The Middle Class: Canary in the Gold Mine

Lots of nations gauge the health of their country by how the middle class is doing. There’s just one issue with that – no one can say exactly what defines the middle class. But even when you take a guess, it seems like the health isn’t so good these days. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:40Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 1:50Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, sitting in for a good old-fashioned Stuff You Should Know episode.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  That's right. Not one of those new fangled ones?

• 2:03Josh Clark?

  No, no, not one of the new ones that are just like, you know, all hair gel and, you know, style, no substance.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, it still has that new podcast episode smell.

• 2:14Josh Clark?

  Yes, for sure. Speaking of new smell, how do you feel being 55 birthday boy?

• 2:21Speaker 03

  New smell? You know, it's great. I think I have actual privileges now that come with that age.

• 2:29Josh Clark?

  Like cheap coffee at McDonald's, that kind of stuff?

• 2:31Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, I don't know about McDonald's, but like, I think my, I think I can play golf for a little cheaper now, like literally as this, as the senior rate, which is hysterical.

• 2:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, well, I think you can get a AARP membership now, too.

• 2:46Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. I mean, you're probably already getting that stuff in the mail, right? They, they start early.

• 2:51Josh Clark?

  Uh, no, I'm not even 50 yet. They won't let me. I keep applying and they keep denying.

• 2:56Speaker 03

  Okay, maybe 50. I mean, they start sending in that stuff years ahead.

• 2:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we used to have one. You had to get it for work or something like that, but they found out, you know, what our age is and they got really mad.

• 3:07Speaker 03

  They said, we've been spending, sending things to spring chickens.

• 3:11Josh Clark?

  But, uh, yeah, well, let me know how the golf thing goes and if you get cheap coffee at McDonald's and what being a senior is like, Chuck, because, you know, I think for me and Jerry and everybody, we just want to wish you a happy birthday.

• 3:23Speaker 03

  Hey, I appreciate that.

• 3:25Josh Clark?

  People went bonkers on Instagram.

• 3:27Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Was that you?

• 3:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, of course.

• 3:30Speaker 03

  I figured, you know what? My uncle, uh, my uncle wished you a happy birthday.

• 3:36Josh Clark?

  Did he? On that post, I didn't see that.

• 3:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was pretty funny. And then there was a confusing series of texts where he was finally like, is it your birthday? And it was like, it was a few days ago, sure.

• 3:47Josh Clark?

  He said, who is this?

• 3:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 3:49Josh Clark?

  He said, McGovern.

• 3:51Speaker 03

  Not McGuffin.

• 3:53Josh Clark?

  No, McGovern.

• 3:54Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 3:56Josh Clark?

  All right, let's start talking because we're talking about the middle class. And America at least, although this definitely extends to other countries like the UK, some of the Nordic countries, Australia, there's not an obsession, but a real like obsession with the middle class, how it's doing, how mobile it is upwardly, downwardly. And there's, it's essentially the middle class is like the thumbnail metric for the health, the real true health of a society and economy. Would you agree?

• 4:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I think so. And I think that used to be a real, like, it's always been a talking point in the United States, but I think it used to be a real genuine talking point.

• 4:43Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 4:44Speaker 03

  Whereas now, I think it's like, you know, are all the rich people doing great? Okay, all right, now let's talk publicly a little bit about the middle class, I guess.

• 4:53Josh Clark?

  Right, but not everybody's fallen for that. There's like this whole idea that the middle class and the health of the middle class was a canary in the coal mine.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:01Josh Clark?

  And not only is the canary dead, it caught fire at some point.

• 5:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:06Josh Clark?

  As far as a lot of people are concerned about the United States middle class at least, because there's this idea that it's dead. But then if you read up a little further on it, you come across other people who are like, no, no, dude, look at these statistics.

• 5:21Speaker 03

  Right.

• 5:21Josh Clark?

  Like, the middle class is actually doing great, way better than they used to be doing. And other people are like, that just doesn't quite add up. So when you get into it, it's really tough to define the middle class. And you can monkey around with who's middle class or who's not and come up with all sorts of different profiles. But I think ultimately, it just matters what people who would probably self identify as the middle class feel about the economy and about their prospects in life.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. Like, what is that, the vibe session?

• 5:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 5:53Speaker 03

  What was her name?

• 5:55Josh Clark?

  Kyla Scanlon. She's a kind of a Gen Z financial explanatory journalist. Yeah.

• 6:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. So that's the idea of like, sort of like, not falling for being gaslit by everything you're being told about how great it's going. And there's something called a vibe session. Am I saying that right?

• 6:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah, vibe session.

• 6:14Speaker 03

  It just sounds weird because a vibe session sounds like, you know, something I do late on Friday nights.

• 6:19Josh Clark?

  Right. This is with a C instead of an S.

• 6:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 6:22Josh Clark?

  And it's much less I re.

• 6:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, man. But yeah, the idea of, you know, various politicians, you know, whenever anyone's running for something, talking about typically reelection, talking about how great everything really is. Whereas everyone is like, yeah, but why doesn't it feel that way? That's a vibe session instead of like a true recession.

• 6:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And she was pointing out like that actually can become self fulfilling.

• 6:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure.

• 6:50Josh Clark?

  Because if enough people start feeling like, no, things aren't going so good, they start not spending money. And that actually can trigger a recession just from the fact that people feel that way, no matter what the metrics say. So we'll talk about all that, but let's talk about the history of the middle class because it hasn't always been around.

• 7:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's interesting. If you look at, you know, the history of the middle class in the West, generally you can point to late medieval Europe as, you know, when things started to get cooking a little bit as far as the middle class goes and, you know, we'll walk you all the way through, you know, modern times. But as cities became a thing, you know, all of a sudden you needed a middle class to sort of administer what the aristocracy was asking for in a lot of cases. So, you know, there was this distinct group kind of created that wasn't aristocracy. And it wasn't the peasant class. And I think one word, and I believe you've even done a short stuff on the bourgeois. Yeah, didn't we?

