Stuff You Should Know - Selects: What are think tanks all about?

Episode Date: June 1, 2024

Think tanks? More like stink tanks! We're kidding. Think tanks do valuable work, when they operate in a non-partisan way of course. Learn all about the history of these heady institutions in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This is the story of how a group of people brought music back to Afghanistan by creating their own version of American Idol. The joy they brought to the nation. You're free completely. No one they brought to the nation. You're free completely. No one is there to destroy you. The danger they endured. They said my head should be cut off. I'm John Legend.

Listen to Afghan Star on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, Josh here. And for this week's Select, I've chosen our episode on think tanks from September 2018. It's a common misconception that our elected officials in Washington and state capitals and everywhere else make the laws and the policy that they introduce. In most cases, they do not do that. That's up to special interest groups.

And once upon a time, think tanks were one of those groups. And even accounting for political bent, the policy they suggested to lawmakers was sound and unbiased. It was good stuff in other words. But that's not the case any longer, as we learned in this episode. Think tanks are open for business

and the US is far the worse off for it. Hope you enjoy this episode. Hope it opens your eyes. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there actually sitting in today and this is stuff you should know about think tanks. The thinkin' is kind of tanks there are. Fish tanks they don't think at all. Well they barely think. They think this water feels a little warm for me and then they think what's water? What's being wet? And then that's about it.

And then they're like how about some of those tasty flakes? Yeah, give me some. And that's it. Think tanks. Think tanks. There's a lot more thinking going on in these kind of tanks. More like stink tanks. It depends on your opinion. And that's everybody's opinion. So yes, I guess they are more like stink tanks these days. This is one of those weird ones where I,

for 47 years I've just sort of had this, I never dug in on what a think tank was. I hear it and I kind of assumed I knew what it was. I was kind of right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a good term for something. Yeah, I was like, is this like a bunch of smart people sitting around thinking about smart stuff?

Exactly. That's kind of right. That's exactly what it is. Ideally. It's like a place where people sit around and think about things that eventually, hopefully, affects public policy in a positive way is what you're ultimately hoping for. Yeah, and by think, we don't mean if you went by a think tank they would all just be sitting around going hmm.

I think it depends on the day of the week or if it's right after lunch. There's a ton of research and study and stuff like that. They're not just pulling stuff out of thin air. No. No, that's the point of think tanks is they are groups of people, nonprofit organizations in the U.S., we should say. Yeah, which we'll get to the finer points of that. Mm-hmm.

Who say, you know what, we see this problem in America, or the world, or wherever. Great Britain has plenty, China has a bunch. And they say, how can we solve this problem? Let's get to it. We're going to take this problem on and figure it out through pragmatic science and evidence-based research. We're going to come up with a solution to this problem and then the next step is to get it out there to the public, to policymakers, to get people talking about it. And then once enough people talk about it and there's a public debate over it,

And then once enough people talk about it and there's a public debate over it, ideally if it's a good idea, it will be adopted as public policy and that problem will be solved in a good way. Yeah, and that's the ideal function of an ideal think tank, which is to say it is nonpartisan, it is fact-based, and it doesn't have an agenda necessarily. But things have changed over the years as we will see. Fairly recently, Chuck, it seems like. Yeah, and think tanks can be very much slanted. But we'll get into all that. That's just sort of a long-winded setup.

Okay. That was a good setup, though, man. Should we go back and check on our old buddy, Plato? So crazy. Yeah. So Plato, his academy, the academy, was some people say was sort of the world's first think tank. Which makes sense.

Yeah. He would get dudes and they would sit around in the garden and I would imagine drink wine and talk smarts and philosophy and kind of, you know, like it was high-minded stuff for the day to sit around and think about sort of what was going on around them and how they could impact change. Yeah. Or thinking about the nature of reality or existence. They once decided that knowledge was uncertain and life is essentially a craps game based

on probability rather than absolute truth. If you step back and think about it, that is the basis of quantum mechanics. Yeah. Could you imagine if they had access to LSD back then? I know. I don't think it would have been too terribly different. Well, yeah. They were sort of traveling down that road anyway. But that was, I mean, that's pretty impressive, some of the stuff they came up with.

This is, again, you know, we did a skeptics episode, skepticism episode. No, I'm sorry, not skepticism, stoicism. And remember, this is where this stuff was, all these different philosophies were all like kind of grew from this academy. So you can make a pretty good case that it was the world's first think tank. It's a little, it's not the first modern think tank, but it qualifies in a lot of ways. No, there was one in 1831 in Great Britain, the Duke of Wellington established what was called the Royal United Services Institution. Which studied like military science.

