unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

Humans have lived with a changing climate  since we’ve been on this planet. But what archaeology and anthropology is able to reveal now, is how well civilizations have adapted to changing climates over the course of human history. 

Brian Fagan is an emeritus professor of anthropology at UC Santa Barbara and the author of more than 50 books including, Climate Chaos: Lessons on Survival from Our Ancestors and Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations. His work focuses on the history of human culture and our relationship with the climate, using ancient artifacts to piece together the story. 

Brian and Greg discuss how humans have historically adapted to climate change, the role climate has played in the rise and fall of civilizations, and the importance of understanding our past to prepare for future climate challenges.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

Why has climate and other big global physical things been underappreciated as historical causes?

07:12: You've got a situation now where climate change is among us. We live with it every day. And every time there's a major storm, up come the media with the old climate change thing, which is all very well, but the fact of the matter is that we've lived with climate ever since we've been on this planet. The real immediacy of it has been in the last 10,000 years, particularly with the development of agriculture and herding, because then you're really getting into a situation where you've got the whole scene of climate changing rapidly.

Looking at climate as a player in history

09:12: We're looking at climate as a player in history, not necessarily a cause. But a major player, which it was.

On the dynamics of herding and the breathing of deserts

20:42: The dynamics of herding are very simple. In the final analysis, an awful lot of history, I think, is probably very simple. You get rainfall in the desert. Large, shallow lakes develop, water holes form, and a whole bit of vegetation comes up. What happens? Animals and, ultimately, humans and cattle move in. Then it dries up, and they move out. It's like lungs in and out. There's no question that there's movement of deserts, the lungs, or the breathing of the deserts.

• Mortimer Wheeler 
• Hubert Lamb

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at UC Santa Barbara

His Work:

• Climate Chaos: Lessons on Survival from Our Ancestors
• The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850
• The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization
• Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations 
• The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations
• The Intimate Bond: How Animals Shaped Human History
• Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization

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What if the institution of marriage holds the key to societal well-being? How does marital status correlate with happiness, prosperity, and positive outcomes for children? Why do some elites downplay marriage's importance in public, even as they themselves often lead marriage-centric lives?

Brad Wilcox is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia, director of the National Marriage Project and an author. His latest book is titled Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization.

Greg and Brad discuss contemporary views on marriage and how shifting societal norms around education, career focus, and individualism have impacted the timing and meaning of marital commitments. Brad Elaborates on what he calls the "soulmate myth" and how this quest for perfect partnership can delay or complicate marriage decisions. They draw intriguing comparisons between Western and arranged marriages, exploring how cultural expectations and extended family involvement contribute to marital success. Brad also dives into the evolving gender roles within marriage and their implications for marital stability and happiness.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

What needs to be done to strengthen marriages in general?

39:15: We have to help our elites understand that marriage benefits not just them, but people in general. And so, insofar as they're school superintendents, professors, journalists, C-suite executives, they could be taking steps in Hollywood, at Netflix, heading up a school district's approach to relationship education, a New York Times journalist to just do a better job. And I'm not even asking for like a rose-colored take on marriage, but just like a truthful take, so that our ordinary kids out there who are watching a Netflix show or, exposed often indirectly to some kind of major media coverage just come to appreciate more how much marriage matters for them and for any kids that they have down the road. That would be, I think, part of the answer. But we've also got to recognize and realize that there's a financial piece to all this, and that's why addressing things like the marriage penalty and also giving people a more generous child tax credit would be helpful as well.

Can the people around you help you choose a better partner?

13:48: As we begin to get more serious or think about getting more serious about someone, I think we should pay attention to how our friends and family members react to a potential boyfriend or girlfriend to make a better decision about our future.

Is there a way in which your ability to manage conflict within the marriage helps you to manage conflict elsewhere?