• 7:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And what it means to be bourgeoisie.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 7:59Josh Clark?

  There's another word for them, burgers too. And apparently both words, I don't, I don't remember this, but I'm sure we talked about it in the bourgeois short stuff, that, that's the name of the, the cities, the fortified cities where they worked, right? Or where they emerged from?

• 8:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:15Josh Clark?

  And burger is, that's why the burgermeister is called that in either Rudolph or Frosty or some Rankin-Bass.

• 8:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:26Josh Clark?

  Remember he's like the scary bag? Exactly. Burgermeister means mayor. So he's like the head of the city, essentially. Anyway, those were the merchants, the bankers, professionals that emerged to kind of fill that space between the peasants and the aristocracy. And you could call them the first middle class.

• 8:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, sort of, but they grew in size and wealth and power. So they were kind of like, hey, we tricked everybody. We're not really the middle, middle class. We're, I mean, maybe upper middle class, certainly obviously not aristocracy because they weren't born into that. But as people got wealthier, there was kind of a true middle class that came after that, where you needed people to do things like book, book, bookkeeping and, you know, kind of handle the, the business of the people that previously had said that they were the middle class, even though no one was using those terms, you know, we should point out.

• 9:19Josh Clark?

  Right, no, nothing like that. There was also a lot of changes where before it was wealth and power, right? Because that's what nobility kind of based itself on. So the earliest middle class kind of based itself on those same markers. But thanks to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, other markers kind of came along. The whole idea of thrift, of saving your money, of not being just frivolous with your money, that became a really big middle class social marker. Certain tastes, certain ways you would dress. And then of course, wealth. Wealth has always been a marker for the middle class, especially the upper middle class.

• 10:03Josh Clark?

  But these, these were all like, all these things seem so normal to us and so ingrained that it seems alien almost to kind of tease this stuff out and identify it historically.

• 10:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. And this was, you know, in, in Europe at the time, when the United States was born. Uh, Livia, by the way, did a great job with this article, I thought.

• 10:25Josh Clark?

  Agreed.

• 10:26Speaker 03

  She is a heck of a writer. So, um, the United States was, you know, as she points out, kind of a, um, sort of a bourgeois, uh, not a, I wanted to say project or a test. It was an experiment, maybe? The American experiment.

• 10:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 10:42Speaker 03

  Because there were people like Thomas Jefferson, who were very much believed like, hey, we're going to build this new country on, um, and not on the backs of, but like, uh, the middle class, these, these people that owned farms and could provide for their family and that owned some land, like, this is the American experiment that, like, the goal that we're striving toward.

• 11:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And those Yaman farmers were typically not slaveholding. So his idea was to, to basically become a, a nation of self-sufficient farmers, growing food for their families and themselves, and then selling some in the market. And, um, that just is not how it went because the wealthy landowners who had actually had slaves, um, became essentially the power, the elite, the people actually pulling the levers. And eventually they, except in the antebellum South, they kind of replaced that, um, wealthy landowning and agriculture with industry as the industrial revolution started in, in Europe and then spread to the US.

• 11:48Josh Clark?

  And then we had a real disparity in power and wealth growing.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. Because if you're owning a factory or owning a railroad or a share of a railroad, uh, that is a very distinct upper class. Um, it may not be aristocracy, uh, but aristocracy became less and less important uh, as time went on. Um, flash forward to like the middle of the 19th century and you had people like Karl Marx. And we should say Karl Marx was trying to sell something, which was Marxism. But he would come along and say like, hey, there are really, uh, two classes. There are, uh, there's the working class and then everybody else that's exploiting the working class.

• 12:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and the the the exploiters or the oppressors in the oppressed, I think he also put it, they owned the capital, they were the capitalists, they were the ones who could open a factory and employ you and you depended on them for money, but they were exploiting your labor.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 12:50Josh Clark?

  And in this sense, where there's an owning class and a working class, there's really no room for a middle class. Eventually, though, a middle class still emerged because those capitalists aren't going to, like you said, do their own books, they're not going to go teach the next generation of workers to come work in their factory. So like, there was a need for people to train the working classes to better serve the capitalist elite. And that's where the middle class really started to emerge in the United States in particular, but also in like, the UK, Australia, some of the other places in the West. That's where that the middle classes, we understand it now, really develop.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. And it was there during the time of Marx, but that wasn't good for Marxism, to point that out.

• 13:37Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 13:38Speaker 03

  So it was very much easier for him to say, like, you're being exploited, or you're the exploiter.

• 13:42Josh Clark?

  It is a little black and white.

• 13:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. So in the 19th century, the middle class values system started to kind of take shape, which is, you know, sort of this, the value system that ideally is still around today, which is the idea that, you know, if you work hard, if you save up, you can be a success in the United States. You know, they agreed that people should vote more and more, like, have access to voting. And of course, that started with, like, hey, maybe men that aren't landowners should be able to vote. And then that kind of spread throughout the years to, you know, people of different races, and then women, finally.

• 14:24Speaker 03

  And but the idea that expanding voting rights and expanding education was always sort of a middle class value. And then early on, it was, you know, the role of women in society has definitely changed as far as the middle class value goes. But early on, it was, hey, women are very important to keep the home, but really be the moral center of of. The world of the home, you know?

• 14:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, of the family, which was of utmost importance, the nuclear family, which became really important in the Victorian era and really informed the middle-class values too, right? And all of those seem like so, we take them for granted so much as values typically, aside from, you know, forcing women to work in the home, whether they like it or not. That just goes to show you how effective the middle class was at spreading its, basically imposing its values on everybody else in the West.

• 15:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. Uh, should we take an early break here? Well, it's not too early, actually.

• 15:24Josh Clark?

  I think so. Yeah, let's.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  All right, we'll take a break. Uh, I think that's a good setup. Middle class is forming, everyone's getting excited, and we'll flash forward to the 20th century right after this.