Yeah, and then here in the U.S. in 1910, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Which studied the results of military science. Right, and that's still around. Carnegie, man, I mean, they still have endowed many things. Yeah, they're well endowed. They are very well endowed. And then of course the Brookings Institution, which may be the most famous modern American think tank to this day, this is the one you probably hear about the most, it was founded by Robert Brookings in 1916. And they had a lot of, I mean they still have a lot of influence, but they had a great deal of

influence kind of post-Depression with FDR's New Deal, helped construct the New Deal, helped construct the Marshall Plan after World War II. That was huge. Yeah, very huge. Both were. For sure, the New Deal definitely was. But the Marshall Plan, there was a survey done of I think like 450 historians, and the number one most important thing that any government has done since World War II, between World War II and the 21st century,

was the Marshall Plan. Like it not only like brought Europe back from World War II, it set Europe on a path away from communism, where if you're not into communism, that was a great positive benefit, right? And the way it did that was in two years, based on this economic plan, in two years, it got Europe, World War II ravaged Europe,

back to production levels, 25% higher than the production levels it was at before World War II ravaged Europe back to production levels 25% higher than the production levels it was at before World War II in two years. So it just went back to normal plus 25% better. And Europe said, I kind of like this capitalism thing. And Western Europe went that way. I was kind of curious because the Brookings Institution gets a lot of like left-leaning criticism today. So I kind of wonder where that all came from. And the article I read said that is a victory of the conservative side to have

Brookings labeled liberal just from kind of pounding it in the press, even though its history and its member board throughout the history has not been liberal at all. And it has been filled from the top down over the years with rank-and-file Republicans and conservatives from like the Reagan era on through Bush one and two. Oh, okay. So they've gotten it across as liberal so that liberals will swallow the stuff that Brookings is putting out there? No. Why would they undermine their own think tank?

Well, I don't think it's not their own think tank. It's not a conservative think tank. Well, it's centrist, like almost right down the middle, from what I see. Right, but I think they want to advance their own, with their conservative think tanks, they want to advance them. So they label Brookings as super liberal. I got you. So anything centrist is liberal. I think that's the way it's going down. I'll bet that's what it is. Yeah.

I can't remember who scored it, but somebody has a liberal score between 0 and 100 for think tanks. And Brookings scored like a 53, right down the middle. Yeah. Like apparently as far as think tanks go, it's about as centrist as you possibly can get. Yeah, and they've been around for a long time. Makes a lot of sense. Yep. So not just Brookings. Brookings is definitely one of the most famous around the world and has done quite a bit of stuff. But there's plenty of others. There's the RAND Corporation is a very famous think tank. Which did you know RAND is actually a, I don't know what you'd call it,

but it started out as RND, like Research and Development, RAND Corporation. And from what I understand, they've come up with the ideas for computers, the internet, spy satellites, the space program, all that stuff that America did in the mid-20th century. Technologically? Yes. The RAND Corporation thinkers were the ones who came up with this stuff. Yeah, I think I knew some of that and I don't think it fully hit home that they were a think tank. Yeah.

With a name like the RAND Corporation, sounds like just a corporation. But they're like a think tank that's really specifically, or was specifically zoned into America's technology progression, I guess. Yeah, I mean a lot of think tanks can be specialized like that. Some are very much just concentrated on economics. Some concentrate on social issues, in that case, technology, and then I think some like Brookings are sort of a little more broad. Yeah. They'll take any case.

Right. They'll take all commerce. Yeah. So after World War II, like there were think tanks before, like you said, Brookings, Carnegie, the Royal United Services Institute in the UK. There were think tanks prior to World War II, but after World War II, they really proliferated. And the reason they started was government was just kind of government. In the early 20th century, it wasn't anything like you see it now.

It wasn't this monolithic behemoth that has its tendrils in every aspect of people's lives or anything. It was a little too far the other way, where it didn't quite know what it was doing. So some of those early philanthropists, like Carnegie and Brookings, they endowed these think tanks to kind of help government out, to basically be like the research arm for government

to help direct the best way for America to go. And that's how it started out. And then after World War II, when America had like all this cash and all this forward momentum, think tanks really popped up and there were all these kind of competing and then sometimes harmonious voices from these think tanks to say,

go this way, go this way, let's go this way. But they all had something in common and that was that they were staffed by very smart people who did very deliberate, very good research, who produced policy positions that lawmakers could then take themselves and go out to the people and say, see, this is what I'm talking about. Here's the data. Here's a sound bite for you to make you understand it. That's what think tanks did.

And in a way, they were, they very much were along the same track as lobbyists, which we did an episode on that. That was pretty good too. But think tanks stopped short of lobbying, allegedly. Yeah, because they kind of had to. Starting in 1913, they were granted tax exempt status, which is a very big deal because there's a lot of money involved in many of these. I've been trying to get that for myself for years. Taxing.

