Flux Podcasts (Formerly Theory of Change)

Flux Community Media
  • 4.8 (63)
  • POLITICS
  • UPDATED DAILY

Flux is a progressive podcast platform, with daily content from shows like Theory of Change, Doomscroll, and The Electorette.

  1. 1H AGO

    Thinking outside Schrödinger’s cat box: Reality as quantum

    Episode Summary  A hundred years after quantum mechanics was invented, physics is still living with its consequences. Since Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger, the theory has transformed science and technology, explaining atomic structure and enabling much of the modern world. But its success has never erased a deeper puzzle: how the quantum world relates to the classical one we actually experience. Quantum theory is notorious for its “weirdness,” which makes sense: Superposition, measurement, and uncertainty are real physical ideas—but they’ve also been repackaged into “quantum woo” that labels superstitions as profound science. Despite the mystical nonsense though, understanding how classical and quantum systems relate remains the biggest challenge of the physical sciences, but as my guest on today’s episode argues, some of those difficulties are caused by the famous “Copenhagen interpretation” of quantum physics, which can overstate the observer’s role and understate the continuity of quantum dynamics. In his account, reality is quantum all the way down, and what we call objects are stable processes, not tiny building billiard balls. Vlatko Vedral is a professor of quantum information science at Oxford University. He’s out now with a book explaining his theories in a more popular format called Portals to a New Reality: Five Pathways to the Future of Physics. The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere. Audio Chapters 00:00 — Introduction 06:42 — An “observer” in quantum mechanics has nothing to do with a person 15:28 — The confusion caused by the ‘Copenhagen’ interpretation of quantum fundamentals 22:47 — Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment was a criticism of quantum duality views 28:08 — Eric Weinstein’s Geometric Unity speculations 35:11 — How to test new quantum theories 44:16 — Information theory and quantum computing 50:43 — Q-numbers, C-numbers, and quantum logic 56:51 — The advantages of a process physics over a thing physics Audio Transcript The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only. MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So normally we don’t cover physics on the show too much, I would say. But what you’re doing here is really important, I think, in a lot of ways. So essentially, what you’re trying to do is to say that, and we will get into the details more specifically, but just generically, would you say that you’re trying to say that what people conceive of as classical mechanics and quantum mechanics, they’re not in conflict the way that a lot of people often think? VLATKO VEDRAL: Yes, I think so. I think you hear all sorts of statements. I think it’s a very nice summary of the spirit of most of my writing, that of course, quantum mechanics was, was a big revolution and it surprised many people at that time. But if you look at it in terms of how big a departure this is from classical mechanics, then it’s very similar to the past revolutions that we had. So certainly you can recover all of the classical ideas in, in a very special limiting case and the two theories. So quantum mechanics in that sense can reproduce the classical world. And if you [00:04:00] see it like that, you see that there is a continuity going through all of these theories as they develop in the history of physics. SHEFFIELD: Exactly. And we’ll get further into that as we go along here. But so just to do some, a little bit basic table setting here. I think probably the biggest difference from how people conceive of chemistry or classical mechanics is that quantum objects are not like little tiny billiard balls. VEDRAL: Yes. SHEFFIELD: They are processes of things that exist in, in a flux, if you will. But can you just kind of explain that a little bit better than I did just there? VEDRAL: Yes. I think that’s the key feature actually the technical word is the superposition principle, which actually states that any quantum object, any quantum particle, like an electron or an atom, and we’ve tested it with much bigger objects than than that in the last a hundred years, can actually exist in many different states at the same time. So you, if you’re thinking about an electron. It could exist within an atom closer to the nucleus of the atom and further away from the nucleus simultaneously. And that’s called a quantum superposition. And that’s of course something that doesn’t have any analog in classical mechanics because in classical mechanics, objects have well-defined positions. They’re localized. They’re either here or there, but not simultaneously in two positions. And the same with all other properties. If they have an energy, they have a well-defined energy, they have a well-defined velocity. Motion is well-defined. Whereas in quantum mechanics, it seems that you have to acknowledge that actually, we need to deal with probabilities at the fundamental level. so we can never say for sure where particles are. Unless we make [00:06:00] a measurement to confirm where they are. But even then, very quickly after the measurement, the particle will spread across the space and we’ll assume, this state of superposition of being in many different locations at the same time. And that gives rise to all sorts of other things that I think are out there in the, public domain. Things like entanglement the effect that Schrödinger talked about a lot, how quantum systems jointly can be in a super position in a way that they’re super correlated to one another. So there, there are all sorts of interesting phenomena, but they can all be explained through this property of being in, many states at the same time. An “observer” in quantum mechanics has nothing to do with a person SHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly. And the idea also the superposition state and how it can be perceived in multiple different ways that gives rise, to the idea of the observer. yes, but a lot, of times, when people who are not physicists are thinking about an observer, they think of it as a person. And that’s not what an observer means in quantum mechanics. and I think that, that ambiguity causes a lot of confusion for people. VEDRAL: I think you’re absolutely right, and I love the fact that you’re, stressing this right at the beginning of the discussion. because it leads to all sorts of statements that, that really go well beyond physics. And in fact, they have no support in physics at all, statements. like, if you really observe something, you can change your reality. If you focus on something, you can really make it happen and things like that. Nothing like that exists in quantum mechanics. what does exist is simply, again, going back to Schrödinger, is that when you make an observation and you’re absolutely right to emphasize that, An observer could be any other physical system, and observation doesn’t need to involve human beings at all.[00:08:00] In fact, it doesn’t have to be a computer at all. It doesn’t have to be as sophisticated as what we would call, a computer. It could be simply an atom being observed by another atom. and so what happens during the observation is that the states of these atoms become entangled, in Schrödinger’s language, which means that for every position of one of these atoms, there is a corresponding position of the other atom. So they’re somehow locked in this perfect correlation that their positions perfectly mirror one another, and that’s where the measurement stops. As far as the quantum physicist is concerned, you would say, I’ve now demonstrated that one of these atoms has measured another one. Now, of course you can, and ultimately a physicist does get involved, in confirming this, which means that you will now measure one of these atoms. And what will happen is that you will see only one of these positions manifest itself. and this is the property that I think causes many people to, speculate and to become confused because quantum physics does not tell us, and in fact, it cannot tell us in advance which of these outcomes you will see when you observe a quantum system. So this is part, this is something that’s called a Heisenberg Uncertainty principle, which means that if you’re in a position in a super position of different locations, but you insist on asking what location is the system at a given time, you will only get randomly one of these possible locations. and all we can calculate is the probability to obtain that. So that’s what quantum mechanics gives us. So if you repeat the same measurement many, times and you get an expected value. And then that’s the value that quantum mechanics predicts. But [00:10:00] each individual measurement, if you like, is as far as quantum formalism is concerned. And as far as all the experiments are con concerned, really random, you cannot predict this outcome. And so that’s what’s interesting. And I kind of developed this in my writings. What does this really mean for our reality? What kind of reality is that? and, I think, but that’s the crux of the question. SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, it’s also it appears to be random, but whether it actually is, not known at the present moment. VEDRAL: Absolutely, and that’s another excellent point that in fact when we talk about two atoms it’s not random at all. the state that you get between two atoms when you make it so that through interaction, one of them measures the other atom is a completely deterministic state. It’s a well-defined state. It’s an entangle state, admittedly, so it doesn’t have any classical counterparts and shorting a cold e

