For the Good of the Public | The Morning Five

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For the Good of the Public | The Morning Five episodes

June 05, 2022 Episode 23: Gun Reform
Wear is the Love, Episode 23

This week it’s all about gun safety legislation, which is being voted on in the House. The Senate will also have its chance to have its say, but potentially not until next week. We discuss the possibilities, plus our views on President Biden’s surprise speech on the issue last Thursday. Let us know your thoughts!

Episode notes

President Biden’s speech transcript

The Top 5 articles for your week:

“Waiting at a Texas hospital for children who never arrive” (New Yorker)

Because this shorter essay from a doctor at one of the receiving hospitals near Uvalde is heart-wrenching. This line got to me, “At 12:17, my phone rang. It was Dr. Veronica Armijo-Garcia from the pediatric I.C.U. ‘This call just came in, and I don’t think it’s hit the news yet. We need to get ready for a pediatric mass casualty.’”

“What the Racist Massacre in Buffalo Stole From One Family” (NYT)

Because this is another heart-wrenching essay about the life of Celestine Chaney in Buffalo, someone who was at Tops Friendly Markets for small dessert cups that she needed for her beloved strawberry shortcake. “Memories, however, refuse to be buried. Her light pinches and offers of peppermints to win silence during church services. Her two-step and arm bob whenever “Uptown Funk” played. Just her voice.”

“The Uvalde Police Chose Dishonor” (The Atlantic)

Because another week, another recommendation for Liz Bruenig on Uvalde, this time on the failure of police to act during the shooting and the refusal of some of their leadership to cooperate since. “Society cannot demand courageous self-sacrifice; we can only ask for it. Most of us know we ourselves would be too frightened to face an armed gunman in a direct confrontation, and we accordingly choose to seek work that doesn’t put us in such positions—or shouldn’t. But perhaps even some of those who do volunteer for danger now lack the fortitude, the relevant virtues of courage, honor, and selflessness, to take up the task.” Phewwwww.

“Imaginology” (Aeon Magazine)

Because Stephen T. Asma, a professor of philosophy, is calling for a new way to organize how we learn, and it’s a daunting proposal — combining how we teach and learn science with how we teach and learn humanities. “Imagination Studies, or imaginology, also promises to reunite the body and the mind, reintegrate emotion and reason, and tesselate facts and values.”

“The Woes of Being Addicted to Streaming Services” (Pitchfork)

Because we’ve shared a lot over the years about the attention economy, and this article on the streaming service Spotify (a service where this podcast is listed!) and what it’s done to listeners (rather than artists) is an angle I haven’t heard before. “Four years ago, while the app’s algorithmic autoplay feature was on, I was served the Pavement song “Harness Your Hopes,” a wordy and melodic—and by all accounts obscure—B-side from the beloved indie band. As of this writing, the song has over 72 million streams, more than twice as much as their actual college rock hit from the ’90s, “Cut Your Hair,” the one Pavement song your a
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39 min
June 02, 2022 The Morning Five: June 2, 2022

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6 min
June 01, 2022 The Morning Five: June 1, 2022

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6 min
May 31, 2022 The Morning Five: May 31

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7 min
May 30, 2022 The Morning Five: May 30

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6 min
May 29, 2022 Episode 22: Grief
Wear is the Love, Episode 22

It’s been a rough week. Michael recaps the May 24th primaries, and then we discuss the aftermath of all these shootings. We don’t have answers, and we can’t put a bow on things, but maybe the episode is a place for grief? We’re not sure. Take care, dear friends.

Michael & Melissa

P.S. Don’t forget that this past week we launched The Morning Five. Our hope is that it might be the kind of quick listen that helps you situate your day, and the events of the day, within the scope of God’s grace. Maybe listen to it while you drive the kids to school as a way to pray together and think together. We’re experimenting with it for now, but will likely make it available on Apple Podcasts and other podcast services soon. New episodes every mornng, Monday-Thursday.

