Hey, it's Bob Garfield.

Once in a while in this space, we offer you an episode of another podcast that we think is pretty aligned with our goals here and on the media.

One of those goals is to ask, how did we get here?

What's the backstory?

Why is this happening?

This week, we're offering you the first episode of a new

podcast from WNYC Studios called The Stakes, because it's asking exactly those questions.

It's hosted by Kai Wright and put together by the team who brought you United States of

Anxiety, and there goes the neighborhood and caught.

Their angle is, we built the society we've got, and maybe it's time to build a new one.

Here's episode one.

Hey, everybody, welcome to our new show.

Before we get started, a word about what we're doing

here and really what you can expect from us. We're trying to make sense of the world in a time

when so much seems nonsensical. And we're going to come at that in really every way we can

think, which means you're going to hear a lot of different kinds of

stories from a lot of different people. But always, our goal here is to understand the society

we've built, to really genuinely look at how we feed and clothe and house ourselves and

educate our kids and take care of our sick and have fun and make art and all of that stuff,

because it's all the result of decisions we've made together about how we want to live.

So let's name those choices.

Let's ask, are we really okay with this?

...