    1h 2m

  2. 1D AGO

    Democracy Is Not Passive

    Democracy Is Not Passive: Chris Melody Fields Figueredo on Ballot Power in 2026 When we think about elections, we think about candidates. But some of the most consequential fights in 2026 won’t be about who’s on the ballot — they’ll be about what’s on it. Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, Executive Director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, joins me to break down the 24 democracy-related ballot measures already approved for November — and the wave of defensive measures, voter suppression tactics, and anti-trans initiatives emerging across the country. We discuss Missouri lawmakers overturning voter-approved minimum wage and paid leave, how supermajority thresholds weaken majority rule, and why ballot initiatives remain one of the most powerful tools for multiracial democracy — even in red states. Democracy cannot be passive. And this year, it’s on the ballot. From this Episode: Ballot Initiative Strategy Center (BISC) BALLOT MEASURE HUB LUCHA AZ —Living United for Change in Arizona is an organization led by changemakers fighting for social, racial, and economic transformation. Missouri Jobs With Justice: A place for people who want to stop the wealthy few from mistreating and dividing us - and who want to start getting the dignity we deserve.  Voices of Florida: Voices of Florida is a Florida-based 501(c)(4) nonprofit formerly known as Women's Voices of Southwest Florida Fund dedicated to defending reproductive freedoms and human rights, and empowering our communities through education, outreach and direct action. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    39 min
  3. Financially struggling Americans have no interest in participating in a political system that’s failed them

