September 13, 2018 • 44 mins
Think tanks? More like stink tanks! We're kidding. Think tanks do valuable work, when they operate in a non-partisan way of course. Learn all about the history of these heady institutions today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there
actually sitting in today, and uh, this is stuff you
should know about. Think tanks, the thinking this kind of tanks.
(00:23):
There are fish tanks. They don't think at all, well,
they barely think. They think, this water feels a little
warm for me, and then they think what's water, what's
being wet? And then that's about it. And then they're like,
how about some of those tasty flakes? Yeah, give me some,
and that's it. Think tanks. There's a lot more thinking
going on in these kind of tanks. Like stink tanks,
(00:46):
it depends on your opinion, and uh that's everybody's opinion.
So yes, I guess they are more like stink tanks
these days. This is one of those weird ones where
I for forty seven years just sort of had this,
never dug in on what a think tank was. I
(01:06):
hear it, and now it kind of assumed I knew
what it was. That was kind of right. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's a good it's a good term for something. Yeah,
I was like, within this is this like a bunch
of smart people sitting around think thinking about smart stuff? Exactly.
That's kind of right, That's exactly what it is. It's like,
it's like a place where people sit around and think
about things that eventually hopefully affects public policy in a
(01:30):
positive way. Is what you're ultimately hoping for. Yeah, and
b I think we don't mean if you went by
a think tank, they would all just be sitting around.
M hmmm. I think it depends on the day of
the week or if it's right after lunch, like there's
a ton of research and study. Oh, I see stuff
like that. They're not just pulling stuff out of thin air. No. No,
(01:51):
that's the point of think tanks is they are groups
of people, UM nonprofit organizations in the US we should
say yeah, which will get to the finer points of
UM who say, you know what, we see this problem
in America and or the world or wherever. Great Britain
has plenty China has a bunch, and they say, how
(02:12):
can we solve this problem. Let's get to it. We're
gonna we're gonna take this problem on and figure it
out through pragmatic science and evidence based research. We're going
to come up with a solution to this problem. And
then the next step is to get it out there
to the public, to policy makers, to get people talking
about it. And then once enough people talk about it
(02:35):
and there's a public debate over it, ideally, if it's
a good idea, it will be adopted as public policy
and that problem will be solved in a in a
good way. Yeah, And that's the ideal function of a
an ideal think tank, which is to say it is nonpartisan,
it is fact based, and it doesn't have an agenda necessarily.
(02:59):
But things have changed over the years, as we will
see fairly recently, Chuck seems like and and think tanks
can be very much slanted. But well, we'll get into
all that. That's just sort of a long winded setup.
That was a good set up, though, Man, should we
go back and check on oural buddy Plato. Yeah, so
(03:21):
Plato his academy. The Academy was some people say it
was sort of the world's first think tank, which makes sense. Yeah,
he would get dudes and they would sit around in
the garden and I would imagine drink wine and talk
smarts and philosophy and kind of you know, like it
(03:41):
was high minded stuff for the day to sit around
and think about sort of what was going on around
them and how they could impact change. Yeah, or thinking
about the nature of reality or existence. Um, they once
decided that knowledge was uncertain and life is essentially craps
game based on probability rather than absolute truth. If you
(04:04):
step back and think about it, that is the basis
of quantum mechanics. Could you imagine if they had access
to LSD back then, I know, I don't think it
would have been too terribly different. Well, yeah, they were
sort of traveling down that road anyway, but that was
I mean, that's that's pretty impressive some of the stuff
they came up with. This is again, you know, we
did a skeptics episode. Skepticism episode, you know, um, I'm sorry,
(04:29):
not skepticism, a stoicism. And remember is this is where
this stuff was. All these different philosophies were all like
kind of grew from this academy. So you can make
a pretty good case that it was the world's first
think tank. Yeah, it's a little it's not the first
modern think tank, but it it qualifies in a lot
of ways. No, there was one in eight thirty one,
(04:50):
in Great Britain, the Duke of Wellington established what was
called the Royal United Services Institution, which studied like military science. Yeah.
And then here in the US in nineteen ten, the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which studied the results of
military science. Right, and that's still around, uh, Carnegie man,
(05:10):
I mean they still have endowed many things. Yeah, they're
well in doubt that they are very well in doubt. Uh.
And then of course the Brookings Institution, which maybe the
most famous modern American think tank to this day, This
is the one you probably hear about the most. Uh.
It was founded by Robert Brookings in nineteen sixteen. And uh,
(05:35):
they had a lot of it. I mean they still
have a lot of influence, but they had a great
deal of influence. UM kind of post depression with FDRs.
New Deal helped construct the New Deal helped construct the
Marshall Plan after World War Two. That was that was huge,
very huge. So both were for sure. The New Deal
definitely was, but the Marshall Plan was. There was a
(05:55):
survey done, if I think, like four fifty historians and
they the number one most important thing that any government
has done since UM, World War two between World War
two and the century was the Martiall Plan. Like it
it not only like brought Europe back from World War Two,
it set Europe on a path away from communism, where
(06:21):
if you're not into communism, that was a great positive benefit, right.
And the way it did that was in two years
based on this economic plan. In two years, it got
Europe or ravaged world War two ravaged Europe back to
production levels higher than the production levels it was at
before World War Two in two years. So it just
(06:42):
went back to normal plus better. And Europe said, I
kind of like this capitalism thing, and Western Europe went
that way. I was kind of curious because Brookings, the
Brookings Institution, gets a lot of like left leaning critics
SYSM today, so I kind of wonder where that all
(07:02):
came from. And uh, the article I read said that
is a victory of the conservative side to have Brookings
labeled liberal just from kind of pounding it in the press,
even though it's history and its member board throughout the
history has not been liberal at all, and it has
been filled from the top down over the years with
(07:26):
rank and file Republicans and conservatives from like the Reagan
era on through Bush one and two. Okay, so they've
they've gotten it across is liberals, so that liberals will
swallow the stuff that Brookings is is putting out there. No,
I know what they undermine their own think tank. Well,
I don't think it's not their own think tank. It's
(07:47):
not a conservative think tank. Well it's centrist, like almost
right down the middle for right. But I think they
want to advance their own uh with their conservative think tanks.
They want to advance them, so they label Brookings is superliberal,
just so anything centrist is liberal. I think that's what
it is. I can't remember who scored it, but somebody
(08:08):
has a liberal score between zero and a hundred for
think tanks, and Brooking scored like a fifty three, right
down the middle. Like apparently, as far as think tanks go,
it's about as centrist as you possibly can get. Yeah,
and they've been around for a long time. Yeah, makes
a lot of sense. Yep. So, um, it's not just Brookings.
(08:29):
Brookings is definitely one of the most famous around the
world and has done quite a bit of stuff, but
there's plenty of others. There's Um, the Rand Corporation is
a very famous think tank which did you know RAND
is actually am I don't know what you call it,
but it's supposed it started out as R and D
like Research and Development RAND Corporation, And from what I understand,
(08:50):
they've come up with the ideas for computers, the Internet, uh, spy, satellites,
the space program, all that stuff that America could in
the mid twentieth century technologically. Yes, the Rain Corporation, like
thinkers were the ones who came up with this stuff. Yeah,
I think I knew some of that, and I don't
I don't think it fully hit home that they were
(09:11):
a think tank. Yeah, with the name like the Rain
Corporation sounds like just a corporation, but but they're they're
like a think tank that's really specifically there was specifically
zoned into America's technology progression. I guess, yeah. I mean
a lot of think tanks can be specialized like that,
Like some are very very much just concentrate on economics,
(09:35):
some concentrate on social issues in that case technology, and
then I think some like Brookings are sort of a
little more broad. Yeah, they'll they'll take any case, right,
they'll take all comers. Yeah. So after World War Two, um,
like there were think tanks before, like you said, Brookings,
Carnegie Um, the Royal United Services Institute in the UK,
(09:57):
there were like there were think tanks prior to World
War Two, but after World War Two they really proliferated.
