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.

What DOES It Mean to Be Woke? The Liberal Backbone, Chapter 3 11/26/2024

The Liberal Backbone, Chapter 2: Why Nothing Makes Sense 11/19/2024

The Liberal Backbone 11/12/2024

Slowly and then all at once 11/05/2024

Slowly and then all at once 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 essence of catastrophic failure in just a few words, in his novel The Sun Also Rises. The alcoholic veteran Mike Campbell is asked how he went bankrupt. “Two ways,” he says. “Gradually and then quickly.” As it is with one person going broke, so it is with an entire economy crashing, or countless other catastrophes. There isn’t only a single failure, but a first, and then more — and then a cascade. And so it is when a democracy fails: it happens slowly and then all at once. Facing the possibility of a vindictive autocrat becoming president, the LA Times decides not to endorse his opponent, or anyone. Then the Washington Post does the same. Then USA Today and all the other Gannett newspapers follow. Some of their journalist employees protest, but almost no one walks off the job; a few editorial board members are rare exceptions. We can feel for those who keep their heads down. Given the precarious state of journalism, they know that if they lose the job they have now, there's almost nowhere else for them to go. Businesses, too, begin signaling their loyalty and obedience to the potential dictator. Their executives are driven by what they see as their duty to protect against risk — even as far larger risks gather. Nearly all their employees act essentially the same way. And as the cascade accelerates across society, a democracy that has survived many shocks fails. The last shock is sudden, even though the preparation was long. Until recently, it seemed unthinkable to most Americans that our democracy could fail. But it would be far from the first, as historians of democracy know well. One of the most insightful is Robert Kagan, who until recently was a member of the Washington Post editorial board. Kagan immediately recognized the meaning of the Post’s endorsement surrender. He resigned. It wasn't the first time he had made such a choice. In 2016, he left the Republican Party after it nominated Donald Trump. He sounded an alarm in an essay for the Post called “.” But as Kagan’s principled choices demonstrate, fascism doesn’t have to come. Our democracy doesn’t have to fail. Some failure cascades are like avalanches: impersonal and irresistible. But when a human system fails, each step is a choice by an individual human being — by each of us. And sometimes, we make the right choice. Nothing is stopping us from doing that now, or at any time — nothing but our own character. “The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves,” as Shakespeare’s Cassius tells Brutus, with the Roman Republic falling around them. More: /episode/index/show/dastardlycleverness/id/33807232

To a Friend Voting for Trump 10/07/2024

Mike Madrid on Why Latinos May Save Democracy 07/07/2024

Mike Madrid on Why Latinos May Save Democracy 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 a top expert on Latino voting, and in recent years he’s become a national leader in the bipartisan fight to save democracy. He’s been the political director for the California Republican Party, a senior adviser to both Republicans and Democrats, and a co-founder of the never-Trump Lincoln Project. Now Mike has a new book, called The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy. One of his goals for it is to help the Democratic Party win against MAGA authoritarianism. He’s worried, though, that Democrats have been slow to get the message about Latinos and their crucial role in the nation’s future. And he thinks that helps explain why so many Latinos have been moving towards the Republican Party, a development many Democrats find baffling. According to Mike, they’re baffled because they don’t understand Latinos or other minorities nearly as well as they think they do. He says too many Democratic candidates, strategists, and pundits think of minorities as theoretical stereotypes instead of as real people with complex lives. That’s why Democrats tend to assume immigration is the top issue for all Latino voters, for example, or that most want to be talked to in Spanish. Both of those assumptions may seem reasonable theoretically, but are often wrong in reality. Mike argues that now more than ever, Democrats need to get reality right. That’s because first of all, the Latino vote can make the difference in crucial battleground states this year, including ones that may surprise you, like Wisconsin and North Carolina. And he believes that over the long haul, Latino voters can help revive all Americans’ faith in democratic institutions — and democracy itself. — Spencer /episode/index/show/dastardlycleverness/id/32038312

Confused About the Gaza Protests? This May Be Why. 05/06/2024

"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