It's worth making it explicit each time you release one of these podcasts that it is available in Overcast (https://overcast.fm/+ABCdjNt75T4) [and, presumably, other podcast apps?]. I was very pleasantly surprised to find it there when I searched given that there's no mention in the email body.
You might have mentioned it in an earlier edition, but I'm only now beginning to take your podcast aspirations seriously now that there are more consistent episodes 😅
Worth it because I imagine there are plenty of people who are like me in that if a podcast isn't automatically injected into the feed of their podcasting app, their likelihood of hearing it goes down 90+%
I was disappointed on the the half about "Abundance." I acknowledge I'm a sore YIMBY, but I thought it was too dismissive without engaging in much substance. I was interested in your critique about its lack of a theory of change but a lot of the talk was guilt-by-association and superficial criticizing of its name with a random tangent about polyamory.
You mention that Derek Thompson has been everywhere promoting the book, so why not interview him and provide a challenge from the left and press them on their theory-of-change (or lack of).
Also regarding the part about degrowthers, I disagree about their influence being overstated. Paul Ehrlich's "Population Bomb" sold over 2 million copies and you can see how it influenced a lot of local and national policy in the 1970s that we are now feeling the effects of today. In my home state of Oregon, our most beloved governor, Tom McCall, famously declared the state to be full, and my understanding is that in California, planners were explicitly worried about growth management in implementing downzoning and whatnot.
All that to say, I don't usually listen to the podcasts (I'm usually short on time with my toddler running amok) so I get it if the vibe of the show is more casual than your otherwise excellent writing.
I listened to 20 minutes and then my kid gave a waffle to the dog, so I paused. When I came back, looks like I can't scrub to where I was and the 15 second jumps don't work either. Just letting you know so you can troubleshoot since it's a new thing. I'm on a newish iphone. Good stuff, though!
Huh, must be something on Substack's end, I'll look into it. You should be able to find the podcast on the big platforms as well, where at least it's scrubbable...
Hi Max- I enjoyed the ep. I particularly appreciated you sticking up for boring lib proceduralists. Obviously record-retention-rule compliance is not the biggest issue in the world, but imo the choice to host their chat ties in with real, substantive problems with trump 2.0. They're incredibly lawless. In marginal rule-of-law cases, who cares really, but they’re spitting in the eye of any legal limits or obligations, and exclusively for evil ends. Many tariffs, DOGE, immigration enforcement, etc. have either no legal basis or a hallucinated one. The American separation of powers set up is very dumb (I’m Canadian, we have different problems), but the admin’s operating outside of it sure seems to be hurtling you folks towards a constitutional crisis. As you said in the ep, it’s hard to build anything worthwhile acting like that, even if it works if you just want to break stuff.
I also think Sam’s beef with libs allegedly only taking issue with the Khalil situation on procedural grounds didn’t make a lot of sense. You can’t separate the substantive and procedural problems here. The admin disregarding Khalil’s procedural rights allowed them to violate his substantive rights (ie, kick him out of the country when he had a right to be here because of his speech). These things won’t always dovetail, but in this case they do.
I did also find it funny that in the first half, Sam’s position was that rules and procedures were bullshit, but in the second half (when someone cringe suggested trimming them) they’re very important. Maybe like with buzzfeed, you can take the boy out of Gawker but not the Gawker out of the boy.
I think everyone who has considered not having kids because of climate change is in some sense a degrowther, I think even being eco conscious and trying to avoid disposable plastics and reducing your carbon footprint can thought of as degrowth
Here's the best way, in my view, to articulate the sense in which someone who is upset by a politically-motivated deportation because it defied a court order (instead of because of the wrongness of the act itself) is still an ally, a comrade, and a fellow traveler...
Any left/progressive vision for a working, just, fair, effective political system, in fact, any vision for any future political system worth fighting for, assumes the existence of a stable, robust (but also flexible, dynamic and evolving) process by which we collectively establish a set of rules *and then agree to be constrained by them*. This is the operating system that is necessary for whatever specific vision of politics you are hoping to achieve, and one that, importantly, prevents the worst alternatives from prevailing.
A commitment to this principle is more important (and more practical) than the ability to "correctly" evaluate each individual policy for whether or not it is fair and just, or leads to the best outcomes, or makes the best trade-offs, or is otherwise best given whatever criteria you want to use.
Yes, "you can't deport your political enemies" is an obviously good policy, and it would be nice if everyone could just immediately perceive that. But most policies are not like that. It is impossible to enumerate all the correct policies, and doubly-impossible to expect everyone to agree on them. But we can achieve a working system that is fair, just, stable, and capable of error-correction. One that leads, reliably, inevitably, to the absence of politically-motivated deportations. As annoying as these rule-of-law sticklers might be, they are correct about the fundamental importance of this underlying principle. We should embrace them, loudly concur on this shared commitment, and *then* get them to recognize the specific harm of the crime in this particular case.
Listening to the episode and people like Altman are self pitying and have zero self awareness because he, like other groups (Technologists, centrist politics dipshit bloggers, etc) base their entire worldview and personality of whatever the opposite is of the handful of people on Twitter who make fun of them say. However much time you think these people spend on Twitter, take that number and multiply by 100. These people are stewing in this stuff at levels that we can’t comprehend and even though many of these people have power and literal access to political leaders, every time someone says they are a loser asshole under a tweet they get more red and mad than we can imagine.
It's worth making it explicit each time you release one of these podcasts that it is available in Overcast (https://overcast.fm/+ABCdjNt75T4) [and, presumably, other podcast apps?]. I was very pleasantly surprised to find it there when I searched given that there's no mention in the email body.