And you're right. It is a very big deal. The Church of Josh. just get it going. That's why I'm wearing this robe right now. In the 1950s though is when Congress really kind of, because they were tax exempt, had to get involved and say, hey, listen, you got to walk a line here politically. You can't, if you want to keep this tax exemption. And then I went, oh yeah, we for sure do. They said, you can't be

partisan. It's got to be good information. You can't slant things a certain way or support, officially support or endorse candidates. You are here to educate with your objective work. And that went along for a while. And then we started getting think tanks that set out to do just that, which they are called advocacy think tanks now, which I'm not sure how they manage to skirt, unless they change the rules, skirt those rules and say, hey, we're going to be a conservative think tanker or liberal think tank and still be tax exempt. Do you know?

The only thing that I can tell is that they are still technically producing a public good, or if they believe that they're producing a public good, even if they have conservative alignment or a liberal alignment, they're trying to move society along in a way that they think is good or for the betterment of society. That's what stuff you should know is. Dude, that's what I've been telling the government.

I mean, could we be a think tank? No. Absolutely not. I mean, think about it. I mean, I guess we could. I think that there's a, I don't, okay, let me take that back. No, we absolutely couldn't. I'm going to go with that.

Because we can't be brought to you by me undies at the same time. We don't have time. I don't know. That's a good question. But we don't have, yeah, you couldn't advertise and have like, you couldn't get advertiser money and be tax exempt. That's just too sweet. Yeah, like I doubt if the Brookings Institution's papers have like Burger King coupons on them.

You never know. They should. So we'll get to why we can't be later on. Okay. But one of the things about think tanks is the reason they have a tax-exempt status is what they're doing is producing work that furthers the public good. Yeah. That's why they're supposed to have tax-exempt status.

What you're pointing out is a really good thing to point out. Like, wait a minute, there's a lot of stuff here that they could lose their tax-exempt status for. And if we fast forward to three or five years from now, I think we're going to start seeing them lose tax-exempt status. They just haven't yet, I think is what it is. Yeah, because some of them flat out, like, it's so obvious when they come around. Like, when the Democrats were beaten in 2000, they got together and they started, left-leaning thinkers got together and started the Center for American

Progress, which is an economic organization. It says it's nonpartisan, but it literally says as a quote, their goal is to develop new policy ideas, critique the policy that stems from conservative values. That raises a flag. Challenges the media to cover the issues that truly matter and shape the national debate. Right. So, they're kind of flat out saying like we're out to prove, not just have an opinion about. Maybe that's a distinction, out to prove that conservative economic values are bad for the country.

Basically, yeah. Is that the difference maybe? It's like here's our data. I honestly don't know, dude. It's not a bunch of op-eds thrown together? So, no, it's not supposed to just be op-eds. It's supposed to be backed by data, yeah. But I mean like Center for American Progress or like the Heritage Foundation or like ALEC,

the American Legislative Exchange Council. Like these are like, and we're going to do a whole episode just on ALEC one day, okay? Seriously. But they're like little, they're like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar like karate training islands for liberals or for conservatives or for rich billionaire followers. It doesn't matter. That's what they are. They come up with new ideas to push their agenda,

and then they train activists to go out and get that message out, to change people's minds, to get themselves on CNN or Fox News or whatever, and to shape the public discussion on something. It has a lot of the contours of what think tanks used to have. But there's this whole other layer of like sinew and gristle there that think tanks aren't supposed to have. Should we take a break? Sure. All right, we'll take a break and we'll talk a little bit

more about the Heritage Foundation right after this. For so many people living with an autoimmune condition, the emotional toll is as real as the physical symptoms. Starting this May, join host, Martine Hackett for season 3 of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production, and partnership with Arginics. From myasthenia gravis, or MG, to chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, also known as CIDP, Untold Stories highlights the realities of navigating life with these conditions from challenges to triumphs.

This season, Martine and her guests discuss the range of emotions that accompany each stage of the journey. Whether it's the anxiety of misdiagnosis or the relief of finding support and community, nothing is off limits. And while each story is unique, the hope they inspire is shared by all. Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When the Taliban banned music in Afghanistan,

millions were plunged into silence. Radios were smashed, cassettes burned. You could be beaten or jailed or killed for breaking the rules. And yet, Afghans did it anyway. This is the story of how a group of people brought music back to Afghanistan by creating their own version of American Idol. The danger they endured. They said my head should be cut off.

