A Teachers' Strike and a Democratic Movement in Oklahoma

Summary

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Episode: A Teachers' Strike and a Democratic Movement in Oklahoma
Date: May 31, 2018
Host: Dorothy Wickenden
Guest: Rivka Galchen

---

Overview

This episode of The Political Scene dives deep into the 2018 Oklahoma teachers’ strike and its reverberations in state and national politics. Executive Editor Dorothy Wickenden speaks with writer Rivka Galchen about the catalyst for the walkout, the historical and political context behind Oklahoma’s educational funding crisis, the grassroots organizing that fueled the movement, and how it’s reinvigorating local democratic participation.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Backdrop: Oklahoma’s Budget Crisis and the Teachers’ Walkout

• Severe Cuts: Over the past decade, Oklahoma’s Republican-led legislature slashed more than a billion dollars from K-12 funding, resulting in over 200 schools moving to four-day weeks ([01:16-01:52]).
• Initial Legislative Response: As teachers began strike preparations, a 5% pay raise was passed—but with little extra funding for student resources. The subsequent nine-day walkout shut down every major school district in the state ([01:52-02:10]).
• Scale of Protest: 80,000 people attended the demonstration at the Capitol in Oklahoma City ([02:10]).

Notable Quote:
“We would gladly give up a raise to have the money for textbooks and smaller class sizes…to leave them and have to make a stand is kind of heartbreaking.”
— Holly Peart, elementary school teacher ([02:26])

---

2. Historical and Political Shifts in Oklahoma

• From Blue to Deep Red: Oklahoma’s shift from a relatively progressive Democratic state to a solidly Republican one occurred later than many southern states, primarily in the 1990s, driven largely by evangelical movements pushing issues like gay marriage, abortion, and gun rights ([04:05-05:14]).
• Culture Wars’ Role: The deepening of political divides mirrored national trends in the culture wars, shifting the electorate “almost on a dime” ([05:14]).

Notable Quote:
“The first American evangelical Christian president was Jimmy Carter. And that was also what Oklahoma was…And then that changed and it became about culture.”
— Rivka Galchen ([05:18])

---

3. Rise of Grassroots Organization

• People-Led, Not Top-Down: Organizing was spontaneous, community-driven, and not led by major unions. Examples included marches sparked by personal conversations and viral social media organizing ([06:08-07:16]).
  • Heather Cody started a 100-mile march from Tulsa by simply reaching out to friends.
  • A 25-year-old teacher, Alberto Morijon, launched a Facebook group that quickly grew from a handful of followers to over 70,000 ([07:16]).
• Contagion of Activism: The movement spread because “everyone wanted it to be there,” propelled by local desire for action and solidarity ([07:40]).

Notable Quote:
“One person is not a movement, it’s the next person.”
— Rivka Galchen ([07:45])

---

4. Links to Broader Movements and Civic Participation

• Inspired by Other Protests: Many participants were first emboldened by the Women’s March and the rise of the MeToo movement ([08:08-08:48]).
• Voter Engagement: Activists noted the absence of Democratic candidates in half the state’s counties. The answer: “let’s make this a democratic process…even if we’re going to lose” ([08:48]).

---

5. Structural Issues: Oil Industry, Earthquakes, and Austerity

• Oil industry's influence led to low taxes on fracking, which, along with budget cuts, eroded state services including education, healthcare, and infrastructure ([09:21-10:56]).
• Persistent Austerity: Many teachers pointed out that these cuts benefited only a narrow wealthy set, with capital gains tax cuts helping only “about 800 families” ([13:07]).

---

6. The Lives and Sacrifices of Teachers

• Low Pay and High Turnover: Oklahoma ranks 49th in teacher salary; many with decades of experience earn less than $40,000/year, causing high turnover ([11:43-12:56]).
• Schools as Social Safety Nets: Teachers worried about what four-day weeks meant for students dependent on school lunches ([12:56]).

