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Video version available at:
https://www.youtube.com/@SolutionsFromTheMultiverse/videos

Imagine a “Medicare for All” plan that actually means all humans, everywhere. We take that audacious idea and force it into concrete steps: a lean nonprofit that runs a global health insurance platform where verified clinics submit medical claims with documentation, and we reimburse care for patients who cannot pay. No vague charity promises, just a claims workflow that is measurable, auditable, and designed to expand healthcare access fast.

Along the way, we pressure-test the hard parts: fraud, corruption, and paperwork. We talk about using AI fraud detection, identity validation, two-factor authentication, and Medicare-style snap audits to keep the system honest without building a bloated bureaucracy. We also explore incentives borrowed from micro lending, where small groups of clinics share accountability, so bad actors get pushed out before they can drain the pool.

We compare this model to Doctors Without Borders and GiveDirectly, not to dunk on them, but to ask a sharper question: what delivers the most health outcomes per donated dollar? Paying local doctors and nurses directly could be cheaper than flying teams around the world, and pairing provider reimbursements with cash support could cover real-world costs like meds, transport, and missed work. We even consider SMS-based claims for regions without reliable broadband, so the platform works where the need is highest.

If you’ve worked in insurance claims, medical billing, cybersecurity, fundraising, or mission-driven software, we want your feedback and your pushback. Subscribe, share this with one friend who cares about universal healthcare, and leave a review with the biggest flaw you see in the plan so we can make it stronger.

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Email: [email protected]
Adam: @ajbraus - [email protected]
Scot: @scotmaupin

adambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)
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Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.

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VIDEO available: https://www.youtube.com/@SolutionsFromTheMultiverse/

If you’re tired of the “my kid started school and now our whole house is sick forever” cycle, we’ve got a surprisingly low-tech fix: put handwashing stations where students actually pass by every day. We make the case that bathrooms aren’t enough because the important moment is right before eating and right after high-contact routines. From summer camp sink lines to Malaysia’s restaurant handwashing culture to cruise-ship dining rooms that practically force sanitizer on everyone, we break down why placement, maintenance, and social visibility turn handwashing from a nice idea into a real disease-control tool.

Then we shift from prevention to relief and share an evidence-informed approach to shortening the common cold by lowering viral load early. We talk zinc lozenges that actually work (and which additives can wreck the benefit), hypertonic saltwater gargles with a clear mix ratio, and why nasal rinses can be the “slam dunk” when colds start in the nose. We also get into neti pot safety, including the non-negotiable rule about distilled, sterile, or previously boiled water, plus a few extra tools like honey for cough and a more advanced hypertonic saline nebulizer idea for bronchitis-style misery.

You’ll also hear a quick detour on why you might not have dandruff at all, how to wash your scalp properly, and why some people ditch shampoo entirely after the oil adjustment period. Want more practical, weirdly effective solutions like this (and yes, there’s a video version too)? Subscribe, share the episode with a fellow parent, and leave a review with your best cold remedy or school hygiene idea.

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Email: [email protected]
Adam: @ajbraus - [email protected]
Scot: @scotmaupin

adambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)
The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)

Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.

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The Big Idea

Professor Adam Braus pitches a fix nobody's tried: instead of taxing property at a flat rate, tax it like income — progressively. Own a modest home? You're barely taxed. Own a $50 million real estate empire? You pay real money. It's a property tax with a conscience, and Adam argues it could solve the housing crisis, fix California's broken Prop 13 system, and take a swing at the billionaire-hoarding problem all at once.

Scot Maupin, doing his usual generous-interrogator thing, pokes at yachts, shell companies, and whether landlords will just pass the cost to renters — and Adam's got an answer for all of it.

What's Broken Right Now

• Prop 13 locks property taxes to a home's original purchase price — not what it's worth today. Buy a house in 1985 for pocket change, and decades later you're still paying taxes on pocket change, even as the home is worth millions.
• This hits commercial property too — including, allegedly, golf courses that shuffle ownership through shell-share tricks so they're never technically "sold."
• The result: California's budget is starved relative to its actual wealth, and the state leans harder on income tax to compensate — which hits working people disproportionately harder than a property tax would.
• Meanwhile, in places like Montana and Hawaii, wealthy outsiders are buying up land and driving housing costs through the roof — not because there's a housing shortage, but because of hoarding and speculation.

The Fix: Progressive Property Tax

Instead of one flat rate on a property's value, tax brackets stack on a person's total property holdings:

• First $200K (or so): little to no tax — protects ordinary homeowners and grandmas on fixed incomes.
• $200K–$2M: a low rate, comparable to today's lowest-tax states.
• $2M–$10M+: rates climb toward the top of the national range (2%+).
• +$50M: a "super bracket" — 2.5–3%+ on the excess.

