Democrats have the narrowest of majorities in the House and Senate. And after a few months of a presidential honeymoon for Joe Biden, they really are feeling the constraints of their tiny margin for error. The Senate is split 50 50 with a tie breaking vote going to Vice President Kamala Harris, which means the Democrats there have to reach unanimous agreement in order to do anything that Republicans in the chamber are against.

And with Mitch McConnell as their leader, Republican senators are pretty much against everything Democrats want to do. So what’s the plan and how are they moving forward in the face of such obstruction?

And that obstruction is a formidable obstacle outside of domestic politics. Because nine months after the January sixth Capitol riot, so much about what happened on that day and why it happened is still unknown.

Law enforcement officials have been conducting many investigations of various people, but none of their findings become public unless they’re relevant to a trial. And after several months’ delay, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi decided to launch a Select Committee to investigate what happened.

In this episode of Theory of Change, we feature Greg Sargent, an opinion columnist with the Washington Post and a blogger there as well. And prior to that, he wrote for the American Prospect and Talking Points Memo and New York magazine. He’s also the author of a book that came out a few years ago called “An Uncivil War, Taking Back Our Democracy in an Age of Trumpian Disinformation and Thunderdome Politics.”

Beyond discussing why Democrats don’t talk about far-right radicalism more, I also talk about some of my own experiences in Republican politics and why I left.

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The complete audio, video, and transcript 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

Gaby Goldstein, cofounder of The Sister District Project, discusses the history of how Republicans gained majorities in state legislatures, and the ways in which they've used that power to shrink rights, including voting rights., and reproductive rights. She also provides some practical solutions for Democrats to begin to win over majorities in state legislatures, starting with Virginia: one of the few states in which Democrats hold a legislative trifecta.

The Sister District Project

Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn't Count

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

FiveThirtyEight: What Redistricting Looks Like In Every State

https://www.electorette.com/podcast

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As technology has given extremist movements a much greater ability to spread their views and carry out violence, researchers are studying radicalization now more than ever. But one area that hasn’t received enough attention is an examination of women who become militants.

Understanding radicalization is important in the United States as well, which is seeing the emergence of a far-right Christian tradition that has already carried out a number of violent acts.

What makes them want to risk their lives for a cause or become extreme? It’s a complex question with many answers for the different militant movements that have seen large numbers of female fighters, including some that seek to restrict women’s rights. Are there similarities among these women as well?

More importantly, what do the answers to these questions tell us about our own society?

In this episode, we feature Nimmi Gowrinathan. She’s the author of “Radicalizing Her,” a new book that provides a close look at the motivations of various women who have gotten involved in militant groups. She’s also the founder and director of the Politics of Sexual Violence Initiative, a global research project examining the impact of rape on women’s political identities in extremist movements. She’s also a visiting professor at the City College of New York and the founder of Adi, a policy magazine that highlights the voices of marginalized people.

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

MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS

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.

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

Maya Contreras is an activist, a voting rights advocate, and now she's running for Congress in New York's 12th District. Maya was one of the very first guests on The Electorette, and has always been passionate about legislation that works for everyday working people. We talk about what drove her to run for office, and why she chose to primary a sitting Democratic incumbent. We also discuss current legislation, like the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, and why she believes Congress is at an impasse in passing some of our most transformative bills.

https://www.electorette.com/podcast

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Historian and author of the prize winning book "Set the World on Fire," and co-editor of the New York Times bestseller, "Four Hundred Souls," Dr. Keisha Blain discusses her latest book, "Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America" which explores the extraordinary life, and work of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer.

EPISODE REFERENCES

Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America

Set the World on Fire

Four Hundred Souls

https://www.electorette.com/podcast

Rate & Review on iTunes: https://apple.co/2GsfQj4

Also, if you enjoy the Electorette, please subscribe and leave a 5-star review on iTunes. Also, please spread the word by telling your friends, family and colleagues about The Electorette!

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Thirty years ago, Linux began as a college student’s hobby operating system project. Today, it’s a critical piece of software that powers the majority of the world’s smartphones and the most powerful servers and supercomputers. Along the way, Linux managed to displace much more established versions of the Unix operating system that it was designed to be compatible with.

But Linux as a technological phenomenon has been about more than what it makes computers do. It also popularized the concept of “open-source development,” a new way of programming where everyone has access to the underlying software code, and they can modify it and redistribute it as well.

Before Linux, open-source was considered a threat to capitalism and society itself. Today, it has become even more popular than Linux and is used almost everywhere in computing, including all the software we use here at Flux.

In this episode, we feature Miguel de Icaza, a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft who played several important roles in the spread of open source, including at Microsoft, where he helped turn a company that was vehemently in favor of proprietary software into one that now embraces it and sells it in many different ways.

