#1713 Yes, GOP Policies Really Are That Bad: Trump's Corruption and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act
Air Date: 5-30-2025
Given the overwhelming weirdness of Trump and his malfeasant style of governance, it would be perfectly understandable for casual observers to believe that his signature piece of legislation, weirdly named in reality the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," was itself also likely to be pretty weird; a potential departure from usual Republican Party policy priorities. In reality, what's weird is how deeply normal it is: take from the poor and give to the rich while letting corporations get away with murder.
Read more#1712 Eugenics Redux: A Gilded Age Ideology Brought Back for the Second Gilded Age
Air Date: 5-27-2025
Slippery slope arguments are, technically, logical fallacies but they persist as potent political arguments because of the well-founded fear that good ideas, taken to an extreme, can become very bad ideas. And there's almost no slope more slippery than eugenics. The practice has such a well-earned bad reputation that we often forget that most who have gone down the eugenics path did so with nothing but the best of intentions... and it may be happening again.
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Read more#1355 I Can't Breathe, The Three Words That Define an Era (Throwback)
Original Air Date: 6–29-2020
Today we take a look deeper at the concept of "I can't breathe," going beyond the literal utterances by victims of police brutality and COVID-19 sufferers to the metaphorical epidemic of exhaustion, burnout, depression and disaffection in the US and around the world.
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#1711 How It Started, How It's Going: Assessing the Flooded Zone Full of Shit
Air Date: 5-21-2025
A popular MAGA refrain is, "promises made, promises kept." The key is having known which promises to take seriously. Weaponizing the government against his enemies and attempting to wield dictatorial power, sure. Benefit his supporters or the working class more broadly, or rid the government of waste, fraud, or corruption... not so much.
Read more#1710 The past is never dead. It’s not even past. Race, Religion, Culture and the Stories we Tell
Air Date: 5-18-2025
The full quote from today's title is from one of the most celebrated writers of Southern American literature, William Faulkner, who said, "The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.” The new film, Sinners, set in the Jim Crow South, attempts to take on some of the subjects that make up that web of history and consequence. The theme of today's episode is an attempt to dig into many of the subjects of the film.
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