After a first season exploring topical issues such as racial politics, anti-semitism,
and the symbolism of Trump's wall, Mind of State launched Season Two in the middle
of a global pandemic, economic collapse, a nation-wide reckoning with racial injustice,
and during the run up to what could be the most important election in US history.
Co-hosts Betty Teng and Jonathan Kopp engage in nuanced conversation with experts
from the worlds of politics and psychology, as well as others from related fields
who have studied the complex dynamics between individual and group psychology and
political processes. We explore how "mind" impacts "state" — and vice versa.
Mind of State is produced by co-founders Betty Teng, Jonathan Kopp, and Thomas Singer,
together with Alletta Cooper and Jenny Woodward.
The Founders
Betty Teng
Co-Founder · Co-Host · Producer
Betty P. Teng, LMSW, MFA, is a psychoanalyst and trauma therapist who has
worked with survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence and childhood
molestation at Mount Sinai Beth Israel's Victims Services Program in Manhattan.
She is one of the authors of the New York Times bestseller,
The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. Betty has spoken and written on
trauma and its impacts on individuals, politics and society for conferences
and media outlets, such as Slate and Vox. She currently sees patients in
private practice.
Jonathan Kopp
Co-Founder · Co-Host · Producer
Jonathan Kopp is a political communications strategist specializing in issue
and positioning campaigns for candidates, causes, companies and countries.
He is a Managing Director at the Glover Park Group. Jonathan was a member
of the Obama for America 2008 National Media Team, the Opposition Research
& Rapid Response Team of the 1992 Clinton/Gore "War Room," and the
Clinton Administration White House staff.
Thomas Singer, MD
Co-Founder · Producer
Thomas Singer, MD, is a psychiatrist and Jungian psychoanalyst. Tom is an
expert on the relationships between myth, politics and psyche in his studies
of The Vision Thing and the Ancient Greece, Modern Psyche
series. He is the editor of a series of books exploring cultural complexes,
including Placing Psyche, Listening to Latin America,
Europe's Many Souls, and The Cultural Complex. He is
president of the National ARAS, an archive of symbolic imagery that has
created The Book of Symbols.
The Producers
Alletta Cooper
Producer
Alletta Cooper is a Brooklyn-based audio producer and story-telling consultant.
Her work has been heard on NPR, the award-winning StoryCorps podcast,
PBS – American Experience, Google's social media channels, CBS World News,
The Track podcast, and Delta's in-flight entertainment system. Alletta also
consults with non-profits, design firms, and major corporations on
incorporating storytelling into their work.
allettacooper.com
Jenny Woodward
Producer
Jenny Woodward is a New York-based creative director and video and digital
media producer. She worked for the New York Times for many years developing
and producing content before starting her own production company, working
with a wide variety of clients and subjects, in NY and abroad.
jennywoodward.com
Drawn from the podcast created by some of the co-authors and contributors to the New York Times bestseller
The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, this collection is as relevant now as it was when
Apple Podcasts featured it as "New and Noteworthy" in 2019.
The book's chapters are divided into five sections that reveal persistent themes underlying our
increasing distress due to the interconnectedness of psychology and politics in the United States:
- Acknowledging Death, Trauma & Loss
- Why Truth Matters
- Anxieties of Race & Dominance
- Democracy at Risk
- The Importance of Myth in Politics
Table of Contents
IntroductionBetty Teng, Jonathan Kopp, Thomas Singer
Part 1 — Framework
Cultural Complexes and the Soul of AmericaThomas Singer
Part 2 — Acknowledging Death, Trauma & Loss
We Are All Going to Die — SomedaySheldon Solomon
Ambiguous Loss & the 2020 PandemicPauline Boss
Our Collective TraumaJudith Herman
Acknowledging Harm & Repairing the WorldJessica Benjamin
Living UnarmedMegan Doney
The Trauma of SyriaAnne Barnard
Part 3 — Why Truth Matters
The Case for Radical OpennessAnton Hart
The End of Truth?Scotty McLennan
Conspiracy without TheoryNancy Rosenblum
Nervous States & the Instability of TruthWilliam Davies
Trump on the CouchJustin Frank
Delusions & Lies: The Mind of TrumpMichael Tansey
Part 4 — Anxieties of Race & Dominance
Justice, Rage & PeaceEric Ward
Anger & Racial PoliticsAntoine Banks
Why Everyone Hates the JewsSusan Fiske & Peter Glick
The Perilous Path to AsylumHawthorne "Hawk" Smith
Partisan Politics, Toxic Identities, Dangerous DividesLilliana Mason
White Identity PoliticsAshley Jardina
A "Syndemic" — Climate, Race & COVID-19Adrienne Hollis
Part 5 — Democracy at Risk
Sounding the Alarm: Cultism and the Loss of RealityRobert Jay Lifton
Politics of CareDeva Woodly
Restoring Faith in DemocracyEric Liu
Can Voting & Democracy Survive the Internet?Nate Persily
Analyzing the 2020 ElectionMichael A. Cohen
Politics & the Teenage MindLisa Damour
Part 6 — The Importance of Myth in Politics
America's Economic MythBetty Sue Flowers
When Myth Becomes HistoryJules Cashford
The Symbolic Power of Trump's WallThomas Singer
As we were wrapping up season 2 of Mind of State, it became increasingly clear that there was
no real wrapping up of the myriad issues we explored. The end of the second decade of the
twenty-first century was just the beginning of America's needing to grapple with a newly
shuffled deck of old and new issues.
Although each episode of Mind of State was recorded at a specific time and in a specific
context of events surrounding the 2020 presidential election, it was also clear that the
issues raised were setting an agenda for the century's third decade. Each episode has a
continuing timeliness and timelessness that, like so many fragments from a recurring
collective nightmare, reveals the depth and breadth of our disturbed relationships between
psyche and polis.
In response to the growing sense that we were just beginning rather than ending, we imagined
a free, open-source curriculum that would accompany and unpack the rich material from each
season two episode by asking a series of Socratic questions about the issues, which range
from malignant normality to race to voting rights to ambiguous loss to underlying mythic
structures to the impact of the internet, gun laws, the nature of truth, and a host of other
themes that continue to challenge the American people to make choices for our future
democratic process.
— Betty Teng, Jonathan Kopp & Thomas Singer
Questions? Email info@mindofstate.com
