Dastardly Cleverness in the Service of Good

Winner of national Communicator and W3 Awards: the podcast for people who make progress. Your host: writer, consultant, and national media commentator Spencer Critchley.

"The President of Forgetting" 03/13/2024

What's the Real News About Election '24? With Mike Madrid & Zach Friend 02/13/2024

Luke Freeman on the promise & challenges of Effective Altruism: how to make giving count 12/22/2023

What Cynics Get Wrong About Politics 10/25/2023

What Cynics Get Wrong About Politics 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 cynicism itself. We should always be skeptical about politics. People aren’t angels, as James Madison reminded us. But skepticism involves checking to find out what’s really going on, good or bad. Cynicism is just assuming that it’s all bad. This is often mistaken for savviness, which lends cool-kids credibility to claims like “all politicians are crooks,” or “there’s no difference between the parties,” or “government never works.” Except none of those claims actually stands up to skeptical scrutiny. Political journalists reinforce cynicism when they cover politics, day by day, as a dirty game in which all the players are more or less the same: self-interested schemers. NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen blames it on what he calls which rewards reporters for the cynicism of their coverage, when what we need from them is skepticism. Skepticism is healthy, and necessary for democracy. You can’t say either about cynicism. If we automatically accept cynical beliefs as true, we make them ever more likely to become true. People who work on behalf of hope gradually withdraw from the arena, leaving it to people all too happy to encourage despair. And those are people who do in fact have very bad motivations. In this way cynicism reinforces itself and becomes a political death spiral. Democracy can’t run on despair. But authoritarianism depends on it. This is why authoritarians like Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump don’t care that you know they’re lying — they want you to know they’re lying. It serves their interests if you conclude that everyone is a liar, and lose hope. Then your only safe choice is to back the most powerful liar. All this is why I wanted to talk this time about what has become a deeply unfashionable topic: morality in politics. Yes, it does exist, and in a democracy it must exist. And once again I talk with Kevin Lewis and Zach Friend. Kevin has been a communications advisor and spokesman for former President Barack Obama, the White House, the Department of Justice, both Obama campaigns, and Meta. Zach has worked for the White House Council of Economic Advisers, the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, and several presidential campaigns, including both of Obama’s. He’s currently an elected Supervisor in Santa Cruz County, California. Both have seen lots of the good and bad in politics, but neither is a cynic. — Spencer /episode/index/show/dastardlycleverness/id/28415675

A Hollow Man Vacates the Chair & Other Leadership Lessons, Cautionary & Otherwise, with Kevin Lewis & Zach Friend 10/05/2023

Kevin Lewis on AI: Lessons from Working with Meta, Obama, and the DOJ 09/19/2023

Katie Davis: What We Really Know About Kids & Tech 07/11/2023

Joan Esposito: Talk radio for people who want better politics 02/01/2023

Sam Farr: How Democracy Can Work 12/21/2022

Why do so many choose tyranny over democracy? Joan Esposito interviews Spencer Critchley 11/29/2022

Les Francis & Lora Lee Martin: Can Democrats Save Democracy? 10/27/2022

Sam Quinones: "America and hope in the time of fentanyl and meth" 10/11/2022

Sam Quinones: "America and hope in the time of fentanyl and meth" 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, heroin, cocaine, and opioids, and to other things increasingly recognized as addictive, like sugar, junk food, and social media. The problem has been growing for decades, but in recent years it has exploded. A record for deaths by overdose was set in 2020, at a level six and a half times higher than just 10 years before. The 2020 record was smashed last year, with the overdose death rate still rising. Overdose is now the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45. Some of the toll is probably related to the COVID pandemic. But much of it is also caused by a seemingly infinite supply of incredibly addictive and dangerous synthetic drugs, especially meth and fentanyl. They can be obtained or made cheaply by almost anyone, and sold at an enormous profit. Often they’re mixed in with other illegal drugs, or with counterfeit versions of legal drugs. Now there are reports of fentanyl pills made to look like candy. Spencer's guest this time is one of the leading experts on the addiction crisis, and one of its most powerful storytellers. Journalist Sam Quinones sounded the alarm on opiate addiction in 2015 in his multiple-award-winning book . That book focused on the devastation visited on a small Ohio town from two sources: the aggressive marketing of a supposedly safe universal painkiller called Oxycontin and a flood of cheap, black tar heroin. Dreamland played a major role in exposing the scale and the origins of the opioid epidemic, and that helped produce consequences for many of those who promoted and profited from that epidemic. Sam Quinones was well ahead of the crowd when he wrote Dreamland, and he still is. His latest book is called In it, he describes how the addiction crisis has gotten even worse — and yet he also gives reasons for hope. Those reasons are found in the stories of ordinary people who reject the despair that addiction feeds on and amplifies. They’re replacing it with small acts of rebuilding and love, the mutual care that may be the only lasting cure for addiction. /episode/index/show/dastardlycleverness/id/24647700