May 20, 2020

Besides lessons in ethics (and in Asher’s case, lessons in the English language), the Brady Bunch offers up a metaphor about the fault lines in American politics — fault lines that include the undermining of government, extreme individualism, race and class divides, and capitalist and corporate excesses. Blood pressures soar, especially when Jason contemplates the Dunning-Kruger effect, but your intrepid hosts release the tension by suggesting some pathways out of political malaise.

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Show Notes

• Two scenes from the old-school tv comedy The Brady Bunch: (1) Mom always says, “Don’t play ball in the house!”
  (2) The vase springs leaks from its cracks.
• Nicholas Johnston in Axios, “The pandemic broke America“
• Article in the Los Angeles Times about Jane Mayer and her book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
• ProPublica graphic “How Dark Money Flows Through the Koch Network”
• Jared Kushner is out of his depth.
• Dunning-Kruger effect
• Ernest Callenbach’s 1975 novel Ecotopia explores the upsides of bioregionalism.
• Rand Abbott fights the trashing of Joshua Tree National Park during the January 2019 government shutdown.
• Armed protesters at the Subway sandwich shop
• Seeing White podcast
• The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Society Almost Always Do Better by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
• Chuck Collins article in The Guardian
• Inequality.org reports that decades of tax cuts and billionaire-friendly public policies helped US billionaire wealth soar over 1,100% between 1990 and 2018. Yet their tax obligations, as a percentage of their wealth, decreased 79% between 1980 and 2018.
• There are 140,000,000 US households. Right now there’s talk about a $2,000,000,000,000 stimulus package. If we divide $2 trillion by 140,000,000, that comes to $14,285.71 per household, so the majority of the funds are not being directed to households.
• Comparison of how various countries are supporting income during the pandemic
• Grocery stores rescind “hero” pay.
• David Homgren on permaculture and RetroSuburbia
• Rutger Bregman book Humankind: A Hopeful History
• Antithesis to Lord of the Flies
• Article from Food Tank: “17 Organizations Providing Emergency Food Relief to Native Communities During COVID-19“