Crisis in Perception

America's elections increasingly resemble contests between opposing political camps. But does that visible division accurately reflect what citizens believe? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Do We Have A Center? 2016, 2020, and the Challenge of the Trump Presidency by Walter Frank, this Deep Dive investigates American political polarization...

What happens when a civilization becomes so confident in technological progress that it struggles to recognize the physical limits supporting its prosperity? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. In Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation , James Howard Kunstler challenges America's faith in technological rescue, argui...

What happens when an economy becomes increasingly dependent on the same financial and energy arrangements that may be making it more fragile? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Living in the Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler as our lens, this audio investigation explores the hidden dependencies connecting fossil fuels, economic growth, fina...

How did corporations come to possess constitutional protections, and what does that transformation reveal about the relationship between economic power and democratic government? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. In Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became “People”—and How You Can Fight Back , Thom Hartmann traces the historical expansion of corpor...

What happens when the relationship between a president and a news network becomes so intertwined that each begins shaping the other's version of reality? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. In Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth , journalist Brian Stelter investigates the relationship between Donald Trump, Fox News, a...

What happens when political power becomes increasingly insulated from the information needed to exercise it responsibly? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. In Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency , journalist Michael Wolff reconstructs the turbulent final months of Donald Trump's first administration, from the struggling 2020 reelectio...

What if children begin learning about race long before adults deliberately teach them anything about it? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using How to Raise an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi as our lens, this Deep Dive investigates racial socialization and the larger environments through which children develop ideas about race, identity, inequality, be...

What happens when political allegiance becomes intertwined with identity, belonging, fear, and the information a person trusts? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. In The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control, Steven Hassan applies his experience studying destructive influence to Donald Trump and the political...

What separates a political betrayal from the constitutional crime of treason? And can public officials escape one form of accountability while remaining subject to another? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. In Traitor: A History of American Betrayal from Benedict Arnold to Donald Trump , author David Rothkopf examines American history through the recu...

What if a presidential debate does not simply reveal political viability, but participates in creating it? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The Audience Decides: Applause-Cheering, Laughter, and Booing during Debates in the Trump Era by Patrick A. Stewart as our lens, this investigation examines how debate structure, candidate performance, audi...

Why do people who resist authority sometimes become fiercely loyal to leaders who promise protection from outsiders? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. In The Securitarian Personality , political scientist John R. Hibbing offers an evidence-based investigation into the psychological motivations of Donald Trump's most ardent supporters. Rather than...

What happens when constant change stops being a temporary disruption and becomes the normal condition of life? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. In Liquid Modernity, Zygmunt Bauman argues that modernity has shifted from seeking durable social arrangements toward valuing flexibility, mobility, reversibility, and continuous adaptation. This Deep Dive ex...

What happens when a system can transform mass killing into administrative duty? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt as our lens, this Deep Dive investigates the relationship between bureaucracy, obedience, moral judgment, and individual responsibility. Arendt’s portrait of Ad...

What happens when an economy grows richer, but prosperity becomes increasingly concentrated? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. In Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All?, sociologist Zygmunt Bauman challenges the widely accepted belief that the enrichment of a small economic elite necessarily benefits society as a whole. Drawing on research into...

What happens when predicting human behavior becomes a business—and greater certainty becomes a competitive advantage? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. In The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, Shoshana Zuboff argues that a distinctive form of capitalism has emerged around the extraction of human...

What happens when not knowing stops carrying a political cost—and begins carrying a political reward? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. In Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber, Andy Borowitz traces what he describes as the evolution of political ignorance through three stages: Ridicule, Acceptance, and Celebration....

Why do narcissistic relationships and public conflicts become so difficult to escape—even when everyone recognizes that something is wrong? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Fragile Bully: Understanding Our Destructive Affair with Narcissism in the Age of Trump by Laurie Helgoe, PhD, this investigation examines the interaction between grandiosit...

What happens when exposing the failures of universal ideals begins to erode confidence in the ideals themselves? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Left Is Not Woke by Susan Neiman as our lens, this investigation examines her argument that parts of the contemporary “woke” left have moved away from three principles she regards as essential to left...

What happens when political events arrive so quickly that yesterday’s shock becomes today’s baseline? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The List: A Week-by-Week Reckoning of Trump’s First Year by Amy Siskind as its lens, this episode investigates how information overload, shifting expectations, public memory, and institutional norms interact dur...

What turns religious conviction into a system of political obedience? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America by Chris Hedges as our lens, this Version 2 remaster examines Hedges’s argument that radical Christian dominionism can convert religious certainty into a broader system of authorita...

What happens when a democracy builds systems of coercion abroad—and then discovers that those systems can reshape politics at home? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. This remastered investigation revisits Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire by Jonathan M. Katz. Katz follows Major Ge...

What happens when political disagreement becomes evidence of a much larger struggle over who gets to shape culture? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using God's Chaos Candidate: Donald J. Trump and the American Unraveling by Lance Wallnau as our lens, this episode examines the larger institutional and religious framework through which Wallnau int...

Economic growth can create extraordinary prosperity without distributing its rewards evenly. What determines who actually receives the gains? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Economic Inequality: The American Dream Under Siege by Coral Celeste Frazer as our lens, this Deep Dive traces the historical forces that have repeatedly widened and narro...

What happens when the market stops being an economic tool and becomes a model for citizenship itself? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Politics Beyond the Age of Greed by Henry A. Giroux as our lens, this Deep Dive investigates Giroux’s argument that neoliberalism is more than an economic program. It also op...

What happens when the safeguards around presidential power depend on whether individual officials are willing to enforce them? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President by Michael S. Schmidt as our lens, this Deep Dive examines the tension between presidential authority, personal...