Apple recently released the MacBook Neo, a delightfully colorful and extremely popular laptop with moderately low-end specs. Priced at only $599 ($499 with an education discount), t’s so popular that it’s often sold out — despite being the slowest model in Apple’s laptop lineup. (It actually uses an iPhone CPU and 8 GB of RAM.)

But what if you had a time machine? How far back would you have to go for the MacBook Neo to be Apple’s best laptop — or best computer?

It’s a fun hypothetical with a shocking answer: By some measures, only a couple years.

And that’s why this is such an interesting question -- it shows just how fast technology is advancing. This article will compare, stat by stat, how long ago the MacBook Neo is Apple’s fastest computer based on various specs, as well as discussing the underlying technological process that got us here. Let’s dive in:

The MacBook Neo’s headline numbers, via the Geekbench Browser, are:

- Single-core CPU: 3,461

- Multi-core CPU: 8,668

- Metal GPU: 31,286

- RAM: 8 GB unified, soldered, no upgrade option

Now, in time-machine order:

Single-core: 2024 (Laptop and Desktop)

On single-core performance, the MacBook Neo would have been Apple’s highest-scoring laptop as recently as November 2024 — i.e. up until the moment Apple shipped the M4 MacBook Pro.

This is basically the most insane benchmark in the article. The Neo’s 3,461 single-core beats:

- The M3 Max 16-inch MacBook Pro (single-core ≈ 3,128) — Apple’s flagship laptop, originally released in 2023, which retailed for up to $7,200.

- The M3 Ultra Mac Studio (single-core ≈ 3,202) — Apple’s desktop flagship, released March 2025 and starting at $3,999.

The $599 fanless laptop has higher single-thread performance than both the $7,200 laptop workstation and $4,000+ desktop workstation Apple was selling to professionals basically a year ago. It only loses single-core to the M4 generation that began shipping in November 2024 and the M5 generation that followed. Of course, the Neo is fanless, and so would not sustain long-term performance like a Mac Studio would. But it is still shockingly impressive.

Multi-core: 2021 (Laptop), 2017 (Desktop)

For the Macbook Neo to be Apple’s fastest laptop measured by multi-core performance, you need to go to 2021. That’s because the MacBook Neo scores better on multi-core than any Intel laptop. It’s also barely better than the base M1 chip.

The Neo (8,668 multi) beats:

- The M1 MacBook Air / Mac mini from late 2020 (≈ 8,191 multi) — barely, by around 6%.

The M1 Pro / M1 Max MacBook Pro shipping on 26 October 2021 is the first MacBook generation to clearly clear the Neo on multi-core. So in laptop-only terms, the Neo would have been Apple’s best multi-core laptop until late October 2021.

But what if we raise the stakes and compare the Neo to desktops?

The Neo clears the:

- The base 2017 iMac Pro (8-core Xeon W-2140B, ≈ 7,367 multi).

- The base 2019 Mac Pro (8-core Xeon W-3223, ≈ 7,303 multi).

But, it loses, but only barely, to upgraded 2017 iMac Pro configurations:

- iMac Pro 14-core: ≈ 9,020 multi

- iMac Pro 18-core: ≈ 9,918 multi

In multicore performance, Apple’s cheapest 2026 laptop is basically competitive against Apple’s high-end, upgraded desktops from 2019. Which is wild.

Once again, we need to caveat with the fanless architecture, but it’s important to note that fanless is a choice made by Apple, not a hard design limit of the chip itself.

GPU: 2019 (Laptop)

If single-core is where the Neo is most absurdly impressive, GPU is where it’s most ordinary.

Apple doesn’t market the Neo’s GPU as a monster. The chip has a 5-core A18 Pro GPU — basically an iPhone-class GPU — and the Geekbench 6 Metal score of 31,286 reflects that. Compared with the rest of Apple’s lineup:

- iPhone 16 Pro: 32,575— the Neo is somehow slower than its own donor phone.

- M1 MacBook Air, 2020: 33,148 — the Neo is slower than a 2020 entry-level Apple laptop.

- 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro w/ Radeon Pro 5500M: 36,145 — the Neo loses by ~16%.

- M4 MacBook Air, 2024: 54,630 (~75% faster than the Neo).

- M3 Max MacBook Pro: ≈ 155,991.

- M3 Ultra Mac Studio: ≈ 259,668 (~8× the Neo).

Translation: in the laptop-only time machine, the Neo would have been Apple’s best laptop GPU only until November 2019, when the 16-inch MacBook Pro shipped with the Radeon Pro 5500M. Every Apple Silicon MacBook ever sold also beats the Neo on Metal GPU performance. This is the one part of the chip that genuinely feels like an iPhone in a laptop.

(The late-2018 15-inch MacBook Pro could be configured with a Radeon Pro Vega 20 BTO option, which may also have edged the Neo, I just wasn’t sure so I went with 2019. If someone can confirm in the comments I’ll change this to 2018.)

RAM: 2012 (Laptop), and 2003 (Desktop)

So how long ago was it that 8GB of RAM was the highest spec Apple laptop option?

MacBook Neo’s 8 GB matches the highest-end official Apple laptop configurations from around 2012. The non-Retina MacBook Pros of mid-2012 officially supported 8 GB; on 11 June 2012 Apple shipped the Retina 15-inch MacBook Pro, configurable to 16 GB soldered, and the (time-traveling) Neo lost the laptop RAM crown forever.

In laptop-only terms, on RAM, the Neo would have been competitive with Apple’s best laptops until mid-2012 — about fourteen years ago.

On the desktop side, you’d have to go all the way back to June 2003, when the original Power Mac G5 first reached an 8 GB RAM ceiling. Before that — including the entire Power Mac G4 era of 1999–2003 — Apple’s flagship desktop topped out at only 2GB.

So a 2026 MacBook Neo would have had quite a bit more RAM than any Mac Apple sold until 2003.

Price

Adjusted for inflation, the Neo is very likely the cheapest Apple laptop ever, and maybe the best value laptop computer of all time.

In 1999, you needed to spend the equivalent of about $3,170 in 2026 dollars to get into the Apple laptop ecosystem — and the machine you got, the 1999 iBook Clamshell, was far, far worse than the Neo on every dimension. Today you can spend about 19% of that — or 16% with an education discount — to walk out with a vastly more powerful (and more colorful) MacBook Neo.

Roughly, using U.S. CPI inflation:

- 1999 iBook ($1,599) → ~$3,170 in 2026 dollars.

- 2006 MacBook white plastic ($1,099) → ~$1,800 in 2026 dollars.

- 2008 MacBook Air ($1,799) → ~$2,760 in 2026 dollars.

- 2010 11-inch MacBook Air ($999) → ~$1,510 in 2026 dollars.

- 2020 M1 MacBook Air ($999) → ~$1,275 in 2026 dollars.

- 2026 MacBook Neo: $599. Or $499 with education.

The Neo is roughly $700 cheaper, in real terms, than the M1 MacBook Air was at launch five years earlier — and the M1 was already considered the value benchmark in laptops. It’s about $2,570 cheaper, in real terms, than the iBook of 1999, while being faster than every Mac Apple sold for most of the next two decades.

So, we get it. The Neo is awesome. But is it just Moore’s Law? Was this all inevitable?

No.

Why is this happening? It’s not really Moore’s Law.

A reasonable first guess is that the Neo crushes a 2017 iMac Pro on single-core because of Moore’s Law — twice as many transistors every two years, repeated for nearly a decade, eventually adds up. But that’s not really what happened, and the actual story is interesting.

Moore’s original observation was about transistor *density*, and that has broadly continued. The 2017 iMac Pro’s Xeon W chips were built on Intel’s 14 nm process; the A18 Pro in the Neo is on TSMC’s 3 nm-class N3E. By transistor count, the A18 Pro packs roughly 20 billion transistors into a phone-sized chip. Density did its job.

But Moore’s Law alone doesn’t translate to single-thread speed. That used to come from a separate effect called *Dennard scaling*: as transistors got smaller, you could clock them faster at the same power. Dennard scaling broke around 2005–2006 because of leakage current at small feature sizes, and clock speeds have crept rather than leapt ever since. The 2017 iMac Pro’s top Xeon ran at up to 4.5 GHz boost; the A18 Pro runs at about 4.0 GHz peak. Clock speed isn’t doing the work.

So what is? Roughly four things:

Wider, smarter cores.

Apple’s performance cores are unusually wide — the M-series and A-series chips can decode 8+ instructions per cycle and have very large reorder buffers, vs ~4 wide on the 2017 Xeons. This is architecture, not Moore’s Law. Most of the per-core speedup since 2010 has come from ARM-style design choices that Intel underinvested in.

Memory hierarchy.

The Neo’s unified memory sits inches from the SoC; bigger on-chip caches and faster memory paths matter enormously for real-world code.

Specialized accelerators.

Some of what Geekbench measures runs on dedicated hardware blocks — image processing, cryptography, machine learning. The A18 Pro has fixed-function silicon for these that the 2017 Xeon simply doesn’t.

Power efficiency, finally cashed in.

Phone chips were designed under brutal power budgets (2–5 W). When Apple ported that DNA to laptops with the M1, it turned out you could get desktop-class single-thread performance in a fanless package. The Neo is a more aggressive version of the same trick.

There’s also a market story underneath this. Intel’s Xeons had no real pressure to get dramatically faster because the workstation market didn’t punish stagnation. Apple’s iPhone chip team had brutal annual pressure from a billion-unit consumer market. A decade of that compounding produces, eventually, a $599 fanless laptop that beats a $7,000 workstation on the benchmarks that make computers most usable for most consumers.

The deeper point: the old-school understanding that exponential transistor density drives everything-else — is now wrong. Apple’s unique position and ability to innovate across multiple form factors is now truly paying off in a way that was impossible in the Intel (or PowerPC) eras.

Final thoughts

If you had a time machine, the MacBook Neo would be absolutely shocking to anyone coming from the Intel era, and totally astounding to someone from the early 2000s.

As they used to say, the Neo is inexpensive but not cheap. In fact, it’s basically just held back by the RAM configuration. A Neo with 16, 24, or 32 GB would be competitive into the 2020s on every metric except serious GPU performance, which is scary.

You can of course quibble about thermal architecture, screen size, screen quality. or other measures, but the reality is that the Neo is shockingly competitive with pro-level laptops from just a few years ago. It’s a real achievement by Apple, Tim Cook, John Ternus, and Johny Srouji, and their teams.

The Neo is in some ways an unbalanced machine — incredible single-core CPU performance, decent burst multi-core, a weaker GPU, and a tiny amount of RAM.

The truth is that if it had more RAM it would probably cannibalize even more of Apple’s higher-end laptops. It’s just that good.

Marty McFly, if you’re reading this and are considering taking a MacBook Neo back in your DeLorean, you’d be carrying a pretty capable machine.

The winner’s real identity has never been revealed. All we know is the name of their anonymous trust:

Zorro Trust.

The exact same name as a trust used by Jeffrey Epstein. Was this just a naming coincidence—or did Epstein really win?

This conspiracy theory has been repeated as fact online by figures like Joe Rogan and Marjorie Taylor Greene, among others.

Despite that, no serious investigation of the claim has been undertaken. If you’re skeptical, before you dismiss this theory out of hand, know this: lotteries have been rigged before, including lotteries run by MUSL, which runs Powerball.

This multi-part series goes deeper on this topic than anything I’ve seen elsewhere. You are reading the article version of part one, but we also have a version of this article on YouTube. Pardon the flashy thumbnail, which I’ve been told is important for conversion on YouTube.

If you’re new here, my name is Alexander Webb and I’ve previously written for the New York Times and National Geographic. The Studies Show, which I founded, looks at the world’s most interesting stories through an academic lens.

We are going to exhaustively look at the evidence for and against the conspiracy theory, talking to primary sources familiar with the 2008 Powerball win. But we won’t stop there. Along the way, we’ll explore the academic research on the psychology of conspiracy theories, look at the ways the lottery has been rigged in the past, whether it could have been rigged in this case, the math of statistics and coincidences, and more.

No matter what we conclude, we are going to learn a lot.

Now, with an open—but critical—mind, let’s dive in.

The conspiracy around Epstein and the lottery exists because of two words: Zorro Trust.

An entity titled “Zorro Trust” claimed a winning Powerball ticket in August 2008, about seven weeks after the draw date of July 2, 2008. Zorro Trust was also the name of a trust connected with Jeffrey Epstein, specifically his activities in New Mexico, which shares a border with Oklahoma — where the ticket was sold.

The basic conspiracy theory is that Epstein won the lottery two days after he reported to jail, possibly as payment by an unnamed entity, possibly as a method for him to launder money. Some believe it was rigged. Others have gone further, claiming there were two wins, or that there was a malfunction in the Powerball machine.

The case against him winning rests largely on the seeming statistical implausibility of Epstein specifically winning, the fact that trust naming coincidences are possible, and, essentially, a single quote in a single newspaper.

What’s striking is how thin the evidence is on either side. And that is partially by design, because whoever won used an anonymous trust. Whoever won, they have never come forward.

You might ask yourself: why would Epstein even need to win the lottery? It’s a fair question, and we’ll explore it later in greater depth.

Before we get into the conspiracies and the evidence that may or may not debunk them, let’s establish the facts that are basically unassailable.

Timeline - What We Know for Certain

Strip away all the articles and rumors, and we have a set of facts which I have seen no reputable source deny.

The Zorro Trust and Zorro Ranch

In the 1990s, Epstein acquired a ranch in New Mexico which he called the Zorro Ranch. He formed a trust called Zorro Trust — not, legally, “The Zorro Trust,” just “Zorro Trust.”

A document in the Epstein files indicates it was technically an Ohio trust, structured as a grantor trust, meaning all income would flow directly to Epstein himself for tax purposes.

If you search old newspapers from the ‘90s, you can find Zorro Trust and the manager of the Zorro Ranch, Brice Gordon, applying for well permits and other standard land-use things. So far, Zorro Trust is not remarkable.

Zorro Trust appears in newspapers again in the mid-2000s, first as one of the largest donors to New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, then later — when Epstein was investigated for crimes — when Richardson said he would donate the money to charity. This was around 2006.

Note here Zorro Trust is called a New York entity.

The Sentencing

On June 30, 2008, Jeffrey Epstein was sentenced and given 18 months. He reported to prison in Florida as a registered sex offender. His plea deal was essentially universally seen as a sweetheart deal, with an extraordinarily lenient sentence. He was allowed to leave jail for about half of each day on “work release.” He could have faced life in prison on federal charges. Unusually, his unnamed co-conspirators were granted immunity. There’s a lot there to talk about, but it’s not the focus of this article.

The Draw

On July 2, 2008 — two days after Epstein’s sentencing — Powerball, the lottery game run by the Multi-State Lottery Association, drew its numbers. 4-33-46-48-52 (Powerball 17) In newspapers printed the next morning, some reported an Oklahoma ticket had won.

It was later revealed to be a ticket sold at a convenience store in Altus, Oklahoma, population approximately 20,000. Altus is around 400 miles and a 6.5-hour drive from the Zorro Ranch.

The Claim Is Filed

On or around August 26, various newspapers released what appear to be identical articles from the AP noting basic facts about the case, including that an entity titled Zorro Trust claimed the ticket via Heritage Trust, Oklahoma. They also reported that new legislation meant Oklahoma winners could claim prizes anonymously via a trust. The Oklahoman appears to release an article about this on the 25th, digitally.

The Only Firsthand Reporting

Most newspapers report the basic facts of the case, but The Oklahoman ran an article which was essentially the AP wire story with additional local details. In it, a local grocery store meat manager claimed a woman who worked at the grocery store had won. He refused to give the woman’s name to the journalist.

Here is a link to a digital version of that article.

Most of the people debunking Epstein’s win rely on this article, including the 2019 Bloomberg article which some cite as proof, saying things like “Bloomberg and The Oklahoman debunked it.” But the Bloomberg article contains no new information and relies entirely on The Oklahoman’s reporting. Even worse, the wording of the Bloomberg piece implies the Oklahoman article was done with the purpose of debunking the claim—when I have learned this was not the case.

The statistical improbability of Epstein winning, as well as that single quote — from one unnamed source, relayed by one named source — is essentially the entire evidence base for the claim that Epstein didn’t win. (At the same time, the naming coincidence, alongside Epstein’s other shady activities, is the only evidence Epstein might have won. All this just underlines how little evidence we have either way.)

The Rigging Precedent

On July 20, 2015, Eddie Tipton, the head of information security for the Multi-State Lottery Association, was found guilty of rigging the Hot Lotto, a different lottery game. Rigging affected wins in Iowa, Colorado, Wisconsin, Kansas, and — importantly for this story — Oklahoma.

Tipton’s method involved manipulating a computer random number generator. Powerball uses analog machines, so his exact technique would not have worked. However, as I’ll discuss later in this series, the security around Powerball in these years was likely extremely lax by modern standards. More on that in a future installment.

Epstein’s Death

On August 10, 2019, Epstein reportedly died by suicide, although his brother alleges he was murdered, and there were numerous irregularities surrounding his death. Some more elaborate conspiracy theories hold that he was not killed at all. This series will not deal with questions over his death, but the fact that these questions exist and are widely believed is important — it frames the overall lack of public trust in the broader Epstein case.

What the Epstein Files Say

The recent release of Epstein files by the Justice Department has added more evidence — or at least, more fuel.

One document flat-out claims Epstein won the lottery. However, this was not an agent or lottery administrator admitting it. It was a tip from a journalist to the FBI, and it’s the document most often cited in social media posts. The problem is that the tip gets key details wrong: it says Epstein won in New Mexico when it was an Oklahoma lottery ticket, and the grand prize amount is close but not quite right.

More importantly it seems likely that if that journalist had a smoking gun they would’ve released it by now and all this would be settled. Most likely, they saw the same name, thought it was likely Epstein won, and reported it.

Several other recently released files also imply, though do not directly confirm, that Epstein won the lottery. Most notably, both Epstein’s pilot and flight engineer were asked in legal depositions whether they knew about Epstein’s lottery win — the question phrased as though it were a confirmed fact. And when both witnesses said no, the lawyers repeated the question.

These legal depositions are important because they suggest Epstein winning the lottery was taken seriously enough by lawyers to have it asked multiple times. Whether the lawyers saw something in discovery that led them to believe he won, or they just Googled Zorro Trust like the rest of us, is still unknown.

There are other mentions of Powerball or lotteries in the files, but no smoking guns. Epstein apparently had his accountant buy tickets for friends, with messages to people like Woody Allen along the lines of: Jeff wanted to buy you $24 of Powerball tickets, here are the numbers, in case you win I’m keeping them in my safe. None seem to have won anything significant.

He also tells someone — possibly a victim — in an email that his advice was like giving her the winning lottery numbers, but she rejected it. In another discussion, he claims nobody can predict the lottery numbers.

As far as I can tell, these facts, along with several viral articles and tweets, form the basis for the conspiracy theory. It has widespread purchase, with Marjorie Taylor Greene, Joe Rogan, and others treating it as established fact. Some sources have even claimed Epstein won twice. But one key reason this conspiracy is so believed is that Epstein is a genuinely unusual person—and many of the facts of Epstein’s life were once believed to be a conspiracy theory. Turns out, they were facts.

Epstein’s Wealth and The Importance of Prior Probabilities

Epstein is one of the few people in the world wealthy enough to hide a $29 million lottery win.

His finances are so complex and convoluted that Court-appointed accountants have analyzed Epstein’s finances and found hundreds of millions of money flows still unaccounted for.

He was also strangely well-connected.

As most people know by now, Epstein was a sex offender worth hundreds of millions of dollars. But he wasn’t just a rich creep.

