic process. I hadn't really thought about this, but in a way, The Fabric of Civilization, my latest book, which is the story of world history through the story of textiles, says the world is always changing. Even in the periods where it changes slowly, it changes. There are always people who are pushing against the established order, whether it's economic or cultural or whatever.Another thing that it says quite explicitly in the discussion of traditional clothing—and if somebody goes to my Substack, you can see that I posted this—is that people don't generally want to make a choice between tradition/identity and modernity/progress: They want both. Given control over their lives, they will find ways to incorporate both, to hold onto what they value in terms of their identity and tradition, and to get the benefits of modernity and liberalism.I think many people who really like change don't fully appreciate that. It was definitely not appreciated at the beginning of the 20th century and the technocratic move that we talked about earlier, but the example I use is the way indigenous women in Guatemala dress. Now, they can buy jeans and t-shirts just like everybody else, but they choose to dress in traditional garments—except they're not really traditional. They've changed in a lot of different ways. The daily blouse is made in a factory. It's made out of polyester. It's not woven on a handloom, but it still looks Maya because that identity is important. I think there is a universalizing element of liberalism that wants everyone to be a rootless cosmopolitan. Even those of us who basically are rootless cosmopolitans aren't really. We actually do have roots. I am very dedicated to living in Los Angeles. I really am from the South; whether I like it or not, it shaped me in certain ways. I have certain ties.Liberalism needs to understand that that's how people are—that they care about where they come from. They care about things that are passed down in their families. They care about their community ties, and that is perfectly compatible with liberalism and dynamism. But the manifestations of that will change. This is why the great social success story of the past 25 years—this is from a liberal, social point of view—is the story of gay marriage, because it says, yes, gay people are different in certain ways, but they are embedded in families. They want to be embedded in families—not every single one—but in the sense that most people want to be embedded in families. The mere fact that you have a sexual orientation toward the same sex does not mean that you want to leave that all behind; it means you want to have Thanksgiving, and you want to get married, and you want to have kids. And all of that which is part of normal human life since time immemorial can take a slightly different turn and still be compatible with these very ancient, conservative institutions, which, by the way, have taken a zillion different forms over human history.Aaron: Thank you for listening to Reactionary Minds, a project of The UnPopulist. If you want to learn more about the rise of a liberalism and the need to defend a free society, check out theunpopulist.substack.com.Bonus Material: Virginia Postrel, The Future and its EnemiesVirginia Postrel, “Continuity and Change: The case of Maya trajes.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theunpopulist.substack.com

Hosts Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola are joined by Stefania Maurizi, who is an Italian journalist with the daily Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano. She is also the author of the book, Secret Power: WikiLeaks and Its Enemies, which is being translated into an English version. BECOME A SUBSCRIBER: Patreon.com/UnauthorizedDisclosure Stefania reacts to the decision by United Kingdom Home Secretary Priti Patel to approve the US government's extradition request against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Later in the interview, Stefania describes how she was surveilled and had her rights violated by a private security company's spying operation against the Ecuador embassy when she visited Assange. She discusses the criminal case that is pending in a Spanish court. Both the US and UK are obstructing this investigation. BECOME A SUBSCRIBER: Rokfin.com/UnauthorizedDis Stefania concludes by describing what happens next in the case and stating why it's important to be clear in our conversations that Assange is a journalist.

India Policy Watch #1: Silver Linings PlaybookInsights on burning policy issues in India- RSJHello Readers! We are back after a nice, little break. Things have changed a bit in the past four weeks; haven’t they? Stock markets around the world are down by 10 per cent. Central banks have hiked interest rates by 40-50 bps. Inflation in the US is running at a 40-year high of over eight per cent. Retail inflation in India at 7.79 per cent is beyond the zone of comfort for RBI. The Rupee hit an all-time low last week. Technology stocks are down all over the world and the deal pipeline in the digital startup space has all but dried up. Musk is buying Twitter or maybe he isn’t. NFTs are dead and buried and crypto valuations are in a funk (or in a death spiral as Matt Levine puts it). And no one really knows anything about the Ukraine war. It drags on like a Putin-shaped monster waddling its way through the spring rasputitsa with no hope of getting anywhere. Such then are the vagaries of the world.  Thankfully, the Indian news channels were debating more important issues during these times. Like loudspeaker bans in religious institutions. Like a videographic survey of a Varanasi mosque by a 52-member team. Or if the Taj Mahal was indeed a Shiva temple called Tejo Mahalaya before Shah Jahan, that undisputed emperor of large tracts of Hindustan in the 17th century, figured he had run out of land to build a mausoleum in memory of his late wife. Or if Sri Lanka was more in the dumps than us in these times. These things matter. So they must be investigated by the intrepid reporters sitting in the studios. We must be forever thankful for the oasis of assurance that Indian news channels offer to us in this volatile and uncertain world.Anyway, coming back to the point, things have turned for the worse since we last wrote on these pages. Yet, amidst all the talks of a recession or stagflation, I believe there’s some kind of silver lining for India if it plays this situation well. Sweet Are the Uses Of InflationFirst, let’s look at the inflation and the rising interest rate scenario. India didn’t go down the path of expanding the fisc by doling out cash incentives at the peak of Covid induced distress in the economy. Much of the “20-lakh crores package” that was announced in May 2020 was either repurposing of the existing schemes or putting a monetary value on loans, subsidies or free food that was offered to the people. So, while the RBI cut rates and increased liquidity, the supply of money in the system and the government balance sheet didn’t bloat like those in the US and other western economies. The upside of the US model was that the economy rebounded faster, it began running at almost full employment and people who got Covid relief checks started spending as the economy opened up. The downside is an overheated economy that now needs to be cooled down but that comes with its consequences. The war in Ukraine and the resultant rise in oil and commodity prices have queered the pitch. So, for the first time in a long, long time the Fed has had to raise rates while the markets are falling. In 2022, the global rich have lost over a trillion dollars already as markets have fallen while the poor have had their wage increases outpace inflation. There’s less K-shaped recovery discussions in the US happening today. Anyway, these are new scenarios for an entire generation raised on rising stocks, low inflation and low-interest rates. This will be a hard landing for them. In the model that India followed, on the other hand, there was real distress in the rural and informal economy because of the absence of a direct cash transfer scheme during the pandemic. As the economy opened up, there were supply chain disruptions that hurt multiple sectors. The rise in oil prices because of the war added to the inflation. But there is an important difference between our inflation and that of the West. It is more a supply-side issue for us. A few rate hikes, some stability in oil and commodity prices and our continued diplomatic balancing act that will help us with cheap oil from Russia should stabilise things. We could be looking at a transitory elevated inflation for a few quarters rather than something more structural. Also, we have a much greater headroom to control inflation by raising rates. The repo is at 4.4 per cent after the out-of-turn increase by RBI last week. It is useful to remember as late as mid-2018, the repo was at 6.5 per cent and that didn’t look like a very high rate at that time. So, the RBI has another 150-200 bps of flex to tame inflation without seriously hurting growth, unlike the West. And that is only if the inflation prints get into the teens. That looks unlikely. So, what’s in store for us? We will continue with the trends we have seen so far: a K-shaped recovery that will hurt the poor more, the formalisation of the economy will mean the published numbers of GST collections or income tax mop-up will be buoyant, the food subsidy and other schemes started during the pandemic will continue for foreseeable future and we might get away managing to keep inflation down without killing growth.Second, the structural inflation in the western economies will mean they will have to take a couple of long-term calls. The discussion on the first of these calls is already on with an urgency markedly different from what it was six months back. How to reduce the dependence on oil and gas that support authoritarian regimes around the world? This shift away from the middle-east and Russia for energy is now an irreversible trend. Expect a rethink on nuclear energy and acceleration on the adoption of EVs. The other call is who should we back to replace China as the source of cheap goods and services to the west? The low inflation that the west has been used to over the past two decades is in large part on account of China’s integration into global trade. Now China wants to move up the value chain. Worse, it wants to replace the US as the dominant superpower. Continuing to strengthen China economically is no longer an option. China has done its cause no favour by being a bully around its neighbourhood (we know it first hand), being a terrible friend (ask Sri Lanka) and creating an axis with Russia and other authoritarian regimes around the world. There’s no going back to a working relationship with China of the kind that was prevailing before the pandemic. It is unreliable and it won’t turn into an open, democratic society with rising prosperity as was expected. It is difficult to see beyond India in filling that China-shaped void if the west were to search for continued low costs. Vietnam, Bangladesh and others could be alternatives but they lack the scale for the kind of shift that the west wants to make. The inflation pressure means the west doesn’t have time. India has an opportunity here. And I’m more sanguine about this because even if India shoots itself in foot like it is wont to, the way the die is cast it will still get the benefits of this shift. This is a window available for India even if it were to do its best (or worst) in distracting itself with useless, self-defeating issues. Lastly, there are some unintended consequences of a moderately high single-digit inflation for India. This is a government that likes to be fiscally prudent. It didn’t go down the path of ‘printing money’ during the pandemic because it cared about the debt to GDP ratio and the likely censure and downgrades from the global rating agencies. But it is also a government that likes welfarism. Welfarism + Hindutva + Nationalism is the trident it has used to power its electoral fortunes. A rate of inflation that’s higher than government bond yields will pare down the debt to GDP ratio and allow it to fund more welfare schemes. And that’s not a bad idea too considering there’s evidence that things might not be great in the informal economy. That apart, the inflation in food prices because of supply chain disruptions, increase in MSP and the war in Ukraine is good news for the rural economy. After a long time, the WPI food inflation is trending above CPI which means farmers are getting the upside of higher food prices. I guess no one will grudge them this phase however short-lived it might be. Well, I’m not often optimistic on these pages. But the way the stars have aligned themselves, India does have an opportunity to revive its economy in a manner that can sustain itself for long. The question is will it work hard and make the most of it? Or, is it happy being lulled into false glories and imaginary victimhood from the past that its news channels peddle every day?A Framework a Week: Errors of omission and commission — how VLSI relates to subsidiesTools for thinking public policy— Pranay Kotasthane(This article is an updated version of my 2014 essay on nationalinterest.in)The fundamental idea of any testing is to prevent a faulty product from reaching the end consumer. A well-designed test is one that accurately identifies all types of defects in the product. Very often though, this is not possible as tests may not cover the exact range of defects that might actually exist. In that case, the suite of tests leads to errors of commission or omissions. The interesting question, then is — which of the two errors is acceptable?An illustrationThis second problem can be explained using a fairly simple scenario from “Design-for-Testability” theory used in all integrated chip (IC) manufacturing companies. Consider a firm that makes the processor chips going into your laptops. Every single processor chip goes through a set of tests to identify if the chip is good or bad. Four scenarios result from this exercise:The two scenarios marked in green are the best-case scenarios. In the first of these, all the designed tests are unable to find any fault with the chip. At the same time, the chip itself does not show any defects after reaching the end consumers. When such awesomely functional chips reach your laptops, the chip-making companies make profits.In the second “green” scenario, the tests indicate that there is a problem with the chip. Further debugging (which involves greater costs) concludes that this chip is actually manufactured erroneously. It is then the raison d’être of the tests to throw away these chips so that they do not reach the customers.However, when tests are unable to identify any problem with the chip even though it is bad, we end up in the second choice problem 1 scenario or the “error of commission”. This is the scenario you encounter when your laptop crashes within a few days/weeks/years (within the guarantee period) after purchase. Obviously, this makes the consumer lose trust in the product and dents the manufacturing firm’s image.On the other hand, there is the second choice problem 2, where tests are designed so thoroughly that they start eliminating chips which are actually not dysfunctional. This is the Error of Omission. The cost involved with this error is that it leads to a loss of revenue as many good chips are just thrown away based on faulty tests. It also lowers the confidence of the firm.The above illustration shows the two errors that are commonly encountered in the chip manufacturing business. Which of them is tolerable is a function of the company’s image in the market, the end application of the product and the costs involved. For example, if the chip is being manufactured for use in mission-critical automobile systems like auto-braking or fuel injection, the preferable error is the error of omission as there’s a life and personal safety at stake. On the other hand, if the end application is a low-end mobile phone, the company might settle for a higher error of commission and avoid the extra costs of rejecting lots of chips.Application — SubsidiesThe above illustration can directly be applied to a subsidy case to explain the effect of identifying beneficiaries incorrectly. Using the framework above, we can visualise a subsidy program as shown in the figure below:From the framework above, which would be your second choice? The first option would be to start with very few beneficiaries being fully aware that there will be a definite Error of Omission. The next step would be to work on reducing this error rate itself. The problem here will be that there might be some people who, even though needy are not attended to urgently.Another option would be to start with a large number of beneficiaries being aware of the errors of commission. A subsequent step would be to try and reduce this error rate. The costs involved here are that the free-riders might sideline the really needy. Such schemes will also require huge sums of capital as they will start by serving a huge number of people. This is the path that most government subsidies follow in India. A digital identity project like Aadhaar plays a role right here — it can reduce the errors of commission.If you were to design a subsidy scheme, which would be your second choice scenario? Thinking about second choices is generally useful in public policy as the first-choice option is often unavailable. The art of policymaking lies in picking a second-best option that makes most people better off. India Policy Watch #2: Samaaj Ke Dushman Insights on burning policy issues in India- RSJHere is a quote for you to ponder over:All these theoretical difficulties are avoided if one abandons the question “Who should rule?” and replaces it by the new and practical problem: how can we best avoid situations in which a bad ruler causes too much harm? When we say that the best solution known to us is a constitution that allows a majority vote to dismiss the government, then we do not say the majority vote will always be right. We do not even say that it will usually be right. We say only that this very imperfect procedure is the best so far invented. Winston Churchill once said, jokingly, that democracy is the worst form of government—with the exception of all other known forms of government.Sounds relevant to our times?Over the past month, I have been reading Karl Popper’s “Open Society and Its Enemies”. It is a wonderful book written during WW2 when open and democratic societies were facing their most difficult test yet. The key question Popper is interested in is how do we avoid democracies falling into the trap of turning themselves inwards and giving into a majoritarian system of governance. Seems like as relevant a question as it was during the time of his writing. While reading the book, I chanced upon a most amazing essay written by Popper himself about his book in The Economist in 1988. Reading it three decades later, it is remarkable how accurate he is in first framing the core question of a democracy right and then looking for solutions that can be tested with scientific rigour. I have produced excerpts from that essay below:In “The Open Society and its Enemies” I suggested that an entirely new problem should be recognised as the fundamental problem of a rational political theory. The new problem, as distinct from the old “Who should rule?”, can be formulated as follows: how is the state to be constituted so that bad rulers can be got rid of without bloodshed, without violence?This, in contrast to the old question, is a thoroughly practical, almost technical, problem. And the modern so-called democracies are all good examples of practical solutions to this problem, even though they were not consciously designed with this problem in mind. For they all adopt what is the simplest solution to the new problem—that is, the principle that the government can be dismissed by a majority vote…My theory easily avoids the paradoxes and difficulties of the old theory—for instance, such problems as “What has to be done if ever the people vote to establish a dictatorship?” Of course, this is not likely to happen if the vote is free. But it has happened. And what if it does happen? Most constitutions in fact require far more than a majority vote to amend or change constitutional provisions, and thus would demand perhaps a two-thirds or even a three-quarters (“qualified”) majority for a vote against democracy. But this demand shows that they provide for such a change; and at the same time they do not conform to the principle that the (“unqualified”) majority will is the ultimate source of power—that the people, through a majority vote, are entitled to rule.Popper’s answer is the two-party system. The Congress is busy with its chintan shivir as we speak and I read Popper with bemusement when he wrote on the merits of a two-party system.The two-party systemIn order to make a majority government probable, we need something approaching a two-party system, as in Britain and in the United States. Since the existence of the practice of proportional representation makes such a possibility hard to attain, I suggest that, in the interest of parliamentary responsibility, we should resist the perhaps-tempting idea that democracy demands proportional representation. Instead, we should strive for a two-party system, or at least for an approximation to it, for such a system encourages a continual process of self-criticism by the two parties.Such a view will, however, provoke frequently voiced objections to the two-party system that merit examination: “A two-party system represses the formation of other parties.” This is correct. But considerable changes are apparent within the two major parties in Britain as well as in the United States. So the repression need not be a denial of flexibility.The point is that in a two-party system the defeated party is liable to take an electoral defeat seriously. So it may look for an internal reform of its aims, which is an ideological reform. If the party is defeated twice in succession, or even three times, the search for new ideas may become frantic, which obviously is a healthy development. This is likely to happen, even if the loss of votes was not very great.Under a system with many parties, and with coalitions, this is not likely to happen. Especially when the loss of votes is small, both the party bosses and the electorate are inclined to take the change quietly. They regard it as part of the game—since none of the parties had clear responsibilities. A democracy needs parties that are more sensitive than that and, if possible, constantly on the alert. Only in this way can they be induced to be self-critical. As things stand, an inclination to self-criticism after an electoral defeat is far more pronounced in countries with a two-party system than in those where there are several parties. In practice, then, a two-party system is likely to be more flexible than a multi-party system, contrary to first impressions.  PolicyWTF: The Wheat Ban Photo OpThis section looks at egregious public policies. Policies that make you go: WTF, Did that really happen?— Pranay KotasthaneThe Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) has banned wheat exports from India with immediate effect. For an expert’s view on why this ban is a policyWTF, read Ashok Gulati and Sachit Gupta’s take in the Indian Express. The article lists three less-worse options that the government chose to ignore, and opted for this rather extreme step instead. From a broader public policy perspective, there are three points to learn from this PolicyWTF. One, it reflects the perilously increasing scope of what’s classified as “strategic”. Once an item gets that tag, a fundamental concept behind international trade that “only individuals trade, countries don’t”, gets defenestrated. Here’s why I think this “strategic” line of thinking is the real reason behind this policyWTF. Until 11th May, the message from the government was that it has procured sufficient stocks of wheat and that there is no plan for an outright ban on exports. The PM in his recent visit to Germany even proclaimed that Indian farmers have “stepped forward to feed the world" even as many countries grapple with wheat shortages. There were reports that the government might consider an export tax on wheat; a ban wasn’t on the cards. A May 14 Business Standard report cited an unnamed senior official thus:“We have worked on four-five policy measures to curb this unabated flow of wheat from India. A final decision on this is yet to be taken. We are waiting for approval from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).”So it seems that it was the PMO that opted for this extreme step. Why, you ask? The reason perhaps lies in the exceptions to the ban. The government plans to permit wheat exports bilaterally, on the request of specific countries. In one fell swoop, every bag of wheat being exported by an Indian farmer now becomes an economic diplomacy photo-op for the government. While this may seem like a masterstroke for the government, this ‘strategy-fication’ comes at the immense expense of farmers and traders. While they will not be able to cash in on the immediate opportunities, they might also receive smaller if not fewer international orders from international buyers in the future.The second lesson from this PolicyWTF is for the farmers. While this particular ban will undoubtedly hurt the farmers and traders, its origins lie in the now-normalised intervention of governments in all aspects of agriculture. In that sense, Minimum Support Prices (MSP) and the wheat ban are two sides of the same coin. A government that giveth will also taketh at whim. The push for making MSP a law is likely to invite more such export bans from the government, in the name of consumer interest. Observe the ease with which the State can take away economic freedoms in this statement by the Commerce Secretary:"So, what is the purpose of this order. What it is doing is in the name of prohibition - we are directing the wheat trade in a certain direction. We do not want the wheat to go in an irregulated manner to places where it might get just hoarded or where it may not be used to the purpose which we are hoping it would be used for”.The third policy lesson is the need to lift the bans on genetically edited crops. The ostensible reason for this ban was a decrease in production due to the heatwave in large parts of India. Assuming that climate change will lead to many more instances of crop failures, crops engineered to withstand higher temperatures are an important part of the solution. In the wake of the ongoing wheat shortage, there are signs that the regulatory environment is changing in a few countries. Australia and New Zealand approved a drought-tolerant Argentinean wheat variety for human consumption last week. Many countries now classify gene edited crops that do not use DNA from a different organism, as non-GMO. Indian regulators hopefully too will move in the same direction.HomeWorkReading and listening recommendations on public policy matters[Post] The Indian ‘sedition’ law was in the news last week. We had a conceptual take on sedition in edition #115 that puts the current events in context.[Podcast] What’s it like to grow, operate, and sell a manufacturing firm in India? That’s the theme of the latest Puliyabaazi with Hema Hattangady.[Book] Lithium batteries are all the rage. For understanding the politics and the geopolitics of these batteries, read Lukacz Bednarski’s succinct Lithium: The Global Race for Battery Dominance and the New Energy Revolution. For a short introduction to battery failure accidents in India, here’s a nice primer by Saurabh Chandra on Puliyabaazi. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit publicpolicy.substack.com

