Episode description

Playing for Team Human today; Aaron Gell. Aaron is an editor at large for Medium and an instructor for NYU's Prison Education Project.

Aaron will show us how listening and sharing stories can be the key to cultivating empathy. His long-form journalism finds the humanity in even the most compromised and contemptible of characters. In this episode, Douglas and Aaron invite you to eavesdrop into their conversation as they explore the ways stories can connect us. In this moment, when we face existential crisis from many directions, Gell asserts that empathy is an imperative if we are going to preserve our humanity.

We’re in this story together. 

Douglas opens with a monologue on how the end of the Mueller investigation is the opportunity to do a political reset. Being anti-trump is not enough. "Just as Trump’s administration became something of a cult, with subordinates taking increasingly daring and untenable positions in order to win his approval, the anti-Trump movement has become a cult of conspiracy psychosis."

Check out Douglas’s regular column on Medium, featuring expanded versions of the monologues you hear each week opening the show.

Check out these stories from Aaron on Medium https://medium.com/@aarongell

“How to Survive a Midlife Crisis: Drugs, Dance Music, and Free Love”

I ditched my wife and kids to party in the woods with 250 sex-positive millennials

https://medium.com/s/youthnow/drinking-the-kool-aid-857cfe8c8c96

“Love is a Battlefield”

Hardcore military role players meet regularly to act out the Second Civil War. I strapped on an AR-15 and headed downrange

https://medium.com/s/love-hate/a-dispatch-from-the-second-civil-war-835635943c53

Team Human happens each week thanks to the generous support of our listeners on Patreon. Your support makes the hours of labor that go into each show possible. You can also help by reviewing the show on iTunes.

On this episode you heard Fugazi’s “Foreman’s Dog” in the intro thanks to the kindness of the band and Dischord Records. Mid-show you heard R.U. Sirius’s President Mussolini Makes the Planes Run On Time and Throbbing Gristle’s “Walkabout” (See Team Human Episode 67 with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.) Our outro features the Mike Watt ’s beak-holding-letter-man.

Order Team Human the book and manifesto, now available everywhere!

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