Notable Quote:
“The raises are the icing on the cake…they think, you know, take away the raise, just fund the schools.”
— Rivka Galchen ([11:57])

---

7. Local Political Revival and New Leadership

• Barriers in Statehouse: Despite large-scale protests, legislative processes repeatedly stymied debate and funding discussions ([13:43-15:21]).
• New Faces Running for Office: Dozens of teachers and grassroots organizers decided to run for office themselves, including Mickey Dolenz, who made personal connections with constituents as a key to his campaign ([15:21-16:33]).
  • Dolenz dressed as a mailman to increase door-answer rates and built his platform by listening to local concerns ([15:40-17:17]).
• Intergenerational Energy: Young activists and new leaders like Anna Langthorne and the founders of the Frontier Coalition shifted the focus to local, practical problems—bridging generations in the process ([17:39-19:01]).

Notable Quote:
“It’s just conversation by conversation by conversation…that’s the real way we’re going to have change.”
— Anna Langthorne, Democratic Party chair ([19:48])

---

8. The Enduring Impact of Grassroots Politics

• Relentless Organizing: The movement’s strength came from “old-fashioned retail politics”—constant door-knocking, face-to-face conversations, totaling tens of thousands of home visits ([19:48-20:22]).
• A Path Forward: Despite slow legislative change, a wave of teachers and supporters are running for office, including both Democrats and Republicans. Even if incumbents hold seats, “they will have spoken to their electorate for the first time in years”—a victory in itself ([21:14-22:01]).

Notable Quote:
“One thing that’s so great is half of these seats in the legislature have been unopposed for years…even in the cases where incumbents win…they will have spoken to their electorate for the first time in years.”
— John Waldron, teacher and candidate ([21:38])

---

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• Holly Peart on the stakes for teachers:
  “We would gladly give up a raise to have money for textbooks and smaller class sizes…and to leave them and make a stand is kind of heartbreaking.” ([02:26])

• Rivka Galchen on social justice roots:
  “The first American evangelical Christian president was Jimmy Carter…and that was also what Oklahoma was…Then that changed and it became about culture.” ([05:18])

• On grassroots momentum:
  “One person is not a movement, it’s the next person.” ([07:45])

• On local engagement:
  “It’s just conversation by conversation by conversation…that’s the real way we’re going to have change.” — Anna Langthorne ([19:48])

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:16] – Introduction to Oklahoma’s education funding crisis
• [02:26] – Teacher Holly Peart on personal impact of the strike
• [04:13] – How Oklahoma shifted from blue to red
• [06:08] – The March from Tulsa: grassroot origins
• [07:16] – Social media’s role in rapid organizing
• [08:48] – The Frontier Coalition and building local democracy
• [09:21] – Oil, fracking, and budget austerity
• [11:43] – Reporting on teacher experiences and school conditions
• [13:43] – The legislative roadblocks during the strike
• [15:21] – Mickey Dolenz’s campaign and personal contacting
• [17:39] – The growing influence of young political activists
• [19:48] – Retail politics and the future of organizing
• [21:14] – Teachers running for office and increasing democratic participation

---

Conclusion

This episode reveals how the Oklahoma teachers’ strike became a model of bottom-up democratic revival in a deeply red state, illustrating the power and limitations of grassroots activism. From inspiring stories of individual educators-turned-candidates to the struggle for legislative change, Dorothy Wickenden and Rivka Galchen unpack how this movement is reshaping civic life—not only in Oklahoma, but as part of a wider revival in American local democracy.

Transcript

[A]

As summer draws to a close and the kids go back to school, I know I'm going to want to keep in touch with my kids at a price I can afford. Back to school Shopping can be a hassle, but your phone plan shouldn't be. That's why I made the switch to Mint Mobile. For a limited time, Mint mobile is offering three months of unlimited premium wireless service for 15 bucks a month. So while other parents are sweating overage charges, I have a little bit more room in my budget for cool back to school threads. Say bye bye to your overpriced wireless plan's jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages, Mint Mobile is here to rescue you. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Dish overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month. This year, skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your three month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a [e-mail] New Yorker that's that's mintmobile.com New Yorker upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.