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Kidney stone pain as a potential cause area, published by Dan Elton on May 3, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. This is a cross-post from my Substack (original post here). Note: At the Effective Altruism Global: San Francisco conference in 2017, Prof. Will MacAskill implored the audience to “keep EA weird”. As the EA movement grows, it's important to keep EA's original spirit of exploration alive. To help do that, I'm planning to write several articles on potential new — and weird — cause areas. Effective altruists want to figure out how to do the most good per dollar spent. “Good” is often cached out in terms of deaths prevented or quality-adjusted life years saved (QALYs). QALYs attempt to adjust life-years for different states of health. However, the very method of QALY calculation, which typically involves surveys asking about trade-offs, might have some blind spots. For instance, if a disease state is rare, than most likely the requisite survey data for it has never been collected. The surveys themselves may have blind spots too. Consider these points from Andrés Gómez Emilsson (emphasis mine): “Someone described the experience of having a kidney stone as ‘indistinguishable from being stabbed with a white-hot-glowing knife that's twisted into your insides non-stop for hours'. It's likely that the reason why we do not hear about this is because (1) trauma often leads to suppressed memories, (2) people don't like sharing their most vulnerable moments, and (3) memory is state-dependent (you cannot easily recall the pain of kidney stones .. you've lost a tether/handle/trigger for it, as it is an alien state-space on a wholly different scale of intensity than everyday life).” Andres Gomez Emilsson As Daniel Kahneman describes in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, the remembering self is different than the experiencing self. People have trouble describing and conceptualizing extreme events, either positive or negative. People also don't like thinking about extreme negative events generally, whether they experienced them or others did. I personally sometimes notice my brain flinching away when thinking about kidney stone pain, even though I haven't experienced it myself. In the first part of this post I'll go over the evidence for extreme pain events. Then, I'll focus on kidney stones. The main reason for focusing on kidney stone pain is that over the past two years I've worked off-an-on on automated deep learning based software for detecting and measuring kidney stones in CT scans (see my paper in Medical Physics). So I have some expertise on the subject. Currently I am working with a radiologist at Massachusetts General Hopsital who is an expert on stone disease, Prof. Avinash Kambadakone. Background - suffering focused ethics “In my opinion human suffering makes a direct moral appeal, namely, the appeal for help, while there is no similar call to increase the happiness of a man who is doing well anyway.” “Instead of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, one should demand, more modestly, the least amount of avoidable suffering for all.”— Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) The idea that we should focus on eliminating suffering over increasing pleasure is intuitive to many people. See this recent Twitter poll from Robin Hanson: So, I don't think I need to spend much time here convincing people that reducing suffering should take precedent over increasing happiness. Note what I have in mind here is what is called “weakly-negative utilitarianism” which is quite different than pure negative utilitarianism, which focuses only on eliminating suffering. Readers interested in diving further into these topics should check out Lukas Gloor's essay “The Case for Suffering-Focused Ethics”. Background - long-tailed distributions of pleasure and pain “...

In the early 19th century, English textile workers calling themselves “Luddites” destroyed machinery in an effort to save their jobs from automation. And two centuries later, those who resist technological change are still called Luddites. In the 2020 book The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel tells the history of textiles, including the Luddite movement. And in her 1998 book, The Future and Its Enemies, she describes the “stasist” view behind Luddism, as well as its natural antipode, dynamism. To discuss how this framework can help us understand the current moment, I’ve brought Virginia on the podcast. Virginia is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and visiting fellow at the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy at Chapman University. She is the author of The Future and Its Enemies, The Substance of Style, and The Power of Glamour. Her latest is The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World.

In the early 19th century, English textile workers calling themselves "Luddites" destroyed machinery in an effort to save their jobs from automation. And two centuries later, those who resist technological change are still called Luddites. In the 2020 book The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel tells the history of textiles, including the Luddite movement. And in her 1998 book, The Future and Its Enemies, she describes the "stasist" view behind Luddism, as well as its natural antipode, dynamism. To discuss how this framework can help us understand the current moment, I've brought Virginia on the podcast. Virginia is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and visiting fellow at the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy at Chapman University. She is the author of https://www.amazon.com/Future-Its-Enemies-Creativity-Enterprise/dp/0684827603/ (The Future and Its Enemies), https://www.amazon.com/Substance-Style-Aesthetic-Remaking-Consciousness/dp/0060933852/ (The Substance of Style), and https://www.amazon.com/Power-Glamour-Longing-Visual-Persuasion/dp/1416561110 (The Power of Glamour). Her latest is https://www.amazon.com/Fabric-Civilization-Textiles-Made-World-ebook/dp/B08KQ441QQ/ (The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World).

