Trust, Class, Hobbies, Blame

Deep thoughts from a week of reading and watching

Thank you for all your nice words and congrats last week about Death, Sex & Money joining Slate. It was so nice to hear from so many of you. I talked about the transition with Vulture’s Nick Quah if you’re curious to hear more about the future of Death, Sex & Money.  

And some of you did your homework assignments of signing up this newsletter (welcome!) and going to Apple Podcasts to tell me your favorite episodes of the show (thank you!). One conclusion so far: you all have a lot of different favorite episodes! Some of you love celebrity interviews. Others of you like people who aren’t well known. Some of you mention episodes from years ago that changed something fundamental in your life. It’s really fun to read these. Keep them coming. 

But here today, for you newsletter readers, I want to share some reading and viewing recommendations because I’ve been taking in a lot over the past week or so.

I felt challenged and fed by this piece about what it’ll take to build back trust in America, by Jedidah Britton-Purdy. First off, Purdy always gets points right off the bat for me for being from West Virginia (like yours truly), and for making me think critically about who gets to decide what’s cool and what’s good for “the culture” since he burst on the scene in 1999. (For reference, check out this oddly titled profile from The Washington Post back then called “The Adventures of Anti-Irony Boy.”) His piece from earlier this month resonated with me because his analysis felt right and it was paired with something concrete that each of us can do:

All-pervading mistrust fosters overheated politics, in which everything is at stake but little is accomplished, because so much of the effort is defensive. It also encourages constitutional crisis: If the other side is morally unacceptable and dangerous, supporting extreme efforts to keep it out of power becomes more plausible. The collapse of trust encourages, even if it does not ensure, a collapse of democracy.

Democracy places a unique demand on trust. The usual measures of trust, which ask whether we trust other people and institutions to do the right thing, assume a morally static world: We know the right thing to do, and the question is whether a neighbor, stranger, or public official will do it. But democracy matters most, and is most difficult, when citizens decide to change course morally. The New Deal, the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts, the revolution in environmental laws in the 1970s—they all succeeded as far as they did because they were democratic choices to live by different values. That kind of progress means putting our futures in one another’s hands.

“Putting our futures in one another’s hands.” That takes trust, and also faith that you’ll be ok if you’re not solely focusing on your own self-interest and particular worldview.

I’ve been thinking about that, how my particular worldview compares to what polling tells me other Americans are thinking about, as the first returns of the 2024 campaign season came in from Iowa this week. Whenever it’s election returns time, it’s time to analyze chunks of voter demographics, including “working class” voters. I finally got to this piece in The Atlantic from December called “What Does the Working Class Really Want?” It’s worth a read, and I also recommend a follow-up conversation with someone about what you think “working class” really means in 2024 America. (I did this, and it led to a family conversation around the dinner table where we took turns shouting out the names of family and friends who didn’t go to college.) That’s historically been the definition of working class — people who didn’t go to or finish college — but I was glad to be reminded by this post from Brookings that what these workers actually do to earn money is changing, and with it, how some of them view government as helping them or causing them headaches:

There are far more workers in health care and retail than there are in manufacturing, and far more in food service than in construction. Many of them are women; many are not unionized. They enjoy fewer benefits than unionized manufacturing workers, and many of them are living from paycheck to paycheck, working two shifts or two jobs to make ends meet. Many working in personal services, such as hairdressing, hope to own their own businesses, and they are more sensitive than are manufacturing workers to regulatory barriers, such as licensing requirements, that impede their aspirations. For this reason, among others, they are less instinctively pro-government than were members of the working class in the long era of Democratic dominance that stretched from the 1930s through the 1960s.

Speaking of class, I highly recommend comedian Gary Gulman’s new special on Max called Born on Third Base. It’s about growing up poor and how that shapes how he sees everything from Jerry Seinfeld to ordering at Chipotle. I particularly appreciated his scathing commentary on Shark Tank—how dehumanizing a watch it is if you think of it as regular people making a presentation to famous rich people about their life’s dream and having to give away more than they should in equity to make it happen. In its place, Gulman imagines a reality show where billionaires have to make their pitch to the rest of us about how they’re helping society and why they shouldn’t be sent to the guillotine. (Shout out to my comedian sister Liz for making sure I didn’t miss this special, or Gary’s previous one The Great Depresh.)

Now, I’m not endorsing bringing back the guillotine, but the joke did make me laugh, and think about whom we ask to sing for their supper in our society.

But before we get out the pitchforks, a counterpoint. I also really appreciated this newsletter post from Elise Loehnen last week about Accepting Responsibility, and how part of growing up is about laying down blame. In this time of reset, where I’m rethinking my well-worn habits and routines, it was a good nudge to think about necessary update to my internal narratives.

And while we’re on the subject of routines, don’t miss this celebratory essay from Heather Havrilesky from this week: Hobbies Change Your Life!

Finally, one more note about my last week. On Sunday, I went back to church for the first time in a very long time. I grew up Unitarian Universalist, a denomination known as they one where they hug too much at church. I’ve gone in and out of attending services regularly as an adult, and I’ve really fell off since I became a parent. But being back in a sanctuary, surrounded by all new people but with songs I knew and rituals that were familiar, I was reminded of what can be beautiful about showing up to a church in person. I made a new friend in the parking lot, contributed to a local food bank with my donation in the offering, was challenged to rethink a few things by the sermon, and looked around at this beautiful building that churchgoers before me had built and taken care of for generations. It was nice, something I hadn’t known how much I needed.

I’ve got a few more weeks of rest and reset before we get humming at Slate, so keep the recommendations coming for things to read, watch and listen to. Next week, let’s celebrate the other podcasts you’re enjoying right now. Tell me your old and new favorites in the comments.

Until then,

Anna