Category Opinion
The Tragic Heroes of 2020
The last year and a half saw two major crisis – COVID19 and the breakdown of the rule of law. COVID itself was – conspiracy theories aside – almost certainly a naturally occurring infection that jumped from a wild species to humans. Its spread was aided by freedom protesters and conspiracy theorists, eager to fight […]
Rust Belt This
The Upper Midwest is a nice place — if you don’t mind cold winters. Since the mid-80s, Wisconsin has had lower unemployment than the national average for all but two years. It has a diverse economy, US News says it’s the eighth smartest state, and there’s lots of delicious beer. I could go on, but […]
Why NFAC May Be Good
I like this picture. I consider the existence of this armed militia a cause for hope not because I hate white people and certainly not because I want to express white guilt, but because I think it represents a real, sustainable basis for respect. I think it represents a genuine respect because, in my experience, […]
The Homely Gangsters Episode 9
This isn’t the first time in history we’ve had celebrity scientists. It’s not the first time these celebrities have used their expertise to tell us how we should live, what values we should have, and how we ought to interpret the world. That history is surprisingly dark. Are we heading down the same dark path […]
The Homely Gangsters Episode 7
Are men just women with dangly bits? Why is there more pressure on women to make families and more pressure on men to succeed in their careers? Can we blame it all on the white man? Is it the work of the Illuminati? Would the world explode if we talked about gender politics without foaming […]
The Homely Gangsters Episode 6
Do you spend all day watching the news, terrified of gun violence and involuntarily urinating at the thought of armed neighbors? Is your front room filled with assault rifles, NRA posters and shrines to John Rambo? Check out the latest episode for a balanced examination of exactly what the whole gun thing is about. https://www.buzzsprout.com/255212/1093037-guns
The Homely Gangsters Episode 5; Immigrants
https://www.buzzsprout.com/255212/949615-immigrants-are-coming.mp3?download=true The brave Homely Gangsters dive into the immigration debate and find that, basically, it’s b.s. on both sides. What, really, are the pro-immigrant and anti-immigrant people after? Why do the rich and professional classes, in every society from Han Dynasty China to Brexit England, lean pro-immigrant? Why do the poor and laboring classes, in […]
The Homely Gangsters Episode 4; The Paris Agreements
https://www.buzzsprout.com/255212/949605-the-paris-agreement.mp3?download=true As the greenest podcast in the history of podcasting, the Earth-Mothers Mia and Jen team up with primitive survivalists Ben and Jamal to talk global warming, Trump vs. the UN and the largely ignored conflict between fighting climate change and helping poor people in industrializing countries.
Science Popularizers in the 19th Century
We are, as I’m sure you’re aware, in the middle of a boom for scientific prestige. Never before have we been so impressed with the scientist as a heroic figure and only once before have we been willing to listen seriously when scientists (like Niel De Grasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking) pretend that […]
Threats to Democracy
We tend to think of democracy as an inevitability. Indeed, Violet Brown, the current oldest person alive, was born in 1900, 124 years after the establishment of democracy in the US. Even my host country, South Korea, has been democratic longer than my sister has been alive. However, our current wave of democracy is only […]
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