The Podcast list

I cranked this out as a "filler" post, while I keep working on a few posts I have in queue.  I thought it might be fun and interesting to see what podcasts I listen to regularly, for news/current events and analysis.  I don't listen to every episode - that would be way too time-consuming - but these are the ones I listen to most often.  So, in no particular order, here they are.

• Deep State Radio is a twice-a-week roundtable discussion of significant political events.  The show's four regulars consist of two journalists (one from the Washington Post and the other from the New York Times), and a pair of academics.  There's also a steady series of guest commentators popping in and out.  Bonus points for the clever show name, too.
• Congressional Dish is a one-woman weekly podcast.  Jen Briney, the host, puts a lot of research into every episode.  I agree with 80-90% of what she says, depending on the episode, and I really commend her for producing a podcast that delivers a lot of useful information about Congressional bills that may affect all of us.
• Common Sense is a unique animal.  The host, (Dan Carlin, someone I've mentioned on the blog before)  is a self-described "political martian", but while his ideas are outside the mainstream, they're not really that farfetched.  Dan likes to take the long view, as in envisioning what things will look like if current trends continue for years or decades; and he's also a big history buff, so he's usually quick to say "Hey, we've done something like this before, and it didn't really work out well." He's a bit slow in getting out new episodes because his audio engineer is always sick (inside joke for people who remember the early episodes), but the wait is worth it.  EDIT (10/14): I just wanted to add a short postscript to this bullet point.  Since I published this post, I've learned that Dan Carlin will probably be discontinuing Common Sense - almost certainly for the short-term, and maybe even indefinitely.  This means we could be losing a popular political commentator with a unique perspective, and that's a huge loss.
• Ken Rudin's Political Junkie also comes out weekly, and is filled with arcane and obscure bits of trivia.  It usually compares current events to analogous historical events.  I think it's a bit dry and too technical even for political wonks like me, but it's good for looking at current events under a microscope.
• Left, Right, and Center is another weekly podcast, and it uses the roundtable discussion format as well.  You probably guessed from the title, but this podcast features discussions from people representing opposite ends of the political spectrum, as well as a centrist thrown in to keep things interesting.  It seems to have gotten livelier over the past few years, and maybe a bit more contentious or polarized (I thought a shouting match was going to break out two weeks ago), but the participants still manage to have thought-provoking debates. 
• FiveThirtyEight is another excellent podcast.  Nate Silver and his crew have lost a step since correctly predicting the 2012 election, but they're still very well-informed and insightful.  I only started listening to this one over the summer, but have been listening more often in the last month or so.

Those are the Big 6.  I'd also like to give honorable mentions to Arms Control Wonk, NPR Politics, Vox's The Weeds, and Power, Politics, and Preventive Action.  I listen to the first three sporadically, and the last one is kind of a weird podcast.  It released twenty episodes on July 20th & 21st, and hasn't released a new episode since.  It's content is dated, but still worth a listen.

All these podcasts are on iTunes, by the way.  Okay, that's a quick and easy post until my next one comes out (hopefully in a day or two.)

The Star Wars & politics podcast

I just wanted to throw this entry up really quick, to let the readers know about a podcast out there that does something similar to what I do.  The podcast is called The Beltway Banthas (heh), and it seems to have a roundtable discussion format.  (Full disclosure: I haven't listened to an episode yet - but it's on my "to do" list.)  You can link to its official website here, its Facebook page here, and its Twitter feed here.  It doesn't seem to be on iTunes, as far as I can tell.  Anyway, I just wanted to spread the word about another "pop culture + politics" content creator.  Hope you enjoy it.

Loki and the Leviathan

"Is this not your natural state? It's the unspoken truth of humanity that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power.  For identity.  You were made to be ruled.  In the end, you will always kneel." - Loki, The Avengers

Who should rule over a population? Why do people create societies? How do people behave when there's nobody in charge? Loki alludes to these three questions while he gives the usual "I'm a megalomaniacal villain" speech; he doesn't answer the last two, and his answer to the first one is (of course) "me." His little spiel is a throwaway scene that firmly establishes him as an over-the-top bad guy, in case the audience missed everything he did up to that point.  But let's look closer at what he said in this scene, along with those three questions at the top of this paragraph.

Loki's basically saying, "People are a pack of uncivilized animals who can't be trusted to rule themselves.  Leave them to their own devices, and they'll spend their time fighting each other for a higher rung on the social ladder.  They need someone to control them, and deep down they all know it." He's saying all this because he's the bad guy and wants to be in charge, but he's copying his ideas from a 17th century philosopher named Thomas Hobbes.

One of Hobbes' biggest contributions was Leviathan, the work that most people know him for.  In Leviathan, Hobbes argued that:

1. People were basically warlike and self-interested
2. Because of #1, people were constantly fighting each other (for food, land, resources, etc)
3. People eventually formed societies because they got tired of the constant fighting
4. A sovereign with near-absolute authority was appointed to run society, to keep citizens safe from external threats and to prevent them from reverting to their warlike natures

Sounds a lot like Loki's speech, right? Almost like something Hobbes could have written himself.  This concept comes up a lot in pop culture, especially sci-fi: some entity with extraordinary abilities takes control of society, or tries to, on the premise that people aren't able to rule themselves.  Here are a few other examples: I, Robot, Demolition Man, Equilibrium, and The Hunger Games.  It's also a common plot gimmick in cartoons and comic books: the heroes develop authoritarian attitudes for one reason or another, and make themselves absolute rulers.  Marvel and DC have both made stories about it, and it's even shown up in a Simpsons episode.  

So why does this all matter? Well, honestly, this is something I wrote for fun - to make a classic philosophical idea relatable by linking it to something most people are familiar with, and to get people thinking about deep political questions.  Those three questions mentioned earlier have been at the center of a lot of political writing over the centuries.  Thinking about them is supposed to change how you think about society, government, and the world in general.  Hobbes gave just one perspective; there were political theorists before and after him who had different takes on those questions.  We'll get to them in time.  For now, I want to restate the three questions I raised earlier, to you think about them as you finish this blog post.  I'll be revisiting them in the future.

Who should rule over a population? Why do people create societies? How do people behave when there's nobody in charge?