Flux Podcasts (Formerly Theory of Change)

Episode Summary

Politics in the United States and everywhere else has always been about policy—which party wants to do this, which party wants to do that. But in the 21st century, a new dimension has been added: true and false.

That reality has become a serious problem for left-of-center political parties, because they have traditionally oriented themselves around an affinity for science and reason.

As a result, right-wing parties wit...

Episode Summary

Many people expected that Donald Trump's fate would be decided by women last year. It was, after all, the first presidential race since the Republican-dominated Supreme Court had decided to roll back a national right to abortion.

But Trump upended that possibility by deciding to run a campaign that was focused very heavily on men and trying to attract the votes of men who didn’t commonly participate in voting.

That’s ...

Episode Summary

 Ever since he came back into office, Donald Trump has messed up a lot of things. The judiciary, the budget, federal employees, foreign policy, you name it. But we can’t forget that America’s economic, political, and religious systems were already failing a lot of people long before he ever came on the scene. That’s especially ...

Episode Summary

The Trump Administration's wars on federal employees and research science are getting a lot of headlines, but there's a third war that's being conducted by the radical right that doesn't get nearly as much attention as it should, and that is its efforts to control Americans’ bodily autonomy.

Whether it’s trying to outlaw abortion, even in cases of rape or incest, or trying to place restrictions on birth control, the ...

Episode Summary

Donald Trump's second presidential administration has been remarkably different from his first one, primarily through his acceptance of long-standing reactionary goals to attack government and expertise—particularly federal agencies that produce and teach science such as NASA, the National Institutes for Health, and the Department of Education. What’s curious about this assault on science is that while it aligns per...

Episode Summary  

For decades, the American far-right has been screeching constantly that its activists and politicians are being censored by “cancel culture.” It’s nonsense, of course, because almost invariably everyone who supposed canceled ends up with a huge media following and a very profitable victim narrative.

But the lies about mass censorship of reactionaries and conservatives aren’t just about manipulating the public into f...