And the reason they started was government was just kind
of government it was in the in the early twentieth century.
It was just just this. It was. It wasn't anything
like you see it now. It wasn't this monolithic behemoth
(10:18):
that has its tendrils in every aspect of people's lives
or anything. It was a little too far the other
way where it didn't quite know what it was doing.
So some of those early philanthropists like Carnegie Um and Brookings,
they they endowed these think tanks to kind of help
government out to basically be like the research arm for government,
(10:39):
to help direct the best way for America to go.
And that's how it started out. And then after World
War Two, when America had like all this cash and
all this forward momentum, think tanks really popped up and
and there were all these kind of competing and then
sometimes harmonious um voices from these think tanks to say
(11:01):
go this way, go this way, let's say this way,
but they all had something in common, and that was
that they were staffed by very smart people who did
very deliberate, very good research, who produced policy positions that
lawmakers could then take themselves and go out to the
people and say, see, this is what I'm talking about,
(11:21):
here's the data, here's a sound bite for you to
make you understand it. That's what things tanks did, and
in a way they were They very much were along
the same track as lobby lobbyists, which we did an
episode on that that was pretty good too. But think
tanks stopped short of lobbying allegedly, Yeah, because they kind
of had to um. Starting in nineteen they were granted
(11:44):
tax exempt status, which is a very big deal because
there's a lot of money involved in many of these.
I've been trying to get that for myself for years,
and you're right, it is a very big deal. The
Church of Josh, just get it going. That's so I'm
wearing this robe right now. Uh. In the nineteen fifties, though,
is when Congress really kind of because they were tax exempt,
(12:06):
had to get involved and say, hey, listen, you gotta
walk a line here. You politically, you can't um if
you want to keep this tax exemption. Now, oh yeah,
we for sure do. Um. They said, you can't be partisan,
it's got to be good information. You can't um slant
things a certain way or support officially support or endorsed candidates. Um,
(12:27):
you are here to educate with your objective work. And uh.
That went along for a while, and then we started
getting think tanks that set out to do just that um,
which they are called advocacy. Advocacy think tanks now, which
I'm not sure how they managed to skirt unless they
change the rules, skirt those rules and say, hey, we're
(12:50):
gonna be a conservative think tank or or liberal think
tank and still be tax exempt. The do you know?
The only thing that I can tell is that they're
still technically producing a public good if or if they
believe that they're producing a public good, even if they
have conservative alignment or a liberal alignment. They're trying to
(13:13):
move society along in a way that they think is
good or for the betterment of society. Stuff. Dude, That's
what I've been telling I mean, could we be a
think tank? Absolutely not. I mean think about it, like,
I mean, I guess we could. I think that there's
a I don't Okay, let me take that back. No,
we absolutely couldn't because we can't be brought to you
(13:34):
by we don't have we don't have time. I don't know,
that's a good question, but we don't have. Yeah, you
couldn't advertise and have like you couldn't get advertiser money
and be tax exempt. That's just like a doubt. If
the Brookings institutions papers have like Burger King coupons on them,
you never know. So we'll get to why we can't
(13:55):
be later on. But one of the things about about
think tanks is they're they're the reason they have a
tax exempt status is what they're doing is producing work
that furthers the public good. That's why they're supposed to
have tax exempt status. What you're pointing out is a
really good thing to point out, Like, wait a minute,
there's a lot of stuff here that that they could
(14:17):
lose their tax exempt status for. And if we fast
forward to three or five years from now, I think
we're going to start seeing them lose tax exempt status. Um,
they just haven't yet, I think is what it is. Yeah,
because some of them flat out like it's so obvious
when they come around like uh, when the Democrats were
beaten in two thousand, they got together and they started, uh,
(14:40):
left leaning thinkers got together and started the Center for
American Progress, which is an economic organization. It says it's nonpartisan,
but it literally says, as a quote, their goal is
to develop new policy ideas, critique the policy that stems
from conservative values, lanches the media to cover the issues
(15:02):
that truly matter and shape the national debate. So it's
they're they're kind of flat out saying like we're out
too prove, not just have an opinion about Maybe that's
a distinction, out to prove that conservative economic values are
bad for the country. Basically, Yeah, is that the difference.
Maybe it's like, here's our data. I honestly don't know, dude.
(15:25):
It's not a bunch of op eds thrown together. It's
so so No, it's not supposed to just be op eds.
It's supposed to be backed by data. Yeah. But but
I mean, like Center for American Progress, or like the
Heritage Foundation, or like ALEC, h the American Legislative Exchange Council,
like these are like and we're gonna do a whole
(15:45):
episode just on ALEC one day. Okay, seriously, but they're
like little, they're like Kareem Abdul Jabbar, like karate training
islands for liberals or for conservatives or for um rich
billionaire follow worse, like it doesn't matter, Like that's what
they are there there. They come up with new ideas
to push their agenda, and then they train activists to
(16:09):
go out and get that message out, to change people's minds,
to get themselves on CNN or Fox News or whatever,
and to shape the public discussion on on something. It
has a lot of the contours of what think tanks
used to have, but there's this whole other layer of
like like seeing you and grizzle there that that that
I think tanks aren't supposed to have. Should we take
(16:29):
a break? All right, we'll take a break in we'll
talk a little bit more about the Heritage Foundation right
after this. All right, nineteen eighties, the Heritage Foundation, which
(17:02):
you briefly mentured, mentored, that's the new mentioned before before
he broke. They came about broke, they said, all right,
it's nineteen eighties. We got Ronald Reagan in there. He
is watching movies or asleep most of the time, so
we have a good opportunity. That's how they want you
(17:24):
to think he has a good Did you see the
numbers about his uh movie watching? No? Oh man, it's great.
Like a movie fan, it's great. How many movies did
he watch? Your day? He watched a lot of movies.
And this is like back when they just had like reels,
right films trip. I guess they probably just you know,
cue the projector when he he and Nancy wanted to
watch it a good old fashioned western starring me. Can
(17:47):
you do the rest of the episode as ready? No? Uh?
So they came along and they said, all right, Reagan's
in in office. Here are our recommendations. What up I
would call a blueprint for grabbing the government by its
frayed New Deal lapels and shaking out forty eight years
of liberal policy. And it came by way of two thousand,
(18:09):
more than two thousand recommendations, and they tried to institute
about two thirds of them. Yeah. Reagan was like, great,
here's my thanks for the outline for what I should do. Right. Yeah,
so two thirds, like he said during his two terms,
is what he tried to implement. And then, of course
when Bill Clinton gets in there, the Progressive Policy Institute, Um,
(18:31):
I don't know if it was two thousand plus, but
they offered similar recommendations. And that's how it goes the
think tanks right now. Yeah, because if you're a lawmaker,
and again we said this in the Lobbying episode two,
you're not necessarily like some smart whip crack sharp person. No,
I think we've seen that played out. You can just
(18:52):
like give people to vote for you. Yeah, on both
sides of the aisle. It's just a crack at like
you know Trump or anything. Oh no, no, no no, I
mean on all up and down the House and Senate. Right.
You don't like to think they're all geniuses, but they're not.
