The Daily Evolver

Jeff begins the podcast by playing an excerpt from a commencement speech given by President Obama at Howard University recently, which had a distinctly integral feeling to it. Before challenging the graduates, Obama puts their place in history in context: "If you had to choose one moment in history in which you could be born, and you didn't know ahead of time who you were going to be ... What nationality, what gender, what race, whether you'd be rich or poor, gay or straight, what faith you'd be born into ... You wouldn't choose 100 years ago. You wouldn't choose the '50s, or the '60s or the '70s. You'd choose right now." It's an uplifting introduction based on the big picture, the arc of history, so often lost to us amid our daily toils as the cable news hijacks our amygdalae. "People realize," says Jeff, "that for all of our problems, that this is indeed the best time to be alive and that it's getting better." Such a vision of progress is a stark contrast to the everyday attitude of first tier consciousn