    3D AGO

    Financially struggling Americans have no interest in participating in a political system that’s failed them

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit plus.flux.community Episode Summary We’ve talked a lot on this program about how Donald Trump won the 2024 election due to people who were less engaged in the political process, and the evidence keeps piling up in that regard, including a study released last June by the Pew Research Center. Before Trump came along, however, so-called “unlikely voters” had strongly Democratic voting preferences, at least according to surveys by Suffolk University in 2012 and 2018. Figuring out what low-engagement people are thinking about politics is going to become increasingly important as both major parties are trying to move beyond just maximizing their most dedicated supporters. But understanding why people are choosing not to participate is difficult because Americans with these opinions are often unlikely to answer phone calls from strangers and are less likely to want to take a phone or online survey. That’s why in this episode we’ll be featuring Daniel Laurison, a sociologist at Swarthmore College who just released a new study based on detailed interviews with 144 lower-income Pennsylvanians who do not vote regularly. The full video of our conversation is available to paid subscribers. You can get unlimited access to this and every other episode on Patreon or Substack. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere. Related Content * Flashback: How ‘unlikely voters’ could be the key to the 2024 presidential election * Flashback: Donald Trump’s bet on non-voters is high-risk, high-reward * Americans are deeply dissatisfied with society, Democrats must speak to their rightful concerns * Republicans built an infrastructure to attack democracy, Democrats must build one to protect it * The decline of black churches and media has indirectly increased black support for Republicans * How the American left became post-political, and how to change that Audio Chapters (full episode) 00:00 — Introduction 06:57 — Non-voters feel the political system is for the rich; they’re not wrong 15:50 — Trump constantly takes credit and shifts blame; Democrats don’t 21:07 — Non-voters are choosing not to participate, not being driven away by barriers 28:44 — Republicans stay in touch with voters between elections through advocacy media 36:21 — The loss of third spaces and ways to meet friends and network 44:13 — Democrats have redirected local engagement funds to advertising, and it hasn’t worked 49:01 — Trump’s love of self-promotion matches today’s political need for constant communication Audio Transcript The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only. MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So this is a really important report, I think, especially given the recent trends we’re seeing in Donald Trump’s approval rating from people—there’s a lot of people out there saying, well, I didn’t vote for this. And they didn’t. But in fact, he was actually saying what he was going to do in a lot of ways, but they didn’t know. Let’s start though, from the beginning what the larger purpose, behind the report here. And then we’ll start getting into the details. DANIEL LAURISON: Great. Yeah, I mean, for me, the, the purpose is really to, to first of all highlight the real problem we have in our democracy, which is a lot of people don’t feel, feel included, don’t believe that they’re represented, don’t see anything in electoral politics that reflects what’s going on for them. And that means that a lot of them choose to stay home on election days. And a lot of what we what, what campaigns, what parties, what even civic organizations tend to do to try to bring them out is not necessarily effective. So for me, the most important thing about the report and about what’s going on is that we can’t have an effective democracy if a bunch of people don’t believe that democracy is doing anything for them, him. SHEFFIELD: Well, yeah, so I mean, with that regard though, I mean, yeah, people, overwhelmingly a lot of people do feel like the, the American political system doesn’t represent them. And they’re not wrong to feel that way. But how, how people are responding to that is very different. And you, you’re looking at the people [00:04:00] who, they’re kind of opting out in a lot of ways, it seems like. LAURISON: Yeah, I mean, this study is based on interviewing, especially exclusively poor and working class people, or low income and working class people. People who don’t have college degrees and or are earning under $45,000 a year and or are in, manual service, routine working class type jobs, jobs that don’t require college degrees. And so for them, I think part of the. What we call the disconnect is really the class composition of who runs politics, who they see in politics, who they see caring about politics, the volunteers, the politicians, all of that. And so that disconnect as we call it, is, is, is an important way as a class to disconnect. And that’s something that I think doesn’t get as much attention as we maybe need to give it. SHEFFIELD: yeah. Well, and one of the things that I think is Im important here is that within, within politics, a lot of people that, that are trying to bring a data-driven approach, quote unquote, to it. They rely on polls and polls, they’re not as much of a science as people often imagine them to be. And I can say that as somebody who used to be a pollster. And so I’m not hating on it. It’s just that you have only one interaction. It’s a one shot interaction with the person on that topic. And you don’t know if you phrased it in a way that they understand in the same way. And but then at the same time, people also are doing focus groups and those also have problems as well. And you guys are doing something else. LAURISON: Yeah, so we did in-depth qualitative interviews. We talked to people for usually about an hour, sometimes an hour and a half. A couple of interviews went up to two hours. And so we could really get a sense in a conversation what, what they meant. if they said something and we weren’t sure what they meant, we could say, what do you mean by that? And we could follow up on stories they told us, or when they said, you. I just don’t like that guy. We could ask what they meant, et cetera. So I think there’s really something to be said for this kind of qualitative research. It’s not something that, that I would expect [00:06:00] a campaign in its final 40 days to be able to do. But it is something that that makes people feel heard and understood and listened to, and that’s really worthwhile. And for our purposes for research, you just get a different sense of, of. What people are thinking and feeling and what they believe. Then you can with other methods, especially polls. I’m a person who does both qualitative and quantitative research. I love surveys. I love survey data. But the fundamental feature of a survey is you give people a set of options to take boxes on. And if you’re not asking the right questions, you’re not going to find out what’s going on for them. That’s one piece. And then the other piece is a lot of people just tick the box that sort of seems right in the moment and you don’t have any sense of whether that’s something they believe really deeply, whether that’s something they care really a lot about, whether that’s something that motivates them or if it’s just like the box that appealed in the moment. So again, while I use surveys. I like surveys. I think polls are real information, but there’s some things you just can’t capture unless you’re having conversations with people. Non-voters feel the political system is for the rich; they’re not wrong SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and and especially I think with regard to disengagement and dissatisfaction because everybody has their own things that they’re dissatisfied about. Because, ultimately people who are deciding to vote for someone, there’s, they’re deciding, they’re unifying on that thing of this is who I’m going to vote for, whereas somebody who is not voting. They can have a, a variety, a wide variety of reasons for not participating. Although one of the consistent themes in the research is that people that you guys talk to are, they feel like that politics is for rich people and for people who are, are world apart from them. and, and you guys have several different case studies in that regard. There. LAURISON: Yeah, absolutely. And just to go back to the methodology for a second, the other piece that I think is really important is that polls and surveys increasingly just can’t be representative. And qualitative data is never even attempting to be representative because you’re almost never doing random [00:08:00] samples or that sort of thing. But the people who are least likely to respond to polls and surveys are also the people who are least likely to vote. And so you don’t get a good set sample of people who are non voters necessarily, unless you’re really making an effort. And you don’t get a good sample of people who are, who don’t have college degrees, who are low income, who are poor, who are struggling and waiting can take care of some of that, but it can’t take care of all of that. So one thing we were able to do is use community-based researchers who were from the communities where we were trying to talk to people to bring in their friends and family, to bring in people that they had connections to so that we were reaching people who would never, you know, if a pollster calls you and says, do you want to answer some questions about politics? These are people who would never do that. And they were, some of them were in fact, quite hard to recruit, even

