The Gray Area with Sean Illing30 Huhti 2018

The age of "mega-identity" politics

Yes, identity politics is breaking our country. But it’s not identity politics as we’re used to thinking about it. In Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, Lilliana Mason traces the construction of our partisan “mega-identities”: identities that fuse party affiliation to ideology, race, religion, gender, sexuality, geography, and more. These mega-identities didn’t exist 50 or even 30 years ago, but now that they’re here, they change the way we see each other, the way we engage in politics, and the way politics absorbs other — previously non-political —spheres of our culture. In making her case, Mason offers one of the best primers I’ve read on how little it takes to activate a sense of group identity in human beings, and how far-reaching the cognitive and social implications are once that group identity takes hold. I don’t want to spoil our discussion here, but suffice to say that her recounting of the “minimal group paradigm” experiments is not to be missed. This is the kind of research that will change not just how you think about the world, but how you think about yourself. Mason’s book is, I think, one of the most important published this year, and this conversation gave me a lens on our political discord that I haven’t stopped thinking about since. If you want to understand the kind of identity politics that’s driving America in 2018, you should listen in. Books: Ideology in America by Christopher Ellis and James Stimson Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi The Power by Naomi Alderman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(765)

Happiness isn’t the goal

Children live with a beginner’s mind. Every day is full of new discoveries, powerful emotions, and often unrealistically positive assumptions about the future. As adults, beginner’s mind gives way to ...

30 Syys 202453min

A message from Sean

Sean Illing has a special message for all you listeners: Look at me! We’ve made our first-ever video episode. See Sean in conversation with Yuval Noah Harari. Watch it with your friends and family and...

27 Syys 20241min

What if we get climate change right?

Climate change has become synonymous with doomsday, as though everyone is waiting for the worst to happen. But what is this mindset doing to us? Is climate anxiety keeping us from confronting the chal...

23 Syys 202448min

Yuval Noah Harari on the eclipsing of human intelligence

Humans are good learners and teachers, constantly gathering information, archiving, and sharing knowledge. So why, after building the most sophisticated information technology in history, are we on th...

16 Syys 20241h 24min

Why cynicism is bad for you

There’s a certain glamor to cynicism. As a culture, we’ve turned cynicism into a symbol of hard-earned wisdom, assuming that those who are cynical are the only ones with the courage to tell us the tru...

9 Syys 202458min

Poetry as religion

Sean Illing speaks with poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht, whose book The Wonder Paradox asks: If we don't have God or religion, what — if anything — do we lose? They discuss how religion acce...

2 Syys 202455min

The jazz musician’s guide to the universe

How is the origin of our universe like an improvised saxophone solo? This week, Sean Illing talks to Stephon Alexander, a theoretical physicist and world-class jazz musician. Alexander is the author o...

26 Elo 202453min

Revisiting the "father of capitalism"

Sean Illing talks with Glory Liu, the author of Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher became an Icon of American Capitalism. Smith is most well-known for being the “father of capitalism,” b...

19 Elo 202451min