The joy they brought to the nation. You're free completely. No one is there to destroy you. to destroy you. I'm John Legend. Listen to Afghan Star on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Guess what, Bingo? What's that, Will? So iHeart is giving us a whole minute to promote our podcast,

Part-Time Genius. I know. That's why I spent my whole week composing a haiku for the occasion. It's about my emotional journey in podcasting over the last seven years, and it's called Earthquake House. Mango, I'm going to cut you off right there. Why don't we just tell people about our show instead? Yeah, that's a better idea. So every week on Part-Time Genius, we feed our curiosity by answering the world's most important questions. Things like, when did America start dialing 911? Is William Shatner's best acting work in Esperanto?

Also, what happened to Esperanto? Plus we cover questions like how Chinese is your Chinese food? How do dollar stores stay in business? And of course, is there an Illuminati of cheese? There absolutely is, and we are risking our lives by talking about it. But if you love mind-blowing facts, incredible history, and really bad jokes, make your brains happy and tune in to Part-Time Genius. Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, 1980s, the Heritage Foundation, which you briefly mentored, mentored?

Sure. That's the new mention. Before we broke, they came about and said. We broke a long time ago, too. They said, all right, it's 1980s, we got Ronald Reagan in there. He is watching movies or asleep most of the time. So we have a good opportunity. That's what they want you to think. He has a good, did you see the numbers about his movie watching?

No. Oh, man, it's great. As a movie fan, it's great. How many movies did he watch a day? He watched a lot of movies. And this is like back when they just had like reels, right, film strips. I guess. They probably just, you know, cued the projector when he and Nancy wanted to watch a good old

fashioned western. Ooh, that was a good Reagan. Starring me. Can you do the rest of the episode as Reagan? No. So they came along and they said, all right, Reagan's in office. Here are our recommendations, what UPI would call a blueprint for grabbing the government by its frayed New Deal lapels and shaking out 48 years of liberal policy.

And it came by way of 2,000, more than 2,000 recommendations. Yeah, and they tried to institute about two-thirds of them, right? Yeah, Reagan was like, great. Bring them on. Here's my, thanks for the outline for what I should do. Right. My plans. Yeah, so two-thirds, like he said, during his two terms is what he tried to implement.

And then, of course, when Bill Clinton gets in there, the Progressive Policy Institute, I don't know if it was 2000 plus, but they offered similar recommendations. And that's how it goes with think tanks now. Right. Yeah, because if you're a lawmaker, and again we said this in the lobbying episode two, you're not necessarily like some smart whip crack sharp person. No, I think we've seen that played out. You can just like get people to vote for you. Yeah.

On both sides of the aisle. Oh, sure. It's not just a crack at like Trump or anything. Oh no, no, no. I mean, all up and down the House and Senate, you'd like to think they're all geniuses, but they're not. They're not, no. And you don't have to be smart to hold office. You just have to get people to vote for you again,

which is why think tanks have flourished for so long, why lobbyists have flourished for so long, because they're the ones who do the research and write the policy and say, here you go, you want to go look smart? Here you go, buddy. We've highlighted some sound bites for you to go say to people and get into the 24-hour news cycle.

And that's one of the big roles that think tanks play today and have, especially since World War II, is by going to policymakers and being like, here's your agenda, take or leave as much as you want, but all of this is backed by data. Like, it dovetails with what you want to do with the country and it is just gangbusters stuff. It's high quality, well researched stuff.

Yeah, it's really interesting because I think there are still think tanks that only craft, only do research and present it and say do what you will with it. But those seem to be more and more gone by the wayside. Yeah, 2010 was a real watershed year, it feels like, for think tanks. Yeah, like you mentioned Alec, which we're going to cover in full. But I mean mean they are a bill-writing organization.

They call them model bills. But I mean when you hear a senator or something say, you know, we crafted this legislation, what that probably means is an organization like ALEC handed them the legislation and said, you know, here it is if you want to use it. And you probably should want to use it. So that is, so ALEC I think does in many ways qualify as a think tank. They're not a 100% standard think tank. But actually writing the law.

And for the lawmaker to go and go into Congress and introduce it as their own bill. That's a little beyond what think tanks do. Think tanks more like write a paper that says, here's this problem in America, here's some ideas to solve it, here's this research to back up those ideas, go write a law based on it. What things like Alec does is take it a step further, but Alex still qualifies as a think tank. And Alec is part of something called the State Policy Network, which apparently is, there's one in every state and Puerto Rico, and they're like a confederation of think tanks that basically sit around and figure out ways

to sue local, state, and federal lawmakers over laws to try to get laws overturned. Like they use the courts rather than the legislation. But it's still the stated goal is to affect public policy and turn it in one direction or another. Yeah, what was the website that you sent? Sourcewatch? Yeah, Sourcewatch called them, called ALEC a corporate bill mill. Right.

So they're just churning out hundreds of bills a year. Not all of them get used, but many of them do. And it's just, I don't know, I don't think a lot of Americans realize that a lot of actual legislative policy is being written by. McDonald's. Yeah. Exactly. It's crazy.

