Mansplaining

Send us Fan Mail To meet the increased demand for carbon-free electricity that might mitigate the climate crisis that is already upon us, nations the world over are reconsidering nuclear energy.  Mansplaining listeners of a certain age remember the No Nukes movement that gained steam after frightening meltdowns at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.  What they may not realize is that nuclear power re...

Send us Fan Mail Recent estimates are that the United States has a shortage of housing volume of 4-7 million homes. A problem of that scale doesn’t happen overnight and involves decades of neglect and inaction.  With the chronic lack of housing likely to be a major issue for the foreseeable future, public policy experts have been brainstorming about potential solutions, and a few have dusted off a...

Send us Fan Mail Like its cousin AGI, quantum computing, which harnesses the quantum states of subatomic particles to perform impossibly difficult computations at lightning speed, is a new-ish technology that many of its proselytizers believe is thisclose to reality.  The “quantum supremacy” of this new technology over classical computing promises stunning breakthroughs in areas as disparate as dr...

Send us Fan Mail The New York Yankees’ recent relaxation of half-century-old rules about facial hair got Joe to thinking about dress and codes generally.  Why do they exist?  Where do they come from?  Mark takes Joe on a historical tour of dress codes, from ancient Rome and China through medieval Europe and Tudor England, ending in the modern era of school uniforms and casual Fridays.  As our hero...

Send us Fan Mail You know them by their brand names, like Ozempic, Trulicity, or Mounjaro. They're the GLP-1 receptor agonists that were originally formulated for Type 2 diabetes but have caused a revolution in the treatment of weight loss. As more research rolls in, they’re also looking like game-changers for treating conditions as far-ranging as heart disease, dementia, and substance use di...

Send us Fan Mail State lotteries are a 12-figure business in the US of A. Americans spend more money on lottery tickets than on books, video games, recorded music, movie and sports tickets combined. Of course, lottery revenue is allocated to public goods like schools and parks, but it’s a double-edged sword, as lotteries are disproportionately funded by the poorest third of households, i.e., the p...

Send us Fan Mail Here are a couple sobering numbers: The typical American has only $8,000 in the bank, and the median savings for the age cohort approaching retirement is only $120,000. Neither is anywhere close to adequate. Might a fiscal cliff be approaching for millions of retirees? Joe and Mark do a deep dive into the scary numbers outlining Americans’ financial distress and declining optimism...

Send us Fan Mail You’ve probably used a map app like Google Maps, Apple Maps or Waze to help you get from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible.  But did you ever wonder how they work?  Did you ever wonder whether we should slavishly follow their directions or be skeptical and consider external factors like our own prior driving experience?  Well, wonder no more.  Mark and Joe take the fastest...

Send us Fan Mail The year 2024 brought more than its share of misfortune to your Mansplaining co-hosts, what with the double whammy of layoffs and a terrible election result.  But in the spirit of turning the page to the New Year, Mark asked Joe what he’s feeling good about in 2025 and beyond, from multiple perspectives (personally, locally, nationally, and internationally). With hopefulness in sh...

Send us Fan Mail In continuation of a Mansplaining tradition of holiday-themed conversations, Mark and Joe consider how we might heal our deepening political rupture and bring peace to a divided nation.  It’s a daunting task that may take years, if it happens at all.  Making it happen involves redressing the loneliness and isolation wrought by a decades-long breakdown in civic trust.  Government h...

Send us Fan Mail The bankruptcy filing of Spirit Airlines underscores the existential problem for air carriers.  After driving many of its competitors out of business with its no-frills model of below-cost fares, bare-bones service, and nuisance fees, Spirit still couldn’t make a profit.  How did we get to a place where the only thing shrinking faster than the number of airlines still in business...

Send us Fan Mail Those of us above a certain age remember that flying didn’t used to be such an ordeal.  Once upon a time, people enjoyed flights that had comfortable seating, decent food, and no extra fees for checked bags.  Might the coming technological innovations restore some of the fun in flying?  In a special bonus segment and addendum to Episode 101, Joe and Mark look back at the good old...

