Shows / Crisis in Perception
Crisis in Perception
Crisis in Perception is a long-form educational podcast examining how we misunderstand the world around us. Using books as entry points, each episode explores history, psychology, economics, science, and power structures to reveal how systems actually work—and why our perceptions so often fail. Clear, evidence-based, and non-tribal. Crisis in Perception uses AI-assisted tools for narration and synthesis in service of long-form educational analysis.
Episodes
Crisis in PerceptionSelling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945–60 — Making Common Sense
How does a contested political idea become familiar enough to feel like common sense? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our…
Crisis in PerceptionRaw Deal: How the “Uber Economy” and Runaway Capitalism Are Screwing American Workers — Who Pays?
What happens when technological flexibility makes work easier to buy, but harder to live on? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems…
Crisis in PerceptionEnvisioning a future without food waste and food poverty — When Abundance Fails
How can a food system create enormous abundance while simultaneously producing waste, hunger, and unhealthy diets? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we…
Crisis in PerceptionLabor’s Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the Working-Class Family in America — Jobs, Marriage, Class
What happens to family stability when the economic foundation supporting a particular family model begins to disappear? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where…
Crisis in PerceptionSocialist Reconstruction: A Better Future for the United States — Who Controls the System?
Who decides what an economy is ultimately organized to accomplish—and what changes when ownership itself becomes the variable under investigation? Welcome to…
Crisis in PerceptionChe: A Graphic Biography — How Revolutionary Movements Transform People and Power
Che Guevara is often remembered as an icon. This episode asks what becomes visible when we reconstruct the systems behind the image. Welcome to Crisis in…
Crisis in PerceptionThe Battle Lines Have Been Drawn on the Green New Deal — Climate Policy as a System
What changes when climate disruption, work, health, inequality, and political power are treated as parts of the same system? Welcome to Crisis in Perception…
Crisis in PerceptionA People's History of American Empire: A Graphic Adaptation — How Power Expands
What if wars, territorial expansion, labor conflict, and political repression become easier to understand when we examine the systems connecting them across…
Crisis in PerceptionThe Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy — When Markets Gain Leverage
What happens when democratic governments still possess formal authority, but increasingly compete for the investment and cooperation of economic actors they…
Crisis in PerceptionOn Practice and Contradiction — How Theory Changes Through Practice
What happens when reality stops fitting the theory meant to explain it? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using…
Crisis in PerceptionThe Death of Stalin — How Fear Makes Power Fragile
A government can concentrate enormous power while simultaneously damaging its own ability to understand what is happening inside it. Welcome to Crisis in…
Crisis in PerceptionCHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties — How Stories Become History
How does an official explanation become accepted history—and what should happen when later evidence reveals that important pieces never fit cleanly? Welcome to…
Crisis in PerceptionBreaking Rockefeller: The Incredible Story of the Ambitious Rivals Who Toppled an Oil Empire
What actually breaks a monopoly when the monopoly controls much of the system in which competitors must operate? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we…
Crisis in PerceptionSo Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government — Money & Power
What happens when political fundraising, lobbying, access, and private career incentives begin reinforcing one another? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where…
Crisis in PerceptionDeath of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Year — The Cost of Dissent
Martin Luther King Jr. is often remembered through the parts of his message that eventually became part of America’s national memory. His final year presents a…
Crisis in PerceptionAbolish Rent — When Housing Becomes a Power Relationship
What looks like a housing affordability problem can also reveal a deeper question: who holds power over the places people need to live? Welcome to Crisis in…
Crisis in PerceptionThe Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life — How Mortality Shapes Meaning and Belief
What if the awareness of death influences human behavior most powerfully when we are not consciously thinking about dying? Welcome to Crisis in Perception…
Crisis in PerceptionFault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974 — How Division Became Structural
What if America’s political division is less a recent rupture than the result of pressures accumulating across interconnected systems for decades? Welcome to…
Crisis in PerceptionOne Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America — When Tradition Is Made
How does a political idea become so deeply embedded in public life that people eventually experience it as tradition? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we…
Crisis in PerceptionWhite Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism — When Segregation Changed Form
What happens when an older political arrangement becomes unsustainable but the incentives and conflicts underneath it remain? Welcome to Crisis in Perception…
Crisis in PerceptionReligion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion — Ritual Without Belief
What happens when supernatural belief disappears but the human needs religion organized remain? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems…
