Mansplaining

Send us Fan Mail It’s been 64 years since the United States admitted any new states to the union—the longest period in our history.  Though most observers would say that the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are at the head of the line to become our 51st and 52nd states, the case for admitting either one is not a slam dunk, especially given the anti-majoritarian tilt of current U.S. politics. ...

Send us Fan Mail Given the booming numbers of people who report that they don’t belong to any religion (30% in the USA, 70% of young people in Europe), you’d think that religion is not long for this world.  But might those numbers mask the persistence of spirituality even as organized religion steadily declines?  Joe and Mark separate the wheat from the chaff and the faithful from the “nones” in s...

Send us Fan Mail It’s been said that New Year’s Day is the closest thing we have to a truly global holiday.  People of all different religions and ethnicities recognize it, but how did that come to be?  It’s a complicated story involving competing lunar and solar calendars, Julius Caesar’s scientific adviser, a 16th century pope, and a two-faced Roman god.  Mansplaining ’s New Year’s resolution th...

Send us Fan Mail The last few years have seen rapid improvement in AI’s ability to generate original text, images and music – so rapid that it got Mark thinking about what that means for the people who make their living as  writers, musicians and visual artists.  This being Mansplaining , he asked Joe about it.  Joe and Mark discuss the implications of computer-generated art, how it’s already affe...

Send us Fan Mail Mark Zuckerberg renamed his company from Facebook to Meta to signal that he’s all in on building the metaverse—the next-stage internet, betting billions that it will be the next big thing.  Will it meet his expectations, or is it the technological white whale that takes down Meta and all others who pursue it?  Joe and Mark discuss what the metaverse might look like, whether it wil...

Send us Fan Mail There’s another epidemic in America right now: an epidemic of vaping.  Just as the number of cigarette smokers was in decline, we have e-cigarettes with flavors like bubblegum and mango that make them irresistible to teenagers.  As the FDA ponders whether to formally approve e-cigs as smoking cessation devices, Mark and Joe explore whether vaping has any redeeming value or whether...

Send us Fan Mail It’s fair to say that Russia is having a tougher time in Ukraine than anyone (outside of Volodymyr Zelenskyy) expected.  The vaunted Russian military is performing very poorly, at least compared to our image of it from the Soviet era.  But why?  And might a diminished Russia pose an even greater threat to world peace?  Joe and Mark discuss Putin’s folly, the nuclear threat, and wh...

Send us Fan Mail It used to be that the movies were where you found profound meditations on subjects that mattered, while TV was the place for frivolous, escapist fare, but it sure seems like those roles have flipped in recent years. Joe asked Mark whether TV and streaming platforms are now ground zero for capturing the cultural zeitgeist.  Join Mark and Joe as they consider the state of screens l...

Send us Fan Mail When it comes to charter schools, people working on education policy tend to sort themselves into two camps: the lovers and the haters.  Charters are either dramatically improving the way we teach and learn, or they’re a right-wing plot to siphon money from public education and undermine teachers’ unions.  So, which is it?  Class is in session as Joe and Mark look at the history o...

Send us Fan Mail It’s a simple question, really:  Why can’t we control guns in America?  The answer is also deceptively simple: It's because we’re afraid.  Mark and Joe explore the deep divisions around gun control, the even deeper-seated fear of victimization informing the uniquely American behavior of stockpiling firearms, and how dry recitations of facts and statistics about gun violence a...

Send us Fan Mail In college, one of Mark’s professors warned him not to interpret a memorable line about love in Homer’s Iliad to mean romantic love, which was, she said, a notion that first arose in Europe during the Middle Ages.  Ever since, Mark’s been wondering whether that's true, so he asked Joe about it.  Join Joe and Mark as they ponder a question immortalized by Cole Porter: What is...

Send us Fan Mail A controversial 2001 academic paper suggested that there’s a connection between Roe v. Wade’s legalization of  abortion in 1973 and the reduction in crime that followed a generation later in the 1990s. With crime again rising  in a post-Roe America, Mark and Joe discuss the Donohue-Levitt hypothesis, the many alternative explanations  offered since its publication, and whether it’...