    19 min

  4. FEB 13

    Robert Kennedy’s MAHA cult is making America sicker

    Episode Summary  Amid the constant contradictions of Donald Trump’s second administration, some of his policies have been remarkably consistent, especially those out of the Department of Health and Human Services, where Secretary Robert Kennedy Junior has been ripping up decades of scientific consensus on many areas, including vaccines, diet recommendations, and transgender care. But as a lifelong politician and lawyer with no actual experience as a doctor or medical administrator, he has needed to develop a staff of people with at least some medical experience in order to tear and destroy. What kind of doctor would want to work for a parasite-ridden lawyer who brags about eating roadkill, seems to not understand how viruses work, and advocates eating lots of saturated fats? The answer is: almost none of them. But, unfortunately, there are always a few people out there with enough personal grudges and crank beliefs to do the job. Our guest on today’s program, Jonathan Howard, knows all about the new medical establishment after having seen firsthand how they promoted anti-vaccine lies and dangerously underestimated the effects of Covid-19. We had him on the program in 2022 to discuss his first book, We Want Them Infected, and he’s out with a new one examining the policy insanity of Kennedy and his underlings called Everyone Else Is Lying to You. The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere. Related Content --Covid contrarians want you to forget that they were much more wrong than the scientific consensus --How 1970s tobacco companies pioneered the deceitful marketing strategies used by today’s conspiracy peddlers --Why the “naturalistic fallacy” is the basis of so much anti-science thinking --Marianne Williamson’s ineffective self-help politics --How “post left” grifters use contrarianism and know-nothing socialist rhetoric to push people to the far right Audio Chapters 00:00 — Introduction 07:36 — Robert Kennedy Jr. and his allies are the medical establishment, and they are responsible for what happens 16:26 — The “Great Barrington Declaration” was initiated by political activists, not scientistsc 20:48 — After claiming to oppose censorship, the Trumpian medical establishment is conducting it at a massive scale 25:57 — Anti-vax activists have had years to do their own studies, but they have basically nothing 33:34 — The cowardice of Republicans like Bill Cassidy who know better 37:54 — Other people in the MAHA conspiracist movement 44:41 — MAHA figures have more conflicts of interest than the scientists they hate 51:24 — The looming conflict between polluters and anti-vax Republicans 01:03:20 — John Ioannidis and the perils of medical contrarianism 01:08:08 — Why atheist activists teamed up with far-right Christians who hate medical science 01:18:44 — Conclusion Audio Transcript The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only. MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So, I literally just released an episode catching up with a previous guest who had been on the show who had marked a lot of the negative trends that we are now seeing. And unfortunately I’m in the same spot with you, my friend, that, there’s a lot of bad things that have happened. And there are so many things that I do wanna kind of summarize of them so that we can all keep track of what’s been going on for the conversation. And as we’re talking today on January 30th, the most recent kind of news headline of this awful medical establishment that is in installed itself thanks to Trump, is that, the measles in the United States are, they are what’s being made great, it looks like. JONATHAN HOWARD: Yeah, no, measles is spreading out of control. There’s the largest outbreak in 25 or 30 year, probably 26 years, actually in, South Carolina right now. Measles seems to be. Popping up in multiple other states as well. This is of course, [00:04:00] following a very large outbreak in Texas in the spring of 2025 that killed two children, and another adult. So these were the first measles deaths in the country in about 10 or 15 years, and the first children to die, I think since 1991. and our current medical establishment is trying to control it with vitamin a cod liver oil, and by spreading disinformation about the measles vaccine as was eminently predictable. SHEFFIELD: It was. And what we’re really seeing, I think, consistently is that, that these guys are kind of across the board are, they have these old fashioned medical viewpoints. Like that’s what really what they’re doing. And they have these ideas that really have been debunked for about 80 years roughly. but they want to try again on everything seems like. HOWARD: Yeah, I was gonna say, it depends how old fashioned you’re talking