#165 Journey Into Wokeness with Caitlin Flanagan

This podcast begins with a sample Waking Up episode, which takes the place of this episode’s housekeeping. 

(I’m going to editorialize a tiny bit here; you can take this ignorant opinion or leave it at your pleasure.) About two months ago, Sam had some British guy on--I think he's a writer--who pushed back on the notion that meditation has any real impact on the meditator. He found it boring and decided--whether through a knee-jerk reaction or through really trying it--that it was a big fat waste of time. It wasn't going to lower his blood pressure or cause him to reconcile with his ex or any other claims stretching credulity. But I say, as long as if it’s fun and it distracts you from your mortality for ten minutes, then it's all well and good. And yet I have to agree with that guest--thinking that you're going to learn how to recognize the important from the inconsequential, as Sam promises in this sampler, just because you meditate—well, that's just silly.

CF is an interesting left-leaning but not-really-feminist feminist, who skewers hypocrites right and left. Since she’s the mother of two sons, she isn’t so quick to vent about toxic masculinity.

She wrote an expose of the nanny industry pointing out that many privileged white upper class Harvard graduates who make it to the top of their New York investment banks end up hiring a illegal aliens as nannies. And somehow, Biffy doesn't pay Consuela's social security on the proposition that she's a “member of the family.” 

And yet, CF reports, Consuela is always mysteriously fired within five years.

Here's another droll CF comment: men say women are hysterical. But if women are more hysterical, it’s probably because of all the sexual assaults they’re repressing.

One last thought: CF makes a fascinating point that Harvard is making use of minority students to bolster their image, but it is not being straightforward with them about what will be needed for them to succeed in highly competitive fields like STEM. This means Harvard is condemning their minority students--even those who are superlative students--to compete in an unfair field against Palo Alto kids with three years of AP physics, kids who have done unbelievable experiments already in their high-school labs. Harvard owes it to their social-engineering admissions to prepare them in some way, offer them the remedial or even advanced prep classes that they might not have been given, and yet instead of doing that, the kids are callously left to sink or swim at their peril, never mind the psychological damage that might be inflicted on them.

I knew a couple of kids in that category from when I was in school, kids who were dumped in the deep end without adequate preparation. Hell, when it comes down to it, I was one of those kids myself. Admitted to Berkeley from a mostly minority high school and left to flounder without the least concern of how badly of my depth I was. So I can attest--CF knows what she's talking about here. This stuff is real.