The Round Table: A YVote Podcast

The Round Table: A YVote Podcast

By YVoteNewsNews Commentary
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The Round Table: A YVote Podcast episodes

  • 2020 may be over but the Census isn't

    At this week's Round Table, Divya, Madeline and Olivia spoke with Hansi Lo Wang, national correspondent for NPR based in New York City who reports on the people, power, and money behind the 2020 census. The Census is one of the most consequential things the government does every decade, yet few of us deeply understand its operations and implications in the way Hansi does.  The U.S. government has conducted the Census every 10 years since 1790, and there’s a long, complicated history about who has been counted and how they’ve been counted.  This year--amidst pandemic and polarization--was no exception, and we don’t yet know how things panned out during this most unusual 2020 collection period. There’s a lot of distrust of the Census, which works at odds with getting an accurate count. The reality is, there has never yet been a perfect Census—we have always excluded people or categorized them in ways that can be limiting or that shift over time.  Hansi is already starting to focus on some of the exciting ideas percolating for the 2030 Census as we continue to strive towards a more perfect union.  Thank you for joining us!

    29 min
  • Maybe your grandparents aren’t on TikTok
    Our podcast guest Aviv Ovadya reminded us that entertainment is where we gain our sense of what it means to be a person and thereby has a HUGE influence on us.
    There are so many opportunities for unethical behavior. Social media platforms are used by everyone, and thereby can be a very POSITIVE force, across demographics and generations, if they are structured to bring out ethical behavior (although Aviv DID confess that your grandparents may not be on TikTok…) Isaiah underscored that the power of social media, and tech companies, is indescribable so why not use it for something good?
    1 min
  • Why young people love Bernie
    We loved Bernie Sanders recent interview with Ezra Klein, and his response to a question about how a guy as old as him garnered so much support from young voters. His secret? He loves young people, treats us with respect, and talks about real issues to us. Bernie underscored that young people are the most progressive generation our country has ever had: we are firmly anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobia, anti-xenophobia and a generation that believes in economic, environmental, and social justice. Further, we’re a generation that is economically hurting--the first generation slated to have a lower standard of living than our parents, on average--and that was BEFORE the pandemic. Younger workers are making less money than our parents, having a harder time buying a home, and getting stuck with tremendous student debt. Ours is a generation that wants the government to address the economic pain we are feeling. Is there any reason we love Uncle Bernie?
    1 min
  • Embrace the strategy of SIFT
    Our guest Aviv Ovadya shared his fondness for a methodology popularized by Michael Caulfield with the acronym SIFT--Stop and take stock, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, Trace the claims, quotes, and media to find the original coverage. What’s exciting is that this can actually be done pretty quickly (albeit a bit slower and more of a pain on your phone.) Ideally platforms themselves will start helping contextualize information and promote more embedded media literacy bc there is too much coming at us too quickly, but until then, we must put ourselves in the driver's seat
    1 min
  • What’s entailed in social media readiness
    Navigating the complex world of social media can be hard, especially during these polarizing and inflammatory times we find ourselves in. When it comes to facing adverse or defining circumstances, it’s always better to traverse them with like-minded individuals who are ready to give support to one another. In our recent Round Table episode, we spoke with Aviv Ovadya and Robin Ehrlich of The Thoughtful Technology Project. They underscored the importance of setting intentions and goals when handling social media and, ideally, even writing them down. They encouraged us to ask ourselves questions like “who do you want to be?” and “What values do you want to represent?” You can then hold yourself--and others--accountable for this.
    1 min
  • A big part of media literacy is emotional literacy
    Our podcast guest Robin Erlich of The Thoughtful Technology Project reminded us that a big part of media literacy is emotional literacy--that is, how do we as individuals respond to the very emotionally intense news that swirls around us and our friends’ reactions to them? The murder of eight people in Atlanta, six of them women of Asian descent, last week, and the trial of Derek Chauvin, the officer who killed George Floyd, this week strongly fit this triggering criteria.
    Robin encouraged us to each take a second to pause and think, “how is this making us feel? What reactions and judgments are coming up?” and putting that through our internal lens before engaging. She underscored that there are two sides to the same coin: half the battle is to provide education and foster critical thinking, and the other half is individuals’ responses and the responsibility we bear to ourselves and others to interrogate how this all makes us feel on a deep level
    1 min
  • Can Technology Be More Thoughtful--and Can We Be?