[B]

This is the Political Scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about politics. It's Thursday, May 31st. I'm Dorothy. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the New Yorker. This past February, teachers in West Virginia organized one of the largest statewide strikes in recent history. Since then, the teachers walkout movement has spread to Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, North Carolina and Oklahoma, which has withstood some of the most severe budget cutting in the country. In the past decade, the Republican led state legislature has slashed over a billion dollars from K through 12 education funding. More than 200 schools are open only four days a week, and when teachers began planning the strike in March, the legislature passed a 5% pay raise. But there was little extra funding for students or schools, and in early April, teachers began a nine day walkout that shut down every major school district in the state. The demonstration at the Capitol in Oklahoma City was attended by 80,000 people. Holly Peart, an elementary school music teacher, was there on the first day of the protests.

[C]

We would gladly give up a raise to have the money for textbooks and smaller class sizes and be able to do the things that these kids deserve to get the best education. We want to be there for our kids. We want to be there teaching our kids and taking care of them. We do more than teaching. We feed them. We have to call dhs. We have to do a lot of things. And so to leave them and have to make a stand is kind of heartbreaking. And I think that it's catching across the country because we're finally, finally telling our bosses like we need more to do our job.

[B]

Well, Rivka Galgen joins me to discuss how the teacher protest movement in Oklahoma is reinvigorating local politics and to discuss its contribution to other grassroots revolts across the country. Rivka, welcome.

[D]

Thank you for having me here.

[B]

It's great to have you on the program. So I remember a few months ago you came to your editor here at the New Yorker with the idea for the piece about the Oklahoma teacher protests. Why did you want to write about it?

[D]

Well, everyone loves teachers, including.

[A]

Not everyone.

[D]

Not everyone. But I had been following local politics in Oklahoma, both because I'm from there and because it's been really interesting lately. Jacob Rosecrans was a teacher who lost in 2016, and then in one of the first special elections that followed in 2017, he turned his district 40 point swing and became a state legislator. And a lot of that was coming out of awareness of education funding issues and kind of just increased frustration around that.

[B]

And so he's a Democrat.

[D]

He's a Democrat.

[B]

So let's just back up because, you know, your own experience in Oklahoma is interesting. You lived there in the 80s and 90s when you were in middle school and high school.

[D]

I lived there from first grade to 12th grade.

[B]

Oh, yeah. So really, you really grew up there. And looking back now, you know, you write in the piece that how it shifted from a relatively progressive state with a strong Democratic Party to a deep red state essentially under one party rule. How did that come about?

[D]

Yeah, it's an interesting story because it was an unusual kind of blue state. And a lot of states in the south we know historically were blue, were Democrat dominated. But then it was sort of tied with the civil rights movement and with Nixon that they flipped. But Oklahoma didn't flip like that. And so the story there is much more complicated and local. And it really didn't turn until the 90s and most people pinpoint it towards evangelical associated movements pushing a lot of flyers, pushing issues on gay marriage and pushing abortion and a little bit on gun rights. And it just turned almost on A dime under Bill Clinton.

[B]

But really, this was kind of during the midst of the culture wars.

[D]

Yes, absolutely. And it was interesting because we forget that, you know, the first American evangelical Christian president was Jimmy Carter. And that was also what Oklahoma was. It was that kind of Christian culture that was about social justice and helping the poor, and that was still dominant. And then that changed and it became about culture, and those issues swung everyone to the other side of the political spectrum.

[B]

You know, it is. This story is such an inspiring example of grassroots organizing. And one of the. One of the most striking stories in your piece was about Heather Cody, who organized what, about 100 people on over 100 mile march from Tulsa to Oklahoma City. How does that kind of organizing get started?

[D]

Yeah, one of the things that's so moving about Heather Cody's story and the teachers who walked from Tulsa all the way to the Capitol, which is a six day walk with a lot of miles in it, is that it's everyone's dream. It's not top down organizing. It wasn't coming from the Oklahoma Education association, which is a great organization, but it was coming from. Heather was sort of like, oh, well, Disneyland. And my step tracker said, I walked 16 miles. Let's walk. We can do it. And of course, there's a long history of marches as a way of getting more attention onto an issue.

[B]

And how did she get the word out?

