Inflation Surges to 40-Year High

Sarah, David, and Jonah reflect on the problem of inflation, which surged to 9.1 percent ...

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Sarah, David, and Jonah reflect on the problem of inflation, which surged to 9.1 percent this week and look ahead to the presidential race in 2024. Will there be a showdown between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump to win the Republican nomination? Our hosts wrap up with a discussion of shifting coalitions within the political parties.

Show Notes:

–TMD: June’s Very Bad, No Good Inflation Report

–New York Times: Most Democrats Don’t Want Biden in 2024, New Poll Shows

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Left wing meat = Beyond Meat, Impossible Meat, etc.

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  2. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Jonah says the Dems act like everything is messaging problem: I’m reading Yuval’s book right now, and it definitely speaks to that issue. When everything is about coms staff and a platform to perform on, every problem is a narrative/messaging problem. (When you’re a hammer…)

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    JimC

    When Jonah talked about the Webb telescope images, I was sure he or David would mention the Total Perspective Vortex from Douglas Adam's Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy:

    “The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses. To explain — since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation — every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.

    The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.
    Trin Tragula — for that was his name — was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot. And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake.

    “Have some sense of proportion!” she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day.

    And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex — just to show her.

    And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.

    To Trin Tragula’s horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.”

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  4. Avatar photo
    Matt Y.

    The heavens declare the glory of God;
    the sky displays his handiwork.

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    Emily Spenla

    I just wanted to note that most Hispanic immigrants are Roman Catholic, not Evangelical as mentioned on the pod. I’ve noticed that ya’ll tend to lump conservative Catholics in with Evangelicals and rarely, if ever, mention them as their own distinct group.

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  6. Randolph Mitchell

    ‘Why, then, should one worry particularly to call [the cosmos] large? There is nothing to compare it with. It would be just as sensible to call it small. A man may say, "I like this vast cosmos, with its throng of stars and its crowd of varied creatures." But if it comes to that why should not a man say, "I like this cosy little cosmos, with its decent number of stars and as neat a provision of live stock as I wish to see"?’ G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy.

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  7. Avatar photo
    Jack

    I may be a weird guy, but when I first saw the JWST pictures, I thought, “This is AWESOME!”
    And then, “WE did this. Heck yeah!”
    There’s a great game with a sci-fi theme called “Stellaris.” Although there are some terrifying scenarios in the game, I really appreciate a line from one of the trailers.
    “The galaxy is bright and full of wonders.”

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  8. Randolph Mitchell

    Enjoyed the podcast! One nit: unless I misheard, Sarah said that the JWST is the largest telescope. It is not. 6.5 meters is pretty big, but there are other ground-based telescopes that are bigger.

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    BWG

    What's with the statistic about the ratio of women to men in college enrollment being 6 to 4? Should that not be 3 to 2? That makes it more clear that 50% more women than men are enrolling in college. And isn't it basic grade school arithmetic that fractions (or ratios) should be expressed as irreducible fractions/ratios? Or was the point to express it as 6/10 vs 4/10? (A couple more reducible fractions.) Not a major gripe but it just kinda bounced off my ear like a nerf bullet while I was listening.

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    1. Ben P

      I've heard that stat reported as "60/40", which is the percentage version. My guess is they took that and knocked off the zeroes.

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  10. Vitaly

    Great podcast, but I disagree with Sarah about Joe Biden running in 2024. The majority of the party doesn't want him - why should the party commit political suicide and run him regardless? Because it will be awkward if he doesn't endorse Kamala Harris? There is precedent for something like this - Obama did not endorse Hillary until June 9th 2016 (when she clinched the nomination), and he only endorsed Biden in April 2020. I don't think we appreciate how transactional Democrats are going to get once they grasp the disaster they are facing. Gavin Newsom, Jared Polis, Gretchen Whitmer, Roy Cooper - any of them will do better in 2024 than Biden or Harris. Plus, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker from the Senate. Even if not all of them will run, you could get a very competitive primary.

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