They're not. And you don't have to be smart to
hold office. Um, you just have to get people to
vote for you. Again, which is why I think tanks
(19:12):
have flourished for so long, why lobbyists have flourished for
so long, because they're the ones who do the research
and write the policy and say, here you go. You
want to go look smart, here you go, buddy. We
even like highlighted some sound bites for you to go,
say two people and get the get into the twenty
four hour news cycle. And that's one of the big
roles that think tanks played today is by and and
(19:35):
have you know, especially since World War Two, is by
going to policy makers and being like, here's your agenda,
take your leave as much as you want. But all
of this is backed by data, like it dovetails with
what you want to do with the country, and it
is just gangbusters stuff. It's high quality, well researched stuff. Yeah,
it's really interesting because I think there are still think
(19:56):
tanks that only craft U only do research and present
it and say do what you will with it. But
those seem to be more and more gone by the wayside.
Two ten was a real watershed year. It feels like
for think tanks. Yeah, like you mentioned ALEC, which we're
going to cover in full, but I mean they are
(20:17):
they are a bill writing organization. They call them model bills.
But I mean when when you hear a senator or
something said, you know, we crafted this legislation, well, that
probably means is an organization Like ALEC handed them the
legislation and said here, you know, here it is if
you want to use it, and you probably should want
(20:38):
to use it. That's so. That is so ALEC I think,
does in many ways qualify as a think tank. They're
not add percent standard think tank, but actually writing the law. Yeah,
and for the lawmaker to go into do and go
into Congress and introduce it as their own bill. That's
a little beyond what think tanks to think tanks were
(21:00):
like write a paper that says, here's this problem in America,
here's some ideas to solve it. Here's this research to
back up those ideas, go write a law based on it.
What things like ALEC does is take it a step further.
But ALEX still qualifies as a think tank. And ALEC
is part of something called the State Policy Network, which
(21:20):
apparently is there's one in every state and Puerto Rico.
And they're like a confederation of think tanks that basically
sit around and figure out ways to sue local, state
and federal law lawmakers over laws, to try to get
laws overturned, like they used the courts rather than the legislation.
But um, it's still the stated goal is to affect
(21:43):
public policy and turn it in one direction or another. Yeah,
what was what was the website that you sent? Source Watch? Yes?
Source Watch called them, uh, called ALEC a corporate bill mill. Right,
So they're just churning out hundreds of bill a year.
Not all of them get used, but many of them do.
(22:05):
And it's just I don't know. I don't think a
lot of Americans realize that a lot of actual legislative
policy is being written by McDonald's. Yeah, exactly, it's crazy.
I can't wait to do the alquum. We're both going
to be well, our cars are gonna blow up right after,
but by god, we're gonna get that episode. Maybe we
should make that or like last episode in the year whatever,
(22:28):
what's twenty years from now, two thousands now? That was
eighteen years ago. I used to love that bit though. Um. Alright,
so we got to talk about money here because this uh,
they are not, um, the independent most times these days
(22:49):
they're not the independent organizations that you think they are. Uh.
They used to be funded by these endowments and um.
More and more, it's it's corporation ends, large businesses. Sometimes
private individuals of course, will give. And sometimes it's a
great work around for campaign finance laws. Instead of directing
(23:11):
you know, you know, tens of millions of dollars like
you can't do to a campaign, you can throw it
in a think tank that will probably get a better result. Anyway,
that's new the time was it used to be like
in my day, right, a rich philanthropist would say, I
hate poverty and the effects that has on Americans. Go
(23:32):
figure this out. I'm gonna fund to think tank. And
that's how you're dedicated to like just go make that happen.
And that's what think tanks were originally born from. And
that's largely the the only kind of oversight they worked
under is they were trying to end poverty, or they
were trying to work against communism, like these huge, haughty goals.
(23:55):
Now they're being micromanaged. That's one thing that's happening to them. Yeah,
And the idea that the these think tanks are not
suede or influence are affected by their donors is not true.
And the sort of the biggest problem going is that
now you have legislation being drawn up by think tanks
because corporations are paying money to get research that looks
(24:19):
like it's in their favor. Yeah. So, so one of
the problems is the like, there's not as many philanthropists
who are just endowing think tanks with no strings attached anymore.
There are plenty of philanthropists out there still that are
are funding think tanks, but their donations are directed, their
(24:40):
results oriented. They're very technocratic, right, they want to see
bang for their buck. Whereas before it was just like
to make America a better place and that was it.
There wasn't a lot of like um um, nobody's feet
were being held to the fire, you know. Now it's like,
we want you to further this specific agenda, which is
(25:01):
um uh, we want to make sure that St. Louis's
children there's not a single one malnourished any longer. Which
is great, it's a great goal. There's nothing wrong with
that goal. But it's just so very narrowed and tailored,
and there's ways that you can hold the think tank accountable,
which is good in one hand, but it's also basically
(25:22):
the introduction of like a corporate management to think tanks,
which that's not really how they were originally formed, and
it's having a weird effect on them. So think tanks
are starting to say, all right, we thank you for
this money. We'll go save the children of St. Louis.
But and by the way, shout out at St. Louis.
That was a great show that um so again saving
(25:44):
the children St. Louis good stuff, but we've got all
this other stuff we want to do too, So to
keep that going, we're gonna have to also go find
sources elsewhere. And again you can find them from other
other people, but one of the places they're finding them
from his corporations. And that it's having a big negative
impact on think tanks right now. Yeah, and it goes
(26:05):
both ways. In the past, you know, eight or ten years,
conservative billionaires of says that here they funneled a hundred
and twenty million dollars to about a hundred groups and
think tanks, uh to do things like discredit climate change science, um,
which I mean, dude. The Koke Brothers and x On
Mobile specifically funded a couple of think tanks called Atlas
(26:29):
Economic Research Foundation and the International Policy Network to basically
to basically question the science behind climate change to further
fossil fuel interests, which is, see you guys in hell
for that one like that, What a crummy legacy to
leave on Earth just to make a few extra bucks.
(26:51):
Forget future generations they can all burn. Forget all the
endangered species that are on the brink of extinction that
are oh wait no, they're now extinct. It doesn't matter
because we made a few extra billion dollars. Yeah, that's
that's despicable. Well what uh, it's funny. I just watched
the movie Chinatown for a movie Crush episode and there's
(27:13):
that You ever seen that? Yeah, you know, most a
lot of that movie is about It was originally titled
Water and Power, you know, because it's about you know,
this weird uh political situation in Los Angeles and nineties
where they were diverting water to the valley which was
a desert and all these rich fat cats that were
(27:34):
getting the water diverted there, we're buying up land in
the valley, like hundreds of thousands of acres because they
knew it was going to be a lush green valley soon.
So all that really happened in l a Chinatown was
based on that. But there's that great scene when Jack
Nicholson is Jake get us uh confronts John Houston about
(27:55):
you know, he's the big bad guy no across and
he says, you know, how much money do you need?
How much how many more things can you buy? Or
this or that? And he says, what are you trying
to secure? And he looked at him and he said,
the future, Mr gittis and that's what it is. They're
they're not after more billions to buy more planes and
are bigger house. They're trying to leave that they that's
(28:17):
what they want out of their legacy, is they're trying
to affect the future and in their own specific way,
right But they're affecting the future in the worst way
possible according to us. And the problem is not according
to them, you know, but if you if you pull
enough people and just ask them plainly, if you took
money and billionaires in power and all that out of it,
(28:40):
do you want a better future for humanity and for
earth a hundred years from now? I would guess the
majority of people would say yes. And if you can say, well,
these guys are actually doing the opposite of ensuring that
right now, how do you feel about that? Most people
would say I don't feel so great about that. The
(29:01):
problem is that most people would also follow up with,
but what can we do? Right? They're they're rich, and
that's a great point. Let what can you do? Let
me hop back on Facebook and find a goat video.