He was a college dropout who passed himself off as a financial wizard, and in the early 1980s, he appeared to use a fake Austrian passport, with a fake name, which claimed he lived in Saudi Arabia. He operated numerous shell companies and trusts which collectively dealt with over a billion dollars. Epstein was not unusual because he was rich — his finances and life story are genuinely unusual, even for an international playboy. His friends included Presidents and political figures, royalty, billionaires, and it is widely rumored he had ties to intelligence services.

Epstein’s story is so strange that if you told it to someone a decade ago, they wouldn’t have believed it was true. This is important simply because the strange facts of Epstein’s life raise his prior probability of engaging in lottery rigging from ‘so unlikely we won’t even really consider this’ to merely ‘this seems really unlikely, but I guess it’s possible.’

This is important, because when we evaluate the evidence here, Epstein’s demonstrated ability to money launder, his web of connections, and the vast sums of money he controlled that are still unaccounted for, all change our priors about whether this conspiracy is even possible at all.

However, we still need to take a critical eye, which is why we should eliminate the parts of this conspiracy that really have no public evidence:

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Debunking the Weakest Conspiracies

Before we get to the questions that are genuinely hard to answer, let’s clear out the weaker claims first.

Conspiracy One: The Powerball Draw Was Delayed

A viral but since-deleted Medium post, archived here, claims there was a technical error the night of the drawing. That meant the drawing could not be shown live on TV, and instead had to be done and verified by an auditing firm. Grok sometimes repeats this claim on X. It would indeed be extremely suspicious, especially because the Hot Lotto game was rigged, including in Oklahoma.

However, I could not find any evidence this was true. And I investigated it thoroughly, by checking scans of newspapers published the next day.

In the early 2000s, newspapers commonly reported Powerball numbers. A few newspapers printed on July 3 do not mention the numbers drawn on July 2, saying the numbers were not available at the time of printing. That looks like evidence for the conspiracy. However, these papers were on the East Coast, where printing times would have been tighter for the nightly draw. For example, one newspaper in Maine seems to have printed the numbers in one edition on July 3 and not in another.

That sounds suspicious — until you check other draw dates. That same paper also missed several other drawings beforehand, suggesting this was simply about the paper’s printing schedule. For digital-native people today, it’s easy to forget how much print deadlines mattered.

Other newspapers printed notices like this, demonstrating that these things happened.

So, we can establish that a paper missing a draw the next day was not strong evidence of an unusual delay.

So did any paper actually report a delay on July 2?

I found a Tennessee newspaper in July reporting a Powerball delay due to technical errors. But this was later in the month, about a different drawing.

So we do have evidence that technical errors did exist around this period — but not strong evidence one occurred on July 2nd.

Indeed, that same paper printed the July 2nd numbers on July 3rd, right on schedule.

If there was a delay that night, I could find no reporting of it, unlike the delay later in the month. This strongly suggests that technical errors did happen, and indeed were reported sometimes, but there’s no evidence this drawing had an error. Instead we have the opposite: papers that reported errors in other drawings reported this one right on schedule.

This conspiracy may have started because right next to the announcement of the lottery win in The Oklahoman, there is a notice about a technical error — but for a different game, on a different date. It seems most likely this claim is false, based on sloppy conflation of other errors.

Verdict: The delay story is almost certainly false, based on newspaper reporting at the time.

Conspiracy Two: Epstein Won the Lottery Twice

I could find no evidence at all of a second jackpot win, and no underlying evidence for it in the conspiracy theories.

This claim is technically true in a trivial sense — if Epstein was buying Powerball tickets for friends, and the odds of winning any prize are roughly 1 in 25, then someone almost certainly won a few dollars. But winning $3 is very different from winning the jackpot.

Verdict: Seemingly false in any way that matters. I could find no source other than online chatter suggesting he won a jackpot twice. If he did, he hid it a lot better than the first time, as the Zorro Trust was seemingly not used.

Conspiracy Three: The Newspaper Quote Was Added Later

When I first started exploring this, I checked the Wayback Machine to see how far back I could find mentions of the anonymous woman winning. I was surprised that most newspapers didn’t mention her — only one did. When I put the web address of The Daily Oklahoman article into the Wayback Machine, I could find no evidence of any caching before 2019, which seemed strange. I wondered: was this quote added later, once Epstein died?

So I got a scan of the physical paper from August 2008.

The article was there. Same as today.

Verdict: False.

What the Research Says About Situations Like This

Taking a step back — this is The Studies Show, so it’s worth pausing to consider what academic research tells us about our own biases.

A 2014 study found that refuting claims of an MMR/autism link successfully reduced misperceptions among people who loosely believed the conspiracy. But among parents who held the strongest anti-vaccine attitudes, the refutation actually decreased their intent to vaccinate. Showing them evidence against the conspiracy made them believe it more.

Think about what that means for what you just read. I spent the last several sections debunking three claims. The research predicts that for some of you, those debunks made you more convinced Epstein won the lottery. And if I conclude at the end of this series that he didn’t win — or even if the government produces documents showing he didn’t — a hardcore group of believers will persist. They might even think I’m in on it.

Where We Stand

After consulting historical newspapers and primary documents, I think we can be fairly confident of three things: there was likely no delay in the drawing on July 2, 2008; there is no evidence Epstein won a Powerball jackpot twice; and the original reporting in The Daily Oklahoman was not tampered with.

But we are still left with the core, unanswered questions.

Was it really a coincidence that an anonymous trust with the exact same name won the Powerball two days after Epstein went to jail? Why did lawyers for Epstein’s victims ask two separate witnesses about this — and when both said no, why did they repeat the question? And why does the entire case that it wasn’t Epstein rest on a combination of statistical improbability and a single unnamed source, relayed secondhand, in a single local newspaper?

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Coming in Part 2

In the next installment, we’ll explore the numerous coincidences surrounding the July 2, 2008 Powerball jackpot and how they may—or may not—be connected to Epstein.

We’ll look into another coincidental lottery win I’ve seen nobody else talk about, and hear from a source close to the original reporting. Finally, we’ll also look at other important evidence, including facts I’ve seen reported nowhere else.

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Despite their reputation as black holes of regret, one night stands are often positive for both men and women. 79% of participants in this study reported neutral to positive feelings about their most recent ONS, and nearly half (47%) reported no regret at all.

But there is a gender gap, and it’s specific to one pairing. Heterosexual women who slept with men reported significantly more regret than every other group. Men with women, women with women, and men with men all reported similar (low) levels of regret. The gap exists only when straight women sleep with straight men.

This matters because it suggests the regret gap isn’t something inherent about being female. If it were, women would probably show elevated regret in same-sex encounters too, and, in this paper, they don’t seem to. Instead, the gap appears to come from the dynamics of heterosexual encounters themselves. The researchers found that sexual satisfaction — particularly orgasm achievement — was the strongest mediator, accounting for roughly 49% of the gender gap. Men were also significantly more likely to receive oral sex (73% vs 46% of women), and receiving oral sex was the only sexual practice that independently predicted lower regret. So, straight men, take notes I guess.

But social factors also matter, and that’s kind of predictable. Decision autonomy, intoxication, and reputational concerns also contributed. Together, all these factors apparently explained 86% of the total gender difference, which is essentially full mediation, meaning once you account for the quality of the experience, being female no longer predicts more regret.

Controlling for personality (emotional stability) didn’t change the results, which further weakens the idea that women are just dispositionally more regretful.

The influence of drugs:

75% of the sample were under the influence when they decided to have a one night stand. The substance was overwhelmingly alcohol (99% of those using substances), though 17% had cannabis (either alone or with alcohol), plus cocaine (3%), MDMA (2%), and amphetamines (1%).

Regret had an extremely slight U-shaped relationship on the left, that becomes pronounced with heavy intoxication. As the chart shows, the curve dips slightly at low intoxication levels before climbing sharply at higher levels. My guess is just that people comfortable with a drink or two are probably more relaxed (as a personality type and after the alcohol) than someone who is stone cold sober, but clearly more in control than someone who is hammered. And it goes without saying that at the high end of intoxication, there is probably even more possibilities for dark outcomes around sexual violence.

It doesn’t matter much if it’s a stranger or a friend, as long as you enjoy it.

Contextual factors, such as whether you knew the person, met them at a party vs. a date, were friends or strangers, didn’t seem to meaningfully predict regret. What mattered was the quality of the experience itself—satisfaction, autonomy in the decision, and not being excessively intoxicated. These findings held across Germans, Austrians, Americans, and Italians, and for both students and non-students. But as you can see, that is a pretty Western-centric sample. I’m genuinely curious if it would transfer to other cultures.

These patterns may not generalize to cultures with very different norms around casual sex. The study also only recruited people who’d actually had one night stands, which sort of underestimates regret since people who anticipate regretting casual sex may avoid it entirely. I guess you can’t regret what you don’t do, but the point is that the sample size is self-identified (at least somewhat) comfortable with casual-sex people.

And one other thing: Men who have sex with men were pretty satisfied, which undercuts a bit the idea men are just selfish lovers, which the heterosexual data somewhat suggests. It could just be that men are simple—easier to make orgasm. Or perhaps men understand other men well. Lot’s more to explore in this space.

Paper: The Gender Gap in One-Night Stand Regret: Evidence from Heterosexual and Same-Sex Encounters

Authors: Christina Sagioglou and Maximilian Dick

Broadband internet was pretty bad for American youth mental health

Girls were hit hardest via cyberbullying, while boys stayed up later.

A one-standard-deviation increase in state broadband access was associated with a 1.2-1.9% (9.3–16.5% increase) in adolescent suicide ideation, with girls being hit hardest.

This study covers 2009-2019, and as someone alive in the early 2000s, I will say many people got broadband way before 2009, so I bet we would have seen even more dramatic results if it started in say, 2000.

While effects appear for both sexes, the mechanisms differ strikingly by gender. For adolescent girls, broadband access increased cyberbullying victimization by 9% and made them 8% more likely to describe themselves as “overweight” (despite no actual change in BMI, which is perhaps the most heartbreaking part of this study.)

In contrast to girls, adolescent boys did not seemingly suffer from worse cyberbullying or body image issues. Instead, it affected their sleep. They were 9.9% less likely to report getting adequate sleep (17.2% for white boys specifically). Notably, the authors find that boys already at elevated suicide risk were most adversely affected—a pattern distinct from the more uniform downward shift in girls' mental health distribution.

Anyway, this paper also ends pre-covid and is essentially pre TikTok—it was just taking off at that time—so I think more research on this angle needs to be done, and is indeed being done.

Paper: Broadband Internet Access and Adolescent Mental Health in the U.S.

Authors: Brandyn F. Churchill & Kathryn R. Johnson

Poverty massively decreased from 1939 to today, but relative poverty is (slightly) worse today than in 1963

The authors note: “Relative poverty fell from 25.4 percent in 1939 to 19.5 percent in 1963, before rising to 20.8 percent in 2023.”

The main focus of this paper is the huge drop in poverty from 1939 to today, although in some ways I think the more interesting figure is the fact that relative poverty has increased from 1963 to today. After all, how people feel compared to others is hugely important for political and psychological reasons.

The headline findings of this paper show a dramatic number of people in poverty in 1939, just under 50% of the US population. But this appears to be because the poverty measure is indexed to 1963, and because 1939 was the end of the Great Depression, and featured lower living standards than the 1960s (of course).

The paper quotes Thomas Sowell a few times particularly to make the point that huge decreases in poverty took place from 1939, particularly among Black Americans, without government transfers.

Paper: Poverty and Dependency in the United States, 1939–2023

Authors: Richard V. Burkhauser Kevin Corinth

In China, people who plagiarized dissertations are more likely to become government officials, more likely to rise quicker once in the role, issue worse decisions that favor bigger interests, but live-streaming court proceedings somewhat mediates these poor rulings

Honesty matters but it’s hard to test over a career. These researchers found a way to do so by analyzing who plagiarized in their dissertations, then tracking who became judges, and analyzing their court rulings. While this paper looked at China I bet you could do this in other countries too.

The findings are striking:

Plagiarists are more likely to enter government service, and once in service, they are more likely to get promoted.

The authors ran a separate incentivized dice game and found that people who had plagiarized years earlier also cheated more on the dice game. But what people said about honesty was almost worthless to predict how they’d behave. The main exception was if they said hiring a ghostwriter was ok, it predicted dishonesty.

The rulings by judges who plagiarized are more preferential to big interests and more likely to face appeals, but live-streaming trials cuts this down. As the paper authors note “These results are consistent with dishonest judges being captured by powerful litigants when public scrutiny is low, a conjecture corroborated by subsequent corruption investigations.”

But the dishonesty doesn’t just stay in individual judges, it hurts entire institutions. Dishonest judges affect the actions of junior judges, and lawyers who plagiarize are more effective when faced with plagiarizing judges.

Finally the paper looks at newer efforts to stop plagiarism with detection efforts, finding reductions in plagiarism rates, and some reductions in judicial biases, suggesting injecting honesty into the system early may matter.

My guess is that these results would apply in many cultures, not just in China. China has a uniquely large population and sample size of cases, so I think we shouldn’t generalize to people based on cultural characteristics.

Paper: A Few Bad Apples? Academic Dishonesty, Political Selection, and Institutional Performance in China

Authors: Zhuang Liu, Wenwei Peng & Shaoda Wang

To be honest I was going to include even more papers but I didn’t want this to run too long. I’ll probably do this monthly from now on instead of every 2 months as initially planned.

Thanks for reading and see you soon

Alex

In Iraq, the US invaded a dictatorship, occupied the country for years, dissolved the military, purged the bureaucracy, and tried to build a democracy from scratch. An insurgency followed. Hundreds of thousands died. Trillions were spent. It is largely viewed by the American public as a failure.

The political scientist Alexander Downes has spent years studying what happens after foreign-imposed regime change. His findings are bleak: regime change increases the likelihood of civil war, violent removal of the newly installed leader, and continued conflict between the intervening state and its target. The Iraq model—maximalist intervention, institutional destruction, attempted democratization—is probably the approach most likely to produce chaos.

Trump’s Venezuela operation looks like an attempt to avoid Iraq’s biggest mistakes. The U.S. carried out strikes on targets in and around Caracas, captured Maduro, flew him to New York — and, at least for now, did not occupy the country. Venezuela’s state apparatus remains intact: the military wasn’t dissolved, the bureaucracy wasn’t purged, and Delcy Rodríguez has assumed interim power.

This isn’t true regime change. It’s closer to compellence.

The term comes from Thomas Schelling, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who wrote Arms and Influence in 1966. Schelling distinguished between deterrence—threatening someone to prevent them from acting—and compellence—threatening someone to make them act. Deterrence is somewhat passive: you draw a line and wait. Compellence is active: you apply pressure until the other side does what you want.

Trump demonstrated he wasn’t bluffing by conducting one of the most dramatic extractions of a head of state in modern history. Now the message to Venezuela’s remaining leadership is simple: cooperate, and everyone makes money. Resist, and you’re next.

In this case, Trump’s deal appears simple: Adopt a relatively pro-US foreign policy, and invite US oil companies back into the country.

Todd Sechser’s analysis of over 200 cases of compellence finds a 41.4% success rate, which is less than a coin flip, but almost certainly better odds than the US faced in Iraq.

Beyond looking at what Trump did, it’s important to notice what Trump didn’t do: He didn’t support the Venezuelan opposition. He didn’t call for free elections. He didn’t back María Corina Machado or Edmundo González, the leaders many Western governments consider the legitimate winners of Venezuela’s contested 2024 election. Instead, he’s signaling he’ll work with Delcy Rodríguez—Maduro’s handpicked vice president, now sworn in as interim leader—if she cooperates.

This is extremely cynical and disappointing from the perspective of American ideals. But on paper, the logic, however dark, is more coherent than Iraq ever was.

Venezuela seemingly has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. (Although some think these figures were fudged). Under Maduro, the economy collapsed from a GDP per capita of around $12,000 to roughly $4,000—a decline that began before US sanctions. The country is so poor now, but has so much potential wealth, that even a corrupt deal with the US could make ordinary Venezuelans materially better off. And it will certainly make cooperative elites richer. Trump is betting that these incentives are enough to make this arrangement work.

There’s another factor that may work in his favor. Iraq involved a majority Christian country occupying a majority Muslim one, which complicated the politics of legitimacy and fueled resistance. Venezuela is a Catholic country with its own history of democracy—Maduro, after all, just falsified an election rather than abolishing elections entirely. Whatever deal emerges won’t be as likely to be seen as a foreign system being imposed from outside.

Will it work? Honestly, we don’t know. Schelling himself acknowledged that compellence is harder than deterrence—you’re asking someone to actively change their behavior, which is psychologically and politically more demanding than asking them to refrain from acting.

There are real reasons to doubt the strategy. Rodríguez and the remaining leadership have spent years under sanctions and indictments. They watched what happened to Gaddafi and Noriega. They might calculate that cooperation merely delays their own eventual extraction—that the US will keep making demands once it sees weakness. The compellence literature suggests targets often resist even when capitulation seems rational, precisely because they don’t trust the coercer to stop.

And the minimalist model can become maximalist quickly. If Rodríguez faces internal opposition, if the military fragments, if the promised investment doesn’t materialize, Trump may face pressure to escalate. The absence of occupation today doesn’t guarantee its absence tomorrow.

Sechser, cited earlier, notes several reasons why compellence strategies invite resistance that deterrence may not, citing several papers in the process:

Posen (1996) argued that acceding to a compellent threat invites future predation, whereas capitulating to a deterrent threat does not. A third possibility is that compellent threats are more likely to offend a target’s sense of national honor: Art (2003: 362) asserts that “compellence more directly engages the passions of the target state than does deterrence because of the pain and humiliation inflicted upon it”. Behavioral psychology offers a fourth explanation, suggesting that individuals’ inherent aversion to losses may make them more resistant to compellent threats (Davis, 2000; Schaub, 2004).

But compared to invading with over 100,000 American troops, Trump’s actions are a low cost, and likely lower risk way to use American power. The real risk seems to be the continued erosion of international norms and laws, with the US action contributing to a “might makes right” paradigm. The long-term consequences for the international order likely outweigh whatever short-term gains the US extracts from Venezuelan oil.

Trump’s actions in Venezuela are cynical and dangerous. But Trump’s Venezuela strategy is more coherent than Iraq was. It avoids the most obvious errors of the post-9/11 era. It reflects a clear-eyed, transactional view of American interests. The lack of idealism is sad. But that doesn’t mean it won’t help Trump achieve his goals.

Yet coherent isn’t the same as wise in the long term, and avoiding Iraq’s mistakes doesn’t mean this will succeed.

We are in a new era. It is clear the US has learned important lessons from Iraq.

What lessons Venezuela has to teach America remains to be seen.

The Studies Show was founded by Alexander Webb, PhD, in early 2023. Alexander Webb has also written for The New York Times, National Geographic, WIRED, Business Insider, and other publications, in addition to co-authoring multiple peer-reviewed academic papers.

More from The Studies Show:

This is a summary and review, informed by relevant academic research, with a large dose of personal opinion thrown in.

As you may remember, we discussed the math behind UFO conspiracies in an earlier post, which you may want to read as well.

What is striking is that almost none of the core claims in the documentary are new. What is new is that high-ranking people like Secretary of State Marco Rubio are putting their reputations on the line by appearing in a documentary about a once laughable fringe topic. However, no concrete proof of aliens is presented by the movie.

The film claims, albeit without hard evidence, that:

1. UFOs are real, and are piloted by non human intelligence. To back this up, military pilots and insiders are wheeled out to tell their stories of seemingly impossible encounters, with craft moving far faster than any human ship. Clips of Rubio and Obama are played where they note that these objects seem to exist but we don’t know what they are. These clips of famous people confidently stating we don’t know what these are, are mixed with less famous people who confidently say, in essence, they’re aliens, giving the misleading impression there is an elite consensus on the issue. Photos like the Calvine photograph are shown but not explained, which I think is a weakness of the movie.

