Comedy has always been about pointing out the absurd and unjust things in life, but lately, a lot of veteran comedians have taken to complaining about their business more than anything else. Long-time standup comics like Dave Chapelle and Ricky Gervais are oftentimes at war with their own audiences, accusing them of being intolerant of dissent and killing off comedy.

Is there anything at all to that critique? Or is it mostly about older comedians not wanting to update their material? In this episode, I’m joined by Lisa Curry, she’s a standup comedian who’s performed in 13 different countries, written on Comedy Central’s Jiff Jeffries Show, and she’s the host of “Long Story Long,” a weekly show on SiriusXM. You can also find her on Instagram and Twitter.

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ABOUT THE SHOW

Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield about larger trends and intersections of politics, religion, media, and technology. It's part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet.

Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange

Matthew Sheffield on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield

Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield

Laura Packard is the Executive Director of Healthcare Voter, an organization that holds elected officials accountable for their votes on health care. Laura is also a healthcare advocate, and cancer survivor who credits the Affordable Care Act with saving her life. In this episode, she discusses the significant improvements to the Affordable Care Act — including expanded coverage and lower costs — many of which are due to the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress in 2022. We also discuss what's being done at the state level to improve healthcare coverage. Laura also hosts of the weekly show, Care Talk on @actdottv where listeners can call to get their questions about healthcare answered.

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One of the biggest social changes since the 1960s has been the empowerment of women to make personal choices, to control who they date, whether they’re married, and when or if they have children.

While society and popular culture aimed at women seem to have embraced many of these changes, the unfortunate reality is that popular culture aimed at men has not kept pace. Instead of encouraging adaptation and teaching new social and professional skills, cultural influencers who aim for the male media market have mostly been offering the same old advice—which simply doesn’t work in a world in which divorce is common and dating apps have made things easier but also more complicated.

Male friendship has also declined. A 2021 study from the Survey Center on American Life found that 15 of male respondents said they had no close friends. Obviously the COVID-19 pandemic played an important role in this, but there are other factors as well, such as pop culture that encourages men to avoid new friendships or discussing their feelings. As a result, many men have not been able to resolve these struggles. So-called “deaths of despair,” such as drug or alcohol overdoses and deliberate suicides are much higher among men than women.

Further compounding the negative situation has been the proliferation of “men’s rights” activists and other far-right political actors such as the “incel” movement who have been radicalizing millions of young men to blame others for their problems, instead of learning from mistakes or improving their outlook.

Is there a crisis of masculinity in America? In this episode, we’re featuring Brandon Bradford, he’s a political consultant who also serves as a men’s support group leader in his spare time.

We’ve talked a lot on Theory of Change about the growing threat of political extremism and how far-right activists are leveraging religion and business connections to build power over the minds of millions of Americans.

And yet, despite all of that, it’s also the case that people can change. No matter how strong they hold their viewpoints today, no one was born with their opinions. Having been born and raised in fundamentalist Mormonism, I personally can attest that people can change their opinions when exposed to the facts. The process usually is a gradual one, but it’s real.

The results of the 2022 elections in the United States are also proof of this as well. Almost everywhere, Republicans who actively put forward Donald Trump’s election lies lost their races. And interestingly enough, many of those losses seem to have been caused in part by people who supported Republicans who didn’t promote Trump’s election lies.

In Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and lots of places in-between, millions of Republican-leaning voters couldn’t bring themselves to support Trump’s dangerous sore-loser campaign.

Joining me to discuss what’s going on here is Melissa Peltier, she’s the director and writer of a documentary called The Game Is Up: Disillusioned Trump Voters Tell Their Stories. It’s a film that closely profiles several people who supported Donald Trump in 2016 and then decided to change their minds—and why they did so.

MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS

The full transcript, audio, and video of this episode are available to subscribers. Please join today to get full access with Patreon or Substack.

The deep conversations we bring you about politics, religion, technology, and media take great time and care to produce. Your subscriptions make Theory of Change possible and we’re very grateful for your help.

If you would like to support the show but don’t want to subscribe, you can also send one-time donations via PayPal.

If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on Apple Podcasts. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests.

ABOUT THE SHOW

Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield about larger trends and intersections of politics, religion, media, and technology. It's part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet.

Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange

Matthew Sheffield on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield

Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield

Just as the 2020 elections were fading into America’s rear view mirror, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, cast the political and media worlds into chaos by taking ownership control over Twitter. Most people don’t use Twitter because they find it too weird and disjointed, but it is actually the place online where most of America’s political junkies: activists, politicians, and journalists come to talk.