Send us Fan Mail After considering why companies run out of ideas in our last episode, Joe put the same question to Mark about why so many of our favorite pop and rock music artists seem to run out of ideas.  Mark and Joe ponder whether this is a real phenomenon, and if so, what might cause it.  Turns out that early-career creativity is a complicated amalgam of neural plasticity, free time, and th...

Send us Fan Mail Google had quite a run, from its market-leading search engine to Gmail to the Android operating system.  For the longest time, it seemed like a veritable fount of innovation.  But in recent years, dogged by antitrust lawsuits, it looks less like a forward-thinking innovator and more like a tired dinosaur trying desperately to hold onto its piece of the profit pie.  Why does that s...

Send us Fan Mail When the Supreme Court struck down race-conscious affirmative action programs, it conveniently left standing the legacy preferences employed by colleges and universities that are described by some as affirmative action for rich, white people. Is it fair that schools are now forced to ignore the race of their applicants but are still allowed to favor the children of wealthy alumni...

Send us Fan Mail Every time the power goes out in Seattle, Mark wonders whether his city fell victim to malicious hackers.  It’s a legitimate concern, since bad actors have been messing with America’s energy systems for years.  But how credible is the threat of foreign hackers causing catastrophic damage to critical civilian infrastructure like our electrical grid and drinking water? Joe and Mark...

Send us Fan Mail The CDC and Surgeon General recently released reports highlighting twin epidemics that are plaguing young people in our country.  For boys, it’s loneliness and social isolation; for girls, it’s persistent sadness and hopelessness.  Why are young people so sad and lonely?  Mark and Joe discuss whether loneliness is inheritable, how much of the blame we can pin on the distorted view...

Send us Fan Mail It’s been said that fusion power is 20 years away, and always will be.  Why is it taking so long?  Well, it turns out that generating temperatures as hot as the sun is hard to do here on Earth, as is controlling the fusion reaction so it doesn’t vaporize everything it touches. Joe and Mark ponder these and other challenges to producing fusion energy, and whether any of us is likel...

Send us Fan Mail Who knew the Democratic Party was run by "childless cat ladies"?  JD Vance's rant has already garnered more than its share of well-deserved opprobrium.  But in Mansplaining's first-ever White-Hot Take, Joe takes aim at the right's weird obsession with fertility, what it means for American women, and why, like so many of the right's other weird obsessi...

Send us Fan Mail The Supreme Court’s recent controversial ruling about presidential immunity appears to rely on a shadowy notion of executive branch power called the unitary executive theory.  After gaining currency in conservative circles for decades, the unitary executive may now be poised to go from theory to reality, thanks to the right-wing SCOTUS supermajority.  Mark and Joe trace the theory...

Send us Fan Mail It wasn’t so long ago that human fertility was likened to a ticking time bomb, with overpopulation leading to famine and ecological collapse.  More recently, we’ve heard that declining fertility rates are the real problem, bringing forth a shrinking workforce and economic ruin.  Is negative population growth something to worry about? Joe and Mark examine demographic history and tr...

Send us Fan Mail For decades, Americans have moved south chasing cheaper homes and better weather.  But after years of unremitting heat and more frequent hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods that have disproportionately devastated those destinations, you might wonder whether people start moving back whence they came.  In a follow-up to Episode 74 (The Weather Forecast is Calamitous), Mark and Joe ass...

Send us Fan Mail Just as colleges are finally being forced to pay their long-exploited student-athletes commensurate with the revenue they generate for their schools, we’re beginning to hear about private equity firms investing in college sports programs.  Joe and Mark give it the old college try in analyzing the implications of this development on college athletics specifically and higher educati...

Send us Fan Mail Over the past several years, bail reform laws—changes to the criminal legal system to reduce unnecessary pretrial detention, especially for non-violent offenses—were implemented in jurisdictions throughout the country, and many advocates for criminal justice reform welcomed these changes as long overdue.  There ensued a backlash, howerver, in which conservatives blamed recent incr...

Send us Fan Mail Neuralink, Elon Musk’s neurotechnology startup, recently live-streamed footage of a paralyzed man with a brain implant playing video chess using only his mind.  According to Musk, that’s just one of many medical applications for brain-computer interfaces (BCIs).  But it is BCI’s non-medical applications that are generating controversy among ethicists, in the way they aspire to cre...