I'M THE VILLAIN

For our last episode of 2020, we are talking about the future. Given all this year has uncovered, between the pandemic, half of the country being on fire, and increasing unrest around racial politics in the United States, we talk with Craig Blackmoore, a Detroit-based artist, about our outlook on the future. He dabbles in a lot of tech innovations, from 3D printing to cryptocurrency to AI, and is definitively excited for the future, but thinks we are going to have to go through a period of chaos before we can help people realize the true potential of the innovations we have been developing. This is definitely one of our most fascinating conversations on the podcast thus far. 

Links:

Craig's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sirblackmoore/?hl=en

Music is Beauty of Maths by Meydan.

As a special holiday treat for you all, we have created a special, never-before-seen supercut of bloopers from previous episodes that we had cut out of the show. Some prominent features are: a pre-covid hot wings party, breakups, finding out the name you came up with for your brand comes up with porn when you Google it, conference hookups, and being so type A that you might need to go to therapy.

AND, as a holiday promo, if you send your address to [email protected], we will send you a free sticker! And maybe some other goodies also, depending on how many responses we get!

Links:

If you listen all the way to the end you get the special treat of hearing Deondre' sing this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyTwz06M8Yk&ab_channel=MarcRebillet-Topic

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

Internet culture has made depression and anxiety in vogue, with brands marketing their "Depression" and "Anxiety" necklaces and graphic tees. But when was the last time you say "Schizoaffective disorder" on a T-shirt? We talk to Shreye, who you heard on the Effective Altruism and Financial Inclusion episodes, about what it's like having Schizoaffective Disorder and how there is still widespread stigma for the more serious mental health disorders in the broader public, even as it is now commonplace to tweet about having social anxiety.

[Article] How being sad, depressed, and anxious online became trendy

[Article] Article about the Deinstitutionalization of asylums in the 90s and its long-term effects on prisons and homelessness

[Article] HuffPo listicle of funny tweets about having depression

An example of a graphic tee about depression

Have you ever wondered how nuclear weapons are connected to fat? I have not. Not once in my life. But I guess someone has, because apparently there is a documentary about it. In our second installment where we watch a documentary together and discuss it afterwards, we watched the Nukes Episode of the Connected show on Netflix. The premise of the show is to talk about how seemingly unrelated things are all connected to each other, and is hosted by this really cool, very whimsical dude from NPR named Latif Nasser. He goes to the site of the very first nuclear test (The Trinity Site) and takes you on a journey through many of the various scientific breakthroughs that have stemmed from those nuclear tests, and we discuss which of those we thought were most interesting, along with some commentary on our reaction to how America treated Harry Truman causing mass death during Hiroshima vs. how we are reacting to Trump's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic now, the moral implications of nukes, and how it is crazy that scientists are constantly doing things to the planet where we have no idea what the outcomes on the planet and future generations of humans will be, just like when we started testing nukes that pumped out literal tons of radioactive material into the atmosphere.

We have been doing a lot of introspection during this podcast, and this particular episode is the culmination of a lot of the conversations we have been having recently about racial justice and the general power dynamics at play in American society. We invite our friend Ronald Young Jr. back on the show to have a conversation about whether power is zero sum, Black Panther and whether Michael B. Jordan did a good job as Killmonger, and the general axis of change with the Martin Luther King Jr. nonviolent approach on one side and the Malcolm X violent revolution approach on the other.

After this summer and the George Floyd protest, racial justice is now a major topic of mainstream discussion, with major companies conducting anti-racism trainings, and conversely, Trump banning diversity trainings within the government, citing them as racist against white people. But how do we translate this heightened literacy and awareness of racial justice issues into action instead of just theory? In other words, how do you get people to care?

In our second international guest on this podcast, we talk to Uddhuv, who describes himself as "the only neuro atypical comedian on the Mumbai circuit," about how he was recently diagnosed with autism. He reflects on the ways in which not knowing he had autism affected past relationships, his school years, and the ways in which he could have been supported if he had just known he was neuro-atypical. With  children today being born with a phone in their hand that is literally changing their brain chemistry, and almost 10% of school-age children being diagnosed with ADHD, do we even have an understanding of that "neurotypical" even means anymore? Especially when it manifests itself differently between men and woman and different countries vary in how seriously they even take mental health? As usual, we don't come to many clear answers, except that you should probably be seeing a therapist.

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

6 days until Election Day. I'm sure you may be sick of hearing this from the 5+ texts and calls a day you're probably receiving, but there's a lot at stake in this election, and we break down what we think matters, whether this is really "the most important election of our lifetimes" as news outlets like to say every election year, and talk about why we are more activated this year than we have been in the past. 

We probably won't know the results for a while after Election Day,  and it is sure to be a dissatisfying and anticlimactic end to a harrowingly long election season, I think we are not the only ones who will be breathing a sigh of relief when all this is over.

Links:

Vote 411 Voter Guide to help you find out who is running in down-ballot races and explains any propositions on the ballot: https://www.vote411.org/

Bill Gates TED talk that we reference about him predicting the pandemic: https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready?language=en

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

We try a completely different format for this episode, where we watch a documentary called The Social Dilemma, and respond to it with our friend and former guest for the Suffering Episode, Hanyu Chwe. Hanyu is a graduate student who studies network sciences. The documentary covers social media's insidious effects on our brains, interviewing a number of former Silicon Valley executives about the ways in which social media has led to an increased rate of teen suicide in girls, increased political polarization around the world, and the massive spread of fake news and misinformation. It draws a direct connection between the fact that radicalizing information tends to keep users on sites like Facebook and Twitter longer, which means more money for advertisers on those platforms. We talk about what we can try to do about these issues, both on a personal level (turning off notifications) and a government level (regulating the shit out of big tech).

Links:

The Social Dilemma Documentary (Netflix): https://www.netflix.com/title/81254224

Twitter thread Hanyu linked to research on what news sources are most polarizing: https://twitter.com/DavMicRot/status/1312466129168691200?s=20&fbclid=IwAR3Uzt6VgpIrWCXheyGeOqQOy3ejEBCwevnxVb-7Cq_p5UGsAAtlS0QJLpQ

White paper called 'Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook':  https://education.biu.ac.il/sites/education/files/shared/science-2015-bakshy-1130-2.pdf?fbclid=IwAR33dhIIcdVssbVezLjsewaQy9_Xq3HLbV0xJF9K0xclEJSg4nxHNAJphOg

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

In this episode, we talk DC politics with our friend David Lazere, who, full disclosure, is the son of one of the frontrunners for the DC At-Large Candidate, Ed Lazere. We talk about the big topics on the ballot, as well as the topics that are notably missing - we also have a conversation about who the frontrunners are and the importance of local politics in general.

Links:

DC At-Large Candidate Debate 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osq4cGp0L_E

DC At-Large Candidate Debate 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khvOp7GUpEA&feature=youtu.be

DC At-Large Candidate Debate 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFwWrXnt1Sc

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.