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Show 540: George Lakoff on the Political Mind

George Lakoff on The Political Mind

This week, Matthew LaClair speaks with cognitive linguist George Lakoff. Professor Layoff is the author of eleven books including NY Times bestsellers The Political Mind: Why you Can’t Understand 21st Century American Politics with an 18th Century Brain, and The All New Don’t Think of an Elephant, and he has just retired from teaching after 50 years, 44 years which he spent at the University of California at Berkley.

How do political ideas spread? Why do people often vote against their own interests? Why have ultra-Conservatives been so successful in controlling American discourse? What message should liberals and progressives focus on going forward?

Audio can be found here!

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Show 342: An Anti-American Manifesto w/ Ted Rall

An Anti-American Manifesto?

Audio here!

Sound a bit too radical for Freethinkers? Even for left-leaning humanists and atheists? Maybe a wee bit too “negative” for “Bright-Sided“* Americans (*thanks Barbara Ehrenreich!)?

Well then, what about “violent revolution?” That may even make radical philosopher Ted Honderich flinch!

Ted Rall, cartoonist for Universal Press Syndicate, is a revolutionary. While not devoted to any particular revolutionary flag – communist, socialist, anarchist or otherwise – he IS suggesting that the time for radical change has come, and if we don’t move NOW to be the ones we’ve been waiting for, “they” will.

In his new book, he writes, “Right-wing organizational names change, but they amount to the same thing: the reactionary sociopolitical force – the sole force – poised to fill the vacuum when collapse occurs. The scenario outlined by Margaret Atwood’s prescient novel The Handmaid’s Tale – rednecks in the trenches, hard military men running things, minorities and liberals taken away and massacred, setting the stage for an even more extreme form of laissez-faire corporate capitalism than we’re suffering under today – is a fair guess of how a post-U.S. scenario will play out unless we prepare to turn it in another direction.”

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Show 240: Austin Dacey on the Secular Conscience

Audio here!

In “The Secular Conscience,” Austin Dacey argues that we who are non-religious should be every bit as engaged in public discussions as are our religious counterparts… discussions which involve reflecting upon individual behaviors and/or public policies, as being problematic or as supporting our society moving in a direction we want.

Austin feels that the public discussion of behavior and policies are presently dominated by religion, and that if secularists do not find a way to participate in that discussion it will be at our peril. This of course makes total sense, but what exactly can we bring to such a discussion that would constitute a unique and much needed contribution?

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