Make Me Smart July 17, 2023

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Kai Ryssdal 

Alright, whose in charge? Jayk, let’s go. Fine. Don’t even wait.

Kimberly Adams 

He already did. Hello there. I’m Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart where we make today make sense.

Kai Ryssdal 

I’m Kai Ryssdal. It is Monday, the 17th of July. Good to have you back with us on the pod.

Kimberly Adams 

Yes, we’re gonna do some news on this Monday of Mondays. We’re gonna get you smiling at the end, ideally. But first with the news. Kai, why don’t you go first?

Kai Ryssdal 

Alright, well, mine is not so much news as it is a rant. And it’s a little bit of a rant against the New York Times. But it’s mostly a rant against the Republican Party in the United States of America. So the New York Times has a big story today about the plans for a second Trump term. And the headline says Trump and allied allies forged plans to increase presidential power in 2025. Now, you may think to yourself, well, increasing presidential power. I mean, there’s been a classic debate in this country about the imperial presidency versus the powers of the legislative branch. And the legislative branch is of course article one of the Constitution. And that’s the most important branch. And oh my God shut up. That’s not what this piece is about. Okay, this piece is about a twice-impeached president, under indictment now in 37 felony counts under the Espionage Act, and who is credibly accused of having led and formed an insurrection against the United States of America on the 6th of January 2021. Trying to, in a second term, amass political power in the White House by subverting otherwise independent government agencies, to his power. And that’s not the way it works. That’s not the way it works. And it cannot be the way it works. Go ahead.

Kimberly Adams 

I mean, it’s, it’s not the way it’s supposed to work. But I think that’s where American exceptionalism can get us in a little bit of trouble, when we just like, assume that kind of stuff can’t happen here. And January 6, this kind of stuff can happen here. I remember back in like 2017, 2018, sitting with some of the White House reporters and asking them, you know, would they be game to ask Trump, you know, if he loses the election, is he going to accept the results? Because even then you could sort of see the way the winds were blowing. And a lot of people just didn’t take it seriously at the time, right. And I was really surprised how comfortable people were saying, these sorts of things just don’t happen here. And this kind of article, like, laying out these plans, it’s very easy. Like, you’re right, it should not be this way. But it could be this way. Because there’s a big chunk of America that wants Trump to be president again, and thinks this is a great idea.

Kai Ryssdal 

You’re absolutely no, you’re absolutely right. And thank you for pointing out the flaw in my logic and the logic of of many, many people in this country who go around saying, “Oh, we’re America, this doesn’t happen here.” And oh, look, it kind of does. But just to flesh this out a little bit. And then I’ll get to my rant about the New York Times, which falls in line with exactly exactly what you were saying. This article lays out how the President plans to do this by taking the Federal Trade Commission, for example, and the Federal Communications Commission and those really independent but very, very important government agencies that regulate how so much of what happens in this economy happens and putting under direct political control. And let’s remember that the President is again, the former president is again credibly accused of using the instruments of power to go after his political rivals. Here’s another one just to bring it home to you. What if Powell, what if, what if Powell? What if Trump goes after the Federal Reserve and decides to try to subvert that, to his political will, that would just be catastrophic for everybody in this country, so that would be terrible, and it cannot be allowed to happen here. I would suggest that that part of the blame for this lies with the media in this country for many years as Trump rose to and took power or exercise power, not actually raising the BS flag and and saying what was happening in plain and and understandable English. And that’s on us, the members of the media. And here it is, again with the New York Times, saying in this headline, “Trump and allies forge plans to increase presidential power in 2025.” That’s not what they’re doing. That’s not what they’re doing. Right. It would be a plan to establish an autocracy and a very nearly unlimited form of power in the presidential office. And that’s not right. And we have to call that stuff out. All of us do. And that’s, that’s my rant.

Kimberly Adams 

I’m very interested in, you know, the byline on this, which is Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman. And, you know, both Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, were quite adept during the Trump administration of getting in close and getting Trump and allies to talk to them and got a lot of pushback and complaints, especially Maggie Haberman, obviously, for sort of access journalism and all the downfalls of that, which we’ve ranted about before. And I wonder, you know, will it be any different this time?

