Jeff Schechtman talks with authors, journalists, newsmakers and opinion shapers, and sheds light on the issues of the day, from local stories to national and international headlines and ideas.
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The bond market is getting restless. What rising yields, $40 trillion in debt, AI spending, and Scott Bessent reveal about the price of money.
Bill Clinton famously exploded during a 1993 economic meeting: “You mean to tell me that the success of the program and my re-election hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of f***ing bond traders?”
More than three decades later, the bond traders are once again getting everyone’s attention.
My guest on this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast, (https://whowhatwhy.org/podcast/the-bond-market-always-gets-the-final-vote/)economist Dean Baker, questions some of the conventional explanations for what’s happening — starting with the alarm surrounding America’s $40 trillion debt. “If we have a strong, growing economy,” Baker argues, “our debt’s not a problem.”
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23 Sept 2026
Our Cosmic Quest Ends at the Server Farm
For seventy-five years the truth about UFOs has been just about to come out, and never quite arrives.
Adam Kirsch, senior editor at The Atlantic, tells me that the real question was never whether aliens are real, but why we so badly need the answer to be yes. In his new book, We Want to Believe, he reads UFO belief as a kind of faith, disclosure as a Messiah forever late, absence of evidence folded in as proof of a cover-up.
Underneath sits a harder possibility: that we may be the only minds in the universe, and meaning rests on us alone.
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17 Sept 2026
A Timeline of Western Decline
Everyone wants to name the moment it all went wrong. Most people name 2016, and one man, and an election they’re sure the next election can undo.
My guest on a recentWhoWhatWhy (https://whowhatwhy.org/podcast/a-timeline-of-western-decline/) podcast, (https://whowhatwhy.org/podcast/a-timeline-of-western-decline/) Bianka Banova, says they’re off by decades.
The disorder people feel now — the cost of living that won’t fall, the wars that won’t stop, the ground shifting underfoot — isn’t the beginning of anything. It’s the moment the water got hot enough to feel. She argues the world came apart slowly, one comfortable choice at a time, beginning with decisions made decades ago.
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Inside a recent episode
Can Code Have a Conscience?
Published 30 Jul 2026 · Transcript excerpt
[…] Talk about that. Yeah. To kick it off, we manage what we measure. And so if we're not measuring something, then obviously it doesn't matter that much to us. And if we are measuring it, then we start to have an obligation to do something about what we're measuring. And so Humane Bench is one approach to measuring the interaction quality. So looking at model behavior, how is the LLM treating you? Is it doing so humanely? And, you know, we have eight principles that we have derived from human computer interaction research and what we've seen with social media, right? Not everything is a mystery. So we've already been primed to be texting with our fellow humans late into the night with emojis and then on social media and these very public ways sharing intimately. […]
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