about because, the measles vaccine has been around since 1963 and, probably all current members of our medical establishment, except for maybe RFK would say that they think the MMR is a very important vaccine, but if they actually felt that way, they would not be working for RFK, who has spread more misinformation about the measles vaccine and all vaccines and probably any other American in the past 20 years. And what we are seeing is that. Disinformation about the COVID vaccine is very predictably bleeding into all vaccines. So all vaccines are kind of connected in, in that if you trust the doctors who recommend them people are more likely to get the measles vaccine if they’re also told accurate information about the COVID vaccine, which they weren’t. SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And they weren’t. And this is part of when, if you look back at the history that there has always been suspicion about vaccines. People have always had it since they were first [00:06:00] invented. So it’s, I guess it’s understandable even though we don’t agree with those viewpoints for people to, it does seem on the face of it on the surface that a little bit counterintuitive. You mean you’re telling me that. Injecting diseases into myself is good for me? And it’s always been a challenge, right? HOWARD: Yeah. The history of the anti-vaccine movement is as old as vaccines themselves. Even preceding Edward Jenner, as far as I know, the first known vaccinator was an English farmer by the name of Benjamin Esti, who vaccinated his children against smallpox in the 1770s or something like that. And everyone can go read about him on Wikipedia. And he faced great backlash from his community. And then when a smallpox epidemic ripped through the community, his children were spared. But all, everything that we’re hearing about vaccines. Now, all I should say, all anti-vaccine disinformation, none of this is new. It, all goes back to this idea that vaccines are in pure in some way, whereas catching a virus is natural and therefore there’s no problem with it. Or that vaccines have never been properly tested or that they are just being given by pharmaceutical companies to pad their bottom line. So no, nothing that we’re hearing now is new. What’s changed is who it’s coming from, top government officials and top doctors who came from Harvard, Stanford, UCSF and Johns Hopkins. That’s what’s new. Robert Kennedy Jr. and his allies are the medical establishment, and they are responsible for what happens SHEFFIELD: It is. And they still constantly talk about the medical establishment and all that, but they are the medical establishment. They are the ones with the power. They are the ones with the money, and they are the ones who are responsible for the deaths of these children and the other people that will die. HOWARD: Absolutely. So our current [00:08:00] medical establishment, and I love that you called them that way, they, rose to power kind of portraying themselves as these outsiders who would have controlled COVID perfectly. So they became famous not for their on the ground accomplishments, but because of their social media content in which they said they would have protected the vulnerable, they would have kept schools open, or the fact that they proposed things and they argued for things and they called for things. But now that they are in power and have been given the opportunity to prove their re real world competency they’re failing. And it is, of course not just measles. Last year we had 28,000 cases of whooping cough in this country. We had a record number, not a record, but a very high number of pediatric flu death. And of course not all of this can be laid on the hands of our current medical establishment who had just been in power for a few weeks at this time. But they’re showing that they are totally inept at controlling viruses, and I shouldn’t say even inept, indifferent to controlling viruses. They’re not making any or bacteria in the case of whooping cough, but they’re not making any attempt to do that. And they are improving incompetent leaders at the agencies that they run, the NIH, the FDA, and to some degree the CDC as well. And I say only to, to some degree because I don’t think the current director is a doctor, but, they’re proving inept leaders who are loathed and mocked by the people who work for them. SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and you talked about this idea that it seems like a lot of them really actually do not want to do anything to mitigate disease. And that was the title of your previous book that We Want Them Infected. I mean, so what is this? I mean, I think the idea that doctors would want people to be infected with viruses, it seems so absurd that it’s almost [00:10:00] unbelievable that a doctor would say such a thing, bu

