Podcasts about white anglo saxon protestant

We continue GODZILLApril with the latest MonsterVerse film GODZILLA x KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE (2024)! We talk about seeing this together in the theater last year, the awesome pink and green and neon color palette, and if the people in these movies really even matter (although the casts are stacked and everyone is great)! We also talk about Steven attending the Tulsa-based band WILDERADO's concert, taking selfies vs just getting a memory, and Brent has a scary run-in with a W.A.S.P. (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). Oh wait… nope, it was an actual wasp. Like a flying wasp. Scary. *SEND US YOUR QUESTIONS FOR EPISODE 400 & WE'LL ANSWER THEM ON THAT EPISODE* ———————————————————— To see images of the stuff discussed, look at your device's screen while listening! Go here to get some LTAS Merch: tee.pub/lic/huI4z_dwRsI Email: LetsTalkAboutStuffPodcast AT gmail DOT com Follow LTAS on Instagram: www.instagram.com/ltaspod/?hl=en Subscribe to Steven's YouTube channel: youtube.com/@alittlelessprofoun…si=exv2x7LZS2O1B65h Follow Steven on Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/stevenfisher22/ Brent is not on social media. A 5-Star rating on your podcast app is appreciated! And if you like our show, share it with your friends! THE GREEN ROOM FOR CREATURES.

This is episode 52 of the Hidden History of Texas - The Compromise of 1850 and some Texans are already angry and ready to leave the union This is episode 52 of the Hidden History of Texas - The Compromise of 1850 and some Texans are already angry and ready to leave the union In the past few episodes, I've talked about relations between Texas and Mexico, Anglos and Mexicans, and how slavery was part and parcel of life in Texas. The fact that there was, and in reality, still is racial animosity and other types of bigotry towards non-whites and non-protestants among the Anglo citizens of Texas isn't, or at least shouldn't be a surprise. The earliest Anglo settlers primarily came from the Southern states and carried with them their culture.  They were very much like a large percentage of those who resided in many of the States, including some in the north. At the same time America was flexing its muscles and trying to expand its territory. From 1845 to 1865, America operated under the concept of Manifest Destiny as put forth by John L O'Sullivan when in 1845, he wrote,  “…the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions”.  Although originally written as a defense in the argument for admitting Texas into the Union, the article laid the foundation for justification of government actions that consequently had a negative effect on those who fell outside of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant group. By 1850 one outgrowth of this belief was the birth of  a secretive society known as the American Order. The group stood firmly against Catholics, foreigners, and supported restrictions on immigration. They came to be known as the “National American Party' or more commonly labeled the “Know-Nothing” political party. In Texas, they were known as the “American Party” and as a whole they argued that any foreign-born citizen be barred from voting or holding public office. In Texas, the party was anti-Mexican, pro-slavery, and they pledged to vote only for native-born Protestants for public office. Remember from last episode, after the Mexican and American war ended, Texas wanted to annex the eastern part of New Mexico. Texas was also insistent on making certain that slave owners were not only allowed to keep their slaves but also to acquire more. Southern states who identified with  the Texas political views also wanted to make certain that Texas was a slave state.  It was not only Texas that the Southern leaders were concerned with; they also began to insist that ALL of the territory that was acquired as a result of the treaty of Guadalupe-Hildago that ended the war be opened to slavery. Needless to say, this did not sit well with those in the north who were abolitionists, and they were determined to prevent this from taking place.   Meanwhile Robert S. Neighbors, who had been sent to New Mexico by then Texas Governor Peter Bell to organize the 4 eastern counties of New Mexico into a part of Texas failed in his mission.  As a result of his failure in June of 1850 there was a public outcry where some called for the use of military force to take the territory and still others called for secession from the Union. Governor Bell chose to call a special session of the legislature (in Texas the legislature only meets every 2 years, usually it keeps them out of trouble) to deal with the issue. However, even before the session began, things managed to get worse. The government in New Mexico put forth a proposed constitution for a future state and the citizens easily approved it. In their constitution, they declared the state's boundaries to include the land claimed by Texas.  At this point, President Fillmore decided to become involved, and he ordered that the army should reinforce their contingent that was stationed in New Mexico. He also publicly proclaimed that if any militiamen from Texas entered the area,

In this episode we dress up like we're in a Mad Max movie, strap on a comically ridiculous codpiece and dive head first into the world where shock rock meets glam rock in the form of the legendary metal band W.A.S.P.In the same way Lemmy is Motorhead, Blackie Lawless is Wasp. So maybe more accurately we will be diving face first into Blackie's comically ridiculous codpiece.Blackie grew up in Florida and New York in the 60s and considered following his uncle into a career in professional baseball. But it was the stage that called young Lawless and he learned to play guitar. This episode features cameo guest star appearances from Ace Frehley, Kiss, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, The New York Dolls, Johnny Thunders, Arthur Kane, Killer Kane, Sunset Strip, Sister, Nikki Six, Motley Crue, Shout at the Devil, London, Izzy Stradlin, Steve Adler, Slash, Guns n Roses, Fred Coury, Cinderella, Los Angeles, MTV, White Anglo Saxon Protestant, Show no Mercy, Alice Cooper, Ryne Duren, Iron Maiden, Capitol Records, Mike Varney, Animal (Fuck Like a Beast), Music For Nations, Tipper Gore, Filthy 15, PRMC, Parent Resource Music Center, N.W.O.B.H.M., New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Dungeons and Dragons, Steve Gutenberg, Can't Stop The Music, Golden Raspberry Awards, The Village People, The Dungeonmaster, Ragewar: The Challenges of Excalibrate, Digital Knights, Troubadour, Sammi Curr, Trick or Treat, T1000, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robert Patrick, Crimson Idol, Demi Lovato, Holy Fvck, The Occult, MAGA, Qanon, Harvard, Donald Trump, George. W. Bush, Ted Cruz, The Overton window, Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, Eastern Europe, Ukraine #SketchComedy #Sketch #Comedy #Sketch Comedy #Atheist #Science #History #Atheism #ConspiracyTheory #Sceptical #Scepticism #Mythology #Religion #Devil #Satan #Skeptic #Debunk #HeavyMetal #GlamMetal #HairMetal #ShockRock #WASP #W.A.S.P. 

