The Boiling Frog

Welcome to The Boiling Frog reboot! The first 26 episodes were examinations of general topics, such as understanding capitalism, how social psychology belies the principles of capitalism, and how this all shapes political dialog. The new podcasts will look at specific policies of the new administration and use those as case studies to illustrate the real-life impact of those genera

This podcast is all about labor unions – why they exist, their history in the U.S., a brief comparison with unions in other countries, the pros and cons of unions, and the larger political implications of their existence.This is a controversial topic in U.S. politics, with many voters (and most elected officials) falling squarely into the “pro-union” or “anti-union” camp.

Building off the prior podcast on learning from the past, this discussion is all about success and failure. We all know the common wisdom that we all learn more from failure than from success, but of course we don’t strive to fail all of the time!

We all spend a lot of time thinking about the past, often when we're trying to make a decision in the present. Sometimes that reflection ends up complicating our decision-making. Why is that? And if we want to avoid repeating past mistakes while also not preventing ourselves from taking new paths, what's the proper way to use our knowledge of the past?

What makes someone an expert? And how is expertise different from intelligence? This podcast is all about expertise, how we acquire it, how do people view others’ expertise, and the notion of expertise transference from one domain to another. We touch on a number of psychological phenomena, including the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which is a cognitive bias whereby people with low abi

This podcast is the sequel to Greenbacks, where we discussed why we have taxes, the different types of taxes, and the pros and cons of each type. In this podcast, we delve into the evolution of the tax system and look at the debates surrounding the level of tax rates, specifically some of the false choices presented in political discussions. And we delve deeply into one of the most

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Benjamin Franklin This podcast is the first in a two-part series on taxes. This episode is meant to be an overview of why we have taxes, the landscape of both taxing agencies and taxable agencies, as well as the different types of taxes. (It is recommended that listeners start with The Boiling Frog’s

For the tenth episode, your favorite pond dwellers decided to take a break from the normal, big-picture, topic-based discussions and instead shared their personal pet peeves, including both important as well as some silly issues. This twentieth episode is also a diversion from the normal format, but your amphibious friends decided to do the “opposite” of pet peeves – in this

This episode is a deep dive into the foundational requirement of a democracy – having elections and voting. Despite the founding (and often touted) principles of American democracy, it is shockingly inconsistent how we implement it. All U.S. citizens do not have an equal voice, the result of structural inequities in the system (e.g., the U.S. Senate), the leveraging of power to m

It’s a fairly common trope – and often an overused campaign line – that government is “wasteful.” But what does it mean to be “wasteful” (or “efficient” for that matter), and is it true that governments aren’t good stewards of our money? As you can imagine, the answer isn’t as straightforward as it may appear. And if there’s one thing we at the Boiling Frog