Winning Slowly

Stephen gave his students a change of pace by having Chris deliver a guest lecture on podcasting. This lecture was recorded immediately before delivering 5.05: "Faint Not" (Live at N.C. State).

Negative / Visible / Legal: regulations and the open internet

Show Notes

We look at internet policy and regulations as a view into the broader question of the relationship between government regulations and markets. Are all regulations harmful to the free market? Is a free market always the best? How do ideas like net neutrality and local loop unbundling play into it?

Correction

Chris said, wrongly, that the North Carolina state government prevented Charlotte from building its own municipal fiber. What actually happened was the state passed a law preventing cities (like Wilson, North Carolina, which with the FCC sued the state but ultimately lost in a federal appeals court) from building out infrastructure to other communities (including rural areas outside the incorporated area of the city). The laws claimed to be in defense of competition; but there is notably no rush to build higher-speed internet to those rural areas.

The Winning Slowly Internet Platform

What do we think is necessary for a well-functioning internet?

1. Consistency and Reliability: or, you should be able to get sufficient speeds to learn or do your job on a normal basis.
2. A Free/Functioning Market for Content: or, a level playing field for all the bits.
3. A Competitive Market for Internet Service: or, enabling (1) and (2) by making internet service providers earn customers.

Links

• Net neutrality

  • Wikipedia

  • “Net Neutrality in the US: Now What? (Vi Hart)”

  • The Open Internet (net neutrality advocate)

  • Zero-rating (Wikipedia)

• Local loop unbundling

  • Wikipedia

  • “Planey Money 691: The Great Unbundling”

  • As an alternative to net neutrality: “We don’t need net neutrality; we need competition—Op-ed:”Unbundled access" actually works.“

• The FCC vs. North Carolina and Tennessee on municipal ISPs offering service to neighboring communities

• Cell phone competition:

  • The big four in the United States: AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile

  • MVNOs: Wikipedia
    • Cricket
    • Ting
    • Republic Wireless

• Previously on the show:

  • 4.12: Five Years of Facepalming – The EU and internet law—monopolies, copyright, taxing, freedom of speech, and learning from each other.

  • 5.07: Books, The Internet, and Homeless People – Positive / Invisible / Legal (Organized): public libraries and the common good

Music

• “Jep Shuffle” by Holy ’57. Used by permission.
• “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho.

Sponsors

Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors:

• Andrew Fallows
• Kurt Klassen
• Jeremy Cherfas
• Jeremy W. Sherman

If you’d like to support the show, you can make a pledge at Patreon or give directly via Square Cash.

Respond

We love to hear your thoughts. Hit us up via Twitter, Facebook, or email!

At the end of 5.08 we made an offhand joke about Andrew Jackson. On further consideration, that joke wasn't funny: it missed some incredibly important realities. We got this wrong.

Reflections on the necessity, and the limitations, of empathy in light of the 2016 American election cycle

Show Notes

In the wake of the surprising outcome of the 2016 American presidential election, we talk about how we do politics going forward. In particular, we look at how empathy and treating each other (no matter how sharp our differences) as people made in the image of God must inform our politics, even as we acknowledge that no amount of empathy will overcome all disagreements.

Links

• “What A Difference 2 Percentage Points Makes” – Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight

• Previously on the show
  • 4.11: How People Read C. S. Lewis
  • 4.10: The Ancient Wisdom of Usenet
  • 4.09: We’re Idealist Realists
  • 4.05: The Price of Democracy
  • 1.12: Political Appinations
  • 1.06: Rebuke Me Some People

Music

• “Kid” by Arwen and the Mega Reset. Used by permission.
• “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. Who, as it turns out, has been close friends with one of the

Sponsors

Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors:

• Andrew Fallows
• Kurt Klassen
• Jeremy Cherfas
• Jeremy W. Sherman

If you’d like to support the show, you can make a pledge at Patreon or give directly via Square Cash.

Respond

We love to hear your thoughts. Hit us up via Twitter, Facebook, or email!

Positive / Invisible / Legal (Organized):
public libraries and the common good

Show Notes

We talk libraries. Why? Because public libraries are awesome. They’re on of the few unalloyed successes in social experiments. They do good in a wide array of areas, and they’re free to use (because we support them as taxpayers). If you want to hear Chris giddy, this is the episode.