• 15:48Speaker 03

  You know, you're never done decorating your home. You know what I mean?

• 15:51Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 15:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, because it's a process. There's always something you could do or buy or update. The only question is, what's next? For us, our animals just wear out our rugs so quickly, it's usually a new rug.

• 16:02Josh Clark?

  Well, Chuck, whether you need a rug or whatever is next for you, you can go to Wayfair. It's the smart place to get it.

• 16:09Speaker 03

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• 16:21Josh Clark?

  And with over 20 million five-star reviews, Wayfair must be doing something right. You can find pieces made for real life and get even more value with Wayfair Rewards. Join Wayfair Rewards today to get 5% back on every purchase. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com.

• 16:46Speaker 03

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• 16:53Josh Clark?

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• 17:07Speaker 03

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• 17:12Josh Clark?

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• 17:34Speaker 03

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• 17:53Josh Clark?

  If you own a home, you already know, stuff breaks. It's not if, it's when. And somehow, it's always like the AC in July, or the fridge right after you go to the grocery store. That's why you always hear people say they don't make appliances like they used to, because it's kind of true.

• 18:09Speaker 03

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• 18:22Josh Clark?

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• 18:36Speaker 03

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• 19:14Speaker 03

  All right, I promised to talk of the 20th century and the middle class, and that's where we are. Specifically, you know, this is when the middle class in the US really, really emerged as like a massive thing, like the largest portion of like set of people in the US became middle class in the 20th century. And really after the war, it was powered by the New Deal, of course. After World War II, the United States was in a unique position as Victor, but also Victor who didn't have the war fought on their, you know, mainland soil.

• 19:48Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 19:49Speaker 03

  So we didn't have to do all this rebuilding after the war. So we were in a position to really hit the throttle on economic stimulus, which was brought about via the New Deal.

• 20:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and World War II, just the sheer amount of money thrown into the economy from the government for World War II helped as well, right? And we had all those technologies that we developed that gave us things like Pop-Tarts and stuff immediately after the war and completely improved the quality of life for people in the United States, especially the middle class, right? So you have government policy like the New Deal, like the National Labor Relations Act that are favoring workers, this working class that is becoming the middle class. And then one of the other really, really, really big aspects of what built the middle class in the United States and elsewhere were unions, union membership.

• 20:44Josh Clark?

  Because if you can bargain collectively, you can't be exploited nearly as easily. And that means that life is a lot more fair for you, the worker, because you're allowed to get together and say, no, you can't do that to any of us. If you do that to one of us, you do it to all of us and we'll all leave.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  Yes, I mean, we did, we did a great episode on unions years ago. So I advise you to go listen to that now if you want to learn more about those. But, uh, no, no, no, everyone else. I mean, you can if you want.

• 21:14Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  Little refresher. Uh, but union membership really bloomed in the 1930s and 40s. I think at the beginning of the 20th century, it was in the low teens, union membership. Uh, and then it really, really rose from there. And so did wages. Uh, between 1940 and 1960, if you were a, uh, non-farmer, your median weekly income rose, uh, and these, by the way, everything we're doing is in $20, $25 just to make it easier to understand.

• 21:41Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 21:42Speaker 03

  Uh, but your median weekly income for a non-farmer went from $550 to over a thousand dollars, almost 1,100 bucks. And that was across all, you know, a lot of education levels. Um, you know, different racial groups, different industries. That was sort of a broad change.

• 21:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 22:00Speaker 03

  So, you know, it was an interesting time in that, you know, pay for people in what is now like a solid middle class was really rising. They were taxing the rich and constraining corporate power such that some people, uh, called this, this time, the great compression where the wealth levels were sort of smashed together on a graph instead of expanded vastly like we are now. We're gonna have some shocking numbers for you later in this episode.

• 22:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So that, that era between 1940 and I think a lot of people essentially put it at the mid 70s is when they say the party really started to end, was just this economic boom golden age for the United States and the middle class. Um, and there was a, another big factor too, which was homeownership. Um, we, we did, I remember in our, uh, racial discrimination or housing discrimination episode that we did, we pointed out that owning a home has long been really important, especially for the middle class, because that is how you generate wealth for most people. Your home just appreciates some value over the years. And then you can also use that home to transfer that wealth to your kids.

• 23:12Josh Clark?

  So it's also a form of generational wealth transfer for the middle class. So it's really big deal to own your own home. And that was another big thing that happened after World War II. Homeownership went up quite a bit.

• 23:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, previous, and this is going way back, but between 1890 and 1930, home ownership was under 50% in the United States. And eventually, you know, thanks to the suspect mortgages that they were handing out like candy. In 2004, that peaked at, I think it was close to 70%, like 69 or something.

• 23:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. And then I think it dropped down to something like 65 and has basically plateaued since there. But this is, this is the point that, that you could own a house, you could own a car.

• 23:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:59Josh Clark?

  You could have a family of, you know, a husband and wife and two kids and live in the suburbs and the kids would go to a nice school. And this is obviously, this is the most idealized version, what we're talking about. There's a lot of disparity. There was a lot of people who were still very poor in the United States, too. But overall, if we're just focusing on the middle class, you could do all of these things and have a nice, comfortable, middle-class life. A pension after you retired.

• 24:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:26Josh Clark?

  On one salary, one income. Because again, one of the main values of the middle class at this time was that the mother stayed home, raised the kids and made the house the center of the nuclear family, respite from the rest of the world. One salary could do all of that.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it was, you know, people weren't as far apart as they were financially speaking. Like, you may live in the same neighborhood, or maybe the neighborhood next to your boss. You know, blue-collar workers and white-collar workers were, were way more, you know, just kind of squashed together. Like, your children probably went to school. If you were like a line worker at an auto plant, you know, you may not have as nice of a car or as big of a house as your manager or your boss, but, you know, it was in the, it was in the same world. And, you know, I still remember that stuff growing up in the 80s. Like, you watch any John Hughes movie and, like, all the kids at the same school, they were like, you know, the rich kids and then the kids that lived in that neighborhood.

