Nikole Hannah-Jones, WH Press Ban, Ed Sheeran

Ravi Gupta (0:00)

Welcome to The Lost Debate, a show for politically eclectics. I'm Ravi Gupta, and in a second, we will hear from Jeremiah Johnson, who is one of my favorite tweeters out there, and he writes for The Argument. And we talk about a number of things. One is the state of K-12 education and this very provocative piece by Nikole Hannah-Jones about her decision to send her daughter to her local zoned public school and what that means for affluent progressives.

We talk about the media and Trump's attempt to ban certain media outlets from the White House, and we talk about more. So stay on for that in a second. But as a reminder, my book just came out on Tuesday, September 22nd. It's called The Invisible List. You can get it wherever you get your books. And earlier this week, I actually posted an excerpt on this podcast feed of a portion of one of my chapters from the book. So you can go listen to that. And as I said in that episode, if every listener to this podcast bought just one copy, I will make the New York Times bestseller list, which would be a big deal to me. So you'd be doing me a solid. And I know we've had this relationship for many, many years. But more importantly, this book is actually there to help you discover your passions and actually take them on and learn them one year at a time. So I unload all my knowledge and experience of running schools and then applying that knowledge to learning my own hobbies, ideals and passions and give you a how-to guide for how to actually learn things as late as possible. So check it out, The Invisible List, wherever you get your books. We'll put some links in the show notes to where you can check those out. And without further ado, let's get into my interview with Jeremiah Johnson.

Jeremiah, welcome to the podcast.

Jeremiah Johnson (1:45)

Thank you for having me.

Ravi Gupta (1:47)

Well, I first came across your name, I think, because of this tweet thread. I don't know what we call them anymore. About all of the things that have been blamed on capitalism. I'm just so curious about your process. So do you just wake up, you're like, oh, I've started to notice a trend, and then you go searching for all these insane claims that people blame capitalism on? Or are you like, I'm just constantly online, and I just save these things, and then one day when I've accumulated enough of them, I'm just going to share them with the world?

Jeremiah Johnson (2:22)

Yeah, it's a little bit like this second. I wrote a piece a while back called Ugh Capitalism about how people and why people seem to blame nebulous forces like capitalism or neoliberalism for just about every condition of the modern world.

That came from just a trend of noticing people seem to do this a lot. Here's a few examples. You exist online and you notice this kind of thing happening more and more. At some point, people started to send them to me. After I published this piece, I became like the guy who gets sent whenever anybody says something ridiculous about capitalism, that, okay, let's just DM Jeremiah. I have been collecting them for a little while.

Ravi Gupta (3:14)

For people who haven't seen the thread, what were some of the more outrageous connections that people made between what they perceive as societal problems and capitalism?

Jeremiah Johnson (3:24)

Oh, I mean, it's ridiculous stuff.

Things that aren't even related to the economy in any way, it's like, why is there no life on Mars? Well, capitalism probably made the aliens extinct.

Why are people monogamous rather than polyamorous? Well, it's romantic capitalism. In the movies, John Wick, you know, why does John Wick kill people? Capitalism, you know, why are you lonely? Why do incels exist? Why are you bad at sex? You know, why are so many homes painted a really boring kind of shade of beige? It's all capitalism, it turns out.

Ravi Gupta (4:05)

Well, I will link to it in the show notes. It made me laugh. And there's so much I want to ask you about. And basically what I'm going to do is kind of a tour of some of your most recent articles for The Argument and some things that you've tweeted about. I think most, you know, timely is something on my mind. I used to be a charter school principal in Tennessee and Mississippi. And I've been following the work of Nikole Hannah-Jones for a long time. And I initially came across her because she had done this really good, this American life two part narrative about, I think it was in Missouri, the school district where they were integrating across district lines. And it was actually a really beautiful two-part story. I think it was called The Problem We Live With.