Podcasts about American Dialect Society

The Father of Reaganomics, David Stockman, joins us to explore the complex world of international trade and its impact on investors.  Key insights include: Challenging conventional wisdom about trade policies Understanding economic forces that drive investment opportunities Gaining expert perspective on global economic trends Stockman provides a candid analysis of current trade strategies, revealing: The true drivers of economic competitiveness Potential pitfalls of protectionist approaches Critical insights for strategic investors The episode cuts through political noise to offer clear, actionable economic intelligence for informed decision-making. Smart investors look beyond headlines to understand the deeper economic forces shaping their financial future. Resources: Check out David Stockman's Contra Corner Newsletter Show Notes: GetRichEducation.com/553 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE' to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript:   Automatically Transcribed With Otter.ai    Keith Weinhold  0:01   Welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, I sit down with a long time White House occupant who was the official economic advisor to an ex president. We get the real deal on tariffs and what they mean to you. Trump gets called out and the ominous sign about what's coming six months from now, today on, Get Rich Education.   Since 2014 the powerful get rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate investing in the best markets without losing your time being the flipper or landlord. Show Host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad advisors and delivers a new show every week since 2014 there's been millions of listener downloads of 188 world nations. He has a list show guests include top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki. Get rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener phone apps build wealth on the go with the get rich education podcast. Sign up now for the get rich education podcast, or visit get rich education.com   Corey Coates  1:14   You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.   Keith Weinhold  1:30   Welcome to GRE from Brookline, Massachusetts to Brooklyn, New York and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you are listening to get rich education, just another shaved mammal behind this microphone here. I recently spent some time with the father of Reaganomics, David Stockman, in New York City, and sometimes an issue so critical surfaces that real estate investors need to step back and understand a broader force in the economy. Three weeks ago, here, I told you how the second and third way, real estate pays you. Cash flow and ROA are sourced by your tenants employment and the future of your tenants employment is influenced by tariffs and other policies of this presidential administration. This is going to affect rates of inflation and a whole lot of things. Now, an organization called the American Dialect Society, they actually name their word of the year, and this year, it is shaping up to be that word, tariff. In fact, Trump has described that word as the most beautiful word in the dictionary. And I think we all know by now that a tariff is an import tax that gets passed along to consumers when it comes to materials used in real estate construction that's going to affect future real estate prices. Well, several key ones so far were exempted from recent reciprocal tariffs, including steel, aluminum, lumber and copper exempted. Not everything was exempted, but those items and some others were but who knows if even they are going to stay that way. And now, when it comes to this topic. I think a lot of people want to make immediate overreactions in even posture like they're an expert in become an armchair economist, and I guess we all do a little of that, me included. But rather than being first on this and overreacting, let's let the policy which Trump called Liberation Day last month when he announced all these new tariffs. Let's let policy simmer a little and then bring in an expert that really knows what this means to the economy and real estate. So that's why I wanted to set up this discussion for your benefit with the father of Reaganomics and I today. In fact, what did Reagan himself say about tarrifs back in 1987 this is part of a clip that's gained new life this year. It's about a minute and a half.    Speaker 1  4:13   Throughout the world, there's a growing realization that the way to prosperity for all nations is rejecting protectionist legislation and promoting fair and free competition. Now there are sound historical reasons for this. For those of us who lived through the Great Depression, the memory of the suffering it caused is deep and searing, and today, many economic analysts and historians argue that high tariff legislation passed back in that period called the Smoot Hawley tariff greatly deepened the depression and prevented economic recovery. You see at first when someone says, Let's impose tariffs on foreign imports, it looks like they're doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs, and sometimes for a short while at work. Price, but only for a short time. What eventually occurs is first, home grown industries start relying on government protection in the form of high tariffs. They stop competing and stop making the innovative management and technological changes they need to succeed in world markets. And then, while all this is going on, something even worse occurs. High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars. The result is more and more tariffs, higher and higher trade barriers, and less and less competition, so soon, because of the prices made artificially high by tariffs that subsidize inefficiency and poor management, people stop buying. Then the worst happens, markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industry shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs.    Keith Weinhold  5:50   Now, from what I can tell you as a listener in the GRE audience, maybe you're split on what you think about tariffs. In fact, we ran an Instagram poll. It asks, generally speaking, tariffs are good or bad? Simply that 40% of you said good, 60% bad. Over on LinkedIn, it was different. 52% said they're good, 48% bad. So it's nearly half and half. And rather than me taking a side here, I like to bring up points that support both sides, and then let our distinguished guests talk, since he's the expert. For example, if a foreign nation wants to access the world's largest economy, the United States, does it make sense for them to pay a fee? I mean, it works that way in a lot of places, when you want to list a product on eBay or Amazon, you pay them a fee. You pay a percentage of the list price in order to get access to a ready marketplace of qualified buyers. All right. Well, that's one side, but then the other side is, come on, let's look at history. Where have tariffs ever worked like Where have they ever been a resounding, long term success? Do they have any history of a sustained, good track record? I generally like free trade. Then let's understand there's something even worse than a steep tariff. There are quotas which are imposed, import limits, trade limits, and then there are even all out import bans. What do terrorists mean to the economy that you are going to live in and that your tenants live in? It's the father of Reaganomics, and I on that straight ahead on Get Rich Education. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold.   you know what's crazy? Your bank is getting rich off of you. The average savings account pays less than 1% it's like laughable. Meanwhile, if your money isn't making at least 4% you're losing to inflation. That's why I started putting my own money into the FFI liquidity fund. It's super simple. Your cash can pull in up to 8% returns, and it compounds. It's not some high risk gamble like digital or AI stock trading. It's pretty low risk because they've got a 10 plus year track record of paying investors on time in full every time. I mean, I wouldn't be talking about it if I wasn't invested myself. You can invest as little as 25k and you keep earning until you decide you want your money back, no weird lock ups or anything like that. So if you're like me and tired of your liquid funds just sitting there doing nothing, check it out. Text, family to 66866, to learn about freedom, family investments, liquidity fund, again. Text family to 6686   Hey, you can get your mortgage loans at the same place where I get mine, at Ridge lending group and MLS, 42056, they provided our listeners with more loans than any provider in the entire nation because they specialize in income properties. They help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. You can start your pre qualification and chat with President Caeli Ridge personally. Start Now while it's on your mind at Ridge lendinggroup.com, that's ridgelendinggroup.com.    Hey   Robert Helms  9:28   Hey everybody. It's Robert Helms of the real estate guys radio program. So glad you found Keith Weinhold in get rich education. Don't quit your Daydream.   Keith Weinhold  9:48   when it comes to White House economic policy like tariffs, taxes and inflation, don't you wish you could talk to someone that's often been inside the White House. Today, we are even better. He was the official advisor to an ex president on economic affairs, a Wall Street and Washington insider and Harvard grad. Today's guest is also a former two time congressman from Michigan. He's a prolific author, and he is none other than the man known as the father of Reaganomics. He was indeed President Ronald Reagan's budget advisor. He was first with us last year, but so much has happened since. So welcome back to the show. David Stockman,    David Stockman  10:26   very good to be with you, and you're certainly right about that. I think we're really in uncharted waters. Who could have predicted where we are today, and therefore it's very hard to know where we're heading, but you have to try to peer through the fog and all the uncertainty and the noise and the, you know, day to day ups and downs that's coming from this White House in a way that we've never seen before. And I started on Capitol Hill in 1970 so I've been watching this, you know, for more than a half century, actually, quite a while. And man, it's important to go through all this, but it's sort of uncharted waters.    Keith Weinhold  11:04   Sure, it's sort of like you wake up every day and all you do know is that you don't know. And David, when it comes to tariffs, I want to give you my idea, and then I want to ask you about what the tariff objective even is. Now, to be sure, no one is asking me how to advise the President. I'm an international real estate investor, but I do most of my business in the US, and I sure don't have international trade policy experience. It seems better to me, David, that rather than shocking the world with new tariffs that kick in right away, it would have been better to announce that tariffs begin in, say, 90 days, and then give nations space to negotiate before they kick in. That's my prevailing idea. My question to you is, what's the real objective here? What are terrorists proposed to do? Raise revenue, onshore companies merely a negotiation tactic? Is the objective? Something else?    David Stockman  12:00   Well, it might be all of the above, but I think it's important to start with a predicate, and that is that the problem is not high tariffs abroad or cheating by foreign competitors or exporters. There is a huge problem of a chronic trade deficit that is not benign, that does reflect a tremendous offshoring of our industrial economy, the loss of good, high paying industrial and manufacturing jobs. So the issue is an important one to address, but I have to say, very clearly, Trump is 100% wrong when he attempts to address it with tariffs, because foreign tariffs aren't the problem. Let me just give a couple of pieces of data on this, and I've been doing a lot of research on this. If you take the top 51 exporters to the United States, our top 51 trade partners, and this is Mexico and Canada and the entire EU and it's all the big far eastern China, Japan, South Korea, India, you know, all the rest of them. If you look at the and that's 90% of our trade, we have 2.9 trillion of imports coming in from all of those countries, and the tariff that we Levy, this is the United States, on those imports, is not high. It's higher than it was in the past, mainly because of what Trump did in the first term, but it's 3.9% now compared to bad times historically, decades and decades ago. That's relatively low. But here's the key point, if we look at the same 51 trading partners in terms of the tariffs they levy on our exports to China and to the EU and to Canada and Mexico and South Korea and all the rest of them. The tariff average, weighted average that they levy is 2.1% so let me restate that the average US tariff is about twice as high 4% around things as what our partners imposed 2% now the larger point is whether it's 4% or 2% doesn't make a better difference. That's not a problem when it comes to 33 trillion of world trade of which we are, you know, the United States engages in about five and a half trillion of that on a two way basis, import, export, in the nexus of a massive global trading system. So he's off base. He's wrong. The target is not high tariffs or unfair foreign trade. Now there are some people who say, Well, you're looking at monetary tariffs. So in other words, the import duty they levy on, you know, exports to South Korea or India or someplace like that, right? And that, the real issue, supposedly, is non tariff barriers. For instance, you know, some governments require you that all procurement by government agencies has to be sourced from a domestic supplier, which automatically shuts out us suppliers who might want that business. Well, the problem is we're the biggest violator of the non tariff barrier in that area. In other words, we have something like $900 billion worth of state, federal and local procurement that's under Buy America policies, which means EU, Mexico, Canada, China, none of them can compete. Now I mention that only as one example, because it's the kind of classic non tariff barrier, as opposed to import duty that some people point to, or they point to the fact that while foreign countries allegedly manipulate their currency, but you know the answer to that is that number one, overwhelming, no doubt about it, largest currency manipulator in the world, is the Federal Reserve. Okay, so it's kind of hard to say that there's a unfair trade problem in the world because of currency manipulation. And then there is, you know, an argument. Well, foreign governments subsidize their exporters. They subsidize their industrial companies, and therefore they can sell things cheaper. And therefore that's another example of unfair trade, but the biggest subsidizer of tech industry, and of a lot of other basic industry in the United States is is the Defense Department. You know, we have a trillion dollar defense budget, and we put massive amounts of dollars in, not only to buying, you know, hardware and weapons and so forth, but huge amounts of R and D that go into developing cutting edge technologies that have a lot of civilian applications that, in fact, we see all over the world. That's why we're doing this broadcast right now. The point is that problem is not high tariffs because they're only low tariffs. The problem is not unfair trade, because there's all kinds of minor little interferences with pure free markets, but both, everybody violates those one way or another due to domestic politics. But it's not a big deal. It doesn't make that big a difference. So therefore, why do we have a trillion dollar trade deficit in the most recent year, and a trade deficit of that magnitude that's been pretty continuous since the 1970s the answer is three or four blocks from the White House, not 10,000 miles away in Beijing or Tokyo. The answer is the Federal Reserve has in the ELLs building there in DC, not far from the White House. Yes, yes, right there, okay, the Eccles building the Fed has a huge, persistent pro inflation bias, sure. And as a result of that, it is pushed the wage levels and the price levels and the cost levels of the US economy steadily higher, and therefore we've become less and less competitive with practically everybody, but certainly a lower wage countries nearby, like Mexico or China, far away. And you know, there's, it's not that simple of just labor costs and wages, because, after all, if you source from China, you've got to ship things 10,000 miles. You've got supply chain management issues, you've got quality control issues, you've got timeliness issues. You have inventory carry costs, because there's a huge pipeline, and of course, you have the actual freight cost of bringing all those containers over. But nevertheless, when you factor all that in, our trade problem is our costs are too high, and that is a function of the pro inflation policies of the Fed. Give one example. Go back just to the period when the economy was beginning to recover, right after the great recession. And you know the crisis of 208209 and I started 210 unit labor costs in manufacturing in the United States. Just from 210 that's only 15 years, are up 55% that's unit labor costs. In other words, if you take wage costs and you subtract productivity growth in that 15 year period, the net wage costs less productivity growth, which is what economists call unit labor costs, are up 53% and as a result of that, we started, you know, maybe with a $15 wage difference between the United States and.China back in the late 1990s that wage gap today is $30 in other words, the fully loaded way at cost of average wages in the United States. And I'm talking about not just the pay envelope, but also the payroll taxes, the you know, charge for pension expense, health care and so forth. The whole fully loaded cost to an employer is about $40 an hour, and it's about $10 in the United States and it's about $10 an hour in China. Now that's the reason why we have a huge trade deficit with China, because of the massive cost difference, and it's not because anybody's cheating. Is because the Fed, in its wisdom, decided, well, you know, everybody will be okay. We're going to inflate the economy at 2% a year. That's their target. It's not like, well, we're trying to get low inflation or zero inflation, but we're not quite making it. No, they're proactive. Answer is, we've got to have 2% or the economy is not going to work. Well, well, 2% sounds well, that's a trivial little number. However, when you do it year after year, decade after decade, for a long period of time, and the other side is not inflating at the same rate, then in dollar terms, you have a problem, and that's where we are today. So this is important to understand, because it means the heart of the whole Trump economic policy, which is trying to bring manufacturing home, trying to bring industry back to the United States, a laudable objective is based on a false diagnosis of why this happened, and it is unleashed ball in the china shop, disruption of global economic flows in relationships that are going to cause unmitigated problems, even disaster in the US economy. Because it's too subtle, when you think about it, the world trade system just goods. Now, we've not even talking about services yet, or capital flows or financing on a short term basis. The World Trade in goods, merchandise, goods only is now 33 trillion. That is a hell of a lot of activity of parts and pieces and raw materials and finished products flowing in. You know, impossible to imagine directions back and forth between dozens and dozens of major economies and hundreds overall. And when you start, you step into that, not with a tiny little increase in the tariff. To give somebody a message. You know, if our tariffs are averaging 4% that's what I gave you a little while ago. And you raise tariffs to 20% maybe that's a message. But Trump didn't do that. He raised the tariff on China to 145% in other words, let's just take one example of a practical product, almost all the small appliances that you can find in Target or even a higher end retail stores United States or on Amazon are sourced in China because of this cost differential. I've been talking about this huge wage differential. So over the last 20, 25, years, little it went there now 80% of all small appliances are now sourced in China, and one, you know, good example would be a microwave oven, and a standard one with not a lot of fancy bells and whistles, is $100 now, when you put 145% tariff on the $100 landed microwave oven is now $245 someone's going to say, Gee, are we going to be able to sell microwaves at $245 they're not certain. I'm talking about a US importer. I'm talking about someone who sells microwaves on Amazon, for instance, or the buyers at Walmart or Target, or the rest of them, they're going to say, wait a minute, maybe we ought to hold off our orders until we see how this is going to shake out. And Trump says he's going to be negotiating, which is another whole issue that we'll get into. It's a lot of baloney. He has no idea what he's doing. Let's just face the facts about this. So if orders are suddenly cut back, and the flow that goes on day in and day out across the Pacific into the big ports in Long Beach in Los Angeles is suddenly disrupted, not in a small way, but in a big way, by 20, 30, 40, 50% six or seven months down the road, we're going to have empty shelves. We're going to have empty warehouses. We're going to have sellers who suddenly realize there's such a scarcity of products that have been hit by this blunderbuss of tariffs that we can double our price and get away with it.   Keith Weinhold  25:00   Okay, sure. I mean, ports are designed. Ports are set up for stadium flows, not for surges, and then walls and activity. That just really doesn't work.   