The Boiling Frog

It feels like America has gotten dumber over the last few decades. Is that indeed true, and if so, why? As that is a bit vague and pejorative, the podcast looks at more specific issues, including ignorance, intellectual stubbornness, and lack of critical thinking.

For this tenth episode, Seth and Mark decided to have a little fun and stray from the modus operandi of the first nine episodes of The Boiling Frog. Just for fun, our hosts make this episode a series of diatribes, fulfilling the expectations of Seth’s wife who, when first told about our idea for a podcast, asked “what are you going to call it...the angry rantings of two old white men?”

This special episode is a fun and mostly light discussion about our hosts’ personal pet peeves, some rooted in issues discussed in previous podcasts and some just random rantings of old white privileged men. Issues discussed range from the sublime (making capitalism more efficient) to the ridiculous (names on football uniforms).

If you have your own pet peeve you’d like to share, please send us a note as we’d love to read about it!

Risk is a concept not well understood by many people, particularly in a financial context. In this podcast we explore what it means in depth, why it is often a balancing factor for rewards, and how a better understanding of risk and reward can lead to better community outcomes.

A follow up from The Changing Lily Pad, this podcast explores why corruption exists, where it comes from and why it appears that there is more corruption in people and organizations that are conservative.

“Wokeness” and “Cancel Culture” are popular terms in our modern political and social parlance, but what do they actually mean? How should we think about the concept of “canceling” – is it behavior gone too far, or is it just about accountability?

How Hindsight Bias is not just an academic concept, but rather a critical flaw in human’s ability to think critically and avoid logical fallacies, particularly in issues of crime and gun rights.

How a very simple concept in game theory – the Prisoner’s Dilemma – is omnipresent in our economic lives and in almost all social interactions, and the tension between individual incentives and societal good.

A discussion of the role of the local elected representative, the nature of political leadership particularly in a group setting, the traps that electeds fall into, and what we have learned from being local officials.

How understanding externalities is critical for both economics and public policy, but also how the claim of harm is often without merit but used as an argument against change, to protect one’s self-interest, or otherwise for political purposes.