Send us Fan Mail It’s strange to think that laughter –  involving the involuntary and sometimes loud expulsion of air, and which sometimes renders us helpless, struggling to breathe and with tears streaming down our faces – is a helpful evolutionary adaptation, but it is.  Joe humors Mark with an explanation of how this came to be. (Recorded July 8, 2022.)

Send us Fan Mail The COVID-19 pandemic killed millions of people around the globe and devastated cities that experienced the seismic shock of a severe economic downturn that emptied downtowns and shuttered many businesses. Many cities have still not returned to the pre-pandemic normal.  Mark and Joe contemplate what our biggest cities may look like in a work-from-home world. (Recorded June 17, 202...

Send us Fan Mail Mark can’t fathom how it’s legal to take out a big loan to buy a company, then transfer all that debt to the newly-acquired company and force it, in effect, to pay off its own purchase price via draconian cost-cutting measures that can destroy it in the process.  He challenged Joe to make the case for such transactions.  Together, Joe and Mark try to make sense of leveraged buyout...

Send us Fan Mail On a recent tour of college campuses with his daughter, Joe noticed how many more women were on campus than men, so he asked Mark whether this was true, and if so, why.  Join Mark and Joe as they discuss the very real phenomenon of declining college enrollment, why it disproportionately affects men, and what that portends for college education, for gender roles, and for the econom...

Send us Fan Mail Sports are not only big business, they’re emotionally meaningful to millions of people throughout the world. But why? Aren’t there so many better and more important things to do with our lives? Mark asked baseball-loving Joe what it is we get from watching sports, individually and collectively. Joe and Mark cover all the bases before sliding home with the news that, done in modera...

Send us Fan Mail The U.S. Senate’s recent unanimous passage of a resolution to make Daylight Saving Time permanent would save us the annoying chore of adjusting our clocks twice a year.  But is it the right thing to do?  Mark and Joe review the history of timekeeping in the United States and the relative merits of Daylight Saving Time and Standard Time, before deciding which they prefer.  Do not s...

Send us Fan Mail  It’s a choice  a lot of us face every day: whether to give cash to a panhandler on the street or instead donate that money to a charity that serves the homeless and tries to get them off the street.  Mark asked Joe to decide which method is better, and Joe’s research into “paternalistic” versus “agentic” giving led to some soul-searching about his own charitable instincts. (Recor...

Send us Fan Mail Let’s face it: some people are  never, ever going to take a COVID vaccine.  A member of Joe’s family is one such person, and he really wanted to know where that point of view came from, so he asked Mark for help.  Mark and Joe discuss the anti-vax position, the larger phenomenon of distrust that’s central to understanding it, and how we can work to navigate a seemingly unbridgeabl...

Send us Fan Mail If there were a list of intractable problems our country faces, homelessness would certainly be on it.  The solution proffered by many advocates – more affordable housing – seems simple enough, but there’s a reason why problems like homelessness are not easily remedied.  Joe and Mark talk about homelessness in America today, its many root causes, and why it requires solutions that...

Send us Fan Mail There’s been a lot of chatter in the media lately – no doubt influenced by the publication of two recent books on the subject - about whether the United States is on the brink of a second civil war.  Having each read one of the aforementioned books, Mark and Joe discuss whether Civil War v2.0 is likely anytime soon and, if it were to happen, what such a conflagration might look li...

Send us Fan Mail For the last few decades, Americans have taken it as gospel that crime has been falling, a belief that’s supported by reams of data.  But what if the data is being manipulated by police commanders so that it looks better than it really is?  Joe and Mark wade into the sea of crime statistics to see how they’re gathered and whether they’re trustworthy. (Recorded February 4, 2022.)

Send us Fan Mail U.S. diplomatic personnel stationed in Havana, Cuba first reported it more than five years ago: a piercing, high-pitched sound, often followed by headache, nausea, and vertigo.  Since then, such incidents have been reported all over the world, including in our nation’s capitol.  To date, the U.S. government has no good explanation for the strange phenomenon known as Havana Syndrom...

Send us Fan Mail You know those good deeds you do for others and others do for you?  What if somebody told you that every one of those acts is actually selfishness in disguise?  Well, that’s what some scholars think about altruism, and it rubs Mark the wrong way, so he asked Joe about it.  Join Joe and Mark as they examine whether altruism exists and the reasons why it need not be subject to a pur...