Crisis in Perception

If meaning and morality are not assigned from outside humanity, where do they come from? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The Little Book of Humanism by Andrew Copson and Alice Roberts as our lens, this investigation explores the humanist model of a meaningful and ethical life within a natural universe. Copson and Roberts argue that human being...

Humanity’s global expansion can look like a deliberate journey across a stable world. Alice Roberts reveals a much more dynamic process in which both humans and the landscapes around them were continually changing. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The Incredible Human Journey by Alice Roberts as our lens, this episode investigates how Homo sapi...

Domestication looks like a story about humans gaining control over nature. Viewed as a system, however, it becomes a story about species changing one another. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Tamed: From Wild to Domesticated, the Ten Animals and Plants That Changed Human History by Alice Roberts as our lens, this episode investigates the evolut...

What if the most important result of a political campaign is what people remain capable of doing together after the election ends? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Bigger than Bernie: How We Go from the Sanders Campaign to Democratic Socialism by Meagan Day and Micah Uetricht was written during the 2020 Sanders campaign as a strategic argument about...

What happens when a safety net built around steady employment meets a labor market where steady employment cannot be guaranteed? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America by Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer as our lens, this investigation examines the institutional conditions surrounding extreme cash p...

What if racial progress can be genuine while racial domination continues operating through less visible mechanisms? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Racial Domination, Racial Progress: The Sociology of Race in America by Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer as our lens, this investigation examines race not as a biological reality but as a soci...

Why can military victory be much easier to achieve than political control? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Stephen Tanner’s Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban traces centuries of conflict across a territory repeatedly caught between expanding empires, neighboring powers, local communities, and competi...

D-Day is remembered as one of history’s great military operations. But the familiar images of beaches, generals, and individual heroism reveal only part of the system that made the invasion possible. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using D-Day: The Oral History by Garrett M. Graff as our lens, this Deep Dive examines how years of industrial mobiliza...

What happens to negotiating power when a country leaves the institution whose rules it once helped shape? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Inside the Deal: How the EU Got Brexit Done by Stefaan De Rynck provides a first-hand account of the Brexit negotiations from inside Michel Barnier’s European Union team. De Rynck argues that many assumptions surr...

How much of modern England is still being shaped by structures created centuries—or even millennia—ago? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The Shortest History of England: Empire and Division from the Anglo-Saxons to Brexit—A Retelling for Our Times by James Hawes as our lens, this episode examines English history as a problem of structural persi...

What happens when the costs of an economic system accumulate in places most people rarely see? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco documents what the authors call America’s “sacrifice zones”—communities where human beings and the natural world have borne extraordinary costs in the pursuit...

What makes a society vulnerable to a threat it believes it has already defeated? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using J.K. Rowling’s seven Harry Potter novels as a longitudinal case study, this episode follows the development of hidden vulnerabilities across the wizarding world—from the defenses surrounding the Sorcerer’s Stone to the eventual infi...

What if the Great Wall reveals less about permanent separation than about the recurring problem of controlling a boundary? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The Great Wall: China Against the World, 1000 BC–AD 2000 by Julia Lovell as our lens, this investigation follows three millennia of Chinese wall-building to examine the relationship between...

What happens when acknowledging a danger threatens the institution responsible for confronting it? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J. K. Rowling follows Harry as he attempts to warn the wizarding world that Voldemort has returned. Instead of investigating his testimony, the Ministry of Magic protects its...

What makes a system secure: visible barriers, technical difficulty, or an accurate understanding of human motive? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling as an entry point, this investigation examines the layered defenses surrounding the Sorcerer’s Stone. This edition features illustrations by...

How does the human body remain coordinated when no single organ understands the whole? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Stephen Biesty’s Incredible Body Cross-Sections, written by Richard Platt and illustrated by Stephen Biesty, presents the human body as an enormous factory populated by specialized workers. Through intricate cross-section illustrati...

The Opium War ended in 1842, but the system of memory built around it continues to shape international perception. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China by Julia Lovell as our lens, this episode investigates the economic, institutional, and informational systems that pushed Britain and Qin...

The Celts are often presented as a unified people who spread across Europe carrying a recognizable package of language, art, ancestry, and belief. Alice Roberts reveals why the evidence produces a far more complicated picture. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The Celts: Search for a Civilization by Alice Roberts as our lens, this Deep Dive inve...

Revolutions often appear sudden because the slow collapse that precedes them remains largely invisible. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Wages of Rebellion by Chris Hedges as our lens, this Deep Dive investigates the structural conditions that turn discontent into revolt. Hedges argues that corporate capitalism has concentrated wealth, accelera...

What determines whether evidence changes a belief—or is made to conform to it? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The Rocks Don’t Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood by David R. Montgomery as its lens, this investigation explores the intertwined histories of geology, flood traditions, biblical interpretation, and scientific discovery. Mont...

What happens when an ancient sacred story is asked to function as geology, biology, history, and moral authority all at once? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Drawing on Genesis 6–9, Ken Ham’s defense of biblical authority, Creation Museum flood claims, the SBL Study Bible, biblical scholarship from Dan McClellan, scientific critiques from Forrest Va...

What happens when a claim becomes sacred enough that evidence can no longer revise it? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens as our lens, this Deep Dive investigates how religious belief can move beyond private conviction and become institutional authority. Hitchens argues tha...

What makes a moral obligation binding when people do not share the same source of authority? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Is Christianity Good for the World? presents a direct exchange between atheist critic Christopher Hitchens and Christian pastor Douglas Wilson. Hitchens argues that religion contributes no unique moral insight and can place ha...

What allows ideas of liberty to survive when institutions and movements reproduce the forms of power they claim to oppose? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Triumvirate of Rationalism: Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, George Orwell by Christopher Hitchens as its lens, this episode explores a tradition of reasoned dissent extending from the democr...

Life did not evolve against the background of a static planet. Organisms and environments transformed one another across billions of years. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth by Andrew H. Knoll as its lens, this investigation examines how scientists reconstruct the largel...