That's when the hopelessness sets in, and that's what's causing
the paralysis in our our world right now is hopelessness.
That's that's not grim at all. By the way, everybody
(29:23):
be sure to listen to my new podcast, uh The
End of the World with Josh Clark. It's it's a
really uplifting coming very soon. Yeah, coming this fall sometime eventually.
Just stuck up on your happy bills. Uh So. In
two thousand thirteen, however, on the other side, uh left
leaning weekly magazine The Nation um revealed the positions of
(29:47):
the left leaning Center for American Progress and other think
tanks in DC are shaped by interest of their donors.
So it happens on both sides of the aisle for sure. Yeah,
oh yeah, yeah, No, it's an equal opportunity screwing that
the world is getting from lobbying from think tanks, from
from wealthy interests. Like, it's it's both both sides. Yeah.
(30:09):
So they're effectively unregistered lobbyist organizations now to a large degree,
and because their tax exempt, they're not obligated to release
financial statements or reveal their donors. So I'm surprised it
took that long for people to be like, wait a minute,
we can really take advantage here. So let's let's take
another break and then we'll get well, it will spell
(30:29):
out what the advantages are of hiring a think tank.
(30:58):
All right, Chuck, we're back a little warm under the collar.
I feel like we should mention this thing with the
Walton Family Foundation quickly, because that's interesting. I think this
is a great example of what I think tank can
do these days. Yeah, it's UM. Obviously, the Sam Walton
family of Walmart fame. UH. They fund a lot of
conservative think tanks. I think most people know that. UM.
(31:20):
But then they also fund funded one and think tanks
backed by Barack Obama when it came to the Affordable
Healthcare Act, and you're like, wait a minute, why would
they do something like that if they are a conservative
family supporting conservative causes. Then you do a little poking around,
and it turns out that uh, critics would say that um,
(31:42):
the healthcare bill that forced employers to pay for their
employees healthcare tax. Walmart was like, this is great because
we can afford to do this, but our mom and
pop competitors can't. So we're actually gonna try and get
this push through. Even though at its face it doesn't
quite make a lot of sense, it makes sense to them,
(32:02):
like why would Walmart take on the cost of their
their employees healthcare because they know that they can go
back to sleep. Everybody stop asking quests. Really interesting, it is,
it's fascinating. But that's one thing you can do is
donate to a think tank that's furthering your agenda. And
because think tanks are now largely agenda driven, there's a
(32:25):
lot of think tanks out there that can help you out.
And there's a new thing that's happening with think tanks
these days is they're starting to solicit corporate donations. And
one of the saddest stories is the story of the
Brookings Institution, the most centrist think tank that has put
out the Martial Plan that helped figure out the New
(32:47):
Deal and it's and how it addressed the depression, like
has done all this amazing stuff. Is now they hired
a lobbyist for their strategic development chief and they're now
soliciting corporate donations left and right, and they're basically this
is this is what you can get, Like if you
(33:07):
hire a think tanker, I'm sorry, you're you're not supposed
to say higher. If you enter into a partnership or
donate to a think tank and your your corporation or
a very wealthy person. You What the think tank will
do is they will basically get your ideas out there.
They will deploy. So first of all, let's say there's
(33:30):
this really great New York Times article about them. What
was the name of that company, the Lennar Corporation. They
wanted to build in San Francisco. They wanted to redevelop
the site in San Francisco, which whatever, apparently there was
pushback on it, or they were getting some sort of
pushback from the residents of San Francisco. So I guess
(33:52):
the Brookings Institution went to them and said, hey, we've
got some ideas for you. We can support this as
basically like a great idea of cities of the future,
and and we're going to lend the credibility of our
experts in our think tank to your project and make
it like a champion kind of thing, like a blue
type and archetype for how to further cities in America
(34:15):
your development projects. Their their home builders, but but with
Brookings Institution behind it, there was a veneer of something
bigger than building homes, bigger than redeveloping, something about the
future in progress, and Brookings like went to them and
in exchange for four grand Brookings like added this credibility
to it, got talking heads out there on the news
(34:37):
to talk up this development and like what it meant
for the future. And um, one of the other things
they did and can do is they can set up
summits conferences on cities of the future and get the
home builders and lawmakers into the same room to hang
out together. And so that's lobbying. Sure, there's no other
(34:58):
way to put it. That is lobbying, and they were
doing it on behalf of a specific corporation. There should
be no tax exemption whatsoever any longer. It doesn't matter
what side of the aisle you're on. If you're a taxpayer,
you are funding that bye bye through these tax exemptions
because we foot the bill for tax deduction. So if
(35:20):
a single corporation's interests are being served, even if society
in general is benefiting in some way, that's too much
of a slippery slope. That breaks the tax exemption status.
And then that that should go away. And that, sadly
is is apparently where Brookings the direction Brookings is going. Yeah,
and others too, I should say, oh, sure, sure, um,
(35:43):
even the ones that aren't maybe as outright uh are
on his bald face about this stuff. Um, Like a
lot of scholars say that you know, bought and paid
for research is sort of the exception. Still. But even
even so, there's still places where you know, you may
not it. Um, you may not push out certain research
(36:03):
if you think you're it might piss off your boss. Yeah,
which is the same thing or sort of self censor
yourself if you think, like, oh man, I don't know,
like we're getting donations now, like this might not please them,
it might make them look bad, so I probably should
just avoid this conclusion. Yeah. So maybe not of like
completely inventing a study or something, but being very selective
(36:24):
in what you choose to research or how you research
it or what you release is uh, you know, it's
another version of the same thing. It totally is. And
one of one of the other things that they've been
found to do a lot of think tanks um, or
one of the new things that think tanks do is
they will circulate drafts before there's a final draft two
donors like what do you think about this? And sometimes
(36:46):
their opinions will be incorporated into the final draft. That
is the antithesis of the spirit of think tanks and
what they were originally meant to do. They were supposed
to be, like, here's the facts, here's the research to
back it up. It is what it is. We think
you can apply it to make the world better in
this way, not what you know, what do you guys
(37:06):
think does this? Does this jibe with the kind of
sinks you selected for this redevelopment because we can change
this part to to jibe with the sinks you chose.
You know, that's just not what it's supposed to be.
And the reason that I think tanks are doing this
is they are in um existential danger through the death
of expertise that I remember I talked about in the
(37:28):
Elimination Diet episode. The problem is, it's not like America
just said we're sick of expertise, we're tired of you experts,
like you're always right, and we're tired of here and
you're always right. People got tired of being lied to
and misled and misinformed and manipulated, and they finally said,
you know what, experts, that's enough enough of you are
(37:49):
full of it, enough of you have let your credibility
be co opted. We're just not going to listen to
any of you anymore because we don't know who to trust.
And the experts brought about the death of expertise themselves
in large part. Yeah, and there's another Uh. There was
this article from the Washington Post called or think Tanks Obsolete,
which sort of argues along those lines um about and
(38:12):
also incorporates the Internet and the length of like a
research cycle, like with the Internet and Twitter and Facebook
and things like Ted talks. Uh. There's a guy, Donald Abelson,
a professor at University Western Ontario, wrote a book called
The Think Tanks Matter, where his conclusion basically is that
the marketplace of ideas, he says, has become congested and
(38:33):
you don't have time anymore to do a twelvemonth research
proposal to come to the following conclusions. When hundred Ted
talks over that twelve months will be published. Not picking
on ted talks are great, No, it's a good example though.
