Air Date 5/27/2025

Slippery slope arguments persist because good ideas taken to extremes become bad ones. Eugenics exemplifies this—often starting with good intentions.

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KEY POINTS

KP 1: The movement that inspired the Holocaust - Alexandra Minna Stern and Natalie Lira - TED-Ed - Air Date 3-10-22

KP 2: MAHA's Soft Eugenics - Conspirituality - Air Date 3-8-25

KP 3: It Must Be Eugenics - I Must Be BUG'N - Air Date 4-24-25

KP 4: Hayek's bastards w/ Quinn Slobodian - Politics Theory Other - Air Date 3-30-25

KP 5: Even More News: Grok's Meltdown, Donald Trump's Rampant Corruption, and Ms. Rachel w/ Mehdi Hasan - Some More News - Air Date 5-16-25

KP 6: Undercover inside a ‘scientific racism’ network - Today in Focus - Air Date 10-25-24

(00:49:40) NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

On the likely future of gene editing ethics

DEEPER DIVES

(01:02:09) SECTION A: HISTORICAL CONTEXT

(01:44:19) SECTION B: RFK JR. ON AUTISM

(01:59:39) SECTION C: TECH BROS

(02:46:44) SECTION D: PRONATALISM

(03:05:05) SECTION E: MAGA

SHOW IMAGE CREDITS

Description: Composite image depicting HHS Secretary RFK Jr. at a microphone in the center of an overlay of repeating, identical “people” icons. A handful of icons are different, bright neon colors and have a red X in a box over them.

Credits: Composite design by A. Hoffman. Elements from Pixabay. Photo credit: “Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” by Gage Skidmore, Flickr | CC BY-SA 2.0 | Changes: Cropped, background color change, and added overlay

Produced by Jay! Tomlinson

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Air Date: 5-26-25

*CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE “SINNERS”*

You thought you were going to listen to SOLVED! today, and you're not alone. We also thought we were going to make an episode of SOLVED!, but this turned into something a little bit different. So, we're calling it a “special” in which Jay!, Amanda, Deon and Erin discuss storytelling and mythology in general, and the extremely relevant and fascinating themes of the new Ryan Coogler film “Sinners,” in particular. Because storytelling is the process by which humans attempt to understand ourselves, it is, by its nature, never ending.

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REFERENCES:

Humans are not the only animals that create their own culture - Earth.com

Ancient Myths in Modern Times: Illuminating Bygone Legends Through Technology - Connolly Cove

The Vampire in Mythology: Analyzing the Symbolic Meanings and Archetypes of Vampire Figures - Mythology Worldwide

“Sinners” - A film by Ryan Coogler starring Michael B. Jordan

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Produced by:

Jay! Tomlinson

Thanks for listening!

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Original Air Date: 6/29/2020

From 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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Full Show Notes

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SHOW NOTES

Ch. 1: Black Lives Matter Protests, "Outside Agitators," and the Coronavirus - DOOMED with Matt Binder - Air Date 5-30-20

Ch. 2: Structural robbery, mass resistance with William C. Anderson Part 2 - This Is Hell! - Air Date 6-4-20

Ch. 3: George Floyd, you, me… us - Jim Hightower - Air Date 6-9-20

Ch. 4: The End of Policing with Alex Vitale Part 1 - Tysky Sour, Novara Media - Air Date 6-3-20

Ch. 5: America, Racism & Patterns of Change (with Heather Cox Richardson)- Stay Tuned with Preet - Air Date - 6-11-20

Ch. 6: The End of Policing with Alex Vitale Part 2 - Tysky, Novara Media - Air Date 6-3-20

Ch. 7: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on how racism & racial terrorism fueled nationwide anger - Democracy Now! - Air Date 6-1-20

Ch. 8: The End of Policing with Alex Vitale Part 3 - Tysky, Novara Media - Air Date 6-3-20

Ch. 9: The Uprising and Its Leadership: What Does it Look Like in This Moment? - The Takeaway - Air Date 6-10-20

Ch. 10: Cornel West: Nationwide uprisings herald "America's moment of reckoning" - Democracy Now! - Air Date 6-1-20

Produced by Jay!

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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.