This recording takes a different direction as co-hosts ⁠⁠⁠Miles Smith⁠⁠⁠ (Anglican), ⁠⁠⁠D. G. Hart⁠⁠⁠ (Presbyterian), and ⁠⁠⁠Korey Maas⁠⁠⁠ (Lutheran) welcome Aaron Renn to the Paleo-Protestant Pudcast. Aaron Renn is a consultant and keen observer of American cities and social trends who has taken an active interest in American Christianity and political conservatism. Many will know him from his First Things piece on the three worlds of evangelicalism (positive, neutral, and negative). Those observations are relevant for his concerns about why evangelicals are second-class citizens in the world of American conservatism (politics). For listeners wanting a deeper dive into the place of American Protestantism within elite culture and institutional networks in the United States, his essay on the sociologist who invented the phrase - White Anglo-Saxon Protestant - and an interview about the essay are well worth consulting. Among the many hats that Aaron Renn wears, his editorial work and writing for the American Reformer is likely the one that connects most directly to confessional Protestantism. We talked for a while and could have talked longer about evangelicals, political conservatism, confessional Protestants, the value of denominations as institutions, and the cultivation of Protestant intellectuals. This recording did not have an announced sponsor, but it may have well been Aaron Renn's substack which is the place to go to see Aaron wear most of his many hats. Listeners may follow him at @aaron_renn but only after they follow @IVMiles and @oldlife. We all pine for Dr. Maas to do more than lurk on Twitter.

In this episode Uncle Dig interviews James.James is a former medical and grey market grower from Southern Oregon.Uncle dig also gives us an update on what is going on in his garden.

Hello Interactors,Welcome to 2022. Or, as my son likes to say, twenty-twenty also. Today we begin our winter journey through human behavior as it relates to the interaction of people and place. As we further divide, we seem to also be drifting apart. So I turned to one of our leading philanthropic philosophizing musicians, Bono, for the answer.As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.Please leave your comments below or email me directly.Now let’s go…BONO SCRATCHESThe holidays have a way of making you reminisce. I was thinking back 14 years ago when I met Bono at Microsoft just before the 2007-2008 holiday break. He was promoting his RED giving initiative and a small group of us in Windows were meeting with him and his team on ways to incorporate RED into Windows as a cross promotional scheme. Bono thought it especially relevant given we were in REDmond, Washington.I was an early U2 fan. I bought their third album, War, on vinyl in 1983 when it first came out. So I brought it along to the meeting to see how Bono would react. As we filed into the Microsoft board room being greeted by members of the RED team and Bono, I was watching his eyes through his yellow tinted glasses. He immediately latched on to the album in my hand, walked over to me and said, “You just don’t see many of these.” And he took it from me as I followed him to the conference table. He asked me my name, pulled out his red pen and wrote on the back of the album cover, “It took 24 years but we finally hooked Brad. See you…” He then drew his signature profile of his long nose, glasses, and a straight smile and signed it, “Bono.”He was shorter than I imagined. But genuine and endearing. He shared the space and time in that meeting with everyone. But, at the end, he couldn’t resist taking jabs at the Windows logo. “Look,”, he said. “I’m not a business person, I’m an artist.” He then stood up and approached the white board. He talked about how awful the Windows logo was. “Why is the Windows logo a flag?”, he asked. “It bothers me.” He then grabbed a pen and drew a simple four pane window and said. “See, a window. How hard can that be?”, he demanded. And sat down.He had a point. And within a couple years, he got his wish. Pentagram, a design firm in New York, designed a new Windows logo. And with it came a new Microsoft logo that looks more like the sketch Bono made. But it turns out, as is often the case, even that idea was not new. Pentagram had proposed that same logo years before, but it was rejected.But I admit, I was a bit distracted during his loquacious logo lecture. It was hard taking him seriously in his skin tight gold pants. He was distracted too. While Bono was pacing along the whiteboard with pen in hand, his other hand was routinely futzing with his crotch. He looked like a baseball player stepping out of the batters box to adjust his cup or scratch an itch. It’s not the image of a rock star you want lingering in your head.I prefer to remember Bono as a 20 year old kid on MTV bellowing protest songs from the album he signed.U2’s album, War, is noted for its harsh departure from their previous two albums, both musically and lyrically. They set out to tackle themes of war as Ireland had seen its fair share in his lifetime. Their biggest hit from that album, “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, leads in with drums resembling a military march and features the blending of physical and emotional impacts of war. It includes lines like, “The trench is dug within our hearts.” It goes on to address the apathy around war and how our defiance against it is lessened by the numbing of the everyday violence mixed with fictionalized versions on TV.And it's true, we are immuneWhen fact is fiction and TV realityAnd today, the millions cry We eat and drink while tomorrow, they dieThe song, “Sunday Bloody Sunday” refers to a particularly bloody conflict in 1972 called Bloody Sunday. On Sunday, January 30th, 26 British soldiers opened fire on unarmed protestors in Northern Ireland killing 13 on the spot. One other died later from wounds. Many of these 14 people were either fleeing or helping other injured civilians.These lyrics are about the effects of Northern Ireland conflicts that had been occurring for more than two decades by the time U2 released this album. The conflicts occurred mostly in Northern Ireland over political and nationalistic opinions between two warring factions. On one side were Unionists and loyalists, who wanted Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom, and on the other Irish Nationalists and republicans, who sought to abandon the United Kingdom to create a United Ireland. Those seeking to stick with the United Kingdom were mostly Ulster Protestants, and those seeking independence were mostly Irish Catholics which added further religious and historic dimensions to what the Irish called The Troubles.GROUPIESThese two factions created what sociologists call in-groups and out-groups. In-groups are defined as “a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member.” Out-groups are “social groups with which an individual does not identify.” It’s easy to imagine how these two groups in Ireland could formulate in-groups and out-groups along historical, social, religious, and political lines. And looking around today, it’s easy to spot scads of in-groups and out-groups all around us and around the world.In many cases these attributes and divisions are real. In the case of the Irish conflict, who is a Protestant and who is a Catholic, for example, is empirically verifiable. But often times out-groups are created through fabrications of identity traits. They simply become reinforcing prejudicial stereotypes rooted in an underlying fear. Members of the in-group come to feel threatened and build elaborate cases for why the out-group should be feared.It happened in the United Kingdom with Brexit and in the United States with the swell of conservative in-group and out-group identification that Trump helped to solidify. It continues today on the topic of global warming. Many conservatives refuse to believe global warming is a fact. They fear making multi-national corporations accountable for environmental destruction would hurt the economy and America’s dominant position on the world stage. So they invent Anti-American ‘liberal’ out-groups and throw scientists, environmentalists and anyone who agrees with them into the groups. They then sprinkle combustible myths over the lot of them and then strike the match of Fox News and watch it burn.Many sociobiologists, like the recently deceased E.O. Wilson, would argue these people are simply executing on a well established evolutionary strategy. They’re protecting their own in an act called kin selection. It’s defined as “the evolutionary strategy that favors the reproductive success of an organism’s relatives, even at a cost to the organism’s own survival and reproduction.”When an in-group feels threatened, they turn to their members and seek protection while simultaneously turning their back on the out-group. Regardless of which group you’re in, you can’t help but feel threatened by some aspect of the effects of globalization. And so you turn to your in-group for comfort, protection, and strategies for survival.E.O. Wilson extends this argument further to include group-selection theory. Where as kin theory is an individual evolutionary act singled out as favorable through natural selection, Wilson also argues the same can be applied to groups. Those groups that amass the largest in-groups come to dominate the progressively weakening out-groups.It turns out these theories are hotly debated. Arguments against group-selection theory question how a group could possibly survive natural selection if they’re hellbent on self-destruction. It turns out, like the over reliance on the physical sciences to simplify economics, Darwinian ideas, while revolutionary and sound on their own terms, fail to extend to the complexities of the modern human psyche.The intricacies in the balance or tension, for example, of selfishness and cooperation in socio-psychological interactions are unlikely to be explained simply through evolutionary histories. Sociologist, Brian Castellani, studies the complexities of place and health and he reminds us that,“as recent developments in the complexity sciences have made rather clear (e.g., Byrne & Callaghan 2013; Capra & Luisi 2014), psychological existence and more widely social psychology and socio-anthropological existence are different forms of emergent self-organization, which require interdisciplinary understanding beyond just the biological sciences or physics or any such attempts at reductionism.”E.O. Wilson would likely agree as these are themes he covers in his 1998 book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. It’s there that he concludes,“The human condition is the most important frontier of the natural sciences. Conversely, the material world exposed by the natural sciences is the most important frontier of the social sciences and humanities. The consilience argument can be distilled as follows: The two frontiers are the same.”Humans are social animals. We survived and evolved over hundreds of thousands of years by dealing with the tensions and conflicts between individuals and groups with whom they lived. Castellani writes, “given that we are resolutely social organisms, it is better stated that our human capacity for altruism, cooperation, competition, aggression, and social commitment are, for the most part, a function of the fact that we have evolved, as a species, in highly complex social groups – group selection true or not.”He continues,“…the psyche’s evolution did not produce the tension between individuals and civilization; instead, the psyche’s evolution is a function of this tension.”REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE; PREJUDICE, ABUSE, BUSINESS CYCLESuccess, or happiness, of an individual or a group, in evolutionary terms, most likely came down to a realization that in order to survive one must choose to sacrifice. Any of us who ever played on a team, a band, or worked in a group knows that collaboration through cooperation can only work with individuals who make certain sacrifices for the team. Hence the old adage, “there is no ‘I’ in team.”We indeed are hardwired, evolutionarily speaking, to act in our own self interest to survive against an imminent threat. Fight or flight instincts are real. Yet we are equally hardwired to choose self-sacrifice. If such a sacrifice is deemed too extreme, we have the ability to choose to leave the group. Such a choice in the early days of homo sapiens came with its own risk; the group may not survive nor may you. The odds of survival are in favor of the natural forces of both local and global societies. These odds advantage the survival of groups over the survival of individuals thus discouraging such selfish behavior.And yet it still happens. We need only look at voluntary military service as evidence of self-sacrifice for the betterment of the group. And the draft is a great example of an in-group, the government, sacrificing individuals for the survival of the larger group, the country. But such cases are rare, especially with regards to heroes, relative to the general population. But there are smaller, less drastic altruistic sacrifices people make everyday. It’s a group of people that form their own in-group.This in-group makes small sacrifices for the betterment of the planet; they recycle, walk, bus, and cycle, drive less, buy less, fly less, downsize, or simply conclude they must grow their own food. These actions are also driven by fear of the effects of globalization. Think globally, act locally. These people perceive a global threat and fear that if they don’t make some sacrifices for the good of the group, they, nor the group, will survive.But such sacrifices are only effective at a scale larger than one’s own home, business, or even city. It needs to scale globally. We know how to scale for powerful impact. The French philosopher, Michel Foucault, developed theories on the relationship between power and knowledge. He noted two different forms of technologies of power. (He’s using the term technology broadly to mean the practical aims of changing the human environment) First there are the technologies of self which is the power to make your own decisions. The second are the technologies of power and government. For example, even if you decide not to wear a mask in public, institutions hold the power to oblige you to do so.We are pressured individually by our in-groups, or defiant in opposition to an out-group, to behave a particular way. Yet, overlaying it all – even in the presence of fierce hatred and animosity between groups – are human invented policies, procedures, laws, treaties, and obligations that find a way to mend, connect, skirt, or correct the differences between groups. Technologies of power.And even at a psychological level, we posses as humans innate concerns for our global commitment in our day-to-day lives. Technologies of self. Sigmund Freud, in his book titled Civilization and its discontents, talks of roles that Brian Castellani generalizes as “conforming,” “cooperative,” “cohesive,” “common identity,” and “let’s-work-together-and-figure-out-how-to-get-along.” These are the very roles civilizations have relied on to survive and thrive throughout our existence.History has a pretty good track record of societies and governments coming together despite our differences. The outcomes are not perfect, but we made it through the Cold War, civil rights movements globally, and ongoing negotiated tensions between the United States and China or even North Korea. The social-psychologist Anselm Strauss summarizes it like this,“The negotiated order on any given day could be conceived of as the sum total of the organization’s rules and policies, along with whatever agreements, understandings, pacts, contracts, and other working arrangements currently obtained. These include agreements at every level of organization, of every clique and coalition, and include covert as well as overt agreements.”  