2020 was so wild that it was easy to overlook the news that the US military is taking the possibility of our being visited by advanced extraterrestrials very seriously.  Simultaneously, a prominent Harvard astrophysicist has released a new book arguing that an advanced alien object carried by a solar sail was observed passing through our solar system. This is a good time then to take stock of what the social science literature on interstellar civilizations tells us, and we are joined by the wonderfully creative Robin Hanson, professor of economics at George Mason University.  Profess ..read more

Lunchtime Social Science hosts preview the podcast ..read more

It is August 2020 and time to send children back to school. Or is it? The hosts, each with school age children, discuss their respective thinking processes and considerations as to whether to return their kids to school.  ..read more

The hosts discuss whether scholars should pursue activism. Is it good for their work? Is it good for the public's trust?  ..read more

The hosts talk with David Skarbek, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brown University, about his new book The Puzzle of Prison Order: Why Life Behind Bars Varies Around the World.  Skarbek investigates life in a wide array of prisons—in Brazil, Bolivia, Norway, a prisoner of war camp, England and Wales, women’s prisons in California, and a gay and transgender housing unit in the Los Angeles County Jail—to understand the hierarchy of life on the inside. Drawing on economics and a vast empirical literature on legal systems, Skarbek offers a framework to understand why life on the ..read more

In public policy, scholars like to measure “welfare losses” and that is what we teach to students. Welfare losses are deeply rooted in trying to measure ways in which events or policies distort peoples preferences. But what if people's behaviors eventually change forever, is it still appropriate to call that a cost? The hosts discuss 1) the history of thought in how we came to measure policy effects this way and its connection to the enlightenment; 2) the ways in which people are inconsistent in what they want studied in behavioral economics; 3) what philosophy has to to say about aspiration a ..read more

In this episode the hosts discuss personal strategies for enjoying, or at least finding less painful, the 2020 election.  ..read more

The hosts meet with Distinguished Professor George Krause to better understand exactly what "The Deep State" is that has animated so much political attention and what scholars know about it. Resources David E. Lewis's SPSA Presidential Address "Deconstructing the Administrative State." "Experiential Learning and Management of the U.S. Federal Bureaucracy" by George Krause and Anne Joseph O'Connell (2016) "Human Resources and Public Administration" by J. Edward Kellough (2020). Marc Eisner's Antitrust and the Triumph of Economics. "Acting" by Anne Joseph O'Connell (2020 ..read more

The pandemic seems to have brought forth an array of conspiracy theories. Jennifer Silva, author of We're Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America, join the hosts to discuss how the different social sciences have investigated conspiracy theories. Some of the literature suggests that they are the result of being marginalized or socially disconnected, yet they seem to be consistently widespread in that at majority of Americans believe in at least one. Why is there a "Flat Earth Society"? Do conspiracy theories actually affect policy preferences, or are people just using them to rati ..read more

Now that vaccinations are on the way, what is the best way to distribute them ..read more