Flux Podcasts (Formerly Theory of Change)

The 1960s are famous in the American political memory as a time of leftist revolution. Millions marched against racial segregation and the Vietnam War. Women’s liberation went mainstream, and the fight for lesbian and gay rights began. But the sixties were also a time of counter-revolution, a moment when many of the radical forces that became prominent on January 6th, 2021 really began to gain mom...

In a 24/7 news environment, everyone is surrounded by information. Some of it is true. Some of it’s false and much of it is somewhere in the middle. It’s often hard to tell what’s true because no one is an expert at everything. And that’s why social media has become universal. Now we’ve seen a new type of journalist emerge, fact checkers, and that’s a fascinating commentary on their importance to...

People often say that we live in the “information age.” But what does that mean? It means that people living today on earth have the world’s knowledge at our fingertips. All of us can read high quality scientific research, even before it’s published in academic journals. You can look up everything from great lasagna recipes to the latest news about Malaysian politics, and everything in between. Ha...

American politics is broken in a lot of ways. There are many reasons for this. A big one is what podcaster and former CNN host Michele Mitchell calls the “anger industrial complex,” the way that media companies are constantly working to keep their audiences angry all the time.  It’s no grand conspiracy, rather it’s managers pursuing the natural incentives of for-profit media to keep ratings up, no...

A lot of people know about the “Southern Strategy,” the multi-year plan of 20th century Republicans like Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon to get white voters in the South to stop voting for Democrats. But what isn’t widely known is that the GOP itself was changed by the electoral coalition that it attracted. While lingering support for racial segregation played an important role in flipping the S...

While the Republican Party’s embrace of authoritarianism has attracted a lot of media attention in recent years, the Democratic Party’s inability to build a real political majority is a big reason that American conservatives haven’t had to drop their unpopular views about government.  After all, if Democrats were better at diagnosing and meeting the needs of the public, anti-government Republicans...

In recent American history, the mainstream media has adhered to a “both sides” approach to covering politics. But as the Republican party has increasingly become skeptical of democracy and public participation in policy formation, this method is no longer useful as a way of determining the truth. In this episode, Eric Boehlert, founder and editor of PressRun. Media , talks with host Matthew Sheffi...

As the Covid-19 infections continue to rise among non-vaccinated people, it’s worth taking a look at the history of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and unqualified media medical advice. In this episode, Theory of Change host Matthew Sheffield is joined by Richard Carpiano, a Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Riverside. Carpiano is a medical sociologist and public and pop...

Pat Bagley has become a fixture in Utah politics and one of America’s best-known editorial cartoonists. In this episode of Theory of Change, he joins Matthew Sheffield to discuss how the LDS Mormon faith he was raised in has changed over his career and how it’s become much more similar to the Protestant evangelicalism it once despised. They also discuss Bagley’s earlier career as a Mormon children...

A huge part of why American politics is in crisis today is the country’s for-profit media ecosystem that prioritizes controversy, eschews policy discussions, and has no understanding of how important Christian fundamentalism is to conservative ideologues. In the first video stream episode of Theory of Change, Matthew Sheffield speaks with Parker Molloy, founder of  The Present Age  about how bad t...

Every podcast has its “lost episodes.” Or at least that’s what podcasters tell themselves. But booking, producing, and hosting a podcast all by yourself is a lot of work--and technical issues can make that especially difficult. I started “Theory of Change” in 2019 but suspended it for about a year and a half due to some problems with my recording and editing setup. In 2021, I brought the show back...

The internet and the explosion of free political content that it created has had a dramatic effect on the media industry. One sector of journalism that’s been particularly harmed in recent years is editorial cartooning. Ten years ago, most major-city daily newspapers employed artists to draw their takes on the news of the day. Now, however, the ranks of editorial cartoonists have shrunk drasticall...

If you read, listen or watch the news today it’s impossible to avoid public opinion polls. They are literally everywhere. The president’s approval rating, what people think about impeachment, even what the best fast food restaurant is. But as omnipresent as opinion surveys are, a lot of the math and science that goes into them is relatively unknown to many people. There are also a lot of questions...

There’s been a lot of commentary about how Donald Trump is changing the Republican Party. There’s even a cottage industry of former Republicans who often write about how Trump has ruined the GOP they once knew and loved. But according to Bruce Bartlett, a former senior White House economic adviser to President Bush 41, most of what today’s Trump skeptics point to as something new in the party was...

As the actual voting in the Democratic presidential primary gets closer, the race is becoming tighter, both numerically and emotionally. Some wealthy Democratic donors appear to be panicking as the candidate they’ve gravitated toward, Joe Biden, has had trouble in debates and also demonstrated significant problems appealing to the small-dollar donors that have become so important in Democratic pre...

How do you impeach a president? As a legal matter, it's all very simple. But as a political matter, it's anything but. Impeaching and removing a president has never been done before in the American political system. Even impeachment trials themselves are extremely rare in the history of the Republic. Only two presidents, Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, have been impeached while Richard Nixon resi...

Republicans have taken control of dozens of state governments since the mid-1990s. But despite having complete authority in many state legislatures and governors’ mansions, GOP elected officials have not managed to accomplish much. That’s the argument of Red State Blues: How the Conservative Revolution Stalled in the States, a new book by Michigan State University political scientist professor Mat...