An economist explains why the American Dream isn’t dead—and how policy, not just personal effort, shapes who gets ahead.

Dr. Justin Callais is Chief Economist at the Archbridge Institute, co-editor of Profectus, and author of the Substack Debunking Degrowth. His research focuses on economic growth, social mobility, and policy-driven barriers to opportunity.

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One-line summary: Chris Consultant joins Jesse to explain why he is leaving Germany, arguing that high taxes, bureaucracy, demographic decline, energy policy failures, and shrinking free speech have made Europe increasingly hostile to productive people.

Guest bio:

Chris Consultant is a banking and finance consultant, entrepreneur, YouTuber, and Substack writer.

He creates content about taxes, economic decline, bureaucracy, demographics, AI, and the reasons behind his decision to leave Germany for Spain, with a longer-term goal of leaving Europe altogether.

Topics discussed:

Main points:

Top 3 quotes:

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A philosophy professor/lawyer argues that med-school “holistic” + diversity-weighted admissions are less predictive than a numbers-based algorithm—and that the stakes show up downstream in physician quality, access, and patient outcomes.

Dr. Steven Kirschner (as stated in your intro) is a distinguished teaching professor of Philosophy at SUNY Fredonia and also an attorney; he authored the 2024 paper “The Diversity Argument for Affirmative Action in Medical School: A Critique” (Journal of Controversial Ideas).

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Canada’s MAiD program has expanded rapidly—Dr. Ramona Coelho argues the system increasingly serves vulnerable people, with uneven safeguards and serious ethical, legal, and social risks.

Dr. Ramona Coelho (MDCM, CCFP) is a family physician in London, Ontario, a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and co-editor of Unravelling MAiD in Canada: Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide as Medical Care. She has provided testimony and policy input on MAiD and serves on Ontario’s MAiD Death Review Committee with the Office of the Chief Coroner.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by Dr. Ramona Coelho in this interview are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of her employer, affiliated institutions, advisory committees, or any organization with which she is associated.

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A lively tour from Cold War “The Thing” to today’s surveillance capitalism—showing how audio capture, too much data, and automation pressures helped turn listening into AI.

• Dr. Toby Heys — Professor at the School of Digital Arts (SODA), Manchester Metropolitan University; co-founder of the AUDINT sonic research unit; co-author of Listening In
• Dr. David Jackson — Senior Lecturer in Digital Visualisation at SODA, Manchester Metropolitan University; researches AI’s cultural impact; founded the Storytellers + Machines conference (2023); co-author of Listening In.
• Marsha Courneya — Canadian writer/editor; teaches Digital Dramaturgy at the International Film School of Cologne; doctoral researcher in Digital Culture and Communication at Birkbeck, University of London; co-author of Listening In.

• “The Thing” (1945): passive bugging, resonance, why it went undetected
• Cold War escalation: normalization of listening, Five Eyes, PRISM/Snowden
• Stasi data glut: informants, dossiers, “collecting as mania,” behavior change
• Language under surveillance: cryptolects, slang, coded speech, hip-hop as evasion
• Surveillance capitalism: smart homes, smart toys, wearables, “data promiscuity”
• Kids + data: baby monitors/crib cams, school biometrics, “data twins” before birth
• AI training + intimate life: accidental recordings, human review, terms-of-service reality
• Future tensions: convenience vs autonomy, regulation lag, ownership erosion (“enshittification”)

• Audio surveillance scales into an “automation problem.” Once you can record everything, the bottleneck becomes listening fast enough, pushing intelligence services toward automated analysis.
• Surveillance changes behavior—even when nobody is actively listening. The possibility of being overheard bends speech, jokes, and self-presentation (Stasi dynamics → modern smart devices).
• “Too much data” doesn’t make it harmless. The danger isn’t only what’s heard today, but the creation of a searchable “permanent record” that can be reinterpreted later.
• The home becomes the most valuable capture zone. People drop the public mask at home; that intimacy makes in-home audio uniquely revealing and therefore lucrative/powerful.
• Children are captured early—often via “safety” and parental anxiety. Baby tech, smart toys, school systems, and medical records create a data trail before kids can consent or understand it.
• Snowden shocked—but didn’t trigger lasting mass refusal. The episode argues leaks often lead to resignation/memeification (“the intel officer listening”) rather than sustained backlash.
• AI + ownership is the next front. Beyond privacy, the guests worry about erosion of ownership (you can’t fully “own” digital goods or refuse totalizing platforms as easily).