The pitch: this could roughly double California's property tax revenue (from ~$100B to $170–200B), funneled toward building housing, ending homelessness, and politically popular wins like paid leave — while lowering the tax burden on working people (no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security).

How It Closes the Loopholes

• A beneficiary registry (already used in Australia and some U.S. states) ties every property to a real human owner — so you can't dodge the tax by splitting ownership across an LLC for every house, or spreading deeds across family members.
• Commercial real estate is included. Adam's pitch turns this into a two-for-one: tax pressure forces a sell-off of empty downtown office space (a post-COVID glut), and the state can buy it cheap and convert it into actual housing — bringing residents (and life) back to dead downtowns.

The Objections, Pre-Debunked

Scot plays it straight and asks the obvious questions:

• "Won't the rich just flee to Florida or Montana?" Adam's counter: capital flight of real estate is mostly harmless — the buildings can't be packed in a suitcase. If a billionaire sells, the property stays in-state; prices just come down, which is the point.
• "Won't this just raise rents?" Possibly nudges the very top of the market, but the broad base of affordable housing should barely move — maybe even gets cheaper as demand shifts.
• "Will yachts and jets count?" No — keep it simple, this is real estate only.

Where the Idea Comes From

Adam name-checks Gary's Economics (and its scrappier YouTube cousin, Barry's Economics) for the broader "tax wealth, not work" framing, and ties the proposal back to existing progressive wealth-tax proposals from Bernie Sanders (the famous "8% bracket above $1B," pegged to average market returns) and Elizabeth Warren (flat 2% above $50M) — positioning the progressive property tax as a more politically palatable, state-level cousin of those ideas.

Detour of the Episode

A spirited tangent on Maine's Senate race, Graham Platner — oyster farmer, combat veteran, and the episode's pick for "proof this message can win" — plus a running bit on whether wind turbines can literally use up the wind. (They cannot. Probably.)

Quotable

Want me to also draft a short, punchier episode description (the 2–3 sentence blurb for podcast apps) or social media copy to go with these notes?

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Help these new solutions spread by ...

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Comments? Feedback? Questions? Solutions? Message us! We will do a mailbag episode.

Email: [email protected]
Adam: @ajbraus - [email protected]
Scot: @scotmaupin

adambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)
The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)

Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.

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Read Adam’s book Motivate on the most up-to-date science of motivation. Bit.ly/motivate-book

The most frustrating part of self-improvement is the loop: you promise you will change, you push with willpower, you slip, then you blame your character. We take a different angle here: the strongest motivation research points to environment as the main driver of behavior, and “discipline” is often just what your setup makes easy. Once you see that, the shame drops and the strategy gets practical.

We dig into the fundamental attribution error, why popular motivation narratives over-focus on grit, and how tiny design choices shape outcomes. We trade real examples: the cookie problem in your kitchen, smoking triggers that vanish when context changes, and the surprising Vietnam veterans heroin findings that show how access and stress can create addiction, and how a new environment can undo it. We also talk Rat Park, the opioid crisis as a disease of despair, and how enriched lives reduce the pull of destructive “buttons.”

Then we zoom out to systems: crime as a social context issue, policy as environment design, and Advanced Peace as a proven gun violence prevention approach that can save lives and public money. We even get into feng shui as a reminder that space affects mood and attention, whether you explain it as energy or psychology. If you want to read more, work more, eat differently, or build a better life, the question becomes: what can you redesign so the right choice is the default?

Subscribe for more, share this with a friend who is tired of “just try harder,” and leave a review if this reframes how you think about motivation. What part of your environment will you change first?

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Email: [email protected]
Adam: @ajbraus - [email protected]
Scot: @scotmaupin

adambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)
The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)

Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.

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A weird, uncomfortable realization kicked this conversation off: the United States still doesn’t clearly guarantee equal rights for women at the constitutional level, and we’ve been sliding backward on core freedoms that shape everyday life. As dads of daughters, that lands differently, so we went searching for something more useful than another round of online debate.

We propose a simple framework you can argue with, improve, or steal: five tiers of women’s rights, from basic property and independence, to voting power, to equal rights under law, to full equity in real life. We talk through what tactics historically worked at each stage and why the strategies that helped early wins do not automatically unlock the last two tiers. That’s where policies like the Equal Rights Amendment, equal pay enforcement, reproductive autonomy, paid parental leave and universal childcare stop being “nice to have” and become the definition of freedom.

Then we take aim at what we call “mangoes” media, academia and NGOs. We’re not saying they’re useless, but we are saying they can’t be the engine. The engine is organized labor power: voting blocs, strikes, and boycotts that hit the pocketbook, backed by coalitions that can keep pressure on year after year. We dig into Me Too as a case study, and we point to Iceland’s women’s strike as a reminder of what coordinated action can do.

