Crisis in Perception

What happens when friendship becomes the only shelter available to people denied a stable place in the world? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, together with Susan Shillinglaw’s introduction, this episode investigates the economic and social structures surrounding George and Lennie’s friendship, their dream of...

What happens when domination becomes so deeply internalized that unequal power begins to feel like reality itself? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The Color Purple by Alice Walker as our lens, this episode investigates how patriarchal violence, religious authority, racial hierarchy, economic dependence, and restricted access to information sha...

A constitutional right can survive in legal doctrine while disappearing through the systems that make it accessible. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The End of Roe v. Wade: Inside the Right’s Plan to Destroy Legal Abortion by Robin Marty and Jessica Mason Pieklo as our lens, this Deep Dive investigates the institutional strategy that steadily...

What if the creativity of a cultural movement depends on the systems surrounding it? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. This episode explores Post-Punk Then and Now, edited by Gavin Butt, Kodwo Eshun, and Mark Fisher, as an investigation into how cultural systems influence creativity, experimentation, and the ability to imagine alternative futures. The...

How can foreign intervention transform a civil war without bringing it any closer to peace? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using El Salvador Volume 2: Conflagration, 1984–1992 by David François as our lens, this episode investigates how American military assistance, political legitimacy, and guerrilla adaptation reshaped the Salvadoran Civil War. F...

What happens when a government’s attempt to suppress opposition strengthens the insurgency it is trying to defeat? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using El Salvador Volume 1: Crisis, Coup and Uprising 1970–1983 by David François as our lens, this episode investigates how political exclusion, military repression, economic inequality, and failed refor...

What happens when reform becomes visible to power not as renewal, but as a security breach? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Operation Danube: Soviet and Warsaw Pact Intervention in Czechoslovakia, 1968 by David François as our lens, this episode examines the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia and the collapse of the Prague Spring. Fra...

What if Britain’s youth crisis is not a failure of ambition, but the result of a society that removed stable paths to adulthood while calling the result personal choice? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Jilted Generation: How Britain Has Bankrupted Its Youth by Ed Howker and Shiv Malik as the lens, this episode investigates how Britain shifted...

What happens when a species becomes powerful enough to change a planet before it becomes wise enough to govern its own effects? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. David Grinspoon’s Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet’s Future examines the Anthropocene through astrobiology, planetary science, and deep time. Grinspoon argues that humanity has become...

How can science become increasingly confident about something no one has ever directly seen? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using The Elephant in the Universe: Our Hundred-Year Search for Dark Matter by Govert Schilling as our lens, this episode investigates the century-long effort to identify the invisible substance that appears to shape galaxies,...

Behind every torpedo fired during World War II was another battle taking place through encrypted messages, intelligence networks, and technological competition. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using U-571: A Novelization by Max Allan Collins as our lens, this episode explores how submarine warfare depended upon the hidden systems of communication se...

An unexplained experience does not become understood merely because we assign it a familiar name. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the Truth About Everything by Barbara Ehrenreich as our lens, this investigation explores how societies determine which experiences count as reality—and how unusual...

Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. This episode explores Ultimate Punishment by Scott Turow as a systems-level analysis of the criminal justice system. The discussion examines: • incentive structures • institutional persistence • feedback loops • hidden system dynamics • structural outcomes 📺 Watch on YouTube: 👉 https://youtu.be/NJC07h7Pmdc ❤️ Suppor...

Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using David Hone's Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior as our guide, this episode investigates the hidden system of scientific inference. The discussion examines: • incentive structures • institutional persistence • feedback loops • hidden system dynamics • structural outcomes 📺 Watch on YouTube: 👉 https://youtu.be/eKp...

Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. This episode explores *The World Without Us* by Alan Weisman as a systems-level analysis of civilization's hidden maintenance systems. The discussion examines: • incentive structures • institutional persistence • feedback loops • hidden system dynamics • structural outcomes 📺 Watch on YouTube: 👉 https://youtu.be...

When military technology removes risk from one side of a conflict, what happens to the political incentives for using force? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control by Medea Benjamin as our lens, this episode investigates how armed drones have transformed more than the battlefield. We explore the institutional...

Did freedom emerge because people believed in liberty—or because institutions made liberty practical? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. In Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City, Russell Shorto explores how one remarkable city became the birthplace of many ideas now associated with modern liberal democracy. This episode investigates...

What if the fight was never really about the dish, the sandwich, or the chore? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. In This Is How Your Marriage Ends: A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships, Matthew Fray explores how long-term relationships often break down through ordinary behaviors that appear harmless in the moment. Drawing from his own divorce an...

Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. This episode explores How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life by Thomas Gilovich as a systems-level investigation into how people form beliefs that feel rational, coherent, and evidence-based—even when the evidence does not support them. Gilovich argues that questionable beliefs oft...

What if religious belief remains powerful not only because people believe, but because nonbelievers often stay quiet? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. In We of Little Faith: An Atheist Comes Clean (And Why You Should, Too), Kate Cohen reflects on her transition from culturally observant Reform Judaism to open atheism. Her memoir explores parenting, t...

Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. This episode explores This Is the Way the World Ends by Jeff Nesbit as a systems-level analysis of how climate warnings become visible across ecosystems, water systems, food systems, species behavior, and geopolitical instability before societies are organized to act. By focusing on incentive architecture rather than...

Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world—one book at a time. This episode explores The Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury, examining how poverty, political corruption, urban development, and institutional weakness combined to create New York City's notorious criminal underworld. Rather than viewing gangs simply as violent organizations, this episode inve...

Political parties often appear to change because voters change. But what if the deeper force is the evolution of institutions themselves? In this episode of Crisis in Perception, we explore To Make Men Free by Heather Cox Richardson and investigate how recurring tensions between democratic ideals, property rights, economic incentives, and institutional legitimacy have repeatedly reshaped the Repub...

Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world — one book at a time. This episode explores How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America by Heather Cox Richardson as a systems-level analysis of how political mythology, historical memory, and institutional incentives shape democracy, hierarchy, and public per...

Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world—one book at a time. This episode explores The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto, examining how historical memory shapes national identity through the preservation, omission, and institutional transmission of competing origin stories. Rather than treating America's past as a single founding narrati...