Uncertain Things

One of Justin Davidson's first gigs as New York Magazine's architecture critic was covering the development of the 9/11 memorial — an incredibly complex and controversial project that shaped the city's future. The experience influenced the way he thinks about the role of architecture and urbanism in the ways we process our societal traumas. We talk to Justin about the role of the architecture critics, the 21st century task of creating memorials to shame, and why it's too soon to truly memorialize Covid. And then, for fun, we put him in the urbanist hot seat for questions ranging from: "how do we fix housing" to "who should we vote for mayor of New York?"Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice.On the agenda:* -Cities, journalisming, and national tragedies* -What do critics critique? (And why scale matters!)* -9/11 and the premature monument* -How will we remember COVID19?* -Who do monuments serve?* -Why NY sucks (aka Adaam’s favorite diatribe)* -Is there anybody out there (among NYC mayoral candidates)?Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday ruminations, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com. Get full access to Uncertain Things at uncertain.substack.com/subscribe

Our friend Misha Thomas, ex-evangelical and psychologist, returns to the show to discuss his recent revelation around race, spurred on by the PBS documentary, The Black Church. Along the way, we discuss a bevy of unanswerable questions surrounding this idea of racial trauma: Is it good for us keep to re-visiting, even valorizing, our past traumas? Are trauma narratives too reductionist for our own good? What good can acknowledging and discussing trauma bring? And is there really an "other side" we'll ever reach?Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice.On the agenda: * -Trigger warnings on both sides [1:11]* -Reflecting on voting for Trump [14:21]* -The Black Church & a new revelation on race [19:54]* -Racism and classism within the Black community [35:00]* -Busting out of neat, reductionist narratives [44:40]* -Cringing at self-love and self-hate [54:40]* -What's so tricky about trauma [1:01:50]* -The meaning of "moving forward" [1:19:04]* -"The trauma I've never talked about" [1:31:05]Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday ruminations, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com. Get full access to Uncertain Things at uncertain.substack.com/subscribe

Back in 2015, when Eyck Freymann began studying China, he kept coming across this phrase in Chinese media: “One Belt, One Road.” No one in the West was talking about it, but, for anyone paying attention, it was the initiative that would define Xi Jinping’s reign. Eyck joins us to explain the significance of these four words, the imperial mantle Xi Jinping has donned (and why many countries are loving it), and the tricky geo-political landscape the U.S. must navigate if we’re to avoid another Cold War. Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice.On the agenda:* -Intro to Eyck & China [2:49] * -A Coda to our Conversation with Batya Ungar-Sargon [7:47]* -The story of the decade is not a story about debt traps [17:07]* -One Belt, One Road: How it began [25:11] * -The Empire Strikes Back (What Chinese propaganda teaches us) [38:25] * -Why the West needs to be on alert [51:37] * -Violations & Hypocrisies [1:02:08] * -What the Biden Administration Should Do [1:11:55]* -Eyck's take on current events [1:19:18]Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday ruminations, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com. Get full access to Uncertain Things at uncertain.substack.com/subscribe

Batya Ungar-Sargon, deputy opinion editor for Newsweek and self-proclaimed "vulgar Marxist," is still a lefty — even if the left no longer wants her. We talk to Batya about her upcoming book (Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy), debate the liberal media's criminal avoidance of class inequality (which, to her, explains the underpinnings of its current obsession with race), and even get into the differences between Israeli and diaspora Jews.Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice.On the agenda:* -Into the ickiness (why we started uncertain things) [6:09]* -Intro to Batya [10:10]* -Getting called out for calling out Anti-semitism [14:05]* -What happened at the New York Times [23:05]* -Misdirection, race, and moral panic [37:20]* -Class and its dubious champions [47:35]* -The betrayal of the left (on welfare and UBI) [58:43]* -Trump's working class wins [1:09:05]* -A perfect defense of the status quo [1:13:30] * -The woke theology and bowling alone [1:19:00]* -Israeli Jews, diaspora Jews, and anti-zionism [1:29:20]Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday ruminations, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com. Get full access to Uncertain Things at uncertain.substack.com/subscribe

Yuval Levin is a leading conservative thinker and political scientist who has, for quite some time, been contemplating the question: what’s gone wrong in America? We dive into his most recent book, A Time to Build, where he traces the long-term shriveling of our social institutions — from political parties to journalism to the academy — a process which, according to Yuval, supercharged the current trends of inequality, division, and political opportunism. Later on, we dare to get even nerdier than that and revisit Yuval’s historical study of Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine, and the lessons they still teach us.Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice.On the agenda:* -The Hitler question [4:26]* -Yuval, introduced [9:29]* -The difference between the left and right [13:28]* -Seeing things in institutional terms [16:36]* -Conformity, cohesion, and resistance [21:20]* -The strangeness of mid-century America [33:31]* -The social infrastructure that shapes us [38:39]* -The resilience of libraries and schools [42:30] * -Journalism as an institution [45:00]* -America's overly high expectations of the Academy [52:15]* -From the political to the performative (or how to fix Congress) [57:16]* -Being a conservative in the Trump era [1:12:14]* -On Burke, Paine, beauty, and truth [1:20:03]* -Space vs. Motion [1:27:28]Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com. Get full access to Uncertain Things at uncertain.substack.com/subscribe