16:00: Selection effect is part of the story, yes, but having the counsel of a spouse, having the perspective of a spouse as you navigate both work and social challenges of one sort or another, has been invaluable for me, and I think for a lot of people, and we do see when it comes to men, for instance, that guys who are married earn markedly more and make more strategic choices professionally than their peers who aren't married, even controlling things like race, education, profession, and age. So, I do think that being married often endows us with extra benefits, including the counsel and support of our spouse as we navigate life.

Should your spouse be your best friend? 

14:41: One of the key challenges for contemporary couples is to not rely on their spouse for all of their social support and all of their emotional connections and to recognize that oftentimes, a good girlfriend, a mother, a brother, a guy friend, or a friend is going to be a better place to turn than your spouse. Not putting all of your emotional eggs in the marital basket paradoxically tends to make your marriage more resilient rather than less important.

Recommended Resources:

• Robinson Crusoe
• Capstones vs. Cornerstones
• Individualism
• Limbic Capitalism
• Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
• Andrew Tate
• Hannah Pearl Davis
• Melissa Kearney
• Robert Nisbet
• Émile Durkheim

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at the University of Virginia

His Work:

• The Awfulness of Elite Hypocrisy on Marriage
• Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization
• Soul Mates: Religion, Sex, Love, and Marriage among African Americans and Latinos
• Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands (Morality and Society Series)

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Despite periods in history when evolutionary biology has been misused, there’s no denying that the study of biological human nature is intrinsic to the study of social and cultural human nature.   

David Barash is an emeritus professor of psychology and evolutionary biology at the University of Washington, and a prolific author. His books like, Through a Glass Brightly: Using Science to See Our Species as We Really Are and Threats: Intimidation and Its Discontents explore many different corners of human nature and why it should be incorporated into the field of social sciences. 

David and Greg discuss why there’s a resistance in the social sciences to study human nature, why it’s important to understand differences between the sexes, and why relying too much on deterrence could be a dangerous game. 

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

How social darwinism warped evolution

03:33: The unfortunate truth is that evolutionary biology in the past has been misused, especially shortly after Darwin—the whole time of social Darwinism. At which time, particularly right-wing zealots and supporters of imperialism and colonialism, were intrigued by the notion that somehow it was a misunderstanding of evolutionary biology, but they loved the idea that because of evolution, certain people notably, the "white races," were superior, that they were produced that way by natural forces, and hence it is appropriate for them to go ahead and conquer the world—conquer as many people as they can. Moreover, not just with regard to colonialism, but also with regard to the way things are at home. The wealthy are wealthy because they were biologically made superior, and we shouldn't argue with that. So there was that, and that's very much a misunderstanding of evolution and how it works.

Natural doesn't always mean good

12:44: The fact that something is natural doesn't mean that it's good, or that we have to succumb to it, or go along with it necessarily... [13;07] all sorts of feelings that one may have that may be "natural." That doesn't mean we have to go along with it. And by the same token, the differences that we observe in various human societies or between various individuals within society, the fact that it exists even, doesn't necessarily mean that's natural. It's a consequence of any number of things. And even if it was natural, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's good.

Why do male-female differences become problematic?

23:02: I think the reason male-female differences have been controversial has to do with something similar to why biophobia, in general, has existed, which is to say that recognition has been used in the past as a way of buttressing socially inappropriate distinctions. The notion that, well, men are more aggressive than women, men are more pushy than women, hence men are likely to become leaders, business leaders, political leaders, and that's all well and good; that's normal; it's natural; there we're back again to the naturalistic fallacy. And so, to some extent, that's, I think, a big part of the reason why male-female differences have become not quite toxic as an issue but really problematic.

Understanding infanticide

19:57: When we talk about such things as infanticide, I think we have a real obligation to make it clear: a.) that certainly, in the human case, it's extremely rare, and b.) the fact that it does happen in some cases, it's not uncommon among nonhuman animals. We need to make it very clear that that's not, in any way, a blueprint for how human beings ought to behave. There are lots of things in the natural world that are "natural." That's why we call it the natural world, but those aren't worth emulating. In fact, that is so important that we don't.

