Jon Mooallem is a journalist, author, and host of The Walking Podcast. His latest book is This is Chance!: The Shaking of an All-American City, A Voice That Held It Together.
“There is this impulse that we have, this very clearly documented impulse that people everywhere have, to help. It sounds tacky, but when the bottom drops out, when ordinary life is overturned and there’s this upheaval or this disruption—if it’s a natural disaster or even something like this, that there’s ... in the book I call it a ‘civic immune response.’ People do spontaneously help each other, they work together, they collaborate. This whole idea that society falls apart and everyone descends into madness and violence is just not true. And we know that. We have science that shows it.”
Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@jmooallem
jonmooallem.com
Mooallem on Longform
Longform Podcast #74: Jon Mooallem
[08:29] This Is Chance!: The Shaking of an All-American City, A Voice That Held It Together (Random House • 2020)
[11:26] "The Senseless Logic of the Wild" (New York Times Magazine • March 2019)
[11:32] "Neanderthals Were People, Too" (New York Times Magazine • Jan 2017)
[11:35] "We Have Fire Everywhere" (New York Times Magazine • July 2019)
[34:45] Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America (Penguin • 2013)
[34:58] Black Prairie's soundtrack album to Wild Ones
[35:39] "Wild Ones Live" (99% Invisible • Oct 2013)
[36:47] "Death, Redesigned" (California Sunday • April 2015)
[37:46] "One Man’s Quest to Change the Way We Die" (New York Times Magazine • Jan 2017)
[44:10] Our Town: A Play in Three Acts (Thornton Wilder • 1938)
[53:45] The Walking Podcast
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