We're (really) back! We've got some Radically Moderate momentum (finally) and some exciting things to discuss.
The future's looking good...
Despite my public commitment at around this time last year, blogging has taken a backseat to general life chaos and a slew of exciting but generally exhausting scholarly projects. The good news is that in that year hiatus I pushed a big scholarly project out the door and am waiting for reviews, and I finished many smaller projects that are now also under review and/or in the proof stages. I’ve also completed some important policy work on accessing high quality maternity care (see my recent book if you’re interested in healthcare reform) and am wrapping up some other projects that can sit and breathe for a while. But perhaps the biggest barrier to consistent blogging was my transition in 2021 to serving as chair of my academic department. That transition was great, but like with most transitions, I underestimated how much learning a new job, working to build out the position and make connections, and doing some pretty serious strategic work to build a cool future would fragment my already fragmented brain.
At the same time, taking a break from the blog was an accidentally good move, because it allowed me to work out some prioritization of writing projects and now that I have that big scholarly project (more on that later, possibly) out the door, I can now come back to the moderation project with much more focus. I’m also very pleased that thanks to a generous grant from the Mercatus Center’s Pluralism and Civil Exchange initiative, I now have the external accountability and support to turn this blog into a book project, which has been my goal for the past five years, but one I never had time or bandwidth to really push forward.
With all that background that probably no one cares about out of the way, what does this mean for the blog?
Well, it means a few exciting things:
I’ll be able to write more frequently - the goal is weekly - on issues relating to radical moderation broadly understood.
More exciting, I’ll be able to use writing here as a testing ground for ideas as they move through the writing gauntlet of “unformed word associations” to “possibly maybe a real idea” to “hey, this is pretty cool, let’s share it and see what other people think” to “book-worthy.”
As part of that process, I would *love love love* comments, suggestions, and ideas from our amazing readers. We get a lot of comments and feedback offline, but I would love for this space to be a real sandbox of ideas where we all play together to build something cool. So with that being said, I have a favor to ask as well….
If you like the blog, like my scholarly work, or just know me and think I’m an ok person, please subscribe to the blog and share it with anyone you think might be even remotely interested. You can subscribe here, with this handy button:
I’ll have a more content-rich post later this week, but for now, subscribe and comment and let me know what kind of content you’re most interested in, drop sources you’d like me to engage with, or just say “hi” and link to your own cool work (no spam goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway).
That’s it for now! Expect more Radically Moderate content in the very near future.
Excited to follow!