Welcome back to the Season 2 premiere of Neurotech Pub!In this episode, host and Paradromics CEO Matt Angle sits down with fellow Founder/CEOs Carolina Aguilar, Brian Pepin, and Kunal Ghosh to talk shop about building cutting edge neurotech companies from the ground up. We dive deep into business strategies, the neurotech fundraising landscape, emerging therapeutics, and more. We also provide an insider's view of the intersections of data, pharma, and med devices that are shaping the future of healthcare. Pour yourself a cold one and settle in! Check out full video with transcript here: Check out video and a full episode transcript here. 00:00 | Updates & News >> INBRAIN Neuroelectronics raised a $17M Series A >> Rune Labs raised a $22.8 Million Series A >> Inscopix Launched Cloud-Based Platform for Data Management and Analysis2:15 | Meet the panel and pick up a book1:54 | Jester King Brewery  2:25 | Rune Labs  2:50 | Neurostimulator for deep brain stimulation therapy  3:23 | INBRAIN Neuroelectronics  4:11 | Inscopix  5:24 | Ursula K. Le Guin's 'The Dispossessed'  6:19 | Yuval Noah Harari's 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind'  6:32 | Daniel G. Miller's 'The Tree of Knowledge'  6:40 | Jiddu Krishnamurti's 'The Book of Life'  7:34 | Barack Obama's 'A Promised Land,' ‘Dreams from my Father,' & ‘The Audacity of Hope'  7:56 | Karl Popper's 'The Open Society and Its Enemies'9:25 | Venture Capital in Neurotech34:44 | Business Strategy in Neurotech40:32 | Tom Oxley, CEO, Synchron  43:58 | Dr. Thomas Insel  44:06 | Mindstrong Mental Health Care  44:35 | Aduhelm controversy  52:25 | Galvani Bio  59:39 | Percept Neurostimulator  1:00:32 | Neuromodulation and the future of treating brain disease  1:07:21 | Software as a Medical Device FDA Guidance1:09:12 | State of Animal Model Systems1:14:28 | α-Synuclein in Parkinson's Disease  1:18:01 | Alto Neuroscience  1:18:36 | Flatiron Foundation  1:18:45 | Gaurdent Health  1:19:03 | Melanoma Trends & Rates1:21:41 | The Pharma-Data-Device Ecosystem 1:21:42 | Frank Fischer, Chairman of Neuropace  1:22:28 | Neurotech Pub Season 1, Episode 9  1:26:35 | Roche acquisition of Flatiron Health & merger with Foundation Medicine   1:27:12 | Companion Diagnostics  1:28:29 | Adhulem and PET imaging  1:29:09 | Resignations at the FDA over Alzheimer's Drug  1:29:32 | Derek Lowe's take on the Aducanumab Approval, FDA Committee Votes, Halting the Aducanumab Trials, & The FDA Advisory Committee Briefing Document on Aducanumab  1:31:39 | Donanemab receives breakthrough therapy designation in 2021  1:36:58 | Mapping the Frontal-Vagal Pathway  1:37:09 | The Human Connectome Project  1:40:07 | Teal Organizations and Holacracy  1:41:18 | Society for Neuroscience  1:44:37 | Affymetrix (Thermo Fisher Scientific)  1:44:39 | IlluminaWant more?Follow Paradromics & Neurotech Pub on Twitter  Follow Matt, Brian, Carolina, & Kunal on Twitter

In Today's "Moment of Truth," Saurabh and Emma sit down with Mary Eberstadt, conservative essayist, former policy planning staff under the Reagan Administration and author of "Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics," to discuss the devolution of family, marriage, and gender since the invention of "the pill" and what, if anything, can be done to reverse the disastrous effects of the sexual revolution on the American family. Mary Eberstadt is an influential American writer whose contributions to the intellectual landscape traverse several genres. An author of both non-fiction and fiction, her social commentary draws from various fields including anthropology, intellectual history, philosophy, popular culture, sociology, and theology. She is known for her public service and is a sought after public speaker. Central to her diverse interests are questions concerning the philosophy and culture of Western civilization and the fate and aspirations of post-modern man. Mary Eberstadt is the author of several influential books, among them Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics, How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization; It's Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies; and Adam and Eve after the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution.She and her husband, author Nicholas Eberstadt, have four children, and live in the Washington, D.C. area.Learn more about Mary Eberstadt's work at:https://maryeberstadt.com––––––Follow American Moment on Social Media:Twitter – https://twitter.com/AmMomentOrgFacebook – https://www.facebook.com/AmMomentOrgInstagram – https://www.instagram.com/ammomentorg/YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4qmB5DeiFxt53ZPZiW4TcgRumble – https://rumble.com/c/c-695775Check out AmCanon:https://www.americanmoment.org/amcanon/American Moment's "Moment of Truth" Podcast is recorded at the Conservative Partnership Center in Washington DC, produced and edited by Jared Cummings. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're trying something new this month! Today's episode is about youth liberation, and Elysha, Nate, and Tom discuss Emma Goldman's The Child and Its Enemies.Check out our website: https://www.worksintheorypodcast.comCome by and say hello!Twitter: @workstheorypodInstagram: works.in.theoryProduced & edited by Allyson https://www.forestfreeter.comTheme song by http://woulg.com/Transcript:Works in Theory - Theory Bites - The Child And Its Enemies[00:00:00] ELYSHA: Hello, and welcome back to Works In Theory Podcast, we've got a new section that we're trying out on the show this week. We're calling Theory Bites because it bites, but they're also small. We're going to be doing shorter essays and articles rather than entire books to try and give you a little bit more variety and us a little bit more variety in the show that we're putting on.So, we're hoping that these theory bites can be enjoyed on their own or as part of a well-rounded meal with some of the longer Works In Theory episodes. As usual, I'm Elysha and I'm here with Nate and with Tom.TOM: Hello!ELYSHA: And today our first Theory Bite is on an essay by Emma Goldman called The Child And Its Enemies.TOM: Yeah, this is written in 1906. And I thought it was really good. It had a lot of really just well-written like the language that Goldman uses. You can tell that Goldman writes, [00:01:00] right? It's not It's not a strictly, in service of getting a point across, but it's done really well.NATE: Yeah, definitely. I don't know if it's just people wrote better back in like the 19th century or something, or if she's in particular a good writer, but yeah, it was really a joy to read. It makes me look forward to reading more Emma Goldman stuff. ELYSHA: I think there are plenty of writers who wouldn't be looked at with such praise by at least me from the early 1900s. So I think Emma Goldman is a great writer. NATE: So the piece again is called The Child And Its Enemies. This is going to be the first of a couple of pieces we're going to read on the general topic of youth liberation and very early on, she's got a quote that sort of like sums up her thesis in this she says: "Is the child to be considered as an individuality or as an object to be molded, according to the whims and fancies of those around This seems to me to be the most important question to be answered by parents and educators."And so that's sort of, where she's going to be going with [00:02:00] this. The idea is she's obviously going to come down on the side that like children are human beings. They have, you know, their own intrinsic drives. They have their own personhood and autonomy and a lot of the institutions of our society, especially the school try to. Turn the child into an object don't they don't treat the child as a person, but as a commodity or again, an object. ELYSHA: And not just any object, but one who needs to fit within the restraints and respectability of that social era and society.NATE: That's right. She says, "Every institution of our day, the family, the state, or moral codes sees in every strong, beautiful, uncompromising personality, a deadly enemy."ELYSHA: Yeah, that's a powerful line for sure. Bringing back the idea that education isn't benign. It's not just about teaching basic skills like reading or math or whatever else you [00:03:00] learn in school. It's a very critical piece of our like formation as young people and our experiences in school. The way that these skills are presented, the way that like our aptitudes or whatever are measured or like the way that we're treated in school makes a big difference. Probably in how the rest of our life goes.TOM: Yeah, there's a lot of you know, talk from people about children and their future. And like, this is when people are molded and when they're most like when people get their most I guess are instilled with ideas. Right? But we don't really talk about that we structure things in a way that really puts people in a certain direction of, obeying and not questioning which again, every time I say these kinds of things, I feel like I become the conspiracy theorist, but it's, I mean, it seems very obvious like that you know, [00:04:00] school is, is largely not about trying to figure things out. It's about trying to memorize and regurgitate what other people have figured out. Whether or not that's true for all of those things is why now there's a big debate about critical race theory because the right is, is very upset. I'm going way, way, tangent. This is nothing to do with 1906.ELYSHA: It doesn't have to, we don't live in 1906. We're looking at this through 2021. In fact. To just give ourselves away. Cause I have no idea when this is actually going to be released. It is July 11th, 2021.Kind of tying on into that, because the idea that school is where we go as young people and young people on the whole are very, very curious and excited about the world and like interested in making their mark on the world or with the world. And the quote here is:"...when with [00:05:00] large wondering innocent eyes, the child wishes to behold the wonders of the world about it in the schools and in the family life and whatever quickly lock the windows and doors and keep the delicate human plant in a hot house atmosphere where it can neither breathe nor grow freely."NATE: This is just turning into a string of quotes, but at the risk of that, here's one more: "...every effort is being made to cramp human emotion and originality of thought in the individual into a straight-jacket from its earliest infancy; or to shape every human being according to one pattern; not into a well-rounded individuality, but into a patient work slave, professional automaton, tax-paying citizen, or righteous moralist."And so sort of what all of this is getting at is this idea that the school was being used to take, like, what is, this sort of innate like Elysha, you were talking about the innate curiosity, like originality like self-directed learning of a child and [00:06:00] squelch it and put it into a certain mold. Create, you know, citizens of a capitalist state, basically. ELYSHA: Yeah. And it's kind of like Tom was saying, it makes me feel like a weirdo conspiracy theorist sometimes too, because it is just like, school is just so foundational to the way that we're brought into the world. You are a very young age and you go there for many hours a day and reading pieces like this, that really speak to the idea that the state and those who write the curricula, they're looking to. Give folks the skills that will allow them to participate in society in the way that is like clean and easy and simple and to their whims. They want you to be able to do basic math or be literate and then go on to, I mean, in our recent sort of generation, we go onto more education and more education [00:07:00] because that's all of a sudden, a very big deal, but more in the era that our piece is written in education wasn't a K-12 sort of thing that everyone did for up until you're 18 or whatever it is, but you would get the education that is mandated and then go off and get a job or have more kids and just live within this like tightly curated and restrained...NATE: Yea, absolutely. TOM: This piece sort of goes in all directions. It kind of hits every place. Especially I thought the railing against leftist, like railing against radical parents. Like here it says: "Radical parents though emancipated from the belief of ownership and the human soul still cling tenaciously to the notion that they own the child, that they have the right to exercise their authority over it. So they set out to mold and form the child, according to their own conception of what is right and wrong, forcing their ideas upon it with the same [00:08:00] vehemence that the average Catholic parent uses."There's a whole kind of area at the end where Goldman talks about you know, you're basically doing the same thing that everyone's doing, but you know, the problems that you see in other people you're exhibiting them yourself. Your child can regurgitate and they know the names of radical leftists or whatever. That doesn't mean that they agree with it. And it doesn't mean that they're not going to just, you know, become reactionary basically later because you have basically forced them to believe a thing. And I, I thought that was a really good call out.NATE: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And so like taking a step back for a second, she is like, you know, the piece is called The Child And Its Enemies. It's not called the child in school. And so part of what she's talking about is that it's not just the school, but even like the family, the family itself is, is acting in this sort of way to not allow the child to develop of its own accord, but to, to mold it in a certain [00:09:00] direction, again, like as if it's an object to be molded, not like living, breathing one of my favorite lines in the whole book she says:"Scriptures tell us that God created Man in his own image, which by no means has proven a success. Parents follow the bad example of their heavenly master. They use every effort to shape and mold the child, according to their image. They tenaciously cling to the idea that the child is merely part of themselves, an idea, as false as it is injurious."We hear that and we're like, oh Yeah. you know, I, I know for my part, at least my parents were Catholic and obviously they tried to raise me to believe in Catholicism and things like that. But you know, she wants to make sure that we're not just thinking, this is an aspect of like conservative or religious parents, but that, you know, just parents of any stripe, including radicals, who, by trying to force their child to be a radical, they're doing the exact same thing. Even if we might believe it's in a better direction or something.ELYSHA: I feel like I can throw back to our Dewey episode because that one is already released into the ether. [00:10:00] And in that we talked a lot about the importance of learning. To use tools versus learning to memorize facts. And tools like critical thinking skills that you can make your own judgements that, you're setting like a solid, and this is where I'm obviously still like biased towards like, people are good and what we need to do in order to establish like a good, like moral baseline is instilling values about sharing and mutual aid. And those are things that, you know, ideally it doesn't super matter if your parents are voting on what one end of the spectrum or not like the idea of, learning to see the world and make your own decisions that like, ideally against where the like leftist bend is.We're doing that for the good of, not just ourselves, not just immediately, but like [00:11:00] everyone that we possibly can without overwhelming the kid, obviously, because kids can get very overwhelmed. It's not about memorizing facts. And I think that, in this piece, Emma, Goldman would agree with that, is that like the radical parents just cause it's like, you know, or you feel like, you know, the right way to do things like every parent or teacher or like person in authority, feels like they know the right thing. And that's not always the case. And like maybe the right thing could be helping your child to bloom.NATE: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I like that you bring up Dewey, because I think that this sort of dovetails with that really well in the sense that what she's talking about is that sort of like more democratic, more like self-led learning, right. Where it's not even necessarily about what the content is, it's about letting the child discover it themselves.TOM: Yeah, there was that part in here where she said, do your own research -it's a little frustrating because that has become such a cliched nonsense phrase.ELYSHA: To reframe [00:12:00] that discovery is the fun part.NATE: Yeah, So continuing on this idea of like self-directed learning and democratic learning. I want to once again, quote at length here, I think it like makes a very good point because, Elysha, what you were talking about is this idea that obviously we, you know, especially as leftists, we want to sort of direct the child to be like what we think of as a moral person to do the right thing.And it might sound strange to say that well, by trying to force the child to do the right thing, you're like still forcing the child to do something. And I think that she has like an interesting answer to that. So she says :"The terrible struggle of the thinking man and woman against political, social, and moral conventions, owes its origin to the family, where the child is ever compelled to battle against the internal and external use of force. The categorical imperatives: You shall! you must! this is right! that is wrong! this is true! that is false! shower like a violent rain upon the unsophisticated head of the young being and impress upon its sensibilities that it has to bow before the long [00:13:00] established and hard notions of thoughts and emotions. Yet the latent qualities and instincts seek to assert their own peculiar methods of seeking the foundation of things of distinguishing between what is commonly called wrong, true or false. It has bent upon going its own way since it is composed of the same nerves, muscles, and blood. Even as those who assume to direct its destiny. I fail to understand how parents hope that their children will ever grow up into independent self-reliant spirits when they strain every effort to abridge and curtail the various activities of their children, the plus in quality and character, which differentiates their offspring from themselves and by virtue of which they are eminently equipped carriers of new invigorating ideas.A young, delicate tree that is being clipped and cut by the gardener in order to give it an artificial form will never reach the majestic height and the beauty as when allowed to grow in nature and freedom." I think what she's saying is so we might be like, 'well, we gotta like, make sure the child grows up to like, believe the right thing and be a good person.' But what she's saying is that like, well, the child's a human being just like [00:14:00] you, it's capable of coming to these conclusions of what's good and what's right on its own.And in fact, you may right. And trying to like clip the tree into a certain shape. You may actually be curtailing it. It might be possible for the child to rise above even beyond what you think of as like the good and right things that you know. And by, you know, trying to force it into that mode, you're potentially curtailing it.ELYSHA: I think it's very well known at this point that none of us actually like have children closely in our lives. But I think something that I've really tried to develop more in like dealing with kids is the fact that, they are absolutely human beings and like, you're not going to, you know, it, it, doesn't, it's always funny to see folks who like super don't have any experience with kids and they're just, they walk up to like a four year old and like, Hey, what's up bud?And then Buddy's like, 'I got new shoes." That's not meeting the kid necessarily where they're at. You don't [00:15:00] have the same structures and formalities in conversation and in navigating the world with a young kid, as you do fellow adults often. I just feel like a lot of the time, like less is more in pruning a tree. You don't need to sit there and lecture at length about whichever, like moral thing you are trying to instill whatever value it is that you're trying to like share. NATE: I think you're exactly right. That it's like, if you just treat them as human beings, then you're on the right path. You don't need to, force them or mold them in any sort of way or talk down to them or act like they don't know what they're talking about or what they're thinking. ELYSHA: Yeah, because kids know about freedom and they know when you're trying to limit them and they push back against that. That's like all they do. And it's great. And it's a matter of navigating and negotiating that as like you both [00:16:00] develop in the world that you currently live in. Kind of on the same idea of how challenging it is in the ways that we have, or I have anyway, like being conditioned, how challenging it is to take that step back and let people explore things on their own. It says here just after that quote about radical parents and like trying to just still be forcing this morality on people:" What is more astonishing is the fact that parents will strip themselves of everything, will sacrifice everything for the physical wellbeing of their child. We'll wake nights and stand in fear and agony before some physical ailment of their beloved one, but will remain cold and indifferent without the slightest understanding before the soul cravings and yearnings of their child. Neither hearing nor wishing to hear the loud knocking of the young spirit that demands recognition.On the contrary, they will stifle the beautiful voice of spring of a new life of beauty and splendor of love. They will put [00:17:00] the long lean finger of authority upon the tender throat and not allow vent to this silvery song of the individual growth of the beauty of character, of the strength of love and human relation, which alone make life worthless."TOM: I felt at that point that Goldman was kind of saying, you know, I don't think that parents are monsters that are doing these things. They're kind of just doing what society says we should do. And like they care for their children. Right. But, they're not caring. Like most parents take it to the you know, well, as long as I'm protecting the child, as long as I'm, you know, feeding them and housing them and clothing them, then like, I'm a good parent. That's basically like all you gotta do. But then, you know, controlling children nobody really talks about that.When people do talk about it, it ends up being dismissed as like,....ELYSHA: Because children to be objects, right. Like their property. And we're still fighting against that basic notion.TOM: But I liked that Goldman kind of [00:18:00] laid out a little bit of sympathy, I guess, for parents like that they, that Goldman understood that. It is somewhat conscious, but it's not a conscious, like malevolent effort.NATE: At the very end here, she likes sort of takes the tact where she's not even as much, well, like you said, she's not like beating people over the head being like, you're doing this wrong. You're bad people for doing this, but she points out that like, if you try to do this, if you try to direct your child in any direction, whether it's toward religion or toward conservatism or toward socialism, you run the risk of the child, just like rebelling against you to rebel against you. And basically just like producing the exact opposite of what you're trying to produce. And so you might as well just try to give them free rein anyway, and, you know, set a good example. ELYSHA: Yeah I love that. Setting a good example is just so powerful and like trying to take the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do approach is probably how you get kids or anyone to just do the exact opposite.NATE: Yeah. ELYSHA: I mean, not that doing the exact opposite of what you're told [00:19:00] is always a negative consequence, but generally speaking.NATE: Oh, no. In fact, she says when talking about kids tending to do the opposite of what they're told, she says:"Such a condition of affairs may be very painful to the parents who wish their children to follow in their path. Yet I look upon them as very refreshing and encouraging psychological forces. They are the greatest guarantee that the independent mind at least will always resist every external and foreign force exercised over the human heart."It's almost like , this tendency of children to resist being controlled is like a guarantee that like, there's always going to be like a spark of freedom in humanity that you're never going to be able to really like beat people down to create a totally like compliant populace because every new generation that's born is going to be filled with children that hate to do with their parents tell them. ELYSHA: Youth stuff is just wonderful. And I'm always hopeful for the future largely because of the work of youth. NATE: Yeah. The children are the future. ELYSHA: Cool. Hey, that sounds like a great natural conclusion to this very first Theory Bites episode. [00:20:00] NATE: Yeah, absolutely. If I can, I'm gonna end with one more Goldman quote at the very end of the essay, she says:"If education should really mean anything at all, it must insist upon the free growth and development of the innate forces and tendencies of the child. In this way alone, can we hope for the free individual and eventually also for a free community, which I'll make interference and coercion of human growth impossible." ELYSHA: Thanks Nate. And thanks for being here for our very first Theory Bites. Again, we are hoping to release these ones kind of in between our main episodes, but as we're figuring all of that stuff out, you'll probably just see this pop up as one of our monthly releases, but we really appreciate you being here for what is effectively our first attempt at podcasting. And we're hope you're having at least almost as much fun as we are.,We'll see you next time or you'll hear us next time. Or however that goes.TOM: We will see you, but you will not see us. That's [00:21:00] how it works. So don't worry.ELYSHA: Exactly. Surveillance. It's everywhere. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