Any unhappiness or fear we may feel is of our own doing. And we’ve invented social super structures, technologies of power, to address them while knowing full well they also perpetuate our unhappiness. It’s what makes people want to retreat to a simpler past. Some wish to escape to a primitive natural oasis as Thoreau did around Walden Pond while others want to retreat, like Trump does, to the 50s and 60s as a way to “Make America Great Again.”BONO IS NO HIPPIEThoreau discovered retreating to nature and isolating himself from society did not yield the happiness he expected. He too, after all, was a social animal. And while many in America, especially White men, reflect nostalgically on how much better it was for them in the 50s and 60s they forget, or don’t care, to remember it was a time of rampant spousal abuse. Wife beating was not made illegal in all states until 1920. It wasn’t until the 1970’s women’s movement that it got the attention it deserved. The term ‘domestic violence’ didn’t appear until 1973.In 1930 Freud addressed our attraction to the chimera of nostalgia by observing “that what we call our civilization is largely responsible for our misery, and that we [believe we] should be much happier if we gave it up and returned to primitive conditions.” Considering he wrote this at a time when Nazism and Stalinism was on the rise, it’s clear his observations would have been very real.In 2018, the British comparative religion writer and former Roman Catholic sister, Karen Armstrong, noted “that such nostalgia remains the primary motivator for the rise in religious, cultural, and political fundamentalism throughout the world—all a reaction to the perceived “ills” and “inequalities” of globalization and global civil society, which these nostalgic thinkers “read” as resolutely global, secular, elitist, bourgeois, liberal, harmful, and blasphemous.”It’s not hard to identify such in-groups: nationalist movements in Europe, Muslim Fundamentalists and extremists, and the Alt-Right movement in America – which is dangerously neighboring the in-groups of the Christian right, the Tea Party, and increasingly the majority of the Republican party.But there are also groups who want to move toward a more global civil society. They see the tolerance and blending of religions, cultures, and traditions as a way to advance the global community. These are people who live in the now and believe advances in income inequality, race relations, gender spectrum awareness, health and wellness, and reducing global warming can yield a better future for all. And they embrace the global network society introduced through the rapid advancement of the information age.As Brian Castellani says, “at no previous point in our history of anatomically modern Homo sapiens have humans had the capacity to engage in, perpetuate, or share their social commitments (global or otherwise) on such a global scale.”And while some dream of a utopian network society – a massive global in-group – any dip into social media will tell you it’s unlikely anyone will get that many people to agree on a set of binding principles and sacrifices.But the global network society has proven effective at rallying local acts of defiance that lead to compromise. The worldwide BLM movement is the most immediate example. And as unpleasant as it is, defiance in the spirit of altruistic progress toward a better future may be our only choice.It is this very progress that defines an out-group in the eyes of conservatives. The ills of globalization, in their eyes, are the progression, recognition, release, and rise of the historically oppressed. They invent scapegoats in the form of brown skinned immigrants or encroaching Asian wealth and dominance. Many in this in-group fear the grip of the mythical White Anglo-Saxon Protestant slipping away and yearn for a nostalgic Western dominance that they believe their Christian God ordained them to execute.Progressives define conservatives as an out-group. They feel the ills of globalization are the result of over-exploitive capitalistic dominance wrapped up in Western expansionist dogma. Their scapegoats are business men, White male politicians, and toxic masculinity. They fear an allegiance to ever rising GDP will result in a collapse of natural resources and increasing climate instability that threatens the existence of all living beings. Many in this in-group yearn for a nostalgic return to local living and simpler lives that depend less on the globalist infrastructure of over-exploitive capitalism.Castellani believes it comes down to this,“As such, in the face of this misery, we really only have two options: bring peace and happiness into the world through civil disobedience and brutal compromise (both within ourselves and in relations to our bodies, nature and others); or allow our fear of the global to draw us into nostalgic retreat, which often quickly turns our best dreams and intentions into global nightmares.”Track 4 on U2’s album, War, is a piece entitled “Like a Song.” It’s one of the least performed songs by the band, but its lyrics speak to today’s divided groups. In Verse Two Bono nods to in-group signaling that can trigger nostalgia while also calling us to rebel against our divisions, seek connections with others through agreeable terms, and strive to help one another.And we love to wear a badge, a uniformAnd we love to fly a flagBut I won't let others live in hellAs we divide against each other and we fight amongst ourselvesToo set in our ways to try to rearrangeToo right to be wrong, in this rebel songThose are some wise words from a group of 20 year old wannabe punk rockers. And after all these years, Bono continues to acknowledge that the struggles for peace and justice, while motivated by altruism, can only happen through defiance, resistance, and compromise. It is, after all, the natural order of complex systems.In a 2015 Rolling Stone interview he’s quoted as saying,“When you get bleak about things and think, Gosh, is there an end to this? Yeah, there is, it just takes lots of work, lots of time. I was never a hippie— I’m punk rock, really. I was never into: “Let’s hold hands, and peace will come just because we’ll dream it into the world.” No, peace is the opposite of dreaming. It’s built slowly and surely through brutal compromises and tiny victories that you don’t even see. It’s a messy business, bringing peace into the world. But it can be done, I’m sure of that.” Subscribe at interplace.io

