EP 774 The Mysteries of The White House Explored
The White House, as a place, conjures up much about our history as we envision the remarkable people and the momentous events that have comprised its remarkable story. We’ve watched Oval Office addresses, seen press briefings and events of State with major performers there. If you’re old enough to remember, then First Lady Jackie Kennedy invited us to view some new furnishings she wanted to bring to The White House, which acts as both a place of work and the living quarters for the President’s family. Destroyed and rebuilt, renovated after neglect and the site of key decisions about war and peace, it remains a symbol of continuity and stability to the American people. Corey Mead, in his book, “The Hidden History of The White House: Power Struggles, Scandals, and Defining Moments” shares stories we have not heard before about what has transpired there throughout time. We bring the story to this day as we take an aural tour that takes into account the changes in its uses during an era of growing importance as we have firmly established the Imperial Presidency.
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Heat has a pretty ‘cool’ connotation–that song is hot, let’s getaway to a warm destination and that car is smokin’–but in the modern parlance of climate change– heat is anything but. In fact, it lies at the root of virtually all of the climate related calamities–wildfires, hurricanes and just suffocating heatwaves that may not show up as the cause on a death certificate, but often is. It not only kills more people directly than the storms and events emanating from it, but it is stealth. Looking out the window on a nice day, it is impossible to tell whether it’s 70 degrees or 105. And heat does unimaginable things to the body. When our internal temperatures hit 102 or 103, we can pass out. In that process our body is sending blood to the skin, abandoning internal organs, including the brain. According to Jeff Goodell, a prolific writer on climate issues and author of “The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet,” the old, sick and poor are more vulnerable to extreme heat, but the rest of us should not be complacent. The summer of 2023, the warmest on record, is a harbinger of what’s to come. And the heat is coming for all of us and will affect migration patterns, our food supply and all life on earth.
Many money matters are trending in our economy. Some, like softening, but stubborn, inflation still tops the list of what people sense about these economic times. And while recent price reductions at McDonald’s, Wal-Mart and grocery food chains, like Stop & Shop, suggest retailers are sensing that consumers have reached a tipping point and are pulling back, how much it continues to ebb may well predict the outcome of the November elections. Jared Dillian, the editor at Jared Dillian Money(jareddillianmoney.com) and the author of “No Worries: How to Live a Stress-Free, Financial Life” delves deeply with us on the hobby horse we have ridden on this podcast before and that is the excesses in the gargantuan private equity market. Its latest victim is the beloved Red Lobster chain. We also discuss other trends like price spikes in gold, copper, metals and commodities and this quiet moment when it comes to oil and gas prices.
Our guest, Alexandre Lefebvre, author of “Liberalism as a Way of Life”, poses a provocative question–where do our values and beliefs come from in a time when fewer of us claim to belong to a specific religion or follow it in any meaningful way? We might say from our parents, our friends, our experiences, or human nature, but, in fact, he argues that liberalism is where most of us gain our value structure in today’s democratic societies. And while liberalism is normally associated with a political philosophy, his definition is much broader. He posits that liberalism permeates all walks of our life from the home to the workplace and shapes our thinking about how to treat one another in a diverse society. His original thinking suggests that you do not need to be liberal, plus something else, like identifying with a religion, to be a good person, satisfied that you are living a purpose-driven life. He sees liberalism as intrinsically fulfilling and a fun way to be. It’s a concept you’ve likely not thought about before and we are glad to bring it forward on today’s podcast.
Biases, prejudices and preconceptions are part of living. Sometimes it’s because of the way we were raised, the messages we receive through various sources and the politics of this moment, as the GOP’s presumptive presidential candidate refers to people coming across the border as ‘animals’. In the multi-racial and multi-ethnic society in which we live, which will be majority minority in the foreseeable future, we need everyone working together. Shelly Tochluk and our guest, Christine Saxman, have a combined 45 years of experience facilitating White antiracist dialogues and have put that experience to practical effect in their new book, “Being White Today: A Roadmap for a Positive Antiracist Life.” In it they provide insight into what it looks like to operate from eight different positions in the White racial identity journey and they provide concrete approaches for how to navigate conversations about race with other White people at different points on the racial identity journey.
Climate change(aka global warming)and warming denial– human-engineered and accelerating at a rapid clip–have been on display in America for at least 4 decades, dating back to when then Vice President Al Gore shared with us “An Inconvenient Truth.” Scientists were aware of what our industrial and consumer advances–electricity, gas guzzling cars and growing use of fossil fuels–would mean to the planet over time as carbon dioxide was trapped in the atmosphere, generating the greenhouse gases which vex us today. While scientists were developing a consensus about the problem, dogged deniers, many of whom were the merchants of doubt who sold us cigarettes as being good for our health, attacked the science. Their hi jinx brought us “Climate Gate” and have been successful(if we want to call it that)in influencing public opinion to this day. Their efforts make tackling the issue a lower priority than many other more temporal issues, thus the creating political inertia limiting efforts to mitigate it. In his masterpiece of a book, our guest, David Lipsky, author of “The Parrot and the Igloo” gives us much to laugh and cry about as he tells a history so little told or understood in this time of climate weirdness. Now that fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, and heat make the reality inescapable, what will we do? David was so interesting and entertaining we offer you a rare two-part podcast.
Many books have been written in the recent period about rural America. The beginning of this literary push to better understand the opportunities, problems and malignancies of what one author coined ‘overlooked Americans’ in the hinterlands of non-metropolitan areas was J. D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” which raised many questions. It dealt with the character of his family and people in order to determine the reasons for their own misfortune. Some have focused on the economic insecurity brought on by the corporatization of farm work and the loss of manufacturing jobs to cheaper labor in China and other places. It’s a complex tangle of politics, economics and culture, as well as elements of an American way of life that has vanished in the minds of rural residents. Brent Orrell, senior fellow, domestic policy at the American Enterprise Institute(aei.org) is our guest today. He, along with Tony Pipa, of the Brookings Institution have been collaborating on talks called “On the Front Porch” in an attempt to better understand rural America and find commonalities with the growing metropolitan populations. Their goal is to overcome the benefits many politicians have realized in creating urban/rural divisions.
His day job involves commenting on what’s happening in real time around the globe but David Ignatius, the highly respected foreign affairs columnist of the Washington Post, also uses his journalistic sources and methods as the basis for compelling fiction. Thus his latest spy novel “Phantom Orbit” offers great insights into the importance of America’s nascent Space Force and the untold consequences for space warfare. That warfare he tells us as we weave from what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine, back to the elements of his novel, is a key reason that Ukraine has been able to track and defend itself against a better equipped Russian military. We ask David to take us around the globe and into space to better understand the forces at play attempting to undermine American superiority technologically in low orbit, as well as the situation in the Middle East and U.S.relations with China.