2. The US government has known since at least 1947 (Roswell) and has attempted to reverse engineer these craft. To back this up, insiders who worked on UFO adjacent programs are interviewed. The disinformation campaign to tamp down on Roswell etc. was so effective that people stopped taking it seriously, pushing back research progress.

3. There is a long-running program called ‘the legacy program’ which is essentially a shadowy group run by defense contractors, which keeps UFO secrets out of the reach of even CIA directors and most Presidents. This is by design, to protect the secrets from FOIA requests, or congressional oversight/leaking. However, this effort also means that private corporations benefit from technological advances they can sell to the US, rather than the US itself benefitting. Rubio specifically talks about this worry, which is a wild thing for a sitting Secretary of State to say.

4. China and Russia also know, as does the Vatican, but they have apparently kept the lid on it too. The Vatican claim is presented totally without evidence, and China is glossed over. Discussions of Russian nuclear interference by UFOs, and a crash in the Soviet Union, are brief. The part about the Vatican possessing irrefutable evidence of aliens is one of the weakest, most sci-fi, and least supported parts of the documentary. That the China angle is glossed over is also weak, as is the question of why no other countries have leaked UFO crashes/bodies.

5. It is alleged that alien/non human bodies have been found. There are supposedly at least two species, which is presented without evidence, and also seems to be another weak point.

6. The fact that nobody has a clear image of these UFOs is explained two ways. Firstly, the evidence is supposedly classified, and everyone interviewed presents themselves as well-meaning patriots who cannot reveal US Government secrets, despite some of them implying that elements of the same government wants to kill them for speaking out. Second, it is explained by two men with PhDs that the craft likely warp spacetime, which is how they travel so fast, and why they are so hard to photograph. The military has more sightings recently because modern fighter jets were upgraded in the 2010s with better sensors, and after that started seeing more UAPs. Additionally, the FAA does not use radar to track planes, they use transponders, implying it’s more difficult for civilian authorities to see UAP.

7. The fact that these ultra advanced craft crash is explained two ways, neither of them persuasively. First, there’s a ‘shit happens’ explanation that well, even cars that are designed well crash. This seems pretty weak to me. Second, there is the proposed explanation that these crashes might be gifts or an IQ test from an advanced civilization. This claim seems even weaker.

8. The projected amount of energy used by craft to do this is 1,100 billion watts, which is 100x the daily power generation of the United States. The resulting energy field causes radiation, which means certain survivors of experiences have burns or brain damage. This spacetime warp explains stories which are seemingly illogical, such as: Someone goes inside a craft for minutes but hours have passed (a la contact) or they enter a small craft and inside is the size of a football stadium.

9. The film ends with discussion of congressional hearings and David Grusch’s explosive testimony before congress, where the whistleblower reveals the legacy program, alien bodies, and more, as well as congressional attempts to pass laws forcing the reveal of the legacy program, as well as other UFO info.

Stepping back, the baseline thing to say about UFOs before we move further is:

We know for a fact that all advanced governments have secret military programs, and almost everyone except the most kumbaya hippie type people will agree these programs should exist and they should be secret. So some UFO sightings, especially in a country with advanced technology like the US, are likely just US government craft. So, we know that there will be some sightings of strange craft, almost no matter what. However, the craft described by military pilots with extreme acceleration do seem to be much better than what we are able to produce.

The Legacy Program and ‘You can’t handle the truth’

“The Legacy Program” is a running theme of the documentary, and is the alleged attempt of the US government to reverse engineer and protect UFO secrets since at least Roswell in 1947. This effort is led by military contractors in a secret program, and thus has mostly escaped US government control.

This was supposedly done intentionally. because US government activity is eventually accountable to Congress, and possibly FOIA-able, but things under the purview of private corporations cannot be easily accessed.

Even if UFOs/UAPs are totally made up, it appears there is indeed a long-running secret military technology program, controlled by defense contractors, which is unaccountable to the public, and unknown by most of Congress and even most Presidents. This is funded with misappropriated funds, or dark money. The contractor conspiracy angle is actually the most plausible part of the entire narrative, and is the part of the movie most likely to be true. However, the secrecy and unaccountability of the program is taken as a bad thing, but I am not entirely sure.

Assuming:

1. The end user of highly secret US weapons contractor programs is always the US military anyway and;

2. We really don’t want these secrets leaked.

It’s unclear to me how bad this extra layer of secrecy is. Presidents have affairs, take documents to their houses, and may inadvertently discuss classified issues. As discussed in this earlier article, a basic modeling of secret programs suggests that the more people in on a secret the more likely it is to leak.

Furthermore, let’s assume the contractors are hiding aliens. What benefit does society get from revealing this secret? Chaos, fear, nihilism and religious extremism are possible reactions to the reveal that aliens are here and no government can stop them.

Also unasked is a key question: How would the aliens react to being revealed?

It’s probably unanswerable, but the film really glosses over the ‘you can’t handle the truth’ aspect of this phenomenon, suggesting if the technology is revealed we can have unlimited clean energy and possibly global peace. It suggests this right after implying we are being surveilled by a far greater power and our militaries are being probed by that power.

The implied conclusion that revealing everything will make things better seems naive and dangerous. Of course, allowing a small group of people exclusive access to remarkable technology is also dangerous. But the film does not grapple with these trade offs.

Academic research + threads missing from the movie

The Wilson Memo is missing

The movie features Eric W. Davis, who is the supposed author of one of the most famous documents in UFO-lore: The Wilson Memo. This memorandum is a summary of a conversation between Davis and Admiral Wilson, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, where this admiral supposedly discovers the legacy program, has legal authority over it, asks to be read into it, is denied, blows his top angry at insubordination, but then receives chilling warnings that if he pushes it further he will lose rank and be forced out of his position.

Davis has neither confirmed or denied writing it, but said once on a since-deleted section of a podcast which you can watch here that he couldn’t discuss it since it discussed classified secrets (implying it is real).

Wilson, pictured above, has denied it entirely.

That this memo was never discussed or mentioned (it was entered into the congressional record, though) is a glaring omission. Given Davis states, in the film, there are two species of aliens/NHI, it seems kind of strange he would go there but not discuss the memo, even obliquely.

We discuss this and other things in our original post on UFOs and the math behind conspiracy theories.

Academic research and good UFO evidence is glossed over or neglected

Beatriz Villarroel has been conducting research that looks at UFOs through an interesting lens: It uses pre-satellite images of the sky to search for transient objects (e.g. potential UFOs) while totally eliminating the possibility that these objets are man-made satellites, since they didn’t exist yet. (They could however, be artifacts or other things).

This research, which appears to be one of the most promising threads of searching for UFOs, is totally not discussed.

The absence of rigorous scientific methodology is the documentary’s fatal flaw: it treats eyewitness testimony from credible sources as equivalent to physical evidence, when psychological research shows that memories are unreliable. Whenever this problem is encountered, it’s always the same explanation: “I’d love to show you, but it’s classified.” Which raises the question: Where is the UFO Snowden willing to risk everything, if this is really true?

While discussion of craft warping spacetime is discussed, this is only brief, and the other huge thread of inquiry is totally missing: Materials science. Various people across the years have claimed to have fractions of UFO craft, and on UFO podcasts throughout the years you’ll have people like Jacques Valle claim they are testing (or knew people who are testing) fragments of UFO craft.

These claims are never discussed, probably since nobody has ever found conclusive evidence any material are non-human origin, or couldn’t be produced by humans. This is a weak spot in the documentary, as is the core question: If UFOs are crashing, and everyone has smartphones now, why isn’t there footage of a crashed UFO taken by some kid in Montana, or wherever?

Gary Nolan’s work on brain damage is briefly discussed, but the entire thread of Havana Syndrome, and the simple question of whether brain damaged people are more likely to think they’ve seen a UFO (correlation/causation) is not delved into. Gary Nolan is presented as being a normal scientist who got approached by the CIA to research this topic, but it appears he did so only after starting to research an alien-looking skeleton, which was later found to be a human with multiple mutations/diseases.

The Calvine Photograph, which is one of the best pieces of photographic evidence for UFOs is displayed, but not discussed. Basically two men took photographs of a fighter jet and a strange diamond shaped craft in Scotland. Then the UK Government confiscated the images and covered the whole thing up. Years later, one of the photographs leaked. Most people think the event really happened, many think it’s a secret US Government craft, but some think it’s aliens (or NHI) etc.

A few other notable things about the movie:

Very few reports come from the Air Force, they’re almost all from Naval aviators. The implication is that the Air Force is more in on the conspiracy, and tamps down on reports. It’s presented as a quandary, with the point made that “imagine there were undersea mysteries only reported on by the Air Force, and covered up by the Navy—wouldn’t that be crazy?” However, this claim is undercut at other points in the documentary where some interviewed experts claim we haven’t explored 80% of the Ocean floor and if an alien wanted to hide on earth, the ocean would be the best place to do it.

Almost every person interviewed is male and American. (Exceptions to the gender thing are a female fighter pilot and senator Kirsten Gillibrand, as well as Rep. Anna Paulina Luna). This is likely because men are overrepresented in the military and politics. But it does give the documentary a bit of a science fiction obsessed boys vibe, which makes it slightly less believable. The US-centric focus is also a weak point, as one would expect this to happen everywhere, and there are famous encounters in other nations.

The most persuasive people on film are probably the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, as well as current Secretary of State Marco Rubio—both of whom are high ranking officials who had a lot to lose by being associated with something as out there as UFOs. (Obama’s comment is interesting, but so short as to almost be a throwaway.)

Anna Paulina Luna and Tim Burchett, members of the House who are passionate on this issue and cited in this documentary, have endorsed other conspiracy theories, such as the belief the 2020 election was stolen, which makes their advocacy around this conspiracy theory less believable.

Rubio seems more circumspect, basically approaching it from a ‘we don’t know what these things are’ angle, while also focusing on the fact that any recovered technology is likely being exploited by defense contractors, which then make profits off the advances, while the US taxpayer does not benefit from them. The clips of Reid (and his other thoughts on the issue not included here seem to suggest Reid is much more convinced of a long-running ‘it’s aliens’ conspiracy, even if he doesn’t say that directly. The documentary specifically notes that Reid requested access to the ‘legacy program’ and was denied.

David Grusch previously noted on Joe Rogan that he thought that the alien bodies were never truly alive, implying they might be some sort of synthetic biological source. This thread is not discussed by the movie. The alien bodies claim really is explosive, and it’s important to remember that many of the most believable people cited in the movie: Rubio, Obama, etc. do not make this claim.

Final Thoughts:

Like almost every aspect of the UFO phenomenon, there are tantalizing claims made with evidence which really amounts to ‘trust this source’ or ‘it’s classified and I won’t break my oath to the United States.’ While I can understand not wanting to go to jail, given Snowden defected to Russia to reveal NSA surveillance, it seems hard to believe that if this is real, nobody has done the same for what is a much bigger and more important story.

I am critical of the documentary since I want more evidence, but I will say that it does a good job of chronicling a real human and national security interest story with multiple potentially overlapping implications, all of them stunning in their own way:

1. There is a massive disinformation campaign so successful Congress is writing laws to uncover UFOs that don’t exist.

2. There is a mass psychosis where many people report seeing things that are not real.

3. A government has developed exotic craft falsely reported as being UFOs, suppressing a huge but secret scientific breakthrough. These programs may be controlled by military contractors outside the control of normal channels.

4. Alien/non-human craft are real and whistleblowers are telling the truth.

5. Religious people are right, as some sort of supernatural explanation (which fits some of the strange effects of UFOs) is true.

Ultimately, I am critical of the movie because it makes the most explosive claim of all time without proving it. However, it succeeds in being interesting and compiling a large cast of high-ranking individuals, some of which I am surprised agreed to appear on film. In that sense, the movie is a great success. Nonetheless, it ultimately leaves more questions than answers.

Perhaps the documentary’s greatest trick is making you forget that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence—by the end, you’re so immersed in testimony and government hearings that you almost overlook the complete absence of a single piece of physical proof that could survive peer review. That’s supposedly because it’s all classified. For a documentary that purports to be about truth telling, featuring a cast of characters who believe the US government is hiding the biggest story of all time, we sure have a lot of people unwilling to break their oaths of loyalty to the same government which is apparently deceiving everyone and keeping the biggest story of all time hidden.

This tension, and the story itself—whether it is really UFOs, or exotic US craft, or mass psychosis—deserves more focus.

Note:

UFOs and UAPs represent “unidentified flying objects” and “unidentified aerial phenomena” respectively, but are used interchangeably in this article.

Note: This article was written before the capture of Maduro, but has been updated given Venezuela was an important ally and source of oil for China.

I recently visited Shanghai, and what they say is true—there are electric vehicles everywhere, it feels like the future, and going back to the US or Australia feels like stepping into the past (at least when it comes to cars).

While many people talk about the shift to EVs from an economic or green energy strategy, I think the motivation for this shift is really a national security strategy, even if other factors matter too. Here are three reasons why, preceded by a related story about the Beijing Olympics.

The Story

In 2008, I lived in Beijing just before the Olympics. I asked a taxi driver, in broken Chinese, whether he liked Hu Jintao or Wen Jiabao more. (These were the top leaders in China at the time.) He gave a vague answer, saying some prefer one, some prefer the other. Another taxi driver said they were both good. Another refused to talk about it.

I was surprised, since I thought that a taxi driver, accustomed to meeting foreigners, driving in a private car, might be willing to speak a bit more freely. And I never asked them to criticize either leader. But I was wrong.

Eventually I learned why. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the taxi fleet had been outfitted with remote controlled microphones and GPS systems, which enabled the remote shutoff of the vehicle, as well as monitoring of the conversation.

These same incentives, as well as others we will soon get into, are one reason I believe China has embraced electric vehicles.

The National Security Advantages of Electric Vehicles for China:

1. China is vulnerable to an oil blockade, EVs (partially) solve that problem.

The United States produces 3x as much oil as China, despite having a 4x smaller population. It also is a net exporter of petroleum. In a crisis, the US could survive on its own production if it had to.

Meanwhile, over 60% of US petroleum imports come from Canada and Mexico, which are unlikely to stop supplying the US in a crisis.

China, on the other hand, is consuming almost as much Petroleum as the United States, but is far from self-sufficient. Around 1 million barrels a day of China’s petroleum come from the United States, meaning a small but real amount of Chinese consumption could be shut off by American action alone.

Given the loss of Venezuela as a close ally and semi-reliable supplier of oil, China is only further incentivized to pivot to electric vehicles. It is likely that, in a true crisis, only Russia could be counted on to continue to sell oil, given their overland pipelines.

These factors mean that diversification towards electric vehicles makes much more sense for China from a national security standpoint. While the US could survive a global oil crisis based on local production, this apparently would not be the case in China without painful consequences.

Interestingly, China has been stockpiling oil for months. It could be for price reasons, or other ones entirely.

2. China controls the EV tech stack, and associated fields, like solar panels, enabling cheap power generation without imports.

China’s massive investments in solar panel and battery production means that the country is not just skilled at making EVs and associated green energy generation technologies, but also that these purchases support local companies and supply chains.

China has wisely invested across the world, buying crucial stakes in foreign mines.

For example, in China’s hold on the lithium-ion battery supply chain: Prospects for competitive growth and sovereign control by Greitemeir et al. (2025) we find these golden quotes and charts demonstrating just how well China has played the game:

*With regard to nickel mining, approximately 30 % of global production is located in Indonesia, establishing it as the leading region. Out of its own production share, a mere 4.77 % is currently owned by Indonesian companies. Meanwhile, China has a dominant presence there, holding an impressive 86.73 % of the Indonesian mining rights, thus ranking first in terms of ownership of global nickel production.*

As we can see, While China is blessed with a relatively strong supply of Lithium and Manganese, it has made up for lacking other inputs by aggressive purchases of mining rights across the world.

Meanwhile, China has generated more electricity than the United States since 2010, and now dwarfs the US in electricity production. Some of this is for manufacturing, and much of it is coal, but the fact the supply exists allows the country to power EVs in a crisis. In 2024, China installed more solar than the US has in its entire history, and dominates production of photovoltaics.

As we can see in this chart from the International Energy Agency, China absolutely is unmatched when it comes to Solar photovoltaic manufacturing.

3. EVs can be remotely updated, enabling control if the government wants it.

An all-digital, internet-connected vehicle can be remotely shutoff if needed—something basically impossible with older gas-powered vehicles. And if this was selectively done in Beijing taxis in 2008—nearly 20 years ago—just imagine what is possible across modern EV fleets now.

These concerns are widespread and not unique to China. Europeans have worried about the US possessing an F-35 kill switch. Meanwhile, as reported in the Financial Times, the UK is now actively investigating alleged kill switches on Chinese-manufactured buses. These buses, or a variant, have also been sold in Australia.

From a national security angle, cars are one of the few deadly weapons capable of mass killings that an average person could possibly obtain. The ready sale of gasoline is one of the few ways an average person can obtain a highly flammable liquid suitable for use in a bomb. (NYC has had close calls with car bombs before, and China has had numerous car attacks, even if they are suppressed in the media). Philosophical differences around guns and knives already show that certain nations are more comfortable with average citizens having access to deadly force than others. From a national security lens, for a country like China which is more focused on security, this is a natural extension and is a key advantage of an EV-led transport system.

To be clear, while this article focuses on China, it is likely that major government has at least considered EV backdoors for security reasons. This is totally speculative, but two decades hence, there will probably be geofenced no-drive areas where it is impossible to take an EV, even in democracies.

All in all, these factors lead me to believe that EVs and their success should be looked at through a national security lens.

A national-security first focus would also explain some of the storm clouds we’ve seen. While Chinese EV sales have recently cracked 50% for the first time, we’ve also seen reports of overcapacity and financial shenanigans, suggesting the market is due for a correction. Regardless of whether there are problems in the short or medium term, national security incentives will likely push China towards an EV future faster than the US.

Some final notes:

Last but not least, they’re really nice:

Many Chinese electric vehicles are super nice. That Huawei store I went to in Shanghai was selling a fully loaded SUV for $45,000 USD with TVs everywhere, sumptuous seats, connected everything, etc. etc. It makes sense why Biden put 100% tariffs on Chinese vehicles. They’re just very good.

Long story short, the transition to EVs enables many things that fits the Chinese model of development. It prioritizes national security while also delivering reduced pollution and reduced dependence on foreigners. It helps ameliorate an energy weakness, and the cars are also actually nice, improving people’s standard of living.

Thus, from the perspective of the Chinese government, the EV transition is a big win from many angles, but especially from a security perspective.

The Studies Show was founded by Alexander Webb, PhD, in early 2023. Alexander Webb has also written for The New York Times, National Geographic, WIRED, Business Insider, and other publications, in addition to co-authoring multiple peer-reviewed academic papers.

Featured on Marginal Revolution, this post discusses what academic studies can tell us about conspiracy theories, including those involving UFOs. It dives into research on space travel, the mathematics behind which conspiracies can succeed, whether those with false beliefs can be convinced of the error in their ways—and more.

This post was written at the start of Trump 2.0s trade war. I think it mostly holds up, and applies some of the literature on compellence to trade negotiations. In the short term, Trump seems to be winning, but at an uncertain cost for the future of the formerly American-led international trade system.

Also featured on Marginal Revolution, this article discusses the intersection of cultural production and housing prices through the lens of Bob Dylan—with cameos from Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, my grandfather, and more.

Thanks for staying with us, and expect more from us very soon.