Recommended Resources:

• Max Planck 
• Stephen Jay Gould
• David Hume
• David Attenborough
• Richard Dawkins

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at University of Washington
• Professional Website

His Work:

• OOPS!: The Worst Blunders of All Time
• Through a Glass Brightly: Using Science to See Our Species as We Really Are
• Threats: Intimidation and Its Discontents
• Myth of monogamy
• Out of Eden: The Surprising Consequences of Polygamy
• Homo Mysterious: Evolutionary Puzzles of Human Nature
• The Survival Game
• Natural Selections: Selfish Altruists, Honest Liars, and Other Realities of Evolution 
• Madame Bovary's Ovaries: A Darwinian Look at Literature
• How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories: Evolutionary Enigmas

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What happens when the relentless pursuit of optimization backfires? What ethical dilemmas and hidden complexities exist inside of this obsession? How does our fixation with efficiency and quantification come at the cost of essential human values and spontaneity?

Coco Krumme is an applied mathematician and the author of the book Optimal Illusions: The False Promise of Optimization, where she lays out how optimization has stealthily transformed from a technical tool into an all-encompassing philosophy driving various fields, from economics to personal decision-making.

Greg and Coco discuss the fundamental pillars of optimization: quantification, abstraction, and automation, and question their impact. Coco sheds light on whether optimization is avoidable, and they evaluate the ethical trade-offs, especially in crucial sectors like healthcare where lives hang in the balance. They also reflect on the lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic with regards to optimization. Enjoy this engrossing conversation that ends up questioning the very fabric of modern living.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

Looking at optimization as a game

13:57: There are ways to enjoy optimization. It's a game, and you can see progress, and I think that's something humans enjoy. We like seeing ourselves or seeing the world get better. I do think it's pathological at the kind of Silicon Valley elite level. You know, I think there are varying degrees to which these different people that you mentioned and, beyond, right, actually, to what extent that belief in optimization is, very deeply rooted versus an intellectual exercise of posturing to justify whatever investments they're making or whatever success they've had. It's a very curious thing. And I do feel like in the last however many years, I'd be curious what you think as well, but maybe five years or so, we've, as a general population have become more skeptical of those kinds of techno-utopian proclamations.

Does optimization cause unhappiness?

10:38: I think part of our modern unhappiness is that all we have is optimization, and we are able to question it. We are able to say, "Well, maybe it should be working better," and then where do we reach if we don't have that alternative of a cultural or religious mooring that's been passed on for generations?

Breaking optimization into a components

15:46: I break optimization into a few sorts of necessary requirements or components, and one of them is quantification, or, specifically, atomization of the world into seeing things in terms of self-same units that can be tallied up. The other two sorts of necessary requirements that I see are abstractions. In order to optimize, we need to be able to think in terms of models with these atomized units as building blocks. What structures are we building? The third is automation, which is popular, or it's a term on the tip of many tongues these days, but to optimize, we need to be able to scale those abstractions up in a kind of hands-off way, so I do think quantification and optimization are certainly related. You can quantify without optimizing, though, right? You could simply count things up without seeking to improve or make things better.

On navigating modern modernity

28:53: I do think that's the struggle that, as modern Westerners, we face for the next number of years. We are aware that some of these ways of thinking and these systems are failing, both in the material world and in our intellectual and spiritual world. We don't feel happy. We feel we're going too fast. We feel we've lost track of some of the important things, and I think the question that we face is: how do we continue to live in the modern world with its many conveniences and its many fruits of optimization, and at the same time expand our ways of seeing that world and of being in that world, and expand our belief systems and our way of knowing, to hopefully a place where we feel more at ease in it.

Recommended Resources:

• Herb Simon
• Satisficing
• John Stuart Mill
• James Mill
• Utilitarianism
• Sam Altman
• Tautology
• Marie Kondo

Guest Profile:

• Cocofolio.com Personal Website
• LinkedIn Profile

Her Work:

• Optimal Illusions: The False Promise of Optimization

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Historical research on the development of states and political systems typically focuses on the role of war or economic class, but what about the influence of religion?