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KEY POINTS

KP 1: 100 Perfect Days - Pod Save America - Air Date 4-29-25

KP 2: 100 Daze of Trump's 'Fascist Death Spiral' with Heather Digby Parton of Salon, 'Driftglass' of 'Pro Left Podcast' - The BradCast - Air Date 4-30-25

KP 3: There is no president, really - Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie - Air Date 4-26-25

KP 4: 100 days of payback - Today, Explained - Air Date 4-29-25

KP 5: Trump Is Losing A Lot In Court. Plus, the First Episode of The Divided Dial (S2). - On The Media - Air Date 5-9-25

KP 6: 100 Days of Hypocrisy - Main Justice - Air Date 4-29-25

KP 7: A Trumped Up Police State Is Coming Part 1 - The Intercept Briefing - Air Date 5-8-25

KP 8: 100 Days of Chaos Skye Perryman - Future Hindsight - Air Date 5-1-25

(52:39) NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

On the upcoming No Kings protest on June 14

DEEPER DIVES

(57:36) SECTION A: EXECUTIVE POWER

(1:35:05) SECTION B: IMMIGRATION & FORCE

(1:58:20) SECTION C: INCOMPETENCY AND SELF ENRICHMENT

(2:40:49) SECTION D: RESISTANCE

SHOW IMAGE CREDITS for #1711 - Trump 100 days

Description: Black and white photo of Trump at a podium at the White House looking stern, with a policeman standing behind him.

Credit: “P20250519JB-0425P20250519JB-0425” by The White House, Flickr | Government work, Public Domain

Produced by Jay!

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Air Date: 5-19-25

Today, Jay!, Amanda, and Deon (Erin was on vacation) discuss:

• The origins of and problems with “the one way” Christian mindset
• Why Finland’s happiest country title and happiness itself are terribly misunderstood by Americans
• How our globalized world is messing with perceptions of our cultural similarities and differences
• The link between genocides, pseudoscience, and conspiracy theories
• Naomi Klein’s analysis on the problems with how we talk about the Holocaust
• How we get back to humanization and recognizing our core similarities as beings floating on a rock in space
• Some Finnish wisdom that encapsulates life, the universe, and everything

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REFERENCES:

My Miserable Week in the Happiest Country on Earth - The New York Times

Doppelgänger by Naomi Klein (If you buy via this link, you can support indie bookstores and SOLVED! at the same time!)

The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan (If you buy via this link, you can support indie bookstores and SOLVED! at the same time!)

A Wilder Shore: The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson by Camille Peri (If you buy via this link, you can support indie bookstores and SOLVED! at the same time!)

“Pale Blue Dot” - An excerpt from Carl Sagan’s book “Pale Blue Dot” (If you buy via this link, you can support indie bookstores and SOLVED! at the same time!)

SOLVED! SONG! “Pale Blue Dot” - Concepts: Human Intelligence. Song: Artificial Intelligence.

TAKE ACTION:

June 14th - “No Kings” Nationwide Day of Action

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Produced by:

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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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KEY POINTS

KP 1: Sinners: Director Ryan Coogler on His Latest Hit, Delta Blues, His Mississippi Roots & Vampires Part 1 - Democracy Now! - Air Date 4-25-25

KP 2: Sinners and the General State of Things - The Morbid Zoo - Air Date 5-10-25

KP 3: Western Christianity and White Supremacy Part 1 - Meant For This - Air Date 3-23-22

KP 4: How Do You Put A Price On America's Original Sin? - Consider This - Air Date 3-27-23

KP 5: Storm and Stress: Jim Crow America Part 1 - History is US - Air Date 6-5-22

KP 6: Trump's first 100 days, but it's just the racism - Garrison Hayes - Air Date 5-2-25

(48:29) NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

On how to talk about the interplay between economics and identity politics

DEEPER DIVES

(57:48) SECTION A: CHRISTIANITY

(1:33:29) SECTION B: RACE

(2:18:56) SECTION C: CULTURE

SHOW IMAGE CREDITS

Description: Portion of the 1830s painting “Slave Market” (Brazil) depicting two white men discussing the sale of enslaved, black Brazilian men with a church with steeple and cross in the background and the iconography of the Virgin Mary on the wall above.