• Toby: “There was nothing to detect.”
• Marsha: “It ruptures language completely.”
• David: “data isn’t secure and safe.”

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A former Silicon Valley insider explains how MBA-style “spreadsheet management” is breaking software—and why it’s making tech, AI, and everyday products worse.

Darryl Campbell is a former tech industry insider who spent 15 years in Silicon Valley at companies including Amazon and Uber and at early-stage startups. He’s the author of Fatal Abstraction: Why the Managerial Class Loses Control of Software.

• What “managerialism” is and how MBAs took over tech
• Why software moved from serving users to extracting value
• Industrial-era management vs. internet-scale systems
• Boeing 737 MAX, Uber self-driving, and systemic risk
• Enshittification and the decline of product quality
• AI hype, weak ROI, and incentives to do harmful things
• Monopoly power, captured regulation, and why markets don’t self-correct
• Whether real innovation has slowed since the 1970s
• What comes next: backlash, regulation, or a paradigm shift

• The “managerial class” optimizes for financial metrics that don’t capture safety, quality, or real-world harm.
• Industrial-era management worked better because physical constraints forced slower feedback and respect for expertise.
• Software removes constraints: you can ship instantly at global scale, so errors and incentives can become catastrophes.
• Enshittification is a predictable outcome when monopoly power + financial targets replace user value.
• AI is under extreme financial pressure (huge capex vs. limited revenue), which encourages risky monetization.
• Traditional checks—shareholders, competition, regulators—often fail against near-monopolies.
• Meaningful improvement may require a broader public backlash or a major “paradigm shift.”

• “Anything, literally anything, is permissible as long as it makes you more money.”
• “It’s impossible to ignore… the only way to stay current is to pay us $200 a year for the rest of your life.”
• “It feels like we’re in a black and white phase right now, and I’m really interested to see what the color phase afterward looks like.

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MIT Free Speech Alliance president Wayne Stargardt explains how a few high-profile cancellations can drive widespread faculty self-censorship—even at a STEM powerhouse like MIT.

Wayne Stargardt is the president of the MIT Free Speech Alliance (independent of MIT) and an MIT alumnus (Class of 1974) who focuses on academic freedom, free expression, and open debate at STEM universities.

• “Silencing Science at MIT” and what MIT faculty surveys suggest about self-censorship
• The Dorian Abbott Carlson Lecture cancellation (2021) and the alumni response
• Why faculty fear student retaliation (bias reporting, administrative escalation)
• FIRE campus free-speech rankings and what they measure
• MIT’s revenue model (research/endowment vs tuition) and why incentives differ from most schools
• K–12 socialization, in loco parentis, and why students arrive primed for “shout-down” norms
• DEI rebranding (“community and belonging”) and the claim that pressures went underground
• Risks to MIT: recruiting/retaining top faculty and research dollars
• MIT reinstating SAT requirements (post-2020 test disruption)
• MIT vs Harvard: data/analysis vs decision-making under uncertainty (“intuition”)
• AI as a tool: value depends on the questions/tasks you set

• Multiple MIT faculty surveys—asked different ways—cluster around ~50–55% reporting some self-censorship in at least some settings.
• You don’t need “many” cancellations: a few public examples can trigger self-protective silence across a campus.
• The Abbott episode was a catalyst: MIT was “caught by surprise,” and faculty + alumni backlash made repeat events less likely—but speakers may be quietly filtered out earlier.
• FIRE rankings reflect student attitudes + institutional policies; MIT’s rank improved partly because others worsened, not because MIT’s score surged.
• MIT’s finances reduce tuition dependence; the bigger vulnerability is faculty environment → research strength → prestige/funding.
• Administrative culture shift (more “professional administrators”) can amplify complaint systems when they’re sympathetic to activist norms.
• Stargardt is cautiously optimistic: broader American free-speech culture pushes universities either to course-correct or fade amid demographic headwinds.