The second of two episodes recorded live at NC State University on September 22, 2016. (Yep, our schedule is way different this year. You can thank Stephen’s Ph.D. thesis and the combination of Chris’ M. Div., work, and travel for that!)

Links

• Dewey Decimal System
• Library of Congress Classification system
• Samsung Galaxy Note 7: exploding phone, do not buy, return if you bought one
• TESOL (“Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages”)

Music

• “Widows and Revolutionaries” by Darling Valley. Used by permission.
• “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. After this episode, he should write something about libraries.

Sponsors

Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors:

• Andrew Fallows
• Kurt Klassen
• Jeremy Cherfas
• Jeremy W. Sherman

If you’d like to support the show, you can make a pledge at Patreon or give directly via Square Cash.

Respond

We love to hear your thoughts. Hit us up via Twitter, Facebook, or email!

Art, faith, how culture shapes and is shaped by us, and more in The Gray Havens’ latest album

Show Notes

Chris and Stephen have a wide-ranging conversation with Dave Radford of husband-and-wife folk-pop duo The Gray Havens about the value and purpose of art, the business side of the music industry, and the process of putting together their latest album, Ghost of a King.

• Musical influences:
• Simon and Garfunkel
• James Taylor
• Cat Stevens
• Frank Sinatra
• Dean Martin
• Queen
• Coldplay
• Mumford and Sons
• Florence and the Machine
• Fleet Foxes
• Bon Iver
• Lyrical influences:
• The Lord of the Rings
  • the Gray Havens in _The Lord of the Rings
• The Chronicles of Narnia
• The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss
• Other people mentioned on the show
• Jon Foreman
• Ben Shive
• Stephen’s rant on iPods: 1.10: Because Capitalism Yay
• Temple board
• John Piper
  • 0.01: We Need Some Context—in which, in our very first episode, we discussed John Piper and Pope Francis as representing very different styles of using social media. (Also: whoa, that episode is rough…)

Music

• “Shadows of the Dawn,” “Band of Gold,” “Diamonds and Gold,” and “This My Soul” from Ghost of a King by The Gray Havens – used by permission. Go buy this album!
• “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. Who is also deeply inspired by Tolkien, for the record.

Sponsors

Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors:

• Andrew Fallows
• Kurt Klassen
  • Jeremy Cherfas
  • Jeremy W. Sherman

If you’d like to support the show, you can make a pledge at Patreon or give directly via Square Cash.

Respond

We love to hear your thoughts. Hit us up via Twitter, Facebook, or email!

Show Notes

Links

• “Civil forfeiture in the United States” – Wikipedia
• “NYPD admits accounting for its civil-forfeiture seizures is hopeless” – RT
• “Asset Forfeiture Abuse” – ACLU
• “Civil Forfeiture” – Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
• “Police Can Use a Legal Gray Area to Rob Anyone of Their Belongings” – Kaveh Waddell, The Atlantic

Music

• “Faint Not” by Jenny & Tyler – used by permission, and with the deepest gratitude.
• “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. Not quite as awesome as Jenny & Tyler, but that’s okay.

Sponsors

Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors:

• Andrew Fallows
• Kurt Klassen
• Jeremy Cherfas
• Jeremy W. Sherman

Respond

We love to hear your thoughts. Hit us up via Twitter, Facebook, or email!

Show Notes

Links

• An article in The New York Times, in 1903, referenced in The Perilous Life of Symphony Orchestras, by Robert J. Flanagan:

  The permanent orchestra season has, as usual, been financially a bad one all over the country. With the end of April… come the bills for those who pay the piper…. There is always a deficit, which public-spirited guarantors are called upon to pay year after year. A permanent orchestra, it seems pretty welle stablished by American experience, is not at present a paying institution, and is not likely immediately to become so…. [Neverthless,] the prevailing note of the guarantors of the America Orchestras is one of hopefulness. Things are coming on; the public is being educated; it will support the orchestras in larger and larger numbers till they are finally… self-supporting.
  

• Stephen’s top three Dutch minimalist recommendations:
  • “Canto Ostinato” by Simeon Ten Holt
  • Joep Franssens, whose best known work is “Music of the Spheres”
  • Jeroen van Veen
• Prog rock Chris likes:
  • Explosions in the Sky
  • Faunts (and especially their album M4)
• Other music mentioned on the show:
  • Bach’s Mass in B Minor
  • Lecrae
  • Industrial music
  • Stomp dance
  • Mahler Symphony No. 2 “Resurrection”
  • Blue Man Group
  • Spoken word
  • Poetry slam
• A few of Chris’ composed works

Music

• “Generation Love” by Jon Reynolds – used by permission.
• “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. Composed along with hours of other music over the course of his teenage years and adult life. Maybe he’ll make a second career out of that.