In this episode of "Keen On", Andrew is joined by Michael Know Beran, the author of "WASPS: The Splendors and Miseries of an American Aristocracy", to discuss the rise and fall of the distinctly American phenomenon that is White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture. Michael Knox Beran is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, a lawyer, and a writer. He is the author of Pathology of the Elites (Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), Forge of Empires 1861-1871 (Free Press, 2007), Jefferson's Demons (Free Press, 2003), and The Last Patrician (St. Martin's, 1998). Beran's writing has appeared in a number of publications, among them City Journal, The Wall Street Journal, National Review, American Heritage, The New Yorker, Humanitas, George, the New York Daily News, and The Claremont Review of Books. He has been a guest on Charlie Rose, CNN's Inside Politics, Larry Kudlow, Extension 720 with Milt Rosenberg, and other television and radio programs. Beran has practiced law in several New York firms. He holds degrees from Columbia (B.A., magna cum laude, 1988), Cambridge (M.Phil., 1990), and Yale Law School (J.D., 1993). He lives with his wife and daughters in Westchester County, New York. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Social class has fallen off the radar in America, but remains key to understanding many of the problems we face today in society. This includes everything from the erosion of political norms to men no longer behaving as gentlemen.These problems are traceable in part to the fall of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) establishment. Sociologist E. Digby Baltzell, who popularized the term WASP, predicted many of these problems years ago. In a new podcast series starting today, we will examine his work and what it tells us about America.In this episode we will define and distinguish between the elite, the wealthy and the upper class. We well also talk about what it means to be a well-functioning (aristocratic) vs. poorly-functioning (caste) upper class. And we'll define authority and establishment, looking at what makes for a well-structured (establishment) and poorly-structured (caste) elite. Finally, we'll talk about the very specific meaning that the term WASP itself has.These categories are fundamental to understanding what has happened to America since the decline of the establishment. In future episodes we'll trace some of the consequences of this.Rediscovering E. Digby Baltzell's Sociology of Elites: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/02/rediscovering-e-digby-baltzells-sociology-of-elites/The Rise of the “Establishment,” and Its Impact Today: https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-rise-of-the-establishment-and-its-impact-today-with-aaron-m-renn/

I’ll never forget the first time I heard someone mention WASP and realized they weren’t talking about those bee-like creatures who sting and are really scary. I was quite young and when the acrostic was explained to me I realized I was still lost. I only understood what one of the four words meant. WHITE ANGLO SAXON PROTESTANT. Ok. I thought I got the WHITE. The other three, forget it. I’m guessing everyone has their own story of how they came to discover the identity of their family, skin color, racial background, national identity, religion, etc., but it isn’t something that comes very intuitively. These are all categories that require some degree of learning and context.As the years went by I learned a bit more. Anglo Saxon in my mind just meant English or British and I didn’t get the difference between those two at all, but at least I had a bucket into which I could put Anglo and Saxon. Protestant? That was a bit harder. We went to a different church building (as if we ever went) than the Catholics did and we could eat meat on Friday and if we had a cross hanging in our home it wouldn’t still have Jesus hanging on it. And our ministers wouldn’t wear those long dresses or black clothes during the week with a white thing called a collar.But so what? What really mattered was discovering what this meant to others. Some seemed very proud of being WASPs, like attainment of sorts, and somehow superior to other categories. And there didn’t seem to be variations of it. Never heard of WASC or WHITE ANGLO SAXON CATHOLICS. OR BASPs. BLACK ANGLO SAXON PROTESTANTS.I could go on, but you get the point. What’s the big deal? For my Grandmother is was a huge deal because she was DAR (more initials) or Daughter of the American Revolution and even an elite one because she was also a DAM, Daughter of the Mayflower. That’s about as close to royal pedigree as one could have as it was explained to me in Elementary School. My blood must be red white and blue.Now I know that WASP was referring to a certain combination of Race, Heritage, and Religion which somehow meant I had hit the jackpot. I was privileged. Over time I came to discover that lots of people didn’t like WASPs and the subtleties and nuances surrounding the issues weren’t going to go away-certainly not anytime soon if you read the same newspapers I do.So today I decided to bring in a special guest. She is more white than me. She is way more English than I am and she’s worked in the City in London and on Wall Street in Manhattan with names that look exactly like the ones on your checking account. Privileged indeed. Born English. Raised in Cambridge. Mother of 3. Miss Julia Kate Nand. Welcome to Church Hurts And. 

I’ll never forget the first time I heard someone mention WASP and realized they weren’t talking about those bee-like creatures who sting and are really scary. I was quite young and when the acrostic was explained to me I realized I was still lost. I only understood what one of the four words meant. WHITE ANGLO SAXON PROTESTANT. Ok. I thought I got the WHITE. The other three, forget it. I’m guessing everyone has their own story of how they came to discover the identity of their family, skin color, racial background, national identity, religion, etc., but it isn’t something that comes very intuitively. These are all categories that require some degree of learning and context.As the years went by I learned a bit more. Anglo Saxon in my mind just meant English or British and I didn’t get the difference between those two at all, but at least I had a bucket into which I could put Anglo and Saxon. Protestant? That was a bit harder. We went to a different church building (as if we ever went) than the Catholics did and we could eat meat on Friday and if we had a cross hanging in our home it wouldn’t still have Jesus hanging on it. And our ministers wouldn’t wear those long dresses or black clothes during the week with a white thing called a collar.But so what? What really mattered was discovering what this meant to others. Some seemed very proud of being WASPs, like attainment of sorts, and somehow superior to other categories. And there didn’t seem to be variations of it. Never heard of WASC or WHITE ANGLO SAXON CATHOLICS. OR BASPs. BLACK ANGLO SAXON PROTESTANTS.I could go on, but you get the point. What’s the big deal? For my Grandmother is was a huge deal because she was DAR (more initials) or Daughter of the American Revolution and even an elite one because she was also a DAM, Daughter of the Mayflower. That’s about as close to royal pedigree as one could have as it was explained to me in Elementary School. My blood must be red white and blue.Now I know that WASP was referring to a certain combination of Race, Heritage, and Religion which somehow meant I had hit the jackpot. I was privileged. Over time I came to discover that lots of people didn’t like WASPs and the subtleties and nuances surrounding the issues weren’t going to go away-certainly not anytime soon if you read the same newspapers I do.So today I decided to bring in a special guest. She is more white than me. She is way more English than I am and she’s worked in the City in London and on Wall Street in Manhattan with names that look exactly like the ones on your checking account. Privileged indeed. Born English. Raised in Cambridge. Mother of 3. Miss Julia Kate Nand. Welcome to Church Hurts And. 

