(Audio) Katherine Brodsky: Speaking Out in an Age of Outrage
The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss
Lawrence M. Krauss
4.4 • 592 Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2024
⏱️ 143 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
I first stumbled upon the journalist Katherine Brodsky, who has been a commentator and writer for various media outlets, when I heard about her new book, No Apologies: How to Find and Free Your Voice in the Age of Outrage. The title intrigued me but I admit I was a bit skeptical. Having written and spoken about co-called cancel culture in the academic world, I expected I might find nothing new in her book, but I was wrong.
Katherine was motivated to write her book after her own experience of being mobbed online after having defended a colleague in an online media group she helped moderate, for the crime of having posted a job opportunity at Fox News. While she had become aware of the growing social intolerance she was witnessing around her, it was her own experience that caused to make a crucial decision. These kind of experiences can be debilitating, as she had discovered, and she decided to explore the experiences of others, to see how they had recovered their voices, fought back against the mob, or otherwise moved on.
The stories in No Apologies are poignant, and fascinating. Katherine is a clear and compelling writer, and an eloquent expositor, as I discovered during our discussion. We explored her own experience, her interests in journalism, and her own takeaways from the stories she explored as a journalist, which form the basis of the book. It was a fascinating and provocative discussion, and in many ways uplifting rather than depressing. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, and that it helps others to deal with the a society that seems to be becoming increasing intolerant to free and open discussion about important issues.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, and welcome to The Origins Podcast. I'm your host, Lawrence Krause. |
| 0:12.0 | In this episode, I had the delightful opportunity to have a discussion with the journalist, |
| 0:18.0 | Katherine Brodsky, whose career as a media journalist evolved until one point |
| 0:24.2 | when she was moderating an online media group and defended someone who'd made a point that |
| 0:30.3 | was quite innocuous, but who had been attacked viscerously by online mobs. And of course, |
| 0:35.6 | she was subsequently attacked. |
| 0:37.7 | And that motivated her to think about other people's experiences |
| 0:40.9 | and ultimately write this book, No Apologies, How to Find and Free Your Voice in an Age of Outrage. |
| 0:47.4 | It's a fascinating book that is not quite what you think. |
| 0:50.1 | It's a series of stories of people who've responded in many different ways with many different experiences |
| 0:55.0 | from someone who ran a knitting group and who was attacked, |
| 1:00.0 | which you would imagine would be impossible to find something controversial about knitting in such a way |
| 1:05.0 | to a young black man who spent a lot of time talking to KKK members |
| 1:10.0 | and helping them basically come out from their |
| 1:15.4 | experience. Many, many different experiences from anger and frustration to forgiveness and talking about |
| 1:23.8 | the different ways to deal with this unfortunate phenomenon. And it's a, |
| 1:28.4 | it's, as I say, it's an uplifting discussion. She's a, she's a wonderful writer and a very |
| 1:32.8 | eloquent speaker. And I really had a good time talking to Catherine. We talked about her own |
| 1:37.3 | background as a journalist, and one of the things that's fascinating about her, you'd never |
| 1:41.2 | know from listening to her, is that she actually grew up in the Soviet Union |
| 1:45.9 | and her family were Jewish emigrates from the Soviet Union. And like many of my colleagues, I know from the |
| 1:52.0 | former Soviet Union, her family and her are particularly sensitive to issues of dissent and suppression, |
... |
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