It's the season of giving: colorful paper and shiny bows, sure, and charitable giving, too. In this special episode, Jacob Goldstein, the host of What's Your Problem, gets smart about donating.

Did you know that spending money on others makes you happier than spending money on yourself? Or that altruistic nerds have discovered four of the most impactful charities in the world (per dollar spent)? Have you ever wondered how poker players think about giving?

Dr. Laurie Santos from The Happiness Lab, Elie Hassenfeld of GiveWell, and Nate Silver and Maria Konnikova from Risky Business talk about how to maximize your giving – and why you’ll be happy you did.

Link to donate: https://givingmultiplier.org/happinesslab

Listen to The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos

Listen to Risky Business

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In the 1960s, a right-wing organization led by a former candy tycoon rose to fame in America for their anti-communist campaigns. They called themselves the John Birch Society. Then, they tried to take over the Parent-Teacher Association. This week, what the battle between the two organizations tells us about the fate of American politics, and the history of your Halloween candy.

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Today on the show, Leon Neyfakh, co-creator of the hit podcasts Slow Burn and Fiasco, discusses his season on the aftermath of the 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush.

You can listen to the full season of Fiasco now.

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Jesse Owens spent the rest of his life retelling the story of the 1936 games and his encounter with Luz Long. We trace the evolution of a tall tale, discovering the hidden life of one of America’s iconic sports heroes.

This is part two of a two-part crossover from Revisionist History’s ‘Hitler’s Olympics’ series. To listen to the whole series, head over to the Revisionist History show page.

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The most famous athlete in 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany was the American sprinter Jesse Owens, and one of the most famous stories from those Games was the unexpected, heartwarming encounter Owens had with the German long jumper Luz Long. The friendship between the two athletes would serve as a symbol of how sports can overcome national antagonisms. We wonder: What really happened at the long jump pit that day?

This is part one of a two-part crossover from Revisionist History’s ‘Hitler’s Olympics’ series. To listen to the whole series, head over to the Revisionist History show page.

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Jill Lepore returns to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education with a special episode of The Last Archive. She and Ben Naddaff-Hafrey explore the amazing new AI-powered recreation of the Brown v. Board cases over at the Oyez project. Then, Kenneth W. Mack, the Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law at Harvard University, stops by to discuss the enduring significance of the case.

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In a special, all-new episode of ‘The Returns,’ host emerita Jill Lepore returns to talk about the post-truth moment we find ourselves in and what it means for the 2024 election.

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Each week on ‘The Returns,’ we pull a different episode from our own archive to help put our present politics into historical context.

This episode, Epiphany, first ran in 2021, as the finale to Season 2, which was all about lies, fakes, frauds, and hoaxes. In this episode, Jill Lepore takes listeners down the winding path from the little-known Iron Mountain hoax of the late 1960s to the Capitol insurrection on January 6th, 2021.

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