Welcome to this monthly-ish mix episode of the award-winning Best of a Left podcast. In our regular

episodes, we focus on one major theme, presenting our top takes in the first hour of the show

before diving deeper into each of those topics in the second half. For monthly-ish, mix episodes like this one,

we skim across the surface of the past couple of months

as a sort of quick recap and reference guide.

It's well known that many have felt the need to pull back

from the news a bit for their mental health.

If that's you, welcome.

If you know someone who fits that description, send them this episode.

If you don't have the time or energy for our deep dives, maybe just our regular top takes

section in each episode is for you.

If that's still too much, keep an eye out for these monthly-ish mixes to catch you up.

Now, one last quick note of promotion, we've also launched a new show on the

Best of the Left YouTube channel called Solved. We use our curation skills and put them toward

gathering interesting articles and ideas that collectively help us solve some of the biggest

problems of our day. Best of Left members get solved early and ad-free as a podcast, but anyone can check out the video version of the show on the Best of Left YouTube channel.

Now, for today's episode, we have four big sections and lots of subtopics.

If you want to skip around, reference the show notes for guidance.

We're starting with a focus on government power and its misuse, followed by vulnerable communities and civil rights.

Our third section zooms out far enough to see the big picture of cultural and societal transformations currently underway.

And finally, we'll come to our last section on opposition and resistance to end on a high note.

But first, we start with episode 1697,

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