Make Me Smart October 12, 2023 Transcript

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Kai Ryssdal

I’m ready.

Kimberly Adams 

Hey, everyone. I’m Kimberly Adams, welcome back to Make Me Smart where we make today make sense.

Kai Ryssdal 

I’m Kai Ryssdal. Thanks for joining us on this Thursday, October the 12th.

Kimberly Adams 

And today we’re going to be listening back to some audio from some of the big news stories of the week. And so we have some of those said audio clips lined up. Let’s get to the first one.

David Clinch

It’s bad incentives. It’s basically Reply Guys meet revenue. If you put those two things together, it’s just an awful dynamic because you’ve got people whose only interest is clicks and followers. And then you’ve given them the gift that these clicks and followers help them make money behind the scenes. That is absolutely upside down set of incentives.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, welcome to social media. So that was a guy by the name of David Clinch. He’s a founding partner of the social media intelligence agency Storyful and co-founder of Media Growth Partners. It’s an interview that he did with Lily Jamali, on Marketplace Tech. And the general subject was, of course, you know, the perverse incentives, but it comes as the European Commission is now well one hesitates to get a say getting serious, but is trying to get serious with Elon Musk and Twitter, now known as the other thing. Because of the we talked about this the other day, the just spewing of misinformation, and disinformation and imagery and all that stuff on that social media website. He’s got, like, literally like a day and a half to clean it up, or a huge fine. So we’ll see what happens and look, sorry, just a brief editorial comment. It’s one more indication of the Europeans taking regulation of these things way more seriously, than the Americans do.

Kimberly Adams 

You know, I was listening to that clip. And I was thinking it could also have been about that obituary story that you did with people who make money.

Kai Ryssdal

Oh, yeah, totally.

Kimberly Adams

Reading other people’s obituaries. It’s like the perverse incentive things is, it’s everywhere. So anyway, um, yeah. So the next piece of audio comes from an interview I did earlier this week with Ken Pucker at Tufts University, Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Business. So this was a story about Levi’s, Levi’s earnings and how because it was so hot this summer, Levi’s was saying that not as many people were buying jeans, myself included, and sort of whether or not we’re gonna hear more companies using climate change, as an excuse to as for why they missed their earnings, not just because of like supply chain disruptions, but also because of consumer habits changing. And, you know, Ken gave me wonderful information about all those things that I asked him about. But he was very careful to say that it’s really not the consumer’s fault. Here’s what he said.

Ken Pucker

I don’t think consumers can understand the complexities inherent in apparel supply chains to make informed choices. That’s it, companies need to change their behavior. I think in order to do that we need policy. And it’d be helpful if consumers, consumer’s zeitgeist also shifted, and people realize that more isn’t always better. And that they could instead buy more for durability as opposed to for fashion.

Kimberly Adams 

And one of the, no you go ahead, you make your point, because I want to look up something real quick.

Kai Ryssdal 

Well, my point was just that last little bit durability versus fashion. I mean, you know, we we famously in this country, want fast fashion, which is environmentally destructive, we want to, you know, all of us want to look good, and we’re not thinking about how long the clothes are gonna last. And that’s a real challenge when you’re thinking fashion, and sustainability.

Kimberly Adams 

Right. So one of the things he said was that in order to stay, and I’m going to read his exact quote, “in order to stay within planetary boundaries, the average American consumer would have to go from buying about 55 items a year to five,” it’s that order of magnitude of change. And that floored me because I like to think of myself like I have a relatively small closet, you know, compared to most of,  compared to women, women, I know I have not that many clothes. But thinking about only buying five items of clothing per year is a stretch even for me and he’s saying that we need to go from 50 of the average consumer buying 55 items a year down to five. That was wild to me and that’s a such a huge shift in mindset.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, yeah. Well, 55 I don’t, definitely don’t buy 55 I also definitely don’t buy five so I’m probably on the lower end of the scale, sorry, I’m just muttering.

Kimberly Adams 

I need to like go and count because I wonder how many items of clothing per year I actually buy. That’s an that’s a findable number. Yeah. Okay. Anyway,

Kai Ryssdal 

It totally is, all right, next one. Here we go.

Claudia Goldin

Women are now more educated than men. They graduate from college at much higher rates than men, they do better in high school than than men do. So why are there these differences? And and we realize that these differences, although some are found within the labor market, are really reflections of what happens within individuals homes.

Kai Ryssdal 

That was Claudia Goldin. She won the Nobel Prize for Economics this past Monday, I guess, right? Talking about her life’s work, which is gender differences in the labor force. And the the, I think it said the un, misunderstood or not understood things was the citations, if I’m butchering that, but things that we hadn’t really thought about. And when I say we, I mean, the mostly male economists who have been studying this stuff for years, and Goldin comes along, makes it her life’s work and wins the Nobel at the age of 77, the third woman to win the prize, the first one at solo, also the first woman to be tenured as an economics professor at Harvard. She literally sort of created that field and did amazing work. She will also be here tomorrow morning, by the way, depending on when you’re listening to this Friday morning, on the Marketplace Morning Report talking to our colleague David Brancaccio about the prize and her work and what it means.

Kimberly Adams 

You know, when I was working on that, that story about her on Monday, it was so nice to hear just like all of these women waxing poetic about her because suffice it to say not every winner of a Nobel in all the various categories are always the nicest people. Sometimes they have to, not they don’t have to sometimes they kind of can trample on colleagues on their way to the top or not necessarily have people say the nicest things about them after they win. But everyone was just like, so happy and thrilled for her and talking about what a just rock she is in the field and how many women she’s supported over the decades she’s been in the business, so I thought that was really cool.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, that is that is very neat. Very last one. Here we go.

Moxy Fruvous

You will go to the moon/You’ll probably be heading there soon/Someday flowers will grow there/but first you gotta go there/You will go to the moon.

Kimberly Adams 

Oh my gosh, so cute. So this is the song.

Kai Ryssdal

Wow.

Kimberly Adams

I know right? Who knew this was a real thing. This is a song by the Canadian folk band Moxy Fruvous, which was released in 1997. Now how did my non-musical self find the song I didn’t, Phill a Mastodon user sent this to me on Mastodon because since we had to flee Twitter, I’ve been all over the social medias. But Phil sent me this after our episode where we were talking about the plans to you know make colonies on the moon by 2040 and my holding out hope that one day I’ll go to the moon and Phil sent me the song thing you’ll go to the moon and it made me smile.

Kai Ryssdal 

There you go. There you go. Look you gotta you gotta you gotta have hope right. You gotta have hope.  Anyway done for today’s what we are, back tomorrow for economics on tap. YouTube live stream starts at 3:30 Pacific 6:30 Eastern, more news, drinks, and a game.

Kimberly Adams 

Yes. And we love hearing from you. If you have a story you want to share with us a comment a question or a suggestion. Our email is makemesmart@marketplace.org, or you can leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.

Kai Ryssdal 

Sorry about the leaf blower in the background. I’m guessing you can hear that. Today’s episode of Make Me Smart leaf blower or not is produced by Courtney Bergsieker with assistance from H Conley, audio engineering by Charlton Thorp. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Our intern is Niloufar Shahbandi.

Kimberly Adams 

Marisa Cabrera is our senior producer. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts and Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital.

Kai Ryssdal 

And we go out with a leaf blower.