Sponsors

Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors:

• Andrew Fallows
• Kurt Klassen
• Jeremy Cherfas
• Jeremy W. Sherman

Respond

We love to hear your thoughts. Hit us up via Twitter, Facebook, or email!

Show Notes

In which we look at Facebook... but not like we ever have before. Why are people starting to turn off Facebook, and what social pressures are arising from that? How do social pressures of this sort work, and what kinds of changes do they affect?

Links

• Virtue signaling
• “Is Google Making Us Stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains”, Nicolas Carr, The Atlantic, July/August 2008
• “The road out of Denton” – Jim Bradbury for TribTalk/The Texas Tribune, July 8, 2015, on Texas and municipal attempts to block oil drilling.
• Chris’ conversation with his friend about social media:
  • spawned from this tweetstorm
  • the conversation started with this response
• Before you go: “The cease-fire in Colombia’s long civil war starts today. Here’s what you need to know.”, The Washington Post
• Previous discussions of social media or episodes referenced directly on the show:
  • 0.13: Ten Thousandth Lightbulb – What Happened to ADN, Paying to Socialize, Free or Not Free
  • 1.01: Massive Emotional Contagion – Facebook’s Social (Network) Science, User Responsibility, and Corporate Ethics
  • 1.13: Hello Ello? – Definitely Still a Beta, That’s Not a Gift, How People React to News, A Working Business Model
  • 3.01: The Ad-Driven Web, Part I – Denny’s, Newspapers, Native Advertising, and Vicious Cycles
  • 3.02: The Ad-Driven Web, Part II – The responsibilities of producers, consumers, and advertisers on the modern web
  • 3.04: Mom Memes – Generational shifts in social media and the diversifying web
  • 3.05: You Have Agency. Use It. – ‘The Web We Have to Save’—hyperlinks, the stream, algorithms, and human responsibility.
  • 3.11: Augustine’s Podcast – Social circles on- and offline and differences between our embodied and virtual selves.
  • 3.13: Inevitable? (Live at NC State) – Self-driving cars, the limits of technology, and the tension between the personal and the communal.
  • 4.10: The Ancient Wisdom of Usenet – Populism, social media, and wisdom in when, how, and where to (dis)engage with people you disagree with.

Music

• “The Best Part” by Young Mister. Used by permission.
• “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. He’s composing other music right now, and this inspired him a bit along the way. Get inspired yourself and remix it! We’ll feature it if you do.

Sponsors

Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors:

• Andrew Fallows
• Kurt Klassen
• Jeremy Cherfas
• Jeremy W. Sherman

If you’d like to support the show, you can make a pledge at Patreon or give directly via Square Cash.

Respond

We love to hear your thoughts. Hit us up via Twitter, Facebook, or email!

Negative → Positive / Visible / Legal → Social: marijuana legalization and how systems change.

Show Notes

Marijuana legalization is happening in various states in the United States. How does that kind of change fit into the system we’ve devised for talking about structure and agency/systems and individuals? Because norms do change: all the time. How?

Links

• Reefer Madness
• “What’s More Dangerous: Marijuana or Alcohol? A New Freakonomics Radio Podcast”
• “Four of the Major Fear Campaigns That Helped Create America’s Insane War on Drugs” – we don’t necessarily endorse all the ideas here, but it does a nice job summarizing a lot of the issues around the drug war
• “Stop Treating Marijuana Like Heroin” – the New York Times editorial board, on the DEA’s recent decision to continue categorizing marijuana the same way it does heroin (as a Category 1 drug)
• “Donald Trump’s economic speech is basically about getting a do-over” – in which the journalists employed the Internet Archive as part of their reporting on Trump
• Previous episodes mentioned on the show:
  • 4.12: Five Years of Facepalming (Live at NC State) – learning from other countries about our own legal approaches
  • 5.01: A Ph.D.-Level Math Problem – introducing our axes for analyzing systems and their effects on individuals

Music

• “DaVinci” by Jaw Gems. This song is from Jaw Gems' new album Heatweaver. Used by permission.
• “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. He’s composing other music right now, and this inspired him a bit along the way. Get inspired yourself and remix it! We’ll feature it if you do.

