Flux Podcasts (Formerly Theory of Change)

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit plus.flux.community Episode Summary Since the widespread acceptance of the scientific method emerged in the 19th century, most people like to think of their ideas as based on sound reasoning and rational principles. But it’s also the case that many of us also want to believe that there are things that people in olden times figured out....

Everything we do, think, or feel is based 100 percent on rational thinking. Or at least that’s what we tell ourselves. The truth, however, is that we humans often act based more on psychological impulse than on intellectual reason. That underlying reality is one of the main reasons why so many Americans who adhere to strict religious belief in their own lives have been willing and even happy to su...

With each passing day, Elon Musk is making Twitter worse. He’s done everything from allowing neo-Nazis and trolls to come back after being banned to locking out developers and academics who want to use Twitter’s Application Programing Interface or API to make interesting and important projects. A lot of people have had enough and they’re heading for the exits to places like Spoutible, Substack, an...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community Everyone seems to have a podcast nowadays, actors, athletes, comedians, and even politicians. You clearly like them since you’re here right now, and thank you for that. But what do other people think about podcasts? Well, the Pew Research Center just came out with new report about podcasts and how people ar...

Most people aren’t preoccupied with Satan, demons, or the end of the world. But like it or not, many Americans are greatly concerned with these topics. A 2010 poll from the Pew Research Center found that 58 percent of white evangelical Christian adults surveyed believed that Jesus Christ would return to the earth within the next 40 years. That was significantly higher than any other religious grou...

Episode Summary American politics is becoming increasingly destabilized by far right radicalism. But this escalation is actually the symptom of an even bigger problem: That our two major political parties have been stuck in a trench warfare system for decades. It’s been nearly 40 years since a presidential candidate won more than 55 percent of the national popular vote. It’s been 51 years since so...

Episode Summary We’ve been talking a lot here on Theory of Change about artificial intelligence, both the implications of it from a technological standpoint and also how it works . This is something that is going to create a fundamental change in our society, and that’s irrespective of whatever improvements to the technologies will be developed in the future. Regardless of what you think about art...

Artificial intelligence is all over the news of late. People are using it to compose silly poems and making images of dogs driving cars. There’s also a lot of hype for the technology with some putative experts claiming we’re on the verge of sentient robots seeking to destroy us all. There are also a lot of naysayers who claim that the generative AIs that are out there like ChatGPT or Midjourney ar...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community Artificial intelligence, or at least what we’re calling it, is everywhere in today’s world. Up until very recently, however, most of the software and services using AI haven’t gotten much public attention, and that’s because the primary users of AI historically have been governments, militaries, and giant c...

The religious, political, and racial divides in contemporary America are some of the biggest they’ve been in our history, but there’s another one that doesn’t get nearly as much attention—generational divides. But age-based differences in political attitudes are becoming increasingly important as the Baby Boom generation—the first named generation in America and still its largest in history—is in...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community Rupert Murdoch, the Australian-American media tycoon has accumulated billions of dollars since his Fox News Channel has been in existence. It’s done it by monetizing and stoking the rage of a large segment of the public against their fellow Americans through tens of thousands of contrived controversies like...

After decades of neglect, there is finally a large and growing body of scholarship and journalism about the Religious Right, the powerful Christian Nationalist movement that rules the Republican Party from the heights of the Supreme Court bench down to the municipal voting precinct. While there is a great deal of excellent research and reporting on the movement, it overwhelmingly tends to focus on...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community After neoliberalism took over the Democratic Party in the 1990s, American politics shrank. We were no longer debating what the government should do for us, or even if it should do anything at all, for the most part. Instead, our politics focused on who are we, especially in regards to the question of who is...

Episode Summary One of the stranger things that’s happened in right wing media since Donald Trump emerged on the political scene is how obsessed with sex many far right figures have become. Andrew Tate, a former kickboxer, is one of many reactionary lifestyle influencers who preach a gospel of misogyny that they claim will lead followers to easy sex and money. Sex and birthrates are one of the mos...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit plus.flux.community This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit flux.community . Episode Summary For a number of years, surveys from every pollster have found that most Americans think the country is going in the wrong direction. Surveys in other countries like the UK have found the same. And it doesn't matter which pa...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit plus.flux.community Concerns about globalization and the rise of politicized religion have led to dramatic increases in political extremism in the United States and many other countries in recent years. But another huge factor has been the shrinking of what people feel like they can expect from their government. For about the last 30 ye...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit plus.flux.community Episode Summary “The personal is political” was one of the early rallying cries of the Second Wave feminist movement. Decades later, the universal adoption of the internet has led to a new culture around cryptocurrencies with an ethos that could be summarized via similar phrasing: “The personal financial is political...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit plus.flux.community The future is a funny thing. It’s always around the corner and yet it never quite arrives. That’s certainly true when speaking about the technology industry. As the personal computer revolution and the internet began spreading around the world, commentators and entrepreneurs made fortunes telling everyone that we wer...

Comedy has always been about pointing out the absurd and unjust things in life, but lately, a lot of veteran comedians have taken to complaining about their business more than anything else. Long-time standup comics like Dave Chapelle and Ricky Gervais are oftentimes at war with their own audiences, accusing them of being intolerant of dissent and killing off comedy. Is there anything at all to th...

One of the biggest social changes since the 1960s has been the empowerment of women to make personal choices, to control who they date, whether they’re married, and when or if they have children. While society and popular culture aimed at women seem to have embraced many of these changes, the unfortunate reality is that popular culture aimed at men has not kept pace. Instead of encouraging adaptat...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community We’ve talked a lot on Theory of Change about the growing threat of political extremism and how far-right activists are leveraging religion and business connections to build power over the minds of millions of Americans. And yet, despite all of that, it’s also the case that people can change. No matter how s...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community When you turn on your news app, YouTube, or television, chances are you’re going to be deluged with content about “cancel culture,” an amorphous term that no one ever actually defines, but seems to be about private citizens criticizing other private citizens. What you’re much less likely to hear about is th...

Just as the 2020 elections were fading into America’s rear view mirror, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, cast the political and media worlds into chaos by taking ownership control over Twitter. Most people don’t use Twitter because they find it too weird and disjointed, but it is actually the place online where most of America’s political junkies: activists, politicians, and journalists com...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community Alex Jones, the far right talk radio host who pioneered the art of making money from internet conspiracy theories, is facing the worst moment of his career. It is quite possibly the apocalypse of Jones. After making up thousands of lies over a career spending decades, Jones is now starting to face consequen...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community Since the 1964 presidential election, Americans of African ancestry have voted overwhelmingly for Democratic presidential candidates. Republicans in most races usually get in the single digits, according to decades of opinion surveys. On the surface, it may seem like Black Americans have an undying loyalty...