Crisis in PerceptionThe Trouble With Big Data — When Data Becomes the Reality
We often assume that more data produces a clearer picture of reality. But what if the systems that make information easier to process also determine what…
Crisis in PerceptionBoomerang: Travels in the New Third World — When Private Risk Becomes Public Debt
What happens when the financial system prevents a collapse by moving the losses somewhere else? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems…
Crisis in PerceptionPrinceton Readings in American Politics — How Power Actually Works
Power is easy to picture as something held by presidents, parties, corporations, institutions, or elites. It becomes much harder—and more revealing—when we ask…
Crisis in PerceptionHow to Resist Amazon and Why — The Hidden Costs of Convenience
The convenience of buying almost anything with a click can make the transaction look simple. The system producing that convenience is anything but simple…
Crisis in PerceptionHow to Protect Bookstores and Why: The Present and Future of Bookselling — Community Infrastructure
What disappears when a bookstore closes besides a place to buy books? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using…
Crisis in PerceptionThree Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way — When Broadcast Dominance Broke
What happens when an institution built around mass reach and public responsibility loses the environment that made its dominance possible? Welcome to Crisis in…
Crisis in PerceptionLet Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality
How can a political coalition remain powerful when the groups inside it do not necessarily share the same economic interests? Welcome to Crisis in Perception…
Crisis in PerceptionGoogled: The End of the World as We Know It — How Data Rewired Media
What happens when an industry built on relationships and uncertain measurement collides with a system designed to quantify attention? Welcome to Crisis in…
Crisis in PerceptionDown and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film — The Indie Machine
Independent cinema emerged as an alternative to Hollywood. Its success eventually created a powerful system of its own. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where…
Crisis in PerceptionEasy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ’n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood
Hollywood’s director-driven revolution of the 1970s is often remembered as a triumph of artistic rebellion. Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls reveals a…
Crisis in PerceptionConscious Uncoupling: 5 Steps to Living Happily Even After — Why Breakups Become Battles
A breakup can end a relationship while keeping its emotional system alive. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world…
Crisis in PerceptionChina's Great Road — Who Directs Development?
China's rise is often interpreted as evidence that markets displaced socialism. John Ross argues that this framing misses the institutional structure beneath…
Crisis in PerceptionGone Girl — When Identity Becomes Performance
How well can we know another person when both people are constantly shaping themselves for each other? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the…
Crisis in PerceptionWhen Thoughts and Prayers Aren’t Enough — The Hidden Aftermath of Gun Violence
The gunfire may last minutes. The consequences can continue for a lifetime. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world…
Crisis in PerceptionFear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 — How Campaign Narratives Shape Reality
What happens when reporting on a political campaign becomes part of the system shaping the campaign itself? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine…
Crisis in PerceptionExpand Social Security Now!: How to Ensure Americans Get the Retirement They Deserve — Risk Transfer
Retirement may look like an individual financial challenge, but underneath it lies a larger question: who is actually responsible for carrying the risks of old…
Crisis in PerceptionThe Jungle — When Hard Work Doesn't Create Security
What happens when working harder makes you more useful to a system without making you more secure inside it? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine…
Crisis in PerceptionFixing Elections: The Failure of America’s Winner Take All Politics — When Rules Shape Power
What if some of the political behavior we blame on candidates and parties is partly shaped by the rules under which they compete? Welcome to Crisis in…
Crisis in PerceptionMedia Capture: How Money, Digital Platforms, and Governments Control the News — The Dependency Trap
A press can be formally free while becoming increasingly dependent on the institutions that finance, distribute, and technically enable journalism. Welcome to…
Crisis in PerceptionStar-Spangled Jesus: Leaving Christian Nationalism and Finding a True Faith — Faith, Nation & Power
How can faith, national identity, and political loyalty become so intertwined that challenging one begins to feel like challenging all three? Welcome to Crisis…
Crisis in PerceptionThe World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress — When Institutions Depend on Power
What happens when institutions expected to challenge power become increasingly dependent on access to that power? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we…
Crisis in PerceptionWho Will Tell the People: The Betrayal of American Democracy — When Feedback Fails
What happens when democratic institutions remain visible but the feedback connecting citizens to governing power begins to fail? Welcome to Crisis in…
Crisis in PerceptionRepublic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It — Dependence Corruption
What if political corruption does not require corrupt politicians? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world. Using…
Crisis in PerceptionThe Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred — Who Gets to See?
