Radio-Owls: Recent Episodes
Andrew McBurney
Weekly current events discussion with a focus on government, politics, and history. Student questions often answered with new questions. Perspectives you may not have considered. Post questions & comments for discussion. Send questions for new podcasts to my Twitter DM's @aemcburney or through Google Classroom (if you're one of my students). Everyone welcome.
A discussion of the meaning and intent of the Thirteenth Amendment, and what it might have meant for the United States.
Recollections of the neighborhood in Flint, Michigan, where my mother grew up, and thoughts on what makes America great.
Civil Rights isn't a Chapter 5 thing; it's a right now thing. In this short episode, I discuss a few current events but focus on a recommendation for a book: Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America, by Wil Haygood.
The 25th Amendment was designed to provide continuity at the highest levels of our government in the event the President becomes incapacitated. Lately, it has been floated as a mechanism for removing a problematic president. This presents a problem.
In this episode, I discuss some of the historical underpinnings and constitutional foundations of the Civil Rights Movement. However, it is always important to remember, that civil rights is not relegated to a mere historical "era;" rather, it is a part of the law of our land, and represents the ever-present effort to achieve equal opportunity and equal justice under law.
There are, I believe, three major challenges to the United States right now. By "major challenges" I mean trends that historians a thousand years from now would be looking at when analyzing long-term causes and effects for whatever is going to happen next. One thing they all have in common: whatever does happen next, will be up to us.
In recent years, in our public discourse, arguments have become distilled down to the point they could be considered memes--not the ubiquitous, clever social media images--but memes more in the sense of how Richard Dawkins meant it when he coined the term in 1976. The proliferation--or even weaponization--of arguments as memes can have a negative effect on our public discourse, as we abandon complete sentences and complete thoughts and open-mindedness for standardized snap-arguments that people keep in their social media argument toolkit. What can we do? Each one of us can read and listen carefully and critically, and above all, spend the time to actually think about what you think.
I was taught as I was growing up, "Don't believe everything you read or hear." Even before the advent of the 24-hour news networks and the Internet and social media, it was important to read the news with a critical eye. This episode will help act as a foundation for future current events discussions, where we not only look at the event itself, but practice evaluating the reporting on it, and developing informed opinions on people's reactions and the general impact of the news.
It isn't necessarily easy to speak with authority on lessons of history for democracy. While the Framers of the Constitution certainly relied on lessons of history when forming our government, it is only relatively recently that the world has seen so many nations become representative democracies. This episode will discuss three lessons of history regarding democracies.
In this brief episode, I discuss some misconceptions about the right of revolution; as well as some things about natural rights, our government, and our relationship to it.
In this pilot episode, I discuss impeachment generally, as it is described in the Constitution, and then I discuss some things I think are of note in our current political discourse.
In this inaugural podcast, I introduce myself and discuss some of the important lessons of history I have learned that I pass on to my students.