First order of business: Next week, we’re recording a finance mailbag! Please send us your money questions, horror stories, or anything else. Leave a voicemail at (860) 325-0286 or email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com.

You can hardly go for a drive, take a walk in the neighborhood, or turn on a television without being bombarded by ridiculous ads for personal injury lawyers. Are these flamboyant characters legitimate legal representation or scammers? This week, we find out how personal injury firms work, why they advertise so heavily, and how to discern a legit lawyer from a scammy “settlement mill” looking for a quick pay-day.

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Our guests this week are personal injury lawyer John Morgan (Morgan & Morgan), Stanford legal scholar Nora Freeman Engstrom and journalist Jose Martinez from The City Reporter.

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If you like this episode, you’ll enjoy our look into the world of dentistry:

Related Links:

• Read about Prof. Engstrom’s paper on competition and contingency fees here. (Full paper available here)

• Jose Martinez for The City Reporter: ‘Billboard Lawyers’ Defend Ads and Tactics Amid MTA Push for Lawsuit Reform

• You can buy John Morgan’s memoir “Life is Luck” here.

• Didn’t make it into the episode but I highly recommend this great and extremely relevant story by Patrick Radden Keefe for The New Yorker: The Car-Crash Conspiracy.

Have a question you want us to answer? Email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at ‪(860) 325-0286

Thanks and we’ll see you next week!

I recently had a child. Or more accurately, my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby girl while I stood next to her giving words of encouragement like a tennis coach. It’s been almost 5 months since then, and I think it’s the most important and meaningful thing I’ve ever taken part in.

It turns out though, that having a kid (or multiple kids) is becoming increasingly uncommon. According to data from the CDC, the birth rate here in the states is on a steep decline. In the 60s, American families were having 3.5 kids on average, and today, we’re only popping out ~1.6. The “replacement rate,” which is the number all of the experts are concerned about, is 2.1, meaning one person has to give birth to 2.1 kids on average in order for the society that person lives in to replace its population (the 0.1 number compensates for kids who don’t make it to adulthood, and the fact that for whatever reason, the human race produces more men than women).

On today’s episode, I ask whether Noah and Devan want kids, as part of a conversation about why the birth rate is declining around the world. Then we hear from Anna Louie Sussman, author of the upcoming book “Inconceivable: The Impossibility of Family in an Age of Uncertainty,” about what’s actually causing the birth rate to decline, and then I have a heartfelt conversation with writer (and fellow dad) .

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Preorder Anna’s book here, and check out Derek’s Substack here.

Derek Thompson

A newsletter about abundance and building a better world.

And one more thing… Are you a diet soda head? We want to hear from you! Call us at (860) 325-0286 or send us a voice memo at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com. Tell us three things:

1. What’s your diet soda of choice?

2. Why do you drink it? (taste/health)

3. How often do you have one?

If you like the show, drop us a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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Our guests are Robert Klemko, an investigative journalist at ESPN who previously reported on auditors and cop watchers for The Washington Post, and Dale Hiller, creator of the LackLuster YouTube channel and co-founder of Attorney Shield.

If you’re new here, listen to episode 28: Inside the violent world of online pedophile hunters and check out our NST starter pack.

The audit that led to Turner v. Driver

Robert’s ride-along with Chris Ruff

The incident that helped launch Dale’s YouTube channel

Follow us on Instagram @nosuchthing.show.

Have a question you want us to answer? Email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at ‪(860) 325-0286

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If you like the show, drop us a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts, and share with a friend, family member, coworker, neighbor, mail deliverer, and/or roommate. It really helps a lot!

We’re back with another episode of NO SUCH THING. This week, we’re talking about so-called “Super-Agers,” the term used to describe people who are at least 80 years old, but are still sharp as a tack.

Maury Povich. Joy Behar. Anthony Fauci. Bernie Sanders. Martha Stewart. There are a ton of octogenarians who are cognitively impressive. Of course, there are many who… aren’t. What differentiates these two groups?