Episode notes:

Slow Cooker Pork Tacos with Hoisin and Ginger

Henri Nouwen devotional: “The Blessing Hidden in Grief”

Liz Bruenig’s pieces in The Atlantic: “78 Minutes” and “A Culture That Kills Its Children Has No Future”

“Police inaction moves to center of Uvalde shooting probe” (AP)

The Top 5 articles for your week:

“A Gentler Christendom” (First Things Magazine)

Because Ross Douthat writes on Jacques Maritain and how to handle the decline of Christianity. “For those with ears to hear, these are the practical lessons of the recent Christian past, and especially of our own country’s history. Religious power wielded wisely and mildly and indirectly, with due respect to liberty and diversity and a focus first on the faith’s internal health and zeal, can sustain a religious ascendancy for many generations. But religious power wielded too much against pluralism, with political ambition substituting for real faithfulness, will corrupt and enervate and bring about its own reward.”

“What Progress Wants” (The Abbey of Misrule - Substack)

Because “The Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce saw the modern era as a thorough and permanent revolution - a radical break with the human past. He defined a modern person as ‘someone who thinks that “today it is no longer possible…”’ We do not tend to see our time as continuous with what has gone before…By sweeping away old ways of thinking, seeing and living, modernity has produced ‘a type of violence capable of breaking the continuum of history.’”

“The Rotten Core of Our Political System” (The Atlantic)

Because we’re reading the new book, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future” and enjoyed this review from George Packer.

“Inside LA’s Homeless Industrial Complex” (The New Republic)https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/wear-we-are/support

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57 min
May 26, 2022 The Morning Five: May 26, 2022

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6 min
May 25, 2022 Launching The Morning Five with Michael Wear
Friends,

We’re trying a new experiment. Every Monday-Thursday morning we’ll release a brief, 5-minute podcast episode to start your day off with prayer and a brief recap of the news of the day. Our intent is to provide you with another easy way to pray and learn about the news without provoking unnecessary anxiety, anger or antagonism.

We won’t email you every day with the new episode, so be sure to add it to your RSS feed or check in at reclaiminghope.substack.com in the morning for each new episode.

The first episode runs a bit longer than future episodes will as Michael introduces the podcast. We hope you find this experiment valuable. We trust God will make use of it.

Yours,

Michael and Melissa

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11 min
May 23, 2022 Episode 21: Primary recap in PA, NC and other states set the table for November
If you’ve thought about becoming a paid subscriber before, now is the time!
Wear is the Love, Episode 21
This week we discuss the primaries on May 17th — who won, who didn’t, what surprised us and what didn’t. We also discuss Lis Smith’s op-ed in WaPo on the Dobbs abortion case, “This is not the time to change how we talk about abortion.” And finally, we discuss Matthew B Crawford’s article on liberalism, which is number 1 in the Top 5 below.
The Top 5 articles for your week:
1. “Covid was liberalism’s end game” (UnHerd)
Because “The pandemic brought liberalism’s deeper contradictions into plain view. On the one hand, it accelerated what had previously been a slow-motion desertion of liberal principles of government. On the other hand, Covid culture has brought to the surface the usually subterranean core of the liberal project, which is not merely political but anthropological: to remake man. That project can come to fruition, it seems, only with a highly illiberal form of government, paradoxically enough. If we can understand this, it might explain why our embrace of illiberal politics has met with so little resistance.”
2. “An unintended consequence of mindfulness” (Washington Post)
Because “Mindfulness meditation is clearly effective at calming uncomfortable feelings, but some uncomfortable emotions are useful. Guilt can motivate us to apologize when we have hurt someone or to take action to undo some of the damage we’ve done. If meditation reduces that emotion, it could prevent us from doing the right thing.”
3. “Globalization Isn’t Dead, It’s Just Not American Anymore” (Bloomberg)
Because “Around the world, governments are paying more attention to how globalization can threaten national security, citizens’ interests and the environment. To mitigate these risks and make globalization more palatable, many are shifting away from Washington-style laissez-faire policies to a more hands-on approach of ‘managed globalization.’”
4. “Dislodged” (The Missouri Review)
Because “Any chances are hard enough to come by these days, I think. And everything these past couple of years has felt like a last chance. Just leaving my house to scrounge picked-over store shelves for toilet paper felt like a kind of last-chance endeavor. And truly, I am tired of thinking about last chances. What if the last time I saw my parents was my last chance to have seen them? What if the last time I stepped foot in the classroom was the last chance I had to do so? What about that last time I went to a concert and screamed in revelatory joy? Or the last time I sat inside a coffee shop? Or the last time I went anywhere without a mask?”
5. “DeafBlind Communities May Be Creating a New Language of Touch” (New Yorker)
Because a new language is being created right now! How fascinating!
6. BONUS: “Our Braided Bread” (Longreads)
Because this is simply a lovely essay from a writer in Iowa who bakes challah weekly, more often than he used to, and he’s trying to understand why.
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1 hr 15 min
May 17, 2022 Episode 20: Our hometown, Buffalo
Wear is the Love, Episode 20