Sponsors

Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors:

• Andrew Fallows
• Jeremy W. Sherman
• Jeremy Cherfas

If you’d like to support the show, you can make a pledge at Patreon or give directly via Square Cash.

Respond

We love to hear your thoughts. Hit us up via Twitter, Facebook, or email!

In which we laugh at ourselves and explain why you didn't get a new episode this week, but will get one next week, but not the week after that. Systems are hard, people.

P.S. We might just have more bonus episodes at some point. Like this one, they'll be in the feed, and in the Bonus category on the site, but not highlighted in the "Current Season" on the front page. Because they're, well... bonus episodes.

Explanation: New Rustacean is Chris' podcast about the Rust programming language.

Structures and systems, agency and individuals: three axes (and a sub-axis) for thinking about the world we live in.

Show Notes

We introduce our system for thinking about the "structure/agency" or "systems and individuals" problem: how do the systems and structures of our lives shape us? How do we shape them? How free are we, and where are the places where more freedom is good, and the places where it might actually be bad? How do we confront the structural issues we face, or strengthen and preserve the good systems we do have in place?

Questions we'll be asking

• How much can a system penalize an individual for not being part of it?
• How much can a system hurt an individual who is part of it?
• How much can a system benefit an individual that is part of it?
• How much can a system benefit an individual who is not part of it?

Our analytical axes

• Positive vs. Negative: is the relationship between systems and individuals good or bad---and if so, for society as a whole, for individuals, or both?
• Visible vs. Invisible: is the structural pressure visible or invisible---i.e., living in a capitalist society is invisible but deeply impacts us.
• Legal vs. Social: does the structure get its force through law and the power of the government, or through cultural and societal pressure?
  • Organized vs. Unorganized: both social movements and legal structures may be more or less coherent and organized.

Applying the axes

Two big questions we'll ask about the particulars for each issue we look at:

• How constrained are you by these structural pressures?
• To what extent is that constraint or freedom good or problematic?

We think that in almost no cases is a radical end of individual freedom or structural control right. Nor does any system have merely positive or negative outcomes; we live in a broken world where even the best systems working in the most productive cycles with the most virtuous individuals still cannot solve everything perfectly. (And, since people's own situations and religious and ethical beliefs differe, there will be people who dispute our positive/negative valence. We make no apologies for ours, but we welcome disagreement!)

Links

• 32 Theses (and several more words) on Podcasting
• The Internet Archive

Music

• "Equations", by The Midnight Sons, which is Stephen. Used by Stephen's permission. Or insistence, even.
• "Winning Slowly Theme" by Chris Krycho. Kind of strange to think it's been two and a half years since he wrote this.

Sponsors

Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial
support! This month's sponsors:

• Andrew Fallows
• Jeremy W. Sherman
• Jeremy Cherfas

If you'd like to support the show, you can make a pledge at Patreon or give
directly via Square Cash.

Respond

We love to hear your thoughts. Hit us up via Twitter, Facebook, or email!

Show Notes

We use the Panama Papers as a jumping-off point to sum up the season and talk about:

• the alleged flatness of the world
• the possibilities of both globalization and localization
• the twin dangers of imperialism and parochialism
• the ways that growing income inequality intersect with globalization
• the things different cultures can learn from each other
• the distinction between “reasonable” and “justifiable” responses
• the importance of humility, whether in art or in charitable action
• the value of choosing not to do something at times

In other words: how can you be a good actor in a global space?

As an aside, on the rough size of a Word file (referenced with regard to the size of the Panama Papers data release): a 20-page paper from Chris’ seminary degree is about 52 kilobytes. 2 gigabytes would be 20,000 such papers.

Links

• The Panama Papers:

  • “400 reporters kept the Panama Papers secret for a year. Here’s how they pulled it off.” (Mashable)
  • “David Cameron Answers for the Panama Papers” (The Atlantic) – and with a hilarious subtitle: ‘In a robust debate, one member was thrown out of the House of Commons for calling the prime minister “dodgy Dave.”’
  • “The 8 most important things to read to understand the Panama Papers document leak” (Vox)
  • “The Panama Papers leak, explained with an adorable comic about piggy banks” (Vox)

• The Three-Body Problem (Liu Cixin)

Previously on the Show

• 4.07: Kickstarting a Hyper-Local Superfarm
• 4.08: A Ghost in Singapore
• 4.10: The Ancient Wisdom of Usenet
• 4.12: Five Years of Facepalming (Live at NC State)

Music

• “River’s Sigh”, by Hazelwood. Used by permission.
• “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. This theme is never changing. Even if we get a neater recording, or a variation on it: it's slowly winning at taking over your brainspace at the end of every episode..