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A new study out of Northwestern endeavors to answer that question, and in today’s episode, we talked to one of the study’s authors, and to one of the super-agers in question.

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Below are some of the clips we refer to in the episode, as well as the memory test I made Noah take.

• Take the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning test I made Noah do a version of (requires downloading an app).

And if you liked this episode, you might be interested in this one from a year ago:

Any lingering questions? Let us know in the comments below, email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com, or leave a voicemail at ‪(860) 325-0286.

And as always, if you’re a fan of the show, please leave us a five-star rating wherever you listen to podcasts and write a nice review. It really helps a lot.

That’s all for now!

This week, I’m excited to finally share an episode that we started working on back in October 2025. It took hours of interviews, research, conversation, and self-reflection, and I hope that comes across in the final edit.

We’re talking about circumcision: Why do we do it? Should we do it? And why does this issue in particular seem to get people so intensely fired up? I find it to be an endlessly fascinating subject and I hope you do too, no matter where you fall on it.

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Our guests this week are Johns Hopkins epidemiologist Dr. Kate Grabowski, Vanderbilt University associate professor of sociology Laura Carpenter, and Intact America founding executive Georganne Chapin (You can buy her memoir This Penis Business here).

Dr. Grabowski lays out the history of the procedure in America, why it became so widespread, and explains the studies that have found it to reduce HIV transmission. Then, Professor Carpenter tells us how the anti-circumcision movement emerged at a time when there was a broader questioning of society: hippies, women’s health, patients’ rights and a general questioning of authority and bodily autonomy. Georganne Chapin, a leader in the anti-circumcision movement, makes the case against circumcision, arguing that it’s an overreach of parental consent. Lastly, we discuss changing attitudes towards circumcision, as rates continue to decline steadily. Take a listen and let us know what you think in the comments below.

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As always, due to time restraints, not everything can make it into the final episode. And as this is such a sensitive subject (no pun intended…), I tried to represent all sides of the issue fairly, respectfully, and with proper attention to detail. If you want to dig into the topic yourself, just scroll down to find medical research, arguments, counter-arguments, and much more. NST has no particular agenda to push here, so please take it all in and decide how you feel.

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Further reading

Below are related links for further reading, roughly corresponding to the order in which they appear in the episode.

• Johns Hopkins Study: Newborn Male Circumcision Rates in U.S. Dropped Between 2012 and 2022, Find the full study here, PDF here

  

• The Case Against Circumcision, by Scott Raab for Esquire

• Book: Circumcision: A History Of The World’s Most Controversial Surgery, by David Gollaher.

  

• “Partial Paralysis from Reflex Irritation, Caused by Congenital Phimosis and Adherent Prepuce” (1870), by Lewis Albert Sayre, Recent analysis by Matthew Tontonoz

• If You Prick Us: Masculinity and Circumcision Pain in the United States and Canada, 1960–2000, by our guest, sociologist Laura Carpenter.

• American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) statements on circumcision in 1989 (including discussion of 1971 and 1975 recommendations) and 2012.

• Intact America’s surveys can be found here, including the 2020 solicitation survey on mothers being asked by healthcare providers about circumcision.

• Impact of male circumcision on risk of HIV infection in men in a changing epidemic context – systematic review and meta-analysis These are the randomized controlled trials referred to by Grabowski and Chapin.

• The Effects of Medical Male Circumcision on Female Partners’ Sexual and Reproductive Health

• Rates of Adverse Events Associated with Male Circumcision in U.S. Medical Settings, 2001 – 2010

• Dr. Grabowski responds to charges that the sub-Saharan Africa studies have been discredited, and explains why similar associations between HIV and circumcision status have not been seen elsewhere.

  • “Those studies have not been discredited. In fact, the three randomized controlled trials conducted in Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa are considered among the strongest pieces of evidence in HIV prevention research and demonstrated a substantial reduction in HIV acquisition among heterosexual men. The findings were sufficiently consistent that the trials were stopped early because of clear benefit.