Written and researched by Steven Mooradian Koehler Beer and the Prohibition Era  Steven Mooradian  Hello! Welcome to this episode of the Hurstories, a history podcast presented by Mercyhurst students. My name is Steven Mooradian and I will be your host for this episode.    Any good Erieite will tell you, there’s a church on every street, and a bar on every corner.   Erie’s long history with beer extends to the first large waves of immigration, bringing their brewing practices with them, none more locally famous than the Koehler family.  Their persistence through 13 years of prohibition propelled them into local legend, and the Koheler name remains a staple in northwestern Pennsylvania.  Erie, Pennsylvania has been a Mecca for immigrants for over a century and a half. Groups of Italian, Polish, German, Irish, Russian, Greek, and other European immigrants have historically found a small slice of Erie to call home. Even more recently, large contingencies of Nepalese, Bhutanese, Syrian, Central African, and Latin American groups have found their sanctuary and safety in some of the same areas. Though Erie’s population has decreased significantly since the mid 20th century, these groups are almost single-handedly keeping those numbers steady. There is truly a connection between the success of immigrants and the success of Erie.  Erie has a small, urban center. It is centrally located between three major cities: Buffalo, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. And it was a center of commerce and industry for a better part of the 19th and 20th centuries, perfect for establishing economic success in anything from paper to beer. When immigrants arrive they bring their interests and talents, making Erie one of the most diverse cities in America for well over a century.  Charles Koehler, a Dutch immigrant who arrived in Erie in the mid 1800’s, knew Erie held for him some of these opportunities. He worked for Frederick Dietz, who owned a brewery at 17th and Parade Street. Dietz died in 1858 and Charles took it over, though he left only a few years later in 1862 to begin a new brewery with his sons at 26th and Holland. Charles son Fred inherited the business, but it was his other son Jackson Koehler, who would take the family name and make it a brand.1   The first brewery built at the site of 21st and State Streets in Erie in 1855 was by George Frey and Peter Schaaf. Frey was himself an immigrant, from Germany, and is credited with introducing the lager style of beer to the Greater Erie-Buffalo region.2  Schaaf would go on to find a new partner several years later, a man by the name of Henry Kavelage, who in 1863 became the sole owner of the operation and named it Eagle Brewery.  Twenty years after, in 1883, Jackson Koehler purchased the brewery, calling it the Jackson-Eagle Koehler Brewery.  Erie in the 1880’s had multiple brewing operations, consisting of four lager plants, one ale, and one porter breweries. They all shared the market, but it didn’t take long for Jackson Koehler to surge to the top of the game. In 1890, Jackson commissioned Louis Lehle, a Chicago architect to design the new brewery.  On April 1, 1899, several of those other breweries, the Fred Koehler and Co. (Jackson’s brother), Cascade Brewery, National Brewery, and Eagle Brewery merged under the command of Koehler now going by the name Erie Brewing Company. The Koehler name became synonymous with beer in the Erie region.  The brewery ran with few flaws for years, until the bombshell hit.  Prohibition became the law of the land, cemented as the 18th amendment to the US Constitution in 1920.  Prohibition was particularly tricky in PA. Lots of working-class people, meant both strong adherence and strong resistance. Labor Unions were some of the fiercest opponents of the eighteenth amendment. However, other unions were avid proponents of prohibition, because labor leaders felt that with their workers boozed up, gave them a disadvantage on negotiations.  Gifford Pinchot, a successful conservationist running for governor during the lead up to prohibition ran under the pretense that he would strictly enforce the prohibition laws.  Unsurprisingly, he drew much of his support from groups like the Women’s Anti-Temperance Movement, which led the charge against prohibition, but also from several types of unions and farmers.  Pinchot won his election in 1923, just three years after the 18th amendment was adopted, and served as Governor of Pennsylvania until 1927.  He began cracking down on the prohibition laws, however, to his dismay, crime and usage increased while the enforcement of the law decreased dramatically by police departments. Whether it was a direct defiance of the governor, or simply lazy police work, is unclear, but needless to say, prohibition wasn’t going as planned for Governor Pinchot.  Despite his overall failure on prohibition, Pinchot won again in 1931, serving a nonconsecutive term until 1935. He also helped to establish the PA Liquor Control Board and hoped to deter alcohol use by making it quote, “as inconvenient and expensive as possible”.  Meanwhile, rum-running and bootlegging were becoming a massive industry along the Lake Erie border.  The proximity to Canada made it easy for smugglers to get across the international border in a hurry. Canada had no prohibition laws.8 Boats would speed across the lake, pick up cargo in places like Port Dover, Ontario and other lakefront towns, and come back to Erie or the Pennsylvania lakeshore. These trips were so frequent, it has been suggested there are hundreds of unopened bootlegged alcohol bottles at the bottom of Lake Erie. Much like the prohibition era on land, the policing of the waters was so ineffective, it was essentially non-existent.  Even today, restaurants and bars in Erie, like Rum-Runners Cove, Smugglers Wharf, and the former Bootleggers Bar and Grille pay homage to this history.   President Franklin Roosevelt signed a bill in March of 1933, legalizing the sale and consumption of wine and beer and by December of the same year, the 18th amendment had been repealed and the 21st amendment ratified, ending prohibition.  Prohibition forced the closure of breweries for Koehler and many others; however, Koehler was so popular, that in 1933, the year prohibition ended, he reopened the Erie Brewing Company resuming normal operations.   Prohibition was viewed as a complete failed experiment. The usage of alcohol was not eliminated and may very well have even been elevated. The implementation of the eighteenth amendment also brought forth several unintended consequences.   Many marginalized groups were targeted. Anti-alcohol meant anti-immigrant as Europeans like Germans, Polish, Irish, and Dutch were the primary brewers.  Catholics were also notable drinkers and the 1920’s saw a great resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan as well as other extreme sects of White Anglo Saxon Protestant vigilantism. Organized crime including the likes of Al Capone and other notable gangsters was also elevated, in this time period.   As for Koehler, the brewery operated normally until the 1970’s when the it was closed down in 1978.  The historic building sat empty for many years, and unfortunately for history, the complex was demolished in 2006.  However, in 2018, two brothers Bruce and Bryan Koehler, brought the name back.  They are unsure if they are directly related to Jackson Koehler, but they are sure of their connection to Erie.  They’re from Pittsburgh but their grandparents lived in Millcreek and remember passing the plant as kids, even remarking that Koehler is the only beer their family drank.  The brothers operate the new Koehler Brewing Company out of Grove City, PA, about an hour away from Erie. The Koehler brand is still one of the most recognizable in Northwestern Pennsylvania. Many families tell stories of drinking Koehler beer with their loved ones and Koehler memorabilia is highly sought after. Though the building does not exist anymore, the original Eagle Brewery sign survives and can be seen inside the BrewERIE at Union Station, which preserves some of Erie’s brewing heritage.   The survival of Koehler, bootlegging, and the prohibition era in Pennsylvania is just a snapshot of the Roaring 20’s, but it’s a legacy that the Erie region is true to, and in a lot of ways is proud of.  With its recent reemergence, generations of Erieites can kick their feet up, drink a Koehler, and tell stories, just as their fathers and grandfathers did.   Something has to keep those bars open!  We’ll see you next time on Hurstories, until then, I have been Steven, and thank you for listening. 