Oh, and if you made it this far, check out this recent post on Poetry Culture, which discusses (among other things) some of the research on how inequality affects consumption and signaling.

Poetry Culture

Symbols vs. Sources

Ads for luxury products are interesting because what they are selling is rarely the product itself…

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8 months ago · 7 likes · 10 comments · Poetry Culture

Thanks so much!

The word you instinctively put there is almost a Rorschach test for your opinions about the world we live in today.

From first principles, it’s striking: places as geographically and culturally distant as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Singapore, and South Africa share a common legal system, language, and arguably a set of institutional norms. Even in India — no longer a colony — the fingerprints of British influence remain visible in the courts, education, and the enduring prestige of English among elites.

Of course, that influence came at a brutal cost. The British Empire’s rise involved extraction, subjugation, and violence. But it also created a strangely durable set of political and symbolic structures — and its institutional echoes still shape global systems today.

Seen from one angle, the British Empire was a kind of slow-motion A/B test: an experiment in exporting the same “code” — British law, governance, symbols, and infrastructure — into vastly different cultural environments. It wasn’t always intentional, but the effect is clear: different colonies, same institutional inputs, wildly divergent outputs.

Like an A/B test in software engineering, the variables were held constant: common law, the Union Jack, parliamentary design. But the “users” — local cultures, climates, religions, resistances — produced different responses. Some colonies rewrote the rules. Others kept them. Some evolved into democracies. Others did not.

Empire, in this light, wasn’t just conquest — it was a distributed experiment. And the remnants of that experiment are still visible today, not just in law or language, but in the flags flying over former colonies.

So let’s begin with the most visible — and perhaps least consequential — piece of the puzzle: flags.

It’s not just what’s on the flag, but what the flag is saying in the language of symbols: Who are we? Where did we come from? And perhaps most importantly, what parts of that story do we still want to fly over our heads?

We will briefly look at the flags of Australia, Hong Kong, Canada, The British East India Company, the US, and also discuss the politics around Australia’s flag debate.

This topic truly deserves an entire book length treatment, so consider this to be merely scratching the surface for further analysis.

First, let’s look at the colonial template, and the UK flag itself":

The Colonial Template

The de facto template for British Empire flags featured the Union Jack in the top left (the canton), with a local insignia or logo defacing the flag.

The prevalence of this format is vividly shown in this late ‘90s poster calling for the Australian national flag to be changed. This array of flags includes a fire brigade, colonies, Australian States, a US State (Hawaii) and more.

Here is another image further demonstrating the plethora of flags in use by the British Empire. Special note to the flag of British Indian Ocean Territory, (which includes Diego Garcia), which is one of the most beautiful flags I have ever seen.

The repetition of this format across such a vast geography reveals not just a design preference, but a worldview. It encoded the idea that no matter how far from London, each colony was still a visible extension of the crown — not just politically, but symbolically.

This symbolic reach was crucial. Long before colonists encountered British courts or bureaucrats, they often encountered British flags. It was an empire introduced visually before it was introduced legally.

Symbolism and the British Empire

Flags don’t just represent sovereignty — they project it. They tell you who’s in charge, what’s sacred, and what history is being remembered (or erased).

Flags are symbols. This is part of what makes flag debates so fraught — they aren’t just about cloth, or history. Flags are national symbols. They say something about our past, but they also say something about what we are choosing to permanently display today.

Political theorist Benedict Anderson famously argued that nations are “imagined communities” — socially constructed entities bound not by blood or geography, but by shared symbols, rituals, and narratives. Flags, in this framework, aren’t just markers of sovereignty; they’re part of the architecture that helps people imagine themselves as belonging to a common polity. The British Empire, in extending a flag template across continents, wasn’t merely asserting power — it was inviting its subjects (or imposing on them) a particular imaginative structure. To fly the Union Jack was to be folded into the fiction of imperial unity — even when reality was fragmentary, brutal, or unequal.

Consider the design choices of colonial-era flags. Almost all followed a template: Union Jack in the top left corner (the canton), and a local seal or symbol on the right. The formula was intentional — it visually reinforced the hierarchy: British supremacy in the upper left, colonial specificity as a side note. These were never meant to be equal compositions. They were signals.

In vexillology — the study of flags — placement and prominence matter. The upper-left canton is prime visual real estate. To place the Union Jack there was not merely conventional; it was imperial.

When a post-colonial nation keeps or modifies that format, it tells us something. It might reflect continuity. Or apathy. Or a belief that the past is inescapable — or even useful. Other countries choose radical breaks, often creating abstract symbols, new color palettes, or designs meant to transcend ethnicity or class.

Hong Kong

The colonial Hong Kong flag changed multiple times, but often featured a British merchant doing business with local Hong Kong people, showing the importance of trade to this colony. The final flag, however, featured a coat of arms. What is notable is that even the post handover Hong Kong flag also bears similarities China’s national flag.

These colonial coats of arms often blended British heraldic tradition with local symbols — an attempt to visualize a hybrid identity. In Hong Kong’s case, the crest included a lion, a dragon, two Chinese junks, and a crown — a trinity of British monarchy, Chinese trade, and maritime power. Even in its symbols, the city was defined by its role as an imperial hinge point between worlds.

Scholar Homi Bhabha described colonialism as a space of blending and contradiction — where imperial powers tried to impose their culture, but often ended up absorbing local influences too. In this view, symbols like flags aren’t just about control; they’re also about negotiation. Hong Kong’s colonial flags, which paired British lions with Chinese dragons, are a perfect example. These were not clean, unified designs — they were hybrids. And that mix of identities didn’t disappear after the handover. The current flag, with its five stars echoing China’s national flag, still carries traces of its unique past, given that almost no city in China has its own flag, demonstrating—I think—a desire for centralized control. (That phenomenon deserves its own article!)

There are 5 stars making up the Bauhinia flower, matching the five stars on the Chinese flag (below). It’s an aesthetic of absorption — signaling that Hong Kong is part of the nation, not just legally but emotionally. Even its flower carries five stars.

Given Hong Kong was returned to China, rather than achieving independence like other former British colonies, it is not surprising its flag strongly reflects aspects of the Chinese national flag.

Canada

Although Canada’s iconic Maple-leaf flag is difficult to forget, until 1965 Canada’s official flag was simply the Union Jack. For the North American colonies which remained loyal to Britain, I suppose this is fitting, although it is important to note that various Canadian civil ensigns were popularly used to represent Canada. Usually a variation of this one, below:

The maple leaf flag is a good example of post-colonial meaning making. It’s clean, abstract, and emotionally resonant — a symbol that gestures both inward (toward national identity) and outward, with a clear image to present to the world.

The 1965 flag debate in Canada was bitter and deeply symbolic — a public reckoning with what it meant to move from “loyal dominion” to independent nation. The new design, stripped of colonial emblems, was both an aesthetic and political break. Some even called it the first truly post-colonial flag in the British world.

South Africa

If Canada’s flag was a symbolic evolution, South Africa’s was a rupture — and a rebirth.

Before 1928, British South Africa had a flag similar to other colonies. But from 1928 to 1994, South Africa’s national flag was visually and politically entangled with its colonial past. It incorporated the Dutch tricolor (referencing the Afrikaner population), and miniaturized versions of the Union Jack, the old Orange Free State flag, and the Transvaal Vierkleur — all placed at the center. It was a symbolic attempt to stitch together colonial factions, but in doing so, it entirely excluded the Black majority. The flag became a stark emblem of apartheid: a fractured, exclusionary national story told through symbols only a few could claim.

Then, in 1994, everything changed. South Africa adopted a new flag to mark its transition to democracy and the end of apartheid. The design was bold and unprecedented — a Y-shape reaching forward, with six bright colors but no dominant hue. It was designed not to reference any past statehood, but to symbolize convergence, plurality, and a collective future. In vexillological terms, it broke every colonial template. In political terms, it was the visual declaration of a new kind of nation.

The transformation wasn’t just aesthetic. It was foundational. South Africa’s new flag didn’t evolve from the old — it rejected it. And in doing so, it became one of the clearest cases where changing a flag truly did mean changing a country.

In contrast to places like Australia or New Zealand, where the debate remains unresolved, South Africa’s flag stands as a rare example of symbolic clarity — a clean visual break that mirrored a political one.

Australia

The Australian national flag is, essentially, the same as the colonial flag formalized in 1901. It features the Union Jack, the Southern Cross constellation, and the Commonwealth Star — a symbol representing the federation of states.

This flag remains unchanged, despite multiple referenda, proposals, and debates. Many Australians view the flag as a symbol of shared history and national unity — while others see it as a relic of colonial subjugation and erasure.

The tension here reflects a deeper conflict: Should the flag represent the dominant historical narrative, or aspire to represent everyone, including those dispossessed by that history?

On paper, Australia (and New Zealand) are seemingly perfect candidates for flag changes. They are distant from Britain and have strong movements that recognize the First Australians or First New Zealanders. But the plethora of options and different political symbols behind those movements makes any change complicated.

The debate in Australia has lasted decades, often flaring around national holidays like Australia Day, which many Indigenous people mark as “Invasion Day.” The flag debate isn’t just a matter of design — it’s a proxy war over history, recognition, and national origin myths.

While some have advocated simply changing the Australian flag to Aboriginal flag—to recognize the first Australians—complicating the situation in Australia is that there is also a separate flag for islanders in the Torres Strait (near Indonesia), making the adoption of the Aboriginal flag not a completely perfect fit.

In Australia it is common to see the National flag flying alongside both the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags.

Together, these three flags form a symbolic triangle — one of empire, one of Indigenous survival, and one of inclusion. But they also suggest a question: Can one flag ever speak for all three stories? Obviously, that is a hot debate and will likely remain one for a very long time.

The UK itself:

While Brits are likely familiar with the history, many outside the country do not know the composition of the British flag. As can be seen in this image, it is composed of the English flag, the Scottish Saltire, and Saint Patrick’s Saltire (representing Northern Ireland).

What’s remarkable is that this flag is itself a kind of symbolic federation — multiple nations, brought together through war, marriage, and conquest, unified under one symbolic cloth. The fact that the UK’s own flag is a layered compromise may partially explain its flexible deployment across the empire.

This philosophy — unity through layered symbolism — also informed the empire’s aesthetic abroad. This philosophy seems to have also informed Britain’s colonial activities overseas, where the British allowed for some degree of local self governance and control.

In other words, the very construction of the Union Jack — a layered, hybrid identity — became a kind of imperial template for managing difference through symbolic unity.

In the unlikely but possible chance that Scotland leaves the UK, the flag itself may have to change. It is possible that some post colonial nations will be flying the Union Jack longer than the UK itself does.

The Remarkable Similarities between the Flag of The British East India Company and The United States

Early in its history, the British East India Company (BEIC) used the flag of England with 13 (or 15) red and white stripes. Historians debate whether this flag influenced the design of the United States’ flag, with Ansoff (2011) rejecting the idea the US flag was inspired by the BEIC flag.

Nonetheless, the parallels are hard to ignore, making it an unusual coincidence if it really was one.

Later in the history of the BEIC, the below flag was adopted.

Although the flag above appears to be an American flag with a Union Jack, it is actually one flag used by the British East India Company. Note the identical number of stripes—13, as the US flag.

It is also almost identical to an early US flag known as the “Grand Union” flag, featuring 13 red and white stripes with a Union Jack in the canton. Above you can see the flag featured on North Carolina currency in 1776. This wasn’t just aesthetic. It symbolized loyalty to the British system — but a desire for autonomy within it. Independence came later. The visual timeline tells its own story.

It’s hard to overstate the symbolic weirdness of this flag. A nation about to fight for independence — doing so under a banner that still bears the insignia of the crown. It’s a visual paradox, a design echo of political uncertainty.

This created a kind of visual contradiction: the flag of rebellion was also a flag of continuity. Even as the American colonies prepared to sever ties, they signaled their belonging — or their right to belong — within the British symbolic world. They symbolized a belief in the importance of British values (or perceived values) of liberty and freedom (regrettably, in those times, a freedom not for most people). That ambiguity made the Grand Union flag unstable, and likely contributed to its short lifespan. Its successor, the Stars and Stripes, removed the contradiction while keeping the visual grammar — stripes, simplicity, unity.

Perhaps those tensions are why the flag was soon retired and replaced with stars in the canton, a general design that persists, amidst some changes, today.

What is funniest about this flag is that it would be great fodder for conspiracy theories. Imagine: the idea that the British East India Company never folded, it simply became the United States. In this era of trade wars, it is an increasingly good conspiracy theory, as these things go.

Is there a correlation between flag change and democracy?

Interestingly, there seems to be no clear correlation between democratic strength and flag change. Some of the world’s most stable democracies — like Australia and New Zealand — still fly variations of their colonial banners. Meanwhile, countries undergoing major political ruptures, like South Africa after apartheid or the United States during the revolution, have adopted radically new flags. This suggests that symbolic reinvention often follows ideological disruption more than steady democratic evolution.

Is the British Empire more of a franchise model, instead of an A/B test?

Although it’s tempting to compare the British Empire to an A/B test, it could also be looked at differently. The British Empire demonstrates how common institutions or institutional priorities interact with various local cultures, and various ways of governing. Arguably, this could also be seen as a kind of franchise model, much as McDonalds exists around the world but has its menu modified based on local taste.

The idea of some degree of local control and democracy—although not implemented everywhere—ironically led to the breakup of the Empire itself, as colonies like Canada and Australia achieved their own independence and created their own national identities. If it is viewed as a way of spreading institutions and ideas, the British Empire lasted as long as it reasonably could have.

Final Thoughts

Flags may be cloth, but they’re also code — visual systems for encoding identity, power, and aspiration. In that sense, they are a perfect starting point for exploring the legacy of empire. The flags we’ve looked at here do not just mark geography; they reveal how Britain’s symbolic influence was exported, refracted, and sometimes resisted. From Hong Kong’s colonial banner symbolizing trade, to the Grand Union’s strange half-loyalty, each flag tells a slightly different story of adaptation and ambiguity.

This comparative lens — who kept the symbols, who modified them, who rejected them — is a diagnostic tool. If empire was an A/B test, then the flags are datapoints. The patterns we see here will echo again as we examine law, language, and governance. Same empire, different results.

But symbols are just one part of the story.

Future entries in this series will explore the non-visual legacies of empire: how the British legal system embedded ideas of property, contract, and hierarchy; how English became a dominant linguistic currency across the world; and how even ideas of “civil society” and “development” were shaped by British norms. The symbols matter — but they were always backed by rules, institutions, and incentives. And those, too, were exported.

And by looking at how those institutions performed, we may get a clearer sense of what the British Empire really was: a sprawling, contradictory experiment in governance, belief, and control. Flags aren’t everything—they aren’t even that important. A country can change its flag and still leave its power structures untouched. But by tracing how these symbols evolve — and when they don’t — we begin to see how injustice is remembered, forgotten, or rewritten through visual language.

In an age of global nationalism, contested histories, and shifting power, these symbols remain charged. They show up on football kits, in protest movements, on beaches, in schools. We live in the long shadow of empire — and sometimes, we live beneath its flags.

Thank you for reading The Studies Show, we have been creating content under this name since February 2023 and you can find us on YouTube and YouTube podcasts @thestudiesshow as well as on Instagram @thestudiesshow

Thank you to everyone who made it this far, it means the world and I really appreciate every reader/viewer and every comment.

Until next time! Alex

As Black History Month comes to a close, it’s worthwhile highlighting the stark data on continuing inequality in America, and in particular highlighting some early data visualizations done by the great W. E. B. Dubois. Hand-illustrated for the Paris Exposition in 1900, these one-of-a-kind images show not just the state of African Americans in the United States at that time, but also the many ways that data has been creatively visualized over the years.

They are also a powerful reminder of the long-term inequities and inequalities which have existed in the United States, for many reasons.

During slavery, the Black/White wealth ratio was at an off the charts, 60 to 1. To be honest, even this statistic is more optimistic than I assumed—and it is arguably misleading, given that one cannot truly have any wealth or possessions if you are in bondage yourself. And, at this time, 90% of Black Americans were in bondage. Putting that (very important) fact aside, we can clearly see an enormous material improvement in the wealth of African Americans over time, albeit from a very low base.

Today, White households are significantly wealthier than Black households, whether measured via average or median. Researchers in a recent NBER paper estimated that, without any discrimination, the ratio between White and Black wealth would be 3 to 1, rather than today’s 6 to 1 ratio.

Our earlier article, entitled “How Bob Dylan, Housing Prices, and Harvard show that Networks Matter” discussed some of the research about the importance of economic mobility, especially for minority groups. While we will continue to write about this in the future, it is worthwhile looking at these historic charts, not just for their value as a data snapshot of an enduring aspect of American society, but also as an early case study in data visualization, and a tribute to the genius of DuBois.

Population Distribution of African Americans around 1900

The clear distribution of Blacks living in areas in which them or their ancestors were formerly in bondage is clear here, pre-great migration, and moves west, etc.

Percentage of free and enslaved African Americans by year

This dramatic chart depicts the status of free or enslaved Blacks in the United States. While everyone knows the ending of slavery resulted in millions being released from bondage quite quickly, this chart really drives that point home.

Charts Depicting The Wealth of African Americans

This fascinating but not entirely successful data visualization demonstrates property ownership in Savannah and Atlanta, two of Georgia’s most important cities.

This fascinating chart shows the assessed value of furniture and kitchen items, in a time before mass production as we think of it.

Racial, Population, or Marital Status

This very important chart implies the state of interracial marriages, although who is ‘Black” and who is a “mulatto” and who is “white” is of course somewhat a social construct.

What I love most about these charts is the demonstrate the enduring importance—and understanding—that how data is represented is crucial to getting it across. W. E. B. DuBois’ efforts here demonstrate a keen understanding of that fact, and represent a remarkable success given a time without computers.

Thank you for reading, we will be back soon with the beginning of a post series on the merits of viewing the British Empire as an A/B test, and much more.

Thanks for reading The Studies Show!

That is the approximate amount of fentanyl needed to produce a deadly overdose.

Unlike salt, fentanyl cannot be smelled or tasted, making detection without a kit nearly impossible. The potency of the synthetic opioid has made it a favorite of drug dealers and gangs, who can mix it with other drugs to increase their potency. Because it is so powerful, even a small amount can have a high value to dealers who use it to cut other drugs. Of course, just as it is easy to add a little too much salt to a dish, it is very easy for dealers to accidentally add too much fentanyl, killing their customers.

These deaths have been so substantial that they, incredibly, now account for the most common cause of death for Americans aged 18-45. Many, though certainly not all, of these deaths are concentrated in areas that align with portions of Trump's political base.

In addition to concerns over illegal immigration, these deaths are one stated reason for Trump's threatened trade wars with Canada, Mexico and China. This article looks at the scale of the fentanyl epidemic, as well as looking at what the literature says about Trump's unique 'compellence' negotiation style. What sets Trump apart from past US Presidents is his willingness to use overt and public coercion against US allies. Is this likely to be effective? Is it a smart political strategy? And what do the threatened 25% tariffs against Canada and Mexico, in addition to 10% against China, say about US alliances in the age of Trump? Let's dive in:

Fentanyl is a real problem, and Trump is playing to his base

America's most famous rural area might be Appalachia. It is the region that John Denver's anthem "Country Roads, Take Me Home" was written about, and it is not uncommon for people to romanticize the perceived peace and simplicity of living in the woods--particularly as artists as diverse as Beyonce to Post Malone go country. Yet beyond these romanticized depictions of country life, it is difficult for people not exposed to rural America to understand the vast level of economic and social decay which has occurred in the previous few decades.