Kai Ryssdal 

I don’t know. How can it not be? It has to be.

Kimberly Adams 

Look at this piece. I know. Okay, wow. All right. So I’ve got to the first one is sort of a subset of two, two stories about unions. The Hollywood Reporter has a story about the SAG-AFTRA strike, which as we just closed before on Marketplace, is part of a different division of SAG-AFTRA, not the part of the striking, or at least a bunch of Marketplace editorial staff. But the annual costs is a headline, the annual cost of the SAG-AFTRA, DGA and WGA contracts, may be 450 million to $600 million a year, according to Moody’s estimates. And the size of these strikes. And the this is the whole piece is basically about the fact that they think this strike is going to last a long time, because the stakes are so high. And one of the other interesting thing that’s been happening with this is, actors have been very publicly going online talking about how much they actually make, especially like actors who are not the lead stars in things, talking about getting one cent royalty checks, talking about making less than 100 bucks an episode, you know, because of streaming and things like that, talking about how very well known actors and popular TV shows don’t make that much money. And the, this is just a really interesting take on why the stakes are so high on this for both the studios, and for the actors. Because if you think about streaming, the whole business model is kind of built on, you pay for the content once and then sell it an infinite number of times, right. And if they start having to pay TV style royalties, on streaming content, that business model will have to change completely. Right. And obviously don’t want to do that. The actors want livable wages. This is going to take a while.

Kai Ryssdal 

I have, yes, it will definitely take a while and I think the strike is going to go longer than anybody thinks I have a technical question, which I don’t know the answer to. But maybe there’s some listener out there who does or maybe you do. Do, can somebody help me understand why royalties and residuals in streaming are so low as opposed to linear television? Do we know why? Or is it just because they don’t have to pay?

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, it would be really interesting to hear that because a lot of these actors are very publicly going online talking about how little they make. That’s one of my union stories. The other union story is the pending what looks to be quite likely a strike of UPS workers. And this is another huge strike. We’re talking about 340,000 people, UPS is already training some non-union workers to try to potentially step up if the strike goes ahead. So the news today is that the head of the Teamsters said on Sunday that he has asked, asked the White House not to intervene if unionized UPS workers end up going on strike and this is

Kai Ryssdal

Wow, I missed that. Yeah, I missed.

Kimberly Adams

Yeah. And this is important because if you remember, late last year, we had a looming, well we did have a rail workers strike about to happen and the White House and the Democrats in Congress also stepped in to avert the strike, because they did not want that hit to the economy of bringing all that to a standstill. And the fact that the Teamsters are coming out publicly saying they want the Biden administration to stay out of it. That’s not just a request, that’s a threat. Because we’re heading into an election year. And the Teamsters, and the union vote is very, very important for Biden. And that, to me, sounded very much like a “Oh, don’t get into this, because there will be consequences.” And I thought that was very fascinating.

Kai Ryssdal 

It’s, it’s, it’s a really interesting rock and a hard place, right? Because there are the Teamsters, in the unions on one side, but there is, and not to overstate this, but UPS is a non=small part of the lifeblood of the American economy, right? Moving packages around logistics, all that stuff. And so the challenge is keeping the union happy, but also keeping commerce moving, and all those people who want their packages. And what does he do? It’s a real conundrum. That’s it’s a good story, it’s a really story

Kimberly Adams 

Well, and especially since it seems like knock on wood, inflation seems to be just now getting somewhat under control. And that kind of shock to the supply chain is exactly the sort of thing that could tick it right back up.

Kai Ryssdal

Right. Exactly. Yep, totally.

