141. Max Holleran with Marcus Harrison Green: Millennials and the Fight for Affordable Housing
Release Date: 06/27/2022
141. Max Holleran with Marcus Harrison Green: Millennials and the Fight for Affordable Housing
In The Moment podcast
It’s no secret that housing costs are climbing and income is struggling to keep up. It’s a complex problem with a lot of loud voices. One of the newest voices, however, is the YIMBY (“Yes In My Backyard”) movement. This growing number of influential activists are calling for more construction and denser cities in order to increase affordability. Max Holleran’s book, Yes to the City, offers an in-depth look at the movement and how it fits into the larger debate of how we shape where we live. From YIMBY’s origins in San Francisco to its current group of activists pushing for new...
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140. R. Douglas Arnold with Sally James: Can Social Security Be Fixed?
In The Moment podcast
Since it started, Social Security has been a cornerstone for retirement in America. But Americans are living longer and having fewer children, which means that this popular program now pays more in benefits than it collects in revenue. There’s less going into the pot than there is going out. Without reforms, 83 million Americans will face an immediate benefit cut of 20 percent in 2034, just a dozen years away. What’s more, most future retirees are not participating in employee-sponsored retirement plans outside of Social Security, which could otherwise buffer the impacts of these cuts....
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139. Leoma James with Charlie James: Stories of a Black American Woman Living in Africa
In The Moment podcast
What is it like to be a young, Black, American woman traveling in Southern and Eastern Africa? In her new novel, No Blame, No Shame, No Guilt, Leoma James explores the profound experience of being surrounded by Africa’s natural beauty and vibrant culture while also realizing the harsh realities of racism and the long-term implications of colonization in Africa. Through short stories and poetry, James exposes readers to the different racial relations present within each story, allowing them to draw their own conclusions about racism and white supremacy. James only has one request:...
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138. Kevin G. Bethune with Beverly Aarons: How Reimagining Design Can Transform Lives and Organizations
In The Moment podcast
Design is more than an aesthetically pleasing logo or banner – it has the power to solve problems in unique ways, cultivate innovation, and anchor multidisciplinary teamwork. In Reimagining Design, Kevin Bethune describes his journey as a Black professional through corporate America, revealing the power of transformative design, multidisciplinary leaps, and diversity. Bethune, who began as an engineer at Westinghouse, moved on to Nike (where he designed Air Jordans), and now works as a sought-after consultant on design and innovation, shows how design can transform individual lives and...
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137. Alexander Monea with Edward Wolcher: How the Internet Became Straight
In The Moment podcast
In today’s internet-based world, it’s easy to forget that there was a time before it was mainstream. How is it built? Who decides its content? And how has that content affected our culture? , author and researcher Alexander Monea takes a close look at this thing we all take for granted and argues that the internet isn’t as open source as one might think. In his new book, The Digital Closet, Monea explores how heteronormative bias is deeply embedded in the internet, hidden in algorithms, keywords, and content moderation. Monea argues that the internet became straight by suppressing...
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136. Joel Simon and Robert Mahoney with Katy Sewall: How Censorship and Lies Made the World Sicker and Less Free
In The Moment podcast
As COVID-19 began to spread around the world in 2020, so did a steady stream of information — and disinformation. Running parallel to the pandemic was an “infodemic,” a digital and physical deluge of information that resulted in mass confusion and censorship. In their new book, The Infodemic, authors Joel Simon and Robert Mahoney lay bare the mechanisms of a modern brand of “censorship through noise” that moves beyond traditional means of state control (jailing critics and restricting the flow of information, for example) to open the floodgates of misinformation. The result? A...
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135. David M. Peña-Guzmán with Steve Scher: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness
In The Moment podcast
Have you ever watched a dog sleep? At times it doesn’t look like sleep at all with their tails thumping, paws padding at an invisible ground, and squeaks, grunts, and growls disrupting an otherwise quiet slumber. We might assume that they’re dreaming about squirrels, or a really good bone. But are they? What really goes on in the minds of animals when they sleep? Author David Peña-Guzmán brings together behavioral and neuroscientific research on animal sleep with philosophical theories of dreaming in his new book, When Animals Dream. Through his research, Peña-Guzmán builds a...
