The episodes are an hour plus and most could be 10 minutes. They make good points most of the time but the presentation is terrible.
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They try a little too hard to be edgy.
In other news, OTM is still excellent even without Bob.
You all should just listen to Citation Needed instead
for some unknown reason ezra klein decided to interview ross douchehat, and holy cow is this an embarassment for EK, he just absolutely lets douchebag walk all overhim, offers zero pushback when he says something dumb like “the democrats have suddenly moved way left” or “it’s no big deal that texas is literally re-writing history books because kids don’t pay attention in school anyway” etc. absolute clown hour.
if you liked that here is some related non-podcast content Why is the English spelling system so weird and inconsistent? | Aeon Essays
If anyone can get a link to download the new 5-4 I’d appreciate it. All I can find are streams on apple and shit
Not sure what you mean but here is a pocketcast link with a download button.
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New 5-4 starts out pretty humdrum with the case analysis, but picks up steam greatly in the second half, when they put the case in context. It’s brilliant and horrifying. Best pod out there by a mile imo.
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Malcolm Nance embarrassing Shapiro on Real Time last night was pretty great. Forgot how idiotic his straw man arguments were.
New 5-4 outstanding as always. Made me so infuriated at bryer
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@lawbros I seem to remember years ago reading about a Supreme Court justice who was old and clearly in failing health who wouldn’t accept it. He went on TV (I think) to silence the haters by like kicking a football or throwing a fastball or something, absolutely beefed it and ended up retiring because of it. I was reminded by that episode and haven’t been able to find out who it was. It may not have been a SC justice, just some Circuit guy or whatever. I’ve a notion it was the late '70s/early '80s. Anyone know?
Got a hell of a laugh out of the last Chapo podcast episode
But also a little anger too
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Listened to a bunch of 5-4 eps now. That Peter/The Law Boy guy is great, not so keen on the others but they’re OK. They have a tendency to do stuff like over-explain or restate jokes which is a bit distracting but I’ve started listening from the beginning and maybe they’ll get more comfortable. The information is decent but I wish they’d criticise liberal reasoning occasionally and not just be reliable regurgitators of liberal orthodoxy.
For example, one interesting thing they said (in the affirmative action episode) was that family income is a better correlate of performance in college than SAT scores are. Because I thought this was so interesting, I looked it up and discovered it’s not true:
Critics of educational admissions tests assert that tests measure nothing other than socioeconomic status (SES), and that their apparent validity in predicting academic performance is an artifact of SES. We examine relationships among SAT®, SES, and freshman grades in 41 colleges and universities and show that (a) SES is related to SAT scores (r = 0.42 among the population of SAT takers), (b) SAT scores are predictive of freshman grades (r = 0.47 corrected for school-specific range restriction), and (c) statistically controlling for SES reduces the estimated SAT-grade correlation from r = 0.47 to r = 0.44. Thus, the vast majority of the SAT–grade relationship is independent of SES: The SAT–grade relationship is not an artifact of common influences of SES on both test scores and grades.
That is, while it’s true (for a variety of factors) that lower SES means both lower grades and lower test scores, it’s not true that SAT scores are not highly predictive of scores in college. To be clear, I’m a supporter of affirmative action as a means of redressing the effect of SES, but looking up a surprising assertion like this and finding it not true makes me wonder how much of the show is what it sounds like - recycled liberal orthodoxy - and how much is actually well-researched. This contrasts with something like You’re Wrong About, which is obviously presented from a particular political viewpoint but is well-researched and will sometimes call out liberal doctrine as wrong.
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i find that they criticize liberals over their judicial policies quite a lot, eg justices retiring, dragging sure loser cases through the courts. perhaps they don’t criticize on other social issues.
that said, iirc SAT scores was not a very stable predictor year to year, some of it had to do with versions of the exam, and scoring changes. it also was a worse predictor (when i went to college) once you normalized for things like sat prep courses and tutors, which is hugely dependent on income too. i think every year more and more universities stop requiring sat/act scores, and some don’t consider it at all.
The Predictive validity and powers section on the Wikipedia for SAT section makes it sound pretty well-established that SAT is a good predictor, but I’m not an expert. The section “preparation” also says the effect size of preparation is very small. Basically it looks like you can’t buy a good SAT score and the SES differences are from baked-in stuff like better nutrition or better early childhood education or whatever; I’m sure there are zillions of factors.
no i don’t buy that. i clicked on the study reference but i cant get into whether it had any flaws. like probably taking three random prep classes two weeks before the test isn’t going to super helpful. but the wiki mentions many more findings and opinions, like prep industry is rife with useless courses, coaching seemed to help some students and not help others, and coaching has an effect upto 55 pts total, to coaching helps the math version the most.
it would totally make sense that math tests can be trained with tutors. and some tutors are better than others. it just might be whoever has the most access to better teachers that does best.
Latest Chapo on David Frum had me fuming. He’s such a weasily wormy coward.
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The Thursday ep is nutting about Joe Biden being against the deep state.
Mixed feelings on that episode because it has a good reading series.
They lost their way a little recently imo but the last 2 chapos have been perfect. Them becoming the no 1 Joe biden fan club is just great. And they’re correct no other president including hypothetical president Bernie could have done this. Only an obstinate “Irish” prick who isn’t sure what year it is could have.
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They’re at their best when they’re genuinely mad. The David Frum reading series was great.
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