Just in time for your Sunday afternoon walk in the woods or your Monday morning commute, the latest podcast! By popular demand (with some listeners anyway), this episode features another lecture from my periodic series for the William F. Buckley Program at Yale, this time on the topic of “The Endless Quest for Social Equality.” This talk ranges widely from the contentions over income inequality that Thomas Piketty’s book ignited into the current bonfire of Bernie Sanders’s socialist vanities, to the curious findings of social science on other aspects of equality, especially as it bears on the sensitive subject of racism. Finally, I examines the role of envy in stoking the current politics of inequality (I’ve written a few posts on this, but now you can hear me explain it a bit more) . Envy, once considered one of the seven deadly sins, is not much studied by social scientists for some reason (wonder what that reason could be?), but there is some useful scholarly literature on the issue, and Steve reviews the highlights for us.
Closeout bumper music this week is a live performance of “Burden’s Blooming” from Twiddle.
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