Institutionalized

This podcast is wonderful, really intelligent and somehow makes me feel a bit more hopeful

Aaron and Charles have the right idea. It’s true that every institution has become infected and has gone completely insane. However, your delivery needs to improve. Charles, slow down. Speak clearly in easy to understand sentences. Too often it’s hard to understand what you’re saying. But the potential for a great podcast is here you just need to refine it a bit…

One of you is speaking so fast with such little diction. Please slow down and please be mindful of slurring words together. It’s unpleasant. Content good.

I think these guys for the most part are pretty reasonable and have interesting discussions. I like the podcast and will keep listening but listening to the recent family policy episode made me realize they are lacking in female perspective. The episode focused on how to make it easier to have families, and the idea of childcare subsidies was passed along as a push for 2 worker homes - what they don’t mention is that when women have no personal income, they risk being trapped in all sorts of awful situations and lack real bargaining power in a society where value = money. There’s also the fact that while women have started doing the “man” thing - becoming educated and working outside the home, men have largely failed to bring equality to household work, emotional work, and the mental load of family life. The data backs this up. Anecdotally, I and many friends have decided not to have children, in part because of economic reasons, but also because we watched our mothers work all day at a job, and then come home and work in the house while dad did 20% of that and were heralded. Our moms were constantly exhausted and unappreciated and we’re unwilling to do that. Many moms want to work - many (including my mom, and many past and present coworkers) would go crazy as stay at home moms - see the 50’s-60s spike in “female hysteria” and the rise Valium prescriptions (my grandmother for example). The genie isn’t going back in the bottle - the majority of women will stay in the workforce and instead of trying to make us go backward where men hold the power of the purse and women stay home with little choice, society needs to help make households more equal, parenthood less punishing, and allow work to be less life-consuming, with more reasonable expectations. A better compromise would be to provide compensation for stay at home parents to prevent controls on womens options, in addition to caregivers of elderly parents, and just also provide families with cash to use as they will - for example, on childcare or to give grandma some cash to help with the kids to supplement her SS. I don’t think the guys missed this on purpose or have ill intent, I think this is just something they may have a blind spot for. So just a reminder it might be a good idea to email a female friend to see what you may be missing. Overall, good podcast, I will definitely keep listening.