Go for it. Yeah. Hello everyone, I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make Today Make Sense.
And I'm Amy Scott in for Kai Risdall. Thanks everyone for joining us. It is Monday, November 25th. A short week for many folks getting ready for the holidays. But today we're going to do some news and some smiles starting with the news. Amy, what caught your attention today?
Well, two items today, they're related. The first is a Wall Street Journal investigation that came out last night looking at how Tesla, in contrast to its stated mission of protecting life on Earth, according to Elon Musk, has shown a pattern of repeatedly breaking environmental rules at its factories in California and Texas.
It's worth a read. It's a long story, but I'm just going to quote from the journal piece, Tesla's Fremont California facility has accumulated more warnings for violations of air pollution rules over the past five years than almost any other company's plant in California, according to a journal analysis of informal enforcement actions in the EPA's
compliance database. It is second only to a refinery owned by oil and gas behemoth Chevron, which is a nearby Richmond. So, you know, this is significant, obviously, because a lot of people are switching to electric vehicles because of the perceived as cleaner, and in many ways they are. But this environmental pollution is concerning. And, you know, as it happens, where this story comes out as Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk is gearing up to co-lead
this new department of government efficiency in the incoming Trump administration, 2.0, where he plans to cut billions, if not trillions of dollars in government spending. And the journal points out that people who've worked with Musk for years expect he will try to curb environmental regulations that affect his companies.
So yeah, something to watch there. And then item number two is just to close the circle on our conversation from a couple of weeks ago about COP 29 and Azerbaijan, where countries were negotiating how much wealthier nations should spend to support
poorer countries in the face of climate crisis. They came up with a deal finally over the weekend, just $300 billion annually by 2035, which is far short of the more than $1 trillion poorer countries.
say is needed and had hoped for. And you'll read a lot of spin today. This is just a start. It's a down payment, but I think it was pretty disappointing for a lot of folks. And I should point out the previous goal of $100 billion annually was met two years late. So there's a big question of whether and when we even get to that amount. And of course, the US's participation is totally in question.
with the aforementioned Trump 2.0 administration. And is it clear, I know this was something we talked about when we discussed it the last time, how much of this is going to be loans and debt versus actual just like grants and things like that?
I actually haven't read an analysis of that. I think I saw an interesting chart of a breakdown, but I honestly can't remember. I'll see if I can find it and we can post that in the show notes. Yeah. The Elon Musk Tesla thing is interesting because I really do feel like a lot of that that Teslas have kind of lost their veneer of being sort of a code for eco-friendly. I feel like
You know, years ago, if you got a Tesla, it was like almost a statement that you care about the environment, you're supporting the green energy transition, you know, whatever. And now, especially, you know, amongst the more like liberal progressive crowds, it ends up being kind of cringe.
Right. For a lot of reasons, it's true. What you're signaling is quite different. I'd love to hear from Tesla owners. Has it changed your feeling about the car? Or have you reconsidered buying one because of the political situation surrounding Musk? I've heard from two people that I know who changed their decision to buy a Tesla because of Elon Musk and how he is these days. Or maybe how he's always been, but how he's being openly these days.
Well, there are more competitors now to choose from. Right now, but if some of these tariffs on Chinese imports, especially Chinese electric vehicles, come in the way that we expect it's going to be a little bit more challenging to compete against Tesla in that regard.
A lot of the American car makers have focused more on hybrid vehicles and straight electric vehicles because of just the way the market dynamics have been so far. So there may not be that much competition for all electric vehicles.
Anywho, my two stories are, well, one of them is also a follow up to something we've discussed here on the show. We've had conversations about school voucher programs, and in particular, the school voucher program in Arizona, and how Arizona has this program called Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, and I'll read here from Politico.
The school voucher program that in 2022 opened to every family in Arizona, originally created for students with disabilities who needed services they could not get in their neighborhood public schools. ESA have morphed over the last two years into a budget busting free for all, used by more than 50,000 students, nearly one in 20 school-aged children in the state, many of whom were already enrolled in private and religious schools
were homeschools. Homeschool. Families mostly from high income zip codes have applied the taxpayer funds for everything from ski lift passes to visits to trampoline parks, a $4,000 grand piano, more than a million dollars in Legos, online ballet lessons, horse therapy and cookie baking kits.
Wow. And the Politico article is highlighting that this model is very popular amongst the people who are using it, the parents that are using it. And it's very popular in the school choice movement. And now they're trying to kind of replicate this model in other states. But it's been really devastating for Arizona's budget and certainly Arizona's education.
budget, and now they are trying to export this plan elsewhere. And as I was reading this article, it strikes me about how often we've talked on the show about getting engaged in your community and advocating for the things that you want and the policies that you want, and the people most able to do advocacy around this issue, education, school board, school funding,
would be the people who might be homeschooling their children or who might be in this movement versus I'm thinking a lower income parent who maybe has to work, shift work or multiple jobs who needs the public school system to provide for their children, but they would be in many ways the least able to advocate on it simply because of the luxury of time.
And so these policies are being made with lots of input from the parents who have the luxury of time, right? And the parents who need public schools are by default in many ways those that don't and don't necessarily have the resources and ability to get engaged. And I don't really know how you kind of counteract that.