• 25:31Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 25:32Speaker 03

  But it wasn't extreme wealth and poverty.

• 25:35Josh Clark?

  No. And the fact is, they were all going to the same school.

• 25:38Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 25:39Josh Clark?

  There was like a leveling from that. So, yeah, that was a really big deal. And this is, this is going on through about to the mid-'70s, when things started to decline for the middle class, right?

• 25:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:53Josh Clark?

  There's, um, there was the end of the, the post-war boom. I mean, that's really tough to keep up in the form that it was in for very long.

• 26:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:01Josh Clark?

  And it's kind of astounding it stayed up that long. Part of it was that the US was in that unique position. Like you said, it didn't have to rebuild after World War II like Europe and Japan did. Well, after a few decades, Europe and Japan were able to rebuild and they started to catch up to the United States, which meant that they were taking more share of the United States pie with, say, like exports and manufacturing and stuff. That was one factor too. There was also the oil crisis.

• 26:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:29Josh Clark?

  I think that that made a bigger dent than I ever realized that that was like a, a history changing event. The OPEC oil crisis.

• 26:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:41Josh Clark?

  And then also, um, political conflicts that ultimately laid the bedwork for today's culture wars. Civil rights movement, feminism, uh, environmentalism, uh, LGBTQ plus rights. All of these things where marginalized groups, previously marginalized groups came forward and said, no, there's no reason we should be treated like second-class citizens. That created a tension in the United States. A lot of corporations came in and figured out how to exploit this for their own ends. And that eventually started to divide people to where there was this sense of competition is, is the bedrock of American capitalism and American capitalism is the bedrock of the middle class.

• 27:26Josh Clark?

  It's part of the middle class. It's a new middle-class value. It's where we got yuppies in the eighties.

• 27:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. Uh, deindustrialization also happened, uh, in 1970. Uh, if one in out of every four non-farming jobs in the US was in manufacturing. And by 2017, it was one in 11, so. Other countries, you know, as globalization and trade increased, other countries started making stuff super cheap. Like, this isn't a big surprise to anyone listening to this. Imports from China started coming in. Imports from other, you know, Southeast Asian countries started coming in. Stuff was a lot cheaper to buy. And, you know, they started automating a lot of stuff. It was, you know, kind of the first automation boom was happening in the 1970s, where factories didn't need as many people on the line

• 28:14Speaker 03

  to do stuff that these new machines were doing. So that, coupled with de-unionization, really, you know, kind of dropping off was a huge factor.

• 28:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and it really definitely declined. It's below 10% for the entire workforce in the United States. A huge chunk of that is just from government jobs, like teaching. They tend to have a very strong union. But overall, it went from like 35, 36% to 10%. And one of the reasons that that happened is because the government basically withdrew its support for unions. Not only did it stop passing legislation or enforcing legislation that supported unions, it actually started issuing legislation that harmed and crippled unions and essentially removed their power.

• 29:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. And then the last reason, you know, we can't talk about the middle class and wealth disparity without talking about Ronald Reagan. You know, he's the one that kicked it off. And subsequent administrations definitely didn't do the middle class any favors. But those Reagan-era policies, the trickle-down economics, cutting taxes for corporations, undermining labor unions, cutting taxes on the top earners individually, really transformed the look of our nation heavily, heavily in favor of the rich. And, you know, the top 10%, especially the top 1%. And like I said, other, you know, Democrats and Republicans since then have failed the United States in their policies.

• 29:48Speaker 03

  I know after the economic crash and the real estate crash in 2008, there were a lot of people, especially now in hindsight, that look back and say, you know what? We really had an opportunity there. And the Obama administration failed us when we bailed out those banks with not very many strings attached. We had some leverage there to sort of get some changes in place that could have helped, you know, shift the look of the financial outlook of our country, and we didn't do it.

• 30:14Josh Clark?

  No, and what they would have been doing is undoing damage that was done during the Clinton administration where they repealed the Glass-Steagall Act that kept banks from dabbling in investments. You were either a bank or an investment company, which one? And after that, you don't have to choose. And that's ultimately what helped lead us to that massive financial crisis, the Great Recession.

• 30:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:39Josh Clark?

  So yeah, it's really easy and fun to pick on Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher for kicking all this off, but they were not the only neoliberal presidents to come along after the 80s.

• 30:50Speaker 03

  No, for sure. If you're talking about the middle class today, you really have to start with like, how do you define the middle class? And Libya did a really great job in this section, I think. Like, there are a lot of different ways that people and pundits like to talk about what the middle class even is. Some social scientists, it's just a super straightforward income-based definitions, which is good in one sense because you can adjust that depending on where you are like in the world, like a middle-class income in New York City isn't going to be the same thing as in a rural area. So they can, you can adjust things economically based on just a strict income-based definition, which is kind of cool.

• 31:33Josh Clark?

  Also, that means that the middle class doesn't move out of reach of certain people, too. Like, if you just have the median income and say that's the middle class, as the median income grows, the middle class goes up and some people stay behind. This is like, here's the middle-class section and you can get into it and out of it, or drop out of it and go above it, but it's going to stay in the same place. And it's just going to, it's going to change depending on how wages rise.

• 32:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:01Josh Clark?

  It seems like a pretty good, it's a good idea to me. The most widely used one comes from the Pew Research Center. And they, it's an income-based approach that they use, but they basically say that if your household income is two-thirds of the median household income, or up to double the median household income, you are middle-class, right? And I think in 2024, that meant that your household, this is very important, too, that your household made between $55,820 to $167,460. Anywhere in there, you were middle-class income-wise.

• 32:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. This is all, obviously, like, pre-tax money, right?

• 32:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, oh, yeah. I would think so, yeah.

• 32:52Speaker 03

  So, under that definition, the middle-class made up 61% of households in 1971 compared to just 51% in 2023. But, at the same time, the upper-income category went from 11% to 19%, and the lower percentage rose from 27% to 30%. So, what you're seeing is, like, the wealth gap, like, happening in real-time, basically.

• 33:20Josh Clark?

  Yes, but that also suggests that 8% of people in the middle-class moved up from the core middle-class to the upper-income category. So, that's what, that's an interpretation that a lot of people who are like, "No, the middle-class is fine," suggest.

• 33:37Speaker 03

  Right, then 3% moved down.

• 33:39Josh Clark?

  Right, yeah. So, that's, yeah, income is like, if you're an economist, this is what you're looking at. If you're, say, an anthropologist or a sociologist, you might say, "Well, who considers themselves middle-class? Maybe we should look at those people and then kind of study them like that. Like, ask people, are you middle-class or not? Are you working-class? You consider yourself upper-class?" And they usually either divide it into those three: lower-class, middle-class, upper-class, or else they'll divide it into quintiles: lower-class, working-class, which they would also call lower-middle-class, core-middle-class, upper-middle-class, and then gobsmackingly rich.

• 34:22Speaker 03

  And 1% saying buzz off is none of your business. Quit asking me questions.

• 34:26Josh Clark?

  Exactly. They have them arrested.

• 34:28Speaker 03

  Uh, so 2024 was the last Gallup poll that we have where someone said like, hey, what do you consider yourself? And in the United States, 39% of citizens considered themselves middle class. Uh, another 15% said they were upper, upper middle class, which brings that grand total to 54. Uh, 31% identified as working class, 12% as lower class, just 2% of upper class. Um, which means a lot of those, uh, upper middle class people were lying liars and that they're really part of the upper class.

• 35:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. But I think also it's not, I'm sure some people were like, I don't want to say like, I feel upper class.

• 35:10Speaker 03

  Well, it's self identification. So it makes sense.

• 35:12Josh Clark?

  Sure. But at the same time, also, I think that has to do with the idea that maybe based on income, it's almost like that vibe session thing.

• 35:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:20Josh Clark?

  Like, yeah, your income would put you in the middle class, but you, you don't feel wealthy. You feel like you could be ruined by a healthcare crisis at any time. So I think, um, especially with self identification, that gives you a sense of the, the actual health of the economy as far as like consumer confidence is concerned.

• 35:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. And there's, you know, laziness factors in, you could, uh, you could be in the upper middle class, but also still have a, a car tire sitting in your side yard.

• 35:48Josh Clark?

  For sure. With a

• 35:51Speaker 03

  Like typical markers of, of, you know, different classes.

• 35:54Josh Clark?

  For sure. Tires in your side yard. I gotta get mine moved.

• 35:59Speaker 03

  Emily got on to me for years about the car battery that I had. That I just, it's like, how do you get rid of a car battery? I know you can.

• 36:08Josh Clark?

  Oh, you take it to like, um, one of the auto stores.

• 36:11Speaker 03

  I know, but none of those feel right.

• 36:14Josh Clark?

  They, no, they take the core out and, um, yeah, it's, they recycle them for real.

• 36:19Speaker 03

  Yeah. Cause you've watched them do all that, right? From beginning to end.

• 36:23Josh Clark?

  I help on weekends as just as pro bono.

• 36:27Speaker 03

  That's my point is I don't, I don't trust any of it. None of it feels right.

• 36:31Josh Clark?

  All right. I'm with you. Well, you want to know something that really opened my eyes and changed my life, Chuck? I realized recently that, that whole like,

• 36:39Josh Clark?

  Grocery store recycle, bag recycling thing is a total scam. Like Publix and all them who have those, those things out that said, put your plastic bags in your, we recycle them. They don't, they don't. They throw them away. And I can't tell you how much time I've spent like taking labels off of plastic wrap, shaking out plastic wrap to make it clean, like taking it all bundled together, taking it to Publix and putting it in the bin. And then the idea they just take it and throw it away and use this as just like a PR thing? Oh my God, I'm so sick of stuff like that, man.

• 37:12Speaker 03

  Uh, agreed. Two quick things on that. Uh, you can't count on your large grocery store chain to do that. Uh, you gotta go to like the charm. You gotta go to what we have here in Atlanta and Athens. Uh, the, the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials, cause they really do the work. Uh, it's just a big pain. And number two, uh, just as a quick aside, I went to Belize on winter break recently. Had a great time, but the grocery store in, uh, there was a grocery store in Placentia named Publix. P U B L I C S. Same exact font and coloring as Publix.

• 37:50Josh Clark?

  It's like Ricky Rouse in Monal Muck.

• 37:52Speaker 03

  That was very, very funny.

• 37:53Josh Clark?

  It's funny. They're like, we spelled it different. What?

• 37:57Speaker 03

  Uh, all right. So we're getting off track. Uh, the, one of the last ways, um, I guess second to the last way to look at, um, is through education levels because a lot of times when you hear, you know, pundits on the news talking about the middle class, they'll say things like, you know, people with a four-year college degree, that's only about 40% of the population in the US. And it's really misleading. So I wish they'd just kind of throw this one out with the, the Publix, uh, grocery bags because, um, you know, you could have a four-year degree and, uh, be a, a college professor that also has to have a second job to make ends meet, or you could also not have a college degree and own a multimillion dollar, uh, you know, sort of blue collar business. So I say just get rid of that one.

• 38:42Josh Clark?

  A multi-million dollar battery recycling business.

• 38:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. Cause that's where all the money is.

• 38:47Josh Clark?

  So yeah, so values also, I agree, education levels, just get rid of that, especially with college not really leading to many, as many opportunities today as it used to and all of the incredible debt associated with it. That should not be a measurement for the middle class. Values is another one, too. And this one, I was kind of like, what? Why?

• 39:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:08Josh Clark?

  And I realized you can't measure social groups strictly on things like income that, you know, that self identification thing has a lot to do with values. One, we talked about is the nuclear family, which has been altered dramatically since the middle of the last century, when I would say, I would argue in the United States at least, the nuclear family was like at its peak of importance. It's definitely declined. People kind of make family wherever they can find it. And that doesn't mean that like all of the values are gone, that there was a 2010 Vice President Joe Biden, middle class task force.

• 39:50Josh Clark?

  I had no idea that existed, but it essentially went through and said, what are your values? And they came up with pretty basic stuff that, that I think most middle class people would agree with, economic stability and security. You want a car for each of your kids as they get to driving age. You want to take a family vacation once a year. You want to send those kids to college. You want to own your home, like really basic stuff. And the idea that all of that is up for grabs in the, this, this country right now is really alarming.

• 40:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure.

• 40:24Speaker 03

  Should we take another break?

• 40:26Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 40:27Speaker 03

  All right, we're going to take a break and we'll talk about what's gone wrong with the middle class and where we might be headed right after this.

• 40:47Josh Clark?

  If you own a home, you already know stuff breaks. It's not if, it's when. And somehow, it's always like the AC in July, or the fridge right after you go to the grocery store. That's why you always hear people say they don't make appliances like they used to, because it's kind of true.

• 41:03Speaker 03

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• 41:16Josh Clark?

  And that's huge, because fixing an AC can cost a lot. Like, hey, kids, our vacation is canceled a lot. Plus, as a benefit to select plans, you can get real-time video help from live repair experts to troubleshoot home hassles at no extra cost.

• 41:30Speaker 03

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• 41:57Josh Clark?

  You know, eating is a huge part of our lives. It fuels us, it brings us together, and it's one of life's great pleasures. But once a meal's over, we don't think much about what happens next, unless something starts to feel off. Because what we eat and how our bodies respond to it is complicated.

• 42:12Speaker 03

  That's right. From the very first bite, food kicks off a chain reaction, signals moving between the gut, the brain, and the immune system. A constant back and forth we can't see and often don't fully understand. So we want to introduce to you Eating Interrupted, a new podcast from iHeart Ruby Studio. It's hosted by longtime journalist and Crohn's patient Cynthia McFadden. Eating Interrupted explores everything from food allergies and intolerance, and why they seem to be on the rise, to how digestion changes as we age, and what it's really like to live with a chronic GI condition.

• 42:40Josh Clark?

  Through personal stories and expert insight, listen in to unpack what it means when your body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect, and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to Eating Interrupted on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 43:00Speaker 04

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 43:02Josh Clark?

  Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.

• 43:05Speaker 03

  That's Alan Goya, Planning Engineer at AT&T, and he's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, redefining the fan's experience, and Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 43:21Speaker 04

  It was going to rival anything that was already built, and that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 43:29Josh Clark?

  That includes Field Services Manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

• 43:35Speaker 05

  Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.

• 43:41Speaker 03

  And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.

• 43:44Speaker 05

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data's flowing is a beautiful thing.

• 43:49Speaker 04

  What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 43:52Josh Clark?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.

• 43:56Speaker 06

  Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

• 44:13Josh Clark?

  Okay, Chuck, so I think we've kind of said a couple of times that there's a lot of different ways you can look at things to say, the middle class is doing great. Oh, no, the middle class has hollowed out and dead. One of the things that you can really kind of point to is like, how much are you getting paid? That's a pretty easy one.

• 44:31Josh Clark?

  So you can look at average hourly wages for non-supervisory employees. So that's everybody who's not a manager or like a C-suite executive, right?

• 44:42Josh Clark?

  Just the regular rank-and-file employees. There was a peak of pay in 1973 of $30. This is $20, $25, right?

• 44:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, always. Or always on this episode.

• 44:55Josh Clark?

  Right. In fall of 2025, we were at $31.50. So we managed to gain an extra $1.50 in average hourly wages in 50 years.

• 45:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:13Josh Clark?

  And you might think like, okay, well, really, let's think about inflation and everything. I did. Get this. If you went back to 1973, right?

• 45:24Josh Clark?

  $1 today buys 14% of what it bought in 1973.

• 45:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:30Josh Clark?

  So that means that today-

• 45:31Speaker 03

  It gets worse with inflation.

• 45:33Josh Clark?

  It does. So you can, you could buy, using the same hourly wage today, 14% of your groceries.

• 45:42Josh Clark?

  If you went from 1973 to today. So we are definitely worse off because things have gotten more expensive, but wages have stagnated. If anyone ever tells you that wages have not stagnated, they are lying, or they're dumb, or both. And just tell them so.

• 45:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:00Josh Clark?

  I've been trying really hard not to get worked up, man. And I'm trying to keep it together right now.

• 46:03Speaker 03

  Here we go, everybody.

• 46:04Josh Clark?

  I'm keeping it together.

• 46:07Speaker 03

  The idea of the middle class, though, around the 1960s was about,

• 46:13Speaker 03

  wasn't just about getting to a spot and hitting it. It was about everybody continuing to grow and the overall economy of the United States continuing to grow. And that has happened, but compensation hasn't happened along with it. From 1979 to 2025, productivity in the United States rose 87%.

• 46:33Speaker 03

  But the, that hourly compensation rose by 33% for non-supervisory workers.

• 46:39Josh Clark?

  Right. And there's two ways you can interpret that. If you're like, well, unions are gone. You could say, if you're an owner, well, you get rid of the unions, productivity increases. Unions make lazy workers. Another way to put it is that without the unions, you can exploit workers more easily and get them to work harder because they're afraid of losing their job, right?

• 46:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:00Josh Clark?

  Regardless of how you look at it, like, like, there's no way to interpret it differently. If, if your wages have increased 33%, but productivity has increased 87%, that means that that extra wealth that was generated had to go somewhere. And it didn't go to the workers. It went to the wealthiest people. And there are just, like, if you want to just look at eye popping numbers, just look up income inequality in, in the 21st century, because it has gotten completely out of control compared to how it used to be. And I mean, how it used to be like, I'm talking the eighties.

• 47:38Speaker 03

  As Sam Jackson would say, hang on to your butts. What did he say in Jurassic Park?

