Ramtin Arablouei
speaker
199 appearances
5 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 29 Mar
Ramtin Arablouei’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Mar 2026 with 1.
Appearances
In 1978, the effort to create the Consumer Protection Agency came to a grinding end.
But Ralph Nader wasn't gone from the public eye. Throughout the 80s and 90s, he won some key fights for consumers, like finally making airbags a federal requirement and rolling back steep car insurance rates in California.
Today, Nader is mostly known for his run for president in the year 2000, which many Democrats say cost Al Gore the election against George W. Bush. From Raiders to Jimmy Carter, many of Nader's longstanding allies turned on him.
People were angry.
And even now, more than 20 years later, Ralph Nader's presidential ambitions still continue to eclipse his past work as a consumer advocate for many people. So when we interviewed him for this episode, we had to ask him about it. You ran for president in 2000. You got a lot of criticism for, quote unquote, I'm putting air quotes here, ruining the election, right, for the Democrats, et cetera.
Since that time, we've seen similar attacks to other third party candidates or people who are running outside of the Republican and Democratic system. Do you feel like the results of the elections we've seen ever since, where we are today... validates your run or further gives weight to the people who criticized you?
Product recalls reached a seven-year high in the U.S. in 2023.
Almost 50% of the U.S. 's tap water could contain forever chemicals, which have been linked to certain cancers and decreased fertility.
So it's worth revisiting the question that Ralph Nader and the consumer movement posed for all of us. What kind of government do we want? And what role do we play in it?
How much of it do you think has to do with the zeitgeist, the culture at that time in the 1960s and 70s, where there was a kind of what we would call now a kind of punk rock, anti-establishment, we're tired of tradition, we're trying to push through and create a new world culture, right? Because to me, it feels like I didn't grow up as a millennial.
I didn't grow up with that similar kind of broader culture. There's a lot more cynicism now towards what is capable of being done, how much change can actually be made. How much of it had to do with the culture of that time?
Paul Sabin says Nader's legacy is complicated, and not just because of his political ambitions.
By becoming the nation's critic, he also helped to sow a mistrust in the government that Reagan seized on, and which we live with today.
So, where do we go from here?
And I'm Ramtin Adablui. And you've been listening to ThruLine from NPR.
Thank you to Brandon Ongsi, Phil Harrell, Dan Girma, Adrian Martinez, Devin Katiyama, Christina Kim, Anya Steinberg, Peter Balanon-Rosen, and Lawrence Wu for their voiceover work.
And as always, thank you to Johannes Dergi, Edith Chapin, and Colin Campbell.
Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Ramteen Arablui from ThruLine. Electricity, internet, cell service, all the things we rely on every day can be unreliable or inaccessible in an emergency. But through any storm or crisis, radio is a lifeline. Support the resource that's here for you no matter what. Give today at donate.npr.org.
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