I can't wait to do the Alec one. We're both going to be, well, our cars are going to blow up right after, but by God, we're going to get that episode. Maybe we should make that our last episode in the year, whatever, what's 20 years from now? 2000. No, that was 18 years ago. Oh, okay.

I used to love that bit though. Yeah, it was so good. All right. So, we got to talk about money here. Because this, they are not the independent, most times these days, they are not the independent organizations that you think they are. They used to be funded by these endowments and more and more it's corporations, large businesses, sometimes private individuals of course will give. And sometimes it's a great workaround for campaign finance laws. Instead of directing, you know,

tens of millions of dollars like you can't do to a campaign, you can throw it in a think tank that will probably get a better result anyway. That's new. The time was it used to be like a rich philanthropist would say, I hate poverty and the effects it has on Americans. Go figure this out. I'm going to fund a think tank. And that's what you're dedicated to. Like, just go make that happen. And that's what think tanks were originally born from, and that's largely the only kind of oversight they worked under,

is they were trying to end poverty, or they were trying to work against communism. Like, these huge, haughty goals. Now they're being micromanaged. That's one thing that's happening to them. Yeah, and the idea that these think tanks are not swayed or influenced or affected by their donors is not true. And sort of the biggest problem going is that now you have

legislation being drawn up by think tanks because corporations are paying money to get research that looks like it's in their favor. Yeah. So one of the problems is the, like there's not as many philanthropists who are just endowing think tanks with no strings attached anymore. There are plenty of philanthropists out there still that are funding think tanks, but their donations are directed. They're results-oriented. They're very technocratic, right? They want to see bang for their buck.

Whereas before it was just like, make America a better place. And that was it. There wasn't a lot of like, nobody's feet were being held to the fire, you know? Now it's like, we want you to further this specific agenda, which is we want to make sure that St. Louis' children, there's not a single one malnourished any longer. Right. Which is great. It's a great goal.

There's nothing wrong with that goal, but it's just so very narrowed and tailored, and there's ways that you can hold the think tank accountable, which is good on one hand, but it's also basically the introduction of like a corporate management to think tanks, which that's not really how they were originally formed and it's having a weird effect on them. So think tanks are starting to say, all right, thank you for this money, we'll go save the children of St. Louis. And by the way, shout out to St. Louis, that was a great show that one time.

Yeah, what a cool town. So again, saving the children of St. Louis, good stuff. But we've got all this other stuff we want to do too, so to keep that going, we're going to have to also go find sources elsewhere. Right. And again, you can find them from other people, but one of the places they're finding them from is corporations. And that is having a big negative impact on think tanks right now.

Yeah, and it goes both ways. In the past eight or ten years, conservative billionaires have – it says that here they funneled $120 million to about 100 groups in think tanks to do things like discredit climate change science. Which, I mean, dude. I know. The Koch brothers and Exxon Mobil specifically funded a couple of think tanks called Atlas Economic Research Foundation and the International Policy Network to basically question the science behind climate change to further fossil fuel interests,

which is, see you guys in hell for that one. Like what a crummy legacy to leave on Earth. Just to make a few extra bucks. Forget future generations, they can all burn. Forget all the endangered species that are on the brink of extinction that are, oh, wait, no, they're now extinct. It doesn't matter because we made a few extra billion dollars. That's despicable. Well, it's funny. I just watched the movie Chinatown for a movie crush episode and there's that, you ever seen that?

Yeah. and all these rich fat cats that were getting the water diverted there were buying up land in the valley, like hundreds of thousands of acres, because they knew it was going to be a lush green valley soon. So all that really happened in LA. Chinatown was based on that. But there's that great scene when Jack Nicholson confronts John Huston about, you know, he's the big bad guy, Noah Cross. And he says, you know, how much money do you need? How many more things can you buy or this or that? And he says, what are you trying to secure?

And he looked at him and he said, the future, Mr. Gittes. And that's what it is. They're not after more billions to buy more planes and a bigger house. They're trying to leave. That's what they want out of their legacy, is they're trying to affect the future in their own specific way. Right, but they're affecting the future

in the worst way possible. According to us. And the problem is. But not according to them. Sure. But if you polled enough people and just asked them plainly, if you took money and billionaires and power and all that out of it,

do you want a better future for humanity and for Earth 100 years from now? I would guess the majority of people would say yes. And if you can say, well, these guys are actually doing the opposite of ensuring that right now. How do you feel about that? Most people would say, I don't feel so great about that. The problem is most people would also follow up with, but what can we do?

They're rich and that's a great point. What can you do? Let me hop back on Facebook and find a goat video. That's when the hopelessness sets in and that's what's causing the paralysis in our world right now is hopelessness. That's not grim at all, is it? By the way, everybody, be sure to listen to my new podcast, The End of the World with Josh Clark. It's a really uplifting. Coming very soon.

