Interviews with fascinating people on science, ethics, and politics.
Episodes
Thursday Jan 23, 2020
Thursday Jan 23, 2020
Meagan Day is a staff writer at Jacobin magazine. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Vox, Mother Jones, The Week, The Baffler, In These Times, n+1, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction book Maximum Sunlight was excerpted in the Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017. She has co-authored a book with Micah Uetricht called Bigger than Bernie: How We Go from the Sanders Campaign to Democratic Socialism. Look for it in late April.
Today, we make the case for Bernie Sanders: why he is the most electable candidate and the one we should be most excited about. We dig into the data and the theory behind why a Bernie nomination would likely lead to a Bernie presidency. We also discuss why the case for Joe Biden’s electability falls apart and address some of the strongest arguments against Bernie.
We spend the first 13 or so minutes discussing the allegation that Bernie told Elizabeth Warren that a woman couldn’t win the presidency. If you’re familiar with this dispute, feel free to skip ahead.
If this episode inspires you, you can get involved by visiting berniesanders.com/volunteer. Of course you can also make a donation at berniesanders.com. There is also the BERN app which helps you build grassroot support among your friends and family. Find the app at app.berniesanders.com
We’re entering the most critical period of the Democratic primary. The winner of the Iowa caucus on February 3rd is likely to become the Democratic nominee, so if you’ve been on the sidelines, now’s the best time to get involved.
Show notes:
Meagan's writing:
How an Anti-Sexist Candidate Got Smeared as Sexist
Sunday Jan 05, 2020
Sunday Jan 05, 2020
Ben Burgis is a philosopher and logician who lectures at Rutgers University. He has a segment on the Michael Brooks Show called the Debunk and writes a weekly column for Jacobin magazine. We spend most of the show talking about his book Give Them an Argument: Logic for the Left, which challenges the left to take logic more seriously.
Ben’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/benburgis?lang=en
And Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/benburgis
We also discuss:
The aesthetic of reason being adopted to defend bad arguments, why the left needs to make better arguments for their positions, the limits of logic in persuading people whose material interest differ from ours, why left principles for redistribution don't stop at our borders, conflict vs mistake theory in explaining the motivations of our political opponents, and where each theory may apply, the importance of interpreting our allies' arguments charitably, Ben's thoughts on moral philosophy, why tankies are bad utilitarians, double standards for Marx vs other problematic philosophers from history, Jeremy Bentham’s good takes, state monopoly on violence and police reforms, where Ben disagrees with the left, the problems with a radically empirical worldview, whether utilitarianism takes you to implausible places, and how to balance epistemic humility with the need to beat confident bullshitters.
Links:
Life expectancy going up under mao
Deconstructing the ‘Ferguson Effect’ (Note: I think the evidence for this is more mixed than I thought at the time of the interview)