Anna Maria Grzymala-Busse is a political science professor at Stanford University. Her books, Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State and Nations under God: How Churches Use Moral Authority to Influence Policy emphasize the role religious institutions have played in shaping politics.

She and Greg discuss how religious authorities wielded power over emperors and kings, the role religion played in the creation of taxes, and how religion continues to influence politics in the modern world.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

Is there something different about the way religion and politics relate in America?

40:40: The United States is different. It's a religious marketplace, which means that people can move within churches without actually leaving religion. Or they can even sort of continue to view themselves as religious, even when they don't attend churches. And in this religious marketplace, there are all kinds of individual religious leaders. There's no one central authority that speaks for religion in the United States, but there are multiple leaders, all of whom are trying to maximize their market share, right? And when they do so, you know some will claim they're conservative Christians, some will claim they're more liberal ones, and what you see basically is a lot of churn, where a lot of people move between, to some extent, Christian Catholic congregations rather than leave religion altogether. In a monopoly, if you're disgusted with religion or disappointed with your religious leader, you don't have that choice, right? You're in or out. In the United States, you just move to a different church that you find more acceptable and attractive. And I think that's part of the reason why there's so much more resilience in the United States.

Do contemporary social scientists sometimes fail to appreciate the impact of ideas, moral arguments, and religious beliefs?

44:11: I do think that we, as disciplines, tend to overlook religion because it's so unfamiliar. It's such weird territory. For many people, the idea that you can believe in God and for that to mean something is just so foreign. But I think we ought to remember that, for the vast majority of people on this planet, both now and then, this was actually really important. And if it's that important, it probably shapes how they think about politics and what they expect from politics, and we ought to include that.

What did Anna learn from doing both contemporary and historical work?

42:26: Doing both contemporary and historical work has taught me that humanity has changed very little. We know everything; the things that we tend to think of as shibboleths are now contested, much as they were back then. People have petty concerns, public opinion matters, and the sort of pettiness and unintended consequences and unanticipated consequences of decisions can make all the difference. And fundamentally, people were no better or worse than they are today. They were just as prone to violence. They were just as prone to love. They were just as prone to seeking justice and fairness. They just thought about them in different terms.

The power to deliver salvation shaped history

42:46: The ability to deliver salvation, the ability to basically be able to promise people that if you do these things, you can have life eternal, and if you don't do them, we have the power to withhold our own salvation. This sort of path to salvation from you is an enormous authority that I think mattered a great deal. 

Recommended Resources:

• Charles Tilly 
• Contractarianism
• Timur Kuran

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Stanford University
• Professional Website

Her Work:

• Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State 
• Nations under God: How Churches Use Moral Authority to Influence Policy

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Over the course of history, human nature hasn’t changed a great deal, but culture and institutions are another story. And a key way of explaining those l shifts in history is through the lens of evolutionary economics.

Geoffrey Hodgson is a professor at Loughborough University and has written numerous books including Darwin's Conjecture: The Search for General Principles of Social and Economic Evolution and How Economics Forgot History: The Problem of Historical Specificity in Social Science. His work examines the crucial role economics plays in explaining the history of everything.

Geoffrey and Greg discuss the evolution of legal and financial institutions, why traditional economic theories, like general equilibrium models, don't quite pan out when explaining complex social systems, and how the key to finding a general theory for the social sciences may be Darwinism.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

On the theory of firm

33:04: Our argument is really, firms are historically specific. Human cooperation in production is back to the primates. We've banded together and hunted things together, but they aren't necessarily firms in the sense that business school students understand firms or want to apply that knowledge to understanding how firms operate. So we do have teams, groups, and hunting bands in different species, but the firm is something more. It's something long-lasting as mechanisms, which means it can outlive the lives of everyone within it—all employees, all owners, all shareholders—it can all be outlived by the firm. We have several firms which have literally existed for hundreds of years, and that's really important.