Yeah, coming this fall sometime, eventually. Just stock up on your happy pills. Right? So in 2013, however, on the other side, left-leaning weekly magazine, The Nation, revealed the positions of the Left-Leaning Center for American Progress and other think tanks in DC are shaped by interest of their donors. So it happens on both sides of the aisle for sure.

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. No, it's an equal opportunity screwing that the world is getting from lobbying from think tanks from wealthy interests. Like it's both sides, yeah. So they're effectively unregistered lobbyist organizations now to a large degree. And because they're tax-exempt, they're not obligated to release financial statements or reveal their donors. So I'm surprised it took that long for people to be like, wait a minute, we can really take advantage here. So let's take another break and then we'll spell out what the advantages are of hiring

a think tank. For so many people living with an autoimmune condition, the emotional toll is as real as the physical symptoms. Starting this May, join host Martine Hackett for season three of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production, and partnership with Arginics. From myasthenia gravis, or MG, to chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, also known as CIDP, Untold Stories highlights the realities of navigating life with these conditions from challenges to triumphs. This season, Martine and her guests discuss the range of emotions that accompany each stage of the journey, whether it's the anxiety of misdiagnosis or the relief of finding support and community, nothing is off limits. And while each story is unique,

the hope they inspire is shared by all. Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When the Taliban banned music in Afghanistan, millions were plunged into silence. Radios were smashed, cassettes burned, you could be beaten or jailed or killed for breaking the rules. And yet, Afghans did it anyway. This is the story of how a group of people brought music back to Afghanistan by creating their own version of American Idol. The danger they endured. They said my head should be cut off.

The joy they brought to the nation. You're free completely. No one is there to destroy you. I'm John Legend. Listen to Afghan Star on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Guess what, Mango? What's that, Will? So iHeart is giving us a whole minute to promote our podcast, Part-Time Genius. I know.

That's why I spent my whole week composing a haiku for the occasion. It's about my emotional journey in podcasting over the last seven years, and it's called Earthquake House. Mango, Mango, I'm gonna cut you off right there. Why don't we just tell people about our show instead? Yeah, that's a better idea. So every week on Part-Time Genius, we feed our curiosity by answering the world's most important questions.

Things like, when did America start dialing 911? Is William Shatner's best acting work in Esperanto? Also, what happened to Esperanto? Plus, we cover questions like, how Chinese is your Chinese food? How do dollar stores stay in business? And of course, is there an Illuminati of cheese? There absolutely is, and we are risking our lives by talking about it. But if you love mind-blowing facts, incredible history, and really bad jokes, make your brains happy and tune into Part-Time Genius. Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Chuck, we're back. I'm a little warm under the collar.

I feel like we should mention this thing with the Walton Family Foundation quickly, because that's interesting. I think this is a great example of what a think tank can do these days. Yeah, it's obviously the Sam Walton family of Walmart fame, they fund a lot of conservative think tanks. I think most people know that. But then they also funded one and think tanks backed by Barack Obama when it came to the Affordable Health Care Act. And you're like, wait a minute, why would they do something like that if they're a conservative family supporting conservative causes?

Then you do a little poking around and it turns out that critics would say that the healthcare bill that forced employers to pay for their employees' healthcare tax, Walmart was like, this is great because we can afford to do this, but our mom and pop competitors can't. So we're actually going to try and get this pushed through. Even though at its face it doesn't quite make a lot of sense. It makes sense to them. Like why would Walmart take on the cost of their employees' healthcare? Because they

know that they can. Like go back to sleep everybody. Stop asking questions. It's really interesting. It is. It's fascinating. But that's one thing you can do is donate to a think tank that's furthering your agenda. And because think tanks are now largely agenda-driven, there's a lot of think tanks out there that can help you out. And there's a new thing that's happening with think tanks these days, is they're starting to solicit corporate donations.

And one of the saddest stories is the story of the Brookings Institution. The most centrist think tank that has put out the Marshall Plan that helped figure out the New Deal and how it addressed the Depression, like has done all this amazing stuff, is now they hired a lobbyist for their strategic development chief and they're now soliciting corporate donations left and right. Yeah.

And they're basically, this is what you can get. Like if you hire a think tanker, I'm sorry, you're not supposed to say hire. If you enter into a partnership or donate to a think tank in your corporation, or a very wealthy person, what the think tank will do is they will basically get your ideas out there. They will deploy. So first of all, let's say there's this really great New York Times article about the, what was the name of that company? The Lennar Corporation? Okay.

