Heterodox Americana: Recent Episodes
Raphael Freeman; Angie Backues
A nuanced and balanced look at the forces that unite and separate us as a society. Thoughtful conversations that touch on the psychology of political, moral, and spiritual thought
Angie goes to Prague and regales us with story of food, castles, and Eastern European delights
Raphael started taking daily cold showers in July. What resulted from this practice was completely unexpected.
You may notalways get what you want in a relationship, but not asking for what is and keeping your desires hidden is a surer way to not get it. In this episode we look at emotional asymmetry in relationships and the notion of "showing up" for yourself.
Apparently the complicated re-emergence of people and culture now has to content with the complicated re-emergence of COVID-19. As the Delta variant spreads throughout the world, we again have to contend with the same set of spirit-sinking decisions. Nobody ever said global pandemics would be easy.
We talk about how to expand the contents of your mind and, by extension, the mind itself. We deal with some possibly helpful approaches to dealing with rumination, and how to use novel mental representations to change the quality of your life.
Going from quarantine to socializing again has been super weird for lots of people. That, plus... what to do about this vaccine thing, anyway? To vaccinate or not to vaccinate? That is the question.
In this episode, we talk about more than just cancel culture and wokism, we also talk about the changing nature of our economy, the impact of the gig economy, job security (career security, really) and the slow death of our universities. Where are we headed?
A continuation on our discussion of how to be thoughtful about raising daughters with an eye toward the development of their full humanity. This time we talk about the general cultural discourse around menstruation.
The first part of a 7-part series on raising emotionally healthy daughters. This first part addresses the subtle, inadvertent sexualization that happens to so many girls even at home. We talk about how to recognize it and what to do about it. An important discussion even if you don't have daughters, but especially if you do.
Whether in electoral politics or at the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, how can we make sense of the seemingly irrational behavior of people who act against their own best interests. Hint: their "best" interests is not what we say it is. We explore the layers of decisions and interest in this episode.
Are we tired of doing this yet? Figuring out protocols are inherently challenging for our automatic thinking brains. How to act in a pandemic is beyond whatever intuitive mechanism has evolved in us as a species. Outside of scientific/mechanistic/strategic thinking there is simply no way to understand something as small as a virus. What we do in its presence should be informed by protocol; not hubris.
Also... Zombies!
A continuation of our discussion in E51 around parenting, this time we look at parental relationships with younger children where considerations of "prestige" don't necessarily apply. Instead, we ask, "What do we want for our children?", and we examine competing ideas of child happiness.
Somehow this episode morphed into a discussion about the impact of prestige and prestige-seeking behavior on kids. We started off with a wider intention of understanding the parent-child relationship, but ended up focused on this narrow aspect.
We'll continue the wider discussion (including exploration, attachment, and mirroring) in future episodes
If there's a single pernicious idea that dogs our ability to contribute, it's that the world is zero-sum and there's not "enough". We try our best to elucidate the scarcity mindset and offer ways toward a path of abundance (literally and metaphorically [and metaphysically?]). There is enough for nearly all of us but our functional fixedness prevents us from seeing the what's available.
In Ep.26 "The Art of Mansplaining", we talked about the phenomenon that so many women feel as Raphael was insisting that, "it's not a thing." This time we explore if there is any reality to a feeling that so many people have. We compare the phenomena of 'whitesplaining', 'goysplaining', 'straightsplaining' and 'cissplaining' and ask, "what's actually happenning, here?"
We're all arguing about the wrong stuff; the wrong identity politics; the wrong "us". We explored identity politics in Episode 5, but we weren't able to drill down and take a deep examination of the question, "what is identity?" and "what is a group (with respect to group identity)?" This is an exploration of how identity works and the necessity to re-orient politics (in a non-kumbaya way). What's at stake is clear to some, but not-so-obvious to most. We're on the verge of something catastrophic and identity is at the center of it.
Stewardship is the process of taking care of the think that you already have... so that you can keep having it. While the value of this is obvious to good stewards and makes enough sense to the rest of us, in general... we don't do it. If we did, the "check engine" light wouldn't exist.
We explore the psychological difficulties of stewardship vs expediency and the associated pay-offs. It's NOT pretty.
Is it possible to think about sin in neurobiological terms? What if sin is real and not just confined to what we learned from religious realms. In this episode we bounce around an idea that sin is an emotion with its own biochemistry and something that we can all relate to. We use some recent breakthroughs in the biochemical understanding of emotion to frame the conversation.
If sin is real, then what is it's evolutionary or biological purpose. This is the topic we'll explore, here. Hold on to your religious or atheistic chairs. We're going in.