    At this week's Round Table, Inica, Isaiah, and Madeline spoke with Aviv Ovadya and Robin Ehrlich of The Thoughtful Technology Project. The Thoughtful Technology Program focuses on ensuring that our information ecosystem has a positive impact on society—that it can facilitate the understanding, trust, and problem solving needed for a well-functioning civilization. They underscored that being given access to a platform is like being given access to a road--there are endless possibilities but if you don’t know how to drive safely, significant danger can ensue. So what should we do to promote safety online? Emotional literacy needs to be a key part of our individual and collective toolkits--for example, taking time to pause and think before we act and interact online; approaching ideas that seemingly conflict with our own constructively; empathizing with experiences of others. We also talked about the roles that platforms themselves can and should play in promoting safety and well being. Our guests introduced the idea of Compromise Circles, which is something we will definitely be carrying forward. Thank you for joining us!

    29 min
  • The projects Macon is proudest of
    Of the many projects Macon Phillips worked on while in DC, there were two he’s particularly proud of. One was the White House petitions platform, premised on the idea that if a lot of people are excited about something, White House leadership should probably know about it and be able to respond directly. The administration received petitions on everything from online poker to building a new Death Star to topical issues like gun safety to international affairs.
    Another project he’s proud of, from when he transitioned to the State Department after five years, is the Young African Leadership Initiative, which used technology to connect young African leaders with their peers across Africa and with folks in the U.S.. They developed training kits to unpack international priority areas and to teach about things like the difference between climate and weather, what climate change actually means, and the importance of women’s leadership not just from a moral and cultural standpoint but from an economic one. It was exhilarating work that left a lasting legacy.
    1 min
  • Bringing on the digital revolution
    Madeline was curious to know more about the specifics of the tech work our guest Morgan Phillips did in the Obama White House. The first thing he did when he arrived in early 2009 was (surprise!) redesign the White House website and think about what specifically the administration wanted it to communicate to people.
    Macon noted that at the time, it was challenging to get access to computer systems--security at the time required all work to be done onsite (!) so if they wanted to post the transcript of the President’s radio address, which is given at 5AM on Saturday mornings, they’d actually have to go to the White House on Sat at 5AM (imagine!) Macon underscored how hard they worked to modernize the technology so that people could work when and where they wanted to. Further, at that point, people weren’t using their phones to interface with these systems (how quaint!) as the mobile revolution of work on the go was just beginning to be a thing-- for better and for worse as we now know…
    1 min
  • Barack Obama’s secret sauce
    Our guest Macon Phillips noted, unsurprisingly given his tenure in the Obama White House, that he gets asked a lot about Barack Obama’s “secret sauce” for using technology so effectively. The secret is that there wasn’t really a secret as much as an underlying ethic about wanting to really understand a community. After Obama graduated from college, he spent time as a grassroots organizer on the South Side of Chicago, knocking on doors and asking people what their problems are. Macon thinks we need to be applying those same strategies today, thinking about the small steps we can take to reach out to others, even when online and in a pandemic.
    1 min

About The Round Table: A YVote Podcast

From the publisher's feed

The Round Table provides a platform for conversation and engagement of civically-minded young people from different parts of the country. We strive to model civil dialogue across various divides--socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, political, and regional. We aim to challenge norms and represent all kinds of diversity--especially of perspective and ideas--enabling listeners to “hear” our thinking.