America’s National Teacher Shortage: Looming Crisis or Media Myth?
Students are going back to school this month. But according to many news sources, there won't be nearly enough teachers to greet them. The Washington Post has warned of a “catastrophic teacher shortag...
6 Sep 202238min
Nate Silver on Why This Midterm Election Could Be the Weirdest in Decades
Earlier this year, it appeared that Democrats were going to get destroyed in the midterms. Joe Biden's approval rating was in the toilet, inflation was raging, and everything was going wrong. It would...
2 Sep 202255min
The Messy Debate Over Student Loan Forgiveness
The level of student debt in this country represents a massive policy error. But is forgiving up to $20,000 of student debt really the best way to help low-income Americans, or fix the nation's educat...
30 Aug 202242min
Burning Questions on Media: Streaming’s Summer of Hell, Movie Theater Woes, and CNN’s Risky Pivot
Today’s episode is about the entertainment and media industry’s tumultuous summer, the streaming wars, a come-to-Jesus moment for movie theaters, and a dramatic revamp at CNN—which tells a lot about t...
26 Aug 202250min
What’s the Secret of Success in America? This Economist Has Answers.
The economist Raj Chetty has spent much of the last decade trying to answer a very big question: What happened to the American Dream? In 1940, a child born into the average American household had a 92...
23 Aug 202250min
Why Does It Seem Like Everybody Hates Everything?
Bestselling author Chuck Klosterman talks to Derek about the death of the monoculture, how the internet creates cults of fans and anti-fans, and how “hating things” became a mainstream personality tra...
19 Aug 202252min
Donald Trump vs. the FBI: Everything We Know About the Investigation So Far
I've never before recorded an episode specifically about Donald Trump. I guess I’ve been holding out for the chaos that typically swirls around him to exceed an extremely high bar of freaky nonsense. ...
16 Aug 202242min
A New Way to Think About Racism in America
Several years ago, the writer, researcher, and policy advocate Heather McGhee traveled around the country to report on how racism in America holds us back from policies that would benefit everybody. I...
12 Aug 202244min