While excellent newsletters on specific themes within public policy already exist, this thought letter is about frameworks, mental models, and key ideas that will hopefully help you think about any public policy problem in imaginative ways.Audio narration by Ad-Auris.  India Policy Watch: The Demarcation Between Science And Ramdev  Insights on burning policy issues in India- RSJEvent 1: May 23, 2021. Yoga guru Ramdev:"Everyone should progress through self-evaluation. Some allopathic doctors too consider Indian medical science, Ayurveda, yoga as pseudo-science, (emphasis ours) which hurts crores of people.” Event 2: May 29, 1919. New York Times (reporting on the event on Nov 7, 1919):I will connect the two events (hopefully) in a bit.Take Event 1. This was Ramdev in his response to the letter he received from Dr Harsh Vardhan, the Union Minister for Health. The minister had written to Ramdev about his recent statements about allopathy and doctors. You can read more about it here. Dr. Vardhan was forced to write to Ramdev because of the campaign by the IMA (Indian Medical Association) against the damaging statements made Ramdev about modern medicine. Over the past year, Patanjali Ayurved, a company promoted by Ramdev, has made several claims of curing Covid-19 in seven days through its product, Coronil. He has also, at different times, called Allopathy a ‘stupid science’, falsely claimed over 10,000 allopathic doctors died after taking both doses of vaccines and blamed the global drug ‘mafia’ for conspiring against him, Ayurveda and India in that order. Now you might dismiss the whole thing as a sideshow of which there are plenty at anytime in India. But this isn’t one. Ramdev is a hugely influential figure who has a daily show on the national TV channel watched by millions. He singlehandedly created a packaged goods behemoth in the last five years riding on a deeply held belief among Indians about the ‘purity’ of Ayurveda. There have been many questions on those claims. But that’s another story. Anyway, there are a few real issues to contend with here. First, we are in the middle of a pandemic and our fastest way out of it is to vaccinate people at lightening speed. Any statement or action that stops us from doing this is bad and must be stopped. Second, India has made real progress on key health parameters like infant and maternal mortality rates, malnutrition, life expectancy and disease burden in the past two decades. But the harsh reality is it is still placed in the bottom quartile among nations on these metrics. We have had some hard fought wins in making modern medical treatments acceptable among people. We shouldn’t be frittering away these gains by raising suspicions about it among the masses. Lastly, the frontline workers and doctors have put their lives on line during the pandemic to serve the patients. We were showering flower petals on them a year back. Since everything is political now in India and nationalism can be used to defend the indefensible, the troll armies have turned this episode into a dystopian farce where pharma ‘mafia’ and Christian lobbies are the villains and Ramdev is the one exposing their nefarious plans. Now any doctor speaking against Ramdev risks being labelled a pawn hurting India’s interests and its inevitable rise that these lobbies are hard at work to stop. That we want to alienate doctors, hospitals and pharma companies in middle of a pandemic is beyond my comprehension. This is a self goal like no other. The Demarcation ProblemAnyway, the point about pseudoscience made by Ramdev is of interest to me. Who defines it? If crores of people follow something, does that mean it shouldn’t be called pseudoscience? Palmistry, astrology, homoeopathy, Ayurveda - where do they stand on the spectrum of science and pseudoscience? Since some kind of revivalism is on within the Indian society, it will be useful to explore this further. That brings me to Event 2. Why was the eclipse on May 29, 1919 such an event? Here’s why:A hundred years ago, Albert Einstein wasn’t a household name. He was a professor in Berlin, known to scientists, intellectuals, his divorced wife and the first cousin who would soon become his second wife — but not to the world.His rise to superstardom began on May 29, 1919, when the moon and sun lined up just right for a solar eclipse. Photos of the astronomical event showed something strange: A few of the stars visible during the blackout were in the wrong place.Einstein had foreseen this. Using his theory of general relativity, he made the seemingly crazy bet that the stars’ positions in the sky would shift during an eclipse, and even calculated by how much.As the data came in and the results were confirmed, the general theory of relativity was proven. Newtonian physics was no longer the truth. “Revolution in Science,” the front page of The Times of London proclaimed. “New Theory of the Universe: Newtonian Ideas Overthrown.” The New York Times followed suit with “Men of Science More or Less Agog.” Following this with interest was a precocious 17 year old student in the University of Vienna. His name. Karl Popper. This event would leave a deep impact on him as he thought about the nature of truth and the philosophy of science in his later life. The idea that Einstein could precisely postulate in advance what would happen during a solar eclipse and then have the courage for it to be proven or be ‘falsified’ publicly was in sharp contrast to other ‘sciences’ that were in fashion during those years in Europe, namely, Marxism and Psychoanalysis. For over two centuries, scientists had empirically tested Newtonian laws and it worked in all known cases. New inventions came up based on these laws including the steam engine and the power loom that revolutionised societies. Kepler showed how the laws worked for planets and other celestial objects. Haley predicted a comet would reappear again in 76 years based on it. The scientific method that Bacon had proposed involving observation, hypothesis, test and conclusion was proven over and over again for Newtonian physics. That’s how the universe worked. Yet, when Einstein argued that they didn’t work for the special case of really large objects and it was proven during the eclipse of 1919, the entire community of physicists updated their priors. For Popper this was the ‘demarcation’ between what he called science and non-science (later termed pseudoscience by others ). To him all observation is selective and can be used to prove anything. Psychoanalysis was a prime example. Therefore, he dismissed inductive reasoning as the method of drawing scientific inference. Because every single observation so far has followed Newtonian law, doesn’t mean it is the truth. Because the Sun rises every morning doesn’t necessarily prove it will rise tomorrow. More has to be done.Popper instead offered ‘falsifiability’ as the test to ‘demarcate’ science and non-science. As he put it, you can always cherry-pick evidence to prove any theory. Like psychoanalysts and Marxists of his time were doing or what Ramdev is doing with his claims. That’s not enough. For him what really counted as science was if you could stake your theory on a future prediction that could turn out to be false like Einstein and the physicists did with the solar eclipse. A million instances of something working isn’t enough to prove something is science but a single counter-instance is enough to falsify the claim that it is science. That’s how the claim should be tested. On falsifiability. So, science is always about a provisional truth till someone falsifies it. The moment it is falsified, it is no longer science. Science, to Popper, therefore was a grand pursuit to solve big problems and not about making series of tiny empirical observations and figuring out the cause behind them. The observations were only to be made to serve the grand pursuit of truth.Applying FalsificationNow there were others who debated with Popper on the philosophy of science, most notably, Kuhn who coined the term ‘paradigm shift’ to explain how science evolves and those debates are best left for another day. For now, let’s consider ‘falsifiability’ as explained by Popper and view modern medicine as it is practised today. The entire drug discovery and development process involving identification of likely compounds useful in curing a disease, synthesis, characterisation, validation, optimisation and assays that will make it ready for clinical trials follows the principle of finding a single counter instance that would falsify the results. The clinical trials, multiple reviews by the regulators and then the monitoring of the drug performance after it has been launched in the market are all meant to ensure that any instance of failure is captured and studied to eliminate the root cause. This is a rigorous process to stand the test of ‘falsifiability’ and keep modern medicine as close to true science as possible. I will leave it to you to assess other ‘sciences’ I have mentioned earlier on this scale. For me none pass the muster.To be clear, this isn’t to overstate the primacy of science in our lives. You might find comfort and peace of mind through astrology. Yoga and Ayurveda might help you to stay fit and build your immunity. You might have personal experience of homoeopathy working for you. Some scientist who retired from ISRO (or IISc) or some former Nobel prize winner might believe in past life regression or Vedic chants to cure something. These could all be observable truth for those instances. It won’t make them science. Because they can easily be falsified. And since we are at it, let’s not fall to the usual exaggerated claims that do the rounds on Whatsapp. Yes, China is big on their traditional medicines. But if you dig deeper, most of the traditional medicines sold are for the usual reasons: to make you “strong” (wink), for skin ailments and for common colds and fever. Nobody is claiming it will cure Covid-19. The other argument about modern medicine deriving their compounds from nature like Ayurveda also needs to be understood better. It is true many modern drugs have compounds that are extracted from plants and herbs that we often use in Ayurveda. But the modern medicine process is quite exact about the compound, the amount and how it should be delivered into our system. Eating the same plant or herb as a paste or in food isn’t the same thing though it might occasionally yield the same results. There is a difference. The same as that between Sanjeevani and the Dronagiri mountain. Between specifics and generalisation. And no, searching for Sanjeevani isn’t exactly a scientific pursuit. One of the duties of citizens mentioned as part of the Directive Principles of State Policy in our Constitution is “to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform”. This is good goal for every Indian to pursue. You don’t need to jettison any tradition for it. The two can co-exist. Global Policy Watch #1: When Conspiracy Theory Comes True  Bringing an Indian perspective to burning global issues- RSJThere was this amazing piece in the Newsweek about how a global ragtag band of gumshoes, data scientists, molecular biologists and conspiracy enthusiasts exposed the many false claims of the Wuhan Institute of Virology about the origins of Covid-19. The mountain of evidence collected and meticulously analysed by the group, who now go by the appropriate sounding name DRASTIC (Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19), has been enough for the Biden administration to launch an investigation into the source of the virus. The lab origin of the virus was a theory that few believed in even a month ago. But now it is almost mainstream. Conspiracy theories are often used as a label to delegitimise notions and those believing in it are seen as misfits. Calling something a conspiracy theory is to lower its credibility. They have been the bane of many elections, triggered unrest and have kept social media platforms on their toes. But the very public victory of DRASTIC will have an impact on this discourse. It won’t be easy to wave something off as a conspiracy theory. Pranay writes more about this in the next section below. Interestingly (and fittingly, perhaps for this edition), the first philosopher to write about conspiracy theory was Karl Popper. In his book The Open Society and Its Enemies, Popper moves away from science in the realm of nature to the state and the society. He describes ‘conspiracy theory of society’ as an approach to explain a social phenomenon by finding out those who have planned or conspired for it. But Popper argues most conspiracies that are hatched don’t go as per plan and end up with unintended consequences. The role of social sciences, therefore, is to explain these unintended consequences arising out intentional human actions. That sounds like what we strive to do in this newsletter. There will be lot more written as the origin of the virus story progresses. This might be the most consequential conspiracy theory of all time. Global Policy Watch #2: Networks vs Hierarchies  Bringing an Indian perspective to burning global issues— Pranay KotasthaneThis week had its fair share of mind-boggling stuff. To name a few: a court case by a Bollywood celebrity against 5G deployment, a well-known lawyer promoting vaccine hesitancy, and reports documenting how a group of passionate folk forced renowned scientists to eat their words on the virus lab-leak theory.There’s something common to all these events. To borrow a phrase from media analyst Martin Gurri, such instances illustrate ‘the crisis of authority’ in the Information Age. There’s no theory that won’t be questioned by radically connected individuals, irrespective of the evidence backing it. This newsletter has discussed Radically Networked Societies (RNS) many times over in disparate contexts. We have discussed how no issue is local anymore. Even highly-specialised issues are vigorously contested by laymen. Even decisions by authoritative organisations are questioned, debated, and sometimes overturned, in a vastly expanded information sphere. The thesis of Martin Gurri’s 2014 book The Revolt of the Public is along similar lines. He frames the current upheaval as an asymmetrical warfare between hierarchical institutions of the Industrial Age and hyper-networked individuals of the Information Age. In his words:“When judging his government, Homo informaticus can then do so in light of alternative possibilities—different views of the same policy or event, different values invoked for an action or inaction, different performance by other governments, real or imagined. The first step toward skepticism is doubt, and Homo informaticus, exposed to an independent channel, must confront choices and doubts when constructing his story of the world.…Governments of every stripe have had trouble grasping the sudden reversal in the information balance of power. Proud in hierarchy and accreditation, but deprived of feedback channels, the regime is literally blind to much global content. It behaves as if nothing has changed except for attempts by alien ideals—pornography, irreligion, Americanization—to seduce the public. Most significantly, the regime in its blindness fails to adjust its story of legitimacy to make it plausible in a crowded, fiercely competitive environment.…The consequences are predictable and irreversible. The regime accumulates pain points: police brutality, economic mismanagement, foreign policy failures, botched responses to disasters. These problems can no longer be concealed or explained away. Instead, they are seized on by the newly-empowered public, and placed front-and-center in open discussions. In essence, government failure now sets the agenda. As the regime’s story of legitimacy becomes less and less persuasive, Homo informaticus adjusts his story of the world in opposition to that of the regime. He joins the ranks of similarly disaffected members of the public, who are hostile to the status quo, eager to pick fights with authority, and seek the means to broadcast their opinions and turn the tables on their rulers. The means of communication are of course provided by the information sphere.”Gurri, Martin. The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium (pp. 89-90). Stripe Press. Kindle Edition.There’s another way to model this crisis of authority. In edition #11, I had discussed the Overton Window. This framework suggests that for any political issue, there's a range of socially acceptable positions that's narrower than the range of all possible positions. These socially acceptable ideas are seen as being inside the Overton Window — they are mainstream and uncontroversial. On the other hand, policy positions outside it are viewed as shocking, upsetting, and electorally harmful. The key insight of this framework is that, with social pressure, the Overton Window can shift over time; today's radicals may become tomorrow's moderates. In the Information Age, something even more striking has happened. The Overton Window on practically every issue has been stretched such that nearly all possible positions on an issue have become socially acceptable. With that happening, the older institutions, which earlier exuded authority, are shredding legitimacy with every decision they make.This is a value-agnostic assessment of the networked public. In the case of Wuhan lab-leak theory, the effect is a positive one as it has at least thrown light on the geopolitical power play that has suppressed this line of inquiry. The curious case of growing QAnon popularity in the US is the other side of the same coin. But if I were forced to make a ‘bane or boon’ type call on our networked existence in the political sphere, it would be as follows. The backlash of the public is a boon in that it pushes governments towards more accountability. It puts the fear in a government that any wrongdoing will be found out, exposed, and mocked. The bane is that with the multiplication of identity-inspired comradeships across the spectrum, forming coalitions of any kind has become difficult. Every sect is splintering and trust between the splinters is a casualty. The cacophony of conflict spreads to every issue, regardless of how important and urgent it is. Governments become more opaque, more indecisive, and less persuasive in turn. One thing is for sure: our industrial-era political setup is undergoing a fundamental transformation in the Information Age. HomeWorkReading and listening recommendations on public policy matters[Audio] Sean Carroll’s Mindscape podcast: Liam Kofi Bright on Knowledge, Truth, and Science. Liam Kofi Bright received his Ph.D. in Logic, Computation and Methodology from Carnegie Mellon University. He is currently on the faculty of the London School of Economics in the Department of Philosophy, Logic, and the Scientific Method. He is well-known on Twitter as the Last Positivist. [Blog] Check out Martin Gurri’s blog The Fifth Wave. Lots to read here. Get on the email list at publicpolicy.substack.com