• “You don't have to cancel too many professors at a university… they catch on real quick… and… self-censor.”
• “MIT is a multidisciplinary research institute, which happened to have a small specialized trade school attached to it.”
• “You don't have to cancel a whole lot of people to scare the faculty. You just have to cancel a few.”

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In this episode, Jesse talks with Fordham University School of Law corporate-law professor Sean J. Griffith about why “go woke, go broke” hasn’t really played out—and why big, publicly traded firms can stay “woke” even when consumers or politicians claim there’s backlash. The core theme: modern corporate power often runs through managers, compliance systems, and financial intermediaries, not “owners,” and that structure changes what accountability looks like.

They unpack:

• Managerialism and the separation of ownership from control in modern corporations (why founders can still get pushed out, and why shareholders often don’t steer day-to-day governance).
• How “woke” agendas persist inside firms through HR/compliance, regulatory levers, and asset-manager/proxy-voting plumbing.
• Why vague, non-falsifiable goals (DEI/ESG/sustainability) can become a perpetual project that reduces accountability and can substitute for clearer objectives like returns—or even employee compensation.
• The politics of corporate speech and compelled trainings, including the Florida “Stop WOKE Act” litigation.
• The “what now?” question: what reforms (especially around intermediaries and voting) might actually change corporate behavior.

• “Woke doesn’t vanish; it rebrands.” Words change (DEI → “belonging,” ESG → “sustainability”), structures stay.
• Modern corporate governance isn’t “owners calling the shots.” It’s boards, managers, compliance, and intermediaries.
• Compliance departments can function as political “levers” inside firms—often not aligned with shareholder-return logic.
• Passive funds concentrate voting power. People hold the economic exposure, but big fund complexes often hold the vote.
• Vague goals reduce accountability. If you miss financial targets, point to ESG wins; if you miss ESG targets, point to financial realities.

• “Woke capitalism” as organizational inertia, not just marketing
• Managerialism and the separation of ownership/control
• Board governance: fiduciary duty vs stakeholder goals
• HR’s growth, compliance logic, and internal “mission” narratives
• Regulation as governance-by-proxy (disclosure rules, compliance guidelines)
• Passive index funds, voting power, and “engagement” with CEOs
• Proxy advisers and how voting guidance can steer outcomes
• Status incentives for executives (elite conferences, reputational capital)
• The Florida workplace-training case and corporate First Amendment rights
• AI and the possibility of “automating” bureaucracy (for better or worse)
• Political strategy: targeting intermediaries vs hoping markets self-correct

Sean’s article “Woke Will Never Go Broke” at Chronicles Magazine.

• Sean’s faculty page at Fordham University School of Law.
• Sean’s papers on SSRN (example paper page).
• Business Roundtable “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation” (2019).
• Securities and Exchange Commission climate disclosure rule (press release).
• Florida “Stop WOKE Act” workplace-training litigation (Eleventh Circuit case page).
• The Economist: “How HR took over the world… Will AI shrink it?”

Sean J. Griffith is a corporate and securities law professor and director of the Fordham Corporate Law Center. His work focuses on corporate governance, securities regulation, and related questions of institutional power inside public companies.

If you’ve ever wondered why “boycotts” don’t seem to change corporate behavior—or why the same internal programs persist no matter who wins elections—this episode is a deep dive into the 

structure

 of modern capitalism: boards, managers, compliance, regulators, and the intermediaries who often control how shares get voted.

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Political beliefs often matter more than data or methods in shaping how social scientists think about controversial issues. In this episode, sociologist Dr. Mark Horowitz explains why many professors line up by politics on hot-button questions, drawing on moral psychology, groupthink inside universities, and the idea that some topics become treated as morally untouchable “sacred victims.”

Dr. Mark Horowitz is a Professor of Sociology at Seton Hall University whose research uses large surveys of faculty to study political bias, motivated reasoning, and viewpoint diversity in the social sciences.