The laws of physics may be universal. The institutions through which humanity investigates them are not outside society. Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where…
Crisis in PerceptionWe Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For — Why Democracy Can't Be Outsourced
What happens when democratic responsibility becomes concentrated in the people we call leaders? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems…
Crisis in PerceptionAbe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times — How Culture Shaped Lincoln
What if Abraham Lincoln’s political power came not from rising above his culture, but from understanding it deeply enough to reshape it? Welcome to Crisis in…
Crisis in PerceptionAbolition Now!: Ten Years of Strategy and Struggle Against the Prison Industrial Complex
What has to be built before a society can become less dependent on punishment? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world…
Crisis in PerceptionElite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) — Captured Power
What if a movement can become more representative while the deeper distribution of power barely changes? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the…
Crisis in PerceptionBoss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago — How Political Machines Turn Service Into Power
How does political power become durable enough to survive criticism, social change, and even the people who originally built it? Welcome to Crisis in…
Crisis in PerceptionRace: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession — The Feedback Loop of Bias
Racism is often treated as something people consciously believe. Studs Terkel's interviews reveal a more difficult possibility: racial assumptions can continue…
Crisis in PerceptionThe Untold History of the United States — How American Power Became a System
What if American foreign policy is shaped not only by presidents and crises, but by institutions inherited from earlier generations? Welcome to Crisis in…
Crisis in PerceptionWorking — Why Some Jobs Give Dignity and Others Take It Away
What if the deepest problem with work is not how hard we labor, but whether we can still see ourselves in what we do? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we…
Crisis in PerceptionThe Power of Myth — How Stories Become Social Infrastructure
What happens when a society outgrows the stories that once helped people understand who they are—but has not yet developed new ones? Welcome to Crisis in…
Crisis in PerceptionBury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West — When the Frontier Closed In
The American West is often remembered as a frontier being opened. Dee Brown asks us to turn around and examine what that same expansion looked like to the…
Crisis in PerceptionWith Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful
What happens when the law remains the same on paper, but accountability changes according to who has power? Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine…
Crisis in PerceptionThe Hidden History of American Democracy — Who Invented Democracy?
Where do democratic ideas actually come from—and what disappears when history reduces their origins to a single intellectual tradition? Welcome to Crisis in…
Crisis in PerceptionThe Hidden History of Big Brother in America — How Surveillance Becomes Power
What happens when the institutions watching us become increasingly powerful while the systems doing the watching remain largely invisible? Welcome to Crisis in…
Crisis in PerceptionThe Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care — Who Gets Care?
What if the defining question in health care is not whether government or markets should run the system, but who the system is obligated to include? Welcome to…
Crisis in PerceptionThe Opioid Fix: America’s Addiction Crisis and the Solution They Don’t Want You to Have
What happens when an effective medical treatment exists, but the system surrounding addiction makes it unusually difficult to receive? Welcome to Crisis in…