David Stockman  25:08   And let me just get in that, because you're on a good point. In other words, there is a complicated supply line, supply chain, where, you know, stuff is handed off, one hand to another, ports in China, shipping companies, ports here, rail distribution systems, regional warehouses of you know, people like Walmart and so forth, that whole supply chain is going to be hit with a shock. Everything is going to be uncertain in terms of the formulas that everybody uses right now, you know that you sell 100 units a week, so you got to replace them at the sales rate, and you put your orders in, and know that it takes six weeks to get here, and all this other stuff, all of the common knowledge that's in the supply chain that makes it work, and the handoffs smooth and efficient From one player in the supply chain to the next, it's all going to be disrupted. But the one thing we're going to have is we're going to have shortages, we're going to have empty shelves, and we're going to have price which I'm sure that Trump is not going to start saying price gouging of a you know, right? But that's not price gouging. If you have a you know, go to Florida. We have a hurricane. Where we live in Florida and New York, we have a hurricane. All of a sudden the shelves are empty and there's no goods around, because everybody's been stocking up getting ready for the storm. And then all of a sudden, the politicians are yelling that somebody's price gouging, because they raised their prices in a market that was in disequilibrium. Well, that's not price gouging. That's supply and demand trying to find a new balance basic economics. You know, when the demand is 100 and the supply is 35 okay, but I'm kind of getting ahead here, but I think there's very good likelihood that there's going to be a human cry right before, you know, maybe in the fall or right before Christmas, about price gouging and Trump then saying, Well, I was elected to bring prices down and bring inflation under control. It's out of control because all of these foreigners raised their prices. And no, they did, and it was the tariff that did it, and all the people in the supply chain are trying to take advantage of the temporary disruptions. So I think people have to understand, and I can't say this, and I don't like to say it, because I certainly didn't think the other candidate in the last election had anything to offer in terms of dealing with our serious economic problems in this country. I'm talking about Harris. But the fact is, Donald Trump has had a wrong idea for the last 40 to 50 years of his adult life. In that core idea is that trade deficits are a sign of the other side cheating. They're a sign that you're being exploited or taken advantage of or ripped off, or it's not at all okay. Trade deficits are a consequence of cost differences between different jurisdictions, and to the extent that we've artificially, unnecessarily inflated our costs. We need to fix the problem at the source. He ought to clean house at the Federal Reserve. But the problem is, Trump wants lower interest rates when, in fact, the low interest rates created all the inflation that led to our loss of competitiveness and the huge trade deficits we have today. So to summarize, it is important to understand, do not have faith in Trump's promise that we're going to have a golden age of economic prosperity. We are going to have a economic disaster, and it's a unforced error. It's self inflicted, and it's the result of the wrong fundamental idea of one guy who's in the oval office right now throwing his considerable weight around and pushing the economy into upheaval that really is totally unnecessary. He should have done what he was elected to do, and Matt's work on getting production up and costs down, that's not going to be solved with tariffs. David, I have another important point to bring up. But before we do just quickly, are those two to 4% tariffs you mentioned earlier. Those are the tariff levels pre Trump second term correct.    We could clarify that those are for the year 2023 that was the latest full year data that we have with great deal of granularity.    Keith Weinhold  29:56   The point I want to bring up is there any history? That tariffs actually work. Some people cite the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act from the 1930s and that it drove us deeper into the Great Depression. And David, on the one hand, when we think about, do tariffs actually work? If Indonesia can make shoes for us for $11 why would we want to onshore an activity like that? That is a good deal for us. And then, on the other hand, you have someone like Nvidia, the world's leading semiconductor company, they announced plans to produce some of their AI supercomputers entirely on American soil for the first time recently. And you have some other companies that have made similar announcements. So that's a small shred of evidence that tariffs could work. But my question is, historically, do tariffs actually work?    David Stockman  30:44   That's a great question, and there's a huge history. And you can go back all the way the 19th century, where Donald Trump seems to be preoccupied, but what he fails to recognize is that they worked in the 19th century because they were revenue tariffs. It wasn't an effort to, like, bring jobs back to America. We were booming at the time. Jobs were coming to America, not leaving, and it was the federal government's main source of revenue. Because, as you know, prior to 1913 there was no income tax, right? So that was one thing. Okay, then when we got into the 20th century and host World War Two, it became obvious to people that the whole idea of comparative advantage, going all the way back to Adam Smith, and that enhanced a global trade where people could specialize in whatever their more competitive advantage is, was a Good thing. And so we had round after round of negotiations after World War Two that reduced tariff levels steadily, year by year, decade by decade. So by the time we got to the 1990s when China, then, you know, arose from the disaster of Mao and Mr. Dang took over and created all the export factories and said, It's glorious to be rich and all these things is we got red capitalism. But if we start in the 1990s the average tariff worldwide, now this is weighted average on all goods that are bought and sold or imported and exported, was about 9% and there were have been various free trade deals done since then. For instance, we had NAFTA, and the tariffs on Mexico and Canada and the United States went to zero. We had a free trade deal in 212 with South Korea. This never comes up, but the tariff on South Korean goods coming the US is zero. The tariff on us, exports going to South Korea is zero because we have a free trade agreement, and it's worked out pretty well with South Korea. Now we're not the only ones doing this. Countries all over the world. The EU is a total free trade zone in economy almost as big as the United States that used to have tariff levels between countries. Now it's one big free trade zone. So if you take the entire world economy, that 9% weighted average tariff of the early 90s, which was down from maybe 2025, 30, pre World War Two in this Smoot Hawley era, was down to 2.25% by the time that Donald Trump took office, the first time around in 2017 now 2.25% is really a rounding error. It's hardly when you have $33 trillion worth of goods moving around, you know, container ships and bulk carriers and so forth all around the world, and air freight and the rest of it, rail. 2% tariff is not any kind of big deal, as I say in some of the things I write, it's not a hill of beans. So somehow, though 45 years ago, Trump got the idea that tariffs were causing a problem and that we had trade deficits, not because our costs were going up owing to bad monetary policy, but because the other guy was cheating. Remember, this is Trump's whole view of the world. It's a zero sum game. I win, you lose, and if I'm not winning, is because you're cheating. Okay? In other words, I'm inherently going to win. America's inherently going to win unless the other guy is cheating. Now, Trump sees the world the same way that I think he looked at electrical and plumbing contractors in the Bronx, you know, in the 1980s and 1990s when he was developing his various Real Estate projects. These are pretty rough and tumble guys. It's a wild, easy way to make a living. So there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of pretty rough baseball that's played that mentality that the other guy is always trying to screw me, the other guy's always cheating, the other guy's preventing me from winning, is, is his basic mentality. And it's not Applicable. It's not useful at all to try to understand the global economy. Try to understand why America's $29 trillion economy is not chugging along as strongly and as productively as it should be, why real wages are not making the gains that workers should be experiencing and so forth. So he ought to get out of this whole trade, tariff trade war thing, which he started, I don't know how he does, it's a little late, and focus on the problems on the home front. In other words, our trade problem has been caused by too much spending, too much borrowing, too much money printing on the banks of the Potomac. It's not basically caused in Beijing or Tokyo or Seoul or even Brussels, the European Union. And we need to get back to the basic and the real culprit, which is the Federal Reserve and its current chairman, Paul, if he wants to attack somebody, go after the Fed. Go after Paul. But ought to give them a mandate to bring inflation to zero and to stop fooling around with everything else and to stop monetizing the public debt that is buying government debt, take care of your own backyard first before you start taking, yeah, sure, yeah, exactly. You know, I've been in this for a long time. I start, as I said, I started on Capitol Hill. There have been a lot of protectionist politicians, but they always argued free trade is good, but it has to be fair trade. And you know, we have this example in our steel industry, for instance, where we producers abroad are competing unfairly for one reason or another. But the point I'm getting to is they always said this is an exceptional case. Normally we would go for free trade, but we got to have protection here. We got to have a temporary quota. Even when I was in the Reagan administration, we had a big argument about voluntary quotas on Japanese car exports, and I was totally against it. I thought the US industry needed to get its act together, get its costs down. Needed to get the UAW under control, because it had pushed wages, you know, way, way, way too high terms of total cost. But they argued, yeah, well, you're right, but we have to have 10 years in order to allow things to be improved and adjusted and catch up. So this is only temporary. This is just this. Yes, this is protectionism, but it's temporary. It's expedient that we can avoid and so therefore we'll make an exception. But there is no one, and most of these people were, you know, in the payroll of the unions, or they were congressmen from south to South Carolina going to bad for the textile industry, or congressman from Ohio going to bat for the steel industry, whatever, but there was no one who ever came along and said tariffs are big, beautiful things, and we need to have permanent high tariffs, because that's the way we're going to get prosperity back in United States. It's a dumb idea. It's wrong. It's disproven by history and people. Even though Trump has done a lot of things that I like you know, he's got rid of dei he's got rid of all of this green energy, climate crisis nonsense, all of that that he's done is to the good when you come to this basic question, how do we get prosperity in America? The answer is, through free market capitalism, by getting the government out of the way, by balancing the budget and by telling the Fed not to, you know, inflate the economy to the disadvantage that it has today. That's how you get there. And Trump is not a real Republican. Trump is basically what I call a status. He's for big government, right wing status. Okay, there's left wing, Marxist status, then there's right wing status. But you know, all of this tariff business is going to create so much corruption that it's almost impossible to imagine, because every day there's someone down there, right now, I can guarantee it at the, you know, treasury department or at Commerce department saying, but we got special circumstances here in terms of the parts that we're making for aircraft that get assembled in South Korea or something, and we need special relief. Yes, every industry you're doing is putting in for everybody's going to be there the lobby. This is the greatest dream that the Washington lobbyist community ever had. Trump is literally saying he put this reciprocal tariff. You saw the whole schedule. That he had on that easel in the White House on April 2, immigration day. It was called Liberation Day. I called it Demolition Derby Day. There was a reciprocal tariff for every single country in the world based on a phony formula that said, if we have $100 million deficit with somebody, half of that was caused by cheating. So we're going to put a tariff in place closes half of the difference. I mean, just nonsense, Schoolboy idiocy. Now it is. I mean, I know everybody said, Oh, isn't it great? We've finally got rid of the bad guys, Biden, he's terrible, and the Democrats, I agree with all that, but we replaced one set of numb skulls with another set. Unfortunately, Republicans know better, but they're so intimidated, apparently buffaloed by Trump at the moment, that they're going along with this. But they know you don't put 145%tariff on anything. I mean, it's just nuts. David, I feel like you're telling us what you really think and absolutely love that.    Keith Weinhold  41:04   Interestingly, there is a Ronald Reagan clip about tariffs out there in a speech that he gave from Camp David, and it's something that's really had new life lately. In fact, we played the audio of that clip before you came onto the show today, Reagan said that he didn't like tariffs and that they hurt every American worker and consumer as Reagan's economic advisor in the White House. Did you advise him on that?    David Stockman  41:27   Yes, I did. And also I can give you a little anecdote that I think people will find interesting. Yeah, the one time that he deviated in a big way from his free trade commitments was when he put the voluntary export quota on the Japanese auto industry. That was big. I don't remember the exact number, but I think it said they couldn't export more than 1.2 million cars a year, or something like that the United States. And the number was supposed to adjust over time, but we had huge debates in the Cabinet Room about those things, and at the end of the day, here's what he said. He said, You know, I've always been for open trade, free trade. I've always felt it has to be fair trade. But, you know, in this case, the Japanese industry came to us and asked for voluntary quotas, so I didn't put up a trade barrier. I'm only accommodating their request. Well, the Japanese did come to him and ask. They did, but only when they were put up to it by the protectionists in the Reagan administration who, on this took them on the side, you know, their negotiators and maybe their foreign minister. I can't remember exactly who commerce secretary and said, If you don't ask for voluntary quotas, we're going to unleash Capitol Hill and you're going to get a real nasty wall put up against your car. So what will it be? Do you want to front for voluntary quotas? Are we going to unleash Congress? So they came to Reagan and said they were the Japanese industry said they're recommending that he impose voluntary restraints on auto exports. That was just a ruse. He wasn't naive, but he believed what you told him. He believed that everybody was honest like he was, and so he didn't understand that the Japanese industry that was brought to meet with him in the Oval Office had been put up to, it been threatened with, you know, something far worse, mandatory quote is imposed by Congress. But anyway, it's a little anecdote. What happened? On the other hand, he continued to articulate the case for small government sound money. We had deficit problems, but he always wanted a balanced budget. It was just hard to get there politically. And he believed that capitalism produces prosperity if you let capitalism work and keep the government out of the marketplace. And there is no bigger form of intervention and meddling and disruption in the capitalist system, in the free market, in the marketplace, than quotas on every product in every country at different levels. They're going to have 150 different countries negotiating bilaterally deals with the United States. That's the first thing that's ridiculous. They can't happen. The second thing is they're going to come up with deals that don't amount to a hill of beans, but they'll say, we have a deal. The White House will claim victory. Let me just give one example. As we know, one of the big things that Trump did in the first administration was he renegotiated NAFTA. And NAFTA was the free trade agreement between Mexico, Canada, United States. Before he started in 2017 the trade deficit of the US with Mexico and Canada combined with 65 billion. And he said, That's too big, and we got to fix NAFTA. We have got to rebalance the provisions so that the US comes out, not on the short end of the stick 65 billion. So they negotiated for about a year and a half, they announced a new deal, which he then renamed the United States, Mexico, Canada agreement, usmca, and, you know, made a big noise about it, but it was the same deal with the new name. They didn't change more than 2% of the underlying machinery and structure, semantics. Well now, so now we fast forward to 2024 so the usmca Trump's pride and joy, his the kind of deal that he says he's going to seek with every country in the world is now four years into effect. And what is the trade deficit with Canada and Mexico today, it's 230 5 billion okay? It's four times higher now than it was then when he put it in place. Why? Because we have a huge trade deficit with Mexico. Why because, you know, average wages there are less than $10 an hour, and they're $40 an hour here. That's why it has nothing to do with a bad trade deal. It has to do with cost differences.    Keith Weinhold  46:27   David, this has been great, and as we're winding down here, we have a lot of real estate investor listeners tell us what this administration's overall policies, not just tariffs, but overall policies, mean for future employment, and then tell us about your highly regarded contra corner newsletter.    David Stockman  46:45   Well, those are that's a big question. I think it doesn't mean good, because if they were really trying to get America back on track our economy, they would be fighting inflation tooth and nail to get it down to zero. They would be working day and night to implement what Musk came up with in the doge that is big spending cuts and balancing the budget. They're not doing that. They're letting all these announcements being made, but they're not actually cutting any spending. They would not be attempting to impose this huge apparatus of tariffs on the US economy, but they're not doing that. So I'm not confident we were going in the wrong direction under Biden, for sure, and we're going in an even worse direction right now under Trump. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, I put out a daily newsletter called David stockman's Country corner. You can yes signers on the internet, but this is what we write about every day, and I say A plague on both their houses, the Democrats, the Republicans. They're all, in many ways, just trying to justify government meddling, government spending, government borrowing, government money printing, when we would do a lot better if we went in the opposite direction, sound money, balanced budgets, free markets and so forth, so. And in the process, I'm not partisan. You know, I was a Republican congressman. I was a budget director of the Reagan administration. I have been more on the Republican side, obviously, over my career than the Democrats, but now I realize that both parties are part of the problem, and I call it the uni party when push comes to shove, the uni party has basically been for a lot of wars abroad and a lot of debt at home, and a lot of meddling in the economy That was unnecessary. So if you look at what I write every day, it tries to help people see through the pretenses and the errors of the unit party, Democrats and Republicans. And in the present time, I have to focus on Trump, because Trump is making all the noise.    Keith Weinhold  48:59   100% Yes, it sure has kept life and the news cycle exciting, whether someone likes that news or not. Well, David, this has been great. In fact, it sounds a lot like what Reagan might have told me, perhaps because you were a chief economic informant for him, smaller government, letting the free trade flow and lower inflation. Be sure to check out David stockman's contra corner newsletter if you like what we've been talking about today, just like it was last year, David, it's been a real pleasure having you on GRE today.    David Stockman  49:30   Well, thank you very much. And these are important issues, and we've got to stay on top of them.   Keith Weinhold  49:41   Oh, yeah. Well, David Stockman truly no mincing words. He doesn't like tariffs. In summary, telling GRE listeners that the problem with trade imbalances is inflation attack that instead quell inflation, don't impose tariffs. A lot of developing nations and China have distinct advantages over manufacturing in the United States, besides having the trained labor and all the factories and systems in place, think about how many of these nations have built in lower costs they don't have to deal with these regulatory agencies, no EPA, no OSHA, and not even a minimum wage law to have to comply with. And here in the US get this, 80% of American workers agree that the US would benefit from more manufacturing jobs, but almost 75% disagree that they would personally be better off working in a factory themselves. That's according to a joint Cato Institute in YouGov survey. It's sort of like how last century, Americans lamented the demise of the family farm, yeah, but yet, they sure didn't want to work on a farm themselves. Now there are some types of manufacturing, like perhaps pharmaceuticals or computer chips that could likely be onshore, because those items are high value items. Their value can exceed the cost of being produced in the USA, but a lot of these factory goods, not again. If these topics interest you do a search for David stockman's contra corner, or you can directly visit David stockman's contra corner.com. Big thanks to the father of Reaganomics, David Stockman on the show this week. As for next week, we're back more toward the center of real estate investing. Until then, I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, don't quit your Daydream. Y   Unknown Speaker  51:42   nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC   Keith Weinhold  52:02   You know, whenever you want the best written real estate and finance info, oh, geez, today's experience limits your free articles access and it's got paywalls and pop ups and push notifications and cookies disclaimers, it's not so great. So then it's vital to place nice, clean, free content into your hands that adds no hype value to your life. That's why this is the golden age of quality newsletters. And I write every word of ours myself. It's got a dash of humor, and it's to the point because even the word abbreviation is too long. My letter usually takes less than three minutes to read, and when you start the letter, you also get my one hour fast real estate video. Course, it's all completely free. It's called The Don't quit your Daydream. Letter, it wires your mind for wealth, and it couldn't be easier for you to get it right now. Just text GRE to 66866, while it's on your mind, take a moment to do it right now. Text GRE to 66866   The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth, building, getricheducation.com.  

Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay are joined by ICYMI producer (and resident linguist) Alexandra Botti, who shares her experience attending the American Dialect Society's words-of-the-year vote. Then, Candice and Kate break down 2024's winners (the WOTYs), and predict what internet words we'll be seeing in 2025. This podcast is produced by Alexandra Botti, Daisy Rosario, Candice Lim, and Kate Lindsay.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay are joined by ICYMI producer (and resident linguist) Alexandra Botti, who shares her experience attending the American Dialect Society's words-of-the-year vote. Then, Candice and Kate break down 2024's winners (the WOTYs), and predict what internet words we'll be seeing in 2025. This podcast is produced by Alexandra Botti, Daisy Rosario, Candice Lim, and Kate Lindsay.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay are joined by ICYMI producer (and resident linguist) Alexandra Botti, who shares her experience attending the American Dialect Society's words-of-the-year vote. Then, Candice and Kate break down 2024's winners (the WOTYs), and predict what internet words we'll be seeing in 2025. This podcast is produced by Alexandra Botti, Daisy Rosario, Candice Lim, and Kate Lindsay.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay are joined by ICYMI producer (and resident linguist) Alexandra Botti, who shares her experience attending the American Dialect Society's words-of-the-year vote. Then, Candice and Kate break down 2024's winners (the WOTYs), and predict what internet words we'll be seeing in 2025. This podcast is produced by Alexandra Botti, Daisy Rosario, Candice Lim, and Kate Lindsay.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's that time again. With 2024 behind us, we can vote on the word of the year.

La histórica sociedad norteamericana American Dialect Society eligió enshittification como palabra del año 2023. Es un neologismo tecnológico que deriva de la malsonante palabra shit (mierda en inglés) y habla de lo mal que está internet para hacer búsquedas. Y es que, en la última década, la red pasó de ser un espacio donde las plataformas priorizaban los mejores resultados a absolutamente todo lo contrario. Nos lo cuentan los periodistas de Tecnología, Javier Salas y Karelia Vázquez. Créditos:  Realizado por Elsa Cabria Dirige y presenta: Silvia Cruz Lapeña   Edición: Ana Ribera       Diseño de sonido: Nacho Taboada Sintonía: Jorge Magaz Para leer más: Y en una década Internet se llenó de basura: https://elpais.com/ideas/2024-06-09/y-en-una-decada-internet-se-lleno-de-basura.html  