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134. Thomas H. Pruiksma with Dr. Ruben Quesada: A New Translation of The Kural
In The Moment podcast
The Tirukkuṟaḷ, or Kural, for short, is considered a masterpiece of universal philosophy, ethics, and morality. Traditionally attributed to Thiruvalluvar, also known as Valluvar, the original text has been dated from 300 BCE to 5th century CE. The classic Tamil work is one of the most cited and translated ancient texts in existence; it has been translated into over 40 Indian and non-Indian languages and has never been out of print since its first publication in 1812. In a new translation of the Kural, Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma brings English readers closer than ever to the...
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133. Linda Lee with Shin Yu Pai: Meet Town Hall Seattle’s Curator-in-Residence
In The Moment podcast
As Curator-in-Residence for Town Hall, Linda Lee has been working with Town Hall Seattle since October 2021 to better interpret and display our permanent art collections, as well as develop a longer-term exhibition plan including artwork from the community. , Program Director Shin Yu Pai interviews Lee about her work as Curator-in-Residence, her collaboration with Urban Artworks to put art on our walls, and exciting opportunities for the public to get hands-on and make murals with us this June. Linda Lee is a Museology graduate student at the University of Washington and aspires to pursue...
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132. Treva B. Lindsey with Leoma James: Violence, Black Women, and the Struggle for Justice
In The Moment podcast
Studies clearly indicate that Black women, girls, and non-binary people face disproportionately high rates of physical and sexual violence, and face a greater risk of death by homicide than women and non-binary people of white, Latinx, and Asian/Pacific Islander descent. What forces have contributed to a legacy of violence, and is justice possible? In America, Goddam, Black feminist historian Dr. Treva B. Lindsey explores the combined force of anti-Blackness, misogyny, patriarchy, and capitalism in the lives of Black women and girls in the United States today. Dr. Lindsey explains that...
info_outlineIt’s no secret that housing costs are climbing and income is struggling to keep up. It’s a complex problem with a lot of loud voices. One of the newest voices, however, is the YIMBY (“Yes In My Backyard”) movement.
This growing number of influential activists are calling for more construction and denser cities in order to increase affordability. Max Holleran’s book, Yes to the City, offers an in-depth look at the movement and how it fits into the larger debate of how we shape where we live.
From YIMBY’s origins in San Francisco to its current group of activists pushing for new apartment towers in places like Boulder, Austin, and London, Holleran explores how changing the way we look at urban density can make an impact. Once blamed for overpopulated slums, urban density has become a rallying cry for millennial activists locked out of housing markets and simultaneously unable to pay high rents. For many, the YIMBY movement has become a way forward. Yet, with many points of view and powers at play in this fast-changing public debate, there is much tension between activists and proponents of other housing movements.
In this installment of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, Marcus Harrison Green talks with Holleran about the current state of the housing movement, the history that got us here, and how both might shape the future of where we live.
Max Holleran is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Melbourne. His work focuses on urban development in Europe and the United States, particularly how cities manage tourism. He has written about gentrification, architectural aesthetics, post-socialist urban planning, and European Union integration for anthropology, sociology, geography, and history journals. His work on cities and politics has also appeared in Australian Book Review, Boston Review, Contexts, Dissent, Slate, and many other publications. He is currently an Urban Studies Foundation research fellow. He is the author of Tourism, Urbanization, and the Evolving Periphery of the European Union.
Marcus Harrison Green is the publisher of the South Seattle Emerald and a columnist with The Seattle Times. Growing up in South Seattle, he experienced first-hand the impact of one-dimensional stories on marginalized communities, which taught him the value of authentic narratives. After an unfulfilling stint in the investment world during his twenties, Marcus returned to his community with a newfound purpose of telling stories with nuance, complexity, and multidimensionality with the hope of advancing social change. This led him to become a writer and found the South Seattle Emerald. He was awarded the Seattle Human Rights Commissions’ Individual Human Rights Leader Award for 2020.
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