Current Affairs
Current Affairs
Categories: News & Politics
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Myisha Cherry is a philosopher at UC-Riverside whose book The Case for Rage: Why Anger Is Essential to Anti-Racist Struggle (Oxford University Press) argues that reason and emotion are not, as many people assume, opposites, but our emotions are often important expressions of our reason. We get angry when we our implicit framework for how the world ought to operate is violated, and Prof. Cherry argues that it's okay and even important to have this feeling. She shows that in the history of social movements, anger has been an important motivating factor, and argues that it can coexist with love, compassion, and thoughtfulness.
Cherry does not advocate "mindless" rage. She says we need to be reflective, and figure out whether our anger is actually well-grounded in facts and sound morality. She distinguishes between different types of anger, some of which are healthier and more factually grounded than others. But she believes that if we embrace the right kinds of rage, they can help us "build a better world."
Anger plays the role of expressing the value of people of color and racial justice; it provides the eagerness, optimism, and self-belief needed to fight against persistent and powerful racist people and systems; and it allows the outraged to break certain racial rules as a form of intrinsic and extrinsic resistance. This helps explain how the oppressed can feel affirmed when others get angry on their behalf, how people are able to fight against powerful systems despite the risk of abuse and arrests, and why WNBA and NBA players—who used their platform to combat racism—were viewed as radical for simply expressing their feelings. —Myisha Cherry, The Case for Rage
Previous episodes
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472 - A Philosopher Explains Why It's Rational To Be Angry (w/ Myisha Cherry) Wed, 24 Apr 2024
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471 - How is Capitalism Like a Bad Relationship? (w/ Malaika Jabali) Mon, 22 Apr 2024
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470 - How to Spot Corporate Bullshit (w/ Nick Hanauer) Fri, 19 Apr 2024
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469 - Your Money or Your Life: A Physician on the Miseries of Medical Debt Wed, 17 Apr 2024
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468 - How Four Billionaires Are Creating A Horrible Future For All of Us (w/ Jonathan Taplin) Mon, 15 Apr 2024
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467 - The Rise and Fall of Crypto Lunacy (w/ Zeke Faux) Fri, 12 Apr 2024
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466 - How The Occupation Shapes Everything (w/ Nathan Thrall) Wed, 10 Apr 2024
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465 - The Current Israel-Palestine Crisis Was Entirely Avoidable (w/ Jerome Slater) Mon, 8 Apr 2024
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464 - Why Wars Happen (w/ Michael Mann) Fri, 5 Apr 2024
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463 - A McKinsey Whistleblower on Life Inside The Secretive Consulting Firm Wed, 3 Apr 2024
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462 - How Big Pharma Makes a Killing From Letting People Die (w/ Nick Dearden) Mon, 1 Apr 2024
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461 - What Makes For a "Strong Town"? (w/ Allison Lirish Dean) Fri, 29 Mar 2024
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460 - How White Supremacist Ideology Made Its Way Into Music Theory (w/ Philip Ewell) Wed, 27 Mar 2024
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459 - Gary Younge's 30-Year Panorama of the African Diaspora Mon, 25 Mar 2024
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458 - Why The Cop City Indictment Threatens Everyone's Freedom (w/ Christopher Bruce) Fri, 22 Mar 2024
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457 - Why We Need Utopias (w/ Kristen Ghodsee) Wed, 20 Mar 2024
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456 - ZINNOPHOBIA - Why So Many Still Fear "A People's History of the United States" (w/ David Detmer) Tue, 19 Mar 2024
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455 - Why Do We Have Any Poverty In America When It's Such a Solvable Problem? (w/ Matt Desmond) Fri, 15 Mar 2024
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454 - Mini-Cast: Ending Period Poverty Through the "Menstrual Equity for All" Act (w/ Grace Meng) Wed, 13 Mar 2024
