The US holds one national popular vote and Republicans have only won that vote once since 1988. Yet they have held the presidency nearly 12 of those years, and as a result, they dominate the Supreme Court. They hold 50 Senate seats though they’ve received millions fewer votes than Democrats in Senate elections. DAVID DALEY charted the worst of the Republicans’ efforts in his best-seller on gerrymandering, RATF**KED: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count, but he also draws hope from the citizens he writes about in UNRIGGED: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy

I believe human beings want more than anything to feel seen and heard. That’s why I wanted to talk again with NOREENA HERTZ economist, journalist, and author most recently of THE LONELY CENTURY: How to Restore Human Connection in a World That’s Pulling Apart. One of the things I appreciate about Hertz’s approach here is that she broadly defines loneliness as a lack of connection, which opens us up to consider all the ways and all the spheres of our lives where we are lacking or losing connection. And how has our ongoing experience of the pandemic making that both better and worse? You can learn more at noreena.com

Increased tax credits contained in the $1.9 trillion Covid relief package signed this week could lower child poverty more In 2021 than any other year In U.S. history. That is a really big deal. It turns Naomi Klein’s notion of “shock doctrine” on its head – enacting policies in response to a crisis that promise to make things better than before the crisis began. So what else could we do for children? Here’s my 2011 conversation with David Kirp about his book, Kids First: Five Big Ideas for Transforming Children’s Lives and America’s Future. This stuff has all been tried and it works.

SHERRY TURKLE mourned the loss of conversation in ALONE TOGETHER: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other and called for its restoration in RECLAIMING CONVERSATION: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. In THE EMPATHY DIARIES: A Memoir, she turns the conversation on herself, and weaves together her very personal story and her evolving insights on technology, empathy, and ethics. Among her questions: How did her role in keeping family secrets influence her as a researcher, a teacher, a writer, and a woman? To learn more about the book and read an excerpt: bit.ly/3lyo4HS; more about Sherry’s work: sherryturkle.mit.edu

STEVEN GREENHOUSE covered labor for the New ¥ork Times for 19 years. Unions played a key role when the American economy created the greatest middle class the world had ever seen. Given how clearly unions improved the lives of hundreds of millions of laborers, why did workers allow corporations and government to weaken and shrink those unions? What can we do about it? Can our shared vulnerability to the pandemic and its destruction of the economy help us recreate the post-war experience of shared prosperity? We talk about greenhouse’s latest book, Beaten Down Worked Up: The Past Present and Future of American Labor.