Episode 269: An Abundance of Lies

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Every so often, a book emerges that gets a lot of buzz from the media and gets tongues wagging. Sadly, too often those books say things that stretch credulity to the breaking point and start to smell a lot like a massive propaganda campaign stuffed into a hardcover. I follow the abundant evidence of one such book being bunkum in this Episode 269: An Abundance of Lies.

In this episode, I read a lot of stuff. I start with Zephyr Teachout's Washington Monthly essay "An Abundance of Ambiguity;" followed by Matt Bruening's Jacobin article, "What the 'Abundance Agenda' Leaves Out;" followed by Daniel Drezner's book The Ideas Industry and Anand Giridharadas' Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World; moving on to the American Prospect article by Hannah Story Brown called "An Abundance of Credulity;" and I close with Matt Stoller's Big newsletter essay, "An Abundance of Sleaze." (For reasons I'll explain in the next episode, I mentioned but did not read from an essay called The Poverty of Abundance. Trust me, I had reasons.)

I play: two snippets from The Long Now Foundation's interview with the pair of authors, the first featuring host Michael Pollan, the second with Derek Thompson. Musically, George Monbiot shows some real optimism in the opening backed by KMFDM; and Julie & Rolf & The Campfire Gang close us out with "Over the Rainbow."