The Gray Area with Sean Illing24 Feb 2020

Barbara Ehrenreich on UBI, class conflict, and collective joy

In the late 90s Barbara Ehrenreich went undercover as a waitress to discover how people with minimum wage full-time jobs were making ends meet. It turned out, they weren’t. Ehrenreich’s book Nickled and Dimed revealed just how dire the economic conditions of everyday working people were at a time when the economy was supposedly booming. It was a wake up call for many Americans at the time, including me who picked up the book as a curious college student. Since then Ehrenreich, a journalist by trade, has written on a vast range of topics from the precarity of middle-class existence to the psychological and sociological roots of collective joy to human mortality to her own attempt, as an atheist, to grapple with mystical experiences. Needless to say, this is a widely ranging conversation. References: Living with a Wild God by Barbara Ehrenreich Natural Causes by Barbara Ehrenreich Dancing in the Streets by Barbara Ehrenreich Nicked and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich Fear of Falling by Barbara Ehrenreich Had I Known by Barbara Ehrenreich New to the show? Want to listen to Ezra's favorite episodes? Check out The Ezra Klein Show beginner's guide. The “Why We’re Polarized” tour continues, with events in Austin, Nashville, Chicago, and Greenville. Go to WhyWerePolarized.com for the full schedule! Want to contact the show? Reach out at ezrakleinshow@vox.com Credits: Engineer - Cynthia Gil Producer/Editor - Jeff Geld Researcher - Roge Karma Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(766)

Can college survive Trump?

American higher education is under attack. Project 2025 laid out the battle plan pretty clearly: Get rid of the Department of Education, shut off federal funding, take control of the accreditation sys...

21 Jul 202557min

Hopeful pessimism

We live in a culture obsessed with hope. We are trained to believe that being hopeful is the key to success. Stay positive. The sun will come out tomorrow. Keep the faith. But maintaining that kind of...

14 Jul 202551min

If AI can do your classwork, why go to college?

What’s the point of college if no one’s actually doing the work? It’s not a rhetorical question. In the age of AI, it's incredibly easy for students to offload their assignments. AI tools can write es...

30 Jun 202555min

Is Trump winning?

We’re nearly six months into Donald Trump’s second term as president, and a lot of us are still trying to figure out what that actually means. Not just politically. But culturally. What kind of countr...

16 Jun 202548min

A right-wing economist makes his case

For decades, the American right has stayed on brand: the economy. Low taxes. Free markets. Deregulation. Those have been the buzzwords for more than half a century. But that doctrine is now being chal...

9 Jun 20251h 4min

What "near death" feels like

Sebastian Junger came as close as you possibly can to dying. While his doctors struggled to revive him, the veteran reporter and avowed rationalist experienced things that shocked and shook him, leavi...

2 Jun 202552min

Machiavelli on how democracies die

Almost nothing stands the test of time. Machiavelli's writings are a rare exception. Why are we still talking about Machiavelli, nearly 500 years after his death? What is it about his political phi...

26 Mai 202547min

Do you have moral ambition?

We’re told from a young age to achieve. Get good grades. Get into a good school. Get a good job. Be ambitious about earning a high salary or a high-status position. Some of us love this endless cli...

12 Mai 202556min