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Israel, Singapore, Germany, and many other nations have a required year of national service. Some Americas, such as Jon Stewart, have suggested we ought to adopt the same policy, but the idea has never really gotten momentum. Recently there was almost a "climate corp" program that would give people a chance to volunteer through the government to help the climate, but legislators blocked the plan at the last minute.

In this episode, Braus and Scot visit this idea but take a completely different approach. And make a bunch of jokes.

Could this new, distinctly American version of a year of national service begin to gain traction?

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Scot: @scotmaupin

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The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)
The Numey (inflation-free currency)

Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.

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During COVID everyone faced significant mental and physical health problems. For this unprecedented problem, we need new and unprecedented solutions. Scot and Adam welcome their first guest, Dan Morse the director of Social Prescribing USA.

What if your doctor could prescribe art classes and gardening in addition to medicine and physical therapy? New research shows that volunteering and other social hobbies can significantly improve mental and physical health, so why don't doctors prescribe these sorts of activities? Perhaps they should!

Stay tuned to learn about a new solution for better health and wellness (and jokes!).

To find more information on Social Prescribing visit or message:

SocialPrescribingUSA.com
[email protected]
Dan's Twitter @dfmorse23

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Scot: @scotmaupin

adambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)
The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)
The Numey (inflation-free currency)

Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.

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How well do you know your city?

In London, taxi drivers gain an almost preternatural sense of direction in the city. This superpower was called "the knowledge." 

Since the advent of the Google Maps app, we rely more and more on our apps for our maps, and we lose, in some ways, "the knowledge" of our own cities.

In this episode, Braus and Scot have a solution—an AI that gives you directions the old-fashioned way. 

It might sound like a silly idea, but it raises the deeper question of our relationship to technology. Should we build technology that makes us stronger or weaker? More fragile or self-reliant? More knowledgeable or more unaware? 

Enjoy!

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The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)
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Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.

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Voting rights are under attack in the U.S. There are lots of proposed solutions out there to protect the sanctity of the ballot and even encourage voting. But out of these, none of them actually expand the right to vote to a larger group of citizens. If we want to actually expand voting, we have to go younger. And why not?

In this episode, Scot and Braus propose what might sound like a radical idea—lower the voting age to 14. Is this a radical idea? More or less radical than the idea of letting non-land-owners vote, or let men of color vote, or let women vote...? What arguments did people then cite to argue against extending the votes to these groups? They weren't smart enough? They weren't educated enough? They didn't have the right opinions or the right experience? 

Greta Thunberg began protesting when she was 15 years old. Malala Yousafzai gave her first political speech at 11. With the advent of the internet teenagers have access to as much information as any adult. Why do we continue to prevent them from full political enfranchisement?

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Scot: @scotmaupin

adambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)
The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)
The Numey (inflation-free currency)

Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.

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American democracy is ... busted.

The Electoral congress, the Supreme Court, a gerrymandered House of Representatives, the filibuster in the Senate. No matter your politics, it is a fact that all of these institutions are non-democratic—they don't reflect the will of the majority of Americans. They enable a small, vocal, well-organized minority to tyrannize over the majority of folks.

We've got big problems, which sometimes require big solutions. There are lots of solutions bandied about on how to make America a democracy again, but we think you will not have heard this one.

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Email: [email protected]
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Scot: @scotmaupin

adambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)
The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)
The Numey (inflation-free currency)

Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.

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Personal assistants are flourishing from Alexa to Siri to Microsoft's Cortana. But they talk like ... robots! They all live deep in the uncanny valley.

But what if interacting with these personal assistants was fun, efficient, and easy? Could a new speech interface design help this tech to realize its true potential?

Let's see if there's a solution for this.

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Scot: @scotmaupin

adambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)
The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)
The Numey (inflation-free currency)

Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.

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Here is a myth you've been told since you were a child:

If you are accused of a crime, you will face a jury of your peers who will decide if you are innocent. They will only decide you are guilty if your guilt is "beyond a reasonable doubt."

This is, for all intents and purposes, not true in the U.S. today.

The advocacy group, The Marshall Project, reports that "trials are rare. About 94 percent of felony convictions at the state level and about 97 percent at the federal level are the result of plea bargains." A plea bargain is where an alleged criminal agrees to put in a guilty plea for a lighter punishment.

Prosecutors and police have an entire toolbox of tools for how they can pressure and lean on an alleged criminal into a plea bargain, even one with a defense attorney. And trials are slow and expensive. Picking 12 jurors, then presenting them with all the evidence and teaching them the law is extremely time (and money) consuming.

But what if trials were affordable, quick, and just? How many fewer innocent people would be behind bars? Could we get closer to the ideal of no one going to prison unless it was "beyond a reasonable doubt" that they were guilty?

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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)
The Numey (inflation-free currency)

Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.

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It is damn hard to raise a family in the U.S., especially for mothers. They face discrimination, unequal wages, disproportionately bear the financial and time burden of raising the children, and much more.

Did you know that the often quoted "Women make 76 cents on the dollar relative to a man" is actually hiding discrimination against mothers? As reported by Vox in an episode of their lovely Explained series on Netflix, childless women make almost parity with men, it is mothers that are paid only 60 cents on the dollar. When you average mothers and childless women together, you get that famous 76 cents on the dollar figure.

And equal pay is just one issue among many that drastically affects mothers. Maternity and paternity leave, affordable and accessible healthcare, the issue of forced birth and bodily autonomy, affordable and accessible childcare, and high-quality education are all issues of critical importance to moms.

The current ways to fight for these social programs are not working. What if there was a new solution?

What can moms do? What can we all do to support moms?

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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)
The Numey (inflation-free currency)

Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.

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Urban planners and urbanites can all generally agree that US cities have a "missing middle," that is, they are missing houses that are of a middle height between single-family homes and skyscrapers and of a middle price range for working-class people.

Building enough housing and housing that is affordable are critical issues for building a prosperous, equitable, environmentally conscious, and diverse society. NIMBYs and YIMBYs fight back and forth about how much and where to build more housing, but in our backyard here in the San Francisco Bay Area, we just see political gridlock.

95% of SF itself is limited to buildings only 40 feet tall (roughly 3 stories), and more than 80% of the Bay Area is exclusionary single-family zoning. Do the YIMBYs only want more soring towers, and will the NIMBYs grid everything to a halt? Or can we find a solution that resolves this controversy and helps our cities prosper and improve?

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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)
The Numey (inflation-free currency)

Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.

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Scot and Adam kick off the podcast in this inaugural episode. (Follow and tweet us @ajbraus and @scotmaupin.)

The problem with medical care in the U.S. is not the quality, it is the lack of access. Roughly 40M people in the U.S. do not have health insurance and more than double that are underinsured. Even people who are insured often are hesitant to go to the doctor because of copays and deductibles.

The Guardian reported that "A 2009 study conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School found 45,000 Americans die every year as a direct result of not having any health insurance coverage." That's roughly the same number as the U.S. soldiers that died in the Vietnam war.

CNBC reported that "A new study from academic researchers found that 66.5 percent of all bankruptcies were tied to medical issues —either because of high costs for care or time out of work. An estimated 530,000 families turn to bankruptcy each year because of medical issues and bills, the research found."

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, suggested that if there were universal access to healthcare, roughly 338,000 fewer people would have died of COVID-19.

Basically, the healthcare system is a snarl. So how do we fix it?

Tune in to hear a new solution from another verse.

Help these new solutions spread by ...

1. Subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts
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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)
The Numey (inflation-free currency)

Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.