They wanted to build in San Francisco, they wanted to redevelop the site in San Francisco, which, whatever. Apparently there was pushback on it or they were getting some sort of pushback from the residents in San Francisco. So, I guess the Brookings Institution went to them and said, hey, we've got some ideas for you. We can support this as basically like a great idea for cities of the future.

And we're going to lend the credibility of our experts and our think tank to your project and make it like a champion kind of thing, like a blue type, an archetype for how to further cities in America, your development project, they're home builders. But with Brookings Institution behind it, there was a veneer of something bigger than building homes, bigger than redeveloping, something about the future

and progress. And Brookings went to them and in exchange for 400 grand, Brookings added this credibility to it, got talking heads out there on the news to talk up this development and like what it meant for the future. And one of the other things they did and can do is they can set up summits, conferences on cities of the future and get the home builders and lawmakers into the same room to hang out together. And so that's lobbying. Sure.

There's no other way to put it. Yeah. That is lobbying and they were doing it on behalf of a specific corporation. There should be no tax exemption whatsoever any longer. Yeah. It doesn't matter what side of the aisle you're on, if you're a taxpayer, you are funding that. Yeah.

By, by, through these tax exemptions. Because we foot the bill for tax deduction. Sure. funding that by through these tax exemptions. Because we foot the bill for tax deduction. So if a single corporation's interests are being served, even if society in general is benefiting in some way, that's too much of a slippery slope that breaks the tax exemption status and that should go away. And that sadly is apparently where Brookings, the direction Brookings is going. And others too I should say.

Oh sure, sure. Even the ones that aren't maybe as outright or aren't as bald-faced about this stuff, like a lot of scholars say that bought and paid for research is sort of the exception still. But even so, there's still places where you may not push out certain research if you think it might piss off your boss. Yeah, which is the same thing. Or sort of self-censor yourself if you think like, oh man, I don't know, like we're getting donations now, like this might not please them. It might make them look bad, so I probably should just avoid this conclusion.

Yeah, so maybe not like completely inventing a study or something, but being very selective in what you choose to research or how you research it or what you release. Sure. Is, you know, it's another version of the same thing. It totally is. And one of the other things that they've been found to do, a lot of think tanks, or one of the new things that think tanks do, is they will circulate drafts before there's a final draft to donors. Like, what do you think about this?

And sometimes their opinions will be incorporated into the final draft. That is the antithesis of the spirit of think tanks and what they were originally meant to do. They were supposed to be like, here's the facts, here's the research to back it up, it is what it is. We think you can apply it to make the world better in this way, not, what do you guys think? Does this jibe with the kind of sinks you selected for this redevelopment? Because we can change this part to jibe with the sinks you chose. That's just not what it's supposed to be. And the reason that think tanks are doing this is they are in existential danger

through the death of expertise. That, remember, I talked about in the elimination diet episode. Yeah. The problem is it's not like America just said, we're sick of expertise, we're tired of you experts, like, you're always right, and we're tired of you experts, like you're always right, and we're tired of hearing you're always right. People got tired of being lied to,

and misled, and misinformed, and manipulated, and they finally said, you know what, experts, that's enough. Enough of you are full of it, enough of you have let your credibility be co-opted, we're just not going to listen to any of you anymore, because we don't know who to trust. And the experts brought about the death of expertise themselves in large part. Yeah. And there's another, there was this article from the Washington Post called

Our Think Tank's Obsolete, which sort of argues along those lines about and also incorporates the Internet and the length of like a research cycle. Like with the Internet and Twitter and Facebook and things like TED Talks, there's a guy, Donald Abelson, a professor at University of Western Ontario, wrote a book called The Think Tank's Matter where his conclusion basically is that the marketplace of ideas, he says, has become congested. And you don't have time anymore to do a 12-month research proposal to come to the following conclusions when 100 TED Talks over that 12 months will be published. Not picking on TED Talks are great.

No, it's a good example, though. But you can push out a TED Talk, you can push out a Facebook Live video as an economist and have a lot of sway. They mention in here in the article about vaccines. For instance, as far as it goes with the vaccines, Iran Corporation, one of the largest think tanks that we already mentioned, they did like a very thorough deep dive in research debunking the notion that vaccines cause autism. And it took a long time. But you can get on Facebook and go to a group called Educate Before You Vaccinate

and watch videos by non-experts and people are swayed these days by this stuff. Like why wait? You know, the news cycle is so shortened. You can't wait for a long deep dive research paper to come out with some abstract summary that no one reads anyway. And apparently now they're written in such a way where they will just say abstract summary, this stinks. We shouldn't do it. You know they've become so opinionated. I don't know, man. It's just, it's depressing to think that Facebook and Twitter have outsized a think tank as far as influence. They definitely have.