[D]

She literally just sort of wrote to a couple of her friends who wrote to a couple of their friends. And that was the story again and again in the Oklahoma Teacher Walkout. So the march from Tulsa began that way, and the walkout itself really began that way. There was One teacher, just 25 years old, Alberto Morijon, and he was watching West Virginia and the teacher walk out there and he kept thinking, when are we going to see this catch on in Oklahoma? When are we going to see it catch on in Oklahoma? And he'd sort of search for groups that might be organizing it. And he said, okay, I'm going to. I'll be that guy. And so he just starts like a Facebook group, teacher walk out. The time is now. He sends it to his small group of friends, he goes to bed, and then in the morning he's got like 21,000 followers, 21,000 of the group. And then by three weeks, they had 72,000. So it was just. Everyone wanted it to be there. And people often would share the story. One person is not a movement, it's the next person. And they sort of thought of themselves, both the whole state of Oklahoma as Being willing to be the next person after West Virginia, but also the individuals who were organizing things were also just seeding things and being the next person, because, of course, teachers are community leaders, but these are very busy people with a lot of ties and obligations. And yet they were the activists.

[B]

Were they inspired at all by other protests? The Women's March on Washington, you know, the MeToo movement, there was a lot.

[D]

Of talk about those things. And specifically the Women's March in Oklahoma City was a march where a lot of people who were not marchers, who were not sort of people who had devoted their life to activism. But at the Women's March, they saw another friend and they said, we really want to do something. What are you doing? We want to. And they sort of. A lot of communities were formed that way, and one community that was formed that way was called the Frontier Coalition. You know, they were just people who were cared about their states. And suddenly there were so many of them thinking, okay, we're going to do something. What can we do? What can we do? And for them, the answer to that was to build up basically democratic participation, but also just voting and voter registration for them. They saw that there was no active Democratic Party in almost half the counties in Oklahoma, which isn't so surprising. It's a red state, but at least someone should be on the ballot. They said, even if we're going to lose, let's make this a democratic process. And they were really successful.

[B]

I want to go back to a story you wrote some years ago for the New Yorker, because I haven't been able to forget it. And it was about the fracking industry in Oklahoma and how a state that formerly had never had any earthquakes suddenly started having a lot of earthquakes, and you traced it to the growth of this industry. So I was thinking about that as I was reading this piece where you tell us that the state has lowered taxes on oil and fracking interests, which are already. Were already the lowest in the country. And it seemed that was a good example of the state's really austere policies, budget cutting, sort of across the board, and what it's done to the state on all kinds of issues.

[D]

So the state budget, it's not just education, and that's something the teachers kept saying again and again. The state budget, almost every area that can be cut legally has suffered cuts of sort of somewhere between 20 and 35%. So that means hospitals, that means rural hospital closing, that means treatment to keep the water clean, road maintenance. Everything is sort of under enormous stress financially, and it's not very mysterious how that happened. It was interesting that you mentioned the earthquake piece because what's frustrating with that story and with other things in Oklahoma politics is once you acknowledge it's happening, it's actually not that hard to solve. And if you look, Oklahoma has gotten much better about earthquakes. They just have now a more science based approach to where you're allowed to put wastewater underground. And it they still have earthquakes, but they have a lot fewer.

[E]

Right now. We are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known. I'm David Remnick and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Charlemagne, the guy, and so many more. That's all on the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts.

[B]

So education has taken a huge hit here. Oklahoma teachers, I've learned, are paid even less than West Virginia's. When you were reporting this piece, what struck you when you talked to all of these teachers, what struck you about the conditions they work under?

[D]

Yeah, well, I mean, the thing about a Oklahoma teacher pay is 49th in the nation. And everyone says, oh, well, maybe it's not that expensive to live in Oklahoma, but these are people with often one or two master's degrees, 10, 15, 20 years of experience. I spoke to someone with 25 years of experience who was both a teacher and a coach, and he was making $38,000 a year. And he was someone who was saying to me, look, the raises are the icing on the cake. And I thought, well, that's interesting. They're so passionate about their students that they think, you know, take away the raise, just fund the schools. But systemically, teacher turnover is incredibly high there. And I spoke to a lot of teachers who said, we don't really have a teacher at our school who's been here more than seven years. If you choose to have a family, suddenly it's not a viable profession anymore. Maybe, you know, a 25 year old living on their own can live on that salary, but not a parent. And so teacher turnover is a really big problem. But also the whole state is not doing so well. So one thing that was really bothering a lot of teachers about the four day school week was that the students rely on the free lunch and they felt that their students were going hungry in a situation where they used to at least have this one Promised meal. So you sort of saw that it went all the way down and all the way up. And it's directly following tax cuts that have been sort of analyzed by nonprofit nonpartisan groups to be tax cuts that don't grow the state, that don't grow the economy, that benefit primarily the wealthiest members of the state. One capital gains change in the state literally benefits about 800 families in the state. And they pitch it as something that benefits farms and family farms, but it's simply not accurate.