But you can push out of Ted talk. You can
push out uh Facebook live video as as an economist
(38:56):
and have a lot of sway you can They mentioned
in here the UH and the article about vaccines for instance. UH.
When as far as it goes with the vaccines. The
Rand Corporation one of the largest thing thanks that we
already mentioned. They did like a very thorough deep dive
in research, uh, debunking the notion that vaccines cause autism.
(39:19):
And it took a long time. But you can get
on Facebook and go to a group called Educate before
You Vaccinate and watch videos by non experts in people
are swayed these days by this stuff like why wait,
you know, the site the new cycle is so shortened.
You can't wait for a long deep dive research paper
to come out with some abstract summary that no one
(39:42):
reads anyway. And apparently now they're you know, they're written
in such a way where they will just say, uh,
abstract summary, this stinks. We shouldn't do it, you know,
they become so opinionated. I don't know, man, it's just
it's it's depressing to think that Facebook and Twitter have
outsized a think tank as far as they definitely have influence. Yeah,
(40:05):
and YouTube and basically anything that gives a voice to
the average person, which on the one hand is really
cool and great sort of democratizes it in a way,
but but at times, but it's tied into this death
of expertise in a really toxic manner. You know what
I'm saying, Like the two that that democratization of like
(40:27):
a like giving everybody like a mouthpieces, not in and
of itself like a bad thing, but when since it
coincided with the loss and trust and experts and expertise,
That's what where the problem came from. And that was
the reason why we couldn't be a think tank. Sadly,
we could be a think tank now, but we couldn't
be a bona fide think tank because, Chuck, we don't
(40:49):
have enough time in any given week to do so
much thorough um primary source research into stuff. If we do,
if we released one of these every couple of months,
sure we could be like a real think tank, but
it wouldn't be near least fun six episodes a year.
People would love that, Yeah, they love you. Got anything else? Nope,
(41:14):
I guess I don't either. Sorry for going off, everybody,
Thanks for listening. I'm sure I'll gets an email, But
what els is worth it? Uh? If you want to
know more about think tanks, well, I don't know, go
on the internet and look up some think tanks and
see if there's any that you agree with. A lot
of them have like daily interpretations of news that kind
of go through their lens. Um it's it's it's a
(41:36):
way to keep up with things. Uh. And you can
also read this article on how stuff works just not
a think tank, called how think tanks Work. And since
I said that's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call
this a ballpoint pen addiction for just pin addiction. Hey guys,
been listening for a couple of months or so, new listener.
You were my first foray into podcast. I just really
(41:58):
enjoy listening to you two. I saw the Ballpoint Pin
podcast and I could not pass it up. I have
a bit of a pin problem, you see. I own
many many pins, especially the gael type inc rollerball pins.
You got taken a test by quite a few people
who were just like Josh Clark harresy gel pins. Yeah,
(42:21):
there are a lot of I guess traditionalists to bhoopoo
that I think they're great. I got a lot of
support for that one too. I agreed, we got a
lot of pin recommendations. It was good to see. Uh.
And here's another one. I own many many pins, especially
the gel Inc roller ball pins. I also own a
collection of Sharpie's in various tip widths and colors. I
probably have a couple of gallon size zip block bags worth.
(42:44):
You mentioned the way certain pins right on certain types
of paper. I think it's probably the rollerball gel pins
that work best on the thermal paper that they use
the most restaurants. And I was talking about signing the check.
I think that's what she's talking. We still never found
out what that thing is called thermal paper. No, No,
the thing that the check comes out in the little portfolio,
the clamshell. Someone actually said, did you see that this
(43:05):
great couple sent in a picture of a clamshell check
delivery system. What are they called? I don't know, check Catty.
We're gonna we're gonna name them clamshells. Now, that's the
new name for him. So I have a favorite pin,
though guys by them by the box. Uh. It's the
pilot V ball B green pin, the point five millimeter.
(43:28):
I love the way they feel when they write. I
can't go back to ballpoint pins. Use them at work.
I carry at least three in my bag and I
draw and doodle with them. Using them on a newsprint
pad is my favorite thing when doing word art. Sorry
for the ramble, guys, have a great day. That is
from Davini and Barry, Davini Berry, Davini and Berry M. Berry.
(43:49):
I wasn't going okay, well, I didn't know if Davini's
middle initial was M, or if I was missed hearing
you and Davini and Berry. It's actually Davina, excuse me,
Davina M. Berry. If I would have said Davina and Barry,
that would have been much more clear. Or Embury. It
might be Davina Embury. What does it say Davina or Davinah?
Oh God about d E. Thanks d It's d I.
(44:15):
At any rate, we're glad that you started listening to us.
We appreciate and thanks for taking the time to let
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also send us an email to stuff podcast at how
(44:36):
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there
actually sitting in today, and uh, this is stuff you
should know about. Think tanks, the thinking this kind of tanks.
(00:23):
There are fish tanks. They don't think at all, well,
they barely think. They think, this water feels a little
warm for me, and then they think what's water, what's
being wet? And then that's about it. And then they're like,
how about some of those tasty flakes? Yeah, give me some,
and that's it. Think tanks. There's a lot more thinking
going on in these kind of tanks. Like stink tanks,
(00:46):
it depends on your opinion, and uh that's everybody's opinion.
So yes, I guess they are more like stink tanks
these days. This is one of those weird ones where
I for forty seven years just sort of had this,
never dug in on what a think tank was. I
(01:06):
hear it, and now it kind of assumed I knew
what it was. That was kind of right. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's a good it's a good term for something. Yeah,
I was like, within this is this like a bunch
of smart people sitting around think thinking about smart stuff? Exactly.
That's kind of right, That's exactly what it is. It's like,
it's like a place where people sit around and think
about things that eventually hopefully affects public policy in a
(01:30):
positive way. Is what you're ultimately hoping for. Yeah, and
b I think we don't mean if you went by
a think tank, they would all just be sitting around.
M hmmm. I think it depends on the day of
the week or if it's right after lunch, like there's
a ton of research and study. Oh, I see stuff
like that. They're not just pulling stuff out of thin air. No. No,
(01:51):
that's the point of think tanks is they are groups
of people, UM nonprofit organizations in the US we should
say yeah, which will get to the finer points of
UM who say, you know what, we see this problem
in America and or the world or wherever. Great Britain
has plenty China has a bunch, and they say, how
(02:12):
can we solve this problem. Let's get to it. We're
gonna we're gonna take this problem on and figure it
out through pragmatic science and evidence based research. We're going
to come up with a solution to this problem. And
then the next step is to get it out there
to the public, to policy makers, to get people talking
about it. And then once enough people talk about it
(02:35):
and there's a public debate over it, ideally, if it's
a good idea, it will be adopted as public policy
and that problem will be solved in a in a
good way. Yeah, And that's the ideal function of a
an ideal think tank, which is to say it is nonpartisan,
it is fact based, and it doesn't have an agenda necessarily.
(02:59):
But things have changed over the years, as we will
see fairly recently, Chuck seems like and and think tanks
can be very much slanted. But well, we'll get into
all that. That's just sort of a long winded setup.
