Make Me Smart

Remember WeWork’s doomed IPO? We’re about a year from that whole bananapants story, but today The Wall Street Journal helped clear up one loose end. Apparently erstwhile WeWork CEO Adam Neumann is no longer at the company as a consultant. Today, we’ll talk about what we know and what we don’t about how the office-space company is faring in seven months into the pandemic. Plus: Halloween candy power rankings and the real-life Michael Myers — no, the other one.

As always, find links to everything we talked about on our episode page at makemesmart.org!

… was all the votes we cast along the way. Today we’re geeking out about early numbers from the U.S. Elections Project. Voters have already cast more than 23 million ballots, more than 16% of the 2016 turnout. Wild. Also on the docket: the latest data on women being pushed out of the workforce, Trump’s flip-flop on wildfire aid and the best Zoom class of the week.

Thanks to everyone who joined us for the live-stream on YouTube today! Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next one. As always, find a list of everything we talked about on our episode page at makemesmart.org!

It’s our 300th episode! We’re eating some cake to celebrate, and Kai’s got a little messed up. We’re also going to hear from a bunch of you about how you’ve become smart over 300 episodes of the show. Thank you all so, so much for listening! Before that, we have some news stories to talk about, including the latest maneuver from Ajit Pai at the Federal Communications Commission and the results of our new poll with Edison Research.

For a list of everything we talked about today, check out our episode page at makemesmart.org! The celebration continues tomorrow on our YouTube channel, where we’ll do our live happy hour episode at 6:30 p.m. Eastern time, 3:30 p.m. Pacific. Subscribe so you don’t miss it!

Tell us if this sounds familiar: The endless string of controversies around user data, disinformation, anticompetitive practices, QAnon and more have soured you on Facebook, big time. But where else are you going to keep up with your family, your neighborhood or your kids’ school? That’s the conundrum facing one of our listeners, and we give the best advice we can on this Whadda Ya Wanna Know Wednesday. Plus, your questions about airline bailouts, conference swag and interest rates.

As always, find a list of everything we talked about today at makemesmart.org!

Disinformation is a growing business that brings up a lot of questions. Is that fake news story getting to your timeline from a troll farm in Russia? Or a teenage contractor a few states over? More importantly, who is making money off it? On today’s show, Wilson Center disinformation fellow Nina Jankowicz joins us for an informative, if depressing, look at the depth and breadth of this growing industry.

It’s not a great time to be in the movie business. It’s an even worse time to be in the theme park business. So it makes sense that Disney just announced a big restructuring of Disney+ and the rest of its streaming media business. Is this the canary in the coal mine for the other big studios? We’ll talk about it, and get Kai Ryssdal’s capsule review of “Mulan.” Plus, Facebook’s new content policies, the economics Nobel and a real-life lightsaber.

As always, find a list of everything we talked about today on our episode page at makemesmart.org!

Early voting is already underway in several states. For this Friday happy hour episode, we’re going to dig into some of the data out of those states and compare it to 2016. Why, what do you usually do at happy hour? Plus, we’ll talk about bedtime, the president’s tweets and “Sister Act.”

As always, you can find links to everything we talked about on the episode page at makemesmart.org. Thanks to everyone who joined us for the livestream today! Subscribe so you don’t miss the next one!

First President Donald Trump squashed coronavirus relief negotiations. Then he tweeted about some piecemeal relief he would sign. Now he’s reportedly asking for a “big deal” before Election Day. What’s changed? Well, uh, let’s look at the stock market. Plus, an update on TikTok star Nathan Apodaca and a very intriguing real estate opportunity — living under a rock!

Don’t miss our live stream on YouTube tomorrow at 3:30 p.m. Pacific time, 6:30 p.m. Eastern. Subscribe so you don’t miss it! For a list of everything we talked about today, check out our episode page at makemesmart.org!

The coronavirus is spreading in the White House. It’s flu season, and experts are bracing for a new wave of COVID-19 cases with a vaccine still months away. So are people going to start stocking up at the grocery store again? We’ll talk it over on this week’s edition of Whadda Ya Wanna Know Wednesday. Plus: market reaction to the president’s diagnosis and the military’s role in the peaceful transition of power.

As always, find a list of everything we talked about today on our episode page at makemesmart.org!

President Donald Trump pulled the plug on a coronavirus relief package today, tweeting that he would sign a bill after the election. For months now, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have been going back and forth over a plan. One key issue: help for state and local governments, which are facing a $155 billion deficit, according to one estimate. Today, we’ll talk with Brookings Institution economist Louise Sheiner about the role those economies play in the broader economic picture and what their needs are are in a recession that looks very different from 2008. How worried should public employees be right now? We’ll have to wait till after the election.