Credit: “Slave Market” by Johann Moritz Rugendas, New York Public Library Digital Collections | Copyright status undetermined by NYPL | Changes: Cropped with increased contrast and brightness

Produced by Jay! Tomlinson

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Original Air Date 6/4/2022

Today we take a look at some of the obvious steps we need to take to reduce gun violence in the United States, debunk some of the favored propaganda supporting unfettered gun ownership and explore the origins of how Gun Culture™ was invented by corporations as the frontier era need for guns began to vanish pushing them to convert guns from tools that were needed but not loved into items that were loved though no longer needed.

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Full Show Notes | Transcript

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SHOW NOTES

Ch. 1: Igor Volsky on Ending Gun Violence - CounterSpin - Air Date 5-27-22

Ch. 2: NRA's "Good Guy With A Gun" Theory Failed In Real Time In Uvalde - All In with Chris Hayes - Air Date 5-27-22

Ch. 3: Jordan Klepper Debunks The "Good Guy with a Gun" Argument - The Daily Show - Air Date 12-11-15

Ch. 4: The Second Amendment Isn't About Killing Politicians or Overthrowing Democracy - The Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 5-31-22

Ch. 5: Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger speaking to Charlayne Hunter-Gault - PBS NewsHour - Air Date 12-16-1991

Ch. 6: How the Gun Industry Used Marketing to Change a Culture - Letters and Politics - Air Date 8-7-19

Ch. 7: Mass Shootings: American Exceptionalism of the Worst Kind - Breaking the Sound Barrier by Amy Goodman - Air Date 5-26-22

SHOW IMAGE: Description: A pencil sketch of a larger-than-life hand gun on the shoulders of a weary man, in the image of Jesus carrying the cross. He stands in a pool of red blood.

Credit: “Gun Culture” by Christopher Dombres, Flickr | Public Domain | Changes: Cropped

Produced by Jay! Tomlinson

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Original Air Date 5/24/2019

As the neoliberal order collapses from the pressure of its failures to provide for working people, we take a look at the much-maligned, rarely-understood field of economic and social study known as Marxism.

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SHOW NOTES

Ch. 1: The Contributions of Karl Marx Part 1 - Economic Update - Air Date 5-25-18

Professor Wolff takes a deeper look at the life and work of Karl Marx in celebration of the 200th anniversary of his birth.

Ch. 2: Marxism Today - Analysis - Air Date 6-19-16

Robin who was a BBC reporter for 25 years thinks Marx was always in the background discourse of politics, an influence he partly feared and didn't fully understand. He takes a walk through central London in the footsteps of the great revolutionary.

Ch. 3: David Harvey on Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason - Left Out - Air Date 11-5-17

David Harvey is arguably the most influential living geographer, as well as one of the world’s leading Marxist scholars. He is among the most cited intellectuals of all time across the humanities and social sciences.

Ch. 4: This Ruthless Criticism of All That Exists Marxism as Science - Revolutionary Left Radio - Air Date 2-2-19

J. Moufawad-Paul, a Marxist philosopher and author of "Continuity and Rupture", "The Communist Necessity", and "Austerity Apparatus", joins Breht to discuss his most recent essay "This Ruthless Criticism of All That Exists: Marxism as Science".

Ch. 5: Erosion of Consumer Choices - David Harvey's Anti-Capitalist Chronicles - Air Date 4-24-19

Prof. Harvey discusses Marx's theory of Capital and its relevance today. Consumers have less and less autonomy. Their choices, even how they will spend their leisure time, are increasingly influenced by capitalists.

Ch. 6: The Contributions of Karl Marx Part 2 - Economic Update - Air Date 5-25-18

Professor Wolff takes a deeper look at the life and work of Karl Marx in celebration of the 200th anniversary of his birth.

Produced by Jay!

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Introducing Jane Goodall on Hope, AI, and the Natural World from Possible.

Follow the show: Possible

What would it look like to keep all living creatures in the loop on the development of new technology?