We loop back around to ways of thinking about mental health during a pandemic. Obviously the US is suffering disproportionately in this regard, but the underlying perspectives are applicable universally.
Let us know what you think!
I sit with Victor Jackson—an insightful, young thought leader in Philadelphia—and we hash out, among other things the US’s unique refusal to be accountable, the false promise of full inclusion, and the pitfalls of socially constructed identities
*explicit language
We talk with Dave Ramsey (daveramseymusic.com) about the potential social landmines of talking about opinion that break from received orthodoxy. Much of this episode refers to Sam Harris's podcast episode: Can we pull back from the brink? (https://samharris.org/podcasts/207-can-pull-back-brink), but our discussion should be robust enough to stand alone as we discuss these core issues.
We also talk about what the data disparities around police shootings of unarmed black men really says, and the cultural shifts after the George Floyd moment. Let us know what you think!
We struggled with this title, but this is actually a good show. We talk about strategies for organizing the things you can control, how to build better models of your social world. We both found it really helpful to hash these idea out. Let us know what you think.
We talk with community organizer and activist Ben Blei and try to get a perspective on the role White people have to play in helping all Americans to get freer
Things feel different in the United States. If this energy will last, we won't know. But I'm nervously optimistic that we might end up in a new place. A better place. Time will tell
With a spotlight finally shone on the problem lethal force used police departments across the U.S., how do we make sense of the death of Mr. Floyd and explain just why his case is both emblematic of the problem and vastly different in its presentation. How did we get here?
We just take a look at what happening in our cities and talk about the murder of George Floyd as well as some of the broader implications. This episode was hard.
We hint and the dual traditions of thinking about what makes life worth living, but mostly look at contemporary manifestations of how to live a life of meaning and how to live a life of joy. They're not the same but they overlap. But in what way and how do they differ? Can you have Joy without meaning or meaning without joy? The works of Jordan Peterson and Martin Seligman help us to explore this dichotomy.
With so many systems breaking down, how do we best prepare for the future? We're talking not just thriving, but for some, actually survival. We explore the perils of homeostasis and talk a little about how our relationship with meat might be irrevocably altered.
Questions are perhaps the most powerful tool which allows us to interrogate the worlds inside and outside of us. Yet many of us don't ask enough question and end up trapped in our own thinking
We discuss how the 18th century conflict of slavery informed the way we cast states' rights and how the culture of "states' rights" informs our response to the pandemic
Less that 24 hours after the suspension of Bernie Sanders's campaign, his hold-out supporters were being shamed and mocked by 'vote-blue' people. In this episode we examine the complexity of political preferences and try to understand why what may seem like an obvious choice to some, becomes far less obvious to those in radically different circumstances
Does denying our social instinct and keeping our distance rock the boat? Does it disrupt our social norms? You bet it does! Part of why social distancing is so hard is because, as hyper-social creatures, it goes against our evolutionary instinct to congregate and cooperate as groups.
Here, we looking at the glaring failings in our healthcare system, our lack of preparedness and the general American apathy toward fighting for our basic rights.
It's the end of the world as we know it; and I feel fine.
Let's talk about the corona virus, our new reality and try to strike a balance between the fearmongering and pretending that it's business as usual.
You can be frustrated or fascinated; bored or amazed. Here we look at the intersection of boredom, mindset, mindfulness, and savoring. Just like Beyonce, you can be your own best friend and enjoy your own company.
Connect with you! You don't need nobody else.
A meandering, but hopefully entertaining look at the phenomenon (non-phenomenon) of "mansplaining".
Sometimes the hand-wringing about the status of our romantic relationships or the lack of said relationship is enough to throw us into a tizzy. We end up sacrificing meaningful parts of what could be an amazing life by investing energy into the problems. But, is there another way?
In this episode we talk about what you can do instead of fretting.
In what is, perhaps, the most xenophobic moment in recent history, we try to take a look at the mechanics of xenophobia and think of ways to get back to a place of sanity
Reclaiming our time! This is not a show. This is a cutting room floor clip. We talk about communalism, the Amish, and some other stuff. It's from early on (around episode 3). Don't indulge us in this foolishness!
Episode 24 is coming in 6 hours when our time allotment renews.
Here we examine the source of all our pain. Dukkha. Angst. When our expectations don't match our current circumstances, we perceive that as pain. But what do we do about it?
What do we do with the "unknowns" in our life? Here we look at the reality of our information gap and how to deal with the emotional uncertainty that it produces. Special Guest: Lex Peters
We all have major mistakes in our lives. Hopefully, we learn from them. Angie and Raphael talk about their biggest mistakes and the impact that they created in their lives.