The American Dialect Society's 2023 word of the year? Enshittification. And our guest on this edition of Chicago Public Square Podcasts, Cory Doctorow, is the guy who coined it.Hear him define it—and his harrowing explanation of how he, one of the world's most tech-savvy authors and journalists, got scammed out of $8,000 before he could figure out what was going on. Also: The one “ironclad” rule you should follow to avoid a similar fate.And then, in this—our first conversation since this podcast from 2019—you'll learn, among many other things, why he thinks Amazon embodies enshittification and why so many major publishers refused to consider one of his books.Listen here, or on Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, Amazon's Alexa-powered speakers or Apple Podcasts. Or if you prefer to read your podcasts, check out the transcript below.And if you're a completist, here's the original, mostly unedited, behind-the-scenes raw audio and video from the recording of this podcast via Zoom on YouTube.■ Enjoying these podcasts? Help keep them coming by joining The Legion of Chicago Public Squarians.■ And consider subscribing—free—to the daily Chicago Public Square email newsletter.Now, here's a roughly edited transcript of the interview, recorded March 7, 2024:[00:00:00] Charlie Meyerson: The American Dialect Society's 2023 Word of the Year? Enshittification. And our guest is the guy who coined it:[00:00:10] Cory Doctorow: What I think is going on is that this bad idea, right?—“Let's make things worse for our customers and our suppliers and better for ourselves”—is omnipresent in every firm.[00:00:21] CM: Cory Doctorow's a science fiction author, activist, and oh, I'd say a very active journalist with an email newsletter he publishes daily. His new book is The Bezzle, a high-tech thriller whose protagonist is … an accountant. More on that to come. I'm Charlie Meyerson with ChicagoPublicSquare.com, which, yes, is also an email newsletter. And this is a Chicago Public Square Podcast. Cory, it's great to see you again. What's new since the last time you and I recorded a podcast—almost exactly five years ago this month, back in 2019?[00:00:55] CD: Well, there was a pandemic, and you know, lucky for me the way that I cope with anxiety and stress is by writing. And so I wrote nine books, which are all coming out in a string, which has left me pretty busy—but in a good way. My friend Joey Dilla says, when life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla. So that's definitely where I'm at now.[00:01:18] CM: You have a daily email newsletter, you have a podcast, and you're on this nationwide book tour now, although you're home now in California. When do you rest, huh?[00:01:27] CD: Well, when I rest, I think about how terrible everything is, and so I try to do as little of that as possible. I mean, my family and I go off and do things from time to time. But, yeah, I have always written as a way of processing the world, and the world needs a lot of processing, so I'm doing a lot of writing.[00:01:48] CM: Did your, uh, restlessness contribute to an unfortunate happening that I think shocked a lot of readers on February 5, 2024, when it was the most-tapped item in Chicago Public Square? And I'm gonna quote you here, “I was robbed $8,000-plus worth of fraud before I figured out what happened, and then he tried to do it again a week later.” What happened?[00:02:11] CD: Yeah, that was while I was taking a rest as it happened. So for Christmas break, my wife and I, and then my daughter and my parents joined us, went to one of my favorite places in the world, New Orleans. So, we landed and needed cash. So I went to an ATM in the French Quarter, was like a, a chase ATM, and the whole transaction ran and then it threw an error and said, we can't give you your money. I was like, Ugh, what a pain. And later on, we were walking through town and we passed a credit union's ATM branch.I bank with a one-branch credit union. And most credit unions don't charge fees to each other. So I was like, oh, we'll just use this one. So I got some money up. A couple of days go by, it's time to leave, my folks have already gone, my wife and daughter are at the hotel, and I've gone out to get my very favorite sandwich just before we go. And my phone rings and it's the caller ID for my bank.And they say, “Mr. Doctorow, this is your bank calling. Uh, did you just try and spend a thousand dollars, uh, at an Apple store in New York?” And I was like, Ugh. One of those ATMs turned out to be dodgy. Either was the one that threw that error. And the reason was that it had, like, a skimmer mounted on it and they captured my card number.Or maybe it was that cheap Chinese ATM that the one-branch credit union I went to was using one or the other. I was definitely skimmed. So, you know, I make my peace with it and I start talking with this guy and you know, when you bank with a little one-branch credit union, they don't have their own after-hours fraud unit. They just contract out. And so these guys, you know, they're a little clumsy. They're a little amateurish. They ask you a bunch of questions your bank should know the answer to because they're not really your bank, they're their fraud center partner.I'm just going through this whole thing and it's going on and on, and I can see the store that sells my sandwich, and I can see the time ticking down.And finally, I said like, “Look, fella, you've already frozen the card, you've gotten most of the recent transaction data. I'm gonna go. When I get to the airport after I clear security, I'll call the bank's after-hours number,” and he got really surety and I was like, you're just gonna have to suck it up.This is how it goes. You know, whatever losses you're experiencing have nothing compared to the losses of me missing my flight with my wife and daughter. So go back and go to the, go to the airport and on the way I look at my phone and I find out that DC-737 Max Boeing Aircraft has just lost its door plug and all the 737 Maxes in the U.S., they've just been grounded. And we get to the airport and it's a zoo. Everyone's trying to rebook. By the time we get to the gate, we've got five minutes. 'Cause there's just the lines, you know. Massive.So I call the bank's after-hours number and they say, “Sorry, sir, you pressed the wrong button. This is lost cards. Fraud's a different number, but it sounds like you told the guy to freeze your cards. So it should be fine. Just come in on Monday and get your new card.”So, uh, Monday morning I print out the list of all the fraudulent transactions, about $8,000 worth, and I go into the bank. And the cool thing about the one-branch credit union is that the person who helped me out was a vice president there and she was pissed about this $8,000 fraud. 'Cause if Visa wouldn't cover it, then we'd have to eat it. You know—not me, but the credit union and, and so she's pissed. I'm pissed. And I say, “Look, you know, some of this has to do with that crummy after-hours fraud center you guys use. 'Cause I told them to freeze my card on Saturday and all this fraud took place on Sunday.”And she said, “Ugh, that's no good. I'm gonna call them up now and find out what's going on.” She comes back five minutes later and says, “They never called you on Saturday. That was the fraudster.”My card hadn't been skimmed at all. So it turns out that guy—I'm like thinking about all the information I gave him: “Well, I gave him my name, but that's in my Wikipedia entry. Gave him my date of birth; that's in my Wikipedia entry. I gave him where I live; that's in my Wikipedia entry. I gave him the last four digits of my credit card, and that's not an—and then I was like, “Wait a second. He didn't ask for the last four digits. He asked for the last seven digits”And I said to the vice president of the bank, “You guys only have a single VISA prefix, right? The first nine digits are the same for every card you issue?”She's like, yep.And I'm like, “OK. So I gave him the last seven digits and that was enough. Then he had the whole card number. And that's how they robbed me.”And he did it again the following Friday just before MLK weekend. And he called at 5:30 just before the bank's closed for a three-day weekend or just after the bank's closed for a three-day weekend, which is like the fraud golden hour.And, you know, I recognized who it was and, and he said, “You know, your car's been compromised. It's so and so.” And I'm like, “No, it hasn't. Card's still in my wallet. Hasn't left my wallet since I picked it up on Monday. Why don't you tell me what the after-hours number on my card is? 'Cause I'm looking at it now. You tell me what number I call back to speak to you.” And he is like, “Mr. Doctorow, this is not a game. I have told you that there is active fraud on your card. If you don't complete the anti-fraud protocol with me right now, then any losses will be yours to bear. The bank will not identify you.”I'm like, “That's adorable.” So I hang up on him and he calls me back and I'm like, oh, this guy is like definitely a fraud, right? Any doubt I had is immediately dispelled. So I just hung up with him and blocked his number. And then I called the risk management person at the bank when they reopened on Tuesday—'cause again, small bank, you get to talk to the person, and it turns out that there's some a leak somewhere in America's credit union supply chain. And somehow fraudsters are calling people knowing what bank they bank at, and knowing their phone number, neither of which is a matter of public record for me.And that was the convincer for me. So even though I go to Defcon, the big hacker conference every year, and I go to those social engineering competitions where people get in a little soundproof booth in front of an audience and try to trick store clerks into giving them sensitive information, usually the store management has given them permission to try this out.And I'm an expert on this stuff and I've written multiple novels about it. I got fooled. I got fooled using Swiss cheese security, which is where you have all these different layers of security. They've all got their little holes in them, like slices of Swiss cheese. Most of the time the holes don't overlap and there's no way to go all the way through the defenses.But I was on vacation on the day the DC-737 Max, you know, had its door plug fall outta the sky. An hour before I was leaving, right after I used not one but two dodgy ATMs in one of the property crime centers of the world. You know, as all of these things all lined up, all the holes of the Swiss cheese lined up, I got fooled.You know, there are lots of lessons here, but one of them is if you think you can't get fooled, that's the guarantee that someday you're gonna get fooled.[00:08:35] CM: Well, you're certainly one of the most tech-savvy humans I'm aware of in this world. Is there any lesson that you gather from this? For the rest of us?[00:08:43] CD: So the ironclad rule should be, and the rule that I normally follow is when your bank calls you, you say “Thank you very much. Do you have an operator number or anything so I can speak to you? 'Cause I'm gonna call back the number on my card.” That is complete proof against the fraud.Now, the banks could do something about this 'cause the reason that I didn't do it that day is 'cause I wanted to get that goddamn sandwich and calling and speaking to someone like a rando in their voicemail tree and trying to tell them, you know, like, give them all my account information, a lot of which I didn't even have 'cause it's just, it's in my laptop back in the hotel—going through all of that with a stranger would've eaten up all the time I had. So I was like, “Oh, I'll just deal with this guy. He knows my number, he knows my name, and he knows where I bank. It's clearly from my bank.”But if they were to call you up and say, “Mr. Doctorow, this is your bank, this is my operator number, or a unique five-digit code, or whatever, write it down. Call the number on your card. And give that number to the interactive voice response system. The bank is gonna pay me to sit here idle for 15 minutes waiting for you so you can find a quiet place to sit down and call, and you will speak directly to me. We won't have to go through a long process where you have to get me up to speed on the thing I'm getting you up to speed on, and we'll just, we'll just make it work.”You know, we haven't found out yet whether or not Visa's gonna honor this claim. But if my bank loses $8,000 this year because of me—and it's a credit union, so I'm a member of it, right? I'm co-owner of this bank, as are all the other customers of it—that's all the money they're gonna make for me this year, including the interest on my mortgage, right?Like they've just zeroed out one of their most valuable customers. Paying the after-hours fraud center or an in-house fraud center to have a little bit more idle time at the margin so that you can have a higher fidelity of anti-fraud is something absolutely worth it. And you know, this is emblematic in some ways of what happens when you squeeze all the slack out of the system—is that you kind of groom people to cut corners because they know the process sucks.So I think that it could be improved, and you know, clearly a lot of the blame here is on me, but not all of it.[00:11:01] CM: You're generous to accept even some of the responsibility.[00:11:04] CD: Well, I should have known to call them back. But I didn't.You know, I spoke with that risk management officer, and I was like, “Let's go through the way your interactive voice response system characterizes each of the options when you call after hours,” because I had missed the anti-fraud. 'Cause it's not called “anti-fraud.” Like “If you suspect fraud on your card, press 2.” It was something else. Right? It was like, “If you have a problem with your account,” and I was like, “That's something else.” I didn't even press it.So we discussed new wording and they're gonna put new wording in. Also, I'm speaking at DEFCON this year again. This year's theme is “Enshittification,” and so they're giving me a keynote slot, and that always comes with a bunch of free speaker's badges. What I usually do when I speak there is I go to the people in line waiting to buy a badge and I just pick five people and give them badges. But I'm saving one for my bank's risk management officer, and she's gonna get in for free and she can go to those social engineering competitions.[00:12:00] CM: Well, I've fallen in love with this word that you coined, enshittification, and I need to note for our listeners that there are two T's in the middle of enshittification.CD: Mm-hmm.CM: How did you decide on two T's?[00:12:13] CD: You know, the first time I used it, I only put in one. CM: Did you? Okay. CD: Two T's is better. CM: You think so?CD: It makes shit an infix and it makes -tification the suffix instead of -ification.CM: OK. CD: So en is the prefix, shit is the infix, -tification is the suffix, and that second T is doing some work there. The American Dialect Society, when they gave the word the honor—and it's not just their word of the year, it's like their digital word of the year, and, I don't know, like their sweary word of the year; it, like, took top honors in a bunch of categories—they are actual cunning linguists, and they went ahead and dissected the word and figured out what all the things meant. I couldn't diagram a sentence if you paid me.[00:13:01] CM: I knew you'd have a reason for the double-T, and thank you for fulfilling my expectations. Yeah. But let's back up for people. I imagine there are a few who do not yet know about enshittification.CD: Sure.CM: What is it? [00:13:15] CD: It's a term I coined to describe a specific pathology of late-stage internet platforms. Platforms are the unlikely endemic form of the internet. You know, for a medium that was supposed to disintermediate everything, the fact that the biggest form of business on the internet is intermediaries is pretty wild. And—if you wanna think of it as, like, a pathology—it describes the natural history, like what happens when a platform unifies and it has a very specific kind of decaying model where first it allocates value to end-users; those end-users flock in and get locked in somehow, so that when the company then starts to take away some of that value to give it to business customers, the users don't leave, can't leave. Then those business customers come in because of the attractive proposition that's being made to them. And then they get locked in because they're there for the end users who are also locked in. And then once everyone's locked in, all the value is drawn out and given to the firm, the platform. And then the whole thing turns into a pile of shit, hence enshittification.Um, but it also describes like the underlying mechanism, like what's going on inside the firm? Why are digital firms so able to enshittify? And it's because digital is very flexible. I had someone email me this morning and say, well, Panera Bread is steaming towards, its IPO and there's this investigative report that says that they've cut back on their ingredients, their ingredients aren't very good anymore.That's enshittification too, and it's not quite. Because enshittification involves this process I call twiddling. It's when the platform can change the business rules from moment to moment. So a really good example is an Uber driver who's the business customer in that two-sided market riders and drivers.So Uber practices this thing called algorithmic wage discrimination, which is a violation of labor law that they say doesn't violate labor law. 'Cause they do it with an app. And what they do is if you are a driver who's selective about which rides you take, if you only take the highest dollar value rides, then each ride that's offered to you comes at a higher dollar value than it would if you were less selective.The less selective you become, the lower the return per mile and minute becomes in small increments that are very hard to notice, and if you become more selective, they toggle back up again. And so the rate is going up and down and up and down in response to your perceived selectivity in a fully automated way.And this is a kind of game of exhaustion because at a certain point, you take your eye off the ball and you start taking rides that are worse and then the rides get worse and worse and worse. Meanwhile, you're jettisoning those things that you used to do as side hustles that let you be more selective.That's what it means when you're taking worse rides as you're taking more rides. And at a certain point, you're just like fully locked in. You have a car lease to meet because you've bought a car just to drive for Uber. You've got some other overheads that you're trying to meet, and your wages sunk to the very bottom that algorithmic wage discrimination is a term vena dubo coined is a thing that Panera Bread would love to do.It's a thing that like. You know, the black-hearted coal bosses of Tennessee Ernie Ford songs would love to do. But you know, like doing that manually with an army of guys in green eyeshades is not practical. And digital firms can alter the business logic from second to second in ways that offline firms or firms that have some physical component struggle to do.And so that's the underlying mechanism. And then the next question is, why is it happening to everyone all at once? Why are all these platforms enshittifying now? That's kind of the epidemiological question, right? Where's the contagion coming from? Because when a lot of firms start doing something all at once.In the same way, it's unlikely to be related to something endogenous to the firm. It's not just that like a bunch of people had the same bad idea at the same time in all these companies, right? What I think is going on is that this bad idea, right? “Let's make things worse for our customers and our suppliers and better for ourselves” is omnipresent—in every firm, right? Every firm is trying to find the equilibrium between apportioning value to say employees or suppliers and to customers and to themselves. And there are some constraints, right? One is competition. If you know, if you offer a substandard product and there's somewhere else your customers can go, they'll go there.If you pay substandard wages and there's somewhere else your employees can go, they'll go there. You know, all of this stuff about “Nobody wants to work” is hilarious because I guarantee you they'll work if you offer double the wage, right? “Nobody wants to work at the wage you're offering” is like, “Nobody wants to sell me a plane ticket at what I think it's worth.”That sounds like a me problem, not like an American Airlines problem. Right. So, you know, the competition acts as this check on firms, but competition has been in free fall for 40 years. And I think that across the threshold, right? We allow companies to buy their major rivals. We allow them to engage in predatory pricing, to exclude new market entrants.We allow them to buy nascent competitors before they can grow to be threats and then extinguish them. We allow them to do all the above, right? You have Amazon, which tried to buy Diapers.com—Diapers.com, which, you know, as is implied by the name, was an e-commerce platform that sold diapers. They were doing a really good business and they didn't wanna sell to Amazon.So Amazon first tried to do an anti-competitive acquisition, right? To take a firm that was its rival in a certain vertical and, and buy it. So the firm wouldn't do that. So then they did predatory pricing. And buying the nascent rival and predatory pricing would've been illegal until the Carter administration. Carter removed some Jenga blocks from the antitrust tower. Reagan started pulling them out by the fistful, and every administration since has lowered the amount of antitrust enforcement we do—to the point where now companies can just get away with murder. And so Amazon said, all right, we're gonna start selling diapers below cost. They sold diapers below cost to the tune of a hundred million dollars in losses—which, put Diapers.com outta business. Right? So that's predatory pricing. Then they acquired Diapers.com at pennies in the dollar. So that's the anti-competitive acquisition, and then they shut them down. That's, a catch and kill, right? All of this was, is illegal under the black letter of competition law.None of it was enforced against. Amazon also derived a secondary benefit from this. And that secondary benefit was informing every other source of capital that if you invest in a company that competes with Amazon, the best you can hope for is an acquisition. But what's probably gonna happen is you're just gonna get driven outta business.It's what venture capitalists called the kill Zone, and it's why people don't compete with Amazon. And so we lost the constraint of competition and we lost the constraint of regulation. Because when a sector dwindles to a handful of firms, they find it very easy to agree on a single lobbying position, and they can make their will felt in Congress, in the expert agencies and in court, and they can get away with whatever they want.