Mansplaining

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Summer is Joe’s fourth favorite season of the year, and mosquitoes are a large reason why. So Joe asked Mark to indulge him in a fantasy: what would happen if mosquitoes disappeared from the face of the Earth? Would their extermination lead to a measurable increase in human flourishing or trigger a butterfly effect of unintended consequences? Mark and Joe explore the cases for and against mosquito eradication, the role of chaos theory in thinking through such scenarios, and whether “species-cide” might be preferable to a broader “mosquito-cide.”

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A recent viral video showing what appeared to be a tip added automatically to a customer’s order at a digital kiosk at Shake Shack spotlighted an issue that had been bubbling under the surface of American life for years: why are today’s consumers being asked to tip for so many more things? It seems we’re no longer living in a world where tipping rewarded good service; now it feels obligatory. How did we get here? Joe and Mark chronicle the sordid history of tipping, from its roots in Tudor-era England to its adaptation by post-Civil War American employers to exploit Black workers, to the current situation for tipped workers. Gratuities happily accepted for this episode!

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With only 24 of 777 incoming seats in New York’s City’s premier public high school being offered to Black and Hispanic students, even though they make up 62% of the population, standardized testing has once again come under scrutiny. There’s a reason why the “A” in SAT no longer stands for “aptitude”—the test is a closer proxy for socioeconomic status than intelligence. Mark and Joe trace the history of standardized tests that were originally developed to rid the educational system of inherited privilege but ended up creating perverse incentives like “teaching to the test” that make it harder for actual learning to take place.

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With the world’s progress toward reducing carbon emissions fitful at best, people are slowly waking up to the possibility of not meeting international targets and staring instead at potential worst-case scenarios. Enter geoengineering, in which we deliberately manipulate the Earth's climate system to stave off planetary ruin. Is artificially reflecting sunlight away from the planet or sucking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere our last, best hope, or is it a reckless distraction from ongoing climate mitigation efforts? Joe and Mark review the forms of geoengineering under consideration, how feasible they are, and whether they’d do more harm than good.

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The recent IPO for SpaceX briefly turned Elon Musk into the world’s first trillionaire. One person having a net worth involving 13 digits is staggering to comprehend, leading Joe to ask Mark a question floating around liberal and progressive circles: should our society even allow that? Mark and Joe consider five philosophers whose work, at least in theory, supports the existence of billionaires and trillionaires (though they each offer conditions and caveats), after which there’s ample time for deliberation. You be the jury: should billionaires exist?

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So much has been written and said about how to live a meaningful life. It’s been the pursuit of philosophers for millennia, a central focus of psychology for the last century and a half, and a recurring topic of TED Talks online, not to mention a profit center for the vast self-help industrial complex. The sheer volume of information is dizzying. Luckily, you’ve got Mansplaining to extract the juice from that oversized lemon. Joe and Mark discuss  the three core pillars of meaningfulness and whether they’re consonant with personal achievement while offering some tips for making our lives more meaningful.

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In the wake of the Supreme Court’s disemboweling of the Voting Rights Act, many (former?) Confederate states are redistricting away Black members of Congress who aren’t Republicans. We seem to have entered a golden age of gerrymandering, the manipulation of electoral district boundaries to create an unfair advantage for a specific political party.  Mark and Joe investigate the checkered history of gerrymandering, consider some philosophical concepts explaining the decision to gerrymander, and ponder whether it’s worse than ever before.

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You’ve probably heard of the Doomsday Clock. It’s the clock whose hands move closer to midnight every time humanity is judged to be closer to annihilation. A few months ago, it inched a tiny bit closer to midnight. Mark wondered whether this phenomenon was akin to how the news media incessantly reports on bad things so as to boost their audience, so he asked Joe about who makes the Clock-setting decisions and whether they serve any real purpose other than generating alarming headlines. Joe and Mark recount the history of the Doomsday Clock, what its creators were trying to accomplish, and whether its impact has been useful or counterproductive.

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It is thought that somewhere in Eurasia during the Late Pleistocene, an intrepid pack of gray wolves made a fateful decision to approach a human campfire seeking scraps. From that humble beginning was forged a love affair for the ages. But why that animal, and how to explain the incredible bond that emerged between dogs and humanity?  Mark and Joe trace the history of how dogs and people co-evolved to become such reliable and trusted companions, and what accounts for the hold that dogs have on so many of us today.

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The media images we see of conservative politicians and voters depict people who are angry, fearful, and full of suspicion and outrage. So, why does study after study suggest that there’s a measurable happiness gap between conservatives and liberals, with liberals on the short end of that gap? Joe and Mark examine the measures of happiness that comprise this consensus, explore whether self-reporting one’s life satisfaction is a reliable gauge of happiness, and wade into the fierce debate over why the data says what it says.