The contradictions of wokeness

Hogging seats on a crowded train, not saying excuse me, watching videos on your phone with no headphones in. Sometimes it feels like we don't know how to act anymore. What we have been seeing, increasingly, is people breaking rules. Why should I play by the rules if nobody else is going to do that for me? This week on Explain It to Me, how to mind your manners.

New episodes Sundays wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Sean. Today we're running one of my favorite episodes. It's with Musa Algarbi. He's a professor at Stonebrook University and the author of We Have Never Been Woke.

The book, like the Conversation, isn't really about the ideology of wokeness, whatever that is. It's more about the language and the symbols around the movement and how elites have co-opted them, which, as you say, this is much more than a superficial critique of woke politics. Anyway, it's terrific, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. There are several terms in our political vocabulary that have been stretched to the point of incoherence.

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