[00:20:25] CM: What is your cure for enshittification?[00:20:27] CD: So if you take each of these constraints, right—the first one being competition—restoring that constraint will reduce the power of firms to enshittify, right? If they have to worry about you quitting or leaving as a customer, then they have to treat you better. And if they don't get the message, then you can go somewhere that treats you better.So we are in a historic moment for antitrust enforcement. As we record this today, the European Union has just started enforcing the Digital Markets Act. Here in the United States, we have generationally significant leaders at the Department of Justice Antitrust Division—with Jonathan Kanter at the Federal Trade Commission with Chair Lina Khan, and at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau with Rohit Chopra.No coincidence that there is a bipartisan effort to slash all of their budgets working their way through the mini budget right now. Right? But reinvigorating antitrust is a way to restore the disciplinary power of competition. It also restores the power of regulators because it's not just antitrust that regulators do—it's everything.And if you want a company not to rip you off, say the way Amazon does. So if you go to Amazon, you click the first link on an Amazon search, on average, you pay a 29% premium relative to the best item. 'Cause Amazon makes $38 billion a year selling payola the right to make the top search result.If you walked into a Corner store or Target and said, “Sell me your cheapest batteries,” and they sold you batteries that were 30% more expensive than their cheapest batteries, That would be fraud. Amazon's regulatory capture allows it to say, “It's not fraud when we do it with an app,” just like Uber says, “It's not a labor violation when we do it with an app” or Google says “It's not a privacy violation when we do it with an app.” Make those companies more fragmented and you starve them of the capital they need to suborn their regulators, and you also introduce a collective action problem where they just become too many companies to agree on what it is they're gonna tell their regulators.CM: Are you available for federal office?CD: Uh, no. I wrote nine books during lockdown and I just agreed to write a 10th one about unification. I'm busy till 2027.[00:22:35] CM: Cory and I have something else in common—decades apart from one another. We've both been contributors to the Venerable Journal of Science Fiction Locusts, although my main contribution consisted of a series of cartoons I drew as a teenager. What do you make of the state of science fiction these days? Text, TV, motion pictures.[00:22:53] CD: Well, it's certainly at an interesting moment. I mean, there's one way in which the most salient fact is that it's dominated by five companies—five major publishers that sell to one national brick-and-mortar chain owned by a private equity fund, Barnes and Noble; and one rapacious monopolist e-commerce platform, Amazon.Ninety percent of the audiobooks are controlled by Amazon subsidiary Audible. There's a single national distributor, which is Ingram. All the other distributors are owned by the Big Five publishers. So I published a book in 2020 with my colleague Rebecca Giblin about how monopolists rip off creative workers.None of the Big Five publishers wanted to publish it 'cause it was really critical of them. So we published with a wonderful independent press called Beacon that's 150 years old, owned by the Unitarian Universalists. Albert Einstein once very famously said, “If there is hope in this world, it the Unitarian-Universalists and Beacon Press” (Editor's note: Not quite, but not far off in spirit.) Beacon is distributed by Penguin Random House, the largest publisher in the world who got a dollar every time we sold a book explaining why they were an evil monopolist.Right? So. That's one way in which science fiction is just on the ropes, right? You have four major studios, thankfully, uh, thanks to our friends in the federal government, Paramount did not just sell to Disney, but they're looking for another suitor. And so, you know, in every way we are struggling.You have HBO Warner, which is cutting shows they have—and not because no one wants to see them, but because David Zaslav—the villain from central casting who runs that business—has figured out that he can get more in a tax credit for writing off a show than he can for releasing it—taking stuff that people, like, miss their parents' funeral to work on and just flushing it down the toilet. So in those ways it's very bad. In terms of the work being produced, it's never been better. I mean, we're in an amazing moment for the field. People are writing incredible things—notwithstanding the massive scandal at the Hugo Awards last year, which is a whole different story about the difficulties of hosting the Hugos in China and the mistakes that the non-Chinese Hugo administrators made.[00:25:07] CM: I missed that. Give us the short version of that.[00:25:09] CD: Oh my gosh. So after the Hugo Awards are awarded as you leave, they're handing out sheets of photocopied paper with all the vote tallies and nomination tallies—that didn't happen at the WorldCon China, which was the first ever held in China, which has more science fiction fans than all the rest of the world combined, and, you know, more than deserves a world con. Instead, the committee that oversaw the Hugos waited until the very last minute permitted by the bylaws to release the numbers, whereupon everyone realized that something was up. And it turns out that they had unilaterally disqualified innumerable works both Chinese and also a number of works by American and European Chinese writers of Chinese descent. And they had done this—it transpired after lots of memos leaked and so on 'cause they stonewalled when people asked about this—they'd done this not because anyone in China had asked them to, but because they thought that the Chinese government would get upset if they didn't.And they went so far as to assemble dossiers on people nominated for awards and disqualify them if they thought they had been to Tibet. It turns out the person that they disqualified for having traveled to Tibet, had traveled to Nepal, which is not Tibet …CM: Easy mistake to make.CD: These were Americans and Canadians, not Chinese fans. And they disgrace themselves. They disgrace the award. The people who won the award now have an asterisk next to their name. When they were fighting for their reputations and stonewalling, they were gratuitously insulting to these writers, most of them of Chinese descent. You know, Chinese Americans primarily when they question this and they are fans of very longstanding people who have volunteered to run this award for decades.And this is the way they're going to end their careers in fandom. It's quite sad.[00:27:05] CM: One of the things Cory told me, back when we talked in a previous podcast in 2019, was that one way to spot terrible technology in our future would be to take a look at what the powers that be are foisting on prisoners. And now five years later, his new book The Bezzle offers a look at just that. But why did you set it to open in 2006?[00:27:28] CD: Well, for that you need to understand these nine books I wrote during lockdown. So one of them was a book called Red Team Blues, and the conceit behind Red Team Blues is, it's like a detective thriller about a hard-charging, two-fisted but lovable forensic accountant—67 years old, spent 40 years in Silicon Valley undoing every bit of mischief that a tech bro ever thought to do, finding all the money that people use spreadsheets to hide. And the conceit was, it's like the last volume of a beloved detective series you have read for 25 years and grown up with.Except I'm not gonna bother writing the other books; it's just the last one. And it was pretty successful. I sent it to my editor who I love dearly. I met him on a bulletin board system when I was 17 years old. He's edited all my novels, and he will not think that I am being overly critical of him when I tell you that he's not the world's most reliable email correspondent.And so when I sent him the manuscript after finishing the first draft, I finished it in six weeks from the first word to the last. In that first draft, I sent it to him and I expected months to go by. And instead the next morning there was an email waiting for me that was just, that was a fucking ride.Whoa. And he bought three of them. And there's a problem because this is the last adventure of Martin Hench forensic accountant. There is some precedent for bringing a detective out of retirement. Very famously, Conan Doyle brings Sherlock Holmes back over Rickenbacker Falls because Queen Victoria offered him a knighthood.My editor is a very powerful man in New York publishing. He is a vice president in the McMillan company, but he cannot knight me, so I was not gonna bring poor old Marty out of retirement. And so I had to come up with something else. And it occurred to me that I could write these books out of order. I could write them in any sequence.He's like the Zelig of high-tech finance fraud. He's been at every place where someone ripped someone else off with a computer. If I wrote them out of order, I wouldn't have any continuity problems 'cause when the series goes backwards, you're not foreshadowing—you're backshadowing. And the more detail you throw in, the more of like a, you know, absolutely premeditated motherfucker you appear to be—even if you're just winging it.So this is the second book. The first one is set in the 2020s. It's a cryptocurrency heist novel. This one is about the era where Yahoo is buying and destroying every successful Web 2.0 company. It's a time I know very well. I was there. I founded a startup that, you know, Microsoft tried to buy—that our investors then stole from the founders and then the deal fell through and the chaos that ensued.And so I've lived through it. And so it was a moment I really wanted to write about in particular because. It's the moment that represents the time between the dot-com bubble bursting and the subprime bubble bursting, and it's this period that you can think of as the bezzle. The bezzle, B-E-Z-Z-L-E, not B-E-Z-E-L.Not the rectangle around your phone screen, but this term that was coined by John Kenneth Galbraith to describe what he calls the magic interval. After the con artist has your money, but before you know it's a con. And in that moment, Galbraith says everybody feels richer, everybody is happier. The national stock of happiness goes up for so long as the bezzle is going.The longer the bezzle goes, the more unhappiness debt you accumulate because the more money gets pumped into the fraud. Right? And so the irony of the bezzle is that the people who are in it don't want you to rupture it, even if that will save them from losing everything, because it's when the unhappiness starts. It's like continuing to drink so that you don't get hungover.The more you do that, the worse the hangover becomes, and that moment, those charmed and difficult years from 2002 to 2006, are really an ideal time to tell a story that I think of as Panama Papers fanfic.[00:31:49] CM: The Bezzle has a few Chicago connections. One is a name well known to people in Chicago: Wrigley. Give our listeners a taste of how that comes into play.[00:31:59] CD: Yeah, so that same editor of mine, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who I love dearly but is not the world's most reliable email correspondent—when he edited my first novel, now almost 25 years ago, he gave me this piece of advice with his editorial note that I've never forgotten: He said a science fiction novel has the world and the character, and they're like a big gear and a little gear. And the point is to turn the world all the way around so the reader can see what's going on in the world.And the way you do that is by having the little gear, the character, turn around as many times as it takes to spin the world one complete revolution. And the teeth have to match for that to happen. The world has to be a macrocosm of the character. And the character has to be a microcosm of the world. And when the books don't work, check your micro-macro correspondences, see if they're, if the one is the miniature of the other.So one of the things that I do in these novels about scams is I try to start with a small scam that's a kind of microcosm of the big scams. So the big scam in this book is about prison tech, but the small scam in this book is a Ponzi scheme and it's set on Catalina Island, and Catalina is a place I've fallen in love with since I moved to Southern California.And it's for people who don't know, it's this kind of storybook island across the channel from Long Beach. It's the deepest channel in the world. And this island was owned by the Wrigley family. It's where the Cubs used to have their spring training.It's where Marilyn Monroe was a child bride. It's where the CIA was founded. It was home of the largest ballroom in America and every week the most popular dance music program in the world used to broadcast live from high atop Avalon on beautiful Catalina Island. It's home to—originally—13 male bison that got loose after shooting a Zane Gray movie. But then old man Wrigley decided it would be un-Christian to have 13 bachelors. So he imported 13 cows for them—not understanding that, uh, bison form harems. And they have ever since struggled with an out-of-control bison population.It's a remarkable place and one of its peccadillos leftover from Old Man Wrigley is that when he gave the island to a land trust, he decreed that there would never be a fast-food chain on the island, which, you know, whatever. In terms of folly pursued by billionaires, it barely registers. I'm not a big fast-food eater myself, but for the people on the island, fast food has become a kind of forbidden fruit.And if you go to the little K to 12 school and you go for an away game with your football team, everyone expects you to bring back a sack of sliders because everyone wants to try, you know, the fast food they can't get on the island. And so I made up a little Ponzi scheme involving hamburgers brought over from the mainland and flash-frozen … to be traded as futures in the same way that housing and luxury tower blocks—only incidentally, a place where someone might live—is primarily a source of leverage and a safe deposit box in the sky, which, you know, in the runup to the 2008 crisis was, you know, often bought and sold several times before it was built, had multiple, uh, collateralized debt obligations and synthetic collateralized debt obligations hanging off of it and could be inflated into paper worth 10 or 20 times its value, which is exactly what happens to these deep-frozen hamburgers on the island.Thanks to a wicked real estate baron, who it turns out is doing the same thing with real estate as he is with hamburgers and who becomes so enamored of his own cleverness that he begins to relish the moment when the whole thing bursts and the island's economy tanks. And that's where Marty Hench and his friend come in and they decide to do a controlled demolition of this Ponzi before it can take down the island.[00:36:16] CM: You know, as I read The Bezzle, I thought. Boy, there's a lot of food in this book. How important is food and cooking in your life? Or was that just you writing about people for whom it is a big deal?[00:36:28] CD: I mean, I love to cook, but Marty Hench is a better cook than I am. I love books that have delicious food in them. And I love books that have delicious food that's well appreciated. You know, the Hemingway hamburger of, you know beef, salt, pepper, turn it once, don't touch it again, is actually pretty goddamn good advice for making a hamburger. I put a little butter in the pan depending on the fat content in your ground beef, but it's not bad.I find these books to be a really fun way to kind of do the adult version of what I did in the Little Brother books. So in the Little Brother books, it's kind of like that cool uncle or your friend's older brother puts an arm around your shoulder and says, “Lemme tell you how the world really works, kid.”And just opens your eyes. And these books are more like, let me tell you how the worst things in the world are done. And counter sinking that with the great pleasures of life, I think makes these books more balanced.[00:37:41] CM: Your books were some of the first that I read on mobile devices—a Blackberry in my case—and I know you've continued to champion that technology. Digital rights management—DRM, the fences around the use of people's electronic content—has been a longstanding concern of Cory's. How're we doing?[00:38:01] CD: Well, again, back to that, you know, generational moment for tech and antitrust. There is, for the first time in the whole time that I've been working on this, some real energy to do something about it—some sense that it is iniquitous.So, to give you a sense of how screwed up this whole system is: In 1998, Bill Clinton signed this law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Section 1201 of that makes it a felony to traffic in, quote, a circumvention device for effective means of access controls to copyrighted work.So if there's a thing that stops you from accessing a copyrighted work and someone makes a tool that allows you to access it. That tool is illegal and the person who who gives it to you as a felon can go to prison for five years and pay a $500,000 fine for a first offense. So what that means, very practically speaking, is if I want my audiobook sold on Audible, which requires digital rights management—a lock on every book that ensures that it can only be played on a device that Amazon has approved of—then I can't leave Amazon and take you with me. If I decide that Amazon is abusing me, and they really do abuse their suppliers, especially in the audiobook world.There was a ghastly scandal last year called Audiblegate, which involved at least $100 million in wage theft from independent audiobook authors that Amazon did with a scummy accounting trick. So if I go, look, I'm gonna leave and I'm gonna take my readers with me, and I'm gonna give them a tool so they can unlock their books, take them to whatever app the next store I decide to sell on uses, I commit a felony. Not only do I commit that felony, but the felony carries a harsher penalty than you would pay if you were to go to a pirate website and download the book. But it's also like a higher penalty than you would pay if you were to go into a truck stop and shoplift the CD of the book, and it's probably a higher penalty than you would pay if you stuck up the truck that delivered the CDs and stole the truck.Right. So for me to allow you to access the book that I wrote maybe that I financed the audiobook for, that I read the audiobook for is a crime that exceeds the penalties then that you would pay for even really serious property crimes involving other people's property. And this just gives Amazon enormous leverage.People are getting sick of this in Oregon. They've just passed a right-to-repair bill. That prohibits companies from using this technology to lock parts to their devices. So if you take a screen outta one iPhone and put it in another iPhone, right? If you're an independent repair shop, and Apple won't sell you parts, but you're buying broken phones and harvesting dead parts out of them, you have to do something called parts pairing, where you enter an unlock key, and the same law—this law that prevents you from unlocking your audiobooks—also prevents someone from giving you a tool to do the parts pairing. And so the screen won't work on the phone. Oregon's just banned using that technology, so they can't overturn this law. It's a federal law, but they can ban you from using technology that implicates it.Um, I think that. You know, we are in a moment where enough is enough. People are getting really pissed off about it. They're no longer getting duped by the story that this stuff is anti-piracy technology that stops people from stealing from you. And they're realizing that the thing that you have to worry about is not that your readers might.Read or listen to your book the wrong way, but rather that the companies that distribute your books might rip you and your readers off that you are class allies in the fight against monopolies.[00:41:55] CM: Back to your daily newsletter, in which you deal with issues like this every day. It reads typographically like an email newsletter circa the turn of the century. You run full web addresses …CD: Mm-hmm.CM: … URLs. You don't hyperlink words or phrases. Why is that?[00:42:15] CD: So I want it to be future-proof. So I want you to take something out of your inbox from 20 years ago that I wrote and copy and paste it into some other format that doesn't exist yet. I. And for you to be able to know what all those links were.So there's no tracking redirect, you know, like the t.co redirect that Twitter uses or I think it's HREF that Tumblr uses, and so on. They all have their own little redirects. I want the link to be live. I want you to be able to see the semantics of the link before you copy it or before you click on it.I want you to be able to see whose link you're going to without having to sort of glance around somewhere on the screen for a link preview. And I want you to be able to copy and paste it between programs—even programs that don't carry over the style information or the link information—and have it all carry over.And so that's why putting it all in that plain text format is, is so important to me. I do every now and again, shorten a URL if it's very, very long. So sometimes I'll, I'll link a gift link from the New York Times, from my subscription to the New York Times in the thing. And those NYT gift links are obnoxiously long, like hundreds of characters.So I have my own URL shortener, and so I'll sometimes do a little URL shortener in there, but for the most part, I don't shorten URLs.CM: Closing thoughts, Cory?CD: We're emerging from a 40-year neoliberal period incubated at the University of Chicago—thank you very much— …CM: Yeah, sorry about that.CD: … Where we only talked about economics and never about power. I got an email from someone yesterday saying that it's not price gouging. If profits go up when gas price inputs go up at the pump, right? If the cost of oil goes up, then the cost of gas goes up because the investors, I.Want the same margin. So if gas is a dollar a gallon coming into the gas station and they're getting a 50% margin, then it'll be a dollar 50. If it's $2 a gallon, then they'll get $3 and so on. And that's not price gouging, that's just maintaining a constant a constant margin. The thing is no

