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 into reality, thanks to the right-wing SCOTUS supermajority. Mark and Joe trace the theory’s lineage, whether evidence for it exists in our founding documents, and the implications of its newfound legitimacy. (Recorded July 26, 2024.)

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 trends, what declining fertility means for women and children, why the Goldilocks “just right” level of fertility is unsustainable, and whether that’s a problem for humanity. (Recorded July 12, 2024.)

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 assess the likelihood that a reverse migration of displaced climate refugees will happen anytime soon. (Recorded June 28, 2024.)

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 education generally (hint: they ain’t good). (Recorded June 14, 2024.)

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 increases in crime on bail reform and claimed it led to a rash of opportunistic recidivism by folks who should have been behind bars pending trial. But did bail reform really cause an uptick in crime? Mark and Joe separate the facts from the hyperventilation. (Recorded May 25, 2024.)

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 create a symbiosis between people and AI meant to keep humanity from falling too far behind machines. Joe and Mark assess the state of BCI technology and whether the coming age of human-computer hybrids is cause for excitement, trepidation, or both. (Recorded May 10, 2024.)

A common argument among sports fans is whether coming through “in the clutch” — where an athlete is said to raise his or her level of performance in the most important moments of the game — truly exists. Some cite chapter and verse of their favorite players doing spectacular things under intense pressure to bolster their argument for its existence, while others insist with equal vehemence that clutch is a figment of the imagination, unsupported by the data. Well it’s the bottom of the 9th, folks, and Mark and Joe go deep on whether clutch is fact or fiction. (Recorded April 12, 2024.)

"Inflation will be with us for years to come." "You can’t lower inflation without raising unemployment." "Supply chain disruptions will cause a recession." These are some of the fables told in recent years by economic forecasters. Their job is to use empirical methods to explain why certain things happen in the economy but they’re notoriously bad at it, their predictions no more reliable than that of a palm reader. Why is this so? Joe and Mark assess their record, offering some explanations for why it’s so terrible, and consider how “the dismal science” might step up its game. (Recorded March 22, 2024.)