Crisis in Perception

A government can concentrate enormous power while simultaneously damaging its own ability to understand what is happening inside it. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The Death of Stalin, written by Fabien Nury and illustrated by Thierry Robin, this Deep Dive examines the institutional consequences of governing through fear. The fictionalized gr...

How does an official explanation become accepted history—and what should happen when later evidence reveals that important pieces never fit cleanly? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O’Neill with Dan Piepenbring as our lens, this investigation examines how prosecutors,...

What actually breaks a monopoly when the monopoly controls much of the system in which competitors must operate? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Breaking Rockefeller: The Incredible Story of the Ambitious Rivals Who Toppled an Oil Empire by Peter B. Doran as our lens, this episode explores the rise of Standard Oil and the rival commercial netw...

What happens when political fundraising, lobbying, access, and private career incentives begin reinforcing one another? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government by Robert G. Kaiser as our lens, this investigation traces the transformation of lobbying through the career...

Martin Luther King Jr. is often remembered through the parts of his message that eventually became part of America’s national memory. His final year presents a more complicated picture. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Year by Tavis Smiley with David Ritz as our lens, this ep...

What looks like a housing affordability problem can also reveal a deeper question: who holds power over the places people need to live? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Abolish Rent by Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis as our lens, this Deep Dive investigates the authors’ argument that rent functions not simply as a market price but as a rel...

What if the awareness of death influences human behavior most powerfully when we are not consciously thinking about dying? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski as our lens, this episode investigates Terror Management Theory and the psychologic...

What if America’s political division is less a recent rupture than the result of pressures accumulating across interconnected systems for decades? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974 by Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer as our lens, this investigation traces how modern American polarization...

How does a political idea become so deeply embedded in public life that people eventually experience it as tradition? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by historian Kevin M. Kruse, this Deep Dive investigates the systems behind the rise of modern American civil religion. Krus...

What happens when an older political arrangement becomes unsustainable but the incentives and conflicts underneath it remain? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism by Kevin M. Kruse as our lens, this episode investigates his argument that white flight from Atlanta was more than population m...

What happens when supernatural belief disappears but the human needs religion organized remain? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion by Alain de Botton as our lens, this episode investigates whether secular societies may have discarded useful social technologies along with religi...

We often assume that more data produces a clearer picture of reality. But what if the systems that make information easier to process also determine what becomes visible in the first place? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The Trouble With Big Data: How Datafication Displaces Cultural Practices by Jennifer Edmond, Nicola Horsley, Jörg Lehmann a...

What happens when the financial system prevents a collapse by moving the losses somewhere else? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World by Michael Lewis as our lens, this investigation follows the global aftermath of the credit boom and asks how private financial risk became entangled with governments, taxpaye...

Power is easy to picture as something held by presidents, parties, corporations, institutions, or elites. It becomes much harder—and more revealing—when we ask how influence is actually converted into political outcomes. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Princeton Readings in American Politics, edited by Richard M. Valelly, this Deep Dive explor...

The convenience of buying almost anything with a click can make the transaction look simple. The system producing that convenience is anything but simple. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using How to Resist Amazon and Why by Danny Caine as our lens, this episode investigates how Amazon’s growth has reshaped bookselling, labor, logistics, marketplace...

What disappears when a bookstore closes besides a place to buy books? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using How to Protect Bookstores and Why: The Present and Future of Bookselling by Danny Caine as our lens, this Deep Dive investigates bookstores as parts of larger cultural, economic, and community systems. Through profiles of twelve bookstores, Ca...

What happens when an institution built around mass reach and public responsibility loses the environment that made its dominance possible? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way by Ken Auletta as our lens, this investigation traces the transformation of ABC, CBS, and NBC as technological disruption...

How can a political coalition remain powerful when the groups inside it do not necessarily share the same economic interests? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson as our lens, this Deep Dive investigates the interaction between economic powe...

What happens when an industry built on relationships and uncertain measurement collides with a system designed to quantify attention? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. In Googled: The End of the World as We Know It, Ken Auletta chronicles the rise of Google and the profound disruption it brought to advertising, journalism, publishing, television, and...

Independent cinema emerged as an alternative to Hollywood. Its success eventually created a powerful system of its own. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film by Peter Biskind as our lens, this investigation traces the rise of the American independent-film ecosystem and the...

Hollywood’s director-driven revolution of the 1970s is often remembered as a triumph of artistic rebellion. Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls reveals a more complicated institutional story. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ’n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood by Peter Biskind as our l...

A breakup can end a relationship while keeping its emotional system alive. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Conscious Uncoupling: 5 Steps to Living Happily Even After by Katherine Woodward Thomas as our lens, this episode investigates why the end of a romantic relationship can activate fear, shame, anger, obsessive attachment, blame, and retali...

China's rise is often interpreted as evidence that markets displaced socialism. John Ross argues that this framing misses the institutional structure beneath China's development. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using China's Great Road by John Ross as our lens, this episode investigates how markets, private enterprise, state ownership, s...

How well can we know another person when both people are constantly shaping themselves for each other? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn as our lens, this Deep Dive investigates identity, intimacy, deception, and the feedback systems that develop when people begin performing versions of themselves for one another. Nick...

The gunfire may last minutes. The consequences can continue for a lifetime. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using When Thoughts and Prayers Aren’t Enough: A Shooting Survivor’s Journey into the Realities of Gun Violence by Taylor S. Schumann as our lens, this episode investigates what disappears from view when gun violence is understood primarily th...