It all seems to have started as a joke, however. Musk offered to buy Twitter at a price of $54.20 per share, 420 being the very, very old reference to marijuana. After his Tesla stock price went south dramatically, Musk tried to get out of the deal but was forced into it by a lawsuit from Twitter. Since then, Musk has brought the site into complete chaos, reinstating a number of accounts that had been banned for promoting hatred and violence and disinformation, including, most famously, Donald Trump.

While he appears to have had no real plan for Twitter beforehand, what has become very evident is that Elon Musk has become radicalized by the far right, a path that has become increasingly common in recent years for wealthy white libertarian men who just a few decades ago actually saw themselves on the political left, before the re-emergence of populists like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

There’s a lot to talk about Musk and Twitter and how he fits into the larger tradition of the libertarian right within Silicon Valley and the American political right as a whole. We’re pleased to feature two panelists to discuss this topic. Jacob Silverman is the co-author of the forthcoming book Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud, which he’s co-writing with the actor, Ben McKenzie. We’re also joined by Chris Lehmann, who is the Washington Bureau Chief of The Nation magazine and the former editor of The New Republic.

MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS

This is a free episode of Theory of Change, but the deep conversations we bring you about politics, religion, technology, and media take great time and care to produce. Your subscriptions make Theory of Change possible and we’re very grateful for your help.

Please join today to get full access with Patreon or Substack.

If you would like to support the show but don’t want to subscribe, you can also send one-time donations via PayPal.

If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on Apple Podcasts. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests.

ABOUT THE SHOW

Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield about larger trends and intersections of politics, religion, media, and technology. It's part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet.

Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange

Matthew Sheffield on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield

Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield

Elyssa Feder, the Executive Director of Rising Organizers, an organization focused on training new and emerging leaders to build power in their own communities for change, discusses the importance of organizers in shaping policy, and building better communities for everyone. We also discuss the outlook for the upcoming 2022 midterm elections and the role of organizers is shaping what voters care about. #2022midterms #midtermelections #midterms

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Alex Jones, the far right talk radio host who pioneered the art of making money from internet conspiracy theories, is facing the worst moment of his career. It is quite possibly the apocalypse of Jones. After making up thousands of lies over a career spending decades, Jones is now starting to face consequences.

In August, a jury in Austin, Texas, returned a damages verdict against Jones for defaming the parents of a child who was killed in a school shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, in 2012. Jones was ordered to pay $4.1 million in compensatory damages and $49 million in punitive damages. The lawyer for the plaintiffs in this case, which is one of only several, insists that this will be only the beginning of what’s going to happen to Jones and his company Infowars.

But is that right? Will he actually have to pay those large-scale fines? And will Jones be affected by large-scale fines at all?

And in the long term, are legal suits a way forward to stop the propagation of conspiracy theories in this country? Joining me to discuss in this episode is Liz Dye. She is a columnist with the legal affairs website Above the Law. And she also is a writer at Wonkette.com.

MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS

The full transcript, audio, and video of this episode are available to subscribers. Please join today to get full access with Patreon or Substack.

The deep conversations we bring you about politics, religion, technology, and media take great time and care to produce. Your subscriptions make Theory of Change possible and we’re very grateful for your help.

If you would like to support the show but don’t want to subscribe, you can also send one-time donations via PayPal.

If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on Apple Podcasts. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests.

ABOUT THE SHOW

Theory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield about larger trends and intersections of politics, religion, media, and technology. It's part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet.

Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChange

Matthew Sheffield on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield

Matthew Sheffield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffield

Shauna Siggelkow, the Director of Digital Storytelling for the non-profit Define American, discusses their recent report analyzing anti-immigration messaging and disinformation campaigns on YouTube. The report was the culmination of three years of original research which looked at the impact, tactics, and reach of anti-immigration narratives on YouTube. Shauna discusses whose behind these campaigns, and how they are influencing voters views on immigration policy.

THE FULL REPORT: Immigration Will Destroy Us’ and Other Talking Points

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Jamia Wilson and Kate Kelly, hosts of the Ordinary Equality Podcast, join me to discuss the repeal of Roe v Wade, how the repeal with impact the upcoming midterms, and we try to answer the question, "Where do we go from here?" #midterms #midtermelections #midterm2022 #RoevWade

Jamia Wilson is an award-winning feminist activist, best-selling author, speaker, and podcaster. Kate Kelly is an activist, human rights lawyer, and best-selling author. Their podcast, Ordinary Equality, can be found where you listen to podcasts.

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