Kimberly Adams

All right. I’ve gone on quite a while. But I do have one more and a little bit of a content warning here. I’m going to talk about murder and sexual violence here. There has been a lot of news about these murders in Long Island, the Gilgo Beach cold case, where several women were found brutally murdered in this part of New York, and there’s a lot of coverage of it. And it may not seem like something that’s in our wheelhouse. But this is also a story about the risk of workers, right? Because a lot of these women were sex workers, or at least reported to be, and some of them definitely were. But this, there’s a piece in USA Today, getting into just how much risk of violence there is for sex workers, and how women sex workers in particular are often a top target of serial killers, because they know nobody’s going to come looking for them. And they are vulnerable. And they think that these are people who will not be missed. And unfortunately, the history of police investigations into a lot of these cases, affirms that, and, you know, sex work is this particular kind of sex work, is definitely illegal in most places in the United States. But the level of violence that some of these workers experience is just really horrific, and not just when they are murdered, but when they are just sort of everyday exposed to violence. And I think this piece in USA Today, looking at that, from the sort of perspective of what it is like to do this kind of work, and the risk that comes with it was is really important to keep in mind. So highly recommend.

Kai Ryssdal

Totally agree, totally agree.

Kimberly Adams

All right. Now, we definitely need some smiles.

Kai Ryssdal 

All right, you go ahead,

Kimberly Adams 

I have a story about concrete. Because that’s the most exciting thing in the world, right? Yes. So there’s a story I saw in Science Alert, a headline, “We finally know why ancient Roman concrete stood the test of time.” Now, if you’ve been fortunate enough to travel abroad into the parts of Europe and North Africa that have a lot of Roman ruins, one of the things that’s very noticeable about it is that their concrete structures remain in astonishingly good condition, considering how old they are. And given that this is like a blended mixture that we still use a version of today and you know, how quickly does your driveway crack? The fact that Roman concrete has stood up the test of time is is is quite impressive. And so, these researchers really looked into why the concrete is so resilient. And it turned out that and I’m not even going to get into the science of it, you should read the article, the way that they thought previously, Rome, Ancient Romans used lime in the mixture was slightly different instead of using it one way they used it at like a much higher heating the mix made the mixture while it was hot, which had the after on effect of when the concrete cracks, water reacts with these chunks of lime in it to basically fill in the gap and re-concrete, you know, the crack that’s formed. And so it’s like self-healing concrete. Now, sure, this is interesting and curious just for history and randomness. But also, now that they know this, they are now this team is now working on commercializing a version of ancient Roman concrete as more environmentally friendly alternative to current concrete, concrete, which are a major producer of greenhouse gases, the way that we may contract right now. And I thought that was really cool history, fixing the future.

Kai Ryssdal 

History is cool. It’s actually great that they’re gonna figure out how to do that now. Because, yeah, I mean, my, my drive way cracking. That’s why I chuckle. That’s why. All right, here’s, here’s mine. It’s not your traditional make me smile, but it’s just flat out. Good news. And it comes to us from David Leonhardt at the New York Times, who writes the morning newsletter at the Times, points out some new data from the CDC, that “the total number of Americans dying each day from any cause is no longer historically abnormal.” That’s a quote and of course, during the pandemic, we had huge spikes in excess deaths, right. I don’t want that to sound down sound unfeeling, but that’s what they’re called. And during the pandemic, during the worst of it, excess deaths were more than 30% higher than normal. So or the number of people dying was 30% higher than normal. That was those were excess deaths. It is now statistically almost zero. That is great news. And we should all be super thankful it’s happening in other countries as well. And we’re all vaccinated and taking precautions when we need to and that’s just flat good news. That’s the only way to put it.

Kimberly Adams 

That is really great news. Still be careful though. Like but still great news. Yes, yep. Okay, that is it for us today. We are going to be back tomorrow for our weekly deep dive. This week we’re going to be talking with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Wesley Lowery about his new book “American Whitelash: A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress.”

Kai Ryssdal 

Until then, if you got a question for us a comment, if you got a summer reading tip, cocktail for Kimberly, or a beer for me take your pick whatever you want to suggest, voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART. Email us at makemesmart@marketplace.org. We will read them and we’ll we will absorb them.

Kimberly Adams 

Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Today’s program was engineered by Jayk Cherry, Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter and our intern is Niloufar Shahbandi.

Kai Ryssdal 

Marisa Cabrera is the senior producer of this podcast. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital and on demand here at Marketplace.

Kimberly Adams 

You’re gonna die on that hill, huh?

Kai Ryssdal 

I am gonna die on that hill.