50 Things That Made the Modern Economy - Tax Havens
The economist Gabriel Zucman is the inventor of an ingenious way to estimate the amount of wealth hidden in the offshore banking system. In theory, if you add up the assets and liabilities reported by every global financial centre, the books should balance. But they don’t. Each individual centre tends to report more liabilities than assets. Zucman crunched the numbers and found that, globally, total liabilities were eight percent higher than total assets. That suggests at least eight percent of the world’s wealth is illegally unreported. Other methods have come up with even higher estimates. As Tim Harford explains, that makes the tax haven a very significant feature of the modern economy.
Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon
Producer: Ben Crighton
(Image: Huts along tropical beach, Credit: DonLand/Shutterstock)
The Gist - Jon Ronson on Writing the Year’s Wildest Movie
The new movie Okja has pretty much everything. Car chases. Giant mutant pigs. A dystopian future. Jake Gyllenhaal with an outlandish moustache. A subtle social message. Tilda Swinton pretending to be Tony Blair. The movie is written by Korean director Bong Joon-ho (Snowpiercer) and returning guest Jon Ronson. Ronson takes us into the craft of writing the year’s wildest movie.
In the Spiel, why congressional comity is overrated.
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Motley Fool Money - Amazon Upends the Grocery Industry
Amazon buys Whole Foods. What does the deal mean for consumers, investors, and competitors? Our analysts tackle those questions and delve into the latest news from General Electric, Nike, and Kellogg. Plus, best-selling author Brad Stone discusses the future of Uber.
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CrowdScience - Can Your Lifestyle Be Passed on to Future Generations?
Back when Charles Darwin presented his theory of evolution by natural selection, French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck suggested something different - that the changes you are exposed to during your lifetime can be passed on to future generations. By this theory, giraffes have long necks because, over generations, they have stretched them, reaching for leaves.
This theory became laughable when genes were discovered as the means of heredity. Lifestyle choices cannot be passed down in your DNA, or so we thought….But recently this idea has returned and a new field of biology has emerged called epigenetics – which looks at how the genes we inherit from our parents are controlled and modified by their life experience and the choices they made.
Marnie Chesterton meets the survivors of the Dutch Famine of World War Two, whose grandchildren show health effects from that event despite being born three generations after the starvation of 1944.
As the new field of epigenetics develops, does this mean Lamarck was right all along? Can your lifestyle be passed on to future generations and does this mean we need to rethink our traditional view of evolution?
Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at crowdscience@bbc.co.uk
Presented and Produced by Marnie Chesterton
(Image: Grandmother, Mother and Daughter in a kitchen. Credit: Getty Images)
Cato Daily Podcast - The Federal Budgeting Process Is (Still) Broken (Again)
The federal budgeting process hasn't worked for more than a decade. How should it be fixed? Bloomberg's Megan J. McArdle suggests that Congress should focus on programs, not broad signaling, and get back to legislating.
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Opening Arguments - OA78: Jeff Sessions, “Preemptive Executive Privilege,” & More on Emoluments
If it's Friday, it's a current events episode, and if it's current events, we're probably talking about Donald Trump. We begin, however, with Breakin' Down the Law, in which Andrew answers the question raised by every single person in the universe this week: can Jeff Sessions really do that? In our main segment, we look at the recent emoluments lawsuit brought by the Attorneys General for Maryland and Washington DC. After that, Yodel Mountain returns with a look at the Washington Post's breaking news that Donald Trump is under investigation by the FBI, as well as the GOP's purported talking points as to why this is no big deal. Finally, we end with a brand new Thomas Takes the Bar Exam question #28 about a malicious pizza store owner. Remember that TTTBE issues a new question every Friday, followed by the answer on next Tuesday's show. Don't forget to play along by following our Twitter feed (@Openargs) and/or our Facebook Page and quoting the Tweet or Facebook Post that announces this episode along with your guess and reason(s)! Recent Appearances Andrew was a guest on today's (6/16/2017) episode of This Week in Law, as well as on Episode 24 of the Scenic City Skeptics show. Check 'em out! Show Notes & Links
- We first discussed obstruction of justice in Episode #70, and analyzed the status of Executive Order 13780 in Episode #51.
- You can read the text of U.S. v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974) here.
- Here is a link to the Maryland/DC complaint against Trump.
- And here is a link to Trump's motion to dismiss the CREW lawsuit.
- This is the Washington Post story breaking news of the investigation by the FBI into Trump.
- Here are the ostensible (and terrible) GOP "talking points" about the investigation.
- And this is the text of the Rosenstein order appointing Mueller as special counsel.
Pod Save America - “Tiny, decent things.”
The aftermath of the Alexandria shooting, the investigation of the President, and the Democrats' plan to stop health care. Then, former White House lawyer Danielle Gray joins Jon, Dan, and Tommy to talk about the travel ban, and Judge Tim Black discusses his ruling in the same-sex marriage case, Obergefell v. Hodges.
The Gist - The Delicate Art of Political Persuasion
A big problem with political arguments, says Robb Willer, is that everyone sees himself or herself as the hero in a zombie movie. “American liberals see themselves as Brad Pitt warding off a zombie horde,” says Willer. “But the problem is conservatives see themselves the same way,” and no one is able to make arguments that appeal to the other side. Willer teaches sociology at Stanford and writes about the delicate art of political persuasion for places such as the New York Times.
In the Spiel, please Mr. President, don’t throw the special prosecutor into the briar patch.
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Bay Curious - What Would Really Happen if a Tsunami Hit the Bay Area?
Our question-asker saw a tsunami hit San Francisco in the movie San Andreas, and wonders: would it really be like?
Reported by Johanna Varner and Olivia Allen-Price. Bay Curious is Olivia Allen-Price, Jessica Placzek, Paul Lancour, Vinnee Tong, Suzie Racho, Penny Nelson and Julia McEvoy. Theme music by Pat Mesiti-Miller.
Ask us a question at BayCurious.org.
Follow Olivia Allen-Price on Twitter @oallenprice.