This episode of the Popperian Podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with James Kierstead. They speak about Karl Popper's work The Open Society and Its Enemies, the years that Popper spent in New Zealand writing this book, what Popper thought about his adopted country, Popper's attack on Plato for his “unmitigated authoritarianism”, how valid this attack was, the controversy surrounding the book and how we should examine it today in light of new scholarship, and the importance of freedom of speech and freedom of expression for the Open Society. James Kierstead was born into a Canadian army family and grew up in Canada, Germany, and England. He got the chance to learn Greek and Latin at Sherborne School in Dorset after winning a scholarship and subsequently studied classics (Literae Humaniores) at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and ancient history at King's College London. After that, James moved to California, where he studied political theory and wrote a PhD thesis on Athenian democracy under Professor Josiah Ober. Since coming to Wellington in 2013 he has continued to research and teach in the field of ancient Greek democracy, and he also oversees the Victoria Ancient Theatre Society (VATS), which produces an ancient play every year. James also spent a little time in Athens over the years; in 2016 he was an Early Career Fellow at the British School at Athens, and also spent time at the American School and the German and Canadian Institutes, as well as volunteering with the Agora Excavations and Museum. *** Karl Popper's Open Society and its Enemies, and its Enemies ((PDF) Karl Popper's Open Society and its Enemies, and its Enemies | James Kierstead - Academia.edu). *** Free Kiwis! (James Kierstead - YouTube). *** You can follow James Kierstead's ongoing work at: James Kierstead | Victoria University of Wellington - Academia.edu and James Kierstead Profile | Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington (wgtn.ac.nz) Support via Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/jedleahenry Support via PayPal – https://www.paypal.me/jrleahenry Shop – https://shop.spreadshirt.com.au/JLH-shop/ Support via Bitcoin - 31wQMYixAJ7Tisp773cSvpUuzr2rmRhjaW Website – The Popperian Podcast — Jed Lea-Henry Libsyn – The Popperian Podcast (libsyn.com) Youtube – The Popperian Podcast - YouTube Twitter – https://twitter.com/jedleahenry RSS - https://popperian-podcast.libsyn.com/rss *** Underlying artwork by Arturo Espinosa