Focusing on the systems behind the memes

25:19: Rather than arguing about the definition of the meme, I think look more concretely at the psychological, organizational, legal, and other cultural rule systems that are involved.

Collateralization is also a very old concept, but it's underdeveloped

46:44: Mortgage is an old word. I mean, with the pawnbroker shop, they had pawnbroker shops in ancient Rome, so if you had a gold ring or something, you put it in, and that's a form of collateralization. You deposit the ring, a good bit of gold, you get the money out, and then you either repay it and get the gold back or you use the money. You don't. So collateralization is also a very old concept, but it's underdeveloped.

Is the issue with business people using evolutionary metaphors a lack of precision? 

20:13: Precision isn't everything. It's important. I would emphasize conceptual precision because often when people say we need more precision, they go off and try and build a mathematical model, but then they assume out of some of the problems and difficulties that were there at the beginning that the discussion about what should be done in terms of research is ruled out.

Recommended Resources:

• General equilibrium theory
• Game theory
• John Dewey
• Thorstein Veblen
• The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins 
• Adam Smith
• Ronald Coase
• Oliver Wiliamson
• Alchian and Demsetz
• Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History by Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast
• First Bank of the United States 
• Joel Mokyr
• Deirdre McCloskey

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Loughborough University
• Professional Website

His Work:

• Darwin's Conjecture: The Search for General Principles of Social and Economic Evolution
• From Pleasure Machines to Moral Communities: An Evolutionary Economics without Homo economicus
• How Economics Forgot History: The Problem of Historical Specificity in Social Science 
• Conceptualizing Capitalism: Institutions, Evolution, Future
• The Wealth of a Nation: Institutional Foundations of English Capitalism
• “Social Darwinism Revisited: How four critics altered the meaning of a near-obsolete term, greatly increased its usage, and thereby changed social science” | Journal of Evolutionary Economics

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Through navigating the intricate world of play behavior we can dissect how animals, from rambunctious rat pups to the majestic meerkats, use this seemingly frivolous activity as a critical tool for survival. Explore the fine line between amusement and aggression, and discover how young creatures use play as a classroom for the lessons of life, playing a part in everything from social hierarchies to practicing recovery.

David Toomey is a Professor and Co-Director of the PWTC Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is also the author and co-author of several books, including Kingdom of Play: What Ball-bouncing Octopuses, Belly-flopping Monkeys, and Mud-sliding Elephants Reveal about Life Itself and The New Time Travelers: A Journey to the Frontiers of Physics.

David and Greg discuss where humor meets hierarchy, where verbal jousts and jests reveal much about the social fabric of our own species and the animal kingdom – Play Behavior. David discusses the evolutionary parallels between the spontaneous nature of improv and the unpredictability of life itself, proving that being adept at handling the unexpected may well be hardwired in our DNA. Then they examine the broader implications of play throughout life, challenging the separation of creation and judgment and considering the profound implications of play for our sense of self and the wider world.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Why is play the defining characteristic of life?

33:49: Play and natural selection seem to have quite a lot in common. They are both provisional and they both balance competition and cooperation, and so on and so forth. All the many features of natural selection are also features of play. And you could push this, and I do push this a bit further, and say natural selection is the defining feature of life. You can say, well, life is something that grows, consumes, and dies, but the same can be said of stars or candle flames. You can say that life reproduces, but the same could be said of crystals. But the thing that characterizes life that does not characterize candle flames, stars, or crystals is that it evolved by natural selection. So, if natural selection and play share features, then I don't think it's going too far to say that life is fundamentally playful.

Exploration vs. play

04:32: One way to separate exploration from play is an animal exploring its environment or exploring something will conclude its exploration and decide that's all I'm going to do, that's all. Now I'm comfortable; I've sufficiently explored it, and we're done with that. But there's no clear endpoint to play. An animal stops playing only when it's tired of playing or becomes interested in something else. So all of that together may be sufficient to define play.