That was a good set up, though, Man, should we
go back and check on oural buddy Plato. Yeah, so
(03:21):
Plato his academy. The Academy was some people say it
was sort of the world's first think tank, which makes sense. Yeah,
he would get dudes and they would sit around in
the garden and I would imagine drink wine and talk
smarts and philosophy and kind of you know, like it
(03:41):
was high minded stuff for the day to sit around
and think about sort of what was going on around
them and how they could impact change. Yeah, or thinking
about the nature of reality or existence. Um, they once
decided that knowledge was uncertain and life is essentially craps
game based on probability rather than absolute truth. If you
(04:04):
step back and think about it, that is the basis
of quantum mechanics. Could you imagine if they had access
to LSD back then, I know, I don't think it
would have been too terribly different. Well, yeah, they were
sort of traveling down that road anyway, but that was
I mean, that's that's pretty impressive some of the stuff
they came up with. This is again, you know, we
did a skeptics episode. Skepticism episode, you know, um, I'm sorry,
(04:29):
not skepticism, a stoicism. And remember is this is where
this stuff was. All these different philosophies were all like
kind of grew from this academy. So you can make
a pretty good case that it was the world's first
think tank. Yeah, it's a little it's not the first
modern think tank, but it it qualifies in a lot
of ways. No, there was one in eight thirty one,
(04:50):
in Great Britain, the Duke of Wellington established what was
called the Royal United Services Institution, which studied like military science. Yeah.
And then here in the US in nineteen ten, the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which studied the results of
military science. Right, and that's still around, uh, Carnegie man,
(05:10):
I mean they still have endowed many things. Yeah, they're
well in doubt that they are very well in doubt. Uh.
And then of course the Brookings Institution, which maybe the
most famous modern American think tank to this day, This
is the one you probably hear about the most. Uh.
It was founded by Robert Brookings in nineteen sixteen. And uh,
(05:35):
they had a lot of it. I mean they still
have a lot of influence, but they had a great
deal of influence. UM kind of post depression with FDRs.
New Deal helped construct the New Deal helped construct the
Marshall Plan after World War Two. That was that was huge,
very huge. So both were for sure. The New Deal
definitely was, but the Marshall Plan was. There was a
(05:55):
survey done, if I think, like four fifty historians and
they the number one most important thing that any government
has done since UM, World War two between World War
two and the century was the Martiall Plan. Like it
it not only like brought Europe back from World War Two,
it set Europe on a path away from communism, where
(06:21):
if you're not into communism, that was a great positive benefit, right.
And the way it did that was in two years
based on this economic plan. In two years, it got
Europe or ravaged world War two ravaged Europe back to
production levels higher than the production levels it was at
before World War Two in two years. So it just
(06:42):
went back to normal plus better. And Europe said, I
kind of like this capitalism thing, and Western Europe went
that way. I was kind of curious because Brookings, the
Brookings Institution, gets a lot of like left leaning critics
SYSM today, so I kind of wonder where that all
(07:02):
came from. And uh, the article I read said that
is a victory of the conservative side to have Brookings
labeled liberal just from kind of pounding it in the press,
even though it's history and its member board throughout the
history has not been liberal at all, and it has
been filled from the top down over the years with
(07:26):
rank and file Republicans and conservatives from like the Reagan
era on through Bush one and two. Okay, so they've
they've gotten it across is liberals, so that liberals will
swallow the stuff that Brookings is is putting out there. No,
I know what they undermine their own think tank. Well,
I don't think it's not their own think tank. It's
(07:47):
not a conservative think tank. Well it's centrist, like almost
right down the middle for right. But I think they
want to advance their own uh with their conservative think tanks.
They want to advance them, so they label Brookings is superliberal,
just so anything centrist is liberal. I think that's what
it is. I can't remember who scored it, but somebody
(08:08):
has a liberal score between zero and a hundred for
think tanks, and Brooking scored like a fifty three, right
down the middle. Like apparently, as far as think tanks go,
it's about as centrist as you possibly can get. Yeah,
and they've been around for a long time. Yeah, makes
a lot of sense. Yep. So, um, it's not just Brookings.
(08:29):
Brookings is definitely one of the most famous around the
world and has done quite a bit of stuff, but
there's plenty of others. There's Um, the Rand Corporation is
a very famous think tank which did you know RAND
is actually am I don't know what you call it,
but it's supposed it started out as R and D
like Research and Development RAND Corporation, And from what I understand,
(08:50):
they've come up with the ideas for computers, the Internet, uh, spy, satellites,
the space program, all that stuff that America could in
the mid twentieth century technologically. Yes, the Rain Corporation, like
thinkers were the ones who came up with this stuff. Yeah,
I think I knew some of that, and I don't
I don't think it fully hit home that they were
(09:11):
a think tank. Yeah, with the name like the Rain
Corporation sounds like just a corporation, but but they're they're
like a think tank that's really specifically there was specifically
zoned into America's technology progression. I guess, yeah. I mean
a lot of think tanks can be specialized like that,
Like some are very very much just concentrate on economics,
(09:35):
some concentrate on social issues in that case technology, and
then I think some like Brookings are sort of a
little more broad. Yeah, they'll they'll take any case, right,
they'll take all comers. Yeah. So after World War Two, um,
like there were think tanks before, like you said, Brookings,
Carnegie Um, the Royal United Services Institute in the UK,
(09:57):
there were like there were think tanks prior to World
War Two, but after World War Two they really proliferated.
And the reason they started was government was just kind
of government it was in the in the early twentieth century.
It was just just this. It was. It wasn't anything
like you see it now. It wasn't this monolithic behemoth
(10:18):
that has its tendrils in every aspect of people's lives
or anything. It was a little too far the other
way where it didn't quite know what it was doing.
So some of those early philanthropists like Carnegie Um and Brookings,
they they endowed these think tanks to kind of help
government out to basically be like the research arm for government,
(10:39):
to help direct the best way for America to go.
And that's how it started out. And then after World
War Two, when America had like all this cash and
all this forward momentum, think tanks really popped up and
and there were all these kind of competing and then
sometimes harmonious um voices from these think tanks to say
(11:01):
go this way, go this way, let's say this way,
but they all had something in common, and that was
that they were staffed by very smart people who did
very deliberate, very good research, who produced policy positions that
lawmakers could then take themselves and go out to the
people and say, see, this is what I'm talking about,
(11:21):
here's the data, here's a sound bite for you to
make you understand it. That's what things tanks did, and
in a way they were They very much were along
the same track as lobby lobbyists, which we did an
episode on that that was pretty good too. But think
tanks stopped short of lobbying allegedly, Yeah, because they kind
of had to um. Starting in nineteen they were granted
(11:44):
tax exempt status, which is a very big deal because
there's a lot of money involved in many of these.
I've been trying to get that for myself for years,
and you're right, it is a very big deal. The
Church of Josh, just get it going. That's so I'm
wearing this robe right now. Uh. In the nineteen fifties, though,
is when Congress really kind of because they were tax exempt,
(12:06):
had to get involved and say, hey, listen, you gotta
walk a line here. You politically, you can't um if
you want to keep this tax exemption. Now, oh yeah,
we for sure do. Um. They said, you can't be partisan,
it's got to be good information. You can't um slant
things a certain way or support officially support or endorsed candidates. Um,
(12:27):
you are here to educate with your objective work. And uh.
That went along for a while, and then we started
getting think tanks that set out to do just that um,
which they are called advocacy. Advocacy think tanks now, which
I'm not sure how they managed to skirt unless they
change the rules, skirt those rules and say, hey, we're
(12:50):
gonna be a conservative think tank or or liberal think
tank and still be tax exempt. The do you know?