In this week’s episode, recorded in San Francisco, we lament the mass shooting by a white supremacist in our beloved hometown, Buffalo. We discuss the heinous shooting in Buffalo, and how it’s a bit different when you’re reacting to the place you grew up.

Then, Michael discusses political homelessness, a topic he’s spoken on and written about for years, and rebuts a common critique.

The Top 5 articles for your week:

“The Monthly Salon: May” (Abbey of Misrule - Substack)

Because “‘Changing the world’ is of course a modern notion, and it has gone into hyperdrive since the 1960s, as religion, with its promise of perfected kingdom beyond this life, has been replaced by materialism, which requires us to try and achieve it in this one. But the prevalance of the ‘changing the world’ narrative has also become ubiquitous for another, more everyday reason: the world is getting worse. And the worse it gets, the more we are desperate to change it - or to believe that we can. With God gone, after all, what else is left to us?”

“Is a Better World Possible Without American Power? A Debate With Daniel Bessner” (Wisdom of Crowds)

Because we listened to this podcast episode this weekend and thought it was a super interesting distillation of Leftist frameworks and approaches to how the world works. (warning: explicit language)

“The Multiverse Swallows Everything — Including Politics” (Politico)

Because “…how could it possibly be surprising that the multiverse reigns supreme in our cultural imagination, when the core concept is one that treats aspiration as outright fantasy? The solutions offered by the loudest politicians today that might bridge that gap are frequently themselves little better than science fiction.”

“We’ve Never Been Good at Feeding Babies” (The Atlantic)

Because the formula shortage is a national conversation, but one that could be prevented, possibly. “‘There are only a few manufacturing plants in the country, and there are four infant-formula companies that control about 90 percent of the supply in the United States,’ Dittmeier told me. ‘It’s a highly concentrated market with a highly concentrated production capacity, so that when one plant is taken offline for just a period of weeks, you see these ripple effects throughout the entire sector.’”

“Whatever Happened to Identity Politics?” (NYT)

Because we enjoyed this conversation with philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò. “There was one event in particular, where a group of people had come to visit campus from an alternative high school for kids who had been railroaded out of other school systems. Working-class, Black and brown kids. And they had come to campus to see what we were doing. And this person from the medical school comes up to speak and gives this impassioned description of how racially insensitive the med school practices are, and it’s just one of those “read the room” moments — this is the furthest thing from what your audience on this particular day rightfully cares about. That was a clear moment where I realized, “Oh, it’s not just that people talk this way when it’s just us academics around.” I think some people hav
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32 min

About For the Good of the Public | The Morning Five

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For the Good of the Public brings you daily news and weekly conversations at the intersection of faith and civic life. Monday through Thursday, The Morning Five starts your day off with scripture and prayer, as we catch up on the news of the day together. Throughout the year, we air limited series on Fridays to dive deeper into conversations with civic leaders, thinkers, and public servants reimagining public life, for the good of the public.