    “The main reason results differ from studies conducted in North America or Europe is that the epidemics and predominant modes of transmission are very different. In sub-Saharan Africa, the trials were conducted primarily among heterosexual men acquiring HIV through vaginal intercourse. In contrast, HIV epidemics in North America and much of Europe are concentrated among men who have sex with men (MSM), where anal intercourse is the predominant mode of transmission. The biological protection associated with circumcision appears much stronger for vaginal sex than for receptive anal sex, which carries substantially higher transmission risk through different mucosal mechanisms.

    “There is some evidence suggesting circumcision may reduce HIV risk among MSM who predominantly practice insertive anal sex, but the protective effect is smaller and less consistent than what was observed among heterosexual men in Africa. Many observational studies in Europe and North America also face important limitations, including lower HIV incidence in heterosexual populations, differences in sexual networks, and difficulty adequately controlling for behavioral confounding.

    “People sometimes argue that the African findings are not generalizable outside Africa. I do not find that biologically persuasive for heterosexual transmission. There is no evidence that the underlying penile biology differs geographically. Rather, the differences are driven largely by differences in transmission routes, sexual practices, and epidemic structure.”

• Grabowski on follow-ups, payments, and satisfaction rates.

  • “Follow-up across the three major trials was approximately 90%, which is considered excellent retention for longitudinal clinical research. High retention is important because it reduces the likelihood that findings are biased by differential loss to follow-up.

    “Participants were not “paid to be circumcised.” As is standard in biomedical research, men in both study arms received modest reimbursement for transportation and time spent attending study visits. These reimbursements were reviewed and approved by ethical review boards and were not considered coercive. Importantly, compensation was not contingent on choosing circumcision.

    “With regard to adverse events, the trials carefully monitored complications and published detailed safety data in the world’s top medical journals. Serious adverse events were uncommon across all three studies. Subsequent systematic reviews have similarly found that complication rates are generally low when circumcision is performed in appropriate medical settings by trained providers using sterile technique. When discussing low complication rates, it is important to specify that this refers to procedures performed in safe clinical environments.

    “On satisfaction surveys, it is always possible that some degree of social desirability or “white coat” bias influences self-reported outcomes in clinical studies. However, if there had been widespread regret or major dissatisfaction, one would expect that to emerge more clearly across multiple studies and long-term follow-up evaluations. It largely did not. In the Ugandan, female partners were also interviewed, and their responses were generally consistent with those reported by men.”

• Grabowski on comparisons to female genital mutilation (FGM), sometimes called “female circumcision.”

  • “I really would suggest avoiding the term “female circumcision” and instead use the term Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), which is the standard terminology used by major international health organizations. The comparison between male circumcision and FGM is medically and anatomically misleading because the procedures are fundamentally different in extent, intent, and consequences.

    “FGM typically involves partial or complete removal of the clitoris and/or other external female genital tissue, often with the explicit purpose of suppressing female sexuality and sexual pleasure. Many forms of FGM are associated with substantial immediate and long-term harms, including severe pain, infection, childbirth complications, sexual dysfunction, and psychological trauma. There are no recognized medical benefits.

    “Safe medical male circumcision, by contrast, involves removal of the foreskin covering the tip of the penis. It does not remove the glans itself, which is the primary structure involved in sexual sensation for men. The foreskin does contain nerve endings associated with light-touch sensitivity, and researchers appropriately evaluated sexual satisfaction and function in the HIV prevention trials to assess whether circumcision negatively affected sexual experience. Overall, those studies did not demonstrate major reductions in sexual satisfaction or function.

    “Honestly, I think equating the two procedures really minimizes the severity and harms of FGM. From a medical and public health standpoint, they are distinct procedures with very different implications, risk profiles, and ethical contexts.”

• For more info on HIV prevention, here’s a debrief on PrEP, shown to reduce the risk of getting HIV by as much as 99%, and you can learn about Doxy PEP here.