Is openness beneficial or harmful to societies, past and present? Swedish author Johan Norberg joins the show to discuss his book Open: The Story of Human Progress and talk about openness throughout history.  We discuss how open exchange, free movement, and openness to new cultures and new ideas have been key to building some of the biggest empires throughout history - and how those same values can benefit us today. Recommended reading - Karl Popper, The Open Society. Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty.  Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies.   To make sure you hear every episode, join our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/neoliberalproject. Patrons get access to exclusive bonus episodes, our sticker-of-the-month club, and our insider Slack.  Become a supporter today! Got questions for the Neoliberal Podcast?  Send them to mailbag@neoliberalproject.org Follow us at: https://twitter.com/ne0liberal https://www.instagram.com/neoliberalproject/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/1930401007051265/   Join a local chapter at https://neoliberalproject.org/join

This episode of the Popperian Podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Oseni Taiwo Afisi. They speak about Karl Popper's book The Open Society and Its Enemies, the ideas and history behind the work, the place for the Open Society and Popper's epistemology within the African context, how the communalism and collectivism in traditional Africa does not make it analogous to the repressive and totalitarian societies that Popper argued against, the difficult line between group rights and individual rights, the question of tribalism and Africa's development, Popper's concept of piecemeal social engineering in the African milieu, and the challenges of multiculturalism and heterogeneity to the Open Society in postcolonial Africa. Oseni Taiwo Afisi is the current Head of the Department of Philosophy, Lagos State University, Nigeria. His areas of competence include critical thinking, logic, political philosophy and Philosophy of science with a special interest in Karl Popper's critical rationalism. He received his Bachelor and Master's degrees in Philosophy from the University of Lagos, Nigeria, and later proceeded to the University of Canterbury, New Zealand where he wrote his thesis on Karl Popper's Critical Rationalism and the Politics of Liberal-Communitarianism, and obtained a PhD. degree in philosophy. He was a visiting academic to the Australian National University in 2011. *** Karl Popper and Africa: Knowledge, Politics and Development (Karl Popper and Africa: Knowledge, Politics and Development : Oseni Taiwo Afisi : 9783030742133 (bookdepository.com)). *** You can follow Oseni Taiwo Afisi's ongoing work at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Oseni-Taiwo-Afisi Support via Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/jedleahenry Support via PayPal – https://www.paypal.me/jrleahenry Shop – https://shop.spreadshirt.com.au/JLH-shop/ Support via Bitcoin - 31wQMYixAJ7Tisp773cSvpUuzr2rmRhjaW Website – The Popperian Podcast — Jed Lea-Henry Libsyn – The Popperian Podcast (libsyn.com) Youtube – The Popperian Podcast - YouTube Twitter – https://twitter.com/jedleahenry RSS - https://popperian-podcast.libsyn.com/rss *** Underlying artwork by Arturo Espinosa

In this episode, Shruti and Virginia Postrel discuss her latest book, “The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World.” They talk about different methods of dyeing, spinning as a feminine occupation, the textile trade in the 17th and 18th centuries, how technological changes disrupted the industry and much more. Postrel is an author, columnist and speaker whose work spans a broad range of topics from social science to fashion, concentrating on the intersection of culture, commerce and technology. Her previous books include “The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion” (2013), “The Substance of Style” (2003) and “The Future and Its Enemies” (1998). She is a regular columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and contributes columns, focusing primarily on history and material culture, to Reason. Follow Shruti on Twitter: https://twitter.com/srajagopalan  Follow Virginia on Twitter: https://twitter.com/vpostrel  For a full transcript of this conversation with helpful links, visit DiscourseMagazine.com.

Funding the Podcast and Destroying your IgnoranceSqeaky has bought all of these and read most of them, they are all great. These are all fantastic and we wholeheartedly recommend them all for skeptics and people suffering dysevidentia alike:Dawkins, Richard - Brilliant Biologist Leading expert on evolution,The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True - https://amzn.to/38lk89N,The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition - https://amzn.to/38i4gVJ,Hawking, Stephen - Brilliant physicist who predicted features of black holes,A Brief History of Time - https://amzn.to/38lKuZr,The Universe in a Nutshell - https://amzn.to/38j3uYs,Lugeons, Noah - Brilliant Skepticism communicator and Demigod of Anger,Diatribes: Volume One: 50 Essays From a Godless Misanthrope - https://amzn.to/3kTAtHI,Diatribes, Volume 2: 50 More Essays from a Scathing Atheist - https://amzn.to/3blNMh8,Popper, Karl - A philosopher Sqeaky hasn't formed an opinion on yet,The Open Society and Its Enemies: https://amzn.to/3cTwZBu,Sagan, Carl - Brilliant Polymath who communicated science and wrote Scifi,The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark - https://amzn.to/3cexgyA.The Full Rant Text [1:12] - People are deeply annoying. I was shitposting on Reddit and stumbled upon a discussion in r/MagicTheCircleJerking about trans rights.Her name is “Alesha, who smiles at Death”, including the “smiles at death” part. She lives in the fictitious game multiverse of Magic the Gathering and she transitioned from mister murderous murderer to miss murderous murderer, and murdered anyone anytime. She is a fictional trans character who made people dead that deadnamed her.Fortunately, most people on this part of reddit are decent and jumped to her defense. Even though Alesha is the last person who needs defense it is the right ethical stance. She literally has an army called the “Mardu Horde” with swords, horses, spears and other medieval army stuff. Or in another timeline raised an army to slay the Mardu Horde and did so. She is a total badass and has all the rights she wants, and I link to books and stuff about her in the show notes.In this discussion thread she was parodied as “Alesha, Who Play Sport”, and even had her card with the art of her leading the hordes into battle modified with a football. Either this is conservative bigoted ignorance or jab at that ignorance and that ignorance elevates the extremely minor issues of trans people in sports to full blown bigotry in reaction. Clearly Alesha's ability to run a touchdown is more important than the countless warriors felled by her sword.Some small fraction of people transition from Male to Female. Some fraction of this fraction of people then play sports (We should have more sports in America, again see the show notes). Some small fraction of that fraction of a fraction of those people go on to compete at a level where it matters in some competitive sporting context.Even then, if there were tons of people it is still just sports and there are better ways than laws of ways of working this out, yet we have asshats pushing laws.Thanks to a paper from Jessica Campisi, a student researching this topic at Bellevue University, we know that there 71 anti-trans bills filed in the last year and 35 focused on sports. This is despite most lawmakers in most states being unable to cite examples of this happening, and even fewer where it is problematic.So this excuse is bullshit on three fronts, but that doesn't stop it from being used to justify a huge amount of pain and bigotry towards trans people. This isn't the only shitty excuse. People have baseless claims of pedophelia or appeal to some other evidence-free ideology like religion.There is real suffering with discrimination. Trans people get passed over for promotions, fired without cause, have lower earnings, and all that is before the verbal bullshit directed towards them. Being a person that can easily pass for a rich straight white male, of course the first place I go is economic harm, but I am sure the random violence trans people face isn't fun either.Fuck the deeply annoying people who care more about which bathroom trans people use than why trans people are fired or excluded just for being trans. There is real suffering around this and people are pushing sports testosterone and bathroom laws, but not equal treatment or pay laws. The evidence is in, the bigotry is real and we could probably do a whole episode on the slanted research of male to female discussion, political goals, and religious motivations of this thanks to Jessica's research.Back to reddit, these people verbally barraged anyone being even slightly transphobic. This is good. What is deeply annoying here is that people asking honest questions get attacked too. Someone suggested Alesha kill people. She is fictional, so clearly that can't happen. So one idiot not understanding, pointed out that transphobia exists on a spectrum and questioned who should be killed, and blathered on uselessly for a while.This person didn't get the joke. This person was drenched in a flood of downvotes and foolishly suggested ways to talk about actually changing minds. This person was just stupid, not a dysevidentia sufferer that I know of. But they did miss the frequency that hateful bigots hide their bigotry as “just jokes” even when the threats or words were affecting real and specific people instead of hypothetical homophobes being cut to ribbons by a fictional character's fictional sword.This person was espousing a mythical kind of centrism where people who police themselves are punished and often bigots “just joking” get away with it.They were talking about “Leading by example” and “taking the high road” and other things that historically don't and have never worked without other leverage. Look into it, most peaceful protests had government, money, or the credible threat of violence on it's side or they failed.Still this person wanted a serious discussion about trans-rights, but couldn't grok that this wasn't the time or place because Alesha Demanded Blood! Well meaning trans defenders just downvoted and reported, presuming the idiot to be a transphobe simply because he asked a question. And people not getting the joke reported comments for promoting violence. The discussion was locked and is now a craterous wasteland of deleted posts.This instant demonization of these centrists is also entirely understandable, even if it's deeply annoying. Bigots commonly stand behind a defense of “The marketplace of ideas”, “let discuss like adults”, “I am just asking a question”, or “bigotry exists on a spectrum”. Bigots like to stand behind such phrases because their ideas are terrible and rightfully the target of derision. But as we are “discussing it like adults” they can hide their awful ideas under a cloak of superficially civil words.Nuance is important. We weren't having any in that reddit thread. This all comes back to the paradox of intolerance. I heard some guy named Karl Popper wrote about it in some I bought...

Sanjay Dixit explains the Karl Popper paradox as enunciated by him in 'The Open Society and Its Enemies': Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal. Dixit picks up the 3 most often utilised tools to fool the Indians into tolerating the intolerant - vasudhaiva kutumbakam, ahimsa paramo dharmah, and ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti; and draws up their limits and boundaries.

In this essay, Marcus Collins considers what the Beatles thought about anarchists and what anarchists thought about the Beatles in sixties Britain. He identifies curiosity and ambivalence on both sides, as anarchists sought to contend with the strange phenomena of Beatlemania, the counterculture and pop stars engaged in political campaigns. Marcus Collins is Senior Lecturer in Cultural History at Loughborough University. He is author of The Beatles and Sixties Britain (2020), Modern Love (2003), co-author of Why Study History? (2020) and editor of The Permissive Society and Its Enemies (2007). He is currently writing the second volume of his study of the Beatles (The Beatles' World) and a short history of British documentaries about lesbians and gay men (Arrested Development: Broadcasting and Homosexuality from Wolfenden to AIDS) as well as embarking on a collaborative project on attitudinal change in the global sixties. Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group. For more information on the ARG, visit www.lboro.ac.uk/subjects/politics-international-studies/research/arg/ . You can follow us on Twitter @arglboro Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns). Hear more at https://soundcloud.com/user-178917365 Artwork by Sam G: https://www.instagram.com/passerinecreations

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 21 In 1945, even as the Nazis fell from power, Karl Popper told us how to find the line where free, liberal societies are in imminent danger in his book The Open Society and Its Enemies, most simply summarizing a crucial part of the argument in a short footnote about "The Paradox of Tolerance." There, Popper lays out a short summary of when a free society should and must not tolerate intolerant movements if it is to survive. It is not only when they espouse and preach intolerance but when they also cease to be amenable to reason and rational debate, forbid their followers from listening to reason and rational debate, cannot be held in check by public opinion, and encourage their followers to respond to arguments with "fists or pistols," i.e., violence of some form or another. I contend that the Woke, uniquely, have crossed this line in this episode of the New Discourses Podcast. They are absolutely intolerant, will not debate or listen to alternative perspectives, and, unlike all other hate movements that fail those two criteria, have grown to be completely unchecked and uncheckable by public opinion. This places them outside of the range to which tolerance should be extended in free, open societies, and it identifies them uniquely as a threat to their continuance. Join me to hear my argument for how Karl Popper warned us in 1945 so that we might see this situation when it arose. Infographic: http://bit.ly/ParadoxToleranceInfographic For more on the idea of tolerance, check out the entry on "tolerance" (https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-tolerance/) in my Critical Social Justice Encyclopedia and check out the four-part series on Herbert Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance" on the New Discourses podcast, part 1 here: https://newdiscourses.com/2021/01/how-not-to-resolve-the-paradox-of-tolerance/ -James Support New Discourses: paypal.me/newdiscourses newdiscourses.locals.com/support patreon.com/newdiscourses subscribestar.com/newdiscourses youtube.com/channel/UC9K5PLkj0N_b9JTPdSRwPkg/join Website: newdiscourses.com Follow: facebook.com/newdiscourses twitter.com/NewDiscourses instagram.com/newdiscourses newdiscourses.locals.com pinterest.com/newdiscourses linkedin.com/company/newdiscourses minds.com/newdiscourses reddit.com/r/NewDiscourses Podcast: @newdiscourses podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new-…es/id1499880546 bit.ly/NDGooglePodcasts open.spotify.com/show/0HfzDaXI5L4LnJQStFWgZp stitcher.com/podcast/new-discourses © 2021 New Discourses. All rights reserved.