Natural selection is improv

21:48: Natural selection has many features, and one feature of natural selection, and Darwin noted this: it seldom works from scratch. It takes an existing feature and changes it—maybe improves it. So, for instance, the bones of a paw, if you will, if they are lengthened, and lightened, and hollowed, become the bones of a bird's wing, but the fundamental structure is the same; they're the same number, they are the same relation to each other, or they become the bones of a whale's fin, same thing, same number, same relation between them. So, natural selection doesn't invent things from scratch very often. It just changes things, and that's exactly what improv does. We all know the rule of improv is yes and. And that is, it seems to me, its natural selection is also yes and.

On the evolutionary purposes of play

06:59: This is what anyone would answer you if you asked the question right on this play. One is that it's training for adult behavior. That is, we're learning how to explore, hunt, or mate in our play. The other is that it's socialization. That is, for social animals, and consider wolf cubs. Wolves need to play together if they are to learn to cooperate, and they need to cooperate if they are to take down an animal larger than themselves, like an elk. A wolf can't do it alone. Thus, play is necessary for the survival of the individual animal. It's also essential for the survival of the pack itself. So those are the two long-standing hypotheses.

Recommended Resources:

• Potter Stewart
• Gordon Burghardt Books
• Herbert Spencer
• Sergio Pellis Google Scholar Page
• Natural selection
• George Romanes
• David Hume
• Frans de Waal
• Lamarckism
• Organic Selection
• Johan Huizinga

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
• David Toomey on LinkedIn

His Work:

• Amazon Author Page
• Kingdom of Play: What Ball-bouncing Octopuses, Belly-flopping Monkeys, and Mud-sliding Elephants Reveal about Life Itself
• The New Time Travelers: A Journey to the Frontiers of Physics
• Amelia Earhart's Daughters: The Wild And Glorious Story Of American Women Aviators From World War II To The Dawn Of The Space Age
• Stormchasers: The Hurricane Hunters and Their Fateful Flight into Hurricane Janet

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Constitutions are often thought of as the agents of change for monarchies and empires, usually it spells doom for them. But the history of constitutions is far more complicated than a revolutionary tool, in fact some of them were penned by monarchs themselves. 

Linda Colley is a professor of history at Princeton University. Her latest book, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World is a deep dive into some of the most notable constitutions, how they came to be, and the impacts they have in today’s world. 

Linda and Greg discuss how constitutions often borrowed and plagiarized constitutions before them, how the purpose of the documents has evolved over time, and how a constitution-less Britain still influenced so many other constitutions. 

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Do constitutions borrow from each other?

05:16: Publishers started producing not just the text of one constitution; they started bundling together the texts of multiple constitutions. And these compendia became very useful for governments wanting to initiate or amend a constitution, particularly if they had to act quickly. Because they could say, "Oh, I really like that bit in Argentina's constitution." Or, "Oh, that Hawaiian constitution hits it on the spot." And if you analyze the makeup of some constitutions, the Norwegian constitution of 1814 is an extreme example. You can see them adopting sentences, sometimes whole paragraphs, because Norwegians had to act quickly before a Swedish army was moving in. So they had to do this in a matter of weeks. So they bought and acquired all these compendia of constitutions, and they just cut and pasted.

The evolving role of constitutions

21:37: So, constitutions, because they go into print and now go online, can work as advertisements and proclamations to foreign audiences—not just something that caters to domestic and legal purposes.

The british identity

49:51: In the British case, power and success have notably receded since the Second World War. There's been more uncertainty, therefore, about national identity and British identity. Hence, the independence movement in Scotland in part. And so, that's another factor that might influence future constitutional thinking. Given that some of the old props of national identity no longer work, would a statement of constitutional unity and definition be helpful?

