Flux Podcasts (Formerly Theory of Change)

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community Protestant televangelists have been infamous for decades for their lavish lifestyles and nefarious scandals. They’ve also been extremely successful at promoting far-right political viewpoints to unsuspecting Protestants who just want to watch some devotional preaching. The radicalization of American evangel...

The far-right U.S. Supreme Court opinion overturning the right to abortion at the federal level was leaked to the public on May 3, but it wasn’t until July 7th that President Joe Biden unveiled any sort of meaningful action to protect access to federally approved abortion medications and to prohibit states from banning people from traveling across state lines to seek the procedure. The judicial ac...

American democracy is in crisis, much of it the direct product of Donald Trump, a petty scammer who managed to talk his way into the White House who was willing to overthrow our government after he lost in 2020. But the crisis of the present moment is larger than Trump himself. It’s also larger than the extremist political movement that calls itself “conservatism” in the United States. The politic...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community The U.S. Supreme Court ignored decades of settled precedent about abortion access and women’s health care in a sweeping decision that rolled back the court’s 1973 decision Roe v. Wade. The ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is the culmination of decades of anti-abortion activism. But it’...

Episode Summary It's been almost 30 years since Mosaic, the first popular web browser was released in 1993. So much has changed, both technologically and socially, but what has the web wrought? In its earliest days, the internet was seen as a tool that would democratize information and greatly expand our ability to share knowledge and expression. That certainly has happened to a large degree, but...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community We certainly have our problems, but humans have come a long way since we emerged as a distinct species roughly 300,000 years ago. Most recently, the key to our progress has been the idea that you gain more knowledge by questioning what you know to begin with. Socrates’s idea of “questioning everything” was...

Episode Summary Like beauty, humor is in the eye of the beholder. That’s especially true in regards to political humor, where many on the left and the right seem to think that the opposition is literally incapable of being funny. Right wingers say liberals are too caught up in diversity and inclusion to take a joke. And left-wingers say that reactionaries are so enthralled with stupid ideas that t...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community Big businesses and organizations are obsessed with branding, the idea of associating themselves in the public mind with a particular thing. But the most prominent branding operation in recent decades wasn’t in the realm of commerce. It was in the realm of religion, where well-funded activists succeeded at c...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community As we head into the 2022 mid-term elections and further on into the 2024 presidential election, one of the hottest topics in political strategy is where will Latino voters fit into the equation. Historically, Democrats have done better among Latinos, but in 2020, former president Donald Trump improved his s...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community It’s well-known by now that disinformation media played a significant role in enabling the political rise of Donald Trump. But the truth is that far right media has been misinforming Americans for many decades. Fake news was a long thing before Facebook and other words. A lot of times, it’s hard for people...

Episode Summary Contrary to the predictions of political consultants and commentators, both of America's two major parties have continued to be politically relevant since the GOP broke a decades-long congressional losing streak in the 1994 midterm elections. The American government has been closely divided, with each party taking trifecta control of the government only a very few number of times....

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community It’s a bit hard to believe that one year ago, Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. A lot has happened during that timespan but a lot has also not happened. As of this week, Biden and the Democratic majority in the Senate have confirmed 41 federal judges, the most ever for a pre...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community Polling over the decades has shown that most Republican voters are heavily motivated by white Christian identity politics. But Republican elites– politicians, writers, and many donors– were more interested in cutting spending and giving tax cuts to job creators, or rich people in other words. Over the past...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community All of us are much more than what we do for a living. And yet, when we lose a job or have trouble finding another one, we feel like we’re missing something important. But work is about more than just something to do with your time or to feed your family. For many people, work is an entry point into larger s...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community William Faulkner’s line that “the past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past,” is certainly true in regards to today’s Republican Party, which, quite literally, is an outgrowth of a conspiracy revolution that began in the 1940s and fifties, and never really stopped. A key figure in the through-line of American rea...

Misinformation, incorrect beliefs about the world, and disinformation, deliberately constructed falsehoods, have always been a part of human history, but they are playing an increasingly important role in politics around the globe now, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. Research is showing that people on the political right and people who are inclined toward religious traditionalism are more...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community We don’t think enough about just how much our lives have changed because of technology. If you’re a millennial or older, chances are you can remember a time when payphones existed, everyone went to the movie theater, and lots of people didn’t have an email address. A lot has changed for us along the way. Th...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community Five years after it was written, the so-called Steele dossier, a collection of memos compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, alleging extensive ties between Donald Trump and various Russians, is still one of the most heavily discussed pieces of writing about the ex-president. The...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community By now, a lot of people are aware of and concerned about the lies, hatred, and rumors that are so rampant on social media. The social media companies are definitely responsible to a large degree for letting this happen. But they don’t deserve all the blame. There’s another sector of the internet economy tha...

Every four years, the United States holds its presidential elections. But one year afterward, the states of New Jersey and Virginia hold their own gubernatorial elections. And for decades, the overwhelming trend in both states has been that the vote for the governor is opposite from the current president’s party. So in other words, if the current president is a Democrat, then usually the Republica...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community Extremist Muslims and extremist Christians hate each other, or at least they did before the meme wars began. It’s hard to believe, but extremist Muslims and Christians are actually starting to cheer each other online . After presidents Trump and Biden ended the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, white national...

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...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community Democrats have the narrowest of majorities in the House and Senate. And after a few months of a presidential honeymoon for Joe Biden, they really are feeling the constraints of their tiny margin for error. The Senate is split 50 50 with a tie breaking vote going to Vice President Kamala Harris, which means...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theoryofchange.flux.community As technology has given extremist movements a much greater ability to spread their views and carry out violence, researchers are studying radicalization now more than ever. But one area that hasn’t received enough attention is an examination of women who become militants. Understanding radicalization is imp...

Thirty years ago, Linux began as a college student’s hobby operating system project. Today, it’s a critical piece of software that powers the majority of the world’s smartphones and the most powerful servers and supercomputers. Along the way, Linux managed to displace much more established versions of the Unix operating system that it was designed to be compatible with. But Linux as a technologica...