If you want a practical, strategic conversation about feminism, labor unions, gender equality and how change actually happens, hit play, then subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review. What lever would you pull first: vote, strike, or boycott?

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Help these new solutions spread by ...

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Comments? Feedback? Questions? Solutions? Message us! We will do a mailbag episode.

Email: [email protected]
Adam: @ajbraus - [email protected]
Scot: @scotmaupin

adambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)
The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)

Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.

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innovationlens.org

[email protected]

Most people talk about AI like it’s a faster intern. Jonah Lynch is building something closer to an intellectual compass: a system that can “read” the scientific literature at scale, map what we already know, and point toward the empty spaces where the next discoveries are most likely to happen.

We unpack Innovation Lens, Jonah’s research forecasting platform that uses natural language processing, text embeddings, and geometry in vector space to detect patterns across millions of papers. He explains the core intuition behind prediction in science: some fields are too sparse to pay off, others are so crowded that the easy value is gone, and there’s a Goldilocks zone where the research landscape is ready for a breakthrough. We also talk about validation and benchmarking, why this approach can beat random guessing and even the standard “follow the adviser and find a gap” method, and what it changes for PhD topic selection, literature review, and R&D strategy.

The conversation gets personal too. Jonah shares how leaving the Catholic priesthood pushed him to rebuild his life around quantitative tools and a search for truth that doesn’t rely on authority. From VC decision-making and capital allocation to philanthropy, NSF-style grant impact, and better alternatives to citation metrics, we explore where AI genuinely helps human flourishing instead of just generating content.

If you enjoy episodes about scientific discovery, innovation prediction, and practical AI for research, subscribe, share this with a friend who works in science or investing, and leave us a review. What domain would you want a “map of the future” for?

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Help these new solutions spread by ...

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Comments? Feedback? Questions? Solutions? Message us! We will do a mailbag episode.

Email: [email protected]
Adam: @ajbraus - [email protected]
Scot: @scotmaupin

adambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)
The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)

Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.

Send us Fan Mail

Show links:

• Elton University
• Sold a Story (Podcast Mini-Series)
  
  

College is supposed to be a launchpad. Too often it’s a slow, expensive maze that teaches the wrong things in the wrong order, then calls it “rigor.” We talk with Scott, the founder of Elton University, about a different design: remote, one-on-one, and built around the question most schools never ask plainly enough: what do you want to learn?

We get concrete about how the model works. Instead of measuring learning by seat time and 15-week semesters, Elton uses engagement hours that count real effort: coaching sessions, reading, projects, practice, and assessment. Scott explains how that still maps to familiar outcomes like an MBA, while letting two students pursue very different goals without pretending they learned the same thing on the same schedule. We also explore why modern universities no longer “own” knowledge, and why guidance plus credible assessment may be the most valuable services a school can provide.

From there we take a hard turn into evidence-based education and AI curriculum. If medicine needs proof before it reaches patients, why do schools roll out sweeping new programs on kids with little validation? The conversation hits the reading wars, what research says about phonics, and how education fads take hold. We also cover ethics boundaries, accreditation realities, and a PhD-by-publication path designed to help working adults earn citations and a stronger research portfolio without moving or quitting their jobs.

If you care about higher education reform, personalized learning, online degrees, and practical alternatives to the status quo, this one is for you. Subscribe, share with a friend who’s fed up with college, and leave a review with the one change you’d make to how people learn.

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Help these new solutions spread by ...

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2. Leaving a 5-star review 
3. Sharing your favorite solution with your friends and network (this makes a BIG difference)

Comments? Feedback? Questions? Solutions? Message us! We will do a mailbag episode.

Email: [email protected]
Adam: @ajbraus - [email protected]
Scot: @scotmaupin

adambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)
The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)

Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.

Send us Fan Mail

• Spreadsheet from Adam
• Garys Economics YT Channel

AI is going to make someone wildly richer. The only open question is whether it makes the rest of us safer and freer or more replaceable and more financially fragile. We take a hard look at the “productivity miracle” story and ask what happens when the gains from automation and generative AI keep flowing to the top while millions live one emergency away from losing housing, health care, and stability. 

We connect that to an old prediction from Keynes: if productivity keeps climbing, ordinary people should be able to live like today’s high earners and work far fewer hours. Yet we’re still grinding through full-time weeks, and the precariat keeps growing. For us, that’s the heart of the problem: not envy, not abstract wealth inequality, but poverty as economic precarity. When the floor is missing, everything gets expensive: crime, stress, bad health outcomes, and desperate decisions that harm everyone. 

