Make Me Smart February 23, 2024 Transcript

Note: Marketplace podcasts are meant to be heard, with emphasis, tone and audio elements a transcript can’t capture. Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting it.

Kai Ryssdal 

Hey everybody. I’ll try that again. Hey everybody, I’m Kai Ryssdal. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make the day makes sense. Friday the 23rd of February on a day when I have to pick up my own name.

Kimberly Adams 

Hey, but you got it out there. And I am Kimberly Adams. Got it on the first try. Thank you for joining us on our podcast and on the YouTube live stream. Because it’s Friday, and the long-suffering beleaguered Friday, we are doing our normal thing on Friday, which is Economics on Tap. Our weekly happy hour episode, so thanks everybody for joining.

Kai Ryssdal 

We will. What will we do? We will check to see what everybody is drinking. We will discuss the news. We’ll do a little Half Full/Half Empty. I’m kind of winging it here, Kimberly, because my phone is ringing, and I’m distracted. And I’m, Oh my god.

Kimberly Adams 

It’s okay. Well, I have the chat up in terms of drinks, and I can go through, and I see that people are already predicting Jason, that I will be smug about my landline comments the other day, which I’m not. Well, a little bit. A little bit smug. But anyway,

Kai Ryssdal 

Justifying so. Remind people why in case they missed the news.

Kimberly Adams 

So, the other day, last week actually when we were doing Half Full/Half Empty. One of the questions was were we half full or half empty on landlines? And I was among the minority of being half full on having a landline to prepare for the potential zombie apocalypse. And so was our producer, Marissa Cabrera. But it turned out we didn’t need to wait for the zombie apocalypse to need landlines. We just needed AT&T and other networks to randomly shut down due to, I guess we still don’t fully know why. But they say it’s not a cyber-attack, and it wasn’t a solar flare. So anyhow, they were telling people who needed to dial 911 to use a landline. Many people do not have landlines anymore, and therefore I am vindicated. So yes, a bit smug. I’ll take it.

Kai Ryssdal 

You totally are. You totally are.

Kimberly Adams 

Okay. All right, but seriously onto the drinks. What are you drinking first? And then I’ll get to the YouTube chat.

Kai Ryssdal 

I’m having water because I got some things to do later. So, just a little agua. Also, I’m a little dehydrated. Went running this morning, and I had five cups of coffee and no other fluids. So yeah.

Kimberly Adams 

Water is a good choice. I had like two big glasses of water before the show, but now I’m drinking sake that I heated up in the microwave, which is. I know. Not the right way to do it, but I’m in the office. But you know, I’m cold and I wanted something warm. And I picked this up from the sushi place down the street and put it in the microwave.

Kai Ryssdal 

Alright, why are you in the office at 6:30 on a Friday night?

Kimberly Adams 

I was working, man. I was working. Got stuff to do. Got stuff to do. All right. So, what’s everybody else drinking? Okay, let’s see. Jennifer flippin Pierce is drinking a creamsicle martini. Oh, and someone points out that AT&T is saying it was a software update that caused these outages. Yes.

Kai Ryssdal 

What is maple bacon shine and skrewball whiskey on ice, Larry F? What exactly is that? I don’t even know.

Kimberly Adams 

Danny and Wilma McIntyre drinking a Portlandia Columbia Valley cab. Craig Hilton, a New Trail Glacier Hazy IPA. Hmm.

Kai Ryssdal 

Peacefrog521 is drinking chilled boiled tap water, so there you go. There you go.

Kimberly Adams 

Well, at least it’s sanitary. Let’s see.

Kai Ryssdal 

Expat Mike in Japan says it’s too early to be drinking sake for him. Just want to point that out.

Kimberly Adams 

In Japan. Expat Mike, I’m very curious what the take is on microwave and sake in Japan, as opposed to. I’m sure it’s not good.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, it will not be good. It will not be good. Let’s watch. Let’s watch the chat for that.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. All right. Sarah’s got a skrewball whiskey. Oh, says screwball whiskey is peanut butter whiskey.

Kai Ryssdal 

Peanut butter whiskey. What?

Kimberly Adams 

Huh.

Kai Ryssdal 

Expat Mike, never heard of microwaving sake.

Kimberly Adams 

Jen Peck says as long as it’s not fish. All right.

Kai Ryssdal

Exactly. There you go. Should we move on?

Kimberly Adams

Yeah, what’s your news?

Kai Ryssdal 

So, there was really interesting article in The New York Times. I think was probably yesterday actually, about Instagram, and how it’s becoming more and more of a news site. The headline was, its “uneasy rise,” and I clicked on it because it was interesting. But it clicked with me is what I meant to say, and I am totally sober by the way is because I follow a woman on Instagram named Jessica Yellin. She used to be the CNN White House correspondent, left CNN a number of years ago and started to a feed on Instagram called “News Not Noise.” And she works really hard at differentiating the noise in the news cycle from the actual news and what people know. It’s really interesting, and I’ve been following her for a while. She was quoted in this piece; it should be said. Full disclosure. But there’s, it’s really interesting because, and here’s the quote straight out of the article: “As of last year, 16% of American adults regularly got news on Instagram, which outpaces Tik Tok, Twitter, and Reddit. And it’s up from 8% just five years ago.” So, it’s a big jump. More and more people. Here’s why it’s a challenge though. This is now a quote from Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram, for Mark Zuckerberg. Let’s remember that Instagram is owned by Facebook, owned by Meta, actually, same company as Facebook. Instagram has stopped recommending, “political content across different parts of the app unless users opted into seeing it.” The challenge, of course, is that if you have to opt into news to see it, what does that do to your engagement? What does that do to how informed you are as, let’s say, a voter if it’s political content. Also, there’s a whole train of thought on disinformation and misinformation, and what it means for that. It’s just. They’re trying to be thoughtful about it. It’s a really challenging problem. I recommend the article to you.

Kimberly Adams 

Don’t people already have to opt into news on other platforms? If you think about it, you have to turn on your TV and go to the channel.

Kai Ryssdal

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Kimberly Adams

Turn on the radio and choose to listen, yeah, it’s

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, but socials’ different, right?

Kimberly Adams 

I mean. Yes, social is different. But I’m trying to think about how it’s different in this context, in terms of just opting in, what do you mean?

Kai Ryssdal 

Well, if you follow or, or have expressed a preference for political news, and the algorithm learns what you like, and then Instagram decides to deemphasize that, right? That becomes kind of a challenge.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, it does. Because then even if you want to know what’s going on, you’re kind of being led away from it, but the material that may be more social or less newsy but wrong could be overemphasized. I see your point. Okay. Cool. So, my news is also a New York Times article, sort of around the two year anniversary of the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and looking at how well our sanctions have worked against Russia, which is to say, not very well. And yes, we’ve got this brand-new round of sanctions after the Russian government obviously killed Alexei Navalny. But we had a lot of sanctions even before that, trying to isolate Russia, trying to undermine its sources of revenue used to fund the war, and they were not super effective. Just to read a little bit of this. “To hear the Biden administration officials tell it, Russia has suffered a major strategic failure. But beyond North America and Europe, there’s evidence to the contrary. China, India, and Brazil are buying Russian oil in record quantities, feasting on the steep discounts Mr. Putin now offers to countries willing to replace his lost European customers. With those growing economic relationships have come strong diplomatic ties, including with some close US partners. Mr. Putin visited Beijing in October and hosted India’s foreign minister in Moscow in late December. A few weeks earlier, Mr. Putin was warmly received in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, where he was greeted with a 21-gun salute and fighter jets overhead trailing smoke and the red, white and blue of Russia’s flag. Russia’s influence is also expanding in Africa, according to a new report from the Royal United Services Institute.” It goes on and on. It’s very interesting to think about how effective sanctions really are, and yet we keep using them because we have not that many tools left especially when Congress is choosing not to fund another venue of influencing this conflict, which is you know, paying for weapons and things like that. So I’d seen that article, which made something that I saw on X, which I was on today. Randomly, which I’m usually not, but I was looking at the terrible news about our colleagues over at WAMU. They had a bunch of layoffs, and yet another round of journalism layoffs. But anyway, I was on X, and I came across an academic at Stanford University. His name is. He’s an assistant professor of economics at the Stern School of Business. I’m sorry at New York University and a research affiliate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. I’m probably going to butcher his name. I’m sorry. Abdoulaye Ndiaye. And he’s out with colleagues with a new paper looking at the effectiveness of boycotts, consumer driven boycotts, as a way to punish a country compared to sanctions. And according to his research, consumer driven boycotts can actually be more effective in some cases than sanctions at actually causing economic harm to a country. It’s very technical and gets into all these different case studies. But the bottom-up method seems to be a little bit more effective than the top-down method because with sanctions, you tend to kind of eat the cost when you’re issuing the sanction. Versus with boycotts, it seems to generate a little bit more domestic activity to replace the boycotted product or products within the country doing the boycott. I thought it was very fascinating. I’d never really thought about boycotts versus sanctions, and that sort of top-down versus bottom-up approach, which I thought was really interesting.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, totally is. It totally is. It’s a little bit trickle down versus, you know, trickle up-ish if you want to come up with an economic theory. But yeah, it’s totally interesting, right? Makes a lot of sense too. There was a piece I was just as I was driving home just now, Jackie Northam has a piece on Russian sanctions and how generally ineffective they’ve been for the reasons you cited. The Brazilians and the Russian. The Brazilians and the Chinese and Indians buying euros, which is Russian oil at a discount. You know?

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. I remember on the show we were talking, and I was shocked because Russia actually made more money off oil in the early months of the war than they did because the global supply went down with the sanctions on Russia, which drove up the price for the oil that Russia could get out. It was wild. Okay. Yeah.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, economics is weird. Alright. That’s the news. Quick break. And when we come back, Drew Jostad, Half Full/Half Empty, coming back.

Kimberly Adams 

Okay, we are back, and we’re going to play our wonderful game, Half Full/Half Empty hosted by our very own Drew Jostad. Drew, take it away.

Drew Jostad 

All right. This week, Google temporarily removed the News tab from search results for some users. Are you half full or half empty?

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, they’re like testing it. They’re doing an A/B test with users getting it and users not. And I’ve noticed actually sometimes when I search on Google it’s not there. It’s really annoying. I’m completely empty.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, I’m definitely empty. It’s been a bad week in terms of like journalism and the economics of our industry. It’s not looking good. So pretty empty there. Please give us a more positive topic.

Drew Jostad 

Okay, are you half full or half empty on going to a steak house not for the steak, but for the vibe?

Kai Ryssdal 

Where did I hear this story?

Drew Jostad 

This was an interview Kristin did on Monday.

Kai Ryssdal 

Right okay, I was out. That’s why I heard part of that story. Anyway, Kimberly, go ahead.

Kimberly Adams 

I am going to say half full. I like the vibes. I’ll go someplace for the vibes, why not?

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, I think it’s totally fine. Steak houses are like you know, a remnant of years gone by, right? but clearly people still go to them and not always for the steak. I’m half full on that. Sure.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. Why not?

Kai Ryssdal 

Why not?

Drew Jostad 

Are you half full or half empty on celebrating Leap Day?

Kai Ryssdal 

Is this year a Leap Day year?

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, it is. We’re going to have a 29.

Kai Ryssdal

Oh wow.

Drew Jostad 

The fact that he didn’t even know it was coming.

Kai Ryssdal

Yeah.

Kimberly Adams 

One day at a time, man. One day at a time.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, I’m not following that. I will definitely go the Leap Day. Sure. Totally.

Kimberly Adams 

Is the Leap Day lining up with a solar eclipse? When is that happening?

Drew Jostad 

No. Isn’t the solar eclipse like in April.

Kai Ryssdal 

No, it’s around. Yeah, it’s around like opening day or something for the baseball season. So, I think it’s like early April something.

Kimberly Adams 

Oh, okay. My mother was telling me today that she apparently the like, best place to see the solar eclipse is going to be Bloomington, Indiana where she went a lot as a kid. So, she’s going with like a bunch of her childhood friends back to Bloomington, Indiana to see the solar eclipse. Folks in the chat say it is April 8. But to answer the question itself about celebrating Leap Day. Half full. You know me, I love the theme. I’ll celebrate anything.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, totally cool. Also, total eclipses are supposed to be amazeballs. Molly went to the last one. She said it was incredible. Incredible. Yeah. She went to like, Oregon or something. Yeah.

Kimberly Adams 

Bloomington, Indiana friends.

Kai Ryssdal 

There you go.

Drew Jostad 

All right. Are you half full or half empty on Netflix’s new adaptation, live action of Avatar: The Last Airbender?

Kai Ryssdal 

First of all, is this last one? Is this the poll one?

Drew Jostad

No.

Kai Ryssdal

Okay, somebody needs to explain to me what Avatar: The Last Airbender is. Cause I don’t know.

Kimberly Adams 

Ah, I can help you here. So.

Kai Ryssdal

I knew you would be able to.

Kimberly Adams

Yes, Avatar: The Last Airbender was a Nickelodeon series that was sort of one of the more interesting sort of American originated anime like, series because a lot of the series that are anime, you see them being developed in Japan, and they come over and they get dubbed over whatever. Avatar was a Nickelodeon series. It was really great. Very interesting. It had this character, I won’t give you the whole backstory. It was a good show. And then they had a follow up series with the, you know, another Avatar, general principle being that there are people who have special powers to manipulate the elements of the earth. Okay? Right. Okay, so, having a live action version of this beloved show, I am skeptical because we have not had a great track record of our beloved anime series being converted to live action well. Oh, Brian Old brings up something that I had actively suppressed in my memory, which was the M. Night Shyamalan movie of Avatar: The Last Airbender, which was a live action version, and we are going to not talk about it because it was real bad. It was real bad.

Kai Ryssdal 

Farther down in the chat is Ben Novotel saying, “I think Kai has tuned out.” I haven’t tuned out. I am however, having a little cognitive dissonance because I thought this was some spin off of Avatar the James Cameron movie that got all the hullabaloo. And you can understand the brand confusion here, right?

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, okay. Okay. All right. So that is just Avatar versus Avatar: The Last Airbender, because the people who can manipulate these elements are called benders. And the main character is an air bender although he’s special because he can bend all of the elements. Anyway. Well, people tell me that the Cowboy Bebop adaptation was good. I did not hear good things about it, but I haven’t seen it. I know that the ghost note adaptation did not go well. One Piece live action some people are saying is good. I’m skeptical. But you know what? I’m willing to be entertained. And I will probably watch it. And yeah, so I’m going to be half full because I love the attention on shows that I like. Although I would probably rather the money and resources go for new ideas and new things. But Death Note sorry, not ghost note. Death Note.

Kai Ryssdal 

There is no original IP. We’re doing anime on Tuesday, right?

Kimberly Adams 

Yes, that’s right. We’re actually doing a deep dive on anime purely for me. Thank you, Kai, for indulging me.

Kai Ryssdal 

Which is totally fine because I’m going to learn a ton because I know clearly less than nothing about anime if I thought this was a sequel to James Cameron’s.

Kimberly Adams 

A lot of people think that. They’re both called Avatar. Anyway, half full. What about you?

Kai Ryssdal 

There you go. I will go with whatever you say. I think, you know, live action remakes are troubling right of classic animated or anime thing. So, it’ll be, my hopes are not high even though I know nothing about this. I would. Yeah, you know.

Kimberly Adams 

And I’m seeing a lot of people here say the Cowboy Bebop was pretty good. And that the, what’s it called, One Piece live action is doing well. I don’t have Netflix. So, I haven’t seen a lot of these. I got to go and watch those.

Kai Ryssdal 

He’s given me a hard time. How did all those kids get on the lawn, Kai? I don’t know, Phil, but I’m getting mad at here. All right, next one. Last one, Drew.

Drew Jostad 

Last one. We got the poll.

Kimberly Adams 

So, folks who are watching live on YouTube or listening live on YouTube, whatever. If you’re in a safe place to weigh in the poll, we would appreciate it and you can like our live stream while you’re at it. Let’s do it.

Drew Jostad 

All right. If you’re not familiar with Amazon One, it’s a little scanner you might have seen it at a Whole Foods that links payment information to a scan of your palm. Are you half full or half empty on paying with a wave of your hand?

Kimberly Adams 

With all of these new technologies, you know, I’m constantly weighing is it inevitable? Or is it sort of just testing it out? You know, I really thought mini discs were going to be a thing. I did. I did. I really did. To go way back forever, you know. And so, you wonder which of these technologies are going to survive? I think it was, I don’t know if it was on our show or something else where someone was talking about how when bar codes were developed, nobody thought that was going to become the standard for everything. And then they were, and other systems exist for tracking things. And now not. There are a lot of different ways to share data and share information. You can look at people’s eyes. You can look at people’s hands. Facial record recognition, and all of it’s a privacy nightmare. But is it inevitable? And if so, like, I don’t know, Amazon knows so much about us already.

Kai Ryssdal 

So, what do you think? Is this inevitable? Are they just, is it you know, just another like, like, fleshy?

Kimberly Adams 

Gimmicky thing.

Kai Ryssdal 

Alright, we got 184 votes in the poll. That’s plenty. What do you think?

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, I’m going to say half empty. I think that so many of these technologies are advancing so rapidly, that a wave of the hand is not going to be so much more efficient than waving a card or waving a fob. And the privacy trade off. You know, I don’t know that a lot of people are going to get on board and how much easier is that than something else? But who knows? What do you think?

Kai Ryssdal 

I don’t have very many privacy concerns because I don’t know why I just don’t. I just don’t think it’s going to, I think the executions going to be flawed here. And it’s going to be a while before this is a viable technology, and they’re going to be different ways to do it. So, I don’t think a scan of your palm is going to be it so on this specific thing, I’m half empty. I think contactless payment, like actual genuine contactless payment is coming. It’s only a question of when and then I’ll be half full on that. You know, the poll, by the way is half empty 84% of you on almost 200 votes. Half full, 15. So, you know, there’s some privacy concerns out there amongst our listeners.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, with good reason. All right. So, we’re done.

Kai Ryssdal 

We’re done. That’s it for us today. We are back on Monday and then the deep dive with anime on Tuesday. In the meanwhile, questions, comments, you know how to do it. Voicemail is 508-U-B-SMART. Email is makemesmart@marketplace.org And that’s how you get a hold of us.

Kimberly Adams 

Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Today’s episode was engineered by Charlton Thorp. And our intern is Thalia Menchaca.

Kai Ryssdal 

The team behind our Friday game, which is called Half Full/Half Empty, Emily Macune and Antoinette Brock. Marissa Cabrera is our senior producer. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts. Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital and On-Demand. And here we go.

Kimberly Adams 

And I am getting out of the office.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, I don’t. 6:30 is late.

Kimberly Adams 

I got a lot done though. I accomplished the goals that I set for myself for today, and I feel good about it.

Kai Ryssdal

There you go. There you go.