Mansplaining

Send us Fan Mail Ever since we started inserting short, thematically appropriate songs to the end of each episode of this podcast, we’ve received comments and questions from the Mansplaining audience about how those songs were constructed. In this special episode, Joe and Mark recount the process that led to that first song and the legal and technological issues inherent in employing (partially) A...

Send us Fan Mail When the news is full of stories about tech billionaires receiving blood plasma transfusions from teenagers, or signing up to be cryogenically frozen, or funding biotech startups whose aim is to reverse aging, it makes you wonder whether these guys (and they’re all guys) want to live forever. Turns out, unsurprisingly, the answer is yes. Joe and Mark explore what happens when peop...

Send us Fan Mail Summer is Joe’s fourth favorite season of the year, and mosquitoes are a large reason why. So Joe asked Mark to indulge him in a fantasy: what would happen if mosquitoes disappeared from the face of the Earth? Would their extermination lead to a measurable increase in human flourishing or trigger a butterfly effect of unintended consequences? Mark and Joe explore the cases for and...

Send us Fan Mail A recent viral video showing what appeared to be a tip added automatically to a customer’s order at a digital kiosk at Shake Shack spotlighted an issue that had been bubbling under the surface of American life for years: why are today’s consumers being asked to tip for so many more things? It seems we’re no longer living in a world where tipping rewarded good service; now it feels...

Send us Fan Mail With only 24 of 777 incoming seats in New York’s City’s premier public high school being offered to Black and Hispanic students, even though they make up 62% of the population, standardized testing has once again come under scrutiny. There’s a reason why the “A” in SAT no longer stands for “aptitude”—the test is a closer proxy for socioeconomic status than intelligence. Mark and J...

Send us Fan Mail With the world’s progress toward reducing carbon emissions fitful at best, people are slowly waking up to the possibility of not meeting international targets and staring instead at potential worst-case scenarios. Enter geoengineering, in which we deliberately manipulate the Earth's climate system to stave off planetary ruin. Is artificially reflecting sunlight away from the...

Send us Fan Mail The recent IPO for SpaceX briefly turned Elon Musk into the world’s first trillionaire. One person having a net worth involving 13 digits is staggering to comprehend, leading Joe to ask Mark a question floating around liberal and progressive circles: should our society even allow that? Mark and Joe consider five philosophers whose work, at least in theory, supports the existence o...

Send us Fan Mail So much has been written and said about how to live a meaningful life. It’s been the pursuit of philosophers for millennia, a central focus of psychology for the last century and a half, and a recurring topic of TED Talks online, not to mention a profit center for the vast self-help industrial complex. The sheer volume of information is dizzying. Luckily, you’ve got Mansplaining t...

Send us Fan Mail In the wake of the Supreme Court’s disemboweling of the Voting Rights Act, many (former?) Confederate states are redistricting away Black members of Congress who aren’t Republicans. We seem to have entered a golden age of gerrymandering, the manipulation of electoral district boundaries to create an unfair advantage for a specific political party.  Mark and Joe investigate the che...

Send us Fan Mail You’ve probably heard of the Doomsday Clock. It’s the clock whose hands move closer to midnight every time humanity is judged to be closer to annihilation. A few months ago, it inched a tiny bit closer to midnight. Mark wondered whether this phenomenon was akin to how the news media incessantly reports on bad things so as to boost their audience, so he asked Joe about who makes th...

Send us Fan Mail It is thought that somewhere in Eurasia during the Late Pleistocene, an intrepid pack of gray wolves made a fateful decision to approach a human campfire seeking scraps. From that humble beginning was forged a love affair for the ages. But why that animal, and how to explain the incredible bond that emerged between dogs and humanity?  Mark and Joe trace the history of how dogs and...

Send us Fan Mail The media images we see of conservative politicians and voters depict people who are angry, fearful, and full of suspicion and outrage. So, why does study after study suggest that there’s a measurable happiness gap between conservatives and liberals, with liberals on the short end of that gap? Joe and Mark examine the measures of happiness that comprise this consensus, explore whe...