Welcome to the March 2024 episode of "In a Manner of Speaking," in which Paul discusses folk linguistics with dialectologist Dennis Preston, professor emeritus at Oklahoma State University and former president of the American Dialect Society. To learn more about the topic and Professor Preston, and for extra, free content, visit the podcast episode page at PaulMeier.com/In-a-Manner-of-Speaking.

Ep 142: Cory Docorow is a highly regarded sci-fi author, activist and journalist who is in favour of the liberalisation and modernisation of copyright laws. He recently coined the concept of "enshittification", which is when monopolistic digital platforms offer increasingly worse services to continue making money... and then they die. We talk about how the music industry is enshittifying itself, and how copyright could be used better. You may find his views provocative and/or counter to your own beliefs – which of course is all the more reason to listen to them! PLUS, stay tuned until the end of the podcast for an exclusive extract from the audiobook of Cory's new book The Bezzle, read by Wil Wheaton, and which deals with music copyright theft. More on Cory: he is also a special advisor to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (⁠eff.org⁠), the non-profit digital rights group, and he has published a number of fiction and non-fiction books. "Enshittification" was the American Dialect Society's 2023 Word of the Year. His newest novel is The Bezzle. Cory Doctorow: https://pluralistic.net The Bezzle – UK: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/bezzle-9781804547793/ The Bezzle – US: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle Enshittification: ⁠https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification⁠ Remain in Light covered by Angelique Kidjo: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mbIYOh0HJq4wi9oYI-SjACbkSJHC_u7Ng&si=gk1GbRbtkJExJzqI Munchmills: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/105683-most-munchmills-in-one-minute-breakdance ------

The February 2024 episode of "In a Manner of Speaking" is all about the American Dialect Society, which was founded in 1889 to study English and other languages in North America. Paul's guest is Betsy Evans, the new executive director of the society. For more info, visit Episode 73 at PaulMeier.com/In-A-Manner-Of-Speaking.

New year, same Bullshit Mountain. Alex and Emily are joined by feminist technosolutionism critics Eleanor Drage and Kerry McInerney to tear down the ways AI is proposed as a solution to structural inequality, including racism, ableism, and sexism -- and why this hype can occlude the need for more meaningful changes in institutions.Dr. Eleanor Drage is a Senior Research Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. Dr. Kerry McInerney is a Research Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence and a Research Fellow at the AI Now Institute. Together they host The Good Robot, a podcast about gender, feminism, and whether technology can be "good" in either outcomes or processes.Watch the video version of this episode on PeerTube.References:HireVue promo: How Innovative Hiring Technology Nurtures Diversity, Equity, and InclusionAlgorithm Watch: The [German Federal Asylum Agency]'s controversial dialect recognition software: new languages and an EU pilot projectWant to see how AI might be processing video of your face during a job interview? Play with React App, a tool that Eleanor helped develop to critique AI-powered video interview tools and the 'personality insights' they offer.Philosophy & Technology: Does AI Debias Recruitment? Race, Gender, and AI's “Eradication of Difference” (Drage & McInerney, 2022)Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies: Copies without an original: the performativity of biometric bordering technologies (Drage & Frabetti, 2023)Fresh AI HellInternet of Shit 2.0: a "smart" bidetFake AI “students” enrolled at Michigan UniversitySynthetic images destroy online crochet groups“AI” for teacher performance feedbackPalette cleanser: “Stochastic parrot” is the American Dialect Society's AI-related word of the year for 2023!You can check out future livestreams at https://twitch.tv/DAIR_Institute. Follow us!Emily Twitter: https://twitter.com/EmilyMBender Mastodon: https://dair-community.social/@EmilyMBender Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/emilymbender.bsky.social Alex Twitter: https://twitter.com/@alexhanna Mastodon: https://dair-community.social/@alex Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/alexhanna.bsky.social Music by Toby Menon.Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park. Production by Christie Taylor.

The year 2023 is officially in the record books. As part of taking stock, the members of the American Dialect Society met to consider what we've all been up to linguistically.

January! Again! Ryan's back for a Kealoa he wishes he could avoid, and Ben Zimmer returns with a Word of the Year recap. There's some saucy language (courtesy of the WOTY content), so let this be your warning. Stuff to click: Westport Library crossword tournament Great British Bake Off hosts discuss American snack foods American Dialect Society (and their recent post on the 2023 WOTY) If you get bored (how could you?!), write something for the Fill Me In wiki. And if you're feeling philanthropic, donate to our Patreon. Do you enjoy our show? Actually, it doesn't matter! Please consider leaving us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. This will help new listeners find our show, and you'll be inducted into the Quintuple Decker Turkey Club. Drop us a note or a Tweet or a postcard or a phone call — we'd love to hear from you. Helpful links: Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fill-me-in/id1364379980 Google Play link: https://player.fm/series/fill-me-in-2151002 Amazon/Audible link: https://www.amazon.com/item_name/dp/B08JJRM927 RSS feed: http://bemoresmarter.libsyn.com/rss Contact us: Email (fmi@bemoresmarter.com) / Facebook / Twitter / Instagram We're putting these words here to help with search engine optimization. We don't think it will work, but you probably haven't read this far, so it doesn't matter: baseball, crossword, crosswords, etymology, game, hunt, kealoa, movies, musicals, mystery, oscar, pizza, puzzle, puzzles, sandwiches, soup, trivia, words

"Rizz." "Authentic." "Hallucinate." Ben Zimmer, linguist, language columnist at The Wall Street Journal and chair of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society, discusses what the words of the year chosen by various dictionaries and groups say about our language and culture, and previews the American Dialect Society's selection process for their word of the year.

This week we're traveling back to 1950s Hollywood with Hail Caesar! Join us as we learn about the Writers Guild, stars going on arranged dates, the phrase "cut the mustard", how stars concealed unplanned pregnancies, and more! Sources: Jeffrey Schwartz, Tab Hunter Confidential. Allan Glaser Productions, 2015. Available on Amazon Prime. Benjamin McVay, "Movie Stars in the Studio System: Secrets and Rules," Cinema Scholars, available at https://cinemascholars.com/movie-stars-in-the-studio-system-secrets-and-rules/ Writers Guild of America West https://www.wga.org/the-guild/about-us/history and https://www.wga.org/the-guild/about-us/history/a-history-of-wga-contract-negotiations-and-gains  Hilary Swett, "The Screen Writers' Guild: An Early History of the Writers Guild of America," WG Foundation (2020). https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwritersguild-history  Greg Myre, "How The CIA Found A Soviet Sub--Without the Soviets Knowing," All Things Considered (NPR, 18 September 2017). https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/09/18/549535352/how-the-cia-found-a-soviet-sub-without-the-soviets-knowing   Lila Thulin, "During the Cold War, the CIA Secretly Plucked a Soviet Submarine From the Ocean Floor Using a Giant Claw," Smithsonian Magazine (10 May 2019). https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/during-cold-war-ci-secretly-plucked-soviet-submarine-ocean-floor-using-giant-claw-180972154/  "Russian Foxtrot Class attack submarine B-39, has gone to pasture." https://sdmaritime.org/visit/the-ships/b-39-submarine/  Louise Pound, Kemp Malone, and Arthur Garfield Kennedy, "cut the mustard," American Speech, Vol. 2 (1927), 352.  Dialect Notes Vol. 3 (University of Michigan and American Dialect Society, 1905).  Anne Helen Petersen, "Clark Gable Accused of Raping Co-Star," Buzzfeed News, 2015. Available at https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/loretta-young Bill Desowitz, "Hail Caesar! How the Coen Brothers Made Their Hollywood Valentine," IndieWire, available at https://www.indiewire.com/awards/industry/hail-caesar-the-coen-brothers-hollywood-1201781360/ Wikipedia, available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail,_Caesar!

This episode contains spoilers for all the books, especially the last one.Despite being very chaotic, we usually show up to recording with a lot of preparation, including some well-organized Google Docs with often too many pages of notes. This was not the case this week. Nope. On the menu: the American Dialect Society announced the 2022 Word of the Year, we celebrated A Memory of Light's 10th anniversary, and Ayoola Smart was on Paradise Now. Enjoy!Support the showCheck out our Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Patreon.Intro and outro music by Julius H.

This week, Ryan and Brian are graced with the return of The Barnacle! Ben Zimmer stops by with the inside scoop on the Word of the Year (which earned us an "explicit" rating). Other news: 64-card decks, Brian doesn't know the difference between Latin and French, and this week's "Kealoa," featuring ACME vs. APEX. Stuff to click: American Dialect Society's 2022 Word of the Year wrapup another article about it, this time in Rolling Stone Follow Ben Zimmer on Twitter! Follow the American Dialect Society on Twitter! 500, the card game with 64 cards upcoming cryptic crossword stream on January 18 with Will Nediger, Hayley Gold, and guests from The Rackenfracker spend $478.56 to get the framed crossword from "All About Steve" If you get bored, write something for the Fill Me In wiki. And if you're feeling philanthropic, donate to our Patreon. Do you enjoy our show? Actually, it doesn't matter! Please consider leaving us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. This will help new listeners find our show, and you'll be inducted into the Quintuple Decker Turkey Club. Drop us a note or a Tweet or a postcard or a phone call — we'd love to hear from you. Helpful links: Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fill-me-in/id1364379980 Google Play link: https://player.fm/series/fill-me-in-2151002 Amazon/Audible link: https://www.amazon.com/item_name/dp/B08JJRM927 RSS feed: http://bemoresmarter.libsyn.com/rss Contact us: Email (fmi@bemoresmarter.com) / Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / Google Voice (315-510-9892) We're putting these words here to help with search engine optimization. We don't think it will work, but you probably haven't read this far, so it doesn't matter: baseball, crossword, crosswords, etymology, game, hunt, movies, musicals, mystery, oscar, pizza, puzzle, puzzles, soup, trivia, words

jarrett and Tre'vell are back at it again, refreshed from the holiday break and ready to drop some gems for our FANTIfam. Speaking of a break - when was the last time you gave yourself the opportunity to take a break? If your answer is “I can't remember” or “a long time ago”, you'll definitely want to take some inspiration from jarrett & Tre'vell this week.