Trump has strong support in Appalachia, a generally poor region of America, which I grew up just outside of. Appalachia was hit extremely hard by the offshoring of manufacturing, and has enormous educational problems. A study from 2005 apparently notes that 30% of the population was functionally illiterate.1

But while offshoring hit many nations, the US--and regions like Appalachia--were uniquely damaged by globalization.

Gaglardi et al., (2023) note that early 2000's offshoring of manufacturing—sometimes called the China Shock—hit the United States harder than other advanced democracies. However, areas with high education actually benefitted from the shift, while areas with poor education--like Appalachia--were left rudderless. This fact is part of what led to the rise of JD Vance, who wrote about this in his autobiography 'Hillbilly Elegy.'

But while globalization decimated some of the country, highly educated areas came out on top. Gaglardi et. al notes: "We estimate that a one standard deviation increase in local college share results in a rate of employment growth per decade that is 9.1 percentage points higher..." before continuing to note that this "more than offsets the loss of manufacturing jobs"

This CDC chart shows just how dramatic and shocking the fentanyl epidemic has been for Americans. A drug which was a rounding error for deaths two decades ago now accounts for a majority of deaths, substantially pushing up mortality rates.

Appalachia, as we have seen, is not a highly educated area. And so perhaps it is no surprise that as Appalachia has lost jobs, it also has the highest per capita rate of opioid deaths of anywhere in America. Rigg et al., 2018 It is important to note that the underlying causes of opioid deaths and the political affiliation of voters from those areas are complex. But Trump is a master of understanding and distilling a complex issue into a simple narrative. Thus, it is no surprise that in the 2016 election, Trump and Republicans outperformed in areas stricken by opioids (Goodwin et al. 2018), demonstrating the resonance of his message in communities undergoing severe pain.

From a political perspective, these deaths also fit neatly into Trump's narrative of economic decline. Taking only a 40,000-foot view, it appears that opioid deaths are correlated with job losses and deindustrialization. While the structural causes of the opioid epidemic are debated, involve healthcare shortcomings, and are unlikely to be entirely linked to trade, it is certainly the case that from a political perspective, this is an issue which 1) disproportionately affects Trump's base, and, 2) really is killing people, and 3) just happens to have spiked as jobs were lost from deindustrialization.

Of overdoses, most of them are from opioids, as we can see from this chart which looks very similar to the overall deaths from drug overdose chart we saw earlier.

Regardless of the ultimate structural cause of these deaths, their reality is a powerful and potent political message which is harming entire communities.

Dean and Kimmel (2019) note that "job loss due to international trade is positively associated with opioid overdose mortality at the county-level." These figures are significantly higher in counties with fentanyl use. The paper finds that for each 1,000 job losses, a 2.3 increase in county-level opioid deaths are found. But when fentanyl is in the local supply, an 11.3 percent increase in opioid-related overdose deaths are present.

Trump's concerns about fentanyl are real, well-founded, and fit into his narrative about the hollowing out of American jobs by international trade. Whether his policies actually reduce fentanyl flow or not, he is visibly keeping promises to his base-which includes communities hardest hit by the fentanyl epidemic, making this, in some ways, a smart political move to shore up internal Republican support.

Trump's aggressive style and Putnam's two-level game

Robert Putnam describes international negotiations as a 'two-level game' where both international and domestic political concerns take place. While this is speculation, it seems to me that Trump's actions towards Canada and Mexico are primarily a two level game designed to shore up support among Republicans and deliver what appears to be a political win to his base.

It seems to me that the best way to understand these actions is that:

1) Trump’s strategy reflects his belief in the efficacy of tariffs and a raw power approach that minimizes concern over long-term reputational costs. By employing aggressive compellence (which we will soon analyze), he signals strength to both domestic and international audiences—even if the short-term gains may come at the expense of lasting alliances. He may even see his 'wins' against smaller nations as enhancing his own power further, making him less likely to stop. In this 1984 interview, at around 39:00, Trump claims the US needs other countries to respect it. Given his tariff actions, it appears he desires a certain kind of respect.2

2) Trump is playing what Robert Putnam, in Putnam (1988) calls a two level game where the international threats of tariffs are largely, or at least partially, intended for a domestic audience, including Republican Party cohesion. (If he can even bully the nation of Canada, will a House Republican in a swing district defy him?)

Stepping back a bit, what is compellence and what does the literature say regarding whether these strategies are likely to be effective?

What is compellence?

Compellence is a type of coercion designed to force (or compel) an actor to do something. It differs from deterrence, which involves convincing someone *not to do* something. Coined by Thomas Schelling in 1966, it has been applied to both military and economic issues, and different academics have competing interpretations or definitions of compellence, which we may get into in a future post. But for now, we can think of it in a simple form: Trump is using threats to try to get something he wants.

This is a high risk strategy, but one where the risks were asymmetric. Canada had more to lose than the United States, but both sides would have faced severe economic difficulty, particularly in the automotive sectors, which features tightly linked supply chains between the US carmakers and their factories or suppliers in Canada. (Ironically, Japanese and European car makers with US factories have largely located these factories in the American South, and have less Canadian exposure than US automakers like Ford and GM, which are based in Detroit just across the border from Canada.)

At their worst, tariffs might be an imaginary solution to a real problem.

As Trump wished, it spurred a climbdown from the brink, as similar tactics did in a 2019 spat with Mexico. As a result, Canada and Mexico backed down, but notably did so by making relatively few concessions. For better or worse (likely better) it is difficult to compare this episode to other times in US history because it is extremely rare for a US leader to threaten such large tariffs, against allies, with almost no notice. China, meanwhile looks poised to attempt to absorb its 10% tariff.

Is compellence a good strategy?

The good news for Trump is that compellence can work, but the bad news for America is that it can have major long-term costs

While compellence may secure short-term political wins, its repeated use against long-standing allies risks creating enduring fractures in international relationships. These costs are hard to measure, but in the long-term may outweigh any immediate benefits. Often, however, it is less effective than its practitioners believe it will be. Crucially, for the United State's relationship with Canada and Mexico, it is not a strategy that one generally uses with friends. In fact, most of the compellence literature deals with its use against enemies, making historical comparison difficult. But even those comparisons note that this strategy can backfire and the fact that a nation has more power does not necessarily mean it will prevail in the end.

Patrick Bratton, writing in When is Coercion Successful? notes that deterrence is more likely to be successful than compellence, since deterrence allows an actor to do nothing and claim it is their own choice, while compellence involves an actor changing an action. Canadian and Mexican leaders are also subject to domestic political considerations, and cannot be humiliated too many times before their ability to make deals breaks.

Past episodes of trade wars with allies have unclear lessons, but demonstrate the US does not always win them. The 1980s auto crisis with Japan led to export controls from Japan to the US, but this eventually resulted in the opening of Japanese-owned factories in the US, which now create American jobs but also compete with American companies. George W. Bush eventually dropped his steel tariffs in the early 2000s after being taken to the WTO.

Compellence is not new. An interesting paper by Richard Ned Lebow looks at Thucydides' descriptions of compellence and deterrence in the Peloponnesian War, and argues that, "With one partial exception, all attempts at these strategies fail and generally help to provoke the behavior they were meant to prevent. The narrative and speeches nevertheless indicate that leaders everywhere rely on deterrence and compellence and expect them to succeed."

Ultimately, it's important to remember the limits of power, visibly demonstrated by the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the collapse of the South Vietnamese government, and the continued success of North Korea's nuclear program. Economic compellence appears to be less studied but it is worth noting that the world economy adapted to Trump’s first-term tariffs against China, later expanded by Biden, suggesting that these tariffs were only partially successful. Indeed economists have noted that, in addition to moving production to other nations like Vietnam, China can weaken its currency to partially offset the impact of tariffs.

Emotions matter, but they're hard to measure

Beyond economics and policy, the tone and language used in these disputes can have profound effects on public perceptions and international diplomacy. During the height of the tariff drama, there were hundreds of reddit posts of angry Canadians claiming they were going to boycott American products, or cancel vacations in the US. While a loss in tourism can be measured, a loss in goodwill is harder to measure. Regrettably, these effects are likely to be long-term, while a Presidential term is only four years.

Needless to say, the related rhetoric that Canada is merely a US state is highly damaging and humiliating in a way which is totally unnecessary and against US interests. Domestic political concerns in Canada and Mexico will likely play a key role going forward, and may backfire on the US. Canada is currently undergoing a leadership struggle for Trudeau's replacement, and will soon face an election with the Conservatives in pole position to win. However, some commentators think the tariff threat is a gift in disguise to Trudeau's party. By coming out against Canada so forcefully, it is probable that the next administration will be less cooperative with the US than if a quiet deal had been negotiated.

These long term narratives really matter. One study found that Israeli and Palestinian youth internalized broader cultural narratives into their own life stories, which of course is one reason that conflict is so intractable. (Hammack, 2008) This deeply personal level of internalizing a national struggle, of course makes compromise more difficult.

The core trade-offs

Every policy in life has trade offs, and this policy seems to sacrifice long-term goodwill and cooperation for short-term political wins. Business certainty and predictability—as well as a reservoir of goodwill—has been traded for an aggressive, public, political win. Was it worth it? It seems hard to believe that Canada, especially, would not have acquiesced to more border security without such a public spat.

While power dynamics matter, short an invasion, the United States simply cannot force other nations to change every policy it dislikes. As a result, cooperation in some future crisis may be reduced, in ways we cannot comprehend, for short-term political gain. At the same time, real cooperation between nations to stop fentanyl flows is needed more than ever before. While threats can compel action, so too can cooperation and genuine ties.

Furthermore, the uncertainty that even the prospect of swingeing tariffs creates is very bad for business. Why should an American or Canadian small business diversify their supply chain—enabling them to further grow their business—if tariffs may make their operations unprofitable?

World leaders also face a dilemma, having to appear tough at home while also protecting their interests. Of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump recently said “He’s liberal, which is a bit different from me, but I think he’s a very good person and I think he’s done a very good job thus far,” Of course, we have seen how quickly Trump’s opinions of others can change.

The proposed tariffs didn't seem to make sense—but maybe that was the point

Trump's order against Canada seemingly would have slapped a 25% tariff on items *each time* they crossed the border, making car manufacturing using the Canadian/US integrated supply chains, which see partially constructed vehicles and parts cross the border multiple times, financially impossible. Likewise, the immediate tariffs on what are currently untaxed *de minimis* shipments from China, (which are not currently taxed because they have a declared value of under $800) had to be delayed because it was too difficult to immediately implement. These orders seem to be about shock value as much as they are about efficacy.

An alternative set of agreements that did not put public pressure on Canada and Mexico likely was possible. Indeed we are so early into Trump's term that, had private negotiations failed, he could have announced these swingeing public tariffs at a later date. But that would not have provided the political shock value that these moves had.

It remains to be seen whether the 10,000 troops will work, will not be bribed, and will actually be effective. A classic economics fact is that continued demand from Americans (who are among the world's biggest users of drugs) with reduced supply will only increase the prices of drugs. This will, in turn, create opportunities for freelancers to make money off the drug trade, regardless whether they are in government or not.

Parting thoughts:

While Trump’s use of compellence may yield short-term political victories and resonate with key voter groups, the long-term risks—ranging from potential trade disruptions to erosion of diplomatic goodwill—raise important questions about whether these tactics are sustainable. Should these border actions genuinely reduce the deaths of Americans to fentanyl, they may be seen as a success which came at a high diplomatic cost. Given the multifaceted nature of addiction, and the ability of drug markets to adapt to governmental pressure, this seems unlikely at first glance. Moreover, other actions which are likely to help communities dealing with addiction--like subsidized healthcare or anti-addiction services--are likely to be on the chopping block in this administration.

And there is a real risk that future foreign leaders are unable to make compromises for domestic political reasons, making a damaging trade war move from hypothetical to reality. A more measured strategy might secure similar benefits without incurring such high costs and political drama.

Of course, to a leader whose strategy involves drama and force, this might be by design.

For more on tariffs, consider checking out this great piece “Trump Starts to Break Things”.

This is The Studies Show, and I’m Alexander Webb. Since February 2023 we’ve been producing content, and I hope you’ll subscribe if you like what you read. Next up, we are doing a post on the British Empire.

Thanks! Alex

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Bob Dylan is such a seminal figure in pop culture that it’s impossible to imagine a world without him. But what if New York City rents had been as high as they are today? 

In December of 1961, Dylan and his then girlfriend—who appears on the cover of his first album—rented an apartment in the West Village for $60 a month, equivalent to about $597 in 2023 dollars. In today’s New York City, real rents have gotten much more expensive. In today’s West Village, the average one-bedroom rental price is about $5,000. The cheapest one bedroom I could find was $2,900, (there was also a single available studio for $2,750. Were Frank Sinatra still alive today, perhaps he would sing, “If you can make rent here, you can make rent anywhere.” Of course, today’s Dylan might live in a cheaper part of Brooklyn, or even Jersey City, but even there, rent is at least double in real terms what Dylan paid for his apartment. Dylan’s artistic troubadour lifestyle, which enabled him to write songs instead of spending all his time waiting tables, would be almost impossible for anyone without independent family wealth. Rent today is so unaffordable that Dylan might never have moved to New York—changing the trajectory of popular music as we know it.

If Dylan had never moved to New York, he never would’ve made the connections that jumpstarted his career. He never would’ve met John Hammond, the talent scout who took a massive chance on an unknown artist who hadn’t even written any of the songs that would later make him famous. To be sure, we now know Bob Dylan is a genius—but he wasn’t a genius yet. The right connections at the right time were the ladder that helped turn a talented nobody named Robert Zimmerman into the legendary Bob Dylan. (Hammond himself became a legend in his own right, and was crucial to the careers of Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Aretha Franklin, and others.)

Dylan was lucky. He was born at a time when a lower-class individual could afford to move to the big city with only a dream and a few bucks. Today, even a cursory look at rental prices–which have increased dramatically in real terms–show how that is increasingly impossible. 

Although he was no folk singer, my grandfather’s story has some similarity to Dylan’s. My grandfather was a Black man from Alabama who never made it past 2nd grade, and was functionally illiterate. Despite this, he moved to New York City and lived in a brownstone in Brooklyn, where he worked as a longshoreman. He lived in an age where poor people—and he was, truly, born into poverty—could move to big cities and gain a better life. Today’s high rents, coupled with well-intentioned educational barriers, makes that largely impossible today. His story is all the more remarkable when you consider that, as a Black man in the era around Jim Crow, he faced other major obstacles to economic security. 

Ganong and Shoag’s 2017 paper, titled “Why has regional income convergence in the U.S. declined?” explains why stories like my grandfather’s, and perhaps Bob Dylan’s, are increasingly impossible. If you were born poor in a rural part of the country, you could once make a better life for yourself by moving to the big city. Today, the opposite is true.

The paper notes that while Janitors nominally make 28% more in NYC than in the Deep South, once you account for higher rents, they actually effectively make 7% less. Janitors spend 52% of their income on rent in NYC, while Lawyers, on the other hand, spend 21% of their income on it. This just demonstrates a fact of modern American cities–white collar professionals continue to price out lower-earning individuals. This has effects on the whole country, because people like my grandfather now have fewer economic opportunities. It is probably one reason why Americans are moving less today than they did in past decades. 

And while Ganong and Shoag don’t talk about folk singers, we can see that Bob Dylan’s real rental costs went up perhaps 4 or 5 times. How many artists today are shut out of the industry because they couldn’t make connections? How many people in poverty are stuck, without a place to go? Ganong & Shoag’s results suggest that poorly educated people are increasingly cut out of America’s urban cores. 

Janitors and longshoremen aside, you might say the music industry is different, and a contemporary Bob Dylan could just release his own albums, and hope to find an audience on the internet. Indeed, technological change has also altered how musicians are found. From Justin Bieber’s first viral video, to Desiigner’s 2016 hit “Panda” to the politically-infused viral success of Oliver Anthony’s song “Rich Men North of Richmond”, or Lil Nas X’s country-rap anthem “Old Town Road” there are viral success stories. But, out of those four artists, the only two with any staying power—Bieber and Lil Nas X—were embraced by major labels and turned into stars. Many other artists in the modern era made it by networking and meeting big stars in big cities. J.Cole moved to New York where he caught the attention of Jay Z. Kanye West started with Jay Z in a similar fashion, although as a beatmaker (I highly recommend listening to Kanye's “Last Call” which is about this story, and the last 5 minutes of the song is just him talking about moving to New York and trying to make it in music. Incidentally, J.Cole has his own version of the same song.) And, as many know, Taylor Swift worked hard but also had a wealthy father who helped fund her dreams, including purchasing 3% of the record label that signed her for $120,000. 

It is telling that even superstars with no ostensible need for a label deal continue to partner with labels. Consider Kendrick Lamar, probably the hottest artist of 2024, who continues to partner with a label, even though he has his own company, PgLang, and has buzz so strong that he almost certainly would’ve had massive sales without such a partnership. Taylor Swift remains partnered with a label, despite ostensibly not needing one. But why? I have a guess.

Fascinating work on self fulfilling prophecies in music by Matthew J. Salganik and Duncan J. Watts (2008) helps explain why artists like Kendrick Lamar and Taylor Swift stick with labels despite their massive success. In an experiment with over 12,000 participants, they found that a song's perceived popularity had a huge influence on whether people would even give it a listen in the first place. But here's where it gets really interesting: when the team artificially manipulated download counts by completely flipping which songs appeared popular, they found that while some of the highest quality songs could partially recover their standing, the process was inconsistent and incomplete. Even good songs could end up with widely varying levels of success based on initial conditions and social influence. While this study was done in the download era, not the streaming era, I think it is likely the results still apply. 

To make a slight leap from the paper, which song would you bet is going to be more successful: A pretty good song by Taylor Swift, released everywhere by a major label, or a fantastic song self-released by a nobody with 100 followers? 

This might explain why even megastars who seem to have transcended the need for label support still choose to stay signed. Their research suggests that maintaining popularity isn't just about having good music; it's about keeping up the perception of popularity that creates self-reinforcing success. Labels provide that network of constant amplification across radio, playlists, press, and social media. Going independent would mean having to rebuild that entire ecosystem of attention-driving mechanisms from scratch, which might be more expensive and risky than sharing revenues with a label that already has all this infrastructure in place.

As Salganik told me for an article I wrote for WIRED, "Our research is both optimistic and pessimistic. In our experiment we found that better songs did better on average so I guess that's the optimistic part. But, we also found that there was a big range of possible outcomes, even for the same song. So, sometimes a good song could get unlucky." That uncertainty might help explain why artists often stick with the more predictable path of label support rather than gambling on maintaining their cultural position alone. Even for superstars like Kendrick and Taylor, the risk of going it alone might outweigh the reward.

The music industry's network dynamics reflect a broader societal pattern. While Bob Dylan needed physical proximity to industry connections, success in most fields similarly depends on network access, even in the digital era. Cities are the ultimate embodiment of this reality - concentrated hubs of opportunity where connections compound. But today's housing costs create barriers to accessing these crucial urban networks.

Big Cities are Networks

Big cities are the most productive places on earth, with a direct correlation between population and productivity. Big cities also have higher average salaries than the countryside. That’s why its so damaging for lower class people to be cut out of them. 

David Autor’s 2019 paper "Work of the Past, Work of the Future" discusses a seeming paradox: 

US cities today are vastly more educated and skill-intensive than they were five decades ago. Yet, urban non-college workers perform substantially less skilled jobs than decades earlier. This deskilling reflects the joint effects of automation and, secondarily, rising international trade, which have eliminated the bulk of non-college production, administrative support, and clerical jobs, yielding a disproportionate polarization of urban labor markets.

