Solutions From The Multiverse

Send us Fan Mail Unpleasant Biological Fact: Men can start families almost any time in their lives,  while women can only do so reliably before roughly the age of 40. So, what would it mean for women and the movement for women's liberation if we deliberately designed society to launch young people sooner? In today's solution, Braus proposes using recent advancements in evidence-based edu...

Send us Fan Mail If we support democracy, we've got to support and promote voting. But get-out-the-vote (or GOTV) promotions are often lackluster doorknob hangers or cringe advertising promotions by celebrities like Vote or Die or Rock the Vote. What else could we do to promote folks going out to vote? In today's solution, Braus proposes voting sweepstakes. If you vote, that enters you t...

Send us Fan Mail What would solve all of our social ills? Unlimited energy from cold fusion? A benevolent general artificial intelligence? The arrival of angels and the rapture? Those would be great, but in this solution, Braus will propose something simpler: protected bike lanes. Today most people won't bike in a big city because it is (or feels) too dangerous. By making biking save, the pro...

Send us Fan Mail Morality is a mess.  The stakes for being good and virtuous are the highest they have been in over 100 years. Depending on who you ask, if you make the wrong decisions today, you could contribute to destroying the earth, bring about the end of democracy, or go straight to hell. And, no matter who you ask, saying or doing what others consider inappropriate or evil could get you can...

Send us Fan Mail Each week a new solution. This week is not so much a new solution as an application of a hot new idea to an old practice. With abortion and LGBTQ+ issues in the news every day in these times, many folks resort to the concept of bodily autonomy to (rightly) defend the rights of grown adults (and some teens with the help of their parents) to make decisions about their own bodies. Bu...

Send us Fan Mail On January 6th the United States experienced something very close to a coup. So this next election, where Donald Trump will run again and likely fight the results again, the people have prepared. The forces of democracy (left and right) in our country have banded together and started a 14-point, nationwide plan to prevent election fraud and any potential coup. NOT! In fact, precio...

Send us Fan Mail Disclaimer: This solution is not science or representing data or research, it is just a hunch based on a scientific rationale. Men's sperm counts have dropped off significantly in the last few decades in the United States. And no one knows why exactly.  No one has discussed one possible answer: memory foam mattresses! The introduction of memory foam mattresses to American bed...

Send us Fan Mail Lust, Greed, Pride, Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, Wrath The seven deadly sins are a neat sort of concept. They are the "major vices." Perhaps because they are diabolical they are easier to remember than the cardinal virtues: Justice, Prudence, Temperance, and Fortitude. But the list is a bit old school no?  In today's solution, Braus proposes that we should have an updated...

Send us Fan Mail For the first time in hundreds of years, the average life expectancy in the US went down the past few years. That ought to freak you out. So what can we do about it. At the same time, some folks are starting to think there should be a sort of upper-age limit to public service. After all, there are age limits for entering public service (25 for congress, 30 for senate, 35 for presi...

Send us Fan Mail Kansas City has done a neat thing. They've made all public transportation free as of 2019. In 2023, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) is about to spend millions installing new turnstiles—what if instead they just took the turnstiles out? You still can't get a transfer between BART and MUNI (trains and buses)—what if instead of making the payment systems interoperable (which...

Send us Fan Mail College ball is a multi-billion dollar industry, and while the coaches are paid millions, the players (often people of color) are given nothing but a scholarship to attend college. Only a small fraction of those players end up in the NBA.  In this Braus proposes a way to pay college basketball players by taking a page from the book of the economist Thomas Piketty who proposed fixi...

Send us Fan Mail In this controversial (and dare we say 🍌🍌🍌) episode, Braus pushes the limit of political activism. Believe it or not, anyone in the world can volunteer their time to help an American political campaign (click here to read the rules from the Federal Elections Commission: https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/ ). This means that if you are an international person, perhaps...

Send us Fan Mail Most classrooms are based on lectures, worksheets, textbooks, and exams. But what if instead, learning was built around interesting real-world projects? While "project-based learning" is usually limited to college and above, our guest today (a founder of a new college in Berlin!) will suggest that even first graders ought to start learning through projects. What projects...