• Circumcision rates lower in states where Medicaid does not cover procedure, from UCLA

• Birth-dose hepatitis B vaccination rates plunged more than 10 percentage points in past 2 years, study suggests

• Circumcision Down In U.S., Partly Due To Parental Mistrust Of Doctors, Study Says

Some other miscellaneous stories:

• ‘Foreskin Man’ Anti-Circumcision Comic Called Anti-Semitic; Could Sway San Francisco Vote. Sadly we didn’t have time to keep this in the episode, but I think the saga of “Foreskin Man” helps illuminate some of the more alienating tactics used by the anti-circumcision movement, which certainly grab attention but may push many people away from grappling with the cause.

  

• How intactivist’s anti-circumcision movement was co-opted by the alt-right, by Daisy Schofield for Dazed

• A Botched Circumcision and Its Aftermath, by Gary Shteyngart for The New Yorker

• The Men Who Want Their Foreskins Back, by Bianca Bosker for New York Magazine/The Cut

Any questions we didn’t answer for you? Let us know in the comments below, email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at ‪(860) 325-0286.

Lastly, if you’re a fan of the show, please leave us a five-star rating wherever you listen to podcasts and write a nice review. It really helps a lot. Thanks and we’ll be back soon!

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! Please take a second to fill out this NST Listener Survey here. It’ll help us as we plan next season's programming.

On today’s episode, we’re tackling a question from a listener named Joel: Why do we only hear pronounced accents in country music songs?

Our guest this week is New Yorker writer Kelefa Sanneh. In this wide-ranging conversation, we explore identity in country music, why Taylor Swift stopped singing with a twang, how Drake changed the way people think about authenticity in hip-hop and why Adele and Harry Styles don’t sound British when they sing.

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Here’s all the music from today’s episode:

(Apple Music playlist)

Check out Kelefa’s book Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres.

If you’re new here, listen to episode 36: Is Taylor Swift bigger than Michael Jackson? and check out our NST starter pack.

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NST Recommends: We’re enjoying the podcast The Culture Journalist by Emilie Friedlander and Andrea Domanick. Both culture writers with sharp takes on the world’s emerging trends, their episodes uncover the shadowy technological, economic, and political forces lurking beneath the surface of 21st-century music, film/television, style, and media. Read and listen here:

the culture journalist

A podcast about the future of culture, with Emilie Friedlander and Andrea Domanick.

By Emilie Friedlander

Have a question you want us to answer? Email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at ‪(860) 325-0286

Lastly, if you love me, drop us a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts, and share it with your coolest friend.

First up: please take the NST Listener Survey here so we can make the show better! It’s great to get your feedback so we can figure out what’s working moving forward.

This week’s topic came from a listener who asked if micromanaging is a more productive work-style than a more “free range” approach. We used this topic as an excuse to take a trip down memory lane, back to when Devan was a cruel, frankly nasty manager to little old me and Manny. Also covered: performance improvement plans (“PIPs”), handling an incompetent boss, office odors, and more.

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Our guest this week is , historian at Harvard, editor at and author of Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America, who walks us through the history of the corporate work structure and evolution of management styles. Take a listen to the episode and let us know what kind of workflow you prefer. Scroll down for links to research and more.

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Related links

• Micromanagement: When to avoid it and how to use it effectively

• The Micromanagement Disease: Symptoms, Diagnosis, and Cure

• Micromanagement: A Systematic Literature Review and Future Research Agenda

• Survey Reveals Employee Productivity Averages 2 Hours and 53 Minutes a Day

• How Productive Is the Average Person At Work? Key Statistics for 2025

• More Harm Than Good: The Truth About Performance Reviews

• The Most Hated Way of Firing Someone Is More Popular Than Ever. It’s the Age of the PIP.

Recommended reading: We enjoyed this piece on work-life in pop culture and why the Obama-era comedy is still timely during Trump 2.0. Check out similar pieces from the Ministry of Pop Culture.

Ministry of Pop Culture

Three award-winning authors go obsessively deep on movies, TV, and culture. Saved a seat on the couch for you.

I also highly recommend picking up a copy of Studs Terkel’s book Working. Great one for the nightstand.

Have a question you want us to answer? Email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at ‪(860) 325-0286.

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Lastly, if you like the show, drop us a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts, and share with a friend, family member, coworker, neighbor, mail deliverer, and/or roommate. It really helps a lot!

Leave a comment

Before we get into this week’s show, we want to point you to our very first NST listener survey. We want to hear from you all to get some feedback on what you like about the show, what you don’t like, and more. Just fill out this survey right here. Okay, now time for this week’s episode.

Growing up, we were told to always recycle plastic to save the planet. But does recycling actually do anything? In this special two-part investigation, we explore the history of recycling, the rise of “disposable” plastics, and find out how effective recycling actually is.

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In part one (with the help of Nayeema Raza, host of Smart Girl Dumb Questions), we hear from Davis Allen, PhD, Senior Investigative Researcher at the Center for Climate Integrity, who alleges that plastic recycling is a deceptive story created by fossil fuel and petrochemical companies to make us feel guilty for using the very plastics which they profit from. Davis says recycling is a distraction from the real problem.

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In part two, we visit a recycling center here in New York and speak with Kara Napolitano, Education Director at Circular Services to find out how recycling actually works, learn the amount of bottles that actually make it to the recycling facility, and reckon with our own individual impact to determine if recycling is a viable solution to our climate crisis or simply a feel-good placebo in an ever-expanding consumer culture. Take a listen and let us know what you think. Scroll down to see some photos and videos from our field trip, links to the Center for Climate Integrity’s reports, and more.

Leave a comment

Here’s some footage from our field trip the Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility:

And check out Circular Service’s Instagram page for some more informative videos, like this:

Related links!

• Check out the Center for Climate Integrity’s report here: The Fraud of Plastic Recycling

• Nayeema’s video for the New York Times:

• Science History Institute on 1950’s plastic bag deaths: This Bag Is Not a Toy

  

• NYC’s Waste Characterization Studies

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Have a question you want us to answer? Email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at ‪(860) 325-0286.

And once, more, just in case: fill out the NST listener survey here.

Lastly, if you like the show, drop us a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts, and share with a friend, family member, coworker, neighbor, mail deliverer, and/or roommate. It really helps a lot!

This week, we dig in to the so-called reading crisis running rampant in our schools. News outlets are constantly reporting on the death of reading. School test scores by measures like the “Nation’s Report Card” say math and literacy levels are down to their lowest rates since the early 1990s. Schools aren’t even assigning full books in class anymore. Are things really as bad as they seem? And if so, does it actually matter? To find out, we spoke to children’s book author Jason Reynolds, an active Chicago public school teacher, and a professor who’s looked into the actual research and says the literacy crisis doesn’t even exist!

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Our guests this week are author Jason Reynolds, professor Paul Thomas, and teacher Kelsey Clodfelter. Take a listen to the episode and let us know in the comments what you think. Have we evolved past the need for reading? How can we get people to value books again?

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Related links

• Washington Post: Professor Thomas’ op-ed debunking the reading crisis

• The Atlantic: America Is Sliding Towards Illiteracy

• Check out this post from Paul’s Substack to dig more into the “Science of Reading”

@stillateacheri will never give up on the novel 📚#teacher #teachertok #teachersoftiktok #englishteacher #literature

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• Buy Jason’s book Soundtrack

• New data on American reading habits from Pew Research Center

• EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ http://www.nordvpn.com/nst Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee

If you liked this episode, you might like our early episodes on audiobooks and phones in schools:

Email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at ‪(860) 325-0286.

And lastly, if you’re a fan of the show, please leave us a five-star rating wherever you listen to podcasts and write a nice review. It really helps a lot. Thanks and we’ll be back soon!

• Should you keep your eggs inside or outside of the fridge?

• Does medicine actually expire?

• Why do some people sneeze so much louder than others?

• Where does the 24-hour day come from?

• Is grape or strawberry the traditional jelly in a PB&J?

(Spotify, YouTube, Others)

Below are a few of the articles Noah mentions in the episode.

• Why The U.S. Chills Its Eggs And Most Of The World Doesn’t (NPR)

• Drug expiration dates: Do they mean anything? (Harvard Medical)

• Why are there 24 hours in a day? (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

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And here’s the Osmosis Jones clip I refer to during the sneezing segment, followed by the intro to the PB&J Otter TV Show that Devan inquires about.

Have a question you want us to get to the bottom of for a full episode? Email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at ‪(860) 325-0286.

And lastly, if you’re a fan of the show, please leave us a five-star rating wherever you listen to podcasts and write a nice review. It really helps a lot. Thanks and we’ll be back soon!

Now onto this week’s episode, we’re answering a question from a listener named Emma: What do those smiley-face customer-satisfaction buttons you see in airport bathrooms actually do?

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I tracked down the Finland-based company behind most of them, HappyOrNot. Miika Mäkitalo came up with the idea for the company as a teenager, after being annoyed that he couldn’t find any employees at an electronics store to help him buy something.

For this episode I spoke to Scott Erickson, HappyOrNot’s VP of US Sales and Global Channels who gives us a peek behind the curtain, unveiling a hidden world of analytics, cameras, and AI.

If you want to learn more about HappyOrNot check out this profile from 2018 in the New Yorker.

Like this episode? Check out:

DEV-ITORS NOTE: After the interview, HappyOrNot clarified that cameras are standard on their touchscreen devices, but the button devices don’t have them.

Have a question you want us to get to the bottom of? Email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at ‪(860) 325-0286.

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And lastly, if you’re a fan of the show, please leave us a five-star rating wherever you listen to podcasts and write a nice review. It really helps a lot. Thanks and we’ll be back soon!

To begin, a couple of shameless plugs to get out of the way before we dive into today’s episode. First up: I wrote a book! It’s called Colored People Time: A Case for (Casual) Rebellion, and it’s a collection of humorous essays about the way time wraps itself around the most personal aspects of our lives. Consider checking it out!

Also, if you’re around NYC, we’ll be doing a live event book talk about my book on March 29th. Get tickets here, it’ll be fun.

On today’s episode, we dive into the bleak world of sports betting in the United States. As a sports betting dabbler, I can see both the fun and the darkness in it. As athletes are getting caught up in sports gambling controversies more and more often though, I wondered about whether players should be allowed to bet on themselves.

(Spotify, YouTube, everything else)

We’re joined by Danny Funt, author of Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling, who breaks down how exactly our country became inundated with sports betting, and whether or not this whole gambling thing was a mistake from the get go.

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Let us know what you think in the comments below. Do you bet? Has it ruined sports? Or are we overhyping all of this?

That’s all for now! Email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at ‪(860) 325-0286, and please leave us a five-star rating wherever you listen to podcasts and write a nice review.

See you again soon!

Before we get into the episode, a few exciting announcements!

• First up, we made an appearance on Monday’s episode of The Tamron Hall Show, where we got to talk about the pod and reviewed some of our favorite debates. You can check out our appearance below. Thank you #TamFam

You can watch part 2 here.

• For NST New Yorkers: On March 29 at 12pm, we’re celebrating the release of Manny’s new book, Colored People Time, with an event at Caveat. You can buy tickets here. Hope to see you there!

  

  Now onto the episode…

Real Suchers might recall our episode from last May on conspiracy theorists, in which we put a call out to our listeners for their own pet theories. One such submission was that none other than founding father Benjamin Franklin was a scammer taking credit for way more things than he deserved. Friend of the show Rich took umbrage with this, and blew up his personal group-chat with NST. So we had no choice but to put this debate to tape and solve it once and for all.

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With the help of Claire Aubin, historian and host of This Guy Sucked, we investigate the roots of our nation to find out if the esteemed Ben Franklin, face of the $100 bill, is actually all he’s cracked up to be. We dive into how he was able to accomplish so much, what he thought about older women, comparisons to Travis Scott, and what it means to properly evaluate historical icons, separating myth-making from reality.

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Related links

• Franklin’s “Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress” (1745)

• His pro-farting manifesto, “Fart Proudly” (1781)

• A short piece in TIME from historian Gary Nash on Franklin’s relationship with slavery.

• LeBron James high school football highlights. Oh, what could have been…

Special thanks to our debaters for this episode, Kelsey and Rich. Below is a taste of what it’s like to live in Philadelphia.

Let us know what you think in the comments below. Does Benjamin deserve the accolades? Who else deserves a reexamination?

Email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at ‪(860) 325-0286.

And lastly, if you’re a fan of the show, please leave us a five-star rating wherever you listen to podcasts and write a nice review. It really helps a lot. Thanks and we’ll be back soon!

We’ve all been there… you’re seated back, mouth open, instruments scraping your teeth. And all of a sudden your dentist says you have ten cavities and they all need to be treated immediately! Is that true, or does that dentist just need some cash?

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On today’s episode, we ask the question: Are dentists scamming us? We dive into the dark history of dentistry, find out why dental insurance sucks, hear from someone who uncovered a dentist drilling teeth for profit, and talk to a startup founder who’s looking to upend the whole industry.

Lilly Kaplan — licensed therapist and Reality Test newsletter author — sits in for Manny this week.

Our guests this week are:

• AJ Jacobs, journalist and New York Times bestseller.

• Dr. Sarah Stuefen, general dentist in Iowa and spokesperson for the American Dental Association.

• Dr. Cheryline Pezzullo, general dentist and clinical associate professor.

• Dr. Brandon Zeidler, doctor of dental surgery.

• Tyler Burnett, cofounder of Wally Health.

Here’s a photo of me post-bowling incident:

Related Links

• One in Three Young Adults Skip the Dentist, and That’s a Problem

• Dental Fear is Widespread—But Most People Want Treatment

• ​​I Have Dental Insurance. Why Do I Pay So Much for Care?

• A Brief History of America’s Most Outrageous Dentist

• The Truth About Dentistry by Ferris Jabr

• The Politics of Everything Podcast: More Reasons to Hate the Dentist (ft. Ferris Jabr)

• Dr. Brandon Zeidler breaks down his experience with Dr. Lund in way more detail

• WV Dental Loss Ratios Published

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Have a question you want us to answer or a dentist story you want to share? Email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at ‪(860) 325-0286

Nearly 10 years ago, Noah, Devan, and I annoyed everyone around us at work by having a rigorous debate about which film better: A Bug’s Life or ANTZ. Noah and I believed ANTZ was attempting to convey something a little more interesting than A Bug’s Life, and Devan thought we were crazy.

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Today, we’re still having that debate. But we’re also wondering why “twin films” occur so regularly in the first place. A Bug’s Life (1998) and ANTZ (1998)…Armageddon (1998) and Deep Impact (1998)…Friends With Benefits (2011) and No Strings Attached (2011)…Madagascar (2005) and a Disney movie I’ve never heard of called The Wild (2006)…these pairs of movies, and hundreds more, all have basically the same plot and were released within a year of each other. What gives?

The good folks at the What Went Wrong podcast join us today to break down why this happens so often (and why, maybe, it’s not happening as often as we think).

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To give you a sense of the sheer number of these things, here’s a Wikipedia article listing some notable examples.

And when it comes to Armageddon (1998), please enjoy this video from the movie’s DVD Extras, where Ben Affleck makes fun of the plot.

Any favorite twin films examples we didn’t mention in the episode? Leave a comment! And as always, if you like what you’re hearing, consider giving us a five-star review and sharing with a friend.

See you next week.

This week, I got to use the podcast to settle my own personal grievance with my internet service provider. Over the years, I have spent hours on the phone with my ISP’s customer service line hoping to get better speeds, or at least shave off a few dollars from my monthly bill, to no avail. And the worst part is I have no other options in my neighborhood.

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Emily Stewart, senior correspondent at Business Insider, helped explain how our internet situation became so dire, how it could improve, and why Americans should be worried about monopolies (and oligopolies).

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Related links

• Emily’s story for Vox on ISPs: America’s monopoly problem, explained by your internet bill

• More from Emily: Broadband in Chattanooga!

  

  @anissahm15spectrum plsssss get better customer service i literally just called nicely to cancel my service😩😩. #spectrum #meanlady #customerservice #fyp #helpmefindher

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• When can we launch NST Wireless?: Vulture on SmartLess Mobile

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Are you happy with your internet provider? Let us know in the comments below.

Have a question, episode idea, or other feedback? Email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at ‪(860) 325-0286.

And lastly, if you’re a fan of the show, please leave us a five-star rating wherever you listen to podcasts and write a nice review. It really helps a lot. Thanks and we’ll be back soon!

It feels like every week there’s a new headline about AI coming for all of our jobs. A few weeks ago, Amazon announced it’s laying off 16,000 employees, in part because of AI. And Elon Musk has said that in 10–20 years, AI will be so good that work will be optional.

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So on today’s episode, we’re taking a peek under the hood to see just how close AI really is to replacing all of us (including Manny). We’ll talk to two guys who tried to build an all-AI startup for what I’d call a pretty great podcast, Shell Game.

Listen to Shell Game

Investigative reporter and Shell Game host Evan Ratliff joins us alongside AI researcher and Shell Game technical advisor Maty Bohacek to give us a firsthand account of just how good these autonomous AI tools actually are. They’ll break down what they do well, where they still fall short, and how much we can expect them to improve in the future.

• Most Americans use AI but still don’t trust it (YouGov)

• How Americans View AI and Its Impact on People and Society (Pew)

• Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (David Graeber)

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Email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at ‪(860) 325-0286.

And lastly, if you’re a fan of the show, please leave us a five-star rating wherever you listen to podcasts and write a nice review. See you next week.

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Our guests this week are psychologist and YouTuber Maika Steinborn and sociologist Jessica Calarco, author of Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net, we dig into the science, sociology, and cultural forces behind divorce, masculinity, and midlife reinvention.

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Who are your favorite divorced guys? Do you think DGE is real? Email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at ‪(860) 325-0286.

And lastly, if you’re a fan of the show, please leave us a five-star rating wherever you listen to podcasts and write a nice review! See yah next week.

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For the occasion, we brought in Kate Lindsay — ICYMI host, Embedded author, and proud cat lover — to sit in for Manny as we go deep on everything you’ve ever wanted to know about your cat. We’re joined by Dr. Mikel Delgado, a cat behaviorist, scientist, and author of Play With Your Cat!

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We’re going to go live on Substack Friday at 10 am ET to chat through our favorite cat facts with Kate and discuss some learnings that didn’t make it into the episode. So tap in.

If you haven’t already, check out Kate’s first appearance on NST:

Some other business… Last week we had Lilly Kaplan — who you may remember from the Do you need therapy? episode — in the studio for another upcoming episode. We had some extra time so we recorded a mini part two to our What happened to Kanye West? episode. We react to his WSJ apology ad, and Lilly breaks down bipolar I disorder.

And check out this interview friend of the pod Justin Maiman did with Ocean Vuong on Ocean’s new photography show at CPW Kingston. So many gems in this one, including “If I’m brave enough to press the shutter, the camera says yes, even when I say maybe.” Ocean is one of my favorite authors, and it’s always a pleasure to hear him talk about his process.

Last, but certainly NOT least, we’re working on an episode about WORK. Does micromanaging actually work? What’s the best way to ask for a raise? We need your job-related questions. Email us at mannynoahdevan@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at ‪(860) 325-0286.

Follow us on Instagram and if you like the show, leave us a 5-star review and tell us which episode is your all-time fave! See yah next week.