Frames of Space

Jack Whitcomb on the Truth About America's Minimum Wage

The US's federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Is that actually enough for someone to afford basic necessities like food and shelter? Or is it a wage that'd lead to starvation, and would be practically impossible for someone to live off of?
Jack Whitcomb is the writer behind the Substack "Jackonomics," which covers economic subjects such as the cost of living, welfare reform, and monetary policy. He's recently become invested in the discussion about whether or not the US's federal minimum wage is indeed a starvation wage, or if someone could actually live off of it.
In this episode, I got a chance to speak with him about the experiment he conducted to figure this out, and why so many people resonate with the idea that the federal minimum wage is a starvation wage.
Show Notes
"The Federal Minimum Wage Is (Technically) a Living Wage" by Jack Whitcomb, Jackonomics
"Populism fast and slow" by Joseph Heath, In Due Course

Anne-Laure Le Cunff on Why You Need to Experiment

Anne-Laure Le Cunff is a neuroscientist at King's College London and the founder of Ness Labs, a learning community designed to help people experiment and harness their curiosity more productively. She is the author of the recent book Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World.
In this episode, I got a chance to speak with her about why working at Google was stressful enough to land her in the hospital, the cognitive scripts that we subconsciously adhere to in our lives, and the real problem behind New Year's Resolutions.
Show Notes
Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World by Anne-Laure Le Cunff

Darby Saxbe on the Evolution of Fatherhood

Darby Saxbe is a clinical psychologist and psychology professor at the University of Southern California. She writes the Substack "Natal Gazing," a blog devoted to pronatalism, gender roles, and the biological effects that parenting has on adults.
In this episode, I got a chance to speak with her about her new book Dad Brain, which explores the complex biological and societal changes that men undergo as a result of becoming parents. We discussed many of the topics in her new book: the benefits of paid paternity leave, the rise of overly intensive parenting, and many of the discussions surrounding allocation of household labor between couples.
Show Notes
Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men's Lives by Darby Saxbe
"You're not the captain of the parenting police" by Darby Saxbe, The Argument
"Let's be honest about the second shift" by Regan, All Cats Are Female
Fair Play by Eve Rodsky
"Unfair Play" by Lyman Stone

Bret Devereaux on How to Restrain Government Power

Bret Devereaux is a military historian and a Teaching Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University. He writes the blog "A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry," which covers US foreign policy, the nature of military tactics in war, and the best sci-fi/fantasy stories.
In this episode, I got a chance to speak with him about what Star Wars teaches us about modern insurgencies, why non-violent protest often works as a potent strategy, and the best-case scenario for the future of American democracy.
Show Notes
"Collections: Against the State – A Primer on Terrorism, Insurgency and Protest" by Bret Devereaux, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
Letter from Birmingham Jail
The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama

Matthew Yglesias on the Path Forward for Democrats

Matthew Yglesias is the head of the Substack "Slow Boring" and co-host of the podcasts The Argument and Politix. He's been writing about politics for far longer than many people have been politically aware: he's written for Bloomberg, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and more. He even helped co-found the website Vox back in 2014.
Nowadays, his thesis is that Democrats need to moderate on many contentious issues: crime, non-renewable energy, transgender participation in sports, and so on. It's this thesis of his that I find incredibly fascinating, and that's part of the reason I enjoyed the opportunity to speak with him here.
In this episode, I got the chance to speak with him about the concept of the median voter, Matt's dynamic with his friend Ezra Klein, and which priorities Democrats ought to focus on to gain popularity.
Show Notes
"In defense of being wildly out of touch" by Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring
"Should race matter in college admissions?" from The Argument Podcast
"Shmoderation is the future" by Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring

Abi Olvera on the Case for AI Optimism

A few weeks ago, the AI company Anthropic announced something genuinely strange. They had built a new model, codenamed Mythos, that was so capable at cybersecurity tasks they decided not to release it to the public. Instead, they're using it, quietly, with a small group of partners, to patch vulnerabilities in the world's most important software before anyone else gets a model this talented.
Abi Olvera is the Research Director at the Golden Gate Institute and the writer behind the Substack "Positive Sum." She specializes in understanding the constraints and abilities of emerging technology, particularly AI. As a result, she has a unique amount of insight on AI's capabilities, and knows what Mythos actually suggests about the pace of AI progress and innovation.
In this episode, I got a chance to speak with her about how her working-class background has affected her views on AI, whether AI is currently growing at an exponential rate, and the positive effects that AI might have on the next generation.
Show Notes
Assessing Claude Mythos Preview’s cybersecurity capabilities
"The optimism gap that's shaping AI policy" by Abi Olvera, Existential Hope
"Kelsey Piper on Whether AI Will Kill Us All" from Frames of Space
"To Forecast AI's Impact on Biosecurity, We Asked: Why are Attacks So Rare?" by Abi Olvera, Second Thoughts
"The Most Powerful and Dangerous AI Model Yet" from Plain English with Derek Thompson
"Could Artificial Intelligence undermine constructive disagreement?" by David Rozado, Free the Inquiry

Jordan Schneider on Podcasting and Political Corruption

Jordan Schneider is the host of ChinaTalk, a podcast and newsletter covering China, US foreign policy, and the technology shaping both. He's been podcasting since 2017, and has learned a thing or two about how to shape conversations with guests to make them as interesting as possible.
In this episode, I got a chance to speak with him about the nature of podcasting as a forcing function for learning, whether a more powerful UN is preferable or feasible, and what the Roger Bannister effect has to do with the extent of Trump's corruption.
Show Notes
"Ezra, Derek, and Dan Wang" from ChinaTalk
"Does America’s “China Consensus” Make Sense? A Debate" from Robert Wright's Nonzero
Why Congress by Philip Wallach
My first attempt at an AI-generated song

Kelsey Piper on Whether AI Will Kill Us All

Kelsey Piper is a staff writer at The Argument, a publication dedicated to having productive arguments among people who disagree about important political topics. I tried my best to carry the spirit of The Argument with me when speaking with Kelsey in this episode, and I had a blast the entire time.
In this episode, I got a chance to speak with her about her take on the AI extinction debate, the risk that AI will make it easier to build destructive bioweapons, and how her views on effective altruism have shaped her understanding of artificial intelligence.
Show Notes
“To Forecast AI’s Impact on Biosecurity, We Asked: Why are Attacks So Rare?” by Abi Olvera, Second Thoughts
"Forecasting Existential Risks: Evidence from a Long-Run Forecasting Tournament" (See Pg. 63 for bioweapon risk, and Pg. 270 for AI extinction risk)
Kelsey Piper's note on AI progress vs. diffusion
"How the U.S. Public and AI Experts View Artificial Intelligence" from The Pew Research Center
Séb Krier's tweet on AGI development

Sam Kahn on Substack and the Nature of Writing

Sam Kahn is a senior editor at Persuasion and the writer behind the Substack "Castalia."
In this episode, I got a chance to speak with him about how Substack changed his life, his current approach to politics, and the tension between the writing he enjoys and the writing that gets the most clicks.
Show Notes
"The Things Not Named — With Sam Kahn" from The Things Not Named

Tibor Rutar on Capitalism, Inequality, and Exploitation

To what extent has income inequality worsened over the past few years and decades? Have the rich been getting richer and the poor poorer? Has capitalism led to a rise in worker exploitation? Is neoliberalism responsible for the rise in democratic backsliding throughout the world?
Tibor Rutar is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Maribor and the writer behind the Substack "Political Economy, Stats, and Society." And his biography makes this conversation immediately more interesting: he used to be a serious Marxist. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, the appeal of big structural explanations gave him the sense that Marxism could diagnose what was wrong with capitalism and propose something better.
And then, over time, he started changing his mind.
In this episode, I got a chance to speak with him about why he shifted away from Marxism, the difference between neoliberal capitalism and social democratic capitalism, and the effect that globalism has had on working-class Americans.
Show Notes
"The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States" from the American Economic Review
"27. Tibor Rutar - Capitalism for Realists" from Ideas Having Sex
"The quiet vindication of Fukuyama" by Tibor Rutar, Political Economy, Stats, and Society