De Icaza began using Linux while he was in college shortly after its first release in 1991. Soon thereafter, he released Midnight Commander, a powerful program for managing files that is still developed today. Several years later, he co-founded GNOME, a graphical environment for Linux and other Unix operating systems. 

After creating GNOME, he began working on enabling open source developers to write programs that could run on Windows, Mac, and Linux. That eventually led him to co-found Xamarin, which was later turned into a software platform that could create code for both Android and Apple’s iOS. In 2016, Xamarin was purchased by Microsoft and he has worked there ever since. 

In the discussion, de Icaza tells the story of how Linux and open-source development became mainstays in the computing industry, how the “foot logo” of the GNOME project came to be, and why he has gravitated toward using a Mac despite decades of advocating for Linux and free software.

A video version of this interview is below. A lightly edited transcript of the audio follows.

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

Activist and healthcare advocate, Laura Packard, is the Executive Director of the group Health Care Voter, and the founder of Health Care Voices, a non-profit grassroots organization for adults with serious medical conditions. Laura credits the Affordable Care Act with saving her life while battling Stage 4 Hodgkin Lymphoma; now she helps others use their voices to achieve comprehensive healthcare coverage through storytelling, and advocacy. Laura discusses how the Biden Administration has fared in their efforts to expand, and improve, healthcare coverage. She also shares her opinion about what will happen with the ongoing debate over the reconciliation bill in relation to healthcare coverage.

EPISODE REFERENCES

Health Care Voices

Health Care Voter

https://www.electorette.com/podcast

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Also, if you enjoy the Electorette, please subscribe and leave a 5-star review on iTunes. Also, please spread the word by telling your friends, family and colleagues about The Electorette!

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The 1960s are famous in the American political memory as a time of leftist revolution. Millions marched against racial segregation and the Vietnam War. Women’s liberation went mainstream, and the fight for lesbian and gay rights began. But the sixties were also a time of counter-revolution, a moment when many of the radical forces that became prominent on January 6th, 2021 really began to gain momentum.

In episode 15 of this program, we talked with historian Angie Maxwell about how fundamentalist white Southerners flooded into Protestant churches and seminaries. But a similar radicalization process happened within Latter-day Saint Mormonism, a religion that has an outsized influence on the politics of Utah, Idaho, Arizona, and some other Western states.

We’ll be talking about all of that today with Matthew L. Harris. He’s a professor at Colorado State University-Pueblo. We’ll be discussing the political evolution of Mormonism, and the many ways in which its major figures fit into the larger stories of American reaction and white Christian fundamentalism.

What I hope will be clear by the end of the episode, is that while Mormonism is often thought of as a sort of obscure a sect that just does its own thing, it’s actually been highly integrated into the development of American right-wing extremism. The core of our discussion today will be around Harris’s excellent book, “Watchman on the Tower Ezra Taft Benson and the Making of the Mormon Right.” And he has several other ones worth checking out including one coming out soon about Mormonism and race.

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.

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

Heidi Sieck, the Cofounder and CEO of #VOTEPROCHOICE discusses the extreme anti-choice legislation that's happening at the state level, and gets into the details of the legal, and legislative process behind the latest bills. We also talk about the upcoming Mississippi anti-abortion case that will soon go before the Supreme Court, and provides a list of actionable steps to fight back against these draconian laws.

EPISODE REFERENCES

#VOTEPROCHOICE

Texas Abortion Resources

Donate to Texas Abortion Funds

https://www.electorette.com/podcast

Rate & Review on iTunes: https://apple.co/2GsfQj4

Also, if you enjoy the Electorette, please subscribe and leave a 5-star review on iTunes. Also, please spread the word by telling your friends, family and colleagues about The Electorette!

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Dr. Krystale Littlejohn discusses her book "Just Get on the Pill: The Uneven Burden of Reproductive Politics," which argues that the burden placed on people who give birth is unequal, and that they are held accountable for preventing and resolving pregnancies in gender-constrained ways. We discuss how this is a reproductive justice issue, and that balancing the responsibility for pregnancy prevention would ease the emotional and domestic labor often placed primarily on women, and people who give birth.

EPISODE REFERENCES

Just Get on the Pill: The Uneven Burden of Reproductive Politics

How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics

Interview with Dr. Laura Briggs on The Electorette

https://www.electorette.com/podcast

Rate & Review on iTunes: https://apple.co/2GsfQj4

Also, if you enjoy the Electorette, please subscribe and leave a 5-star review on iTunes. Also, please spread the word by telling your friends, family and colleagues about The Electorette!

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