IN-PERSON Podcast Club Meeting in SF: A Challenging Portrait of America
Details
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS AN IN-PERSON EVENT IN SAN FRANCISCO. THERE WILL NOT BE AN ONLINE ZOOM MEETING THE FOLLOWING MONDAY. THE LOCATION OF THIS EVENT WILL BE PROVIDED TO ATTENDEES ONLY.
In 2023, the lives of two young men collided tragically in a New York City subway car. Those men were Jordan Neely, a black homeless man who, in better days, was a Michael Jackson impersonator, and Daniel Penny, a white, former-Marine who served his country for four years. In a short subway ride, Neely began threatening and intimidating passengers, prompting Penny to overtake him. A little over six minutes later, Neely was dead. The story became national news, with Americans quickly taking sides on two very different perspectives of justice.
This fatal encounter and its aftermath are the subject of a new book, Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggling, and Belonging in an American City, by award-winning reporter and bestselling author Anand Giridharadas. Beyond simply chronicling the nuts and bolts of the tragedy, he offers that everything that put it into motion and what followed are sobering and broad reflections of today's America and its culture and society. Simple, polarized, knee-jerk narratives belie the many deeply-complicated issues we all need to address about ourselves and our country. Referencing the Michael Jackson song, Giridharadas wants us to take a look at ourselves -- the Man in the Mirror. Giridharadas' book is the topic of this week's podcast, Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast, and he is the podcast guest.
Giridharadas is the author of five books, including New York Times bestsellers and international bestsellers. He was a foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times for over a decade, has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Time, and is the publisher of the newsletter The.Ink. Giridharadas is an on-air political analyst for MS NOW. He is a recipient of the Radcliffe Fellowship, the Porchlight Business Book of the Year Award, Harvard University’s Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award for Humanism in Culture, and the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism.
PLEASE NOTE: We require that attendees listen to the podcast below before attending the meeting to optimize discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mpujwrj0r30&list=PLDIVi-vBsOEzArBz5VnChpoJEf4DQCgvG&index=2
or
(55 min.)
Dinner:
Please join us for dinner and a relaxing, fun evening following our meeting! We will be placing individual dinner takeout orders from a nearby Thai restaurant. Alternatively, you're free to get takeout elsewhere (there are various close restaurants) or bring your own brown-bag dinner. A microwave oven should be available at our venue. Water will also be available, but feel free to bring your favorite beverage. Looking forward to a fabulous time!
What's a podcast club?
It's like a book club for podcasts. Each week we discuss an interesting and currently-relevant episode from podcasters like Ezra Klein, Michael Shermer, or Russ Roberts. We start off as a large group and spend most of the time talking in small break-out groups, which we remix 3 times over the course of the evening. Our conversations are casual and open. We ask that everyone speak respectfully at all times, and we encourage free and concise discussion relevant to the week's podcast topic. To do this, we try to adhere to Grice's Maxims: https://bit.ly/2p4uSQm
Ultimately, the idea is to help each other think a little differently, learn a thing or two and have some fun.