    1h 26m

  5. FEB 9

    The Librarians: Censorship Comes for Democracy

    The Librarians: Censorship Comes for DemocracyInside the fight over books, schools, and power: A conversation with Kim Snyder, director of The Librarians Award-winning filmmaker Kim Snyder joins The Electorette to discuss her latest documentary, The Librarians, which examines the nationwide rise in book bans and the political targeting of librarians. The film follows librarians across the country as they navigate harassment, threats, and mounting political pressure—all while defending access to information in their communities. In this conversation, Snyder breaks down how these censorship efforts are organized, who benefits from them, and why they pose a serious threat to democratic institutions. The Librarians premieres on February 9th on PBS. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    31 min

  6. FEB 6

    What's Wrong with Mindfulness?

    What’s is wrong with mindfulness?  Where does the idea of mindfulness even come from?  How can we best use eastern ideas around meditation in our western lives? R. John Williams is a professor of English and film and media studies at Yale University. He is the author of The Buddha in the Machine: Art, Technology, and the Meeting of East and West (2014), and of the forthcoming volume Out of Mind: A Media-Theoretical Critique of Meditation.

    1 hr

  7. FEB 6

    Donald Trump is more unpopular than ever, but congressional Democrats are divided on how to push back

    Episode Summary  After months of chaos, censorship, violence, a deluge of Epstein files, and the untimely deaths of two American citizens, Donald Trump’s public approval ratings are at their lowest point ever. And though he’s loath to admit it in public, the president and his staff are having to make changes to try to stop the loss of support he’s seeing—including from within his own party. Despite the fact that Trump has never been more unpopular, Democrats in Congress are having internal struggles over how to oppose him, with newer members wanting to use anything possible to gum up the works that the leadership seems to generally dislike. There’s a rift among the Democratic voter base about their party as well. In a late-January poll, Marquette Law School found that 51 percent of Democrats and people who leaned that way approved of the Democrats in Congress, with 49 percent disapproving. By contrast, 80 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaners said they approved of congressional Republicans. Only 20 percent disapproved. The poll also found that while respondents who said they were “somewhat liberal” were evenly split on their opinion of congressional Democrats, those who identified as “liberal” were more likely to disapprove, a 54-46 percent. Democratic voters seem to want their party to go much harder at opposing Trump, but this seems to go against the entire conception of politics that the party’s leaders understand, a viewpoint that has been largely fixed since the early 1990s—and has been shaped by conservative former Republicans who have not changed their viewpoints since becoming Democrats. Talking about all this today with me is Chris Lehmann, he’s the Washington bureau chief at The Nation magazine and a contributing editor at The Baffler. The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere. Related Content —Even Democrats who disagree with him should be paying attention to Zohran Mamdani —The ersatz data science telling Democrats to pursue mythical centrist voters —Confronting Trump relentlessly and telling the public about it is the best way to counter him —Joe Rogan and how Republicans and Democrats handle dissent differently —What Republicans know about politics that Democratic strategists haven’t learned yet —The endgame of Trump’s top advisers is far more extreme than Project 2025 Audio Chapters 00:00 — Introduction 07:37 — Despite Trump’s historic unpopularity, Democratic politicians aren’t unified on responding 17:07 — Democrats haven’t figured out that the opposition’s strengths can still be attacked 21:18 — The myth of informed centrism and Democratic elites’ failed rebuilding of the party’s electoral model 24:43 — Trump’s instinctive understanding of how to weaponize anger 30:17 — The top Democratic operatives and politicians are cut off from regular Americans’ experiences 35:20 — Many ostensibly liberal institutions are filled with David Brooks conservatives who call themselves centrists 40:06 — The radical right has been at war with modernity for decades, but rarely taken seriously 44:14 — The lost lessons of the World War II generations 52:43 — Epstein files reveal that the ultimate ‘globalists’ are right-wing 56:29 — Nihilism and Tucker Carlson 01:00:59 — Need for hope and transcendence in politics 01:09:02 — Anti-ICE protests as a sign of hope for the future Audio Transcript The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only. MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: And joining me now is Chris Layman. Hey Chris, welcome back to the show. CHRIS LEHMANN: Very happy to be here, Matt. How are you doing? SHEFFIELD: Good, good. Well, good enough, right? Minus the whole possible end of the country thing. LEHMANN: Yeah. That’s always the disclaimer. Yeah. SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Well on, on the other hand though, there have been a number of positive developments recently. And that’s kind of what we’re here to talk about. And I think probably the