Staying Close to Home

216 - The hosts discuss their own histories of migration and reflect on what motivates us to move away from home. Freedom, privation, hope, and fear all intermingle with the unfamiliar and create our unique experiences of difference.
 

Milestones and Artifacts

200 - The hosts reflect on 200 episodes of The American Age. What have the learned? How have they changed? Favorite episodes, the artifact of "the podcast," what is valuable about a nation of ideals, all of this and more is discussed.

How to Do Right By People: Affirmative Action to Self-Care

199 - The hosts pickup their conversation from last time and discuss the aspirations and the limits of affirmative action. From there they think through the various ways we succeed and fail at taking care of ourselves. Paradoxically, because there are so many available “tools” to take care of ourselves, it often feels like another item on the to do list, instead of the thing that makes the doing possible.

Decorum: MAGA Hats, Performance Art, and Us

198 - The hosts work through the value and the limits of decorum. What does it mean to maintain or transform a shared civic space for political or personal reasons? How do we pay attention to other people’s feelings and still manage to articulate the difficult things that are important to us? Is a MAGA hat performance art?

“Identity Fraud”: Woke, Race Hustling, and Manners

197 - The hosts discuss Jenny Zhang’s recent Gawker article, “Identity Fraud.” The history of race hustling is discussed, as is what it means to have power. How can you tell the difference between someone holding on to hurt, and someone hurting? Is “woke” a white performance, or is it a way to be more inclusive and caring about others?

Objective or Fair: What’s Possible, What’s Best

196 - There’s been a recent movement in journalism to focus on “fairness” over “objectivity.” It’s often argued that it’s impossible to be objective, that fair is the best we can hope for. The hosts talk about the implications of this shift, and what could be lost along the way.

Identity Politics and Moral Absolutes

195 - Good intentions don't always yield righteous fruit. We disassociate ourselves from people or ideas out of performance and fear; we're terrified of our peers thinking poorly of us. Sometimes, we seem to forget that the call may be coming from inside the house.

The Expert in the Rye: What Makes or Breaks Credibility?

194 - Hosts Travis Webb and Seph Rodney swing open every last door in a deep discussion about the merits and motives of self proclaimed "researchers" and "experts". There is no one true way to quantify (or even identify) the qualities or prerequisites that would give you authority on a given topic. An enlightening debate is eventually tempered by Steven Fullwood prompting some self reflection.

On ”The Hatred of Poetry” by Ben Lerner: The Finite and The Infinite

193 - Hosts dive into Ben Lerner's "The Hatred of Poetry" and each dispense their interpretations and perspectives of the book. There's such a paradox about poetry; it's an abstract place of abundant connection, yet also an intersection where the human experience diverts from one another. Find out what other works are provocative to the hosts and why Travis doesn't like Emily Dickinson.

Ignorance and Expertise as Two Flavors of Dystopia

192 - In culmination of the long discussion around dystopias, from old films to current news, the hosts walk through ignorance and expertise, taking the scenic route to better investigate the logic gaps between cognitive dissonance and the perils of prowess. Our collective conscience seems to be a game of telephone that begins with practical knowledge and good intentions, but somehow it devolves into bickering amongst constituents about who is right and what is "fake news". How do we effectively sift through all of that in order to create room for progress?