• Why politics predicts social-science positions on controversial questions
• Moral Foundations Theory (Jonathan Haidt): care/fairness vs. loyalty/authority/sanctity
• “Bio-resistance” / discomfort with biological explanations in parts of the academy
• Anthropology & sociology survey findings (e.g., plausibility of evolved sex differences; biology & STEM gaps)
• “Sacred victims,” ingroup policing, and why some hypotheses become morally “off-limits”
• Postmodernism vs. “postmodern vibes”: activist scholarship without explicit postmodern labels
• Grievance studies hoax + “idea laundering” and how ideas move journal → curriculum → common sense
• Tenure realities: how dissent can be managed without formal firing
• Replication/reliability worries and what “fixes” might actually help: introspection + viewpoint diversity

• Humans reason with motivated cognition, and academics aren’t exempt—political identity often tracks judgments on contested claims.
• Moral intuitions shape what feels plausible: some explanations trigger moral disgust (e.g., claims perceived as “naturalizing inequality”).
• Fields with extreme ideological skew risk narrowing hypothesis space, intensifying policing, and losing public legitimacy.
• The issue isn’t “one side evil”—it’s how moral communities become interpretive communities (and vice versa).
• The best corrective mechanisms are viewpoint diversity, active engagement with opposing arguments, and self-awareness about bias.

• “Do you believe it because the evidence suggests it—or because it’s congenial to how you feel?”
• “Interpretive communities become moral and emotional communities—and then disagreement feels morally wrong, not just empirically wrong.”
• “The only way to minimize distortion is introspection plus viewpoint diversity—actively seeking ideas that unsettle us.”

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Evolutionary psychologist Debra Lieberman explains how “disgust” and other built-in mental programs shape attraction, kinship, morality, and even law—while modern technology and social media scramble the cues those systems evolved to track.

Dr. Debra Lieberman is a professor of psychology at the University of Miami and an evolutionary psychologist who studies how evolved “mental apps” shape social life—kinship, cooperation, morality, sexuality, and emotions. She’s the co-author of Objection: Disgust, Morality, and the Law.

• What makes someone “hot”: symmetry, hormonal cues, and universal vs learned templates
• Male vs female mate preferences (fertility cues; resource/provisioning cues; kindness/safety)
• Disgust as an evolved system for pathogen avoidance (food, touch/contact, sex)
• Incest avoidance, the Westermarck effect, kibbutzim and “minor marriages” evidence
• Sexual reproduction, pathogens, and why “mixing the gene pool” matters
• How disgust bleeds into moral judgment and law; coalitions and social leverage
• Why modernity/tech changes the payoff of ancient intuitions
• Gratitude as a “sleeper” universal emotion that jumpstarts friendship
• Her evolutionary psychology textbook + MediaByte project

• Attraction isn’t “simple”—it’s output. Your brain runs hidden machinery that converts cues into a gut-level “hot/not.”
• Symmetry functions like a health certificate. It’s hard to build a symmetric body; disruption from disease/mutations makes symmetry informative.
• Men’s and women’s preferences differ on average, but share a template. Men track fertility-linked cues; women track resource acquisition/investment cues—plus kindness/safety as a major predictor.
• Disgust is a multi-purpose regulator. It steers eating, contact, sex, and social avoidance by tracking contamination risk and other fitness costs.
• Incest avoidance relies on cues, not DNA tests. Early co-residence can trigger “this is kin” psychology even when people aren’t related (Westermarck effect).
• Modern abundance doesn’t erase ancient wiring. People calibrate to local “baselines” and still compete relative to that baseline.
• Moral disgust can be weaponized. Disgust language can rally coalitions (“those people are disgusting/bad”) and support punishment, including via law.
• Gratitude is an underappreciated social engine. It flags “this person values me more than expected,” helping form alliances beyond kin.

• “Beauty is in the adaptation of the beholder.”
• “We’re not frogs… we have a very specific human operating system that guides us toward certain features and away from others.”
• “Symmetry is hard to build—it can act like a kind of health certificate.”
• “Women track resource acquisition… but one of the most critical traits is kindness—it signals safety.”
• “You smell something off and you don’t eat it—you’re not thinking ‘pathogens’… you’re thinking ‘ew’.”
• “There’s no one-size-fits-all disgust; it depends on what you were calibrated to as ‘normal.’”
• “If morality were just cooperation… why wouldn’t heterosexual men celebrate gay men for reducing competition?”
• “Gratitude is triggered when someone shows they value you more than you expected—it jumpstarts friendship.”

🎙 The Pod is hosted by Jesse Wright
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