This, in turn, has reduced wages for poorly educated people, harming the American dream for those who don’t have fancy degrees. Were my grandfather alive today, he would benefit from a less racist society, but possibly earn less in real wages if he lived in a big city. (Of course, the picture is complicated.) The above chart from the paper shows how real wage gains have exploded for those with graduate degrees, but barely changed for poorly educated men. Women are doing much better, but a divergence persists. 

Moving to a big city transformed my grandfather's life. And while his story shows how cities can create opportunity for anyone, the value of urban clustering is even more profound for knowledge workers. Enrico Moretti’s 2021 paper “The Effect of ­ High-Tech Clusters on the Productivity of Top Inventors” demonstrates that inventors create significantly more patents when surrounded by other top inventors. Even though such highly productive individuals can usually afford urban rents, today's extreme housing costs must still prevent some talented people from accessing these innovation clusters. This suggests we're not just losing individual opportunities, but the compound effects of creative minds working in proximity.

How much is this costing the US economy as a whole? A famous paper (Hsieh and Moretti, 2019) estimates the US economy would be almost 3.7% larger if only San Francisco, San Jose, and New York City had zoning laws that were less restrictive1.  Amazingly, 40 percent of Manhattan buildings standing today would now be illegal to build, hinting at the vast extent of our zoning problems. So why aren’t zoning laws less restrictive? Existing homeowners have no incentive to increase housing stock. In fact, they benefit from exclusionary zoning laws that increase the value of their real estate. But while existing homeowners profit, everyone else loses. The United States, long a country famed for internal migration, has in recent decades had the lowest rate of migration since record keeping began in 1948.  Fewer people are moving—which means they aren’t following jobs to the most productive areas of the country. Staying put in dying towns or unproductive regions has big consequences. While mortality has dropped across the developed world, middle-class American whites, many of them stuck in moribund rural areas, have been dying at accelerated rates. 

In 2016, in the midst of a tech explosion minting new millionaires and creating tens of thousands of well-paying jobs, the San Francisco Bay Area experienced a net outflow of 26,000 people.  An exodus in the midst of an economic boom is an obvious sign that something is deeply wrong. 

It’s baffling, until you look at housing costs. East Palo Alto, a city in the heart of Silicon Valley, has had a median home price of around $1 million dollars for the past five or so years. In 2012, that figure was only $277,000.  In Mountain View, home to Google, the median price is about $1,900,000. In 2023 the US average is about $400,000.

Overzealous zoning laws that inflate housing prices restrict the ability of lower class workers—not to mention aspiring folk singers—to move where the most productive jobs are. That means only the rich or the lucky can easily take advantage of the 21st century’s best opportunities. We’ll never know how many entrepreneurs tried their luck in Silicon Valley, but had to leave before their big break because they couldn’t afford rent. From London to Sydney to Hong Kong, the stories are the same. Too much income is being spent on rent, and young people are locked out of a real estate market that—for the previous generation—generated large amounts of wealth. 

Living in a big city can create a professional network that propels your career for decades. Moving to the big city is a way to reinvent yourself and develop new professional connections. The ability to live in the centers of economic growth is an increasingly large invisible advantage that benefits the wealthy and the lucky, providing them with connections and opportunities unavailable to others.

Never forget that Steve Jobs was only 12 when he called local computer company HP to ask for parts. This got him a summer job, and eventually led him to meet Steve Wozniak. Perhaps he would’ve been successful had he grown up in rural Wyoming, but he likely wouldn’t have been in tech. Jobs was adopted, and his adopted father was a high school dropout and son of a dairy farmer. He grew up in what was then an affordable house, but is today valued around $3 million.

Tim Cook, the current CEO of Apple, was born to a shipyard worker (perhaps his father and my grandfather could’ve been friends) and graduated from a public high school in Alabama. He apparently got into the tech industry when an I.B.M. recruiter visited Auburn, demonstrating the importance of chance connections (and his hard work). We will never know how many potential Steve Jobs or Tim Cooks will never be found because of their lack of proximity to, or brushes with, elite networks. While technology (like the iPhone and FaceTime) does make it possible for those at the periphery to make connections to elite networks, it does not seem to be the same as being truly embedded in those networks. 

Housing in big cities is one example of an artificially constrained supply meeting extreme demand. This also exists in elite educational institutions, which could, if they wanted to, dramatically expand enrollment. 

Elite Universities as Networks 

While universities will claim that their mission is to educate the next generation, the fact that elite schools with enormous endowments have chosen to remain small suggests that part of their mission is to maintain the exclusivity of their degrees, and the value of the resulting social network. 

Further suggestive evidence of this phenomenon can be found if we examine grade point averages. A truly rigorous school focused only on learning might grade on a curve, or have a demanding course load which puts the smartest students to the test. Yet, at Harvard, this is not what we find. 

The average Harvard GPA has risen inexorably for decades. Just look at this shocking chart: 

The same article states that while getting on the Dean’s List was once an honor, 92% of students qualified the year before it was abolished. Even if one charitably assumes Harvard students are uniquely talented, the lack of differentiation between students is probably troubling from a strictly educational perspective. (I am also not sure we can assume this, given 32% of the class of 2027 seems to be legacy admissions). But if we assume that the point of getting into Harvard or a similar school is mostly to gain status and a social network and then leverage that into a career in consulting or finance, then the grade compression makes much more sense. Especially if we consider that Harvard (and many other universities) have a sort of symbiotic relationship with their alumni given many are heavy donors to their schools.  

One could argue that, perhaps Harvard has simply admitted the smartest students, and so they are all doing fantastic. Yet this is not consistent with historical GPAs. Harvard was still an elite school 80 years ago, and this phenomenon did not take place. From the outside, it appears that Harvard is a fantastic school which nonetheless has internalized the reality that it is primarily a network building institution, with a great school attached to it. Furthermore, the fact that perhaps 25% of students are legacy admits seems to support this fact.

A recent paper by Ricardo Salas-Diaz and Kevin L. Young called “Where Did the Global Elite Go to School? Hierarchy, Harvard, Home and Hegemony” (2024) reveals that a staggering percentage of both American and Global Elites are educated at Harvard or other Ivies. While different definitions of elite exist, and you can slice the data many ways, it is pretty clear that Harvard, along with other top US and UK schools, is the linchpin of elite networks, even at a global level. These authors defined elites by looking at wealth (billionaire lists) and power (heads of state, central bankers) and influence (heads of NGOs and multilateral organizations). Notably, this list did not include celebrities or musicians, which in the age of social media seems like an omission to me. But overall the idea makes sense. 

Note that even among non-Americans, who are much less likely to go to US schools, Harvard still comes out on top. Also note how the chart above had to be extended to account for the enormous amount of US nationals in Global Elite who went to Harvard. 

A skeptic could say, ‘Harvard doesn’t make elites, the children of elites choose to go to Harvard’. And the authors note this is probably partially true. But the fact that many elite students go to Harvard only increases the value of the degree, and the network. So it’s probably a self-reinforcing effect where Harvard both benefits from elite attendance while also creating new elites. Considering truly elite children can go to almost any school, it is notable that so many of them want to go to the Ivies + Oxbridge, etc., suggesting the school network does matter to reinforce their elite status.

This chart demonstrates how overrepresented top university education is among global elites, but also somewhat hopefully demonstrates that at least a small amount of meritocracy appears to exist, with some elites being minted despite low prestige educational backgrounds. (Or viewed with a negative lens, perhaps the low-achieving children of elites still become elite, despite failing in school.)

This study makes the GPA inflation totally logical, if you consider the purpose of Harvard to be an elite networking institution with a great school attached, instead of as a great school that happens to be good for networking. One could surmise the deal is thus: Why anger future donors to your endowment with low grades, when you can mostly make students (who are disproportionally likely to be rich and powerful in the future) look and feel good?

This self-reinforcing nature of elite networks - whether in universities, cities, or industries - creates ripple effects throughout society. These second-order effects of our increasingly network-stratified society deserve closer examination, as they help explain everything from marriage patterns to geographic mobility to political polarization.

Second order effects?

Here is a mix of speculation and research about second order effects from our increasingly network-stratified society.

If poorer people increasingly cannot afford to move to big cities, and elites sort themselves into top universities, what does this say about inter-class marriages, and the children of the marriages (or relationships) which do occur?

First, and most obviously, if you are a poor person who never leaves the deep south, you will probably never meet the partner, let alone the friends, you would have met in a big city. Physical proximity has long mattered for relationships. Given that romance essentially always has a physical dimension, and friendship usually does, this makes intuitive sense. This 1932 study  found that lots of people (surprise!) marry people relatively close in physical proximity to them, and the farther away someone lives from them (pre marriage) the rarer such a pairing is. This 1950 study found that people disproportionally became friends with those closest to them. This 2021 study found that being seated next to someone increases the odds of a friendship forming. Even in the era of online dating, almost nobody is using apps to date someone five states away.

These friendships and relationships really matter, especially for children. Raj Chetty et al.'s 2022 paper on social mobility bluntly notes in the abstract "If children with low-SES parents were to grow up in counties with economic connectedness comparable to that of the average child with high-SES parents, their incomes in adulthood would increase by 20% on average." This finding is staggering - simply being around more economically connected people dramatically improves life outcomes. And if poor people, like my grandfather, can no longer move to big cities for a better life, society becomes less dynamic and certain people may get economically stuck. While technological advances and remote work might seem like solutions, they may actually be making in-person networks more valuable by making them more exclusive.

This economic sorting has profound social and political implications. With increased sorting by economic opportunity, it should be no surprise that polarization increases. And in an era of increased sorting and political polarization, people will increasingly marry those who are politically similar to themselves. The data back this up: In 1973, only 53% of newlyweds agreed politically, but by 2014 this figure was 74%. This, in turn, probably only increases polarization, creating a feedback loop of social separation.

This data on the increasing percent of wealth held by the richest individuals demonstrates the importance and resilience of the network power of wealthy individuals.

But on a global scale, the network effects seem to be even stronger. The Financial Times, as well as Twitter/X is filled with posts and threads of Europe's relative decline when compared to the United States. Why is this? The US benefits from a large population, with a single market, a homogenous language and culture, essentially the same legal system across states, the world's reserve currency and more. These aren't just economic advantages - they're network advantages that compound over time.

By contrast, academics continue to argue that the Eurozone is not an optimum currency area. That is, the Euro itself exists for political reasons to bridge gaps between countries, rather than for pure economic ones. A diversity of traditions and laws and languages and cultures—which is sociologically and culturally a benefit—is economically a disadvantage, as a Spaniard moving to Germany is actually moving to an entirely different linguistic and cultural space, while an Alabaman moving to Chicago is simply making their winter (much) colder. Add on top of that a less entrepreneurially friendly culture, and harsher regulations (particularly around bankruptcy) and you have a recipe for underperformance.

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This network effect is particularly visible in venture capital. A 2013 study suggests venture capital firms are more likely to invest in firms closer in proximity to themselves, and given the continued importance of Silicon Valley, this has probably only intensified. The concentration of capital in specific geographic areas creates a self-reinforcing cycle: talent goes where the money is, and money goes where the talent is. This fact also contributes to a brain drain from Europe to the United States, which is also compounded by the fact that US-listed firms trade at higher multiples than EU listed ones, which has led some EU firms to relist in the US.

Whether you're trying to be a folksinger or a longshoreman, or even a janitor, high housing costs lead to a diversity of problems, making it harder to join elite networks. And as the study on Harvard and global elites shows, these networks are real, are powerful, and are self-reinforcing. When we understand the Raj Chetty et al. 2022 results that merely growing up in more networked places increases lifetime income substantially, it suddenly becomes clear why parents fight so hard to get into the "right" schools, neighborhoods, or social clubs. Indeed, thinking in terms of networks makes expensive country clubs less of a consumption good and more of a human capital advancement good. Networks matter - not just for individual success, but for the very fabric of our society.

But where do we go from here? This is not just a story about housing costs or elite universities - it's about how opportunity itself is becoming concentrated and self-reinforcing. While technological advances like AI learning tools may democratize education, allowing motivated students anywhere to academically excel, this may paradoxically make elite social networks even more valuable. When anyone can learn anything online, the scarcest resource becomes the in-person connections that can't be digitized.

The solutions are both simple and difficult. Simple because we know what works: abundant housing in productive cities, expanded university access, and infrastructure that enables people to physically access networks of opportunity. Difficult because these solutions require overcoming entrenched interests that benefit from artificial scarcity. Because the poorest among us are hit hardest, the cost of inaction is hidden from view, but that cost is growing every year.

From Bob Dylan finding his voice in Greenwich Village, to my grandfather finding opportunity as a longshoreman in Brooklyn, to Tim Cook getting his first break through an IBM recruiter at Auburn - these stories remind us that networks aren't just about individual success but about society's ability to find and nurture talent wherever it exists. Networks will always matter; the question is whether we make them ladders of opportunity or walls of exclusion.

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As you already know, this is The Studies Show and my name is Alexander Webb and I’m proud to say I just finished my PhD, which was on trust in financial networks and transactions. Thank you all for reading!

Please feel free to comment if you have any stories or papers to discuss.

A hand-painted propaganda mural in North Korea (photo taken during my visit in 2013)

It has recently been reported that several Chinese GPT LLM variants have large amounts of imperfect censorship. A Bloomberg reporter notes he could not even type in the name of China’s leader in Chinese (seemingly even if his query were written in a positive light). In honor of this occasion, today’s episode of The Studies Show is about censorship. We not only look at several academic studies on the topic, but also explore some of my firsthand experiences when living in China and visiting North Korea. Let’s dive in:

The Key Question: Why do so many people accept censorship?

In many countries censorship is pervasive. You can’t criticize the government, or you might get hauled off the jail (or worse). Yet many countries with heavy censorship not only have stable governments, but many people seem to support censorship policies (and not just because they are pretending).

Is it because people get desensitized? Or is it because the government censors so many topics that people relate censorship less to politics?

Yang (2022) studies censorship in China and persuasively argues it is probably both of the above.

“The central argument of this paper is that, when the targets of censorship include both political and non-political content, it normalizes the censorship apparatus and desensitizes citizens to censorship activities. As a result, backlash against both the censorship apparatus and the regime is less likely to happen.’

In the American imagination we often think that countries such as China only censor anti-government content. But lots of things are censored there, notably including pornography, information about wealth gaps, and some historical facts about Maoism. (Chinese media also memorably censored crowd photos of the World Cup while China was still locked down). As we will discuss later, I found both in living in Shanghai and visiting North Korea that this censorship was highly class dependent, with Chinese and North Korean elites, as well as foreigners in China, seemingly experiencing much less censorship than average people. It’s important to note that this is not a phenomenon limited to one or two countries. Another study (Esberg, 2020) found similar activities in Chile during the rule of Pinochet, who not only censored political topics, but also content the Catholic Church didn’t like.

Yang’s paper suggests that the widespread use of censorship contributes to its normalization. It reminds me as a kind of inverse of Steve Bannon’s famous quote that the way to beat the media is to ‘flood the zone with shit’.

How Yang (2022) Studies Censorship

Yang first verifies that large amounts of non-political content is censored by looking at around 15,000 censored WeChat posts. Only about 40% of posts in his sample are politically related. (WeChat, if you don’t know, is an ‘everything app’ of the kind Musk is trying to turn Twitter (X) into. It has messaging, payments, apps, food delivery, shopping, all in one app).

Next, he shows two groups of people WeChat posts, some of which note they were censored. In the first group, he shows political and non-political posts, but only displays censorship notices on the political content. (This is the control group). In the second group, he shows censorship notices on some political and some non-political content (this is the treatment group).

As you can see in this chart from his paper, Yang (2022) finds that users exposed to both political and nonpolitical censorship were much more likely to support the censorship apparatus and express satisfaction for the regime. They were also less likely to express a desire to participate in protests.  

Yang notes:

“Combining the results from the survey experiment and the observational study, I show that large-scale censorship of non-political content exists in China and can significantly increase support for the regime.”

What is it like on the ground in countries with heavier levels of censorship than the United States? While I cannot definitively speak to the present moment, I did live in Shanghai for six months in 2012, and spent approximately six days in North Korea in 2013. This is hardly enough time to make a definitive conclusion,, but given the paucity of foreigners who even visit NK, I think it is worth sharing some observations in regards to censorship and Yang’s findings.

Takeaway #1: Censorship is class dependent

In North Korea, very few people are able to interact with foreigners. Walking on the street of Pyongyang, children looked at me—several wide-eyed—but then generally quickly pretended they did not see me. As a 6’3 male with long hair, I was almost certainly one of the tallest people they had ever seen, and perhaps the only man without a crew cut. This fact alone makes me feel better about my visit—that I could even exist showed locals that the world outside the country was very different than the world inside.

But the people who could talk to you—and this was only a handful, really—did know about the outside world. A tour guide told me that students at the foreign studies university are shown western films to help them learn English. And it goes without saying that NK is so different from America that even the most bland film would show a radically different world. Even for a remarkably closed off regime, the decisionmakers (and even people who interact with foreign tourists) simply cannot have the same level of censorship everyone else has.

In Shanghai (where I lived for six months in 2012), locals who spoke English often had VPNs or found ways to access the internet. I briefly dated a woman who was active on Twitter, even though English was her second language and Twitter was technically banned. You could download anything on the internet if you knew where to look, and it seemed to me like only the very most political movies were really suppressed.  The reality was that most people could not speak English, so foreign movies and ideas were not that much of a threat if consumed in English. My recollection is that The Economist was available in foreign hotels, although I recall an article which had apparently gone too far was a blank page in one edition.

During those six months, I also stayed for one night in some sort of luxury foreign-brand hotel in a skyscraper in Shanghai. To my surprise, the internet worked uncensored just fine, although I am sure the government was checking which sites I visited. I didn’t search for porn or Tiananmen pictures though, so it is possible there were limits that I didn’t brush up against. It’s also possible that this was only doable in English, and that use of Chinese would have run up against censorship.

Takeaway #2: Degrees of Censorship Matter Greatly

The freest I have ever felt, in my entire life, by far, is when I entered China from North Korea. It was like a night and day experience. I could go where I wanted without being followed by a “tour guide.” I was in possession of my own passport. I could choose which restaurant to eat at. I could also connect to the internet, call my family in America whenever I wanted, send emails, etc. You have to go to North Korea to understand just how lucky most Chinese people must feel. Indeed many Chinese friends have compared North Korea to China during the cultural revolution. Chalk that up as one reason why many people will support their government. Things are genuinely much better now.

This chart I created using UN Economic Data shows the huge difference in economic growth between China and North Korea. Note that from 1972-to 1993 North Korea was apparently richer than China, a statistic which I find hard to believe having been to both places, but must speak to the absolute chaos of the Cultural Revolution. It presumably also speaks to the fact that China is much more open than North Korea.

Many people have (in many cases, rightly) criticized politicians like Bill Clinton for being too upbeat that China would liberalize. But at least based on my limited experience in China and NK, some of that liberalization did indeed occur, and does appear sticky. It is however, certainty the case, that it appears the odds of China becoming a western-style democracy soon are very slim. (I highly recommend Acemoglu and Robinson’s The Narrow Corridor).

Some foreigners lump China and North Korea together, but in reality there are huge differences between the two nations.

A Picture I Took In Kaesong, North Korea in 2013

One interesting divergence between the two countries seems to be around sexual attitudes. It is possible to hook up or have casual relationships in China, and openly discuss it to some degree, but this appears to be taboo in NK.

The only time one of my North Korean tour guides directly criticized China was in regard to dating, where the guide claimed that Chinese attitudes towards sex were too permissive. (The guide, as I recall, never said the word “sex” but it was clearly implied, as the discussion involved condoms and birth control.)

It was asserted that North Koreans preferred traditional matchmaking, without intercourse, and with serious discussions between the couple, and likely their families. In this case, the society was downright conservative, even though it is in theory

All in all, the level of freedom in China is just leagues ahead of North Korea, even if they both score poorly on indexes such as the Freedom House Index.

Takeaway #3: Progress on Censorship is not destined.

Last year I had dinner with a friend who I knew in Shanghai in 2012. This friend moved to the US around 2020, and told me that the arts and culture scene which had been so vibrant in early 2010s Shanghai had been dying. Finding space and getting approval for art exhibitions or movies was harder. More content was censored. People were afraid of films or concepts which could be even remotely seen as anti-government.

This, of course, only kicked into higher gear when Covid hit.

News reports seem to suggest that censorship really has been increasing in contemporary China. And one only needs to look at Hong Kong, where I spent many years, to see the dramatic effects of the new National Security law.

At the same time, I distinctly remember going to a nightclub in Hangzhou, China once, maybe in 2015 or ’16. I saw everyone drunk, laughing, happy, acting just like Americans or Europeans or really most people around the world, and I just realized how impossible it was for China to return to a North Korean-style society without nightclubs, with total control, with so little space for free time or thought. China is a fascinating country with many economic and cultural achievements, so it may also be just a matter of time before greater freedoms of speech take hold. It’s important to note that the free speech situation in “greater China” is very mixed with Taiwan being very free and to a lesser extent Hong Kong, having more permissive speech, showing a future with greater freedoms is possible.

My experience talking to friends and locals in the country gives me hope, even when considering the sobering results of the study we looked at above.

But what about censorship in the US and Europe? What are global attitudes towards censorship and free speech?

Free Speech Globally

It’s worth noting that the US and Latin America has, by global standards, unusually strong support for free speech.

This 2015 Pew Research survey across national boundaries found the US to be the world leader for free speech support, although it was second behind Latin America on media freedom.

I think that some of this effect merely results from people wanting to be proud of their own systems, their own countries, and their existing ways of life. People are the heroes in their own stories, and people want to belong. In most cases, we want to be proud of our cultures and countries and hometowns. (I’ll never forget the time I asked a Japanese local told me, with absolute conviction, that the most beautiful view in the entire world was in in the small Onsen town of Beppu.)

Some issues of free speech are also difficult philosophical issues which don’t necessarily have a clear answer. At what point does offensive speech become hateful, and at what point does that speech endanger people’s lives?

(Wikipedia)

In Denmark, burning the Danish flag is legal, but burning foreign flags is not, which is an interesting philosophical position. Debates over flag burning are also alive in the United States, with both Hillary Clinton (in 2005) and Donald Trump (in both 2016 and 2020) supporting jailing flag burners. New Zealand, Germany, and Finland, which many think of as a very liberal countries, apparently ban flag burning showing certain activities are prohibited in many societies which are generally perceived as quite free.

Free Speech and Censorship in the US Context

The United States has robust free speech protections, but potentially worrying trends are emerging. Political divergences over the seriousness of offensive content online are one potential sign that support for freedom of expression may become politicized and possibly change in the future.

This chart is from Pew Research, and was from this article.

However, given the strong legal protections for speech, as well as the fact that parties in opposition nearly always want to support free speech (so they can criticize the party in power) I am mostly confident the US tradition of free speech will continue.

So What Can, or Should, “The West” Do About Censorship?

Maintain Our Freedoms

I think one of the most important things to do is maintain our own freedoms, whether that be freedom of speech, civil rights, voting, or other core freedoms for a modern society. If we don’t demonstrate the power and importance of free speech, and how it can help everyone in a society, we are failing. As evidenced by Clinton and Trump’s support for jailing flag burners, it is certainly the case that cracking down on some types of free speech can be a bipartisan issue.

I was in Hong Kong just after Trump fired James Comey as head of the FBI, and a couple from China I knew expressed incredulity that an American President would go so far as to fire the head of the FBI who, in their mind, had done nothing wrong by rejecting Trump’s desire for “loyalty”. It made me both proud and sad to consider that these friends looked to America for strong institutions and rule of law, only to see it seemingly slipping away.

Resist Lazy Stereotypes About Foreigners

It is also important to remember not to categorize every single member of a country, or group, as being responsible for the policies of that government. Many people want to be proud of their hometowns, their cities, their countries, their cultures, and often their pride is primarily non-political. We run the risk of dangerous backlashes if we automatically group people together with the policies of their leaders. Just as we have a 50/50 country in the States, other societies often have deep political disagreements. The difference is that in countries which experience large amounts of censorship, we may often not know or hear of the people who bravely resist the prevailing narrative. Criticism which is lazy or veers towards racial or cultural attacks will only provoke backlashes and plays into the hands of leaders who oppose freedom of speech.

What does Yang (2022) Suggest?

Yang (2022) notes that while Roberts (2020) suggests spreading greater knowledge of censorship as a means to fight it, Yang’s own results suggest that greater knowledge of censorship can bolster support for the regime—if done right. Roberts does note, in line with the class-skewed censorship I felt in real life, that regimes can use censorship for some people to divide and bolster the regime. This puts us in a tricky position if Yang’s analysis is correct. Yang pivots and suggests that those who oppose censorship should instead shift their efforts towards exposing the harms and problems that censorship can cause, rather than just merely raising awareness that censorship exists.

Final thoughts:

One critical point to repeat is that censorship, done right, may actually increase support for repressive governments. Before visiting North Korea, I assumed that everyone was anxiously hoping to be liberated. While many (probably most) people presumably do want to be liberated, it is important to know that the ruling elite in Pyongyang, as well as the most loyal and most privileged elements of North Korean society are well aware that if the government collapses, their lives might actually become worse. From the limited amount I could see as a tourist, it appears that the incentives for those at the top are to support the government. There is certainly, at a minimum, a collective action problem with a J-curve for elites.

Long story short, Yang (2022) suggests that censorship is more effective if it is broad, sweeping, and not just about politics. This makes sense intuitively, but also matches my experience in countries which are believed to have high levels of censorship. It’s also important to remember that freedoms like freedom of speech only survive with continuous support and care from citizens, and that United States is not perfect in this regard, although we can still be proud of our robust rights around free speech.

Other Notes:I want to thank everyone who signed up after our previous post was shared on Marginal Revolution, which was a true honor, as well as the many signups from Reddit. I was delayed with this edition due to my PhD deadline.

We also have merch available if you’d like to support the show, thank you to those who have already purchased: www.TheStudiesShow.Shop

That’s it for now. Thanks everyone!

Alex

Alexander Webb is a PhD student and freelance writer (New York Times, National Geographic) who started The Studies Show in February, 2023.

p.s. A version of this episode will soon be released on our YouTube Podcasts channel, with shorter variants on our Instagram, and TikTok. On YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok you can follow us @TheStudiesShow. You can see our archives on YouTube Podcasts back to March, 2023 as well as short video archives on Instagram and TikTok since February, 2023. Our earliest Substack post dates to February, 2023.

In a recent congressional hearing, a former US intelligence officer named David Grusch claimed he has seen persuasive evidence that the US Government has alien spacecraft. In light of these explosive claims, I thought it would be worth looking at what academic studies can tell us about the elements of the claimed conspiracy. Even if the aliens part is made up—and I am not saying it is or isn’t—the other elements of the story are definitely real and can be studied. These elements include;

1)     The math of conspiracies. (When does an organization get too big to keep a secret?)

2)     The physics of theoretical alien spacecraft. (Based on sightings, what are the capabilities of these hypothesized craft?)

3)     The psychology of emotional stories. (Can we tell when an emotional story is true or false?)

4)     What are the odds of life on other planets. (Based on certain assumptions, what are the odds alien life exists?)

This episode of The Studies Show reviews academic studies which explore these questions, as well as providing additional suggestive information about the UFO phenomenon, which is probably the most well-known conspiracy theory in existence today.

Let’s get started with a paper on the feasibility of large organizations maintaining conspiracies:

Study #1: How long can large organizations keep a conspiracy going?

There are many UFO conspiracy theories, but the one told by David Grusch goes like this: Elements of the US Government, aligned with a military contractor, have kept a secret program on this topic for 70 years. This program has hid the truth of Alien craft/visitation from the public.

Elements of this story that we know are true are the facts that there are interesting videos of unidentified objects which some believe are actual flying craft, and the US military does admit that it has evidence which is not released to the public.

On the conspiracy side, if you take out aliens you have a much more mundane, but still important question: If a large group of people does something secretly—how long before the secret leaks? We have seen this kind of issue before, notably with the Edward Snowden situation.

Grimes (2016) is a study which examines the math of conspiracies.

As we can see, the more people involved in the conspiracy, the harder it is to hide the truth. How did Grimes get these results? The simplified version is that this paper makes some basic assumptions about the odds someone in on a conspiracy will flip, then multiplies the chance they’ll flip by the number of people who know the truth, times the number of years. So, even if there’s a tiny chance anyone spills the truth, if you have a million people in on the conspiracy, it’s going to be revealed pretty fast. It’s pretty intuitive, and you can see the results in the table above.

Here Grimes makes some assumptions about how long it would take for real-world 2016-era conspiracies to unravel, based on the number of people who would have to keep the secret. These involve widespread but patently false claims, such as the moon landing hoax, etc. Especially notable for the present day is the calculation comparing how long it would take for a vaccination conspiracy to be revealed if the drug companies—which are huge—were also in on it. It just shows one of the many reasons the fringe COVID vaccine conspiracy theories don’t make any sense, even if it is true there are some important scientific debates surrounding the vaccine.

Takeaway #1: Small conspiracies can persist in secret for a long time.

Regarding Grusch’s claims, I have no idea how many people work on the alleged secret program, but I think Grimes (2016) supports the idea that a small (100-300 people) secret program can exist for a long time.

I do think Grimes is very negative on there being a massive conspiracy across multiple governments. Grusch has claimed the Vatican (and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini) was in on it, and also that there is a crashed UFO in a foreign country so large they built a building around it. Others have speculated that the Chinese and Russian militaries have their own programs. This seems exceptionally hard to believe given the number of people involved, and the many ways that the secrets could leak.

I do need to note that there was a correction to this paper, but not one that changed the fundamental results. Ultimately, I think Grimes supports the idea of a long running but small conspiracy, especially if it involves only 50 people or so, but obviously says nothing specific about the aliens angle.

Takeaway #2: Evidence against conspiracies makes some believe the conspiracy even more

It’s also worth highlighting a section near the end of the paper which talks about the dynamics of conspiracy theories:

In a recent Californian study on parents, it was found that countering anti-vaccination misconceptions related to autism was possible with clear explanation, but that for parents resolutely opposed to vaccination attempts to use rational approach further entrenched them in their ill-founded views. The grim reality is that there appears to be a cohort so ideologically invested in a belief that for whom no reasoning will shift, their convictions impervious to the intrusions of reality. In these cases, it is highly unlikely that a simple mathematical demonstration of the untenability of their belief will change their viewpoint. However, for the less invested such an intervention might indeed prove useful.

Long story short, evidence is counterproductive if you truly believe a conspiracy. Which just goes to show that, if it turns out we have never been visited and Grusch is mistaken, or intentionally lying, a hard-core group of supporters will cling to this topic forever.

Many Grusch defenders note his impeccable military credentials. Indeed, he may be proven correct. But before we get to the next paper, I think it’s useful to think about some basic statistics.

Thinking about extreme beliefs using basic statistics:

There are 330 million or so people in the United States. This means a belief so out there that it is held by only 1% of people will still equate to 3.3 million believers. 

10 percent of Americans think the earth is flat. That’s 33 million people. And sure, some people are joking when they give these answers, but again, any belief held by a small percentage of people will mean millions of adherents. According to Pew Research 27% of Americans believe God determines what happens to them “all the time” which equates to 89 million people. This is not to make a judgment on that claim specifically, but that does show that ideas of a higher power with mystical abilities is not unusual. This should be considered when thinking about beliefs in aliens. 

But let’s go slightly further, and assume that a small subset of people who hold outlier views are also 1) very charismatic and believable, and 2) share their stories.

Let’s assume 1% of Americans are convinced UFOs have visited them, and 10% of those people are charismatic, smart, and essentially believable. That is, they are “normal” people with standard normie views except they believe aliens visited them. That’s 330,000 people with broadly believable stories. Let’s assume that one percent of this population comes forward per year with a well-written, cogent sounding, believable story, that gives us 3,300 stories per year, or 9 believable, well-written stories per day! If around 1% of these people are in the military, we then get 33 stories of UFOs from military members, which sound believable, or are at least difficult to disprove. That’s three stories per month. 

Takeaway #3: Statistics suggests there are a lot of people with fringe beliefs

This is one reason why lots of convincing stories without evidence are not very convincing to me. 

But… Some people do have evidence, which will soon lead us to study #2.

The US Government Acknowledges it has evidence it won’t share

The most famous known UFO/UAP case with acknowledged evidence that the public knows about is probably the 2004 Nimitz “Tic Tac” incident in which US fighter pilots encountered a Tic Tac shaped craft in the Pacific. There were multiple eyewitness accounts backed up by radar data. These craft supposedly moved and turned at speeds impossible for human-designed airplanes. Other similar sightings have been reported, including with radar data and videos. David Fravor is the most public figure who participated in this event, and also testified to Congress recently. 

Much of this data remains classified, and the Navy admits it has more videos, but has refused to release themas "The release of this information will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities,"

These are the videos which are publicly released. 

Takeaway #4: The most basic “conspiracy”—that some information held by the government is not public—is 100% true. Whether that matters is another issue.

The most banal conspiracy theory seems to be real. The US Government admits it has more evidence of the UFO phenomenon. This is not to say it shows they are aliens, but that there are further videos of somethingthe public has not seen. That’s not even a conspiracy, it is just true. In the 90s WIRED reported about the Manta/Aurora aircraft which some claim are secret US government craft that people mistake for UFOs.

The real question is what this unknown evidence reveals. Assuming all of these are actually US or Chinese craft, it makes a lot of sense why they won’t release the information.

It does appear there is other evidence of Tic Tac craft. 

These redacted classified presentations, received via FOIA, refer to a Tic Tac craft like those previously seen, spotted by a satellite surveillance system. They also reference a command and control craft. Nearly the entire presentations are redacted. 

How you interpret this evidence highly depends on your point of view. If you think it’s a disinformation campaign, the fact the government is releasing this report appears suspicious. If they truly thought these sightings were aliens, and they wanted to cover it up, they wouldn’t release the reports. On the other hand, if you think there is a vast conspiracy, the fact we have a partial portion of a huge PowerPoint on aliens just shows we are at the tip of the iceberg. 

Study #2: The possible performance of Tic Tac UFOs

What do academic studies say about the performance of Tic Tac craft? I’m glad you asked, because Knuth, Powell, Reali (2019) studied this based on their reported characteristics. Among other things, the study analyzed what their reported performance would mean if they are indeed spacecraft.

The authors write: “The main point is that not only are the observed accelerations of these UAVs consistent with those required for interstellar travel, but that some of these UAVs exhibit capabilities suggesting that they could be spacecraft with impressive interstellar capabilities.“

What is most important about this chart is that it shows, if near speed of light travel is possible, the elapsed time for an individual inside the craft is only going to be a day or two to nearby stars. 

If they are indeed piloted by living beings, it is reasonable that someone with a human-length lifespan could travel between Earth and nearby stars without aging much at all. (This is because time slows the closer one travels to the speed of light.) My understanding is that the theory of how this is possible is that these craft warp spacetime itself, enabling them to accelerate and move extremely quickly.

Takeaway #5: If the Tic Tac craft are real, they are ludicrously advanced, which does suggest they are likely not made by the US or China or Russia.

Let’s go to another study, and also look at a forum post from Reddit’s /r/Ufos, which is a great resource for anyone interested in the topic.

Study #3: People can’t tell the difference between true and false memories

Shaw (2020) had subjects watch videos of people recalling false or true memories, and asked them to judge which was real. People did no better than chance:

Regarding highly emotional stories, people have trouble telling the difference between truth and fiction, meaning there likely is room for bad actors to make up UFO encounters (and I do think most UFO stories are made up, even if some are real).

 Shaw (2020) notes “This research provides evidence that false memories look real. Participants were no better than chance at identifying rich emotional false memories, and no better than chance at identifying rich false memories of committing crime.” They continue further saying

“The results presented here have direct implications for police and legal contexts. In addition to the risk of misidentifying false memories as true, the results presented here show the risk of misidentifying true memories as false – participants were no better than chance at correctly classifying true memories.”

Takeaway #6: We are just not good at identifying false stories, but we also often label true stories as false.

The relevance to the “it’s aliens” side is clear. We are just not good at determining which stories are real or fake, absent other evidence. This is crucial when we consider stories like this, which often pop up online:

We should have compassion for those who claim to have experienced UFO events, whether true or not:

This Reddit post claims to be written by a Northern California CEO who saw floating metal orbs twice, then had telepathic contact with NHI, and now has been diagnosed with brain damage/scarring. He links to an article discussing Stanford Professor Garry Nolan’s research on the brains of those who have had NHI experiences, many of which show damage.  

Assuming this is not a made-up story, this is a fascinating case because it speaks to either explanation–if these were hallucinations, the brain damage makes sense. If he really had his brain contacted by NHI, the brain damage makes sense. A touching part of this story is the person in the comments who reports having a similar experience and warning him not to tell the story to doctors, because he will sound crazy. Whether or not these events occurred, reading these comments gives me a strong sense of compassion and pity. It must be a horrible feeling to believe you have been contacted by a force you cannot control or understand, to receive brain damage from that experience, and have nobody believe you. 

Takeaway #7: The UFO phenomenon is real for many people, whether it is real in reality or not

At this point, it might make sense to take a break and overview the essential conspiracy theory at hand here:

The basic contours of, and my problems with, the current UFO/UAP Conspiracy Theory:

Grusch and others seem to argue that a small group of government officials, aligned with military contractors, has operated a secret program to reverse engineer craft. These craft have fantastic abilities we do not understand how to reproduce.

On the one hand, Grusch did have access to secret information, and many other high-level officials and politicians, including Harry Reid, John Podesta, and John Brennan (former head of the CIA) seem to believe something is happening there.

But believing this conspiracy theory also leads us to believe several other implausible things:

1. Alien craft routinely crash despite being extremely advanced.

2. They crash in such a manner that they can still be flown and/or can be repaired, despite being well beyond our technological frontier.

3. If they are not crashed, the aliens are simply leaving them behind. 

4. In an age of high-powered DSLR cameras (in addition to smartphones) nobody has a great photo of them yet.

Regarding point two: This is a piece of the fuselage of Flight 93, which crashed on September 11th, 2001. It seems implausible that aliens crash and also that the wreckage can be flown. But perhaps these craft are so much stronger than our planes.

But there are also other reasons to be skeptical, even though these claims received a congressional hearing.

Some proponents of UFOs in Congress already believe demonstrably false conspiracy theories: 

Congressman Matt Gaetz claims in this video, that he was stonewalled but eventually saw video of a craft that defies known US/Chinese/Russian capabilities. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) also seems to believe there is a conspiracy. Congressman Tim Burchett (R-Tenn) said "We couldn't fight them off if we wanted to. That's why I don't think they're a threat to us, or they would already have been." Hurting their credibility is the fact that all three of these people seem to believe the demonstrably false claim that the 2020 election was stolen. It’s always funny to imagine that the “Deep State” let Trump win in 2016, but intervened to stop him in 2020 when Trump was already president of the US. Anyway. Fringe UFO beliefs also pop up other places, way beyond lawmakers. One of the Americans who defected to North Korea gave a rambling anti-American speech which touched on UFOs, among other things.

Proving UFOS are real is easy.

