Dating has become an "online first" activity these days, with the plurality of relationships beginning on the internet. This has some pretty substantial negative consequences for our social lives, our romantic relationships, and more generally for community and social connectedness more broadly. In order to remedy these problems, we need to get back to meeting people in person and in particular through friends.

Producing affordable housing is important, but our most commonly used methods for getting this housing built may be actively counterproductive. In what is perhaps the nerdiest episode of the podcast to date, Megan and Clayton take you through what isn't working, and what we should do instead.

We live a substantial portion of our public lives on social media in a way that is actually deeply unhealthy for many of us and causes us to make decisions that we would not otherwise make. Megan and Clayton talk about why we need to stop comparing ourselves to the people we see online and instead get outside and touch grass from time to time.

It's not exactly a secret that ICE are completely out of control right now. They are acting with impunity while violating people's rights all over the country. In this episode, Megan and Clayton dive into some of the most egregious examples of their behavior, and talk about some of the bare-minimum things that we can do to stop this kind of thing happening in the future.

Since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act 35 years ago, we've made limited progress on disability access and even regressed in certain ways when it comes to productive public attention to the issue. Making further progress requires rejecting rising ableism and embracing accessibility.

There's been much to-do about the graying of the world. But how much of it is real, how much are millennials responsible, and is it actually a problem? Listen along as Megan and Clayton take you on a (hopefully) more lighthearted episode this week.

Recent years have seen the rise of "manosphere" content as opportunistic grifters monetize men's inability to get a date and tell them that it's all women's fault. This content is bad for men, bad for women, and bad for society in general. It serves no one but those who are making money stoking people's worst beliefs and impulses. It deserves to be summarily rejected.

Much as digital learning technologies can provide better access to education for some people, they are not, and we cannot let them be a replacement for in-person instruction. They just simply are not as effective and, with the rise of generative AI technologies, only provide more incentives for students to shirk their work and not actually learn the things that they are supposed to. In order to make sure that these technologies do not further harm students' education, we need to embrace the tried and true classroom.

The last two decades have seen a dramatic decline in local newspapers and local news more generally. This has had consequences on everything ranging from social cohesion to the quality of local elections. Megan and Clayton are joined by Sean Ewing to discuss how we got here and what we might be able to do mitigate this decline.

Levels of general knowledge are genuinely on the decline, and the distrust of experts and even reveling in one's own lack of knowledge seem to be on the rise. We all need to be more curious again, and get back to desiring and respecting more knowledge about the world around us.