Podcast Rec: Ear Hustle
One of my new favorite podcasts lately has been Ear Hustle. Honestly, I’ve never given much thought to incarcerated Americans. They’re an easy section of the population to write off. My unconscious inner monologue probably goes a little something like this “They’re bad people being punished, so I’m going to spend my time thinking about good people.” This is of course a classic black hat/white hat, gross oversimplification that our brain does because we can’t process everything and need to make some unconscious decisions to help focus our mind’s computational powers and energies. So thanks Brain, but sometimes it causes us to create bad biases (see: Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking”).
However, I’m very glad to override my bias on this one and listen to this podcast to get a bit more insight into what life on the inside is like. And in short, it’s heartbreaking. Because we’ve built a system that basically funnels certain subsections of the population into a trap from which they can not escape. A lot of these people had little hope of escaping this fate.
Are there “bad” people in prison that deserve punishment that I can continue ignoring and focus my attention on the innocents (e.g. children and puppies)? Yes. But I start to suspect this is a shockingly small minority of the people who are currently in the US prison system.
And even if we continue to oversimplify into “people who do bad things” what about redemption? America is built on the dream of being able to make mistakes and reinvent yourself and start a new life of hope for yourself, but none of that American spirit is being reflected in how we deal with crime and punishment. Take this quote from the latest episode “Gold Coats and OGs” about prisoners who medically assist their fellow prisoners doing the extremely hard and sometimes unsavory job of transporting them and often cleaning up incontinence. Here, a Gold Coat named Richard explains why he does it:
“I was a gang member so now this is my chance of giving back. So this is how I do it. I figure if I can give back to life, then my life will be given back to me”
And if that doesn’t tug at your heart strings, you probably need a tune up. Give it a listen.