Reasons to be less depressed?

Each Saturday I grab coffee with my colleague Heather Lofthouse, and we turn on my laptop mic so you can listen in and then provide your two cents in the comments. Heather is the Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action, and my former student. She asks me questions about the economic and political happenings of the past week. We cover both the highlights and lowlights, and aim to provide a larger context around what we’re all being presented with (or not!) in the news. She’s Gen X and I’m, um, older than that; we often address our generational divide. Sometimes we veer off into stories about family or what shows we’re watching, but we try to stay on task. And we always work to avoid being too cynical. Like you, I imagine, I find conversations with others — on the phone, in person, or even just online typing back and forth asynchronously — to be an important way of processing information, including during trying times. In today’s coffee klatch we cover: * Friday’s jobs report: The large number of jobs added is great, but what will the Fed do with this data?* Sinema’s last stand: Why exactly was she holding out on signing off on the Inflation Reduction Act?* The good people of Kansas: Kansans beat back abortion restrictions at the ballot box on Tuesday. What might this mean for democracy, and the midterms?* The awful Alex Jones: Holy karma, Batman. What will be made of his years of unintentionally shared text messages? And what is the role of defamation lawsuits in the (dis)information age?* A Coffee Klatch theme song: Last week we asked for anyone who might be interested and willing to send in a non-copyrighted tune for us to use as an intro for these weekly recordings. You lovely, talented listeners came through in spades! We’ve been overwhelmed with your outpouring of original songs and kind emails. Thank you to all of you who took the time to compose music for this community to hear. Today we feature some early results from this “contest.”Please pull up a chair. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe