The work Congress could be doing

Make Me Smart October 23, 2023 Transcript

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Kai Ryssdal 

Miss Adams if you’re ready, I think we should we should begin because I have to go get my COVID shot and, and my flu shot.

Kimberly Adams

I got a flu shot today. I did not get the COVID shot yet I need to but yes, let’s do the show.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yes, alright. Hey everybody I’m Kai Ryssdal. Welcome back to Make Me Smart where we make today make sense.

Kimberly Adams 

And I’m Kimberly Adams, thank you, everyone for joining us on this Monday, October the 23rd.

Kai Ryssdal 

All right, we’ll do some news, some smiles. And what do you you’re talking farm bill, what are we doing on the farm bill?

Kimberly Adams 

Nothing, which is exactly the issue.

Kai Ryssdal 

That is a straight line.

Kimberly Adams 

So nothing is not technically accurate. But the farm bill is one of the many things that is expiring as Congress is the cluster that it is, and or the house, I should say specifically the House Republicans is as we we point out, but there is business of government that needs to be done. The farm bill is a massive piece of legislation up for renewal every five years, it’s about to expire. This controls things like SNAP benefits, and crop insurance and food lunch programs. And many things related to climate change. Things that like, you know, are the bread and butter, literally, of how we get food in this country that matter a lot for our economy, as well as for our stomachs, so and health and poverty and a great number of things. So anyway, Politico has an Ag newsletter that had a scoop last week. And like for the special people who pay a lot of money, they got the scoop on Friday, but the rest of us got it this week, about the Democrats on the Ag Committee in the House, basically freaking out, because they discovered that the Republicans on the Ag Committee, were working on pulling some of the money from the inflation Reduction Act that was supposed to be used for sort of conservation efforts related to agriculture, you know, and put it in other things and move it around. It’s super inside baseball, which actually will matter down the road. And I’m sure we’ll do some reporting on it as the legislation gets more beefed out. But the larger point is that there are still some people in the house. What is going on outside, it’s like dog fight out there. Anyway,

Kai Ryssdal 

Out by you, not by here, right? My dogs are inside.

Kimberly Adams 

No by me, I’m like hearing dogs outside, anyway. But this idea that they are negotiating mostly behind closed doors, the framework of this massive piece of legislation that is going to be overdue. And when it does come out, we’re probably going to get yet another massive piece of legislation that very few people have time to look at. But it can’t even really move because we’re also distracted by everything else happening in the House. And this is a huge deal. And this was actually flagged to me by the people over at the Environmental Working Group, which is a climate advocacy group. And one of the things that they also were pointing out is that one of the things under the farm bill that is being negotiated is crop insurance. And in 2022 crop insurance costs reached their highest ever I’m going to read this a couple points in this crop insurance, “indemnities paid out a record $19.1 billion to farmers in 2022. Payments were largely concentrated in just 10 states and covered mostly for commodity crops. And it, only the crop insurance program only protects around 20% of farms. And here’s the key here’s the killer. EWG also discovered that during the past 22 years, insurance indemnities or payouts to farmers for reductions in yield or revenue rose significantly from $2.96 billion in 2001, when current subsidy levels were set to a record $19.13 billion in 2022 to an increase of well over 500%.

Kai Ryssdal 

Do we know why crops and yields are down? It’s, I mean, climate change is the obvious answer, but.

Kimberly Adams 

Climate change. Yeah, climate change. And also, I mean, the folks at EWG believe that the current system incentivizes continuing to grow things that have a high risk of loss, maybe take a lot of water or a very sensitive in places where the climate is no longer allowing it because there’s no cap basically on the crop insurance program. And you’ll get your money back and a lot of this is concentrated with really big farm homeowners who own a lot of land and end up, you know, being made whole by US taxpayers. And, you know, we need farming in this country. And the reason the crop insurance program exists is because it’s really hard to be competitive in agriculture on the global market, you know, given the United States, and so like, this is a system that was designed for that, but it’s getting extraordinarily expensive, and not necessarily benefiting all farmers. And it’s just another example of work that Congress could be doing to fix what may be a fixable problem, you know, we may be reevaluating this program in light of climate change, but instead, but instead, you know, casting our lots to see which of the nine Republicans can curry favor of whoever today.

Kai Ryssdal 

Do you, and I asked this question, not to put you on the spot because I’m jealous, but because I’m genuinely, genuinely curious, and I haven’t really kept up with it. Have you seen any recent polling on public opinions of Congress in the last?

Kimberly Adams 

17% last I checked.

Kai Ryssdal 

And that was when?

Kimberly Adams 

Hold on, I looked this up.

Kai Ryssdal 

Was it pre Kevin McCarthy getting the boot or post? I mean, it’s gotta have gone down. Right?

Kimberly Adams 

Let me look, two days ago on FiveThirtyEight, it got “Do Americans approve or disapprove of Congress?” Disapprove 65.9%, approved 19.4%. So this was a Harvard University.

Kai Ryssdal

I’m surprised it’s that high.

Kimberly Adams

Yeah, Harvard University’s Center for American Political Studies has 30% approve, and 62% disapprove.

Kai Ryssdal

No way, no way.

Kimberly Adams

YouGov, The Economist, approved 16%, disapproved 67%. Yahoo News has an approv- that ran October 12 to the 16th. Approved 12% disapprove 65%. I mean, none of it’s good. I think the one I looked at that saw 17% was Gallup a little bit ago. But yeah, here we go. Here’s Gallup, when was the last time they looked at Congress in the public? Yeah, theirs is at 17% as of September, so the last time they ran their poll.

Kai Ryssdal 

Right, so pre-McCarthy, so I will bet you money they’ll be in the mid to high single digits. I mean, come on.

Kimberly Adams 

I mean, I imagine their October one’s gonna come out soon. They look at this every month. So we should have that answer relatively quickly.

Kai Ryssdal

Alright what’s your news?

Kimberly Adams

All right, what’s your news?

Kai Ryssdal 

So here’s mine, also climate change based and a little bit more discouraging than crop yields due to climate change. We’re all going to be underwater due to climate change. There’s a report out today in Nature Climate Change, providing a revised estimate of what the coming decades hold in terms of climate change, and more importantly, melting of the Antarctic ice sheet. And here’s what it says even if we cut our emissions as we’re supposed to do, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is going to start melting even faster, it “could lead to the most significant sea level rise over the course of, course of centuries.” Rather, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which is the ice sheet in question holds 767,000 cubic miles of ice online. So a cubic mile is of course, a mile by a mile high by a mile deep. And it is melting, even even if we do everything we’re supposed to do. And I just that one got me today. And it just added to the general miasma of just horrible, terrible news that there has been lately. I just yeesh anyway, so you know, that’s it. I just want to throw that out there is in Bloomberg, if you want to read we’ll have it on the show page, of course. But, you know, it’s one of those stories you would have missed because of all the other news, which is happening yeah. Which is a lot.

Kimberly Adams 

A helpful start to our week.

Kai Ryssdal 

Sorry about that. Juan Carlos hit it.

Kimberly Adams

Hey, it’s real life. It’s real life.

Kai Ryssdal

It totally is and look we make no bones about it on this podcast, right? I mean, we tell you what the news is and what we think about it, because it’s real life and while you could take a break from it every now and then and I highly recommend it, and I did it last week and it was glorious to not be on the news all the time, this is life and you got to be up to speed anyway. Sorry. Go ahead. What do you got? Yeah, hold on. Hold on. I’m just reading the URL of this piece in the in the in the rundown and it says jump scare horror movies. And no, that’s all. That’s all just no.

Kimberly Adams 

I chose this story because you and I are of the same spirit on this of disliking horror movies and jump scares because why? Because why? There’s enough scary stuff in the actual world.

Kai Ryssdal

Cause they’re scary, cause they’re scary.

Kimberly Adams

Right? So this is actually from The Washington Post’s department of data, which I love, and it’s an analysis. The headline is actually “What’s killing the jump scare?” And since 2014, the number of jump scares cranked out by Hollywood has fallen precipitously. I’m reading here, according to Where’s The Jump, a remarkable catalogue of over 1,000 movies that documents the timestamps of slamming doors, sudden attacks and other startling moments that can make viewers jump. And so jump scares are in decline, which is good for the both of us. And there’s a lovely chart, documenting the decline of jump scares. Jump scares apparently had hit a peak in like 1981. But movies have had fewer jump scares since 2014. In 2003, Freddy vs. Jason captured 24 jump scares. But it’s been on the decline since. And they’re amazing charts and wonderful, wonderful things. This is, this made me happy. I don’t particularly love the imagery of some of it because they really lean into the Slasher. There’s a graph on here that’s clearly designed to look like slashes from like a knife. They had fun with this one, but more so I’m happy because there are fewer jump scares because I don’t need that kind of stress in my life.

Kai Ryssdal 

No, totally, totally, totally. Alright, so mine, on the face of it might not seem happy, but it really is. And now I’m just going to call you out here on the pod Bridget Bodnar. So she Slacked me before we turn the microphones on. And she said, so you’ve got melting ice sheets and dead dogs for today. Happy Monday to you too. So it’s not really about dead dogs. It’s about the oldest dog in the world. He was 31. He died at about 217 in dog years. But here’s the deal. This dog was around for 31 years. His his owner when he died. The owner was eight years old when this dog was born. I just think it’s a cool little story about dog love and pets and all this stuff. It’s a dog in Portugal. It’s a guard dog called Bobby. I don’t know how much guarding he was doing in his later years. But it was a, hang on a minute.

Kimberly Adams 

The most, he was doing the most. He was a great guard dog. He was doing a great job.

Kai Ryssdal 

Exactly. That’s exactly right. He was a rough Rafeiro do Alnetejo, a breed of Portuguese dog that has an average life expectancy of some 10 to 14 years. And this guy doubled it and then some. And I just think it’s great because dogs come on. I’ve got a 13-year-old dog now who I mean she’s going well, but at some point, it’s going to be very sad. And I just wanted you know, a little dog love. That’s all. That’s all.

Kimberly Adams 

That’s sweet. That’s sweet. Look, I got Jasper when he was 10. And he’s 14 now and I did quite a bit of research on the, you know, average lifespan of Savannas and, you know, supposedly I can get a good you know, six, seven years out of him still.

Kai Ryssdal

Excellent, there you go.

Kimberly Adams

You know if I keep his asthma in check. Yeah, gotta love our animals.

Kai Ryssdal

There. Yeah.

Kimberly Adams

All right. All right. That is it for us today. Tomorrow. Instead of our usual deep dive we’re gonna bring you a special episode of Marketplace’s Morning Report with our wonderful friend David Brancaccio and the Morning Report crew and it’s about the video game industry and what that industry can teach us about the economy. So look out for that in your feeds. It’s super interesting.

Kai Ryssdal 

We will be back on Wednesday until then keep the questions and comments coming we are as you know, at makemesmart@marketplace.org. 508-U-B-SMART is how you can get us on the phone. Actually, I think is probably just an answering machine, I don’t think it’s an actual human being. Unless Bridget answers.

Kimberly Adams

I mean with AI are we gonna be able to tell?

Kai Ryssdal

That’s all I’m saying. Make Me Smart is produced by, today is clearly Kai pounds on Bridget all day because she said a mean thing to him. Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Today’s program was engineered by Juan Carlos Torrado. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Our intern is Niloufar Shahbandi.

Kimberly Adams

Marissa Cabrera is our senior producer. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts and a very nice person. And Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital.

Kai Ryssdal

We love Bridget.

Kimberly Adams

We love Bridget. Just give her a hard time every so often. Daily.

Kai Ryssdal 

That’s right. She’s probably not even listening anymore.

Bridget Bodnar

Oh, I’m on, I’m on the Zoom.

Kai Ryssdal

Oh my god, we gotta figure out a way to get that sound in there.