Jonny reviews the renewed attacks on LGBTQ rights as state legilatures and US House open fr business in the spring legislative sessions. He reviews some of the recent impacts of the Don't Say Gay law in Florida as the state extends its purview (despite arguments in court that it would not). In the back half of the show, he turns to more positive stories of positive legislative and judicial acts supporting the LGBTQ community around the country. He also celebrates the American Dialect Society's selection of "-ussy" as the word of the year. He closes out the show with several community announcements of LGBTQ activites in the Carbondale area.

A chat with Dr Kelly Wright, who's been working on… well, really a lot. Kelly is at the juncture of a lot of areas we're keen on. Oxford's effort to document African-American English? She's been there. Doing lexicography with the American Dialect Society? She's on it. The LSA's social media committee? She… was on it. And she's been looking into a new unexplored area: people's ideas about their own language knowledge. But it's not all easy. And Kelly is here to tell us about her view of linguistics… from the struggle pile.

On this Audio Signals Episode, Sean and Marco are joined by a returning guest on ITSPmagazine, Valerie Fridland. Join the conversation and learn some new words with them."Which Word Takes Top Prize as Word of the Year?Politics, the pandemic, and social media inspire a bumper crop of new words.Language experts recently voted on the word that most summed up this year's cultural zeitgeist.A word arising from the controversial and divisive U.S. political landscape in 2021 took the title.Pandemic-related and TikTok-inspired terms also reflected our national preoccupations.The words COVID and pandemic might have still reigned supreme this year, but in the quickly changing world of language use, they are already so last year. This year, words both lighthearted (bussin', cheugy, yassify) and serious (big, lie, insurrection, omicron) were bandied about in the run-up to the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year (WOTY) vote. For the language experts tasked with whittling down the field for 2021, only words that really caught the year's zeitgeist rose to the top. So, what words made the cut as new and, most importantly, notable?And the winner is..." _____________________________GuestValerie FridlandLinguist, professor, author, public speaker | Mentor at the Mentor ProjectOn LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/valerie-fridland-0b29b5209/On Twitter | https://twitter.com/FridlandValerie_____________________________This Episode's SponsorsBlue Lava: https://itspm.ag/blue-lava-w2qsNintex: https://itspm.ag/itspntweb_____________________________ResourcesWhat word takes top prize as word of the year? https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/language-in-the-wild/202201/which-word-takes-top-prize-word-the-yearAnother Podcast with this guest?Sociolinguistics. Connecting Language With Society And The Way It Adapts To Its Changes | The Mentor Project Series On ITSPmagazine | Redefining Society With Valerie Fridland: https://itsprad.io/redefining-society-703The Mentor Project: https://mentorproject.org/_____________________________For more podcast stories from Audio Signals: https://www.itspmagazine.com/audio-signals_____________________________For more podcast stories from Audio Signals: https://www.itspmagazine.com/audio-signalsAre you interested in sponsoring an ITSPmagazine Channel?

On this Audio Signals Episode, Sean and Marco are joined by a returning guest on ITSPmagazine, Valerie Fridland. Join the conversation and learn some new words with them."Which Word Takes Top Prize as Word of the Year?Politics, the pandemic, and social media inspire a bumper crop of new words.Language experts recently voted on the word that most summed up this year's cultural zeitgeist.A word arising from the controversial and divisive U.S. political landscape in 2021 took the title.Pandemic-related and TikTok-inspired terms also reflected our national preoccupations.The words COVID and pandemic might have still reigned supreme this year, but in the quickly changing world of language use, they are already so last year. This year, words both lighthearted (bussin', cheugy, yassify) and serious (big, lie, insurrection, omicron) were bandied about in the run-up to the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year (WOTY) vote. For the language experts tasked with whittling down the field for 2021, only words that really caught the year's zeitgeist rose to the top. So, what words made the cut as new and, most importantly, notable?And the winner is..." _____________________________GuestValerie FridlandLinguist, professor, author, public speaker | Mentor at the Mentor ProjectOn LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/valerie-fridland-0b29b5209/On Twitter | https://twitter.com/FridlandValerie_____________________________This Episode's SponsorsBlue Lava: https://itspm.ag/blue-lava-w2qsNintex: https://itspm.ag/itspntweb_____________________________ResourcesWhat word takes top prize as word of the year? https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/language-in-the-wild/202201/which-word-takes-top-prize-word-the-yearAnother Podcast with this guest?Sociolinguistics. Connecting Language With Society And The Way It Adapts To Its Changes | The Mentor Project Series On ITSPmagazine | Redefining Society With Valerie Fridland: https://itsprad.io/redefining-society-703The Mentor Project: https://mentorproject.org/_____________________________For more podcast stories from Audio Signals: https://www.itspmagazine.com/audio-signals_____________________________For more podcast stories from Audio Signals: https://www.itspmagazine.com/audio-signalsAre you interested in sponsoring an ITSPmagazine Channel?

On today's episode of Spectacular Vernacular, Nicole and Ben interview Brooklyn-based software engineer Josh Wardle, the creator of the viral online word game Wordle. They also recap their participation in the American Dialect Society's annual Word of the Year vote, over which Ben presided. And Nicole's shares some on-the-ground interviews from the Linguistic Society of America conference, at which she presented some of her own research. And finally, we bring on a listener for some wordplay. Can you solve our final wordplay clue? You could win a year's membership to Slate Plus. Do you have any language questions or fun facts to share? Email us at spectacular@slate.com.   Subscribe to Slate Plus. It's only $1 for the first month. To learn more, go to slate.com/spectacularplus. Produced by Jasmine Ellis and Kevin Bendis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode of Spectacular Vernacular, Nicole and Ben interview Brooklyn-based software engineer Josh Wardle, the creator of the viral online word game Wordle. They also recap their participation in the American Dialect Society's annual Word of the Year vote, over which Ben presided. And Nicole's shares some on-the-ground interviews from the Linguistic Society of America conference, at which she presented some of her own research. And finally, we bring on a listener for some wordplay. Can you solve our final wordplay clue? You could win a year's membership to Slate Plus. Do you have any language questions or fun facts to share? Email us at spectacular@slate.com.   Subscribe to Slate Plus. It's only $1 for the first month. To learn more, go to slate.com/spectacularplus. Produced by Jasmine Ellis and Kevin Bendis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Though COVID-19 vaccines were one of the most important things to happen in 2021, “vaccine” didn't emerge as the winner in Friday night's vote.

Cette semaine, on vous parle d'un concept de plus en plus populaire pour désigner un comportement bien réel : le mansplaining. Vous l'aurez deviné, cette contraction entre « man » et « explain » désigne une situation dans laquelle un homme explique à une femme quelque chose qu'elle sait déjà (ou qu'elle en est même experte!). Ce qui est crucial à retenir c'est que la « mecsplication » survient quand ces explications ne sont PAS sollicitées. Vous comprendrez l'origine du mot, ses nuances et ses implications ainsi que plusieurs exemples de situations vécues. Bonne écoute! Références discutées dans cet épisode:  American Dialect Society (2012). Most creative word of the year 2012. Enright, Lynn. (2019). Why it matters to call external female genitalia ‘vulva' not ‘vagina'. The Guardian, Oxford Online Dictionary. (2014). Added words in 2014. Solnit, Rebecca. (2014). Men Explain Things to Me. Chicago: Haymarket Books.

On this week's That's What They Say, English Professor Anne Curzan fills us in on the American Dialect Society's annual "Word of the Year" vote. The fact that this year's selection was the first ever to be held virtually should give you a big clue about the winner.

On this momentous episode, we look back on all the words that made our year. Like, all of them. Including some from other languages. Many words were discussed in the context of the annual vote of the American Dialect Society, but the greatest were voted on by you, the listeners. Ready? Let’s talk words!

This was sleep heavy podcast. From different sleeping schedules comparison to the popularization of the onomonopia Zzz, who knew there was so much info there. The American Dialect Society is brought up as well as a golden idea for a future niche of podcasts.

Our celebration of Black History Month continues and we begin by speaking with Baltimore-area educator Brittany Willis about the perilous plight of Black youth in the American education system - and how she came to realize that in order to save Black children she had to stop being their teacher. Next up, we talk about the relationship between Black fathers and their sons, as Chicago-based tech and political writer Keith Reid-Cleveland reveals how it took years to learn to love and forgive the father he didn’t meet for the first time until he was twelve years old. For Juicy Fruit, we’re joined again by linguist Grant Barrett of the American Dialect Society to discuss 2019’s Word of the Year and all the words and phrases that had everybody talking for the last decade. Donate to support this and future seasons of Strange Fruit.

Thong, Mons pubis, Hanabira, Vajazzle, Monokini, Anthony Pettis, G-string, Perineum, Klaus (film), Malcom X, Whale tail, Lexicography, Grant Barrett, Cheetos, American Dialect Society, Chewing Gum Ban in Singapore, Joe Frazier, Muhammad Ali, Incest, Milk Kinship, Maasai People

It's Word of the Year time, and there are more words than ever before. We bring you the results from the yearly American Dialect Society vote, and from dictionaries around the world on this episode of Talk the Talk.

This week, English Professor Anne Curzan joined us from New Orleans, where members of the American Dialect Society gathered to make their annual "Word of the Year" selection. This year was special. That's because not only did the ADS choose a word to represent the past year, members also chose a word to represent the past decade.

Dr. Julie Roberts, Executive Director of American Dialect Society and Professor of Linguist & Dialectologist at the University of Vermont and Dr. Gary J. Margolis, Founder and CEO of Social Sentinel explore “The Changing Language of Our Times”.

Tremble, denizens, for episode seven is here to consume you all! THIS episode finds Ari and Charlie on the run from a veritable legion of enemies, bent on destroying this podcast and burying the truth for good. Our theory this week involves Murphy's Law—but just who is this "Murphy," and how does this "law" of theirs connect to Medieval legends, overseas factories, the American Dialect Society, or NSFW Reddit threads? Plus, King Arthur is a LITERAL white knight. | Logo by @NuleTheGoat. Music and audio mixing by @UndreamedPanic. Sound effects taken from soundbible.com, recorded by GoodSoundForYou and PsychoBird. Edited, as always, by Mathaniel. Thanks Mathaniel! | Have some choice remarks for us, your humble hosts? You can email us at chuckandaardvark@gmail.com! Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/chuckandaardvark)

What were the words that marked our year? Daniel was there for the serious, the social, and the silly at the American Dialect Society's annual Word of the Year vote. Hedvig and Daniel discuss all the words on this episode of Talk the Talk.

Every January the American Dialect Society announces their Word of the Year. They choose a word or phrase that has impacted society and changed our language. The Bible announces the one Word that changes the world. Do you know what it is? John 1:1-14. Pastor Daron Lindemann. December 23, 2018. holyword.net

The American Dialect Society named "fake news" its 2017 Word of the Year. The term has been around for a while, but the past few years, it seems to be everywhere.

01.21.17 | The American Dialect Society each year chooses a "word of the year" that has snuck into our lexicon. The Focus Group will share the 2016 word along with the political and slang word of the year. See if you agree. But first, Tim and John discuss whether boycotts work. Grab Your Wallet has called for a boycott of LL Bean due to a family member's support of President Trump. We're all business. Except when we're not. Hear this show, and others, at www.focusgroupradio.com and please subscribe, like, and rate The Focus Group on all your platforms of choice. iTunes: apple.co/1WwDBrC Tunein: bit.ly/1SE3NMb Stitcher: bit.ly/1N97Zqu Google Play: bit.ly/1pQTcVW YouTube: bit.ly/1spAF5a Also follow Tim and John on: Facebook: www.facebook.com/focusgroupradio Twitter: www.twitter.com/focusgroupradio Instagram: www.instagram.com/focusgroupradio

Every January, hundreds of linguists gather in a conference room somewhere in the US to discuss and vote for the Word of the Year. It’s the longest-running and most public WotY proceedings, and it’s part of the annual meeting of the American Dialect Society, a sister society of the Linguistic Society of America. Gretchen was there this year and the past few years, while Lauren has never been (but actively reads the #woty16 hashtag on twitter!). We discuss what the ADS Word of the Year vote feels like from inside the room where it happens, the categories and politics around selecting a WotY, look at the different offerings from other organizations that also name a WotY (Lauren is pretty pleased that Australian Word of the Year was “democracy sausage”, while Gretchen would like a Canadian Word of the Year for 2017, thank you), and end up wondering what even is a word. We also respond to finally going live! Thanks for all your comments so far, and if you have a sec to rate us on iTunes or wherever else you’re listening, we’d super appreciate it. Update: In the show we said that 'Trump’ was selected as sign for the year for Netherlands Sign Language. It was actually the Swiss Deaf Association, in Switzerland. For more information visit the show page: http://lingthusiasm.com/post/155962380426/lingthusiasm-episode-4-inside-the-word-of-the Listen to bonus episodes, suggest future topics, and help keep the show ad-free by supporting us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/lingthusiasm

As 2015 draws to a close, we have our annual chat with Grant Barrett, an officer with the American Dialect Society, about the words and phrases that were on everyone's lips (and texts, and tweets, and Tumblrs) this year. Last year, they chose #BlackLivesMatter - the first time in the organization's history that the Word of the Year was a hashtag. One of our favorite contenders this year is a hashtag that grew out of the #BlackLivesMatter movement: #StayWoke. "It's being aware of the injustice in the world," Barrett explains, "and letting your friends and followers know that you are keeping an eye out - that you're one of those people who isn't just sheeple." They haven't released the official list yet, but we talk about top contenders, including Netflix and chill, thighbrows (they're the new thigh gap), creppy, spoopy, and "watch me Whip, watch me Nae Nae." Barrett says the song is so mainstream now that it's transcended its genre (and his third grade son even mad a Whip and Nae Nae Christmas cookie!).

