Re: the self care / community care. Cue the Hillel quote: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”.
For the show, it would be neat (does anyone besides me say that) if there could be a live event from the Great Hall at Cooper Union (or some other historically connected locale).
I feel like the last several years (since roughly 2016/2017) have been characterized by a collective feeling of SO MUCH happening so much of the time, with seemingly no end in sight. Are there previous eras of history that felt similarly overwhelming to people living through them? What creates that feeling (assuming it's not only social media)? Can we ever exit it—on purpose or organically?
Love these questions!! My instinct is that the world is always getting busier at a slightly faster rate than our ability to process it all, but it's definitely worth finding a few times where that was especially true!
The history on this program is great, and I very much enjoy that part of this program. The interpretation of today's world in light of that history, which was especially notable in today's episode, seems terribly biased. In 2025, I hope you might add the views of someone who doesn't share an exclusively far left view of everything. Presenting a far left view is totally fine, but having more balance with other points of view to interpret both history and what is going on today would be refreshing and uplifting.
We live in the best of times. The world is not perfect, and there are tradeoffs. There is tremendous (maybe too much) income inequality, but in our system, even our poor have greater economic opportunity than people in some societies that have much less income inequality. Cuba has a lot less income inequality that we do, but that isn't necessarily better. Median household income there is only about $200/month or $2,400/year; even with our enormous income inequality, the bottom 10% in the US make many times what the average household in Cuba earns. While our economic system isn't perfect and we probably can and should do better, I'm not sure that we should be disincentivizing (much less demonizing) people who generate wealth by creating and selling products that other people want to buy and that make their lives better.
Clearly some women have, sadly, lost their rights to control their bodies; it's worth noting that, at the same time, many Americans realize that unborn women have gained what perhaps should be the most inalienable of all rights, the right to life. Any balanced discussion of abortion rights should recognize both these points of view.
To better understand how we ended up with Trump (yuch) again, when the dust settles, consider covering the history of Democratic party offering up as an alternative a clearly mentally compromised incumbent President Biden and then the unelected (no primary victory) replacement candidate who had failed to garner much of any support when she ran in the 2020 Democratic primary.
Thanks for the thoughtful response, Steven. I don't think we try and hide our political views, but we do try and be fair when it comes to understanding how stories from the past played out, and how we got to this moment. I'm not sure if "far left" is the right characterization, but honestly I'm not sure how useful "left" and "right" are in 2025.
As for your assessment of our economic picture, I do disagree. I too grew up believing in the idea that in this country there is more opportunity for someone to move up the economic ladder than in others. And for a couple generations, that was the case. But I think one of the defining stories of modern America is that that has largely ceased to be. And while income mobility may still be better here than in other places, wealth concentration in the US is off the charts. When I said on the show that I think this issue is at a breaking point, it's because I think people may be starting to fully realize that the promise of mobility is no longer there for all but the very few, and lucky. I wish it were not so; I still believe in this country more than most. But we have a long hard way to go to try and reverse the trend. As we discussed, though, there are moments in history where we have been in a similar situation, and we turned things around. We'll see.
Thanks again for listening, and writing. Talk soon.
Re: the self care / community care. Cue the Hillel quote: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”.
For the show, it would be neat (does anyone besides me say that) if there could be a live event from the Great Hall at Cooper Union (or some other historically connected locale).
I feel like the last several years (since roughly 2016/2017) have been characterized by a collective feeling of SO MUCH happening so much of the time, with seemingly no end in sight. Are there previous eras of history that felt similarly overwhelming to people living through them? What creates that feeling (assuming it's not only social media)? Can we ever exit it—on purpose or organically?
Love these questions!! My instinct is that the world is always getting busier at a slightly faster rate than our ability to process it all, but it's definitely worth finding a few times where that was especially true!
The history on this program is great, and I very much enjoy that part of this program. The interpretation of today's world in light of that history, which was especially notable in today's episode, seems terribly biased. In 2025, I hope you might add the views of someone who doesn't share an exclusively far left view of everything. Presenting a far left view is totally fine, but having more balance with other points of view to interpret both history and what is going on today would be refreshing and uplifting.
We live in the best of times. The world is not perfect, and there are tradeoffs. There is tremendous (maybe too much) income inequality, but in our system, even our poor have greater economic opportunity than people in some societies that have much less income inequality. Cuba has a lot less income inequality that we do, but that isn't necessarily better. Median household income there is only about $200/month or $2,400/year; even with our enormous income inequality, the bottom 10% in the US make many times what the average household in Cuba earns. While our economic system isn't perfect and we probably can and should do better, I'm not sure that we should be disincentivizing (much less demonizing) people who generate wealth by creating and selling products that other people want to buy and that make their lives better.
Clearly some women have, sadly, lost their rights to control their bodies; it's worth noting that, at the same time, many Americans realize that unborn women have gained what perhaps should be the most inalienable of all rights, the right to life. Any balanced discussion of abortion rights should recognize both these points of view.
To better understand how we ended up with Trump (yuch) again, when the dust settles, consider covering the history of Democratic party offering up as an alternative a clearly mentally compromised incumbent President Biden and then the unelected (no primary victory) replacement candidate who had failed to garner much of any support when she ran in the 2020 Democratic primary.
Thanks for the thoughtful response, Steven. I don't think we try and hide our political views, but we do try and be fair when it comes to understanding how stories from the past played out, and how we got to this moment. I'm not sure if "far left" is the right characterization, but honestly I'm not sure how useful "left" and "right" are in 2025.
As for your assessment of our economic picture, I do disagree. I too grew up believing in the idea that in this country there is more opportunity for someone to move up the economic ladder than in others. And for a couple generations, that was the case. But I think one of the defining stories of modern America is that that has largely ceased to be. And while income mobility may still be better here than in other places, wealth concentration in the US is off the charts. When I said on the show that I think this issue is at a breaking point, it's because I think people may be starting to fully realize that the promise of mobility is no longer there for all but the very few, and lucky. I wish it were not so; I still believe in this country more than most. But we have a long hard way to go to try and reverse the trend. As we discussed, though, there are moments in history where we have been in a similar situation, and we turned things around. We'll see.
Thanks again for listening, and writing. Talk soon.