[B]

You saw the Republican House in action when you were in Oklahoma City. What happened that day when this sixth term Democrat tried to bring a bill to the floor on education funding?

[D]

It was quite exciting to get to see the legislature in action because that process is at the heart of democracy. You still get a kind of romantic and old fashioned thrill. And you know, all day long there was sort of this sense, maybe we're going to hear tax on wind and maybe we're going to hear a change in capital gains. The Republican, we know Republican legislators started these bills and we can get these through because they have Republican backing. However, there was just a sense and like a genuine sense of optimism. And what actually happens in that quite theatrical setting despite a full audience of teachers, is that every time Scott Inman, he's sort of the lead Democrat, he's been there for six terms, would sort of raise his hand to introduce a motion not even having people vote on funding for education, but having them consider discussing a vote on education, and he would just get shut down and almost interrupted. It was almost like a violation of procedure. Finally he was. So he said, okay, well this isn't working. How about instead of talking behind closed doors, let's have a discussion with all these teachers who came here. We have teachers from Tulsa who walked 100 miles and even that was, you know, it was tabled and then the session was over and they didn't hear one bell.

[B]

All right, so a somewhat happier story. One of the people I really liked in your piece was Mickey Dolenz, who was a laid off English teacher who had time to canvass because he didn't have a job when he was running for the state legislature and he began dressing like a mailman so that people would open their doors to him. Could you just talk a little bit about that?

[D]

Yeah. It's so moving to see how local politics works when it actually is about engagement. So Mickey Dahlin's decided he was going to run for office. He had just been laid off as an English teacher and he described it as kind of a lucky thing that he had this time to canvass. And he said, look, I know a lot of people don't want to open their doors because when someone knocks on your door, they're probably selling you magazine subscriptions or their religion, they don't want to open the door. So he noticed that he would knock and he could tell people were home and they weren't answering. He thought, if only I could just sort of get my foot in the door. But then one day he was out again canvassing and he noticed that like most people were opening the doors, like four out of five people. He's like, this is great. And he thought, I wonder what it is. And the next guy laughed at him and he goes, you look like the mailman. Because he had on the blue shorts and the collared shirt. And he realized that's my ticket. And it worked and it worked. So he started sort of dressing in the kind of cargo shorts and the collared shirt. And he knocked pretty much every door in his district twice.

[B]

And he also was campaigning on raising taxes. And he still got elected in that red state. So how did that happen?

[D]

He said, you know, people are interested in politics. Once you sort of let them know what it is. You know, politics is just a word people say they're not interested in it. But he said, I did the math for people. I said, this income tax 1/4% increase is going to cost you about $30 a year. People would hear that and think, that's okay with me.

[B]

And he talked about education funding too.

[D]

And he talked about education funding too. And he also did it as a listening tour. The first time he knocked doors, he asked people what was on their mind. And then the second time he knocked doors, after learning about what was really going on in his specific district, he presented a platform. So he built his platform out of talking to people in his district.

[B]

One of the things that struck me is the youthful energy of amazing when you look at some of the people you talk to. So there was. The chair of the state Democratic Party is 24 years old, a young woman named Anna Langthorne. 28 year old Jarrick McWilliams, who with 38 year old Justin Moser founded the Frontier Coalition, which you mentioned earlier. They are explicitly changing the focus of the conversation from national politics to local politics.