Yeah. And YouTube and basically anything that gives a voice to the average person, which on the one hand is really cool and great. Sort of democratizes it in a way, but in the worst way at times. But it's tied into this death of expertise in a really toxic manner. You know what I'm saying? Like the two, that democratization of like giving everybody like a mouthpiece is not in and of itself like a bad thing. But since it coincided with the loss in trust and experts and expertise, that's where the problem came from.

And that was the reason why we couldn't be a think tank. Sadly, we could be a think tank now. But we couldn't be a bona fide think tank because, Chuck, we don't have enough time in any given week to do so much thorough primary source research into stuff. If we release one of these every couple months, sure, we could be like a real think tank, but it wouldn't be nearly as fun. Six episodes a year. People would love that.

Yeah, they'd love it. You got anything else? Nope. I guess I don't either. Sorry for going off, everybody. Thanks for listening. I'm I don't either. Sorry for going off everybody. Thanks for listening. I'm sure I'll get some email. But whatevs.

It was worth it. If you want to know more about think tanks, well I don't know, go on the internet and look up some think tanks and see if there's any that you agree with. A lot of them have like daily interpretations of news that kind of go through their lens. Yeah. It's a way to keep up with things. Sure. And you can also read this article on how stuff works,

it's not a think tank, called How Think Tanks Work. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this a ballpoint pen addiction, or just pen addiction. Hey guys, been listening for a couple of months or so, new listener. You were my first foray into podcasts. I just really enjoy listening to you, too Welcome. I saw the ballpoint pen podcast and I could not pass it up I have a bit of a pen problem. You see I own many

Many pens, especially the gel type ink rollerball pens. Yeah You got taken a task by quite a few people who were just like, Josh Clark, heresy, gel pens? Yeah. There are a lot of, I guess, traditionalists who've boo-booed that. I think they're great. I got a lot of support for that one too. Agreed.

We got a lot of pen recommendations. It was good to see. Yeah. And here's another one. I own many, many pens, especially the gel ink rollerball pens. I also own a collection of Sharpies in various tip widths and colors. I probably have a couple of gallon size Ziploc bags worth.

You mentioned the way certain pens write on certain types of paper. I think it's probably the rollerball gel pens that work best on the thermal paper that they use in most restaurants. Remember I was talking about signing the check? I think that's what she's talking about. We still never found out what that thing's called.

Thermal paper. No, no, the thing that the check comes out in, the little portfolio. The clamshell. Someone actually sent, did you see that? Yeah. This great couple sent in a picture of a clamshell check delivery system.

What are they called? I don't know. Check caddy? We're gonna name them clamshells now. That's the new name for them. So I have a favorite pen, though, guys. I buy them by the box. It's the Pilot V-Ball B-Green pen, the 0.5 millimeter.

OK. I love the way they feel when they write. I can't go back to ballpoint pens. I use them at work. I carry at least three in my bag, and I draw and doodle with them. Using them on a newsprint pad is my favorite thing when doing word art. Sorry for the ramble, guys.

Have a great day. That is from Davini M. Berry. Davini Berry? Davini M. Berry. M. Berry. I wasn't going, mmm, Berry. Okay. Well, I didn't know if Davini's middle initial was M or if I was mishearing you in Davini

and Berry. It's actually Davina,hearing you in Davini and Berry. It's actually Davina, excuse me. Davina and Berry. If I would have said Davina and Berry, that would have been much more clear. Or Embury. It might be Davina Embury. We'll just say Davina.

Or Davina. Oh God. How about D-E? Thanks, D-E. It's D-I. Mwah! Well, at any rate, we're glad that you started listening to us. We appreciate it and thanks for taking the time to let us know about your pen addiction.

Totally fine with us. If you want to let us know about something you're super into, you can hang out with us on social meds. You can go to stuffyoshouldknow.com and find all of our social media links. You can also send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. For so many people living with an autoimmune condition like myasthenia gravis or chronic

inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, the emotional toll can be as real as the physical symptoms. That's why, in an all-new season of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition from Ruby Studio and Argenics, host Martin Hackett gets to the heart of the emotional journey for individuals living with these conditions. To find community and inspiration on your journey, listen now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the story of how a group of people brought music back to Afghanistan by creating their own version of American Idol.

The joy they brought to the nation. You're free completely. No one is there to destroy you. The danger they endured. They said my head should be cut off. I'm John Legend. Listen to Afghan Star on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. More, more, more, more, more, better. Hey, I'm Melissa Fumero, and I'm Stephanie Beatriz. You may know us from television.

Night, night. And now we're here with our very own podcast, More Better with Stephanie and Melissa. Join us as we take on topics like listening to yourself, the challenge of self-care, and making friends as an adult. We're gonna share our struggles, we're gonna speak to experts, and making friends as an adult. We're going to share our struggles. We're going to speak to experts. And we're going to share everything we learn with you.

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