An interview with harpist, singer, songwriter, and Rochester, NY native, Mikaela Davis. We discuss her unconventional path from the Crane School of Music to writing, recording, and touring her own music. Mikaela has had rich experiences in many facets of music-making and the music business. She's an inspiring artist to listen to and learn from.   Highlights Lives of working musicians in the 21st century - 6:38 Developing her ear - 7:41 The signing in her teenage years - 10:20 Wanting to have a degree - 12.34 A huge agency that wanted to sign her - 13:17 An extremely stressful experience - 16:14 The biggest thing she had learned - 18:43 Never playing the same set twice in a row - 20:58 Nerves before taking the stage - 25:51 Being a band leader is interesting - 29:23 Loving New York City - 33:56 Her childhood in Rochester - 36:16 Everyone supports each other in Rochester - 39:12 Her experience during the pandemic - 43:13 Everyone should have a home studio - 45:00 Being in total control of her intellectual property - 51:44 Her relationship with streaming services in general - 52:40 Her recommendations - 57:19   Episode Resources Connect with Robert Hunt Simonds: roberthuntsimonds@gmail.com  http://roberthuntsimonds.com/ http://craigwagnermusic.blogspot.com  Virginia Postrel: "The Future and Its Enemies": https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684862697/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=libcurrents-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=0684862697&linkId=80041dacbb72c664b3422edf611af196  Connect with Mikaela Davis: Website: https://www.mikaeladavis.com  Mikaela’s Recommendations: Joanna Sternberg: “Then I Try Some More”: https://joannasternberg.bandcamp.com/album/then-i-try-some-more  Connie Converse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTfetwSSsIE  Dorothy Ashby: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8zPorum2p0  Alice Coltrane: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUMuDWDVd20  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Film: https://www.focusfeatures.com/eternal_sunshine_of_the_spotless_mind  Soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlSbT5XODiE&list=PL221E0226B8DE9B6D 

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 17 Repressive Tolerance Series, Part 1 of 4 We live in a crazy world today that seems to have gone off the rails. That's because it is being driven by a broken logic, and, for all the flaws on the right, that broken logic is centered in the no-longer-tolerant left. The logic of the left today is overwhelmingly rooted in a single essay published in 1965 by the neo-Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse. That essay is "Repressive Tolerance." The thesis statement of this essay can be boiled down to "movements from the left must be extended tolerance, even when they are violent, while movements from the right must not be tolerated, including suppressing them by violence." This asymmetric ethic has been the heart and soul of left politics in the West since the 1960s, and we're living in the fruit of that catastrophe now. To help people understand this vitally important and intrinsically totalitarian essay and its relevance to our present moment, James Lindsay walks the listener through Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance" in a four-part lecture series. In this series, he reads the essay in full and attempts to make clear how it is the logic underlying the present moment. The goal is to explain the essay as Marcuse would have understood it, in his own context, and to show how his own logic has become dominant and the monster that he believed he was fighting. In the first part, Lindsay begins by framing the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory to give background on Marcuse. He also explains that Marcuse seems to be attempting to give a solution to Karl Popper's famous "Paradox of Tolerance," which was provided as an aside in his 1945 book The Open Society and Its Enemies, which analyzed how fascism can arise and overtake liberal societies. Marcuse's answer to this conundrum is that a "discriminating tolerance," a "liberating tolerance," must be practiced that offers favoritism to the left and actively suppresses the right, as he defines them (from a perspective of Critical Theory). Join Lindsay as he contextualizes and then brings the first portion of this essay to life, and stay tuned for Parts 2, 3, and 4 to come! Support New Discourses: paypal.me/newdiscourses patreon.com/newdiscourses subscribestar.com/newdiscourses youtube.com/channel/UC9K5PLkj0N_b9JTPdSRwPkg/join Website: newdiscourses.com Follow: facebook.com/newdiscourses twitter.com/NewDiscourses instagram.com/newdiscourses pinterest.com/newdiscourses/ linkedin.com/company/newdiscourses minds.com/newdiscourses reddit.com/r/NewDiscourses Podcast: @newdiscourses podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new-…es/id1499880546 bit.ly/NDGooglePodcasts open.spotify.com/show/0HfzDaXI5L4LnJQStFWgZp stitcher.com/podcast/new-discourses © 2021 New Discourses. All rights reserved.

We’re back In the Enemy Camp w/ C Derick Varn, and we would like to speak to the (((managers))). On the forced march from a generous patron, we read a mid-90s reactionary pseudo-class analysis from Pat Buchanan’s main man Sam Francis entitled “Leviathan and Its Enemies”, published in 2016. Special thanks to Stevie for additional editing. http://patreon.com/swampsidechats http://emancipation.network

In my most philosophical moods (and I'm usually in a pretty philosophical mood) I tend to see pretty much anything as a window onto the cosmos. But I'd never considered my cotton slacks as a window onto the forward march of human progress. That is, until I read Virginia Postrel's new book, "The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World." Did you know that the microbial theory of disease starts with silkworm farming? That the origins of computing have something to do with the algorithmic nature of weaving? That double-entry bookkeeping and modern finance are creatures of the textile trade? Well, I do now, thanks to Virginia's fascinating new book. We talk about all that, as well as the nature of the human desires for protection, comfort, pleasure, novelty and status that drive the whole story forward. Could whatever you're listening to this on now even exist if we didn't care about so much about pants? I don't know, but "The Fabric of Civilization" got me wondering. In addition to this book, Virginia Postrel is author of The Future and Its Enemies, the Substance of Style, and the Power of Glamour. Reason magazine under her editorship in the late '90s and early Oughts was a big formative influence on me and I count myself lucky to have her as a friend. She is also, I should mention, a member of the Niskanen Center's board of advisors.  ReadingsThe Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World by Virginia PostrelCreditsHost: Will Wilkinson (@willwilkinson)Audio engineer: Ray IngegneriMusic: Dig Deep by RW SmithModel Citizen is a production of the Niskanen Center  (@niskanencenter)To support this podcast or any of the Niskanen Center's programs, visit: https://niskanencenter.org/donate

Today, Jonah is joined by Virginia Postrel – former editor-in-chief of Reason magazine and author of many of the latter-day holy tomes of libertarianism, such as The Future and Its Enemies – to talk about her new book, The Fabric of Civilization. Virginia and Jonah do a deep dive into several moments in which the changes in textile manufacturing created giant, revolutionary, consciousness-shifting ripple effects regarding how civilizations viewed their relationship to markets and the economy. In particular, Virginia addresses how the un-guilded spinners of Europe were like the Luddites before it was cool, why textile-making would be one of the most laborious processes in the world without advanced technologies, and what made cotton fabric from India so special that “the French treated it much the same as the American government treats cocaine.” At least that kind of wild protectionism confirms a long-held American instinct: Never trust the French.   Show Notes: -Virginia’s book, The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World -“Isaiah’s Job” -Our first episode with Matt Ridley (on technical innovation) -Our second episode with Matt Ridley (on more technical innovation) -Virginia at Volokh Conspiracy: The textile industry’s relationship to literacy -The salaries of spinners may be higher than one thinks -The High Sparrow and the Labor Theory of Value -Some bits from “The Bad Polanyi” on ancient Assyria -Virginia talks about Indian cotton prints See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rusty Reno is author of several books and editor of First Things, an ecumenical journal of religion and public life. His conversation with Ryan covers his conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism, the scholars and books that have most influenced him, and why he thinks fear is an enemy to solidarity. They also discuss Rusty’s legendary climbing fall, his climbing escapades in Yosemite in the early 80s, and how he went from being a “climbing bum” to a Yale PhD student.   Biblical studies and modern theology   Why rock climbing is good for scholars   Vulnerability as a threat to freedom   Captivity to the resume   The danger of fear   Anti-globalization based on love of homeland   Fear as an enemy to solidarity and love   Links: In the Ruins of the Church by Rusty Reno  Ephraim Radner  “Theology in the Ruins of the Church” by Rusty Reno Sanctified Vision: An introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible by John O’Keefe Readings in St. John’s Gospel by William Temple Austin Farrer The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper The Ordinary Transformed by Rusty Reno Surnaturel by Henri de Lubac Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism and the Future of the West by Rusty Reno The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

The Feudal Society and Its Enemies by The Voice of Nick

"The Paradox of Tolerance" is an idea popularized by the philosopher Karl Popper in his 1945 book " The Open Society and Its Enemies." The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. This idea came to fruition after World War Two and it is likely that Popper used the example of what happened in Nazi Germany as his support for this idea. In this episode, Drew and Alex discuss this idea and try to figure out how society can protect free speech but also limit dangerous ideas from going into the mainstream. They look at how different countries deal with hate speech. The two also wonder if fringe ideas are again going into the mainstream.

This week, host Daniel Raimi talks about carbon capture, use, and storage (CCUS) with Julio Friedmann, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. Friedmann gives an overview of the status of CCUS deployment worldwide, describes the costs of CCUS relative to other approaches for reducing emissions, and notes some emerging federal policies that aim to increase deployment of CCUS in the United States. References and recommendations: "Capturing Investment: Policy Design to Finance CCUS Projects in the US Power Sector" by Julio Friedmann, Emeka Ochu, and Jeffrey D. Brown; https://energypolicy.columbia.edu/research/report/capturing-investment-policy-design-finance-ccus-projects-us-power-sector "To Tackle Climate Change, the (Industrial) Heat Is On" by Julio Friedmann; https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-21/amid-climate-change-the-heat-is-on-heavy-industry-to-decarbonize "Low-Carbon Heat Solutions for Heavy Industry: Sources, Options, and Costs Today" by Julio Friedmann, Zhiyuan Fan, and Ke Tang; https://energypolicy.columbia.edu/research/report/low-carbon-heat-solutions-heavy-industry-sources-options-and-costs-today "Engineers of Victory" by Paul Kennedy; https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/91616/engineers-of-victory-by-paul-kennedy/ "Innovation and Its Enemies" by Calestous Juma; https://global.oup.com/academic/product/innovation-and-its-enemies-9780190467036?cc=us&lang=en& "45Q&A" blog series about the 45Q tax credit for CCUS; https://www.resourcesmag.org/common-resources/45q-series-comments-45q-tax-credit-carbon-capture-utilization-and-storage-ccus/

A conspiracy theory is an explanation of an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful actors, often political in motivation,[2][3] when other explanations are more probable.[4] The term has a pejorative connotation, implying that the appeal to a conspiracy is based on prejudice or insufficient evidence.[5] Conspiracy theories resist falsification and are reinforced by circular reasoning: both evidence against the conspiracy and an absence of evidence for it are re-interpreted as evidence of its truth,[5][6] whereby the conspiracy becomes a matter of faith rather than something that can be proved or disproved.[7][8] Research suggests that conspiracist ideation—belief in conspiracy theories—can be psychologically harmful or pathological[9][10] and that it is highly correlated with psychological projection, paranoia and Machiavellianism.[11] Conspiracy theories once limited to fringe audiences have become commonplace in mass media, emerging as a cultural phenomenon of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.[12][13][14][15] weki #coronavirusmisinformation #CoronavirusConspiracyTheory Political use In his book The Open Society and Its Enemies, the philosopher Karl Popper used the term "the conspiracy theory of society" to denote a conception of social phenomena that he found to be defective—namely, that social phenomena such as "war, unemployment, poverty, shortages ... [are] the result of direct design by some powerful individuals and groups."[81] Popper argued that totalitarianism was founded on "conspiracy theories" which drew on imaginary plots driven by paranoid scenarios predicated on tribalism, chauvinism, or racism. Popper acknowledged that genuine conspiracies do exist,[82] but noted how infrequently conspirators have been able to achieve their goal.[82] The historian Bruce Cumings similarly rejects the notion that history is controlled by conspiracies, stating that where real conspiracies have appeared they have usually had little effect on history and have had unforeseen consequences for the conspirators. Cumings concludes that history is instead "moved by the broad forces and large structures of human collectivities".[83] In a 2009 article, the legal scholars Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule considered a number of possible government responses to conspiracy theories, including censorship and taxation. They concluded that the authorities ought to engage in counter-speech and dialogue, which they termed "cognitive infiltration".[84] #AlexJones referenced numerous conspiracy theories for convincing his supporters to endorse Ron Paul over Mitt Romney and Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton.[1][2] --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/vegansteven/message