Yeah, that's a really good point. Well, and we know that vouchers and school choice is going to be a huge federal priority under Linda McMahon, who has been nominated by Donald Trump to be the next education secretary. And, you know, her job is going to be basically to dismantle or disempower the education department. But this, yeah, we will see more of a national effort on vouchers.
yeah it'd be interesting to see how they on the one hand try to dismantle the department of education but on the other hand try to roll out a federal like school choice policy who knows uh... my other story is uh... about
It's another thing related to the Trump administration. There's a story in Reuters about U.S. farm groups trying to convince the incoming Trump administration to spare their workers from deportation. Basically trying to lobby members of the incoming Trump administration for exemptions to any kind of mass deportations for agriculture workers in these particular sectors. And I'm sure you remember when we were covering the first Trump administration
when he was rolling out all these tariffs and you had all of these individual businesses and industries and lobbying groups going to like the office of the US Trade Representative trying to argue that they needed a tariff exemption and it kind of ended up being a little bit of cronyism and stuff like that and a lot of people are predicting that there's going to be a lot of
favors handed out when it comes to tariffs and things like that. But I hadn't seen this deployed so much around immigration and deportation. And so it would be interesting to watch if and how Trump's immigration plans get rolled out, what industries get more or less crackdowns in that regard, because as it points out in this article, about half of the nation's agricultural workers lack legal status.
Yeah, well, that's something I'm going to be watching for in the home building industry, too. I mean, home builders have come out and said, you know, this is going to hurt us. We employ a lot of immigrants and we may hire subcontractors who may not be checking status. And, you know, I would imagine there'd be some behind the scenes lobbying as well.
Well, because all this factors into inflation. And as we know from this recent election, people really, really don't like inflation. And they tend to punish politicians that oversee inflation. And so this could definitely have consequences there. So it'd be interesting to see how it all plays out. If Trump indeed, it does roll out some of his immigration policies the way he has promised to on the campaign trail. So shall we shift over to some smiles? Let's do it.
So I just finished working on a story that's going to air over the holidays about, you know, holiday scams and just like all of the different ways that people are going to try to scam folks this holiday season and particularly watch out for social media ads. A lot of that stuff is fake. A lot of those companies are not real.
just be extra cautious, you guys, and keep an eye on your credit card statements, careful about clicking links on emails. Also, watch out for charity scams, especially on Giving Tuesday. Just be careful, extra, extra cautious. Anyway, so there is a funny story in the New York Times about this British phone company called O2 that has created an AI
chatbot to basically waste scammers time.
And they call it Daisy Harris, an AI-generated granny unveiled this month by the big British phone company, O2, as part of its efforts to curb phone scammers. She doesn't have a badge or warrant or any way to really stop them. But when an unlucky fraudster dials her number, Daisy does have the power to waste unlimited amounts of their time. And so she basically has been trained
on like the grandmas of a bunch of these developers and also they worked with some of these people known as scam baiters who you know try to get these scammers and just waste their time so they can't call other people you may have seen some of them online and you know she basically just meanders and acts confused and acts like she can't figure out how to you know enter a website or buy a gift card or whatever
And it's right now it's only available like if a scammer happens to dial the number that they've kind of seeded in different places. But I can imagine relatively soon there being like a service where you can like forward scammers to, you know, a bot.
that waste their time for you, you know? Cause like I get so many scam calls these days. I don't know what list my number got on, but I get so many scam calls, at least like six or seven of them a day. And I've been trying to block them, but you know, it would be great if I could just like forward that to a service that, you know, was like the fake version of Kimberly to just like waste their time.
Oh, I love it so much. It's so funny. And I want to talk to this granny. I want to have a conversation with Daisy Harris. She sounds delightful. She has a cat named Fluffy as well.
There's an AI generated image of her down in the article as well. So what's your smile, Amy? Okay, so mine is sort of two competing versions of gratitude and what it does for us. So Vox has a story, which I think they just resurfaced from a couple of years ago, just on the neuroscience of practicing gratitude.
and how not only does it make us feel better, but it can make us actually more generous if you write in a gratitude journal, you know, a few times a week or maybe once a week about the things that you're grateful for. It can actually make you feel better when you donate to a food bank than when you receive money, according to the experiments, which I think is kind of cool. You can train your brain to feel more grateful. But then the Wall Street Journal has this competing story about
this fighting back basically and saying sometimes it's bad for us to force ourselves to feel positive especially if you've had a loss in your life refers to a widow who's lost her husband and is having a lot of trouble feeling grateful and that
Sometimes writing things down that you're ungrateful for can actually be therapeutic as well. So I just like the competing takes ahead of this Thanksgiving when you're sitting around your table thinking about what you're thankful for. Remember that it can be good for your health, but maybe it's okay to not feel grateful at times.
Yeah, what are they called the toxic optimism? Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's okay not to feel okay sometimes. It is. Feel your feelings. But gratitude is important and you know, there are a lot of things to feel badly about in the world, but you know, it is good when we can
at least find something that gives us optimism. Like, you know, I was very entertained today when I went downstairs and I found my cat in a bag, just hanging out inside a bag, head sticking out, no reason, just reusable bags seemed to be the best place for the cat. It was very entertaining. I'll share a photo in the show notes maybe. Those little moments of joy, we got to hang on to them, embrace them. I want to see that picture.
Yeah, I'll send it to you. Okay, that's it for us today. Tomorrow we're going to bring you an episode from the latest season of Million Bazillion, which is Marketplace's money podcast for kids. It's all about Black Friday. And so if you happen to have children in your life who wondered why it's such a big deal and why we are a consumerist culture that just obsesses about.
shopping when we're supposed to be spending time with family. Anyway, this episode explains that and what a football game has to do with Black Friday's origins and how to shop smarter this holiday season. So that'll be in your feeds tomorrow.
This episode of Make Me Smart was produced by Courtney Berg-Seeker with help from Minh Joo Park. Today's program was engineered by Charlton Thorpe, Ellen Rolfis writes our newsletter. Marisa Cabrera is our senior producer. Bridget Bodner is the director of podcasts, and Francesco Levy is the executive director of digital.
