Episode 240: There Are No Accidents

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For too long, the question of what is “safe”—and who should take the blame when it isn't—has been muddled in the name of profits. Maybe we should avoid the word “accident” itself. I'll explore that question in this Episode 240: There Are No Accidents.

In this Episode, I read from Jessie Singer's 2022 book, There Are No Accidents: The Deadly Rise of Injury and Disaster——Who Profits and Who Pays the Price. Seriously. I highly encourage anyone out there to check out this book. It's not perfect——no book is——but it does explore in detail how badly moneyed interests have misinformed us about who should take the blame.

Musically, I play: a lick from the classic banjo soundtrack to the movie Deliverance; and the nineteenth-century chorus from the worker-rights song "Eight Hours," as sung by Cincinnati's University Singers from the 1978 album The Hand That Holds The Bread: Progress and Protest in the Gilded Age; Songs from the Civil War to the Columbian Exposition. KMFDM's "Attack" backs Bruce Livesy in the intro; and I close with Mistle Thrush.