Reject Modernity Embrace Tradition

Episode 53: Reject Mission Creep, Embrace Service First Policies

A cousin to, or perhaps a descendent of "Everything Bagel" policies, is that many organizations are having their primary missions undermined by what are, at best, ancilla

Summer Hiatus Announcement: Reject Unplanned Hiatuses, Embrace the Academic Job Market (with Graham Straus)

Megan and Clayton are taking a bit of a break while they apply for jobs. But, because they are so nice and don't want to just vanish, they've brought a special guest on t

Episode 52: Reject Race Neutral Remedies, Embrace Race Conscious Fixes

The United States as a whole broadly likes to claim that is is focuses on equality and "not seeing race" is often held up as a virtue. However, this notion of colorblindn

Episode 51: Reject Echo Chambers, Embrace Evidence

In an episode that really gets at the ongoing themes of this show, Megan and Clayton talk about how echo chambers, conspiratorial thinking, and shibboleths that require b

Episode 50: Reject the Closed League, Embrace the Beautiful Game

With the World Cup only days away, and with our last couple of episodes being, well, heavy as hell, we thought we would take the opportunity to inject a little levity int

Episode 49: Reject Trump's Forever Dodge, Embrace Foreign Policy

The Trump Administration has been maddeningly, insanely inconsistent on the causes, justification, purpose, just about everything to do with their war in Iran. Megan and

Episode 48: Reject Rejecting the Voting Rights Act, Embrace Reconstruction 2.0: The Reckoning

The Supreme Court's decision in the Callais case is, to put it mildly, a bunch of hot garbage. Megan and Clayton struggle to stay calm as they take you through the histor

Episode 47: Reject Medical Misinformation, Embrace Modern Science

There is a rising tide of misinformation specifically related to women's health that parallels the anti-vaccine movement with startling fidelity. Megan and Clayton talk a

Episode 46: Reject "The Department of", Embrace Justice

Pam Bondi is turning the Department of Justice into an instrument of Trump's will rather than a legitimate law enforcement organization. Her actions are doing long term d

Episode 45: Reject X, Embrace Twitter (with Jake Christie)

Elon has ruined Twitter. Just about every element of the user experience has gotten worse since he took over, and he fundamentally seems to misunderstand the platform. We

Episode 44: Reject Random State Violence, Embrace Accountability

Over the past year of the Trump administration, ICE agents have been running around the country acting with utter impunity. Without the threat of being help accountable f

Episode 43: Reject Isolation, Embrace Celebration

Just about every culture in the Northern Hemisphere has a festival of lights around this time of year, from Diwali to Christmas to Hanukkah to the Lantern Festival to Yul

Episode 42: Reject Tax Cuts, Embrace Civic Commitment

That top tax rates and general tax burdens have decreased has been much reported on, but an equally important, if less well known, trend is that American states and citie

Episode 41: Reject the 50-year Mortgage, Embrace Building Housing

Trump's recent "proposal", if we can call it that, for a 50-year mortgage, is one of the worst ideas his administration has ever had that wasn't actively intending to hur

Episode 40: Reject the Shadow Docket, Embrace Decisions

Recently, the Supreme Court has been making much greater use of the emergency, or "shadow", docket to make rulings which have real substantive impacts - even though the e

Episode 39: Reject Mere Cancellation, Embrace Cultural Change

A few episodes ago, Megan and Clayton talked themselves into the position that the MeToo movement hadn't actually been very successful in achieving many of its goals. Lis

Episode 38: Reject "Born and Raised", Embrace Transplants

Everybody seems to hate it when new people move to the city. Transplants are held responsible for everything from traffic to displacement. But this image of transplants a

Episode 37: Reject Dating Apps, Embrace Meeting Through Friends

Dating has become an "online first" activity these days, with the plurality of relationships beginning on the internet. This has some pretty substantial negative conseque

Episode 36: Reject Inclusionary Zoning, Embrace Social Housing

Producing affordable housing is important, but our most commonly used methods for getting this housing built may be actively counterproductive. In what is perhaps the ner

Episode 35: Reject Social Media, Embrace Real Life

We live a substantial portion of our public lives on social media in a way that is actually deeply unhealthy for many of us and causes us to make decisions that we would