Sponsors

Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors:

• Andrew Fallows
• Jeremy W. Sherman
• Jeremy Cherfas

If you’d like to support the show, you can make a pledge at Patreon or give directly via Square Cash.

Respond

We love to hear your thoughts. Hit us up via Twitter, Facebook, or email!

The global nature of Christianity and the beauty of many cultures practicing the same faith

Show Notes

We look at how Christianity is changing as it shifts from being heavily Western to being far more global (as it was in its birth). What new things might we see and learn as other eyes come to the same text? What do the various cultures of the world have to offer each other as we practice the same, ancient faith?

Links

• Reading we’ve found helpful on today’s topic:

  • Misreading the Bible Through Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible (E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien)
  • Theology in the Context of World Christianity: How the Global Church Is Influencing the Way We Think about and Discuss Theology​ (Timothy Tennent)
  • The Next Evangelicalism: Releasing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity (Soong-Chan Rah)

  (Note that we don’t endorse everything in these books, as we don’t with most things we link—but that particularly bears repeating when looking at theology.)

• Zencastr

Music

• “SARCOPH▲GUS”, by GLYPTØTEK. Used by permission.
• “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. That Creative Commons bit is pretty great: it means you can do whatever you want with this theme wherever you live.

Sponsors

Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors:

• Andrew Fallows
• Jeremy W. Sherman
• Jeremy Cherfas

If you’d like to support the show, you can make a pledge at Patreon or give directly via Square Cash.

Respond

We love to hear your thoughts. Hit us up via Twitter, Facebook, or email!

The EU and internet law—monopolies, copyright, taxing, freedom of speech, and learning from each other.

Show Notes

In this second of two episodes recorded live at NC State (with a different class of students), we tackle the European Union’s approach to internet legislation—including everything from copyright law to dealing with monopolies—as a way to look at how differently things work around the world. What might we learn from other countries here in the U.S.? What might they learn from us?

Links

• Internet history
  • ARPANET (Wikipedia)
  • MILNET (Wikipedia) (actually a subsection of ARPANET used specifically for military purposes)
  • World Wide Web & Tim Berners Lee (Pew)
  • Minitel (Wikipedia)
    • “Minitel, France’s precursor to the Web, to go dark on June 30 [2012]” (Ars Technica)
• Monopsony (Economics Online)
  • Applied to the tech industry: “Publishers’ Deal with the Devil” (Stratechery)
• United States v. Microsoft Corp.
  • “Justice Department Files Antitrust Suit Against Microsoft for Unlawfully Monopolizing Computer Software Markets” (United States Department of Justice, 1998)
  • Wikipedia summary
• “EU Politicians Try To Create A New ‘Link Tax’ To Protect Newspapers Who Don’t Like Sites Linking For Free”
• “Google dominates search. But the real problem is its monopoly on data”
• Pirate Party (Wikipedia)
• TARDIS
• Last mile “loop unbundling” (Wikipedia)
  • “We Don’t Need Net Neutrality; We Need Competition” (Ars Technica)
  • “You Won’t Have Broadband Competition Without Regulation” (Reuters blog)
• Schengen Agreement (Wikipedia)
  • “The Schengen area and cooperation” (Summaries of EU legislation at europa.eu)
• DuckDuckGo
• Bing
• Packet sniffing
  • Packet analyzer (Wikipedia)
  • “Packet sniffing basics” (Linux Journal)
  • Wireshark network protocol analyzer tool
• “Brazil Arrests Facebook Executive in WhatsApp Data Access Case” (New York Times)
  • “Brazil orders release of Facebook executive arrested in WhatsApp dispute” (The Verge)
• End-to-end encryption (Wikipedia)
• “Why Are We Fighting the Crypto Wars Again” (Steven Levy) – with a helpful history of the fight in the 1990s as well as the current issues
• “You Can’t Outlaw Math (Accidental Tech Podcast 26:31 and following)”
• Trans-Pacific Partnership
  • “Everything You Need to Know About the Trans-Pacific Partnership” (Washington Post, 2013)
  • “Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement” (Electronic Frontiers Foundation)
• DMCA (Electronic Frontiers Foundation)
• Digital cash in Kenya
  • “The Invisible Bank: How Kenya Has Beaten the World in Mobile Money” (National Geographic, 2012)
  • “Kenya’s mobile innovation brings digital money closer” (BBC)
  • Similar ventures in the U.S.:
    • Square Cash
    • Venmo

