Making Sense of the News
Like Duolingo, but for Making Sense of the News. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
For the part of you with thirty open tabs that never became anything.
A deep dive: 92 levels across 5 sections, about 184 minutes end to end, roughly 37 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Spotting the Power in the Room, The Art of Being Seen, When the Rules Change: Emergencies, Conflict and Global Tension, and Us vs Them: How Boundaries are Built. It starts from scratch.
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Key ideas in Making Sense of the News
- Power is the ability to force compliance through threats
- Authority is the recognized right to rule based on a system of rules
- Weber identified three distinct sources of legitimacy
- Legal-rational authority relies on the office, not the person
- Power vs Authority
- Legal-rational authority
- Legitimacy creates internal obligation to follow rules
- Rituals and architecture (like courthouses) signal permanence
- The difference between power and authority
- Stable rule-setting relies on consent rather than constant surveillance
- National symbols (flags, anthems) link the state to identity
- Max Weber's three types of legitimate rule
- How political symbols naturalize the right to rule
- Legitimacy as the glue of power
- Coercion without legitimacy
- Symbols and legitimacy
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives Making Sense of the News the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
If a person is forced to hand over their wallet at gunpoint, what is being exercised in that moment?
Get it right to open this lesson and 91 more in the app.
Where Making Sense of the News takes you
Learn how to decode the headlines and understand the hidden forces shaping our world. Move beyond the surface of daily news to see how power, symbols, and emergencies define our reality.
- 1
Spotting the Power in the Room
- Who Gets to Make the Rules
- Setting the Agenda and Hiding the Options
- How Your Preferences Are Shaped
- Politics in Your Everyday Life
- 2
The Art of Being Seen
- Why Visibility Matters in Politics
- Bodies as Symbols of the Nation
- The Logic of Cleanliness and Danger
- Who Stays in the Shadows
- Authority and the Right to Lead
- The Different Ways We Are Represented
- 3
When the Rules Change: Emergencies
- Normal Politics vs Crisis Mode
- The Iran Nuclear Deal and Diplomacy
- Sanctions and Economic Pressure
- 4
Conflict and Global Tension
- The Language of Proxy Wars
- Deterrence and Keeping the Peace
- The Role of International Watchdogs
- The Impact of the War on Terror
- Escalation and the Twelve-Day War
- 5
Us vs Them: How Boundaries are Built
- The Process of Othering
- Securitization and Making Things Scary
- The State of Exception
- Social Construction of Enemies
- Exclusion and Social Hierarchies
5 sections · 23 units · 92 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
You pick the voice
Making Sense of the News is taught in the The Professor style: clear, structured, thorough. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start Making Sense of the News today.
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