Michael Brownstein et al., "Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Help Create Social Change" (MIT Press, 2025)

About this episode

The episode discusses how individual choices can contribute to structural social change, featuring insights from the authors of a new book on the topic.

A novel and scientific approach to creating transformative social change—and the surprising ways that each of us can help make a real difference. Changing the world is difficult. One reason is that the most important problems, like climate change, racism, and poverty, are structural. They emerge from our collective practices: laws, economies, history, culture, norms, and built environments. The dilemma is that there is no way to make structural change without individual people making different—more structure-facing—decisions. In Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Help Create Social Change (MIT Press, 2025) Michael Brownstein, Alex Madva, and Daniel Kelly show us how we can connect our personal choices to structural change and why individual choices matter, though not in the way people usually think. The authors paint a new picture of how social change happens, arguing that our most powerful personal choices are those that springboard us into working together with others—warehouse worker Chris Smalls’s unionization at Amazon is one powerful example. Taking inspiration from the writer Bill McKibben, they stress how one “important thing an individual can do is be somewhat…

People in this episode

Guests: Michael Brownstein, Alex Madva, Daniel Kelly

Topics covered

• social change
• individual choices
• structural problems
• collective action
• personal responsibility
• unionization

Keywords

• social change
• climate change
• racism
• poverty
• collective practices
• personal choices
• unionization
• Bill McKibben

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Amazon

Books & works: Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Help Create Social Change

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