Heterodox Americana

We're all arguing about the wrong stuff; the wrong identity politics; the wrong "us". We explored identity politics in Episode 5, but we weren't able to drill down and take a deep examination of the question, "what is identity?" and "what is a group (with respect to group identity)?" This is an exploration of how identity works and the necessity to re-orient politics (in a non-kumbaya way). What's at stake is clear to some, but not-so-obvious to most. We're on the verge of something catastrophic and identity is at the center of it.

Stewardship is the process of taking care of the think that you already have... so that you can keep having it. While the value of this is obvious to good stewards and makes enough sense to the rest of us, in general... we don't do it. If we did, the "check engine" light wouldn't exist.

We explore the psychological difficulties of stewardship vs expediency and the associated pay-offs. It's NOT pretty.

Is it possible to think about sin in neurobiological terms? What if sin is real and not just confined to what we learned from religious realms. In this episode we bounce around an idea that sin is an emotion with its own biochemistry and something that we can all relate to. We use some recent breakthroughs in the biochemical understanding of emotion to frame the conversation.

If sin is real, then what is it's evolutionary or biological purpose. This is the topic we'll explore, here. Hold on to your religious or atheistic chairs. We're going in.

We loop back around to ways of thinking about mental health during a pandemic. Obviously the US is suffering disproportionately in this regard, but the underlying perspectives are applicable universally.
Let us know what you think! 

I sit with Victor Jackson—an insightful, young thought leader in Philadelphia—and we hash out, among other things the US’s unique refusal to be accountable, the false promise of full inclusion, and the pitfalls of socially constructed identities
*explicit language

We talk with Dave Ramsey (daveramseymusic.com) about the potential social landmines of talking about opinion that break from received orthodoxy. Much of this episode refers to Sam Harris's podcast episode: Can we pull back from the brink? (https://samharris.org/podcasts/207-can-pull-back-brink), but our discussion should be robust enough to stand alone as we discuss these core issues.

We also talk about what the data disparities around police shootings of unarmed black men really says, and the cultural shifts after the George Floyd moment. Let us know what you think!

We struggled with this title, but this is actually a good show. We talk about strategies for organizing the things you can control, how to build better models of your social world. We both found it really helpful to hash these idea out. Let us know what you think.

We talk with community organizer and activist Ben Blei and try to get a perspective on the role White people have to play in helping all Americans to get freer

Things feel different in the United States. If this energy will last, we won't know. But I'm nervously optimistic that we might end up in a new place. A better place. Time will tell

With a spotlight finally shone on the problem lethal force used police departments across the U.S., how do we make sense of the death of Mr. Floyd and explain just why his case is both emblematic of the problem and vastly different in its presentation. How did we get here?
We just take a look at what happening in our cities and talk about the murder of George Floyd as well as some of the broader implications. This episode was hard.