How lockdowns hurt the poorest countries

48:15:The poorest countries reorganize their economies to fit in with the West. That's what brought a billion people out of poverty. The lockdowns essentially were a violation of that promise, right? What the West basically said was, "We're going to pull up the drawbridge because we're scared." And all of those trade promises we made to you were gone. The markets that we promised to you are gone, and the people at the lowest rungs of world society, meaning the poorest of the poor, became even poorer, and millions died as a consequence of that. On the first day of the lockdown, Prime Minister Modi of India ordered half a billion people to walk, bike, and find some way to go back from the city centers where they were working, migrant workers, to their home villages. And a thousand died en route that day. The life savings of those half a billion people were crushed overnight.

Recommended Resources:

• Thomas Babington Macaulay
• Eric Foner
• “The United States’ Unamendable Constitution” by Jill Lepore

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Princeton University
• Professional Website

Her Work:

• The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World 
• Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837
• Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600-1850
• The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History
• Acts of Union and Disunion

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Discover the untold stories behind pandemic decision-making in COVID-19 responses and their seismic effects on society. Hear how early prevalence studies contradicted widespread measures, challenging the effectiveness of lockdowns and calling into question the ethical boundaries of public health compliance.This conversation is as much about ethics as it is about health policy.

Jay Bhattacharya is a professor of health policy at Stanford Medical School and also in the economics department at Stanford University. He co-wrote an opinion piece entitled “Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?”

Jay and Greg discuss the lab leak theory's influence on global policy and the issues faced by leaders in real-time crisis management. Jay weighs the stark health economics versus public health trade-offs, highlighting the profound yet often ignored consequences that lockdowns had on global poverty and social well-being. Greg points out the unprecedented speed of vaccine development, and they reflect on what seen and unseen effects of that time were really caused by the pandemic response and not the pandemic.  

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

The real costs of flattening the curve

59:45: People died at home with heart attacks, they would've lived. And, of course, who faced tremendous pressure on hospital systems – in New York and Bergamo, and and during the pandemic, a few other places experienced that. But the modal hospital system in this country did not experience that, right? They were empty. And a lot of people who should have gotten care didn't get care for other conditions. Cancer screenings went down, heart attack treatment went down, diabetes management went down, stroke management went down, basic fundamental care that happened didn't happen. And, the cost of flattening the curve was exactly that, right? This suppression of fundamental care that ought to happened. We decided we were going to refocus all of healthcare just to manage COVID rather than all of the myriad health conditions that people are really subject to.

The longitudinal effect of the vaccine rollout

57:59: The vaccines, I think, were good, but they were not an unmitigated good. And I think the aftermath of that, of the tremendous mistakes public health made in the rollout of the vaccines, and that governments everywhere made in distinguishing clean and unclean on the basis of vaccine status, are going to be with us for a very long time to come.

Did the lockdowns help prevent COVID?

49:51: No matter what you think about how bad long COVID is, it does not justify lockdowns because the lockdowns do not prevent long COVID. I'm not even sure; the evidence is that the vaccines prevent long-term COVID, but it's very equivocal. So, the question of long COVID is not germane to the question of whether lockdowns were the right or wrong thing to do.

How lockdowns hurt the poorest countries

48:15:The poorest countries reorganize their economies to fit in with the West. That's what brought a billion people out of poverty. The lockdowns essentially were a violation of that promise, right? What the West basically said was, "We're going to pull up the drawbridge because we're scared." And all of those trade promises we made to you were gone. The markets that we promised to you are gone, and the people at the lowest rungs of world society, meaning the poorest of the poor, became even poorer, and millions died as a consequence of that. On the first day of the lockdown, Prime Minister Modi of India ordered half a billion people to walk, bike, and find some way to go back from the city centers where they were working, migrant workers, to their home villages. And a thousand died en route that day. The life savings of those half a billion people were crushed overnight.