Previously on the Show

• 4.09: A Ghost in Singapore

Music

• “The House”, by Air Traffic Controller. Used by permission.
• “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. That Creative Commons bit is pretty great: it means you can do whatever you want with this theme wherever you live.

Sponsors

Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors:

• Andrew Fallows
• Jeremy W. Sherman
• Jeremy Cherfas

If you’d like to support the show, you can make a pledge at Patreon or give directly via Square Cash.

Respond

We love to hear your thoughts. Hit us up via Twitter, Facebook, or email!

Show Notes

In the first of two episodes recorded live at NC State, we tackle the challenges posed by protest art. When does art cross a line and become morally reprehensible? When is it a viable alternative to other, far worse ways of dealing with the esame problems?

Links

• “Stab Stab”
  • (Palestinian Anger in Jerusalem and West Bank Gets a Violent Soundtrack" (New York Times)
  • “NYT Front Page Indulges ‘Blunt’ Palestinian ‘Protest Songs’ Encouraging the Stabbing Murder of Jews” (NewsBusters)
• C. S. Lewis
  • The Great Divorce
  • Mere Christianity
  • The Chronicles of Narnia
• “Free Speech”
• Shades of Blue
• Black-ish
  • Season 2, Episode 16: “Hope”

Previously on the Show

• 0.01: We Need Some Context!
• 4.02: Helpiness
• 4.10: The Ancient Wisdom of Usenet
• Disagreeing well
  • 1.06: Rebuke Me Some Peopl
  • 4.05: The Price of Democracy

Music

• “Half a Second” by Hemmingbirds. Used by permission.
• “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. Big horns underneath and some piping woodwinds carrying the top line? Interesting thought.

Sponsors

Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors:

• Andrew Fallows
• Jeremy W. Sherman
• Jeremy Cherfas

If you’d like to support the show, you can make a pledge at Patreon or give directly via Square Cash.

Respond

We love to hear your thoughts. Hit us up via Twitter, Facebook, or email!

Populism, social media, and wisdom in when, how, and where to (dis)engage with people you disagree with.

Show Notes

There’s a wave of populism sweeping the world. Twitter and Facebook are some of the epicenters of the new populism. How should we think about interacting with radical populists in general? And what about specifically on social media?

Links

• “Is Google Making Us Stupid (Nick Carr at The Atlantic)”
• Bernie Sanders runs to man who fainted during speech (CNN)

Previously on the Show

• 4.05: The Price of Democracy – the necessity and the limitations of gradualism, incrementalism, and compromise in politics.
• 3.11: Augustine’s Podcast – Social circles on- and offline and differences between our embodied and virtual selves.
• 3.04: Mom Memes – Generational shifts in social media and the diversifying web
• 0.01: We Need Some Context – Religious twittering, Google nesting, and hobbyists careering.

Music

• “Optimist” by Wanderwild. Used by permission.
• “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. If you’re wondering what it would sound like as a majorly epic score, he’s thought about doing that version.

Sponsors

Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors:

• Andrew Fallows
• Jeremy W. Sherman
• Jeremy Cherfas

If you’d like to support the show, you can make a pledge at Patreon or give directly via Square Cash.

Respond

We love to hear your thoughts. Hit us up via Twitter, Facebook, or email!

Show Notes

We discuss the problems that face major nation-states trying to respond to the massive refugee crisis in Europe. We also look at the complex relationship between nations on topics like this in a “global world” (nice, Chris) and suggest that Americans both invest actively in making things better and chill out a bit insofar as we don’t live in Europe.

