AJ+, 2019, 12:00… Dolly Parton is an American icon. But she stands, perhaps most importantly, as a timeless ode to the foundation of this country: the working class. In the inaugural episode of Pop Americana, Sana Saeed explores the radical politics of Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” - the song, the film and the album. We threw in some Marxist theory too.
Adam Ruins Everything, 2019, 4:35… SWAT teams were invented in the 1960s to deal with hostage situations and prison escapes. Nowadays, these situations only make up 7% of SWAT deployments as most of their time is spent on non-violent drug searches. Two-thirds of SWAT raids do not even result in discovering a weapon and 40% do not find drugs. New York City also estimates that 10% of no-knock SWAT teams bust into the wrong address.
Last Week Tonight, 2019, 22:37… The intersection of sex and race bias is particularly deadly for women of color who are often not believed by their physicians. Medical students are often taught there are biological differences between the races in terms of skin thickness, pain tolerance, and nerve endings. There are also the problems of implicit biases and structural problems in medicine. For example, the male body has traditionally been the default reference in medical research. In other words, most medical studies have been done on male bodies.
Adam Ruins Everything, 2019, 4:44… Americans subscribe to the individualistic fantasy that hard work results in success, and the “American Dream” can loosely be interpreted as climbing the social ladder. Sociologists call that (upward) social mobility, a concept describing how individuals can change their socioeconomic status. While mobility is possible in open class systems, increasing structural inequalities are making this ever more difficult in the United States.
Ozark, 2017, 2:20… In the popular Netflix show Ozark, Marty, played by Jason Bateman, is forced into a life of crime, laundering money for drug lords. His family knows about this and wrestles with the morality of this lifestyle. When Marty's son Jonah goes to school, he’s asked to sign a pledge that he will not use drugs. Jonah confronts the teacher with economic contributions or latent functions that the drug trade has for society.
The Atlantic, 2019, 5:33… Should a job provide a paycheck or a purpose? Traditional religion lends some people meaning, community, and self-actualization. For many Americans, work has stepped in to fill that role. But this all-encompassing worship of work is setting us up for mass anxiety and inevitable burnout, says Atlantic staff writer Derek Thompson.
Quartz, 2019, 8:04… Online fitness advice is notoriously bad. So why is it so popular? Exercise gurus and fitness influencers are all over social media with supplements and research claims. Broscience is in your feed telling you about fad diets and free weights — but how much is actually supported by science? Quartz News speaks with scientists, researchers, and fitness experts about the sources and research behind the proliferating stream of advice online.
Vox, 2019, 6:35… Child labor was widely practiced until a photographer showed the public what it looked like. The 1900 US Federal Census revealed that 1.75 million children under the age of 16, more than one in five, were gainfully employed. They worked all over the country in cotton mills, glass blowing factories, sardine canneries, farms, and even coal mines. In an effort to expose this exploitation of children, the National Child Labor Committee hired a photographer to travel around the country and investigate and report on the labor conditions of children.
The Atlantic, 2019, 13:28… Paul and Hava met at a performing-arts social event for people with intellectual disabilities. With the assistance of their parents, they went on a few successful dates. The connection was immediate. After some time, they decided to make their strong, loving bond official. The couple made each other so happy that their parents saw no good reason to deny the proposal. The group homes where Paul and Hava lived, however, stood in the way of the couple’s union. “They want us not to get married—not to live together,” says Paul in a new short documentary.
Vice News, 2019, 7:02… Mzu Lembeni runs one of the many tour companies that takes tourists into Cape Town’s townships, impoverished areas that were first created when the Apartheid government forced nonwhites to live in segregated areas. On his tour, tourists can walk right into people’s homes, drink homemade liquor, play with children at a local school, and take as many pictures as they like. For some people, this sounds like exploitation. But Lembeni, who grew up in a township himself, disagrees. “If there was no poverty ... I'll do the township tour, because [of] the culture,” Lembeni says. “I don't sell the poverty, I sell the culture.”
60 Minutes Australia, 2019, 25:03… For the so-called “sugar daddies”, the equation is simple: the wealthier they are, the more attractive they are. But as Sarah Abo finds out, it’s not hard to read between the lines here. The term sugar baby is often code for sex worker, and the male moneybags are often crinkled-up creeps. And that leads to a very important question: is this sugar baby phenomenon about empowering women or exploiting them?
Vice News, 2019, 5:46… A Miami-based startup called Papa provides what they call a “grandkid on demand” service, where they send a vetted college-age person or young adult for companionship and transportation to seniors in need. Clients can use the app, but Papa’s average customer is 75 years old, so most people just call in for the service.