Despacho 42 es un podcast ideado y producido por los Estudios de Informática, Multimedia y Telecomunicación de la UOC sobre cómo las personas nos relacionamos con la tecnología. Esto nos llevará a hacernos preguntas sobre otras disciplinas como la filosofía, la ética, la economía o la salud, entre otras. El Despacho 42 es habitado por César Córcoles (@chechar), Susanna Tesconi (@AuntySue) y Dani Riera (@drierat). Y quiere ser un lugar para tod@s: para expertos (y no tan expertos) en tecnología, para toda la comunidad UOC, y también para aquella gente de fuera del ámbito pero que sienta interés por ella. En este primer episodio del Despacho 42 hablamos de cómo las tecnologías digitales impregnan nuestro día a día. Es un tema que nos ocupa a todos, y es también una responsabilidad y un reto común para todas las personas. Reflexionamos sobre la era posdigital, los sesgos algorítmicos, la ubicuidad de las tecnologías digitales, cómo educar de forma crítica en inclusividad, accesibilidad y neutralidad de la tecnología. También hablamos de los usos positivos de la tecnología, como el e-health, y nos preguntamos: ¿hay un equilibrio entre el entusiasmo ciego y el miedo apocalíptico a la tecnología? Enlaces relacionados del episodio: Decálogo sobre videojuegos: https://www.uoc.edu/portal/es/news/actualitat/2019/293-consejos-videojuegos-ninos-casa.html Joystick: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palanca_de_mando WASP: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Anglo-Saxon_Protestant

We keep it simple today, starting with an Oscar recap about the winners, losers, and that sensual Bradley Cooper/Lady Gaga performance! Then we dive into some duck talk and Brent’s new lease on life (Quack Quack). We discuss The Avengers Issue #13 about a prehistoric Iron Fist (DRUNKEN MONGOOSE KNIFE HAND)! We cap it all off with some talk about Ant-Man and the Wasp, mostly the funny bits. Then we really discuss Marvel’s still-impressive de-aging process and the future of the tech in movies. And stick around for our revisioning of the Ant-Man movie mythos to include a prequel heist movie set in the 60’s that could have been way cooler! Follow us on Twitter & Instagram: @LTASpod Email: LetsTalkAboutStuffPodcast@gmail.com Follow Steven on Letterboxd & Twitter: @stevenfisher22 Follow Brent on Twitter & Instagram: @BrentHibbard Please rate & review us! (5-stars is appreciated!) EVERYBODY HAS SONGS!

The plight of the vanishing New England WASP is the subject matter of A. R. Gurney’s The Dining Room, running now at Sonoma Arts Live. No, it’s not a science lecture on the more annoying cousin of the honeybee but a look at the cultural transformation of a specific component of 20th century America – the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Gurney, whose other works include Love Letters and Sylvia, uses 18 vignettes and about 50 characters to chart the rise and decline of upper middle-class America. The scenes all occur in the titular location around a stately dining table. The table, which was once the center point of family life and special occasions, in time has been reduced to a place on which to fold laundry. Wafting through the room over its two-hour running time are generations of unrelated characters, ages four to ninety, all played by a company of six talented actors - Isabelle Grimm, Kit Grimm, Rhonda Guaraglia, Len Handeland, Trevor Hoffman, and Jill K. Wagoner. One actor goes from playing a stern, turn-of-the-century father lecturing his son on manners to a young boy begging the family servant not to leave her job. Another goes from playing a real estate agent eager to make a sale to a young girl pleading to go to the movies instead of dance lessons. Scenes overlap and intertwine with characters from one era occupying the space at the same time as characters from another era. There are no blackouts as the action is continuous and the actors simply glide in and out of the room. This led to some confusion with a few audience members, so much so that were a few more empty seats post-intermission. It’s really not that confusing one you acclimate yourself to the style and buy into the premise of veteran performers playing children. Where else will you get the chance to see Kit Grimm bouncing around the stage like a four-year old pretending to be a monkey? The scenes range from the poignant to the humorous with the most effective being a conversation between an ailing father and his son about funeral plans and a laugh-out-loud segment between an aunt and her nephew about a college photography project. The action all takes place on the single dining room set, nicely designed and appointed by Bruce Lackovic. William Ferguson has added some effective lighting elements as well. Director Joey Hoeber keeps his cast in check and despite the range in characters the show never veers into the cartoonish. If you don’t enter the theatre expecting a traditional linear narrative, you’ll find yourself enjoying a well-acted, acute observation of a slice of by-gone American life. 'The Dining Room' runs through February 4 at Andrews Hall in the Sonoma Community Center in Sonoma. Thursday through Saturday evening performances at 7:30pm, Sunday matinees at 2pm. For more information, go to sonomaartslive.org.

The US Census has been an important American institution for over 220 years. Since 1790, the US population has been counted and compiled, important figures when tabulating representation and electoral votes. The Census has also captured the racial make-up of the US and has become a powerful public policy tool with both data and clout, affecting a range of policies from segregation to affirmative action. In What Is Your Race?: The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans (Princeton University Press 2013), Dr. Kenneth Prewitt provides a broad historical and political overview of the racial counting component of the Census, from its inception to its future. Prewitt, Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs at Columbia University, was formerly the Director the US Census Bureau, and his first-hand experience strengthens the narrative throughout the book. Prewitt’s book follows the historical ebbs and flows of the Census and race politics in the US, which are unequivocally linked. From the early era of counting the slave population, to later integrating the new immigrant whites–such as Southern European Catholics and East European Jews–with the larger White Anglo-Saxon Protestant majority, and calumniating with race identity politics reflected in the Census discourse today, What Is Your Race? is a fascinating and thorough account of an American institution that has had a powerful influence on policy and society. Specifically, the racial categories, called statistical races in the book, used in the Census have been etched into the American psyche, and the results have sometimes been quite devises. Why should the Census count Hispanics in their own category and not Middle Eastern Americans? Prewitt faced these kinds of tough questions while running the Census and now grapples with them in this book. His final recommendation to ease tensions created from the simplistic statistical race measurement currently used by the Census is to incrementally move away form these categories and to move towards counting national origin, providing much more statistical granularity. You will have to read the book for the full policy prescription, which is fully mapped out for the next century. Dr. Prewitt joins New Books in Education for the interview. For questions or comments on the podcast, you can also find the host on Twitter at @PoliticsAndEd. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The US Census has been an important American institution for over 220 years. Since 1790, the US population has been counted and compiled, important figures when tabulating representation and electoral votes. The Census has also captured the racial make-up of the US and has become a powerful public policy tool with both data and clout, affecting a range of policies from segregation to affirmative action. In What Is Your Race?: The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans (Princeton University Press 2013), Dr. Kenneth Prewitt provides a broad historical and political overview of the racial counting component of the Census, from its inception to its future. Prewitt, Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs at Columbia University, was formerly the Director the US Census Bureau, and his first-hand experience strengthens the narrative throughout the book. Prewitt’s book follows the historical ebbs and flows of the Census and race politics in the US, which are unequivocally linked. From the early era of counting the slave population, to later integrating the new immigrant whites–such as Southern European Catholics and East European Jews–with the larger White Anglo-Saxon Protestant majority, and calumniating with race identity politics reflected in the Census discourse today, What Is Your Race? is a fascinating and thorough account of an American institution that has had a powerful influence on policy and society. Specifically, the racial categories, called statistical races in the book, used in the Census have been etched into the American psyche, and the results have sometimes been quite devises. Why should the Census count Hispanics in their own category and not Middle Eastern Americans? Prewitt faced these kinds of tough questions while running the Census and now grapples with them in this book. His final recommendation to ease tensions created from the simplistic statistical race measurement currently used by the Census is to incrementally move away form these categories and to move towards counting national origin, providing much more statistical granularity. You will have to read the book for the full policy prescription, which is fully mapped out for the next century. Dr. Prewitt joins New Books in Education for the interview. For questions or comments on the podcast, you can also find the host on Twitter at @PoliticsAndEd. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The US Census has been an important American institution for over 220 years. Since 1790, the US population has been counted and compiled, important figures when tabulating representation and electoral votes. The Census has also captured the racial make-up of the US and has become a powerful public policy tool with both data and clout, affecting a range of policies from segregation to affirmative action. In What Is Your Race?: The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans (Princeton University Press 2013), Dr. Kenneth Prewitt provides a broad historical and political overview of the racial counting component of the Census, from its inception to its future. Prewitt, Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs at Columbia University, was formerly the Director the US Census Bureau, and his first-hand experience strengthens the narrative throughout the book. Prewitt’s book follows the historical ebbs and flows of the Census and race politics in the US, which are unequivocally linked. From the early era of counting the slave population, to later integrating the new immigrant whites–such as Southern European Catholics and East European Jews–with the larger White Anglo-Saxon Protestant majority, and calumniating with race identity politics reflected in the Census discourse today, What Is Your Race? is a fascinating and thorough account of an American institution that has had a powerful influence on policy and society. Specifically, the racial categories, called statistical races in the book, used in the Census have been etched into the American psyche, and the results have sometimes been quite devises. Why should the Census count Hispanics in their own category and not Middle Eastern Americans? Prewitt faced these kinds of tough questions while running the Census and now grapples with them in this book. His final recommendation to ease tensions created from the simplistic statistical race measurement currently used by the Census is to incrementally move away form these categories and to move towards counting national origin, providing much more statistical granularity. You will have to read the book for the full policy prescription, which is fully mapped out for the next century. Dr. Prewitt joins New Books in Education for the interview. For questions or comments on the podcast, you can also find the host on Twitter at @PoliticsAndEd. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The US Census has been an important American institution for over 220 years. Since 1790, the US population has been counted and compiled, important figures when tabulating representation and electoral votes. The Census has also captured the racial make-up of the US and has become a powerful public policy tool with both data and clout, affecting a range of policies from segregation to affirmative action. In What Is Your Race?: The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans (Princeton University Press 2013), Dr. Kenneth Prewitt provides a broad historical and political overview of the racial counting component of the Census, from its inception to its future. Prewitt, Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs at Columbia University, was formerly the Director the US Census Bureau, and his first-hand experience strengthens the narrative throughout the book. Prewitt’s book follows the historical ebbs and flows of the Census and race politics in the US, which are unequivocally linked. From the early era of counting the slave population, to later integrating the new immigrant whites–such as Southern European Catholics and East European Jews–with the larger White Anglo-Saxon Protestant majority, and calumniating with race identity politics reflected in the Census discourse today, What Is Your Race? is a fascinating and thorough account of an American institution that has had a powerful influence on policy and society. Specifically, the racial categories, called statistical races in the book, used in the Census have been etched into the American psyche, and the results have sometimes been quite devises. Why should the Census count Hispanics in their own category and not Middle Eastern Americans? Prewitt faced these kinds of tough questions while running the Census and now grapples with them in this book. His final recommendation to ease tensions created from the simplistic statistical race measurement currently used by the Census is to incrementally move away form these categories and to move towards counting national origin, providing much more statistical granularity. You will have to read the book for the full policy prescription, which is fully mapped out for the next century. Dr. Prewitt joins New Books in Education for the interview. For questions or comments on the podcast, you can also find the host on Twitter at @PoliticsAndEd. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The US Census has been an important American institution for over 220 years. Since 1790, the US population has been counted and compiled, important figures when tabulating representation and electoral votes. The Census has also captured the racial make-up of the US and has become a powerful public policy tool with both data and clout, affecting a range of policies from segregation to affirmative action. In What Is Your Race?: The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans (Princeton University Press 2013), Dr. Kenneth Prewitt provides a broad historical and political overview of the racial counting component of the Census, from its inception to its future. Prewitt, Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs at Columbia University, was formerly the Director the US Census Bureau, and his first-hand experience strengthens the narrative throughout the book. Prewitt’s book follows the historical ebbs and flows of the Census and race politics in the US, which are unequivocally linked. From the early era of counting the slave population, to later integrating the new immigrant whites–such as Southern European Catholics and East European Jews–with the larger White Anglo-Saxon Protestant majority, and calumniating with race identity politics reflected in the Census discourse today, What Is Your Race? is a fascinating and thorough account of an American institution that has had a powerful influence on policy and society. Specifically, the racial categories, called statistical races in the book, used in the Census have been etched into the American psyche, and the results have sometimes been quite devises. Why should the Census count Hispanics in their own category and not Middle Eastern Americans? Prewitt faced these kinds of tough questions while running the Census and now grapples with them in this book. His final recommendation to ease tensions created from the simplistic statistical race measurement currently used by the Census is to incrementally move away form these categories and to move towards counting national origin, providing much more statistical granularity. You will have to read the book for the full policy prescription, which is fully mapped out for the next century. Dr. Prewitt joins New Books in Education for the interview. For questions or comments on the podcast, you can also find the host on Twitter at @PoliticsAndEd. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices