Who's to blame for the crisis of American masculinity? On the right, politicians tell men that they being oppressed by feminists and must reassert their manhood by supporting an authoritarian regime. And on the left, users of social media are often very irritating to people who write airport books.

Where to find us:

• Peter's newsletter
• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Conscientiousness as a Predictor of the Gender Gap in Academic Achievement
• Gender Differences in Scholastic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis
• Early Childhood Behavior Problems and the Gender Gap in Educational Attainment in the United States
• Where The Boys Aren’t
• The gender achievement gap in grades and standardised tests
• The State of Gender Equality for U.S. Adolescents
• Highlights of women’s earnings in 2023
• The gender gap in educational outcomes in Norway
• Social Influences And The Gender Gap In Disruptive Behavior
• Family Disadvantage and the Gender Gap
• What might interrupt men's suicide?
• As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops
• The Cost of Caring
• Is Your Child Ready for Kindergarten?
• Age of Entry to Kindergarten and Children’s Academic Achievement
• The Effect of Age at School Entry on Reading Achievement Scores
• Beyond the Pros and Cons of Redshirting
• Self- Control and the Developing Brain
• Importance of Sex Differences in Impulse Control and Addictions
• It is a myth that boys lag behind in brain development

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Peter and Michael dissect Jen Sincero's "You are a Badass," a book that answers the question: What if "The Secret" was written in the painful, try-hard style of "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck"? Featuring a surprise digression about Sincero's other, even worse books.

Where to find us:

• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Savy Writes Books
  
  

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

In 2004, historian Thomas Frank proposed a theory about the rightward drift of the white working class. Was he a prescient king whose work presaged the rise of Trump — or a bumbling fool with a broken thesis? Unfortunately it turns out he is a secret third thing that takes one hour and six minutes to explain.

Special thanks to Julia Valdés for her help with this episode!

Where to find us:

• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• The Thesis That Drove American Politics Crazy: The Emerging Democratic Majority
• What’s the Matter with What’s the Matter with Kansas?
• Class is Dismissed
• The White Working Class and the Democratic Party
• It’s time to bust the myth: Most Trump voters were not working class.
• How the diploma divide came to dominate American politics
• The 'Diploma Divide': Does It Exist for Racial and Ethnic Minorities?
• Blind Retrospection: Why Shark Attacks Are Bad For Democracy
• Nationally poor, locally rich: Income and local context in the 2016 presidential election
• Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government
• Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America
• Political Landscapes of Donald Trump
• The White Working Class and the 2016 Election
• Partisanship by family income, home ownership, union membership and veteran status
• The Elites Had It Coming
• What Explains Educational Realignment Among White Americans?

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

Peter and Michael discuss the book that launched the phenomenon of New Atheism and asked the question: What if we hated Muslims, but in a secular way?

Where to find us:

• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Views of Violence
• Carnival Booth: An Algorithm for Defeating the Computer-Assisted Passenger Screening System
• The same motive for anti-US 'terrorism' is cited over and over
• Does intuitive mindset influence belief in God?
• Terrorism science: 5 insights into jihad in Europe
• Analytic cognitive style predicts religious and paranormal belief
• What Is "Islamophobia"?
• Essays In Defense of Profiling
• To Profile or Not to Profile
• Chapter 2 The Making of Jihadist Social Actors in Europe in
• Who are the new jihadis?
• Disbelief - Prometheus Books
• God and the Ivory Tower
• Religion’s evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion
• The Evolution of Religion: How Cognitive By-Products, Adaptive Learning Heuristics, Ritual Displays, and Group Competition Generate
• Talking to the Enemy

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

What should workers do when they get laid off? In 1998 a bleak, asinine bestseller told them to find another whey.

Where to find us:

• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America
• Downsizing in America
• Temp: How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary
• The Disposable American
• Spencer Johnson, ‘Who Moved My Cheese?’ Author, Dies at 78
• What was the New Economy?
• Boss, Employees Share Large Cheese Platter
• Tarpon's big cheese has aides reading
• Why doesn’t downsizing deliver?
• On the Battlefields of Business, Millions of Casualties
• Shareholder Value and Workforce Downsizing, 1981-2006
• Long-Term Earnings Losses Due to Job Separation During the 1982 Recession
• Does Employee Downsizing Really Work?
• Layoffs, Top Executive Pay, and Firm Performance
• Emerging Conceptions of Work, Management and the Labor Market
• A Conceptual Framework for Analyzing Why Organizations Downsize
• Organizational Downsizing: Constraining, Cloning, Learning
• The Decline and Fall of the Conglomerate Firm in the 1980s

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

New York’s favorite criminal is in the news, so here is our episode about his ridiculous life.

To hear all of our bonus episodes, support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

Is fact-checking a legitimate enterprise? Is America's most famous fact-checker nothing more than a dweeb? Michael and Peter discuss.

To hear the rest of the episode, support us on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod

A memoir about parenting very badly and then getting weirdly defensive when anyone asks you about it.

Where to find us:

• Peter's other podcast, 5-4
• Mike's other podcast, Maintenance Phase

Sources:

• Effects of Authoritative Parental Control on Child Behavior, Child Development
• Types of Parenting Styles and Effects On Children
• Does “Tiger Parenting” Exist? Parenting Profiles of Chinese Americans and Adolescent Developmental Outcomes
• Associations of parenting dimensions and styles with externalizing problems of children and adolescents: An updated meta-analysis
• Do the associations of parenting styles with behavior problems and academic achievement vary by culture? Results from a meta-analysis
• Parenting Styles: A Closer Look at a Well-Known Concept
• Impact of Behavioral Inhibition and Parenting Style on Internalizing and Externalizing Problems from Early Childhood through Adolescence
• The One Weird Trait That Predicts Whether You’re a Trump Supporter
• Investigating Correlates of Self-Regulation in Early Childhood with a Representative Sample of English-Speaking American Families
• Amy Chua thinks identity politics on both sides are to blame.
• How the 'Tiger Mom' Convinced the Author of Hillbilly Elegy to Write His Story

Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!