Reject Modernity Embrace Tradition

A cousin to, or perhaps a descendent of "Everything Bagel" policies, is that many organizations are having their primary missions undermined by what are, at best, ancillary goals: Affordable housing programs not building much housing, transit that people are uncomfortable using, libraries and parks being forced to operate as stand-in homelessness services. In this return from hiatus, Megan and Clayton talk about the contours of this problem, how to identify it, and what we should be doing instead when it comes to having one institution of policy serve multiple ends.

Megan and Clayton are taking a bit of a break while they apply for jobs. But, because they are so nice and don't want to just vanish, they've brought a special guest on to explain the academic job market, why being on market necessitates a break in the first place, and how getting a job as a professor actually works.

The United States as a whole broadly likes to claim that is is focuses on equality and "not seeing race" is often held up as a virtue. However, this notion of colorblindness is actually making it harder to solve some of the most pressing challenges the nation faces which were born out of historical and maintained by contemporary racism and discrimination. Listen along as Megan and Clayton take you through why this is a problem, and what we can do about it.

In an episode that really gets at the ongoing themes of this show, Megan and Clayton talk about how echo chambers, conspiratorial thinking, and shibboleths that require being wrong about things are harming our national discourse, and what we can do to help us get back to some semblance of evidence based public conversations.

With the World Cup only days away, and with our last couple of episodes being, well, heavy as hell, we thought we would take the opportunity to inject a little levity into the show once again and talk about the biggest things that the US gets wrong when it comes to soccer, football, calcio, the beautiful game. Things could be so much better for American Soccer, and we can make them that way.

The Trump Administration has been maddeningly, insanely inconsistent on the causes, justification, purpose, just about everything to do with their war in Iran. Megan and Clayton take you through why this is so strange, why Congress needs to step in, and how we need to orient ourselves differently towards foreign policy going forward.

The Supreme Court's decision in the Callais case is, to put it mildly, a bunch of hot garbage. Megan and Clayton struggle to stay calm as they take you through the history of the VRA up to this point, as well as what this decision means going forward.

There is a rising tide of misinformation specifically related to women's health that parallels the anti-vaccine movement with startling fidelity. Megan and Clayton talk about some of the tactics of these groups, and what we might be able to do to head them off at the pass.

Pam Bondi is turning the Department of Justice into an instrument of Trump's will rather than a legitimate law enforcement organization. Her actions are doing long term damage to our institutions and wreaking havoc on our judicial processes. Megan and Clayton take you through what is happening, and discuss long term prospects for repairing the damage.

Elon has ruined Twitter. Just about every element of the user experience has gotten worse since he took over, and he fundamentally seems to misunderstand the platform. We talked to Jake Christie, the curator of the Museum of Twitter, to understand a bit more about the Twitter of Yore, and what we might've lost now that it's gone.