Caitlin Flanagan has a taste for controversy. Over her decades writing for The Atlantic, she's covered everything from feminism (and the ways it lets women down) to porn to self-censoring in comedy to her own struggle with cancer to the darkest depths of the culture war. But are there any subjects she wouldn’t write about?Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice.On the agenda:* -Introducing Caitlin [3:53]* -On writing and being dour [11:00]* -The censorship and self-censorship of the young [20:46]* -Touching touchy subjects [25:44]* -On feminism, cruelty, and the culture war [31:47] * -The left, the right, and the French [42:15]* -Patriotism & the Patriot Act [47:32]* -Our disembodied lives [49:53]* -On porn, sex work, and loneliness [58:13]* -Trauma and its new narratives [1:10:24]Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com. Get full access to Uncertain Things at uncertain.substack.com/subscribe

Professor Moshe Sluhovsky, who teaches history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, taught a young Adaam to appreciate the nuance, contradictions, and blind spots of the past. In this episode, he breaks down conflicting historical narratives that have pervaded the academe, gives his perspective on America's newfound historicism, and rants with us about the inaccurate historical movies he loves and we hate.Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice.On the agenda:* -Intro to Sluhovsky, the professor who taught Adaam why history matters [1:15]* -The conflicting narratives of Colonialism [21:58]* -History, the field that navigates "the complexities of possible stories that could be told" [24:30]* -History, a field ill-equipped for images [40:18]* -Historical movies: the good, the bad, the ugly [45:54]* -The young, contentious project of re-writing American history [59:24]* -On abstract thinking, morality, and politicization today [1:06:56]Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com. Get full access to Uncertain Things at uncertain.substack.com/subscribe

Back when Dr. Dawn Carpenter was starting out in the finance world in the '90s, she sought out the organizations trying to do some good in the world. It was an unusual decision back then — and one that allowed her to carve out a niche for herself. Now, the conscious capitalism movement is becoming far more mainstream, and as the host of the "What Does It Profit?" podcast, Dawn has a front row seat. We talk to Dawn about the morality of capitalism, her theological studies and how it applies to her work, and the mystical Oz-like machinations of our economy.Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice. Oh, there’s merch, too: mugs, laptop cases, tote bags, t-shirts… the lot. And everything’s on sale. Hurrah for capitalism…?On the agenda:-The virtualized mind -What does it profit? -In the room where it happens-A theological awakening -Conscious capitalism (A podcast begins)-Contributive justiceUncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com. Get full access to Uncertain Things at uncertain.substack.com/subscribe

Perched from his position as a media analyst at the CIA, Martin Gurri noticed — way before most of us — that change was afoot. Starting in the early 2000s, he noticed the new "tsunami" of information coming our way, and he began to see how it was changing, and would forever change, not just our means of communication, but our concepts of authority and power, and even our societies themselves. In 2014, he put down his reflections in a book — The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium — which might as well be the Uncertain Things bible.Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice.On the agenda:* The 20st century vs the tsunami* From Cuba to the CIA* On Authority, Truth, and Utopia* The long march to somewhere* The border infiltrates the center* The sectarian mind and the force of negation * The nuttiness of the Trump years * What we can do * There are no alternatives to liberal democracy* Short-term pessimist, long-term optimistUncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com. Get full access to Uncertain Things at uncertain.substack.com/subscribe

Israeli journalist Nadav Eyal returns to the pod in celebration of the release of the English translation of his book, Revolt: The Worldwide Uprising Against Globalization. We pick up where we left off last time, beginning with the role of the journalist, especially in this new vaccine-starved world, meander into Facebook's many failings, and then take a final, chilling turn to the state of the American empire post-Trump.Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice.On the agenda:* Journalists, vaccines, and the "toilet paper dilemma" [10:27]* Facebook, Silicon Valley, and Freedom of Speech [24:10]* "The West Crumbled in the Trump Years" [39:16]* When the world wasn't watching... [47:15]* "There is no organizing idea for an America-centric world any more." [54:59]* Nationalism vs. populism [1:00:37]Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday thoughts, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com. Get full access to Uncertain Things at uncertain.substack.com/subscribe