[D]

Absolutely. And even the older people I spoke to who were activists said I would often like interrupt what they were saying and say, I just want to say that I feel that the young people led this movement. I feel. And they would say I feel like I was a person trapped in an abusive relationship who couldn't see a way out, who assumed this is the way things are, this is the way things will always be. And they really would emphasize that they felt that it was their younger colleagues and who made them think, well, no, it doesn't always have to be this way. The sense that things could be different, that was really coming from the younger generation.

[B]

And so you got, you have Karen Gaddis then on one hand, whom you spent some time with in the Capitol, who's taught for 40 years in a district near Tulsa. Is she now working closely with these younger people to bridge this gap and to get them all to kind of move forward together?

[D]

Yeah. And then. And Karen Gaddis is an interesting figure because obviously you can sort of guess at her age if she's worked as a teacher for 40 years. But it feels like talking to a 27 year old. She has so much energy. She just went door to door knocking. And then she did it again and she won in the special election. And she's sharing an office with Jacob Rosecrans, who's sort of in his early 30s. And they're the vanguard of this change of teachers being fully active in the political scene.

[B]

It's also a combination between deploying social media to broad and good ends. And also it's a lesson in old fashioned retail politics. You know, it's the Tip o'. Neills. All politics is local. These people are going door to door, they're knocking, they're talking to their neighbors and they're getting elected.

[D]

Absolutely. And it was interesting speaking to Anna Langthorne, who's 24 and the chair of the Democratic Party. And she said, well, look, we're not running TV ads because we have no money and we can't. But we also don't think that's the real way we're going to have change. It's just conversation by conversation by conversation, conversation. And everyone who had run in 2016 or was planning on running it was all about sort of the number of doors you knocked. You know, Mickey Dahlan would say, oh, Yeah, I knocked 20,000 doors. And Karen Getz said, oh, I knocked 16,000 doors. And then I knocked another 11,000 doors.

[B]

That's a lot of doors.

[D]

That's a lot of. I was like, the cardiac benefits are amazing.

[B]

Yeah. 1. Who was it who lost 15 pounds?

[D]

That was Jacob Rosecrans. I think he said he lost 60 pounds.

[B]

So it's a good news story and a bad news story. It clearly is going to be a long, often dispiriting battle, as you felt after that long day in the Capitol. What did you go away with feeling about how this is all going to play out over the next year? Five years, ten years?

[D]

You know, I went away feeling quite overwhelmed with the sense of the amount of labor these teachers had done, just how much work they had done trying to petition their legislatures. And now I think the number is up to something like 90 teachers are running for state legislative seats or for other state political.

[B]

And are these Democrats and Republicans?

[D]

These are Democrats and Republicans. They're more Democrats, and they might be a different kind of Republican than the current Republican Party in Oklahoma. And I think it's just, it's an impressive, just amount of labor. And one teacher who's running, John Waldron, said something which I thought was so interesting, where he said one thing that's so great is half of these seats in the legislature have been unopposed for years. He said even in the cases where the incumbents win and many incumbents will win, they will have spoken to their electorate for the first time in years that I felt completely optimistic about, even though I would never make a forecast how many seats are going to turn or be flipped by educators. It seems already it's a kind of success.

[B]

Thanks so much, Rivka.

[D]

Thank you.

[B]

Rivka Galchin is a contributor to the New Yorker and the author of the novel Atmospheric Disturbances and the nonfiction book Little Labors. This has been the political scene from the New Yorker. You can subscribe to this and other New Yorker podcasts by searching for the New Yorker in your page podcast app and find more political analysis and commentary on newyorker.com feel free to rate and review the political scene on Apple Podcasts. This podcast is produced by Alex Barron and Hannah Wilentz. For newyorker.com I'm Dorothy Wickenden.

[F]

I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's global editorial director. I'm Michael Kolori, Wired's director of consumer Tech and Culture.

[B]

And I'm Lauren Good.

[D]

I'm a senior correspondent at Wired. And our uncanny valley is about the people, power and influence of Silicon Valley.

[F]

And right now, Silicon Valley and Washington have never been more intertwined. So each week we get together to talk about a big story, often at the intersection of tech and politics. Right. So whether we're talking about Trump, Coin, Doge, or Elon Musk, we will always explain how these Silicon Valley forces are affecting Washington and how they affect you. Make sure you're following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode.

[D]

From prx.