Mansplaining

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In recent years, the media has been rife with stories about prominent scientists and labs manipulating research data.  Such behavior recently cost the president of Stanford University his job, and headline-grabbing findings in several disciplines have been discredited.  Is this the canary in the coal mine signaling a much larger problem?  Joe and Mark test the hypothesis that scientific data is hopelessly corrupted by examining the perverse incentives of the scientific industrial complex as well as the burgeoning infrastructure for investigating research discrepancies. (Recorded August 11, 2023.)

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In a summer plagued by heatwaves, wildfire smoke, and biblical rainfall, it’s natural to wonder whether this is the new normal for our weather.  Scientists warned about many of these particulars, but even they’ve been stunned at how quickly they’re coming to pass.  Mark and Joe contemplate whether climate calamity will render vast swaths of the United States uninhabitable over the next few decades, and whether our getting used to once-in-a-century weather events happening with frightful regularity might be part of the problem. (Recorded July 28, 2023.)

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The core idea of universal basic income (UBI) is to reduce poverty by providing people with periodic cash payments sufficient to get by.  Guaranteed minimum income programs for the needy have been around forever, but unconditional cash payments to every citizen have been tested only on a limited basis thus far.  Joe and Mark examine the best arguments for and against UBI before considering whether the thrifty logic of targeted payments to some is preferable to the broad acceptance achievable by identical payments to all. (Recorded July 14, 2023.)

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Politicians love to pay lip service to taming the deficit, but when they’re in power, they invariably do the opposite, cutting taxes and/or increasing spending.  And yet, despite all that seeming fiscal recklessness, the U.S. economy remains strong.  It makes you wonder: maybe deficits aren’t such a big deal after all.  In the second of a two-part episode about our burgeoning national debt, Mark and Joe consider whether deficits matter by conducting a chronological tour of economic thinking, from classical liberalism to Keynesianism to neoliberalism to Modern Monetary Theory.  Is the Left right?  Is the Right wrong?  We’ve got some answers. (Recorded June 30, 2023.)

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Every couple of years, our elected representatives play a game of chicken that’s the subject of breathless headlines predicting dire consequences.  Will we or won’t we avert financial disaster?  We’re talking about the debt ceiling, of course.  All that hysteria makes you wonder what would happen to ordinary Americans if the United States actually defaulted on its debt.  In the first installment of a two-part episode, Joe and Mark discuss why the debt ceiling exists, what a default would mean, and what we might do to prevent one from happening. (Recorded June 16, 2023.)

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It’s getting more and more difficult to live one’s life without owning a smartphone.  After holding out for years, Joe finally broke down and got one after both his employer and his favorite baseball team made it a requirement to have a mobile device to do business with them.  Joe asked Mark whether it will someday be impossible to be a citizen and functioning member of society without one.  Join Mark and Joe as they ponder the sacrifices necessary to go without, and whether that renders you (to use James Joyce’s memorable phrase) "outcast from life’s feast."(Recorded June 2, 2023.)

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It appears we’ve been sold a bill of goods.  For the longest time, workers have been told that innovative new technology is going to improve productivity and lead to shorter work weeks and more free time.  This story has been told since the advent of the assembly line more than a century ago, through the rise of computers and the internet, and now in connection with AI.  And yet, the promised life of leisure never seems to materialize.  Why not?  Joe and Mark discuss a few possible reasons why Americans don’t cash in their productivity dividend. (Recorded May 19, 2023.)

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Though not strictly a partisan phenomenon, the knee-jerk NIMBY ("not in my backyard") reaction is an impulse that wealthy liberals and progressives employ in many different contexts, whether to protect their coastline views from offshore wind farms or to shut down the siting of a homeless shelter or high-density housing in their urban neighborhoods.  But where does this impulse come from, why is it so powerful, and what can be done to counteract its often pernicious effects?  As Mark and Joe learn, it all goes back to how the primitive fear response sometimes triumphs over our ideological commitments in ways that are difficult—but not impossible—to remedy. 

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For the first time, Mansplaining tackles a question posed by one of its listeners!  This particular question doesn’t have a single correct answer, but it does lend itself to spirited discussion about what is and is not a pop song, and the elements that make a pop song great.  Joe and Mark delve into that and much more before each disclosing their nominees for "Best (Written) Pop Song Ever." (Recorded April 13, 2023.)

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The recent bankruptcy of a large regional sports network that carries the games of nearly half the teams in MLB, the NBA and NHL has some people wondering what happens when the old economic model that enriched everybody in professional sports  doesn’t work anymore.  Mark is one of those people, so he asked Joe to look into the matter and predict what’s next for pro sports. Turns out, it’s a sobering story of cord-cutting, the digital transition, and the atomization of society. (Recorded March 24, 2023.)