• 47:42Josh Clark?

  Hang on to your butts, yep.

• 47:44Speaker 03

  Hang on to your butts.

• 47:45Josh Clark?

  You need a cigarette sticking out of your mouth then.

• 47:47Speaker 03

  Oh, I've got it, pal. Uh, all right. So these numbers are going to be slightly depressing and slightly eye popping. Annual wages of the bottom 90% of Americans rose by 29% from 79 to 2021. For the top 1% during, over that same time period, uh, they rose 206%. And the Forbes, uh, 400 list, it's a list that we put out in, or Forbes magazine puts out, uh, about the 400 wealthiest Americans. They, they should probably just stop doing this, um, altogether.

• 48:23Josh Clark?

  I know, it's, it ruins society.

• 48:25Speaker 03

  Uh, but you mentioned 19, the 1980s, 1982, that it was the initial Forbes 400. It had 13 billionaires on it. Um, now, everybody on the Forbes list is a billionaire. And there's another 500 billionaires that don't get on the list.

• 48:43Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 48:44Speaker 03

  So in 1982, there were 13 billionaires. There are more than 900 billionaires in the United States right now, who have a collective worth of $6.6 trillion. I'm sorry, that's just the Forbes 400 have 6.6 trillion. Forget the other 500 billionaires.

• 48:59Josh Clark?

  Okay, so another, another thing that that Forbes list pointed out is that the total wealth in all of the United States is $140 trillion. The bottom 50% owns 4 trillion of that. That means the top 50% owns 136 trillion compared to 4 trillion.

• 49:18Speaker 03

  Ah, man.

• 49:20Josh Clark?

  There was one other statistic I found too. Between 1975 and 2024, there was a wealth transfer upward to the top percent that totaled $50 trillion. So however you want to put it, however you want to look at it, the middle class and the lower class have been held back while the wealth that they have been producing has moved upward. And a big problem with that is when you have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, they're making the decisions about what happens with that money, rather than hundreds of millions of people all making individual decisions and collectively making decisions that are like market signals that tell people, I'm going to go make this, I'm going to stop making

• 50:04Josh Clark?

  this, I'm going to make this price that. All these people are upset because they don't have good healthcare. We better do something about that. None of that matters because they don't have money, so they don't have power and they're afraid of losing their jobs. So you can do basically whatever you want to them. That's what happened.

• 50:19Speaker 03

  Yeah. And politically speaking, the wealth and the power is who controls everything. They, obviously via campaign donations is the most clear cut way, but all kinds of interventions to basically let the top one or two percent make the decisions for the majority. There's a social scientist, and this isn't us railing on stuff, this is just how it is. Like if you're saying this isn't the case, then you're lying. Like you said, there's a social scientist named Richard Reeves who said that the top 20% of earners are basically, have been completely successful in pushing zoning regulations and tax policies that benefit them, all at the expense of the middle class.

• 51:02Speaker 03

  They game the systems to pass that wealth down to their children or to get their kids into the better colleges. It's just the way things have gone in the United States.

• 51:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And the problem, one of the big problems is people are going to be all over our iTunes reviews being like, these liberal idiots, they don't know what they're talking about. It's not liberal and conservative.

• 51:23Speaker 03

  No.

• 51:24Josh Clark?

  It's not Republican and Democrat. This is strictly a class issue. And the idea that you are defending a class beyond yours that is exploiting your own class, including you. That's a problem because it's presented as a political thing and we're so tribal when it comes to political affiliations that you will defend against your own self-interest.

• 51:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:47Josh Clark?

  Because it's being presented to you as a political issue and it's not.

• 51:51Speaker 03

  Happens every voting season that happens.

• 51:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 51:55Speaker 03

  People vote against their own interest.

• 51:56Josh Clark?

  It's true and I'm not picking just on conservatives or Republicans like Democrats do it too.

• 52:02Speaker 03

  Oh, sure.

• 52:02Josh Clark?

  Like it's tribal and toxic and unhealthy. If, oh man, if we could ever come together and break down those lines, oh my gosh. People are so ramped up right now.

• 52:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:14Josh Clark?

  That it would just be magnificent, the sweeping changes that would happen.

• 52:18Speaker 03

  A new Renaissance.

• 52:19Josh Clark?

  Yes, Renaissance two, the sequel.

• 52:23Speaker 03

  Two point oh.

• 52:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 52:25Speaker 03

  Uh, here's the thing, you know, goods have gotten cheaper though. Uh, if you want to look at, again, comparing in today's dollars, groceries are generally cheaper than they were in the mid seventies because the mid seventies, as we said, was pretty bad. Things like, you know, clothing and furniture, electronics, all that stuff is way cheaper than it used to be. If you look at, you know, back when you bought a VCR when those first came out and they were like a thousand dollars, you know, stuff like that is all like the bottom has fallen out on those kind of prices, but that hasn't happened in the housing market, uh, which is a big deal for the middle class, like you said in act one, uh, that median sales price of a house, uh, and again, in today's dollars, it was $300,000 in 1979. It's more than $400,000 today.

• 53:10Speaker 03

  And I think we said it was 69.2% at its peak of homeownership in 2004. As of, I think, 2022, um, you know, what's happened is that, you know, I think you said it was about 65%. So it's not that big of a difference, but it's that age of buying your first house has just gotten older and older and older.

• 53:35Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 53:35Speaker 03

  In 2022, only 62% of 40 year olds own their home, whereas the boomer generation, uh, 69% of 40 year olds owned. And the same can be said for rent and childcare and college and healthcare. It's just all these things are outpacing earnings.

• 53:55Josh Clark?

  Plus also that 62 and 69% is a little misleading because there are way more boomers than there are Gen X who are 40 now. So that so 69% of boomers is numerically a much bigger group than 62% of Gen Xers.

• 54:13Speaker 03

  Right, which also means that that's a greater number of houses that are now locked up.

