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A podcast for people who make progress: in nonprofits, government, politics, and socially responsible corporations. Your host: Spencer Critchley.
Normally, we should be reluctant to talk about politics in terms of morality. We can't live with each other, in peace anyway, if we think di...
One of the most confusing things about Trumpism is this paradox: People who believe so strongly in individual freedom are also eager to give...
In a democracy, law enforcement exists to protect people: their safety and their Constitutional rights. Under authoritarianism, law enforcem...
About a year ago, I started publishing draft chapters of my book in progress, The Liberal Backbone. It hit me lately that the draft is done...
Liberals think of rhetoric as something you cut through to get to the substance. But in politics, rhetoric is the substance. Politics is the...
Escape from the iron cage of alienation appears to be impossible: You'll never think of a way out, because it's thinking that locks you in....
Every politician, or anyone trying to persuade anyone else of anything, faces two make-or-break moments: the moment before they say a word,...
The fiendish thing about the iron cage of alienation is that the harder you try to escape, the harder that gets. The more you try to think y...
Between 1933 and 1981, there were 24 sessions of Congress. For 22 of those 24, Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate. During th...
Last time, I argued that if liberals still believe in an open society — free, equal, and pluralistic — we must defend reason. It's the share...
It's a fundamental assumption of liberal democracy that we debate our differences with reason. But now that assumption looks like a relic of...
Woke theory aims to liberate our minds, but imposes limits on how we think: Many ideas are judged oppressive, and therefore "problematic." L...
Liberals and the woke left see many of the same problems in society, from structural oppression to alienation. And yet the ideology of the w...
As you know if you've been following my posts and podcast episodes lately, I'm writing and releasing the chapters of my new book The Liberal...
The first draft of Chapter 5 of my next book, The Liberal Backbone. It's a brief summary of the roots of woke thinking, which should make th...
Are the woke just a bunch of Marxists? No, but that claim isn't based on nothing. The Theory behind wokeness is complicated, but some of its...
The word "woke" has at least two meanings — and they're so different, they contradict each other. By one of them, any liberal can be proud t...
It's hard to stand for something if you're not even sure what that something is. And many liberals have become unsure what liberalism is. Fo...
With American democracy facing its greatest crisis since the Civil War as a corrupt autocrat returns to the presidency, I want to do my part...
Ernest Hemingway is famous for the terse economy of his writing. And in one of the most resonant examples of that quality, he captured the e...
If we believe in democracy, I believe we have a responsibility not only to vote for it but to speak up for it, including to family and frien...
According to my guest this time, the United States is entering a Latino century, and that might be what saves our democracy. Mike Madrid is...
Many liberals are deeply confused about how to respond to the campus protests over Gaza. And I think it's an example of the confusion libera...
As we risk obliviously repeating catastrophic mistakes others have already made, Spencer Critchley has some thoughts about memory and freedo...
If you wanted to, you could consume nothing but presidential campaign coverage all day every day. But how much of it would leave you feeling...
By some measures, well over half of charities do little or no good. When similar charities are compared, the most effective ones can be up t...
There are lots of reasons to be cynical about the crisis in our politics. The trouble is, one of the biggest causes of that crisis is cynici...
A three-way conversation featuring host Spencer Critchley, Kevin Lewis, and Zach Friend on leadership lessons from the ouster of Kevin McCar...
If you want to know more about the risks and rewards of artificial intelligence, you could hardly do better than to consult with someone who...
If you have children in your family, you're probably worried about what technology might be doing to them. And maybe there's some hope about...
The episode before last, Spencer was the guest for a change, interviewed by Joan Esposito, who hosts a liberal talk radio show originating a...
Sam Farr devoted 44 years of his life to elected office at the local, state, and federal level. That included 24 years as the Congressman fo...
Spencer often talks with Joan Esposito, who interviews him about politics for her show on Chicago's WCPT-AM. This episode of Dastardly Cleve...
Even with democracy in grave danger, Democrats are in a close race against the people who are trying to finish it off. How can that be, and...
In many ways, addiction has become a defining feature of life in America. More and more of us have become addicted to drugs like alcohol, he...
One way of thinking about democracy is as a game — a game in which freedom, equality, and even lives are at stake. And one way of thinking a...
It's not just Democrats who need the Democratic Party to remember how to win elections. Democracy does. Spencer's guest this time has some g...
Spencer's guest this time has fascinating, important insights about Vladimir Putin's "memory war:" a campaign to rewrite history with Russia...
Mike Madrid is a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a longtime political consultant for candidates of both parties, and a leading expert on...
The way we live is also the way we get sick and die: "Lifestyle diseases" are the leading causes of death for Americans, six out of ten of w...
In Singapore, you can face a heavy fine or even jail for offenses like spitting on the sidewalk and importing chewing gum. Meanwhile in New...
Even if you see through the phony panic being spun up by Trumpists, some of what you hear from critical race theorists can sound extreme, es...
Sometimes we can't "just move on." Sometimes we must first confront the truth about the past. According to our guest this time, we can do th...
We already know a lot about how to reform policing: not just to make it more fair, but to make it more effective. It turns out that when pol...
It may be hard for many Americans to imagine, but there are striking parallels between post-Civil-War America and post-World-War-2 Germany....
Compared to other high-income countries, our rate of gun deaths per capita is 25 times higher. But much of what Americans think they know ab...
American democracy is more fragile than many of us ever imagined. But we've been neglecting and abusing it so much that maybe the bigger sur...
Even with Trump out of office, the Republican Party's leaders and media enablers appear determined to keep on living in a world of lies — a...
Spencer Critchley hosts a Zoom-based "Ask Anything" discussion covering the chaos in the Republican Party, how we can both believe in tolera...
This time, host Spencer Critchley talks about the psychology of sedition, Trumpism as Freudian dream logic, and the apparent belief of Capit...