Let's start with Karl Popper and the Paradox of Tolerance. This is something that has vexed me ever since I found out about it. The idea is this: think of society as having a sliding scale between tolerance and intolerance, with regard to people, with regard to ideas, politics, religion, race, sexual and gender identity, and so forth. The more the scale tips toward tolerance, the more intolerant ideas are sanctioned, so both tolerance and intolerance result in intolerance. Intolerance prevails either way. And the only way around this is to embrace intolerance, and then the question becomes, what kind of intolerance do we truly wish to prevail? Works Cited: Belief and Identity. (2019, August 3). Retrieved December 26, 2019, from A Satanist Reads the Bible website: https://asatanistreadsthebible.com/belief-and-identity/ Brandt, F., Brill, M., & Suksompong, W. (2016). An ordinal minimax theorem. Games and Economic Behavior, 95, 107–112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2015.12.010 Brown, D. (2017, August 20). How One Man Convinced 200 Ku Klux Klan Members To Give Up Their Robes. Retrieved December 26, 2019, from NPR.org website: https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinced-200-ku-klux-klan-members-to-give-up-their-robes Clark, D. J. (2018). Behind the Curve [Documentary]. Evil. (2019, June 8). Retrieved December 23, 2019, from A Satanist Reads the Bible website: https://asatanistreadsthebible.com/evil/ Farrelly, C. P. (Ed.). (2004). Contemporary political theory: A reader. London ; Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE. Huntington, S. P. (2011). The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order (Simon & Schuster hardcover ed). New York: Simon & Schuster. Judis, J. B. (2018). The nationalist revival: Trade, immigration, and the revolt against globalization. New York, NY: Columbia Global Reports. On Taake and Antifa. (n.d.). Retrieved December 23, 2019, from Metal Trenches website: https://metaltrenches.com/reviews/on-taake-and-antifa-1377 Popper, K. R., Ryan, A., & Gombrich, E. H. (2013). The Open Society and Its Enemies. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rushin, S., & Edwards, G. S. (2018). The Effect of President Trump's Election on Hate Crimes. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3102652 Schmitt, C. (2005). Political theology: Four chapters on the concept of sovereignty (University of Chicago Press ed). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. The Official Taake Website. (2007, March 29). Retrieved December 23, 2019, from https://web.archive.org/web/20070329042528/http://taake.theblacksun.org/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asatanistreadsthebible/support

Historian Quinn Slobodian makes a return appearance to talk about neoliberals: their opposition to the European Union (essay in Mutant Neoliberalism), their hatred of the 1960s, and their embrace of racial and culturalist politics.

Mary Eberstadt is an American author of several influential works of non-fiction, including How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization; Adam and Eve after the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution; and It's Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies. Her 2010 novel The Loser Letters: A Comic Tale of Life, Death, and Atheism was adapted for stage and premiered at the Catholic University of America's Hartke Theater in fall 2016. She is also editor of the anthology Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys. A frequent contributor to magazines and journals including TIME, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and First Things, Mrs. Eberstadt (nee Tedeschi) has also served as an editor at The Public Interest, The National Interest, and Policy Review. She has been associated with various think tanks, and in 2016 became a senior research fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute. In 2011, she founded a literary organization called the Kirkpatrick Society that has mentored hundreds of writers. In 2014, she delivered the Commencement address at Seton Hall University, which awarded her an honorary doctorate in humane letters.During the Reagan administration, Mrs. Eberstadt spent two years as a speechwriter to Secretary of State George Shultz. She graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University with a double major in philosophy and government. In summer 1981, she became the first female voting member of the student body at formerly all-male Deep Springs College.Support the show (http://www.faithandlaw.org/donate)

With 1.7 out of 7.4 million people protesting in Hong Kong, the Chinese Government is under scrutiny as never before (1:35-23:40). In the latest of a series of devastating results, the federal court has dismissed a significant case that ASIC launched against Westpac. Is ASIC too hard, too soft, or just incompetent? (23:40-36:50). Donald Trump wants to buy Greenland, however, the Danish Prime Minister says she has no interest. Is this the biggest real-estate deal on earth, or a decision for the locals? (36:50-44:19). Scott Hargreaves and Dr Chris Berg are joined by Daniel Wild and Dr Zac Gorman to discuss these questions and share their culture picks, including China born British writer, Ma Jian, and his book China Dream, Toy Story 4 and its commentary on communism, Karl Popper's old classic The Open Society and Its Enemies, and Steve Smith's remarkable comeback in the latest Ashes series. (46:50-59:04).   Show Notes: What If Everyone's Wrong About China?  Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-19/china-s-liberalization-shouldn-t-be-ruled-out-just-yet?utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_content=economics&utm_medium=social&cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-economics&utm_source=twitter Engineers of the Soul: Ideology in Xi Jinping's China by John Garnaut, https://sinocism.com/p/engineers-of-the-soul-ideology-in The State Strikes Back: The End of Economic Reform in China https://www.piie.com/bookstore/state-strikes-back-end-economic-reform-china ASIC loses landmark case against Westpac, Tim Boyd, Financial Review https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/asic-loses-landmark-case-against-westpac-20190813-p52ggy Why does Donald Trump want to buy Greenland?  Phillip Inman, The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/19/why-does-donald-trump-want-to-buy-greenland Donald Trump, Twitter https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1163961882945970176?s=20 Dr Jennifer Marohasy at Climate Change Concern Forum in Maroochydore, Institute of Public Affairs, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVlu-7_FxD8&feature=youtu.be   Culture Picks: Chinese Dream, Ma Jian https://www.amazon.com/China-Dream-Ma-Jian/dp/178474249X Toy Story 4 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1979376/ The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl R.Popper https://www.amazon.com/Open-Society-Its-Enemies-One/dp/0691158134 Steve Smith's comeback at The Ashes https://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/smith-wade-centuries-steer-resurgent-australia-to-commanding-position-20190805-p52dsz.html  

The public school exists to make automatons and to reproduce class hierarchies and authoritarian power dynamics. How different is 2019 from 1906 when Emma Goldman was writing in “The Child and Its Enemies” that schools drive children to become foreign to themselves and to each other, arranged into files, classified, and numbered with quality giving …

Vice Principal and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research Interview starts at 2:28 and ends at 38:32 “Nobody can see the future, but what we can see from the past is that it unfolds according to certain properties. What [Virginia Postrel, author of The Future and Its Enemies] wrote that was so compelling was that the best properties to help that unfold in the best way are properties of experimentation, of testing, of openness, of collaboration, of letting people try what people do in an environment where they get feedback from the marketplace and then they can respond.” Interview with James McQuivey Bradley Metrock's This Week in Voice interview with Brian Roemmelle, starting at Roemelle's estimate that Amazon has 10,000 people working on Alexa. November 15, 2018 Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation by James McQuivey Paleo cheese puffs by LesserEvil at Amazon.com Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress by Virginia Postrel Content “Ben Sasse: By the Book” in The New York Times - November 21, 2018 Them: Why We Hate Each Other and How to Heal by Ben Sasse Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport Moby Dick: or, the White Whale by Herman Melville Next Week's Show Since Darlene and I will be traveling next week in Tucson and Denver, I'm thinking of doing an AMA (Ask Me Anything) show based on your questions or comments. Please email them to me at podchronicles AT gmail DOT com. Thanks! Outro Vector robot by Anki at Amazon.com Music for my podcast is from an original Thelonius Monk composition named "Well, You Needn't." This version is "Ra-Monk" by Eval Manigat on the "Variations in Time: A Jazz Perspective" CD by Public Transit Recording" CD. Please Join the Kindle Chronicles group at Goodreads! Right-click here and then click "Save Link As..." to download the audio to your computer, phone, or MP3 player.

Marking the 50th anniversary of the dramatic year of 1968 (which also saw the election of President Nixon), on this edition of the Nixon Now Podcast we interviewed Richard Vinen for his newly released book "1968: Radical Protest and Its Enemies,” which explores how the events of 1968 — from anti-war marches, worker strikes to violence on the streets of the world's greatest cities — shaped much of today’s culture. Richard Vinen is Professor of History at Kings College, London and the author of a number of major books on 20th Century Europe. He won the Wolfson Prize for history for his previous book, "National Service." Photo: Students flash peace signs during protests at Columbia University.(Patrick A. Burns/The New York Times). Introduction Music: "Revolution" by the Beatles (1968). Interview by Jonathan Movroydis

Eduardo and Andy discuss the recent ban by Facebook, YouTube, Apple and Spotify on InfoWars (and others). Should these actions be supported or opposed?What's Left? Website:Podcasts:iTunes:     Googleplaymusic:      stitcher:Additional Links:What’s Left?: On Independent MediaObama’s use of Espionage ActTreaty of Brest-LitovskAnother point of view on Brest-LitovskThe Smith Act (1940)What’s Left? Socialism 101Alexandra KollantaiHer writingsRobert Mueller released his indictment alleging that 13 Russian nationals colluded to disrupt the 2016 elections. Who are these Russian nationals sowing discord? And who are these Americans that were manipulated??•The Curious Case of the Russian Flash Mob at the West Palm Beach Cheesecake Factory•Karl Popper: ”Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”Popper, Karl, The Open Society and Its Enemies, volume 1, The Spell of Plato, 1945 (Routledge, United Kingdom)•Correction: I stated Radio Lab had reported on the Alaskan immigration town debate. It was actually This American Life that had reported on it.Episode 621/21 July 2017Fear and Loathing in Homer and RockvilleTwo towns where people got really upset about undocumented immigrants, even though in both places, that did not seem to be the most important thing happening at all. One of the towns, a small town in Alaska, has no undocumented immigrants at all, but the possibility of them arriving put the whole town at each other’s throats.https://www.thisamericanlife.org/621/fear-and-loathing-in-homer-and-rockville

Fifty years after radicals took to the streets of Paris and stormed campuses across the Western World, Andrew Marr unpicks the legacy of 1968. Historian Richard Vinen finds waves of protest across the western world in his book The Long '68: Radical Protest and Its Enemies. Some movements were genuinely revolutionary, such as the ten million French workers whose strike nearly toppled the government. But on American university campuses and in British art schools, protests took the forms of civil rights marches and feminist collectives, whose narratives changed the way we think today. In Paris, left-wing students armed with works of philosophy took on the police and the state. But Paris was still coming to terms with its Nazi occupation, explains Agnès Poirier. Her new book follows the artists and writers of the 40s and 50s, from Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre to Miles Davis and James Baldwin, as a new generation helped France regain its reputation for art, passion and political action. Not only left-wing radicals were inspired by the events of that year. In 1968 philosopher Roger Scruton was holed up in a Paris bedroom studying while rioters smashed windows outside. Scruton was horrified by the chaos and destruction, and turned his back on the left-wing politics of his childhood. He became part of a generation of new conservatives who sought to preserve the past rather than fight for an unknown future. Today France is facing new waves of strikes, with railway workers bringing the transport system to a halt and Emmanuel Macron pushing through sweeping reforms to social security. Sophie Pedder, Paris bureau chief for The Economist and author or a new biography of Macron, asks what France in 2018 owes to the events of 1968. Producer: Hannah Sander.

Pontus is finally back and goes on a rant about Lawrence Krauss' reported behaviours then we turn towards the much happier topic of new books coming out for skeptics (Steven Novella and the SGU rogues' 'The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe' and a book in Portugal bearing the title 'Science and Its Enemies'). Jelena brings up yet another woman in science before we move on to Deborah Hyde's article on a rising exorcism. Also, Information Netzwerk Homöopatie goes international thanks to Edzard Ernst et al. Italy introduces mandatory measles vaccinations starting this March and the Skeptic Club Sysifos in the Czech Republic launches the Pro Vax Challenge campaign. Finally, András talks about an online application developed by a Dutch team as an education tool to tackle fake news.