Before jumping into driverless car talk, Ben shares a heads up about fake jobs at credible companies that are actually phishing scams meant to steal your identity and hijack your bank accounts. Beware the job offer that seems too good to be true!
Matt and Ben point out that in the medical technology space, robotic surgeons are so advanced that they have become more precise than human hands.
Shoutout to lifeboat badge winner GKG4 for a great answer to the question “how can I check if an array index is out of range?” which has been viewed 67,000 times.
In her memoir Making a Scene, actress Constance Wu writes about the sexual harassment and abuse she faced on her breakout show Fresh off the Boat, and why she hesitated to speak out at first. She tells WBUR's Scott Tong that "trauma and feelings don't go away simply because you will them to." And when she finally spoke up about that trauma on social media, she received a wave of online hate. A warning that this episode – and the book – includes descriptions of assault and a suicide attempt.
Ever read those Choose Your Own Adventure books of the 80s and 90s? As a kid, Dr. Pamela Harris was hooked on them. Years later she realized how much those books have in common with her field: combinatorics, the branch of math concerned with counting. It, too, depends on thinking through endless, branching possibilities. She and several students set out to write a scholarly paper in the style of Choose Your Own Adventure books. Dr. Harris tells Regina G. Barber all about how the project began, how it gets complicated when you throw in wormholes and clowns, and why math is fundamentally a creative act.
Amanda Holmes reads Louis MacNeice’s poem “Plurality.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.
This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.
After an extended riff, we kick off the new TMK Book Club on An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets by Donald MacKenzie. In the first chapter we get an intro to some of the big themes, methods, and theories that we’ll get deeper into throughout the book’s sociological analysis of financial economics and market dynamics. This is a foundational book in the social studies of finance. Being an academic text, it is also dense and heady. Read along with us if you have the time and ability. But don’t stress if you can’t. We will, as always, do our best to break things down and add our own discussion of each chapter. Episodes come out biweekly. Here’s a free pdf of the book: https://uberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/MacKenzie-An-Engine-Not-a-Camera.pdf
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Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
Today we bring you another SCOTUS deep dive involving campaign finance. Money is speech, and people with a crapload of money just deserve to speak way more than us pleebs and that's a great thing that has fantastic results in our political system and I for one welcome our monopoly man overlords.
By the late 1980s, most Ivy League schools were a fifth or a quarter Jewish—and the University of Pennsylvania was more Jewish than most. For starters, unlike several other Ivies, Penn was never a Christian divinity school. It’s located in the heart of a big city that has had a large Jewish population going back to colonial times. Plus, it offered a plethora of professional schools, which, as we’ve learned in this series, appealed to students seeking social mobility in the early and mid-20th century. In the 1980s, where this episode picks up, Penn was a place where Jews felt truly comfortable.
In this episode of Gatecrashers, we explore Jewish Greek life. Jewish sororities like Alpha Epsilon Pi and Sigma Delta Tau were founded in the early 20th century by Jewish women who were excluded from the Greek system and wanted to create their own sense of sisterhood and social structure. But in the late 1980s, that sense of solidarity seems to have faded. The national headquarters of Sigma Delta Tau stepped in to make some unusual adjustments to the Penn chapter, which had been facing a membership decline. They put the entire chapter on probation following a suspicious underage drinking charge, and brought in a social club called Alpha Zeta to fill the chapter’s ranks and leadership positions.
What does it mean to be a representative of Jewish womanhood, particularly in the 1980s, when stereotypes of Jewish women permeated American culture? What do the actions of SDT’s national leadership tell us about Jews’ place in the Ivy League, and in the wider culture, at that time? And when a minority reaches the point of feeling truly comfortable, is in-fighting inevitable?
Episode 7 of Gatecrashers features historian Shira Kohn on the rise and role of Jewish sororities, Judith Silverman Hodara on Penn’s Jewish history, and several SDT and Penn alumni on the events of 1987.
We’re back from the first part of our fall tour and kicking around some news items: Kanye continues to find wild new ways to embrace conservatism, Liz Truss’ government wildly flails, Bolsonaro has a pretty wild story about encountering a young Venezuelan woman. Plus, we discuss the vandalism stunt on a Van Gogh painting in the name of climate activism, and take a look at a typical day for a VC-backed tech CEO.
Last chance to catch us live this year at Revolution in Ft. Lauderdale on 10/30: https://www.jointherevolution.net/concerts/chapo-trap-house/
Boys and men are failing by so many measures says Richard Reeves in his new book Of Boys And Men: Why The Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, And What To Do About It. Plus, Liz Truss is the least popular UK Prime Minister since they’ve been asking how popular the prime minister is. And whether you fly, ride, or scoot, getting there is considerably less than half the fun.
On today’s episode, NLW looks at the non-fungible token community’s current debate about royalties. Marketplaces are moving to zero-royalty or royalty-optional models, while many in the space think it is precisely automated royalties that made NFTs so disruptive for artists and creators in the first place.
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I.D.E.A.S. 2022 by CoinDesk facilitates capital flow and market growth by connecting the digital economy with traditional finance through the presenter’s mainstage, capital allocation meeting rooms and sponsor expo floor. Use code BREAKDOWN20 for 20% off the General Pass. Learn more and register at coindesk.com/ideas.
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“The Breakdown” is written, produced by and features Nathaniel Whittemore aka NLW, with editing by Rob Mitchell and research by Scott Hill. Jared Schwartz is our executive producer and our theme music is “Countdown” by Neon Beach. Music behind our sponsors today is “War” by Enoch Yang and “The Life We Had” by Moments. Image credit: TIM VERNON / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images, modified by CoinDesk. Join the discussion at discord.gg/VrKRrfKCz8.