Send us Fan Mail In this light-hearted episode, Braus and Scot flex their nerd muscles discussing a potential new fantasy VR game. Who doesn't want to be a wizard or a witch? Who hasn't been enchanted by the spells of mages and sorcerers like Gandolf or Dumbledore? Existing VR magic games are simple "press A to shoot fireball" sorts of games. In the new "Mage Simulator&quo...

Send us Fan Mail What if virtually anyone could go see Van Gogh’s Starry Night or Picasso’s Guernica? Today you can’t bc they live in NYC and Madrid (respectively). But what if every major city had a museum filled with exact reproductions of these great works of art? In today’s episode, Braus, Scot, and a guest Jonah Burns (an artist and the composer and producer of SFM intro music) discuss the id...

Send us Fan Mail Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are public and private institutions of higher learning established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that catered specifically to black Americans. The HBCUs represent a powerful legacy of education and societal advancement.  So here's the idea—LGBTQ+ folks start new "Historically Gay Colleges & Universities"...

Send us Fan Mail Guns are dangerous for those who own them and their families, but people still want to feel safe and protect themselves. Following our "X with half the consequences" theme, this week Braus and Scot discuss some non-lethal weapons people can buy instead of guns. We discuss the relative pro's and con's of baseball bats or compressed air pistols that shoot bb&apos...

Send us Fan Mail College debt is quite a pickle. If you don't do anything its an albatross around young people's necks. If you forgive it all, there's no accountability for colleges. We need something in between. Enter today's solution: Student Debt Default Insurance . And who better to help us suss out how this would work than Nathan Dauschmidt, VP of Strategy and Innovation a...

Send us Fan Mail Inflation in 2022 was over 7%. That means your salary's buying power went down by 7%. The value of your retirement and house went down by 7%. All the prices of basic goods like food and apparel and gas and housing and healthcare and education went up by 7% on average. The high inflation spooked the markets and pushed the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates which made it i...

Send us Fan Mail Is California a progressive state or one ruled by Tea Party libertarians? If you watch the news, you'd think the former, but if you explore the state's bizarre tax policy, you might decide on the latter.  California is a place of great contrasts, one might even say hypocrisy. That hypocrisy extends deep into the state's tax and educational system. In this solution,...

Send us Fan Mail So... what if we could slow down or even partially reverse aging? The stuff of science fiction?  Well not much longer. Researchers at UC Berkeley have discovered that perhaps a medically-common technique called plasmapheresis (the same process as simple plasma donation) might already be rejuvenating people. While more dedicated research is needed, Braus proposes (and Scot disposes...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Braus proposes a new diet for the planet: Sustainatarianism .  This diet maximizes human nutrient absorption against the ecological costs of carbon output and harm to biodiversity. Food waste is very harmful to the planet but vegetarianism and veganism do not forbid food waste, just meat. Moreover, there are certain types of meat such as grass feed beef and sustai...

Send us Fan Mail Most people agree that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a pretty stupid way to measure the growth of a society's economy because it ignores critical aspects of human welfare and happiness. However, Gross Domestic Happiness, an alternative to GDP,  has proven to be difficult to measure and highly subjective. What makes people happy differs across cultures and individuals. In th...

Send us Fan Mail Many folks have heard that education in Finland is the cat's meow, so the solution today is: Why don't we start Finnish-style schools here in the US-of-A? In this episode, Braus gets schooled by two experts in Finnish and international education: Sanna de Araújo , Head of School Concepts at Lumo Education — a consulting company that helps people start Finnish-style schoo...

Send us Fan Mail Celebrities today try to get into the limelight with sex tapes and scandals, and influencers try to get likes and clicks with narcissistic self-promotion. But what if celebrities and influencers could get what they wanted and make society better off? What if there were thousands of living moral exemplars for people to celebrate, admire, and take inspiration? Today Scot and Adam ta...