Five Questions This Week

August 12, 2025•3 min read

(In Current Events—Week of August 5-12, 2025)

By Oliver DeMille
Here we do the news not by telling, but by asking.* The American people are smart and have a lot of common sense. Sometimes just asking them questions gives them much better news than what gets broadcast by the media.
Here are 5 questions that relate to this week’s current events, either directly or indirectly. Answering them will tell you a lot more about the news than the usual media sources. Have fun with them!
1-Do you think the Democratic Party is likely to split into two parties, for example the Democrats and Democratic Socialists, or something like that by the 2026 election? Or maybe the 2028 election?
2- Is it possible for Trump to seed disagreements or divisions between Putin and Xi? Or, alternatively: How could Trump seed disagreements or divisions between Putin and Xi? And should he?
3-As humans, where do our rights come from—God or Government?
4-Do you think one of the deep underlying causes of the growing divide between Red vs. Blue voters in America is different answers to the following question: Where do our rights come from—God or Government?
5-What do you think are the top 2 deepest roots/foundations of the angry divide between Red vs. Blue?
After you’ve answered these, or at least the ones that interest you, ask yourself this: with whom can you share the questions above and your thoughts on them?


*WHY DO WE COVER THE NEWS BY ASKING QUESTIONS?
Wherever you get your news, it’s likely presented in the form of answers. Minds already made up. “Here are the facts,” or more likely in the 2020s, “Here are the opinions.” Actually, telling people instead of asking them has been the main way to communicate news through most of history. And not just media, but in schools and academia as well. Socrates had a different approach: asking questions. But if you’ve read many of Socrates’ dialogues, you know that as soon as anyone answered any question he posed, he had a habit of badgering and arguing with them. He already had an answer in his mind—he just asked the questions to get conversation started. Here we use a different approach. Actual questions. Five of them. Each of them is very important in the news of the week. Some are directly related to current events right now, and others are deeper questions the media isn’t addressing even though it is relevant to certain current news stories. The American people are smart. When you ask them a question, and genuinely want to know what they think, it’s amazing how many great ideas they’ll share. Not the kind we see on TV where a reporter asks people on a street corner or beach some random question and then a team of editors cut, paste and edit until the dumbest or funniest answers are the only ones we get to see. But true questions. Most of the American people are intelligent and have a lot of common sense. I think that’s one big reason why podcasts are so popular right now, because a bunch of good questions and thoughtful responses can go so much deeper on any important topic than highly produced and curated news where those on the screen are mostly just telling people what to think. So, let’s do it differently. Just 5 questions. Really think about them. Answer them for yourself. That’s better than most news shows. Deeper too. And it’s thinking about current events.

*WHY DO WE COVER THE NEWS BY ASKING QUESTIONS?

Wherever you get your news, it’s likely presented in the form of answers. Minds already made up. “Here are the facts,” or more likely in the 2020s, “Here are the opinions.” Actually, telling people instead of asking them has been the main way to communicate news through most of history. And not just media, but in schools and academia as well. Socrates had a different approach: asking questions. But if you’ve read many of Socrates’ dialogues, you know that as soon as anyone answered any question he posed, he had a habit of badgering and arguing with them. He already had an answer in his mind—he just asked the questions to get conversation started. Here we use a different approach. Actual questions. Five of them. Each of them is very important in the news of the week. Some are directly related to current events right now, and others are deeper questions the media isn’t addressing even though it is relevant to certain current news stories. The American people are smart. When you ask them a question, and genuinely want to know what they think, it’s amazing how many great ideas they’ll share. Not the kind we see on TV where a reporter asks people on a street corner or beach some random question and then a team of editors cut, paste and edit until the dumbest or funniest answers are the only ones we get to see. But true questions. Most of the American people are intelligent and have a lot of common sense. I think that’s one big reason why podcasts are so popular right now, because a bunch of good questions and thoughtful responses can go so much deeper on any important topic than highly produced and curated news where those on the screen are mostly just telling people what to think. So, let’s do it differently. Just 5 questions. Really think about them. Answer them for yourself. That’s better than most news shows. Deeper too. And it’s thinking about current events.

sarad

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