The only thing that I can tell is that they're
still technically producing a public good if or if they
believe that they're producing a public good, even if they
have conservative alignment or a liberal alignment. They're trying to
(13:13):
move society along in a way that they think is
good or for the betterment of society. Stuff. Dude, That's
what I've been telling I mean, could we be a
think tank? Absolutely not. I mean think about it, like,
I mean, I guess we could. I think that there's
a I don't Okay, let me take that back. No,
we absolutely couldn't because we can't be brought to you
(13:34):
by we don't have we don't have time. I don't know,
that's a good question, but we don't have. Yeah, you
couldn't advertise and have like you couldn't get advertiser money
and be tax exempt. That's just like a doubt. If
the Brookings institutions papers have like Burger King coupons on them,
you never know. So we'll get to why we can't
(13:55):
be later on. But one of the things about about
think tanks is they're they're the reason they have a
tax exempt status is what they're doing is producing work
that furthers the public good. That's why they're supposed to
have tax exempt status. What you're pointing out is a
really good thing to point out, Like, wait a minute,
there's a lot of stuff here that that they could
(14:17):
lose their tax exempt status for. And if we fast
forward to three or five years from now, I think
we're going to start seeing them lose tax exempt status. Um,
they just haven't yet, I think is what it is. Yeah,
because some of them flat out like it's so obvious
when they come around like uh, when the Democrats were
beaten in two thousand, they got together and they started, uh,
(14:40):
left leaning thinkers got together and started the Center for
American Progress, which is an economic organization. It says it's nonpartisan,
but it literally says, as a quote, their goal is
to develop new policy ideas, critique the policy that stems
from conservative values, lanches the media to cover the issues
(15:02):
that truly matter and shape the national debate. So it's
they're they're kind of flat out saying like we're out
too prove, not just have an opinion about Maybe that's
a distinction, out to prove that conservative economic values are
bad for the country. Basically, Yeah, is that the difference.
Maybe it's like, here's our data. I honestly don't know, dude.
(15:25):
It's not a bunch of op eds thrown together. It's
so so No, it's not supposed to just be op eds.
It's supposed to be backed by data. Yeah. But but
I mean, like Center for American Progress, or like the
Heritage Foundation, or like ALEC, h the American Legislative Exchange Council,
like these are like and we're gonna do a whole
(15:45):
episode just on ALEC one day. Okay, seriously, but they're
like little, they're like Kareem Abdul Jabbar, like karate training
islands for liberals or for conservatives or for um rich
billionaire follow worse, like it doesn't matter, Like that's what
they are there there. They come up with new ideas
to push their agenda, and then they train activists to
(16:09):
go out and get that message out, to change people's minds,
to get themselves on CNN or Fox News or whatever,
and to shape the public discussion on on something. It
has a lot of the contours of what think tanks
used to have, but there's this whole other layer of
like like seeing you and grizzle there that that that
I think tanks aren't supposed to have. Should we take
(16:29):
a break? All right, we'll take a break in we'll
talk a little bit more about the Heritage Foundation right
after this. All right, nineteen eighties, the Heritage Foundation, which
(17:02):
you briefly mentured, mentored, that's the new mentioned before before
he broke. They came about broke, they said, all right,
it's nineteen eighties. We got Ronald Reagan in there. He
is watching movies or asleep most of the time, so
we have a good opportunity. That's how they want you
(17:24):
to think he has a good Did you see the
numbers about his uh movie watching? No? Oh man, it's great.
Like a movie fan, it's great. How many movies did
he watch? Your day? He watched a lot of movies.
And this is like back when they just had like reels,
right films trip. I guess they probably just you know,
cue the projector when he he and Nancy wanted to
watch it a good old fashioned western starring me. Can
(17:47):
you do the rest of the episode as ready? No? Uh?
So they came along and they said, all right, Reagan's
in in office. Here are our recommendations. What up I
would call a blueprint for grabbing the government by its
frayed New Deal lapels and shaking out forty eight years
of liberal policy. And it came by way of two thousand,
(18:09):
more than two thousand recommendations, and they tried to institute
about two thirds of them. Yeah. Reagan was like, great,
here's my thanks for the outline for what I should do. Right. Yeah,
so two thirds, like he said during his two terms,
is what he tried to implement. And then, of course
when Bill Clinton gets in there, the Progressive Policy Institute, Um,
(18:31):
I don't know if it was two thousand plus, but
they offered similar recommendations. And that's how it goes the
think tanks right now. Yeah, because if you're a lawmaker,
and again we said this in the Lobbying episode two,
you're not necessarily like some smart whip crack sharp person. No,
I think we've seen that played out. You can just
(18:52):
like give people to vote for you. Yeah, on both
sides of the aisle. It's just a crack at like
you know Trump or anything. Oh no, no, no no, I
mean on all up and down the House and Senate. Right.
You don't like to think they're all geniuses, but they're not.
They're not. And you don't have to be smart to
hold office. Um, you just have to get people to
vote for you. Again, which is why I think tanks
(19:12):
have flourished for so long, why lobbyists have flourished for
so long, because they're the ones who do the research
and write the policy and say, here you go. You
want to go look smart, here you go, buddy. We
even like highlighted some sound bites for you to go,
say two people and get the get into the twenty
four hour news cycle. And that's one of the big
roles that think tanks played today is by and and
(19:35):
have you know, especially since World War Two, is by
going to policy makers and being like, here's your agenda,
take your leave as much as you want. But all
of this is backed by data, like it dovetails with
what you want to do with the country, and it
is just gangbusters stuff. It's high quality, well researched stuff. Yeah,
it's really interesting because I think there are still think
(19:56):
tanks that only craft U only do research and present
it and say do what you will with it. But
those seem to be more and more gone by the wayside.
Two ten was a real watershed year. It feels like
for think tanks. Yeah, like you mentioned ALEC, which we're
going to cover in full, but I mean they are
(20:17):
they are a bill writing organization. They call them model bills.
But I mean when when you hear a senator or
something said, you know, we crafted this legislation, well, that
probably means is an organization Like ALEC handed them the
legislation and said here, you know, here it is if
you want to use it, and you probably should want
(20:38):
to use it. That's so. That is so ALEC I think,
does in many ways qualify as a think tank. They're
not add percent standard think tank, but actually writing the law. Yeah,
and for the lawmaker to go into do and go
into Congress and introduce it as their own bill. That's
a little beyond what think tanks to think tanks were
(21:00):
like write a paper that says, here's this problem in America,
here's some ideas to solve it. Here's this research to
back up those ideas, go write a law based on it.
What things like ALEC does is take it a step further.
But ALEX still qualifies as a think tank. And ALEC
is part of something called the State Policy Network, which
(21:20):
apparently is there's one in every state and Puerto Rico.
And they're like a confederation of think tanks that basically
sit around and figure out ways to sue local, state
and federal law lawmakers over laws, to try to get
laws overturned, like they used the courts rather than the legislation.
But um, it's still the stated goal is to affect
(21:43):
public policy and turn it in one direction or another. Yeah,
what was what was the website that you sent? Source Watch? Yes?
Source Watch called them, uh, called ALEC a corporate bill mill. Right,
So they're just churning out hundreds of bill a year.
Not all of them get used, but many of them do.
(22:05):
And it's just I don't know. I don't think a
lot of Americans realize that a lot of actual legislative
policy is being written by McDonald's. Yeah, exactly, it's crazy.