Links

• “One in, one out”: Turkey and EU agree outline of ‘one in, one out’ deal over Syria refugee crisis (The Guardian)
• “Central American Families Fear Deportation As Raids Begin” (NPR)
• “The Shame of America’s Family Detention Camps” (The New York Times Magazine)
• Safe cities in Syria: Why Syrian ‘Safe Zones’ Could Be Dangerous for Civilians and U.S. Policy (TIME)
• Stephen’s Biblical metaphors:
  • “Take the beam out of your own eye…”
  • Casting stones

Previously on the Show

• 1.12: Political Appinations – in which we talked (among other things) about the value of more local politics
• 4.06: Kickstarting a Hyperlocal Super-Farm – in which we talked about local governance in the context of the
• 4.07: A Muscle-Flexing Flyby – in which we talked about Russia
• 4.09: A Ghost in Singapore – in which John O’Nolan exhorted people to be charitable in their assessments of businesses

Music

• “Come Down” by Water District. Used by permission.
• “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. Do you hear that? It’s the sound of there not being any sweet remixes yet. Someday. Someday.

Sponsors

Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors:

• Andrew Fallows
• Jeremy W. Sherman
• Jeremy Cherfas

If you’d like to support the show, you can make a pledge at Patreon or give directly via Square Cash.

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John O'Nolan on Ghost, Singapore, international commerce, and giving the benefit of the doubt

Show Notes

We invite Ghost cofounder John O’Nolan on the show to talk about Ghost’s reincorporation in Singapore, what that means for them as a non-profit, and how we should think about these kinds of moves. We talk about everything from the specific details of Ghost’s move to the ethics of business tourism, and John basically hammers on themes we’ve been talking about all season. It’s fantastic.

Links

• “Ghost is moving to Singapore—and saying goodbye to the UK” (John O’Nolan at the Ghost blog)
• Stripe
  • Stripe Atlas
• VAT
  • VAT-MOSS
• Net neutrality in the US
• FBI demanding iPhone unlocking under a law from the 1700s
• “Singapore” – Freedom House Report
• “Censorship in Singapore” (Wikipedia)
  • “Internet Censorship in Singapore”
  • “Media Censorship in Singapore”
  • “Human Rights in Singapore”
• “Singapore Professor Denied Tenure, Sparks Academic Freedom Debate” (Wall Street Journal)

Music

• “A Better Life” from Silent Moon by Supersmall. Used by permission.
• “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. If you ever do a remix of this track, we’ll probably feature it on the show. (Seriously.)

Sponsors

Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors:

• Andrew Fallows
• Jeremy W. Sherman
• Jeremy Cherfas

If you’d like to support the show, you can make a pledge at Patreon or give directly via Square Cash.

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Show Notes

We talk about nation-states, war, hopes of permanent peace and how “the end of history” and the notion of fewer major wars is likely a pipe dream. But also, how to think about foreign policy issues as citizens of nations we love, and the value of nation-states even in a “global village.”

Links

• Fall of the Berlin Wall
• Russo-Japanese War
• World War I
  • “War to end all wars”
• World War II
• Proxy wars
  • Cold War
    • Korean War
    • Vietnam War
  • Arab-Israel conflict
• Exclave
  • Kaliningrad Oblast (Russian exclave on Atlantic ocean)
• Gulf Wars
  • Gulf War
  • Iraq War
• “War on Terror”
• “Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine” (All of Vox’s coverage)
  • “Russian military intervention in Ukraine”
  • “Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation”
  • “The Link Between Putin’s Military Campaigns in Syria and Ukraine” (The Atlantic)
• China’s building islands in the South China Sea
  • “What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea”
  • “China’s President Pledges No Militarization in Disputed Islands”
  • “With China in Mind on a Visit to Manila, Obama Pledges Military Aid to Allies in Southeast Asia”
• Neoliberalism
• “End of history”
• Nation-state
• North Korea hack of Sony
  • “Timeline: North Korea and the Sony Pictures hack”
• Britain considering exit from EU (“Brexit”)
  • “A background guide to “Brexit” from the European Union”
• Putin flexing

Music

• “Warpaint On” by Risley. Used by permission.
• “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. He doesn’t need permission to use his own stuff. But you know what? It’s Creative Commons Attribution licensed… so neither do you.

Sponsors

Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors:

• Andrew Fallows
• Jeremy W. Sherman
• Jeremy Cherfas

If you’d like to support the show, you can make a pledge at Patreon or give directly via Square Cash.

Respond

We love to hear your thoughts. Hit us up via Twitter, Facebook, or email!