Getting let down by the 'Great Expectations' of electoral politics

Code Switch

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 20 March 2024

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This episode is brought to you by our play cousins over at NPR's It's Been A Minute. Brittany Luse chops it up with New Yorker writer and podcast host Vinson Cunningham to discuss his debut novel Great Expectations. It's a period piece that follows the story of a young man working on an election campaign that echoes Obama's 2008 run. Brittany and Vinson discuss American politics as a sort of religion - and why belief in politics has changed so much in the last decade.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	on NPR's Through Line.
0:03.0	Bread, freedom and national dignity.
0:09.0	It was time for the regime to fix itself.
0:12.0	That's why I was going out.
0:14.2	Remembering the Arab Spring.
0:16.5	Find NPR's Thuleine, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:22.3	What's good, you're listening to Code Switch from NPR. I'm Gene Debbie. And once again
0:27.1	y'all we find ourselves in the middle of yet another presidential election cycle.
0:32.0	Like, damn we just just do this and tell me if I'm wrong
0:36.0	but it seems like the general feeling out there about all of this is somewhere
0:40.8	between I don't know deep Malays and existential dread.
0:45.0	There was a time though and it wasn't that long ago during another presidential election cycle
0:50.0	when people were genuinely hopeful.
0:52.7	Even though the country was then involved in two ugly, intractable wars,
0:57.1	even though people were losing their homes
0:58.5	as part of the spiraling financial crisis,
1:00.8	like things were not going great for a lot of people and yet that time I'm
1:05.8	talking about the heady days of 2008 is such a stark contrast to this moment
1:11.8	many of the things that are crises today were still looming
1:16.8	back then. They were moving inexorably closer to us, but still a little further
1:21.9	out over the horizon and there was real optimism that maybe, just maybe, some of those things might be interrupted or at least mitigated.
1:32.0	At the center of all that optimism
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.