DP(E): NPR’s TED Radio Hour with Baratunde Thurston — How to Citizen

Want to find renewed energy about and faith in “this grand experiment” of American Democracy? Listen to this episode. I know I’m queuing up Baratunde’s new podcast myself.

I think the best part of the entire episode was the excerpt of Baratunde’s own TED Talk. We are the generations--those likely to be reading this--where humor resonates (where “resonate" here is used in the sense meant by Northrop Frye: “Through resonance a particular statement in a particular context requires a universal significance", but I’m expanding this to the rhetorical skill of humor (vs. say Postman focusing on the medium with his extrapolation and expansion of the concept of resonance¹).

Also, this: “Civics is on the rebound. We have a lot going on. We want someone to help. And we hope that the people we elect are going to do that. But we haven’t treated them as if they work for us.”

Laslty, I’m definitely going to dig into Eric Liu’s writing and his efforts with Civic University. My kind of person.

Episode resources:

Here’s the NPR TED Radio Hour episode link.

Baratunde Thurston’s podcast, “How to Citizen”

[1] — Neil Postman, “Amusing Ourselves to Death", chapter 2: “Media as Epistemology”