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453 - There Is No Alternative to Ending Fossil Fuel Use (w/ Lorne Stockman) Mon, 11 Mar 2024
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452 - Why "Climate Optimism" Is Irrational and What Global Climate Justice Requires (w/ Jag Bhalla) Fri, 8 Mar 2024
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451 - Is Being "Moderate" Actually How Democrats Win? (w/ Alex Bronzini-Vender) Wed, 6 Mar 2024
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450 - The Many Layers of Injustice in American Criminal Punishment (w/ Stephen Bright & James Kwak) Mon, 4 Mar 2024
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449 - Can The Concept of "Philanthropy" Be Saved? (w/ Amy Schiller) Wed, 28 Feb 2024
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448 - What Would It Take To Have a Democracy? (w/ Thom Hartmann) Mon, 26 Feb 2024
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447 - How Did the Idea of Being "Self-Made" Come About? (w/ Tara Isabella Burton) Fri, 23 Feb 2024
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446 - Our Plan to Make It Actually Enjoyable to Read The News Wed, 21 Feb 2024
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445 - The Role of Drugs in American Life (w/ Benjamin Fong) Mon, 19 Feb 2024
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444 - The History of Arab-Jews Can Change Our Understanding of The World (w/ Avi Shlaim) Fri, 16 Feb 2024
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443 - A HEATED Encounter with Chris Rufo: Critical Race Theory, The Left, and American History Wed, 14 Feb 2024
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442 - The Dark Side of Fashion (w/ Alyssa Hardy) Mon, 12 Feb 2024
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441 - How To Make Schools That Children Actually Enjoy Going To (w/ Lauren Fadiman) Fri, 9 Feb 2024
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440 - How Rupert Murdoch Killed The Only Good Social Media Platform (w/ Michael Tedder) Wed, 7 Feb 2024
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439 - How Labor Can Drive a Hard Bargain (w/ Jane McAlevey and Abby Lawlor) Mon, 5 Feb 2024
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438 - Learning From Neglected Novels By 1900s Radicals (w/ the Rickard Sisters) Fri, 2 Feb 2024
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437 - Why Minimalism? (w/ Kyle Chayka) Wed, 31 Jan 2024
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436 - Is U.S. Democracy Just Going To Be Dysfunctional Forever? (w/ Benjamin Studebaker) Mon, 29 Jan 2024
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435 - What Happens to the Disappointed When Social Movements Fail? (w/ Sara Marcus) Fri, 26 Jan 2024
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434 - The Disaster of Privatizing Everything (w/ Donald Cohen) Wed, 24 Jan 2024
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433 - The Process of Leaving Jordan Peterson Behind (w/ Benjamin Howard) Mon, 22 Jan 2024
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432 - How The Super-Rich Really Live (w/ Michael Mechanic) Fri, 19 Jan 2024
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431 - How to Explain Socialism To People Who Aren't Socialists (w/ Danny Katch) Wed, 17 Jan 2024
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430 - Exposing the Spurious Anti-Semitism Accusations That Helped Bring Down Corbyn (w/ Asa Winstanley) Mon, 15 Jan 2024
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429 - Dreaming of a World Without Wells Fargo (w/ Terri Friedline) Fri, 12 Jan 2024
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428 - How "Influencing" Became an Industry (w/ Emily Hund) Wed, 10 Jan 2024
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427 - Why Americans Don't See Or Talk About Their Wars (w/ Norman Solomon) Mon, 8 Jan 2024
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426 - What "Economic Freedom" Would Look Like (w/ Mark Paul) Fri, 5 Jan 2024
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425 - Can The Love of Menswear Be Justified? (w/ Sam Miller McDonald) Wed, 3 Jan 2024
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424 - On Musical Plagiarism: The Case of Ed Sheeran vs. Marvin Gaye Wed, 20 Dec 2023
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423 - How Socialists Took Over The Cities (w/ Shelton Stromquist) Mon, 18 Dec 2023