Then we get practical. We walk through the “tax wealth not work” approach popularised by Gary’s Economics and break down what it could look like in real policy: a progressive wealth tax, removing the Social Security cap, taxing capital gains like income, closing loopholes like carried interest, and even charging luxury assets such as private jets and yachts like we already do with cars and property. We also tackle the usual pushback about rich people leaving and the “unrealised gains” argument. 

If you’re thinking about AI governance, wealth taxes, universal healthcare, Social Security reform, and how to build a post-scarcity or post-precarity society, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share this with a friend who argues about AI or taxes, and leave a review with your take: what’s the first policy you’d pass to end precarity?

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Help these new solutions spread by ...

1. Subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts
2. Leaving a 5-star review 
3. Sharing your favorite solution with your friends and network (this makes a BIG difference)

Comments? Feedback? Questions? Solutions? Message us! We will do a mailbag episode.

Email: [email protected]
Adam: @ajbraus - [email protected]
Scot: @scotmaupin

adambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)
The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)

Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.

Send us Fan Mail

Your birthday already comes with a zodiac sign, a personality quiz, and a thousand targeted ads. What if it also came with a moral hero you could actually learn from?

We kick off a St Patrick’s Day-flavored riff that turns into a serious proposal: Secular Saints Day. Think of the Catholic saint day calendar, but redesigned for secular humanism. Every date gets a short list of “saints” who earn the slot through courage, service, creativity, scholarship, or sacrifice, without needing religion, miracles, or fear-based morality. Look up your birthday and you don’t get vague destiny, you get a story, a role model, and a prompt to act.

We dig into why this could be a real solution for modern life: moral courage is often the missing ingredient between values and behaviour. We talk Rudolf Steiner and the Waldorf education idea that hero stories help kids build moral fibre before abstract ethics fully clicks, and we connect it to what we see in the world, from non-directed organ donation to different ways religious and secular societies express “doing good”. Then we have fun building the calendar: freedom fighters, scientists, artists, fictional characters, local heroes, and an “All Saints Day” that welcomes everyone into one big tent.

We also get practical about how a movement like this could spread: searchable calendars, short biographies, and yes, the same kind of icons, pendants, and yearly tear-off calendars that make the habit stick. If you like ambitious ideas with jokes baked in, hit play, share it with a friend, and leave a review. Who would be on your Secular Saints Day list?

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Help these new solutions spread by ...

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2. Leaving a 5-star review 
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Comments? Feedback? Questions? Solutions? Message us! We will do a mailbag episode.

Email: [email protected]
Adam: @ajbraus - [email protected]
Scot: @scotmaupin

adambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)
The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)

Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.

Send us Fan Mail

What if American influence felt like clean water, reliable power, and healthier newborns instead of tariffs and weapons? We lay out a bold “belt and suspenders” strategy: a Green Belt and Road that targets water security, neonatal health, and clean infrastructure to cool conflicts before they ignite. China’s Belt and Road proved that ports and rail can reshape alliances; we argue for a greener version that fixes leaky megacities, equips hospitals to save infants, and electrifies logistics so food and medicine keep moving when heat and drought hit.

We start with the simplest lever: water. From Mexico City losing half its supply to Tokyo’s 24‑hour leak response, the gains from modern pipes, smart metering, and pressure management are massive. Then we connect the dots between drought, rising beef prices, and migration surges that stress borders and budgets. Investing upstream is cheaper than reacting downstream. That’s why we pair urban water projects with resilient agriculture—drip irrigation, soil repair, and drought-ready crops—so people can flourish at home rather than flee in crisis.

Health changes demography too. When infant mortality falls, families choose fewer births. Funding maternal clinics, durable incubators, and stable power across sub‑Saharan Africa saves lives and steadily eases pressure on land and cities. We also dig into practical financing: blending public funds, development banks, and private capital with friendshoring rules that grow U.S. and allied manufacturing for panels, pumps, membranes, and meters. And yes, there’s room to cooperate with China on standards and components when it serves local outcomes and global stability.

This is foreign policy you can measure: fewer leaks, steadier grids, calmer borders, better trade. It’s also a national story worth telling—one where American engineers, medics, and financiers build systems that last longer than speeches. If you’re ready for a world where the U.S. leads with solutions people can drink from and plug into, hit play. Then share this with someone who thinks climate action stops at our shoreline, and leave a quick review to help more listeners find the show.

Support the show

Help these new solutions spread by ...

1. Subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts
2. Leaving a 5-star review 
3. Sharing your favorite solution with your friends and network (this makes a BIG difference)

Comments? Feedback? Questions? Solutions? Message us! We will do a mailbag episode.

Email: [email protected]
Adam: @ajbraus - [email protected]
Scot: @scotmaupin

adambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)
The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)

Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.