Recommended Resources:

• Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
• Coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
• London Breed
• COVID-19 lockdowns
• Gavin Newsom
• Anthony Fauci
• Francis Collins
• Deborah Birx
• Scott Atlas
• Max Planck
• World Trade Organization
• Austan Goolsbee
• Barry Marshall
• Variolation
• Andrew Cuomo

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Stanford School of Medicine
• Profile on Wikipedia
• Profile on X
• Profile on LinkedIn

His Work:

• Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say? - WSJ
• Health Economics
• Google Scholar Page
• ResearchGate Page

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How complex are the dynamics of employer-based insurance? Is the time ripe for a radical transformation towards universal basic healthcare—a move that could potentially curb the spiraling expenses and offer stable access to care?

Amy Finkelstein is the John & Jennie S. MacDonald Professor of Economics at MIT and the author and co-author of several books including We've Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care and

Risky Business: Why Insurance Markets Fail and What to Do About It.

Greg and Amy discuss the truth behind America's healthcare conundrum. Amy peels back the layers of the nation's healthcare system, exposing the patchwork structure that's left millions without stable insurance and grappling with soaring costs. Amy lays out the progression of medical practices and the government's shifting role in health insurance. Greg asks about the effects of cost-sharing in systems with universal coverage, and they weigh the pros and cons of mandates versus automatic health insurance provision

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Why did insurance get so highly insecure and highly uncertain?

05:59: Almost everyone who's privately insured, which is about half the population as you said, is getting their insurance through their employer. And that actually can create a fair amount of this uncertainty, this insurance turnover. If you lose your job, change your job, retire, become ill (and therefore lose your job), you can lose your health insurance. And that's not a particularly sensible way to design a health insurance system. The very purpose of health insurance is to provide some modicum of economic and financial security in an insecure and uncertain world. So it's quite perverse from our perspective that health insurance is itself highly insecure and highly uncertain. And you asked, why did it get that way? I think because, there was never a "let's start with a clean slate and figure out how to build a coherent system" moment.

The true purpose of universal health coverage

48:15: We're arguing that we wouldn't have to raise taxes to provide universal basic coverage that fulfills sort of our commitment to access to essential medical care, regardless of resources. But we're not arguing, nor do I think it would be true, that this is actually going to save money. But again, this notion: when people advocate, we're going to do something to save money. So often, that's both a bit of a stretch, but it's also, I think, a bit of a distraction in the sense that the purpose of most policies is not to save money. It's to accomplish an objective, and we pay for that objective. We don't say we're having national defense to save money. We're having it to be secure. Similarly, the purpose of health insurance is not to save money; it's always nice if you do, but it's to ensure access to essential medical care, regardless of resources.

Why do people find it hard to invest in preventive care?

52:02: In general, there's a sense that it's hard to get people to take their statins to lower their cholesterol after a heart attack, even if those statins are free – so it's not about financing. And why? One of the theories is, well, you've got a lot going on in your life, and when you don't take the statin, there's no immediate feedback loop. You don't immediately have a heart attack. And so you don't see the benefit, and that makes it harder to remember…[52:48] Part of the reason it's hard to get people to invest in preventive care is because the returns are not so salient or obvious. You have to believe the evidence and remember it all the time, as opposed to seeing with your own eyes what's happening when you change your behavior.

What does health insurance really mean?

08:53: The term health insurance is a bit of a misnomer. Health insurance doesn't actually insure your health. It's not providing the fountain of youth. Instead, it provides economic or financial protection against the medical costs of poor health.

Recommended Resources:

• Gross Domestic Product
• An Act for the relief of sick and disabled seamen
• Friedrich Hayek
• Massachusetts Health Care Reform
• Charles Murray
• Alexander Hamilton
• Affordable Care Act

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at MIT
• Profile on Wikipedia
• Profile on NBER

Her Work:

• Amazon Author Page
• We've Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care
• Risky Business: Why Insurance Markets Fail and What to Do About It
• Moral Hazard in Health Insurance
• Google Scholar Page
• MIT Economics Publications List

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