In this episode I want to dig into a source of injustice in the world—hidden markets—where who you know is often more important than what you know. My guest has spent his life highlighting these hidden systems that silently maintain inequity. Strap in for The Rational View on hidden markets.

Judd B. Kessler is an award-winning teacher and the inaugural Howard Marks Endowed Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. In 2021, Kessler was awarded the prestigious Vernon L. Smith Ascending Scholar Prize for his path breaking scholarship. For his work on the hidden market of organ allocation, Kessler was named one of the “30 under 30” in Law and Policy by Forbes. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, Harvard Business Review, Politico, and Freakonomics, among others. He’s just published a new book, ‘Lucky by Design’.

In this episode I am continuing to look at pathways to save us from the slow motion economic collapse of late stage capitalism. Today we’ll be talking to an author who has a roadmap to a new system the calls Dynamic Capitalism. Let’s see if we can find a Rational View to a solution.

A passionate advocate for entrepreneurship and long-time venture capitalist, Seth Levine, works with venture funds and companies around the globe. His day job is as a partner at Foundry, a Boulder, Colorado-based venture capital firm he co-founded in 2006. He is also the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of GoodBread, a small business lending platform. He has just published "Capital Evolution: The New American Economy" with co-author Elizabeth MacBride.

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In this episode I’m going to be diving into a topic of interest to everyone in the nuclear energy field. It is a scandalous expose on the history of the dreaded ALARA principle regarding radiation exposure regulations (As Low As Reasonably Achievable), based on the idea that no amount of radiation is safe. What is the scientific basis behind this idea and is it supported by the evidence, or has there been a massive multi-decadal conspiracy? My guest today has published a book that suggests the ALARA principle is a regulatory roadblock paid for by big oil, and implicitly supported by scientific review panels that may have been more intent on shutting down open air nuclear weapons testing than following the evidence.

Returning guest and friend of The Rational View, author Mike Conley has lived in Japan, Hawaii, and all over the US and has backpacked through Thailand and Cambodia. As a lifelong science nerd, Mike became interested in nuclear power in 2010, and quickly saw that the field was in dire need of writers who could explain the technology to the average reader. So he joined the Thorium Energy Alliance, met dozens of scientists and engineers, and made them an offer: “You explain it to me and I’ll explain it to the world.”

The first published book from this years-long effort was Earth is a Nuclear Planet. Its short companion book The LNT Report is now available. The LNT report is based on detailed investigations by Dr. Edward Calabrese into scientific misconduct underlying the history of the Linear No-Threshold radiation regulatory regime. This work brings to light a decades-long scientific scandal that helped to derail the nuclear revolution and entrench fossil fuels and climate change over the past 50 years.

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In this episode I’m going to dig down into the roots of the religious right and show you just how long they have been planning their coup. For decades, a well-funded network of religious and political operatives has been quietly working to dismantle democracy and replace it with Christian theocracy.

Matthew Boedy is a professor of rhetoric at the University of North Georgia. He holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of South Carolina. He researches and writes about religious rhetoric, particularly in the last few years about the rise of Christian Nationalism.

Dr. Boedy is president of the Georgia conference of the American Association of University Professors. He authored three books and has appeared on CNN and MSNBC and in The New York Times, The Washington Post. He was once a crime reporter and high school teacher. 

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In this episode I’m going to explore modern society’s car culture. We all know that the energy use that supports cars is a huge contributor to the greenhouse effect and climate change. We know that the resources society devotes to transportation are significant, and yet they are also the lifeblood of commerce. They represent freedom. The automobile manufacturing industry directly employs and sustains hundreds of thousands of people, and the surrounding industries like rest stops, motels, highway building and maintenance, towing, paramedics, speed cameras manufacturers, traffic light installers, and mortuaries are all dependent on them.  Modern vehicles are the culmination of decades of development. Can we imagine a world without them? My guests today have done just that.

Henrietta L. Moore is the founder and director of the Institute for Global Prosperity at University College London. Arthur Kay is an urban designer, advisor and a board member of Transport for London and the Royal Academy of Engineering. They are co-authors of Roadkill, a new book about the costs of car dependency.

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In this episode I’m digging into the state of healthcare in the United States: the only country in the developed world that believes health care is best delivered as a luxury product. Everywhere else, people go to the doctor when they’re sick. In America, you go only if you’re sick and your credit score is feeling strong. They treat hospitals like casinos: you walk in, take your chances, and hope you don’t lose the house on the way out. Other nations pride themselves on how they treat the less fortunate. Americans  think of healthcare as a benefit for capitalist success. If you can’t afford insurance and get sick you’ve been judged unworthy to live.

Troyen A. Brennan is an adjunct professor of health policy and management at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. A former professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the former chief medical officer at CVS Health, he is the author of The Transformation of American Health Insurance: On the Path to Medicare for All and Just Doctoring: Medical Ethics in the Liberal State

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In this episode I’m discussing Gerrymandering and how it clearly demonstrates US exceptionalism by maintaining incumbents and invalidating the democratic will of the people. If you like this, you might want to move to Texas where it has become a popular sport, alongside of hunting democratic representatives.

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In this episode I’m going to fact check some polarizing memes on current issues in the news. I’m going to help you to identify fake memes and to question the possibility of AI-generated videos. Did you just read something that confirms your worst fears about the opposition and gets your blood pumping? Are you angry? Stop for a moment and think before you hit like and share. I want to remind you to pause and verify any triggering story you get before you share it. Does it confirm a belief you have about how bad the other guys are? Are you getting emotional? Take a deep breath. You are smart. There are ways to avoid embarrassing yourself and falling prey to manipulators who want to sow chaos and distrust and foment violence.  In Canada there seems to be a well-funded social media effort to demonize progressive values and the current liberal government. They’ve hooked onto oil-rich Western conservative disillusionment and seem to be trying to make good on Trump’s threats to annex Canada. I’ll investigate a few of these memes, and I’ll also wade into the morass of politics in the US.

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In this episode I’m interviewing a scientist who is trying to revolutionize computing by replacing power hungry silicon gates with highly efficient biological neurons. For a present-day silicon-based computer to approach the processing power of a human brain would take MegaWatts of power—we are seeing some of these inefficiencies looking at AI systems that require massive amounts of energy to run. A human brain can do the same thing on less than 20 Watts. My guest today is a scientist who is working on the interface between brain and machine.

Dr. Ewelina Kurtys is an entrepreneur with a PhD in neuroscience. After academia, she transitioned into business development and technology commercialization, advising tech companies on sales, partnerships, and market strategy. She founded Ekai Ltd to support innovation and scale in science-driven companies. Her work spans advisory roles, go-to-market planning, and translating complex R&D into real-world impact. She also speaks publicly on innovation, neuroscience, and the intersection of science and entrepreneurship.

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Have you ever heard someone spouting off on social media that the climate is always changing?  Apparently this carries great weight amongst people who don’t want to admit that humans are involved in the accurately predicted warming trend that we are currently experiencing. I just recently encountered someone on social media claiming that the climate is self-correcting and we don’t need to worry about how much CO2 we emit, it will take care of itself….like the North Atlantic cod fishery, or the dodo bird.

In this episode I’m going to review the state of our knowledge of past climates on our planet.

This episode draws heavily on the nice summary recently published by Elise Cutts in Science News.

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