Transcript
A (0:00)
Thank you so much for being a loyal listener to the Good Fight. The podcast has expanded significantly over the course of the last few years. We have millions of downloads a year at this point and it is all thanks to you. But our hard working team that edits these conversations and prepares the transcripts for them needs a little bit of a holiday. So for these two weeks we are rerunning some of the conversations from the last months and years of which we are most proud that we think you might enjoy listening to again. We will be back at the beginning of September with two weekly conversations about big ideas and a regular, perhaps weekly new format of A Good Fight Club in which I invite some of my favorite thinkers and podcast guests to discuss the political events of the past week. I hope you two are enjoying the rest of the summer and I very much look forward to welcoming you back at the beginning of September with our new content. In the meanwhile, if you want to support the podcast, please consider going to jasamunk.substack.com and becoming a paying subscriber.
B (1:39)
I think people feel afraid of empathy. Empathy is a dangerous thing thing actually. Not only is it not of interest, but people are scared of it. And now the Good Fight with Yasha Monk.
A (2:00)
My guest today is Ali Hochschild. Ali is Professor Emeritus at this point at Berkeley University, one of the most distinguished American sociologists. She has written very well regarded book called Strangers in Their Own Anger and Mourning on the American Right, which offered a deep story for why so many Americans have come to feel deeply disaffected with the mainstream culture and ended up supporting the Tea Party and later Donald Trump. And she has now published a new book called Stolen Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right, which is based on similarly detailed ethnographic work, this time in Pike County, Kentucky. This book was selected by Barack Obama as one of his favorites in 2024. Ali and I talked about the importance of actually trying to understand fellow citizens who have very, very different political views about why it is that so many academics, so many of our friends and colleagues are willing to try and understand the customs of people in faraway countries, but not those of their own fellow citizens who who have different political views. We discussed the role that pride plays in our own emotional lives and how a feeling of loss of pride and the shame that can induce can fuel political movements. We discussed whether the deep story she offered in Stranger in Their Own Land and that she updated in the new book, a story of people feeling like they're still stuck in line while others are cutting in can account for the demographic change in support for Donald Trump. It is primarily based on how white Americans see the country. But what do we need to do in order to understand the deep story of Latinos in Miami who flocked to Donald Trump in large numbers over the course of the last years? And finally, we discuss the liberal, or perhaps a progressive deep story, how a ethnographic study of our own tribe would try to explain the fundamental view of America and the world. Adi and I end up having quite an interesting disagreement about what that would look like for those latter parts of the conversation about Latinos in Miami and about what the liberal progressive deep story might be. You will need to support this podcast by becoming a paying subscriber. Go to jasamunk.substack.com and sign up. Thank you very much. Adi Hochschild, welcome to the podcast.