Reid sat down for a wide-ranging solo discussion with Jane Goodall on that very subject – and more. They talked about how to maintain hope and focus on local impact in today’s often chaotic world, how technology – and AI in particular – might be helpful for conservation, and Jane’s global youth program, Roots & Shoots. Plus, the Jane Goodall institute shared audio from a cutting edge acoustic array that helped them discover a brand new species in Gombe National Park in Tanzania! Jane reflected on her legacy and shared stories about bridging unlikely divides, defying the scientific community early in her career, young people opening their eyes to the natural world for the first time, and so much more.

Thank you to the incredible team at the Jane Goodall Institute and WildMon (L. Pintea, B. Wallauer, K. Harmon, M. Campos, Gabriel Leite, Tomaz Melo, Guilherme Melo, D. A. Collins, D. C. Mjungu) that, with funding from Google, utilized an acoustic array to discover brand new species in Gombe National Park, Tanzania, including Thomas’s Dwarf Galago (Galagoides thomasi).

For more info on the podcast and transcripts of all the episodes, visit https://www.possible.fm/podcast/ 

Topics:

03:38 - Hellos and intros

03:45 - “Name that baby” game

05:34 - How Jane has used technology in her work

09:13 - Discovering a new species with an acoustic array

11:57 - How AI can help conservation

16:55 - AI as an animal translator

19:58 - Essential lesson for research

22:30 - Similarities between humans and chimpanzees

26:42 - Bridging divides between unlikely groups

30:32 - “We must either redefine man, redefine tool, or…”

32:20 - Government funding cut from Jane Goodall Institute

36:26 - Youth program Roots and Shoots

39:57 - How to maintain hope

42:53 - What we can learn from kids

44:33 - Global impact of the Roots and Shoots program

46:18 - Jane’s ideal AI tool

48:22 - Jane asks Reid: Can AI become sentient?

51:27 - AI’s impact on the brain

54:55 - Rapid-fire Questions

Select mentions: 

APOPO’s “Amazing Rats” | How It Works

Regeneration by Paul Hawken

TACARE Program

Roots and Shoots

Possible is an award-winning podcast that sketches out the brightest version of the future—and what it will take to get there. Most of all, it asks: what if, in the future, everything breaks humanity's way? Tune in for grounded and speculative takes on how technology—and, in particular, AI—is inspiring change and transforming the future. Hosted by Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger, each episode features an interview with an ambitious builder or deep thinker on a topic, from art to geopolitics and from healthcare to education. Each episode seeks to enhance and advance our discussion about what humanity could possibly get right if we leverage technology—and our collective effort—effectively.

DISCLAIMER: Please note, this is an independent podcast episode not affiliated with, endorsed by, or produced in conjunction with the host podcast feed or any of its media entities. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are solely those of the creators and guests. For any concerns, please reach out to [email protected].

Air Date 5/6/2025

The Monthly-ish Mix™ is here to get you caught up on recent news without being overwhelming! This month we look at government surveillance overreach, challenges facing immigrant and refugee communities, the shifting landscape of American culture brought on by Christian Nationalism and the emerging broligarchy, and grassroots movements challenging institutional power.

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Full Show Notes | Transcript

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PART 1: GOVERNMENT POWER & ITS MISUSE

#1697 The Trump World Order: Are we the Baddies?

(00:27:13) #1699 A Government Of the People, By the People, and Weaponized Against the People

(00:41:10) #1704 Weaponization and Capitulation: Trump vs Immigrants, Universities, and Media

(01:05:30) #1706 Trump's Kafkaesque Deportation Nightmare is the Shame of the Nation

PART 2: VULNERABLE COMMUNITIES & CIVIL RIGHTS

(01:29:29) #1700 Dehumanizing Trans People is Always the First Step for Fascists

(01:49:55) #1705 Threatened Social Safety Nets Are Foundational to Healthy Societies

PART 3: CULTURAL & SOCIETAL TRANSFORMATION

(02:03:47) #1702 Destroying Education, Boosting Christian Nationalism: Rewriting the Past and Hamstringing the Future

(02:24:21) #1703 The Broligarchy and the Rise of Techno-Feudalism

PART 4: OPPOSITION & RESISTANCE

(02:39:54) #1698 Resistance is Not Futile: Support the collective revolt against Trumpism (Special Podcasthon!)

(02:53:32) #1701 Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way: Installing the Backbone Democrats Need

Visit us at BestOfTheLeft.com