The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream (11:50)

Steve Viscelli is an economic sociologist and lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy and Fox Family Pavilion Scholar. He is the author of the book The Big Rig: Trucking and the Decline of the American Dream and he works with a range of public and private stakeholders to make the trucking industry safer, more efficient, and a better place to work. In the 1960s truck driving was a great profession, it had benefits and fairly compensated workers for their time. However, since then there has been a dramatic shift, truck drivers are now expected to work long hours for little to no pay. In one case a California truck driver took home a $0.67 paycheck after paying the gas, insurance, and truck lease payments. In 2005, Steve Viscelli spent six months working for a for-hire carrier. For an average of 90 hours a week, his truck’s 53-foot trailer hauled a mishmash of material: pillows, steel coils—anything a pallet could hold. Steve Viscelli shares his experience and explains the importance of and challenge truck drivers face.

Is there a religious way to get angry? (1:00:00)

The Rev. Elaine Ellis Thomas, St. Paul’s Memorial Episcopal Church, Charlottesville, VA grew up in North Carolina and Tennessee, lived in Oregon for four years, and finally landed in Pennsylvania before coming to Charlottesville in 2014. She has a Masters of Divinity from Berkeley Divinity School at Yale where she did intensive work in reconciliation which took her from New Haven to Coventry, England, to Cape Town, South Africa. Religion generally urges people of faith to keep their temper in check. For example, anger-related teachings appear at many different points in the Bible, and most references condemn the emotion. Verses like these, as well as anger's inclusion on the list of seven deadly sins, lead some people to try to avoid the emotion completely. Trying to avoid anger all together is a losing battle,