• 54:19Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 54:20Speaker 03

  Being passed on to their kids and, you know, not saying that you shouldn't own a house and pass along to your kids. But that as far as the housing market goes, that's just a lot.

• 54:29Josh Clark?

  Right. So Chuck, what are you, what are we going to do about this? What are some things we can do?

• 54:36Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 54:38Josh Clark?

  Let's solve it.

• 54:38Speaker 03

  Put me on the spot. Well, I mean, I don't know, man. It's not like this all over the world. If you look in Europe, there is a middle class there, but it's not quite the same. They aren't, maybe don't have the kind of wealth that upper middle class does here, but they have the income equality isn't as great generally. They have stronger social welfare programs.

• 55:00Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 55:01Speaker 03

  Like the danger of of falling into a desperate life straits isn't as great over there. I saw a thing on Instagram recently. It was an interview with a guy that was a

• 55:13Speaker 03

  he had a good job, you know, it was one of those stories where the guy was on the streets and he had a degree in chemistry and he had a good job and, you know, I read the comments because I was curious if people were going to be like bashing this dude or what. And hearteningly, a lot of the people were like, hey, I worked in in shelters for the unhoused for years and we saw all kinds of people come through here.

• 55:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 55:36Speaker 03

  We saw doctors and attorneys and people, you know, that just, you know, sometimes you're a bad circumstance or two away from that kind of situation. And it's just not like that in Europe, generally speaking.

• 55:51Josh Clark?

  I remember during the 2008 recession of reading some statistic that something like at the time, like 40% or something like that of Americans were one paycheck away from being homeless. Like that's how little savings and cushion that that most Americans had.

• 56:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. Or having, having to make, you know, Healthcare decisions like that aren't good for your life because you can't afford it, because it will bankrupt your family. You're having to put yourself and your family in peril physically.

• 56:24Josh Clark?

  Right. That's part of that. Why the European middle class is much more secure because most of them have universal healthcare.

• 56:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're not bankrupted by a diagnosis.

• 56:35Josh Clark?

  Right. But even even on more day to day pedestrian stuff, so the the lower income you are, the more inflation affects you. Where like if you're higher income and you go gas up your car and you're like, wow, gas went up 20 cents today. That sucks. And you just don't think about it from that point on. If you're if you're lower income, you might roll up to the gas station and be like, oh, I can't afford to drive my car to work today because gas went up 20 cents a gallon. So that's another issue with the whole thing, too. It makes it tougher to to get ahead when you can't afford the basic necessities because they're growing out of your reach day by day.

• 57:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, when I was a snot-nosed, know-it-all college kid, working at Golden Pantry in Athens, Georgia, I used to, and you know, I was working at Golden Pantry. So it's not like I was making any kind of money. But for a college kid, it was like, hey, it's great. I had that. I had everything I need, making that $7 an hour or whatever. Because my parents were generally paying for my education and it's like Easy Street. I would, I would wonder why someone would come in and buy like $7 worth of gas. I would be like, what a weird number. Why are you putting $7 worth of gas? Because it didn't occur to me. That's all that they could afford. It was like, why don't you just fill your car up? And it's like, because they couldn't afford to, dummy.

• 58:00Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 58:00Speaker 03

  I was a dummy.

• 58:02Josh Clark?

  That's right. Yeah, no, I know exactly what you mean. I've been on both sides of that.

• 58:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, you know, the naivete of a college kid, so in a way.

• 58:11Josh Clark?

  Was that the Golden Pantry at Alps?

• 58:14Speaker 03

  Uh, no, I worked on the College Station Road.

• 58:18Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 58:19Speaker 03

  Side.

• 58:20Josh Clark?

  Gotcha. So we didn't figure out how to. Yeah, I had the same kind of job and it is a very weird job.

• 58:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:28Josh Clark?

  So we didn't figure out how to fix anything, Chuck.

• 58:31Speaker 03

  You got any ideas?

• 58:34Josh Clark?

  I think that you could learn a lot from Europe, expanding social safety nets. We could stop making that a political thing and be like, no, actually, this can help everybody. I saw that New Mexico has started free childcare for all. Doesn't matter what your income level is, doesn't matter. Like, you can put your kid into childcare for free. And that's a huge expense that save for the average person.

• 58:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:57Josh Clark?

  I think New York is trying to do that. Like, Mom Donnie is trying to institute that in New York City, too. So that could be a huge trend. Just free childcare, universal childcare, could make a huge difference in people's income.

• 59:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, and all of that is because people want to go out and work their job to make money for the man.

• 59:20Josh Clark?

  Yep, yeah, well put, man. You got anything else?

• 59:24Speaker 03

  I got nothing else.

• 59:25Josh Clark?

  Okay, I don't either, which means it's time for listener mail.

• 59:31Speaker 03

  There's a quick correction we heard from people from Tennessee because we stole their college. Hey, guys, longtime listener here. Your show has fueled many runs and chores over the years. Quick Nashville nitpick from a proud local. In the Flexner Report episode, you mentioned Mahary being right here in Georgia. Nashville would like to gently reclaim that, guys. Mahary Medical College has been proudly in Nashville since 1876, and we're pretty attached to it. Totally understand how geography gets slippery mid-podcast, but just wanted to defend a hometown institution. And that is from Bridget Chauvin or Chauvin. And we heard from a lot of people, Bridget, so I don't know how we screwed that up, but we did.

• 1:00:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we got it screwed up royally. I even went back and was like, surely there's a Mahary College in Georgia, too. Nope, nope, it's just the one in Tennessee. So, sorry, everyone in Tennessee who took offense to that, because we did hear from a lot of you, for sure.

• 1:00:26Speaker 03

  That's right, but we're neighbors, and we like to think that we're all the same.

• 1:00:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. We all shared your medical college.

• 1:00:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:32Josh Clark?

  In the tri-state area. If you want to be like Bridget and send us a really nice email correcting us, we love that kind of thing. You can send it off to [email protected].

• 1:00:47Speaker 00

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