The Oxford Dictionary word of the year for 2014 is vape. I can get behind that. It's a word that describes something a lot of people are doing and it really did come of age in the last 12 months. The American Dialect Society, not so much. Their controversial word of the year is #blacklivesmatter, which is not a word or even close to being one word.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The end of 2014 is upon us, and that means every outlet is publishing Best-of lists. We weren't too impressed with the Wall Street Journal's Best Pop Culture Moments last week, but one list we can get behind is the American Dialect Society's nominees for 2014 Words of the Year. Like most cultural phenomena, lots of language has its roots in subcultures - including some from gay black culture. One of the words on the list is yass, an affirmation audiences have been screaming at house ball contestants for years, that made its way into mainstream usage with a little help from Nicki Minaj. Social justice movements and hashtags also help coin new words and phrases; this year they gave us Gamergate, columbusing, and #notallmen (and its response, #yesallwomen). Grant Barrett is an officer with the American Dialect Society, and compiles their list of linguistic contenders every year. He joins us this week to talk about 2014's nominees and where they came from. He also sheds a little light on the more inexplicable (to us) choices, like "on fleek," an expression that caused Jaison to feel old for the first time in his life. And we spend our Juicy Fruit segment in the historical Brennan House in downtown Louisville, where we learn about preserving sites with historical significance to the LGBT community. Kentucky recently got a grant to help add LGBT-important sites to the National Register of Historic Places, and Preservation Louisville Director Marianne Zickuhr joins us to talk about the work they will do on the project. Hint: It involves Baby Vicco!

SUMMARYHow about some wind pudding with a dollop of air sauce? What's in a tavern sandwich? Do pregnant women really crave pickles and ice cream? Grant and Martha dig in to colorful language from the world of food. Plus, ever think of publishing a novel? Be warned: The snarky literary agent from SlushPile Hell shows no mercy when it comes to rejections. Also, piggy banks, children vs. kids, hand vs. foot dexterity, and a bi-coastal quiz. Plus, those flipped sentences known as antimetabole, such as "It's not the men in your life that counts, it's the life in your men." FULL DETAILSEver thought about getting that novel published? Apparently, others have too, and some of their queries are less than persuasive for the admittedly grumpy literary agent who writes the blog SlushPile Hell. He posts some of the more colorful queries from his inbox, along with his own pithy responses. Take this one: "Have you ever wondered what it's like to be pulled up a waterfall or to be flushed down a toilet?" To which the agent responds, "Hey! Have you been reading my mind?" Ouch.http://bit.ly/9z3rBpIs it wrong to refer to children as kids? One discerning mother, when asked about her kids, always replied, "I don't raise goats, but my children are fine." Grant explains that as early as the 1600s, the word kids had popped up to refer to bratty or unruly children. But by the 1800s, it was normal even among upper-class households to call their young ones kids without any negative connotations. A vegetarian from Vermillion, South Dakota, wonders about the origin of a popular loose meat sandwich called a tavern. It's like a sloppy joe, and also goes by the monikers Maid-Rite and Tastee. Martha notes a diner in Sioux City, Iowa, called Ye Olde Tavern, that claims to have created the sandwich. Still, with food origins, plenty of people lay claim to the inventions of everything, from hamburgers to breakfast cereal.http://bit.ly/fik8P2http://bit.ly/jtCwOAQuiz Guy Greg Pliska has a bi-coastal quiz about two-word phrases connecting the letters NY and CA. For example, the man in black is JohnNY CAsh. Keep your eyes wide open for the clues!A Canadian listener's boyfriend has a special talent. He can remove his socks, roll them up, and throw them across the room into the laundry basket--all with his toes. She says he has toe dexterity, but wonders if the word dexterous can apply to feet as well as hands? Martha notes that great soccer players like Argentina's Lionel Messi are simply called dexterous, although nimble and agile are also appropriate adjectives. Noctivagant people are those who wander the night, and vespertilian folks have bat-like qualities. Add these to "shirtless" as poignant ways to describe a vampire.When the going gets tough, the tough get going. This and other phrases of wisdom are known as antimetabole, from the Greek for "turning about in the opposite direction." Certain forms of these statements also go by the name chiasmus, from the Greek letter chi, meaning "X." They're often effective for making a point in a speech, like John F. Kennedy's famous "Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country." No matter the context, these flipped-sentence proverbs are great for making a point clear. Mardy Grothe has a whole book about chiasmus called Never Let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You. http://bit.ly/lJz5qpThe grumpy agent who writes the blog SlushPile Hell received a submission stating, "I have attached a copy of a letter I recently sent to Oprah about my book. She ends her show in September 2011, which leaves little time to select an agent." The agent responds, "Finally! An author who understands the importance of Oprah and has a no-fail plan for getting on her show." As if.What's for dinner? How about wind pudding, air sauce, and a side of balloon trimmings? This colorful euphemism for "nothing" dates as far back as the American Civil War, when troops would come into the mess tent, see a wild squirrel boiling in a pot, and opt for wind pudding and air sauce instead. The calls and e-mails keep coming in about Scotts being called Todds and Todds being called Scotts. One listener left a voicemail about a christening where the priest called the baby by its oddly common misnomer. Another listener by the name of Stefanie complains that she keeps getting called Jennifer. Perhaps it has to do with rhythm, and the patterns we develop out of sounds and syllables.There's been a lot of talk about the place of handwriting in the digital age. Grant has some great books to recommend on the subject: Reading Early American Handwriting by Kip Sperry, and Handwriting in America: A Cultural History by Tamara Thornton. A long time ago, part of the reason for teaching longhand cursive was to have students practice transcribing documents with indoctrinating political messages. The character of handwriting, from the flourishes to the way a letter sits on the line, brought with it an array of cultural implications.http://bit.ly/mwKGPnhttp://bit.ly/lDrvCSWhy do we have piggy banks instead of any other kind of farm animal banks? In Scotland and Northern England, a kind of earthen material called pigg was used in the Middle Ages for making pots. The name stuck, and today we fill our piggs, or piggy banks, with coins. Why do pregnant women enjoy pickles and ice cream? Or do they? Linguists from the American Dialect Society have been discussing this recently. They found that the expression pickles and ice cream once referred simply to the conjoining of two unrelated things, sort of the opposite of peas and carrots. Not until the middle of the 20th century did it pertain to cravings, simply because pregnant women go through different nutritional patterns than they would when eating for one. Can the word training be pluralized, as in "How many trainings did you have last week"? Martha and Grant disagree about whether training can be a count noun.A Minnesotan who relocated to Wisconsin gets called a Mud Duck, and wants to know why. Much in the way Wisconsinites get referred to as Cheese Heads, it's really a harmless bit of nomenclature from a cross-state rivalry. In hunting, the term duck has also been known to mean a mixed kind of species. Unfortunately, Mud Duck has popped up in odd corners with negative racial connotations. Still, the vast majority of people using Mud Duck mean it simply as a friendly jest. Martha shares another barb from the SlushPile Hell agent.--A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donateGet your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:Email: words@waywordradio.orgPhone: United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673London +44 20 7193 2113Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donateSite: http://waywordradio.org/Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/Skype: skype://waywordradio Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.

We're continuing our look at some of the words of the year of 2008. Last week we talked about words that came from the 2008 Beijing Olympics.Gas prices have been all over the place, but worse still than high gas-prices are accidents caused by DWT, which is short for 'driving while texting.'Legislation and rules were considered in municipalities across the country to stop people from sending text messages on their phones while driving, though few bills seem to have passed.Thanks to high fuel prices, the word gas-sipper made a comeback in 2008. It's the opposite of a gas-guzzler. If a car sips gas, it consume less.Another approach to conserving fuel would be hypermiling. This word, created in 2004, was Oxford University Press's word of the year for 2008.It means to take extraordinary measures to conserve fuel, things like turning off the engine when going down hills, avoiding the brakes, and drafting behind larger vehicles. Drafting means riding up close where wind resistance is less.This approach to fuel economy is stock in trade for the carborexic. That's a person who is energy anorexic, meaning they do things like never use air-conditioning, turn off their refrigerators when they go a way for the weekend, and fill the few lights they use with low wattage bulbs.And that's it for our word-of-the-year minicasts. You can find more words of the year at the web site of the American Dialect Society, at americandialect.org.Also, on our web site at waywordradio.org, you can find more minicasts, news about language current events, and full episodes of our call-in show, all at no cost to you.--Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write 24 hours a day: (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673, words@waywordradio.org, or visit our web site and discussion forums at http://waywordradio.org. Copyright 2008, Wayword LLC.

We kick off our series on contenders for 2008's "Word of the Year" with a look at "nuke the fridge."The American Dialect Society will hold the 19th annual "Word of the Year" vote in January. It's the granddaddy of all word of the year votes--the longest running, the most academic, and the most fun.And as we approach January 9th in San Francisco, we'll be talking here, in these minicasts, about some of the likeliest candidates.One very odd one that caught our eye was "nuke the fridge."Putting it politely, it means to exhaust the possibilities or merits of a movie franchise. Putting it negatively, it means to destroy a movie franchise through the hubris and arrogance of a successful producer or director. The term was coined based upon a scene in the latest Indiana Jones movie, in which the hero survives a nuclear blast by hiding in a refrigerator. "Nuke the fridge" is patterned after "jump the shark," which was coined a few years ago to refer to anything that had peaked in popularity or quality and was now on a downward slide. Jumping the shark referred to an episode on the sitcom Happy Days in which Fanzine water-skied over a shark, a moment thought by Happy Days aficionados (there are such things!) to be the surest sign of the show's decline.That's all about "nuke the fridge." Next time we'll talk about "ground game."--Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write 24 hours a day: (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673, words@waywordradio.org, or visit our web site and discussion forums at http://waywordradio.org. Copyright 2008, Wayword LLC.

In this episode, Grant offers a peek at some expressions he's nominating for the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year vote in January. Will it be 'w00t,' 'subprime,' or something else? You can also check out Grant's longer look at 'word of the year' contenders in The New York Times Week in Review section on Sunday.Get out your plastic utensils and pull up a folding chair! A caller's question about the origin of the word 'potluck' stirs up mouthwatering memories of crispy fried chicken, warm peach cobbler, and Jell-O salad with marshmallows. Okay, the Jell-O salad not so much. But still, whether you call it a 'pitch-in,' a 'carry-in,' 'dinner on the grounds,' a 'covered-dish supper,' a 'Jacob's supper,' a 'faith supper, or a potluck, it's all good eatin'!An Indiana listener complains that he can't stand to hear presidential candidates pronounce the word 'pundit' as 'pundint.'Greg Pliska adds an apt and all-round admirably appealing appraisal of alliterative ability. Meaning, our Puzzle Guy presents a quiz about words that start with the same letters. May we just say that Greg gives great game?A Florida eighth-grader wants to know if a word she memorized for a spelling bee is real: 'agathokakological.' Easy for her to say.An American cartographer for the United Nations reports that he and his British wife disagree over whether 'lollygolly' is a real word that means 'to dawdle.' Martha and Grant show the mapmaker where to draw the line.Martha and Grant discuss a couple of strange new words making the rounds: 'lecondel' and 'earmarxist.'This week's 'Slang This!' contestant finds out whether the word 'puddle' is a slang term for part of a car's muffler and if the expression 'hang paper' involves flying kites.A Pennsylvania caller asks to clarify the difference between 'who vs. that.'Finally, just in time for holiday get-togethers, Grant and Martha provide some linguistic family therapy to solve a mother-daughter conflict over whether 'nummy' is a legitimate term. Mom says it's perfect for describing a delicious meal, but her daughter finds that kind of language embarrassing. Is nummy a real word? Open the hangar, here comes the answer!

In 1998 the American Dialect Society voted "e-" (as in electronic) as the "word of the year". This signified how important the internet had become in our world. Almost 10 years later we’re undergoing an even larger change. Only this time the "e-" prefix stands for "everywhere". Mobile content, services and commerce are changing the way we communicate, work and do business. And these changes are building upon the already massive revolutions brought about by the internet - only faster and made more pervasive. This presentation will look at the strategic issues facing managers and developers as they strive to adapt to this literally "moving" target. The session will be highly interactive in nature so make sure you bring your mobile device! Alex Young has been involved in online for over a decade, moving from instructional design, visual and interaction design through to project and people management within the education, training, TV and telecommunications fields. This journey has instilled a sense of purpose to strive for an optimal user experience for every solution or challenge that presents itself. As part of Mobile Online Business, Alex is focused on how to help companies communicate better with their customers by understanding the pervasiveness of emerging technologies and the ways to best utilise these to communicate with their customers. Rob has been modeling Information Architectures and IA driven business models since 1989. As the technology landscape evolved he moved from digital pre-press, to interactive media, to network applications and finally to pervasive computing. Now he has joined Mobile Online Business (MOB) and is focused upon exploring life after Convergence - a place where objects and their interfaces Diverge allowing you to control them anywhere, anytime. His primary goal is to provide MOB’s clients with hands on, real world experience with this intangible new world. Licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).