Crisis in Perception

A society may become increasingly rational in its procedures while losing the ability to judge whether its purposes are reasonable. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Eclipse of Reason by Max Horkheimer as an entry point, this investigation examines the historical transformation of reason from a faculty capable of evaluating human ends into an in...

What happens when domination no longer needs to issue every command because its hierarchy has been learned as identity? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon as its lens, this investigation examines how colonial power shapes more than political institutions and economic conditions. It also enters language, des...

A classroom can discuss liberation while its structure quietly teaches obedience. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks as its lens, this investigation examines how educational institutions shape authority, voice, participation, and intellectual independence. hooks presents e...

Totalitarianism is often understood as extreme power imposed from above. Hannah Arendt’s investigation reveals a deeper system involving political disintegration, atomized masses, ideological certainty, and the destruction of factual reality. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt as our lens, this epis...

How does a society remember its victories while forgetting the systems that made those victories necessary? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using William Abranowicz's This Far and No Further: Photographs Inspired by the Voting Rights Movement as an entry point, this episode explores how photography can reveal the hidden structures behind politic...

What happens when losing political dominance is experienced as evidence that democracy itself has become illegitimate? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy by Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry as its lens, this episode investigates how religious identity, ra...

What does neutrality mean when financial infrastructure keeps a war machine supplied? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Hitler’s Secret Bankers: How Switzerland Profited from Nazi Genocide by Adam LeBor as our lens, this investigation examines the gap between Switzerland’s formal neutrality and the financial systems that LeBor argues helped sust...

A society can contain intense disagreement among experts while leaving its deepest assumptions almost entirely untouched. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The Responsibility of Intellectuals by Noam Chomsky as our lens, this episode investigates how institutions shape the relationship between expertise, public responsibility, and political powe...

The pioneer is often imagined as an independent figure surviving through courage, faith, and hard work. But the historical record reveals that endurance depended on systems of cooperation that later became easy to overlook. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Life and Labour of Rev. A. E. Garrison by Rev. Abraham Ellison Garrison as our lens, this...

What if the behaviors we condemn as laziness are actually signals that human capacity has been exceeded? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Laziness Does Not Exist: A Defense of the Exhausted, Exploited, and Overworked by Dr. Devon Price as our lens, this episode investigates the belief system Price calls the “Laziness Lie.” Price argues that mod...

What happens when a collection of writings from different centuries, genres, and communities comes to be treated as one timeless voice? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using A History of the Bible: The Story of the World’s Most Influential Book by John Barton as our lens, this episode investigates how diverse biblical texts became consolidated into...

What does it take to transform an invisible theoretical structure into reliable knowledge about reality? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World by Sean Carroll as our lens, this investigation explores the Higgs boson, the Higgs field, and the...

What happens when the leaders most trusted to understand a crisis become insulated from the evidence that could prove them wrong? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam as our lens, this episode investigates how the Kennedy and Johnson administrations became increasingly committed to the Vietnam War desp...

What if the Bible became authoritative not through one decisive act, but through centuries of writing, copying, worship, interpretation, and institutional use? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using How the Bible Came to Be by John Barton as our lens, this Deep Dive investigates how a diverse collection of ancient writings gradually became the fixed...

Can artificial intelligence make a volatile market easier to understand without making uncertain conclusions feel more authoritative? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The ChatGPT Millionaire’s Handbook: Cryptocurrency by Charlie Green as our lens, this episode examines how ChatGPT changes the way investors interpret information, evaluate risk,...

Can declining violence prove that a war was strategically successful, or can a quieter battlefield conceal unresolved damage beneath the surface? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge by Daniel A. Sjursen as our lens, this Deep Dive investigates how the 2007 Surge became an endu...

How can a treatment become society’s default before its effectiveness has been conclusively demonstrated? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry by Lance Dodes, MD, and Zachary Dodes as our lens, this episode investigates the institutional dominance of Alcoholic...

How can a movement sincerely embrace a moral cause while misremembering the conflict that originally brought its institutions into politics? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right by Randall Balmer as our lens, this episode investigates the historical origins of the Religious Right and the political...

During a crisis, information must move quickly. But the systems that make rapid communication possible can also allow emotionally compelling falsehoods to outrun verification. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Communication and Misinformation: Crisis Events in the Age of Social Media, edited by Kevin B. Wright, this Deep Dive investigates the so...

How can a society expand through aggression, remember itself as the victim, and turn that memory into a shared identity? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Aggression and Sufferings: Settler Violence, Native Resistance, and the Coalescence of the Old South by F. Evan Nooe as its lens, this episode investigates how settler violence, Indigenous res...

Why do so many politicians enter office wealthy—or become substantially wealthier after gaining power? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Filthy Rich Politicians: The Swamp Creatures, Latte Liberals, and Ruling-Class Elites Cashing In on America by Matt K. Lewis as our lens, this investigation traces the system connecting personal wealth, campaig...

How can journalism document belief when belief influences what witnesses notice, remember, and understand? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Radiant Truths: Essential Dispatches, Reports, Confessions, & Other Essays on American Belief, edited and introduced by Jeff Sharlet, collects literary journalism examining the unstable intersection of Americ...

What happens when people embrace conformity because it offers relief from anxiety, uncertainty, and social isolation? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The Psychology of Totalitarianism by Mattias Desmet as its lens, this episode investigates the psychological conditions that can make a population receptive to mass formation and expanding instit...

What if some of the most consequential battles in war are fought against heat, noise, infection, blast forces, exhaustion, and the limits of the human body? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Mary Roach’s Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War investigates a side of military science that receives far less attention than weapons or strategy: the re...

Can an institution built to enforce domination become the instrument that ends it? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The State and Revolution by V. I. Lenin as an entry point, this episode investigates the state as a structure of class power rather than a neutral authority standing above society. Lenin argues that the capitalist state cannot sim...