UFO claims, like religious claims, can be proven true easily. All that needs to happen is for the resurrected Jesus, or say, angels proclaiming the truth of Christianity (or any other religion), to visit the White House/Vatican/wherever. Similarly, the UFO debate will be ended instantly if they land in Times Square, visit the White House, or use their amazing technology to hover over any major city for a few minutes. If a scientist or normal person finds a craft in their backyard before the feds get to it, posts it to TikTok, they will get millions of views and we will know UFOs are real.

But, if the powerful being does not want to communicate, and actively tries to hide itself, then we are in a bit of a pickle. An extremely powerful being with high technology will not be able to be seen easily if it doesn’t want to be. And indeed God will be able to hide his existence from us if he wants to. As with the existence of God, these facts are not a slam dunk in terms of the disapproval camp, but they do raise questions as to why we don’t have better evidence of the UFOs.

Parallels to Religious Arguments 

Absent hard proof, the UFO debate can get somewhat theologically adjacent, with parallels to the debate over Jesus’ divinity sometimes known as “Lewis’ Trilemma” which basically argues that Jesus was either 

1. Evil (because he knew he was lying)

2. Crazy (because he was lying, but didn’t know it)

3. God (because he was telling the truth)

Similarly, the UFO debate could be summed up as, perhaps a

1. Psyop (the government/grifters selling books are pushing false information)

2. Mass delusion (the phenomenon is fake, or results from crazy people telling stories, but these people genuinely believe the UFO phenomenon is real)

3. True (UFOs are real, here, and have miraculous capabilities)

I don’t think we need to focus on the theological debates but it is worth saying once more that proving the truth behind the existence of a very powerful-being is actually easy–if the powerful being wants to cooperate. 

Study #4: The Drake Equation

This is not technically a study but I didn’t want to change the heading structure. Anyway, the Drake equation is one way of roughly estimating the odds the odds of life in the Milky Way, but the output is highly dependent on your priors. Since we have little understanding about how easy it is for life to originate, it’s unclear what guesses we should make. For what it’s worth, my try at the Drake equation yielded a total of 4 civilizations in the Milky Way. You can try your hand at it here.

Drake himself claimed the initial meeting surrounding this equation resulted in an estimate of between 1000 planets to 100 million planets with life in the Milky Way, showing just how uncertain we are on this one. Since my inputs resulted in an estimate of 4, maybe I’m a pessimist.

Two more pieces of evidence:

If you haven’t been following this story it may be shocking to know just how bold the claims some publications have been willing to print have been. For example:

Dr. Eric Davis, mentioned in a 2020 New York Times article (reposted here by the Baltimore Sun) which says “Davis who now works for Aerospace Corp., a defense contractor, said he gave a classified briefing to a Defense Department agency as recently as March about retrievals from “off-world vehicles not made on this earth.”

The comments section of this 2020 New York Times article with Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal features direct questions from readers which were answered by Ralph. The article, which is entitled “Do We Believe in U.F.O.s? That’s the Wrong Question: Reporting on the Pentagon program that’s investigating unidentified flying objects is not about belief. It’s about a vigilant search for facts.” is also well worth a read. In the comments, Ralph Blumenthal asserts the evidence they have seen suggests they are indeed “off-world vehicles”. 

Takeaway #8: The New York Times found a quote about “off-world vehicles not made on this earth” credible enough to print.  That either speaks highly of the UFO story, or speaks poorly of the NYT.

Worth noting: The authors of the above mentioned article are the same as the ones who broke the David Grusch story.

Another tantalizing piece of evidence is the so-called “Wilson Memo” which was entered into the congressional record during the Grusch hearings.

If you think Grusch is telling the truth, you should read the Wilson Memo.

This memo which purports to memorialize a meeting between Dr. Eric Davis and Admiral Wilson, in which Admiral Wilson discusses being refused access to the a UFO crash retrieval program run by a military contractor, despite the fact that his rank should allow him access to such a program. When he complains, he supposedly is threatened with early retirement and demotion.

UFO believers often point to this as one of the better pieces of evidence, although it should be noted that Admiral Wilson himself claims such a meeting never took place. However, if the details of the memorandum are true–and he really was threatened over knowledge of such a program, this makes sense. Dr. Eric Davis himself was later quoted in the New York Times article about the subject, suggesting that the paper believes he is a reliable source. Whether this memo is real or not, it’s interesting these players are linked.

Takeaway #9: The contours of Grusch’s conspiracy theory are present in other sources, including the Wilson memo. This speaks to either a long running disinformation campaign, a pseudo meme that keeps getting repeated, or perhaps an actual conspiracy where similar claims keep popping up.

What happens next?

This article in The Hill gets it right. Entitled “A monumental UFO scandal is looming” it starts with the paragraph:

“The decades-long saga of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) is barreling headlong toward one of two stunning conclusions. 

Either the U.S. government has mounted an extraordinary, decades-long coverup of UFO retrieval and reverse-engineering activities, or elements of the defense and intelligence establishment are engaging in a staggeringly brazen psychological disinformation campaign.”

While I do think it is possible there are other options—it is possible everyone is confused by the events and rumors have filled the gap—the broad contours of that statement align with my current thoughts on the matter. The fact that so many Military/Government affiliated officials Lue Elizondo, Christopher Mellon, Eric Davis, Harry Reid, John Podesta, and now David Grusch, have varying degrees of claims about the reality of these craft, seems to suggest something strange is going on.

Grusch claims to be able to provide evidence in a classified setting, and so it is likely lawmakers will soon know whether his claims are believable. Notable too is the fact that lawmakers have added demands for disclosure in various pieces of legislation, so if truth exists to these claims, more people will hopefully know soon.

Takeaway #10: Given Grusch’s offer to provide more information to Congress behind closed doors, we should know a lot more within a year or two. If we don’t I think that’s negative for the idea there is truth to the conspiracy theory.

Ultimately, whatever happens, I think this time period will be a fertile area for more studies and hopefully inspire researchers to do more good work.

Below are more interesting things I found, and a paragraph I cut from the piece, in case you want more.

Thanks for checking out The Studies Show! We’ve been posting reviews of academic studies since February, 2023. Be sure to follow us on Youtube @TheStudiesShow, Instagram @TheStudiesShow TikTok @TheStudiesShow or visit us at www.thestudiesshow.com

Alex

p.s. This topic has so much evidence and chatter and rumors and information that I could only include some of it. If there is demand for another post on this topic I may do another in the future. Thanks so much!

Appendix A: More interesting evidence

An interesting quote:

John O. Brennan, former director of the CIA, said this on Conversations With Tyler: “But I think some of the phenomena we’re going to be seeing continues to be unexplained and might, in fact, be some type of phenomenon that is the result of something that we don’t yet understand and that could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life.”

I don’t even know what to make of that statement, but it seems notable that the former director of the CIA basically says ‘hey guys, it could totally be aliens’.

Interesting but extremely speculative “evidence” by “whistleblowers” online  

These should be taken as entertainment, but given the strange place we find ourselves in, those interested in the UFO discourse may want to familiarize themselves with this content, since they come up a lot, particularly the 4Chan whistleblower.

4Chan Whistleblower- This is a series of posts by someone who claims to have worked on UFO programs for the US Government, is dying from cancer, and decided to tell the truth. The replies line up with an emerging sort of story about Aliens which has taken root. He starts off the series of posts saying: 

I have intimate knowledge of what the US currently knows about UFOs minus the last two years.

- UFOs are primarily unmanned drones

- UFOs are built to spec each time they are deployed

- UFOs are created by a mobile construction facility that hides in the ocean

- Construction facility destroys anything that comes close to it and will disappear for days when approached aggressively

- US believes the facility has been active on earth for at least 100 years or much longer

This is a different post by someone who supposedly worked on Alien bodies. It appears even less believable than the 4Chan Whistleblower, to my eyes, but various people who claim to have relevant expertise have debated online whether the claims have any credence. 

Appendix B: Most UFO conspiracies make no sense even if the big UFOs conspiracy is real 

The big conspiracy theory that the USA has hid evidence of UFOs for decades is often followed by a host of other follow-up conspiracy theories trying to explain why this is the case. One of the more common theories is that the USA has suppressed UFO technology because it could result in limitless clean energy. The “logic” is that this would destroy the oil industry, the idea goes, which means that the industry, working in concert with the government, has suppressed the truth of UFO clean energy. 

The reason this makes no sense is obvious. The US (until the fracking revolution) has been a net importer of energy, and would have benefited immensely from infinite free energy. The real winners from the Oil-based world have been Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other oil producing nations. As I mentioned, while the USA has started pumping more oil recently due to fracking, this conspiracy theory suggests oil companies blocked UFO technology even during the 1970s Oil Crisis, which would’ve been an ideal time for the USA to have free energy. 

If American oil companies really were so powerful, the technology simply could’ve been transferred to the oil companies. But, anyway, we also have great case studies proving this theory is false:

Some people believe the US went to war in Iraq for oil, despite the fact that we did not seize the oil. (Trump memorably complained about this, saying we should’ve seized the oil). Instead, Chinese companies moved in. 

More than half of Iraqi oil comes from wells with Chinese involvement, and 30% of Iraq’s oil goes to China. If the USA was really evil enough to suppress infinite clean energy for the benefit of the oil industry, it would have been evil enough to keep Iraq’s oil. 

It also goes without saying that the US simply could’ve used this infinite energy technology to produce free energy for all Americans, while keeping the technology secret, lying about the true nature of the technology, or charging an enormous license fee for its use by allies. 

This study finds that thinking is more fun than we think it will be. And it’s literally called “Thinking About Thinking” 😂

This is kind of interesting and counterintuitive, since it suggest we don’t have a good grasp on how fun one of the most basic activities we undertake is.

Let’s dive in:

So, researchers in the UK and Japan had 259 students across five* experiments estimate how fun just sitting around and thinking would be. Across either culture, whether they are Japanese, or British, the average person thinks that thinking is going to be pretty boring before they do it. But when it’s over, (most) everyone rates thinking as more fun than they thought it would be.

(We also did a video podcast on this paper in February, so check that out if you prefer that format.)

In the first experiment 30 students in Japan were asked to sit in a room and think for 20 minutes. They couldn’t eat or sleep or check their phones.

Before it started, the students were asked to rate how fun they think the experience will be, and they’re kinda like, “I dunno man, this is probably gonna not be cool.” But then they do it, and then when it's over, they’re like “Actually it was kinda okay!”

This first experiment was repeated with a cohort who was not asked to predict how fun sitting and thinking would be. Instead, they were asked only to rate how enjoyable sitting and thinking was. In this cohort, the results were even more dramatic, although the general trend continued.

But maybe you’re skeptical, and you’re like “Okay, the students were just looking around the room, or out the window or whatever, so that’s not so bad. This experiment tells us nothing.” Well, the researchers anticipated this, so for experiment two, they did the same thing, but made the students sit in a totally blacked out tent-like room. The students still liked thinking more than they thought they would–even in the weird tent prison you see above!

Thinking is even fun in a tent prison(!!!)

For experiment three, the researchers varied the time dimension. They had the students think for 3 or 20 minutes, and here, once again, thinking is still way more fun than people think it will be! Although the students who sat and thought for only 3 minutes did have more fun than those who waited around thinking for 20.

But maybe you’re like, “HEY! The students are only saying they’re happy because it’s over. HELLO! That is why it's happening! This whole set of studies makes no sense.” Well, the experimenters thought of that too:

For experiment four, which took place in the UK, they made the students sit and think for 20 minutes. But they asked them how fun it is at random variables. They might ask them how fun it was after 3 minutes, or 18, or somewhere in between. And still, thinking is just (kinda) awesome, meaning, it’s way better than we think it will be.

So for experiment 5 they got more Japanese university students, and they let them make a choice. The researchers were like. “Hey guys, you can think alone, or you can read online news, which is gonna be more fun?” And everyone is like “Ok the news is gonna be more fun than just sitting doing nothing and thinking or whatever.” But at the end of the experiment, they’re the same! Again, thinking is way more fun than we expect.

It turns out people estimate reading the news is like, pretty fun, and then it just meets their expectations. But people are still like “No, thinking is not fun!” and so they say it's not going to be good, but in the end it’s actually pretty fun so they rate it about the same as reading the news. 

My silent meditation retreat:

On a personal note, I did a silent meditation retreat once, and for nine of the 10 days I couldn’t speak to any of the other people. It was hard, but not as hard as I thought it might be. And that kind of aligns with this study. I guess we shouldn’t be that surprised either. Humans lived in small groups for a very long time, and some of that time was likely pretty quiet.  Since people have been seeking meditative experiences for thousands of years, there must be some need for quiet that many of us feel.

How could this study be improved?

The big confounding variable we can’t test for is the smartphone/videogame/digital age that we find ourselves in. I really wish a version of this study took place in 1900 (which is impossible). But perhaps someone will run it in a very undeveloped place today (which is possible). You could also do a comparison with monks, but they have actively chosen a life of silence, so that would make it a less ideal comparison.

Having done a silent meditation retreat though, I will say that my perception of time changed, and my addiction to my smartphone was significantly weakened, so running this study for average people who have done only one or two retreats might be interesting as well.

All in all, I would applaud these authors for the study, and especially appreciate they ran tests in both Japan and the UK, which goes some way to mitigating the effect culture could have on such results.

Final Thoughts:

At the end of this paper they get pretty deep. They end the abstract saying;

“These results suggest an inherent difficulty in accurately appreciating how engaging just thinking can be, and could explain why people prefer keeping themselves busy, rather than taking a moment for reflection and imagination in our daily life.”

Which is something that is worth thinking about. Life is beautiful and we are so lucky to be even able to sit around and think. My Latin teacher had a framed quote by Ray Bradbury which (as I recall) had a long and moving passage about why you should never wish away time because once you are gone, you would trade anything to get those boring moments back.

Alas I did a quick google search and couldn’t find it. So this other Ray Bradbury quote will have to suffice: “Live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”

Who Wrote The Paper?

The study we reviewed was called “Thinking About Thinking: People Underestimate How Enjoyable and Engaging Just Waiting Is” is by Aya Hatano,  Cansu Ogulmus, Hiroaki Shigemasu, and Kou Murayama and was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2022

We made our review of it available as a video podcast on February 17, 2023. Check it out!

If you made it this far, thank you for supporting The Studies Show. Founded by a PhD student and freelance writer (New York Times, National Geographic) The Studies Show has been releasing episodes since February 2023 as a medium agnostic show, with episodes available as text, short video, and video/podcasts. Please like an subscribe to our content at TheStudiesShow.com on YouTube @TheStudiesShow on Instagram @TheStudiesShow or Threads @TheStudiesShow. We appreciate your support.

Footnotes:

*The authors say there are six experiments in the study, but they refer to one of them as a 1A and 1B study, so I refer to five experiments in this review.

Will Climate Change increase the number of rainbows? Yes! But you’ll (probably) never see them.

Today we’re looking at “Global Rainbow Distribution Under Current and Future Climates” which predicts that, by 2100, Climate change will increase the number “global annual rainbow days” by 4 to 4.9%, with the greatest increase under a high emissions scenario. According to the authors, around 21-34% of earth’s landmass will have fewer rainbows in 2100, with 66-79% of landmass gaining rainbows.

On the one hand this is kind of awesome right? It’s like, even though the world will be getting hotter and less livable, at least there will be more rainbows? But, there’s a catch.

The new rainbow hotspots will mostly be in “high latitude, “high elevation regions with smaller human populations”. So, as the world is burning, there will be more rainbows, but only in places where almost nobody lives! 

This map from the paper (page 8) shows where rainbows will increase most by 2100, with red indicating increases and progressively darker shades of blue indicating areas where there will be fewer days with rainbows.

Which locations benefit most?

Siberia, Northern Canada, Tibet and Alaska will get lots of new rainbows, while Europe, Brazil, and parts of Africa will generally lose rainbows.

Some sleeper winners in all of this are Indonesia, Tibet, and Japan which in addition to already being beautiful today, are going to have even more rainbows in the future. The biggest losers are Brazil, Western Europe, and Southern Africa.

This study also inadvertently highlights an under appreciated and controversial aspect of climate change—Some nations including Canada, and especially Russia, will benefit from climate change, at least compared to everyone else. And as temperatures rise, Russia keeps making money pumping oil, while its crop yields are projected to grow.

What are the limitations of this study?

One limitation is that initial rainbow data was downloaded from Flickr, the photo sharing service, using the hashtag “rainbow” as the means of finding photos of rainbows, geolocating those photos, and then adding it to a dataset. The authors note that only the English word “rainbow” was used, which reduces the reach of such a search.

You can see that the geographic distribution of collected photographs (page 3) correlates highly with the US and Europe. I can’t tell for sure, but it seems the paper may have only six rainbow photos from all of China, which is geographically the third largest nation on earth if only land area is counted (It’s fourth, behind the USA, if water area is also counted).

These rainbow observations are then fed into several models, including predictions for the future climate. I am going to be blunt here; since this is a peer-reviewed study with a large total number of datapoints, I assume there is some predictive value here. I am also not an expert in this space. However, I would have loved to see more photographs or datapoints from non-Western sources, and it does seem like it would have been relatively easy to use Google translate for at least a couple major languages like Chinese, Arabic, and Spanish (and perhaps Russian), to get a bigger dataset. This is especially true given this paper has a whopping 14 co-authors, some of whom must speak some of these languages. (And if they had to find another co-author or two to do this, would it really make a big difference to increase the total number of authors to 16, or even 20?)

What did I like about this study?

I think we need more research like this, that mixes open-source data from people, scientific predictions and models (and rigor) and combines it into a fun and interesting paper. Companies like Instagram/Twitter/Flickr should make their data easily searchable and accessible to academics to do research like this. Overall, this paper is a big win, despite the limitations noted above.

One last thing: “Cultural Ecosystem Services”

This is an entire paper about rainbows, but they don’t include it as a keyword on the front page of the paper. But they do include “cultural ecosystem services”. Does anyone in real life see a rainbow and say “I am so glad we have this cultural ecosystem service.” Can you imagine going on a date with a professor, and you’re like, look! A rainbow! And she is like “I love this cultural ecosystem service!” 

That is a major relationship red flag.

I’m joking but, this last meta point is important and speaks to the different incentives that academics have when writing academic papers versus communicating to the public. Like, what journalist (or average person) in their right mind would even come up with the term “cultural ecosystem services”? You just couldn’t sell it in a newspaper or broadcast. Imagine saying that at a barbecue. People would think you were drunk.

But for an academic, having a fancy term like this 1) Could demonstrate that this is a complex issue which demands precise definitions, which 2) Makes those studying it look smart, increasing prestige.

I am not an expert on “cultural ecosystem services,” so I won’t pass judgement on this field specifically, but I do think large terms which appear to describe or encompass simple phenomena can turn some average people off to academic research. Again, I’m not saying that is good, but I think it’s probably true.

This is probably one reason why most people do not read academic papers, even though they are often freely available and quite interesting.

Who wrote the paper?

Today’s paper was written by 14 people (!!!) but Kimberly M. Carlson was named as the lead author. It was published in Global Environmental Change in 2022. Most importantly, the authors of this paper definitely love cultural ecosystem services (and I guess I do to, given I love rainbows)

Until next time!

Alex

Note: Although we launched The Studies Show months ago (check out our first episodes on Instagram, Youtube, or TikTok) I’d still love to know what you think. This show is the successor to several older projects I had and since this continues in the same spirit as these older newsletters, I’ve kept the same subscribers for this one. But if this doesn’t resonate with you, feel free to unsubscribe!

The Studies Show reviews interesting academic papers. Founded by journalist and PhD student Alexander Webb, it aims to spread important academic findings and examine new papers and ideas. Alexander has previously written for the New York Times, National Geographic, and Wired.

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