Where We Go Next

What does it mean to be vulnerable at scale? To go out on a limb and lay bare not just one's opinions, but the private details of a life? The most effective political writing often exists at the intersection of quantitative data and personal anecdote. A writer's argument - if it is to convince - must accurately speak to the external reality we all share while inviting us to understand the author's...

“Black” is not a synonym for “poor.” But one could be forgiven for thinking that it were based on the way so many people talk about race in this country. The majority of Black Americans are in the middle class or above, yet the national imagination often seems to struggle to reflect this reality. And those who are living in poverty are often the last ones to tell their own stories. Bertrand Cooper...

When was the last time you were really, truly curious about something? Something new, different, foreign, uncomfortable, even? And not just a passing glance, or a quick perusal, but a deep, active interest that takes you places you never thought you'd go? Director of Digital & Storytelling at Braver Angels Mónica Guzmán believes that for us to better understand our world and each other we must be...

Policing - as both an action and a concept - has been on the front page and at the front of many of our minds over the last several years, as we've reexamined our assumptions around its utility and purpose. When is law enforcement actually needed? When does it go too far? And what does good policing look like? Criminology professor and former Baltimore police officer Peter Moskos has combined his...

The first episode of Where We Go Next was recorded just over a year ago. We've talked about a range of subjects since then - from nuclear power, to mRNA vaccines, from Maslow's hierarchy of needs to Montessori's method, just to name a few. But a recurring theme of the podcast - guest after guest - has been identity. How do we understand ourselves and how do we understand one another? How do we cre...

Should a storyteller's identity define what stories they're allowed to tell? Does our sex, race, or sexuality set the boundaries around either the fictions we can dream up or the nonfictions we investigate and explore? Filmmaker Nadia Gill is speaking out against a worrying trend within her industry that suggests storytelling might be better off if we all simply kept to "our own." Encompass Films...

What happens when you're suddenly thrust into the spotlight at the intersection of two of the most pressing topics of our day - the criminal justice system, and the COVID-19 vaccine? Emergency medical physician Dr. Hasan Gokal found himself in the middle of a firestorm after he spent one fateful evening trying to do the right thing. The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired. - The New Y...

Being a "heterodox thinker" often involves being exceedingly content with a whole bunch of people disliking you. Sometimes it's people to the Right of you, then people to the Left, and folks who were your strongest allies two days ago may suddenly hate your guts next Thursday. This is not to say that people who are consistently in one camp aren't principled - far from it. It's more that all of tha...

It's good to push yourself to think differently - to reexamine your priors, question your beliefs, and change your mind. But it's not enough to switch from Right to Left, or Left to Right, or from Heterodox Pepsi to Heterodox Coke. Introspection is a train without a station - something that should keep going. Writer and YouTube host Brittany Talissa King returns to discuss the sometimes difficult...

While the United States is now recovering from a year of death, disease, and economic destruction, we still don't know exactly where or how Covid-19 actually began. Molecular biologist Dr. Alina Chan has spent the last year investigating the true origins of the virus, long before it was politically convenient to do so. COVID-19 CoV Genetics - Global Lineage Surveillance Coronavirus: Facebook Rever...

Have you ever found yourself so gripped in the throes of a conflict - with a friend, a family member, some stranger online - that you're blinded by a kind of rage that feels like it could overtake you at any moment? Have you found yourself questioning the other person's sanity, baffled as to why they would ever believe what they believe? Then you've experienced what is known as High Conflict. Best...

What does it mean to have luck? Good luck, or bad? Is luck something that only happens selectively, or is our entire existence a kind of luck that we've had zero control over? And if that's true - what does it mean for our society? What does it say about our educational system, our criminal justice system, and how we treat and empathize with each other? What does it mean for our world if all of us...

How do we define our "tribes"? That's a word that gets thrown around a lot these days - political tribes, ideological tribes, religious tribes, national tribes... it's just tribalism all the way down. Tribalism, factionalism - whatever you want to call "strong loyalty to one's own social group" - has been with us forever, and we'll never be rid of it. But we can redefine and expand our tribes to i...

How often do you think about how you access the internet? Not in the general sense, but the actual act of accessing it: the descriptive text you read underneath an item for sale, the buttons you click or tap to signal an intent or complete an action, or an input field to type a credit card number, select a country or state, or scroll through a set of dates. This is the stuff that, for many of us,...

If there's anything we've learned over the last year, it's that it's not enough to get important information right - you have to communicate that information successfully, too. Because if the data you need to share isn't being heard by the very people that need to hear it, it may as well not exist! Social media consultant and communication specialist Sarah Mojarad teaches and advocates for effecti...

How do you know what's true, and what's false? What's right, or wrong? How do you know... what you know? You likely heard all of it somewhere, and for you to hear it, somebody had to say it. Because for us to be able to figure out what's true - in order to form a more perfect union - we must be able to speak with one another, freely. Greg Lukianoff, President and CEO of the Foundation for Individu...

The vaccines are here, and they're amazing. But there's still so much pessimism and confusion about how effective these vaccines actually are, which ones are "best," and what anyone can actually do after they've been vaccinated. This is a special episode, to get you justifiably excited about the rest of the year, and your life going forward. Share it with friends and family who are doubtful or sca...

These days, when we hear the phrase "growing up," it tends to mostly reference the growth in inches and feet. But for a child to a grow up, they don't just need to physically grow, they need to grow mentally and emotionally as well. The recent cultural normalization of what is colloquially referred to as "helicopter parenting" has brought with it ever-hovering adults and minute-by-minute-scheduled...

Children need adults. They need them for guidance, for discipline, for inspiration, and of course, formal education. But often when we talk about education, our attention is almost exclusively focused on those adults. What are they doing right? What are they doing wrong? What are they doing too much or too little of, and how can we stop them? And we too often lose sight of how the children are act...

In John Rawls' 1971 book, A Theory of Justice , he offers a thought experiment known as the Veil of Ignorance . Behind this veil, no knows who they are. They don't know their race, class, age, sex, privileges, disadvantages, or even their personality. Only once they step through the veil will they know their place in society. But before they take that step, they are tasked with designing it - its...

Social distancing has separated us from the ones we care about, and cut us off from the day-to-day lives we've so long known. The mental and emotional toll of this prolonged isolation has been excruciating for many. But can we find a silver lining? May we use this time to become better friends and better partners, even fuller versions of ourselves? Humanistic psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman offer...

Society has got you figured out: they talk about you like they know you, like you're part of a collective. They take a group, and pair it with either an adjective or a noun. "White this." "Black that." There's too many of "you," and too few of "them." You talk like this long enough, and it can be easy to slip into a way of thinking about other people that makes them sound so different from you, an...

Why does nothing seem to make sense, anymore? Why do all of our important words seem so slippery, and our definitions ever harder to define? What is a liberal? What really is a conservative? And what does 'liberalism' - the philosophy that undergirds the foundation of American society - actually mean today? Writer and filmmaker Jay Shapiro has spent much of his life trying to figure out society's...

Climate change is a pressing issue that requires both our attention and our action. But why does so much of modern environmental activism seem to come from one side of the aisle? The American Conservation Coalition's Quill Robinson offers a conservative case for solving climate change. American Conservation Coalition Trump Is Out of Touch With Republican Voters on Climate Change , by Quill Robinso...

Racism is real. Its devastating historical effects can still be felt today, and the misguided and harmful beliefs that we've inherited from previous generations can have a profound impact on how we see and treat one another. The anti-racist movement is a response to these injustices, and anti-racism training has sprung up across private and public businesses. But is there only one way to do anti-r...