Can mere ideas actually destroy our relationships? In this episode, we explore some of the most harmful ideas to thriving in a relationship and try to offer some insights as to possible pathways to more fruitful relationships.
With the recent assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the United States may have triggered a chain of events that could easily spiral outside of our control. Democrats and their, "What's your strategy?" critiques and Republicans' "Dangerous pieces off the board" justification are irreconcilable. In this episode, we address why looking at the long-term strategy is ABSOLUTELY the right way to think about this and we examine the potential pitfalls of chessboard thinking and conventional warfare with an unconventional adversary.
So many questions left unanswered about our "Ask a Communist" episode. Here we try to tackle some of the realities of violence perpetrated by communist regimes... and by the United States and separate those acts of violence from the ideals espoused therein. Is it hypocritical to focus on the violence of one country and then turn a blind eye to the violence at home? Or is there something that they have in common? Something in the system. Let's find out!
What's the plan for your life? In this episode, we examine the pitfalls of not examining the conventional, standard Life Plan that most follow and talk about the benefits of designing your own life plan to get more out of life.
What stops us from living the lives that we really want to be living? A few questions that walk us down to path of self-discovery and living a life of absolute joy.
What happens if you test your limits? Two stories about defying external limitations and re-writing the narratives around what things are possible. Deeply personal and yet, universal.
We attempt to flesh out some of the ideas that were not fully developed in previous episodes. We also ask an important new question: How are we hiding? How do we integrate the Self. That and more. You ready for this?
What does it mean when we copy elements from a culture that is not our own? Is it stealing another person's culture? Is it wrong? Here we debate the idea of "cultural appropriation" and try to make sense of this often controversial tendency.
Context is important! It's part of the raw data we use to sculpt our idea of the world. We take a BRIEF historical tour of the Silk Road, power, wealth, and ultimately how we end up with riots in Ferguson and Baltimore. Are these events connected? Absolutely, here's how...
Capitalism has allowed us to leverage more human talent and ingenuity than perhaps any force in history. But how does it hurt us? In this episode we talk about two forces, that we generally call capitalism, that I argue are actually two different phenomena. Our identity as Americans is so tied to the idea of capitalism, however, that we cannot see how this "shadow capitalism" destroys our lives. Let's explore!
How does our model of the world affect what we see and understand? How do we escape this most essential of traps?
Here's how
What does it mean to be kind and how does that relate to our freedom? Here we explore the relationship between freedom, pain, and kindness. Can freedom exist without justice? Can justice exist without punishment? The answer is clear, but you'll have to tune in
Once you're free in and from your own mind, freedom follows everywhere else. But how do we get free. Here we look at the path to spiritual freedom and liberation from dukkha.
On this episode, we partially revisit identity in the context of class. Communist and psychotherapist, Brian gives his take on what we didn't consider on the topic of human emancipation and flourishing.
This time we tackle the White identity politics. Not the White nationalist, right-wing extremist variety; rather the more mainstream and insidious variety.
To do so, we deconstruct identity, examine (in brief) the history of Whiteness, and talk about the implications for the future of our society.
Make America Great Again? Well, that's loaded! We're going to try to unpack it and all that's going on around it. Before we get to MAGA, though, there are a few foundational concepts that we need to layout and explore. The first is identity politics. Hang on to your hats.
Here we cover the PERMA model for human thriving or flourishing. Since one of the goals of the show is to examine our ideas and understand how they impact our ability to thrive, it's probably helpful to know what we mean by, "thrive".
PERMA is about
- Positive emotions
- Engagement
- Relationships (positive)
- Meaning
- Achievement
More on the show notes at heterodoxamericana.com
Here, we look at Moral Foundations Theory and advocate for its effectiveness as a useful framework to contextualize people's political and moral behavior. The real power of the theory, is that it helps to drown out some of the noise of mutual disagreement and gives us the tools to focus on what we have in common. It's through focusing on our commonalities that we can move the crucial of conversations forward. This framework forms the backbone of how we analyze the differences between political camps.
Is this country spinning out of control? Is there anything we can do to repair the rift?
In the first two episodes we talk about the respective journeys of the two hosts and the overall intention to facilitate more conversations between increasingly separated and isolated political and identity groups.
Episode 2 talks about Angie's journey.
Is this country spinning out of control? Is there anything we can do to repair the rift?
In the first two episodes we talk about the respective journeys of the two hosts and the overall intention to facilitate more conversations between increasingly separated and isolated political and identity groups.
Episode 1 talks about Raphael's road to heterodoxy.