biggest one is that, I mean, it’s for a very bad reason, but all of the violence and killing that the Trump regime has been doing against private citizens, the general public has finally started to notice it, it looks like. LEHMANN: Right. SHEFFIELD: And, but Trump himself, of course, is saying that he’s more popular than ever, but there is not a single poll that says that. And in fact, he also did [00:04:00] recently say that he has a, quote, silent majority. Like that to me is the biggest tale that, that he knows something is wrong with his PR approach. LEHMANN: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, it is yeah, the situation is a perfect kind of storm of as you say, they’re objectively losing ground with the general public. And particularly what’s been striking is the group he is doing worse at is now the biggest group of, registered voters independents. And, we are coming out of the 2024 cycle where everything was about the low information voter being mobilized by maga. And that’s when, you had these surges in support among Hispanic and black voters that were historic for a Republican candidate. But, but yeah, that has plummeted very dramatically to earth now. and, for instance, Latino voters say they oppose trump’s immigration policy by a 70 30 margin. So that is, there was all of this loose talk after last election day that, we are seeing the lineaments of a new Trump coalition akin to the, coalition that Reagan put together or that Nixon before him. and that was never true. And it’s become very clear that you, kind of live by the low information voter and die by the low information voter and one bad information penetrates, which is I think the most important thing out of this hellish period we’re living through. They have no answer, they, just continually double down. It’s been, quite striking throughout all, esp especially the murderous siege of, Minneapolis, there’s a very standard presidential playbook for something like this is, [00:06:00] you sort of offer up whoever ty no’s head on a pike, you sort of acknowledge, okay, SHEFFIELD: you feel their pain? Yeah. LEHMANN: we got a little carried away and now we’re going to do, kinder, gentler murderous sieges, which, sadly the Democratic party would go for. And, would, they’ve already, what’s, you can always count on me to bring the clouds in any silver lining situation. But, things that, Schumer and the Democrats in the Senate said they were going to go to the mat for and closed down the government over were things like having ICE and, CPB agents CBP rather agents wear cameras. SHEFFIELD: Yeah. LEHMANN: The administration has unilaterally done that anyway. And because among other things, this is the kind of criminal gangster administration that, they’re, anytime footage from one of these cams is, going to be sought in a legal proceeding, they’ll say, oh, we lost it. It was destroyed, whatever. It doesn’t, it’s not going to change anything fundamental about the, the mass deportation program that is now spilling over into assaults on dissenting US citizens. So, so yeah, the, administration has created all the conditions that have sunk, its standing in the polls and they’re just going to keep doing it. There SHEFFIELD: Because they don’t know anything else. I mean, that’s the LEHMANN: don’t know anything else. Right. And SHEFFIELD: the Republican, sorry, Despite Trump’s historic unpopularity, Democratic politicians aren’t unified on responding SHEFFIELD: The Republican rights sole PR strategy for the past 80 years has been, well, we just have to be more right wing and then it’ll work, LEHMANN: Yeah, which, it, has succeeded in getting them power. And and largely because of the, failure that Democrats to be an effective opposition party throughout this [00:08:00] whole long stretch of time you’re talking about. But yeah, we are now at this point where, I think ordinary voters who aren’t, that, certainly not ideologically driven and not, that informed about everything the Trump administration has been doing. You see the the murders of Renee Good and Andrew Prince in, in Minneapolis, and I think just as powerfully you see the, deportation of. Liam, the five-year-old, in the bunny hat. there’s nothing the right can do to make that seem defensible or palatable. it just, I think, triggers this deep human revulsion that I’m, glad that, American voters are experiencing ‘cause I was starting to have my doubts for a while there. But yeah. SHEFFIELD: Yeah, there’s a significant disadvantage that the American left has in that. The, far right Republican agenda is so monstrous that when you tell people what it is, if they’re not informed, they don’t believe you, that it’s LEHMANN: They won’t believe you. Right, SHEFFIELD: It’s unbelievable. And in fact, like people have done that in focus groups. They’ll say, okay, well, so here’s Donald Trump’s policy of x, and, the voters are like, no, that he doesn’t believe that. LEHMANN: That can’t be right. Yeah, no, it, it does militate against, and, that is the political challenge for, the opposition is, to, present it in these very stark ways and to Yeah. To have enough of a coalition behind you. And that’s what, that’s the other thing that’s happening right now is I think, the citizens of Minneapolis who are, being really heroic and standing up to this siege are, forcing the leaders of the Democratic party to pay [00:10:00] more attention. And it is striking, there was this long, in my view, extremely stupid interval where Matt Yglesias and