You might have mentioned it in an earlier edition, but I'm only now beginning to take your podcast aspirations seriously now that there are more consistent episodes 😅
Forgot to mention:
Worth it because I imagine there are plenty of people who are like me in that if a podcast isn't automatically injected into the feed of their podcasting app, their likelihood of hearing it goes down 90+%
I was disappointed on the the half about "Abundance." I acknowledge I'm a sore YIMBY, but I thought it was too dismissive without engaging in much substance. I was interested in your critique about its lack of a theory of change but a lot of the talk was guilt-by-association and superficial criticizing of its name with a random tangent about polyamory.
You mention that Derek Thompson has been everywhere promoting the book, so why not interview him and provide a challenge from the left and press them on their theory-of-change (or lack of).
Also regarding the part about degrowthers, I disagree about their influence being overstated. Paul Ehrlich's "Population Bomb" sold over 2 million copies and you can see how it influenced a lot of local and national policy in the 1970s that we are now feeling the effects of today. In my home state of Oregon, our most beloved governor, Tom McCall, famously declared the state to be full, and my understanding is that in California, planners were explicitly worried about growth management in implementing downzoning and whatnot.
All that to say, I don't usually listen to the podcasts (I'm usually short on time with my toddler running amok) so I get it if the vibe of the show is more casual than your otherwise excellent writing.
I listened to 20 minutes and then my kid gave a waffle to the dog, so I paused. When I came back, looks like I can't scrub to where I was and the 15 second jumps don't work either. Just letting you know so you can troubleshoot since it's a new thing. I'm on a newish iphone. Good stuff, though!
Huh, must be something on Substack's end, I'll look into it. You should be able to find the podcast on the big platforms as well, where at least it's scrubbable...
Hi Max- I enjoyed the ep. I particularly appreciated you sticking up for boring lib proceduralists. Obviously record-retention-rule compliance is not the biggest issue in the world, but imo the choice to host their chat ties in with real, substantive problems with trump 2.0. They're incredibly lawless. In marginal rule-of-law cases, who cares really, but they’re spitting in the eye of any legal limits or obligations, and exclusively for evil ends. Many tariffs, DOGE, immigration enforcement, etc. have either no legal basis or a hallucinated one. The American separation of powers set up is very dumb (I’m Canadian, we have different problems), but the admin’s operating outside of it sure seems to be hurtling you folks towards a constitutional crisis. As you said in the ep, it’s hard to build anything worthwhile acting like that, even if it works if you just want to break stuff.
I also think Sam’s beef with libs allegedly only taking issue with the Khalil situation on procedural grounds didn’t make a lot of sense. You can’t separate the substantive and procedural problems here. The admin disregarding Khalil’s procedural rights allowed them to violate his substantive rights (ie, kick him out of the country when he had a right to be here because of his speech). These things won’t always dovetail, but in this case they do.
I did also find it funny that in the first half, Sam’s position was that rules and procedures were bullshit, but in the second half (when someone cringe suggested trimming them) they’re very important. Maybe like with buzzfeed, you can take the boy out of Gawker but not the Gawker out of the boy.
I think everyone who has considered not having kids because of climate change is in some sense a degrowther, I think even being eco conscious and trying to avoid disposable plastics and reducing your carbon footprint can thought of as degrowth
Here's the best way, in my view, to articulate the sense in which someone who is upset by a politically-motivated deportation because it defied a court order (instead of because of the wrongness of the act itself) is still an ally, a comrade, and a fellow traveler...
Any left/progressive vision for a working, just, fair, effective political system, in fact, any vision for any future political system worth fighting for, assumes the existence of a stable, robust (but also flexible, dynamic and evolving) process by which we collectively establish a set of rules *and then agree to be constrained by them*. This is the operating system that is necessary for whatever specific vision of politics you are hoping to achieve, and one that, importantly, prevents the worst alternatives from prevailing.
A commitment to this principle is more important (and more practical) than the ability to "correctly" evaluate each individual policy for whether or not it is fair and just, or leads to the best outcomes, or makes the best trade-offs, or is otherwise best given whatever criteria you want to use.
Yes, "you can't deport your political enemies" is an obviously good policy, and it would be nice if everyone could just immediately perceive that. But most policies are not like that. It is impossible to enumerate all the correct policies, and doubly-impossible to expect everyone to agree on them. But we can achieve a working system that is fair, just, stable, and capable of error-correction. One that leads, reliably, inevitably, to the absence of politically-motivated deportations. As annoying as these rule-of-law sticklers might be, they are correct about the fundamental importance of this underlying principle. We should embrace them, loudly concur on this shared commitment, and *then* get them to recognize the specific harm of the crime in this particular case.
Listening to the episode and people like Altman are self pitying and have zero self awareness because he, like other groups (Technologists, centrist politics dipshit bloggers, etc) base their entire worldview and personality of whatever the opposite is of the handful of people on Twitter who make fun of them say. However much time you think these people spend on Twitter, take that number and multiply by 100. These people are stewing in this stuff at levels that we can’t comprehend and even though many of these people have power and literal access to political leaders, every time someone says they are a loser asshole under a tweet they get more red and mad than we can imagine.
This style of news roundup in conversation is exactly what I want from the Read Max pod. More please.
Imogen Heap wrote a song that can be sung along to, called Earth. https://youtube.com/watch?v=d_BduTO0UC8&si=xc5Ux_8SIdVOx7jl
“it actually is a huge bummer to have your suspicions about the operations of power be confirmed” 😅 10/10