Send us Fan Mail Though the truly horrific COVID-19 pandemic, which killed 1.2 million Americans and many millions more worldwide, is barely in the rear-view mirror, public health authorities keep telling us the next pandemic is inevitable. Joe wondered how inevitable, and he asked Mark whether it’s likely to happen in our lifetimes and why pandemics seem to occur with greater frequency these days...

Send us Fan Mail In our post-truth era, perhaps it’s not surprising that a growing number of people say they believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the Earth is flat. Mark struggled to understand how anyone can believe this, so he asked Joe to get inside the head of a flat-earther and explain how someone might come to that way of thinking. Joe and Mark discuss the modern history of th...

Send us Fan Mail Imagine producing a podcast with well over a hundred episodes, soliciting feedback after every episode, receiving dozens of comments and questions, and then sitting on them for nearly six years. Guilty as charged! After being derelict in their duty for far too long, the Mansplaining co-hosts finally dip into a deep mailbag to read listener  comments and questions. Among other thin...

Send us Fan Mail Gambling is having a moment. Not only have a majority of states legalized sports betting since the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in 2018, but prediction markets have also enjoyed explosive growth in the last few years. With huge amounts of money being wagered on everything from which turkey President Trump would pardon on Thanksgiving to whether all twelve singles from Taylor Sw...

Send us Fan Mail Millions of Americans associate the number 65 with the end of their working years and the start of what they hope is a long and pleasant retirement. But why 65, as opposed to younger, older, or never? Joe and Mark trace the history of social insurance programs, including the American and European precursors to Social Security; discuss how and why 65 became the magic number; and po...

Send us Fan Mail There’s a strong anti-intellectual vibe running through American politics and culture. It’s visible in MAGA’s ongoing assault against the administrative state, in the growing distrust of educational institutions, and in anti-vaccine sentiment—the last of which started as a left-wing movement before being coopted by the right.  It’s so palpable today that it makes you wonder what t...

Send us Fan Mail The fact that the heavy drama The Bear has won Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Comedy Series speaks volumes about how the industry values drama in comparison to comedy. Indeed, the last time a real comedy film won the Best Picture Oscar was 1977, nearly a half-century ago. Why do critics think dark material is so much better than light? Joe and Mark explore the long history...

Send us Fan Mail For Mansplaining ’s 6th annual holiday episode, we examine the holiday music that gets played endlessly, in our homes and everywhere we go, at this time of year.  What makes a holiday song good? Which songs resonate for Mark and Joe, and why? And which can we do without? For us, at least, the best holiday songs not only feature strong melodies well sung and played, but they also f...

Send us Fan Mail Psychoactive substances have been ingested by human beings for millennia. But for a few decades at the end of the 20th century, many were banned in the U.S. as part of a cultural backlash manifesting itself in the disastrous War on Drugs. Now that’s slowly changing, as the medical industrial complex reconsiders the use of psychedelic drugs like MDMA, psilocybin, and LSD for treati...

Send us Fan Mail A few years ago, we all started hearing about how gas ranges, which have been popular in our country for at least a century and are favored by professional chefs, were dangerous to our health and should be replaced by electric or induction cooktops. That revelation begs a couple of obvious questions about how such an unsafe appliance became so ubiquitous in the first place, and wh...

Send us Fan Mail Back in its early days, this podcast explored the cultural and economic juggernaut that is Christmas. Time now to take a gander at Halloween. It’s unique among American holidays in that it’s neither religious nor patriotic nor sentimental, yet it’s hugely and increasingly popular for kids and grown-ups alike. How did that come to be? Attention, trick-or-treaters—Joe and Mark leave...

Send us Fan Mail Overshadowed by all the anti-immigrant rhetoric afflicting our country today are wonderful stories of non-human immigration, such as the ones about how certain foods made their way from the New World to the Old World. Take potatoes and tomatoes, for example. They’re staples of Irish and Italian cuisine, respectively, but neither was native to those countries—both originated in the...

Send us Fan Mail Based on recent proclamations from the MAGA government and the zealotry that some of its partisans have for the American flag, you’d never guess that flag worship was really not a thing in the United States for a very long time. Most Americans in the first half of the 19th century had little to no knowledge of the Stars and Stripes; that is, until the Civil War changed everything....