    1h 14m

  8. FEB 3

    Who Pays When Healthcare Is Cut? Inside California’s Billionaire Tax Initiative

    In this episode of The Electorette, host Jen Taylor-Skinner speaks with Suzanne Jimenez, Chief of Staff at SEIU-UHW, about the looming healthcare crisis facing California — and the ballot measure designed to stop it. Their conversation begins with the fallout from the federal budget reconciliation bill (HR 1), which delivered historic tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans while triggering over $100 billion in healthcare cuts to California over the next several years. Jimenez explains how those cuts are already showing up across the state: rising insurance premiums, hospital layoffs, threats to Medi-Cal, nursing homes, community clinics, and serious risks to maternal care and children’s health. From there, Jimenez lays out California’s proposed solution: a one-time emergency 5% tax on billionaires, affecting just over 200 individuals. The measure would generate more than $100 billion to stabilize the healthcare system, protect Medi-Cal, support K–14 education, and fund emergency food assistance. She breaks down how the tax works, why claims of billionaire flight are largely a distraction, and how healthcare workers themselves are leading this effort after elected leaders failed to offer a viable alternative. The episode also explores why ballot initiatives have become one of the most effective tools for protecting public goods, how this proposal could serve as a model for other states facing similar cuts, and what Californians stand to lose if the measure does not pass. This is a clear, urgent conversation about who pays when government priorities shift — and how voters can intervene when the safety net is at risk. 🔗 Learn more about the California Billionaire Tax Act:https://www.cabillionairetax.org/ 🔗 See how healthcare workers are supporting the measure:https://www.seiu-uhw.org/ca-billionaire-tax-act/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    19 min
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4.8
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63 Ratings

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Flux is a progressive podcast platform, with daily content from shows like Theory of Change, Doomscroll, and The Electorette.

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