This past Saturday, I attended the No Kings protest in a Midwestern college town. I walked in with a spring in my step, yet left early with a frown on my face.

In this 5-minute episode of How My View Grew, I explain why.

It's a good-news, bad-news tale.

**Subscribe to the podcast**

To hear the origin stories of more big ideas, subscribe to How My View Grew on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

**Share the love**

Leave me a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

In this episode of How My View Grew, Greg Thomas describes how jazz saved him from hating so-called "white people" and how he learned to see the Black American experience as a hero's journey that is central to American history and culture.

**Key takeaways**

• 3:00 Early-life learning about rabid southern racists
• 9:00 "I gotta pick up an instrument"
• 13:30 The pathologizing of Black Americans by "white" liberals
• 16:00 The depth and wisdom of Albert Murray, Ralph Ellison, and Stanley Crouch
• 19:00 "This history has got my back" and the artificiality of "whiteness"
• 22:00 The hero's journey
• 23:30 Amiel's reflections

**Resources**

• Jazz Leadership Project
• Omni-American Future Project
• “King of Cats,” Henry Louis Gates Jr’s long profile of Murray in The New Yorker
• The Omni-Americans: Some Alternatives to the Folklore of White Supremacy by Albert Murray

**Subscribe to the podcast**

To hear the origin stories of more big ideas, subscribe to How My View Grew on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

**Share the love**

Leave me a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

When right-wingers in the United States were in the wilderness for decades, they didn't just sit on their hands. They envisioned bold ways to change the country. When they came to power, they were ready to act.

Setting aside whether you like those ideas, ask yourself this: if Republicans could do this, why can't Democrats? Are liberals and progressives incapable of imagining what they'll do when back in power? Or have they simply not yet grown this potential?

Maybe it's time for all of us to not just play defense against the current mayhem but also to envision a better offense. If your party were to regain power, what would you want it to do?

In this episode, I invite you to think audaciously and notice not only what you come up with, but also how this improves your mood for dealing with the current presidency and its agents of sycophancy.

Imagine tomorrow so you have more power to act today.

To get you started, I propose two audacious ideas for a post-Trump America.

**Subscribe to the podcast**

To hear the origin stories of more big ideas, subscribe to How My View Grew on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

**Share the love**

Leave me a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Let's admit it. The Trump presidency isn't just creating chaos and destruction with sadistic glee.

It's also exhausting.

What's exhausting isn't only the President, but also the mafia state he has built, many journalists who cover him, and progressives who frame the situation ideologically.

In this 9-minute episode, I describe seven causes of Trump Mafia State Fatigue:

1. The Bullshit Asymmetry Principle
2. The Gaslighting Effect
3. Fly in the Ear
4. Affirmative action for mediocrity
5. The double-edged corruption sword
6. Sanewashing
7. Progressive ideological framing

**Subscribe to the podcast**

To hear the origin stories of more big ideas, subscribe to How My View Grew on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

**Share the love**

Leave me a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

The first 100 days of the Trump presidency have brought destruction and chaos at astonishing speeds.

Yet we've also seen demonstrations of courage, strength, and grace.

In this 4-minute episode, I describe ten such bright spots.

**Subscribe to the podcast**

To hear the origin stories of more big ideas, subscribe to How My View Grew on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

**Share the love**

Leave me a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

In this episode of How My View Grew, I offer nine ways that leaders of key American institutions—Congressional Democrats, the Supreme Court, universities, and law firms—can act differently when facing a warlord Administration.

How do you act toward people whose primary modes are force and intimidation and who honor no laws, constitutions, or norms?

**Subscribe to the podcast**

To hear the origin stories of more big ideas, subscribe to How My View Grew on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

**Share the love**

Leave me a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Why have so many liberals and progressives felt shocked by the first two months of the second Trump Administration?

Why, instead, did so many assume that "they would never do that?"

In this short solo episode, I offer a possible answer. Liberals and progressives have a massive blind spot. They don't know who and what they are dealing with—namely, a worldview that is deeply entrenched in human culture yet widely misunderstood: the warlord or warrior.

Once they see it, they—and conservatives committed to prudence, humility, and order—can abandon failed strategies and craft new ones.

**Resources**

• What I saw at a MAGA conference: A Day at CPAC
• Two days with former Republicans who won't bend the knee for Trump: The Principles First conference
• Why Trump and Vance looked weak and Zelensky looked strong

**Subscribe to the podcast**

To hear the origin stories of more big ideas, subscribe to How My View Grew on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

**Share the love**

Leave me a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

The first two months of the new Administration in Washington DC have brought shocking degrees of chaos and disruption. Many people who didn't vote for the current President feel like they've been punched in the face and knocked to the ground.

How in a situation like this do you get back up? What actions can you take to lift your mood and make things in the world better?

This week's guest on How My View Grew, which launches season three of the podcast, is no stranger to this dilemma.

Ari Weinzweig, co-founder of the Zingerman's Community of Businesses in Ann Arbor, Michigan, knows something about getting crushed by a global shock and then finding a way to get back up. In his case, the event was Russia's brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. How he got back up was by learning about Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity in 2014 and then using this as inspiration to bring dignity into the workplace.

Ari's story offers a lesson about how to respond to disturbing and horrific events. It also raises a startling question: if millions of people felt a sense of dignity in the workplace, would they vote for demagogues claiming "you've been screwed" and promising to "fix it" for them? Or might they instead say, "No thanks. I'm good. If you want to be an autocrat, move to Russia?"

**Key takeaways**

• 5:00 When Ari was unconsciously competent at dignity
• 10:00 "Putin isn't going to call me for advice"
• 14:00 Inspiration from Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity
• 25:00 Honoring dignity doesn't take more time
• 27:00 Being authentic without dumping on others
• 32:00 Showing employees the financial numbers
• 36:00 "Maybe it's not because they're lazy."
• 43:00 Slipping daily and then gamefilming
• 45:30 Amiel's reflections

**Resources**

• A Revolution of Dignity in the Twenty-first Century Workplace, a pamphlet by Ari
• Zingerman's Deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan
• Ukrainian civic activist Valerii Pekar on Ukraine's stunning resilience (How My View Grew)
• Historian Marci Shore on how to improve the world amidst evil (How My View Grew)
• Depolarize politics by escaping the drama triangle (How My View Grew)

**Subscribe to the podcast**

To hear the origin stories of more big ideas, subscribe to How My View Grew on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

**Share the love**

Leave me a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.