I can't wait to do the alquum. We're both going
to be well, our cars are gonna blow up right after,
but by god, we're gonna get that episode. Maybe we
should make that or like last episode in the year whatever,
(22:28):
what's twenty years from now, two thousands now? That was
eighteen years ago. I used to love that bit though. Um. Alright,
so we got to talk about money here because this uh,
they are not, um, the independent most times these days
(22:49):
they're not the independent organizations that you think they are. Uh.
They used to be funded by these endowments and um.
More and more, it's it's corporation ends, large businesses. Sometimes
private individuals of course, will give. And sometimes it's a
great work around for campaign finance laws. Instead of directing
(23:11):
you know, you know, tens of millions of dollars like
you can't do to a campaign, you can throw it
in a think tank that will probably get a better result. Anyway,
that's new the time was it used to be like
in my day, right, a rich philanthropist would say, I
hate poverty and the effects that has on Americans. Go
(23:32):
figure this out. I'm gonna fund to think tank. And
that's how you're dedicated to like just go make that happen.
And that's what think tanks were originally born from. And
that's largely the the only kind of oversight they worked
under is they were trying to end poverty, or they
were trying to work against communism, like these huge, haughty goals.
(23:55):
Now they're being micromanaged. That's one thing that's happening to them. Yeah,
And the idea that the these think tanks are not
suede or influence are affected by their donors is not true.
And the sort of the biggest problem going is that
now you have legislation being drawn up by think tanks
because corporations are paying money to get research that looks
(24:19):
like it's in their favor. Yeah. So, so one of
the problems is the like, there's not as many philanthropists
who are just endowing think tanks with no strings attached anymore.
There are plenty of philanthropists out there still that are
are funding think tanks, but their donations are directed, their
(24:40):
results oriented. They're very technocratic, right, they want to see
bang for their buck. Whereas before it was just like
to make America a better place and that was it.
There wasn't a lot of like um um, nobody's feet
were being held to the fire, you know. Now it's like,
we want you to further this specific agenda, which is
(25:01):
um uh, we want to make sure that St. Louis's
children there's not a single one malnourished any longer. Which
is great, it's a great goal. There's nothing wrong with
that goal. But it's just so very narrowed and tailored,
and there's ways that you can hold the think tank accountable,
which is good in one hand, but it's also basically
(25:22):
the introduction of like a corporate management to think tanks,
which that's not really how they were originally formed, and
it's having a weird effect on them. So think tanks
are starting to say, all right, we thank you for
this money. We'll go save the children of St. Louis.
But and by the way, shout out at St. Louis.
That was a great show that um so again saving
(25:44):
the children St. Louis good stuff, but we've got all
this other stuff we want to do too, So to
keep that going, we're gonna have to also go find
sources elsewhere. And again you can find them from other
other people, but one of the places they're finding them
from his corporations. And that it's having a big negative
impact on think tanks right now. Yeah, and it goes
(26:05):
both ways. In the past, you know, eight or ten years,
conservative billionaires of says that here they funneled a hundred
and twenty million dollars to about a hundred groups and
think tanks, uh to do things like discredit climate change science, um,
which I mean, dude. The Koke Brothers and x On
Mobile specifically funded a couple of think tanks called Atlas
(26:29):
Economic Research Foundation and the International Policy Network to basically
to basically question the science behind climate change to further
fossil fuel interests, which is, see you guys in hell
for that one like that, What a crummy legacy to
leave on Earth just to make a few extra bucks.
(26:51):
Forget future generations they can all burn. Forget all the
endangered species that are on the brink of extinction that
are oh wait no, they're now extinct. It doesn't matter
because we made a few extra billion dollars. Yeah, that's
that's despicable. Well what uh, it's funny. I just watched
the movie Chinatown for a movie Crush episode and there's
(27:13):
that You ever seen that? Yeah, you know, most a
lot of that movie is about It was originally titled
Water and Power, you know, because it's about you know,
this weird uh political situation in Los Angeles and nineties
where they were diverting water to the valley which was
a desert and all these rich fat cats that were
(27:34):
getting the water diverted there, we're buying up land in
the valley, like hundreds of thousands of acres because they
knew it was going to be a lush green valley soon.
So all that really happened in l a Chinatown was
based on that. But there's that great scene when Jack
Nicholson is Jake get us uh confronts John Houston about
(27:55):
you know, he's the big bad guy no across and
he says, you know, how much money do you need?
How much how many more things can you buy? Or
this or that? And he says, what are you trying
to secure? And he looked at him and he said,
the future, Mr gittis and that's what it is. They're
they're not after more billions to buy more planes and
are bigger house. They're trying to leave that they that's
(28:17):
what they want out of their legacy, is they're trying
to affect the future and in their own specific way,
right But they're affecting the future in the worst way
possible according to us. And the problem is not according
to them, you know, but if you if you pull
enough people and just ask them plainly, if you took
money and billionaires in power and all that out of it,
(28:40):
do you want a better future for humanity and for
earth a hundred years from now? I would guess the
majority of people would say yes. And if you can say, well,
these guys are actually doing the opposite of ensuring that
right now, how do you feel about that? Most people
would say I don't feel so great about that. The
(29:01):
problem is that most people would also follow up with,
but what can we do? Right? They're they're rich, and
that's a great point. Let what can you do? Let
me hop back on Facebook and find a goat video.
That's when the hopelessness sets in, and that's what's causing
the paralysis in our our world right now is hopelessness.
That's that's not grim at all. By the way, everybody
(29:23):
be sure to listen to my new podcast, uh The
End of the World with Josh Clark. It's it's a
really uplifting coming very soon. Yeah, coming this fall sometime eventually.
Just stuck up on your happy bills. Uh So. In
two thousand thirteen, however, on the other side, uh left
leaning weekly magazine The Nation um revealed the positions of
(29:47):
the left leaning Center for American Progress and other think
tanks in DC are shaped by interest of their donors.
So it happens on both sides of the aisle for sure. Yeah,
oh yeah, yeah, No, it's an equal opportunity screwing that
the world is getting from lobbying from think tanks, from
from wealthy interests. Like, it's it's both both sides. Yeah.
(30:09):
So they're effectively unregistered lobbyist organizations now to a large degree,
and because their tax exempt, they're not obligated to release
financial statements or reveal their donors. So I'm surprised it
took that long for people to be like, wait a minute,
we can really take advantage here. So let's let's take
another break and then we'll get well, it will spell
(30:29):
out what the advantages are of hiring a think tank.
(30:58):
All right, Chuck, we're back a little warm under the collar.
I feel like we should mention this thing with the
Walton Family Foundation quickly, because that's interesting. I think this
is a great example of what I think tank can
do these days. Yeah, it's UM. Obviously, the Sam Walton
family of Walmart fame. UH. They fund a lot of
conservative think tanks. I think most people know that. UM.
(31:20):
But then they also fund funded one and think tanks
backed by Barack Obama when it came to the Affordable
Healthcare Act, and you're like, wait a minute, why would
they do something like that if they are a conservative
family supporting conservative causes. Then you do a little poking around,
and it turns out that uh, critics would say that um,
(31:42):
the healthcare bill that forced employers to pay for their
employees healthcare tax. Walmart was like, this is great because
we can afford to do this, but our mom and
pop competitors can't. So we're actually gonna try and get
this push through. Even though at its face it doesn't
quite make a lot of sense, it makes sense to them,
(32:02):
like why would Walmart take on the cost of their
their employees healthcare because they know that they can go
back to sleep. Everybody stop asking quests. Really interesting, it is,
it's fascinating. But that's one thing you can do is
donate to a think tank that's furthering your agenda. And
because think tanks are now largely agenda driven, there's a
(32:25):
lot of think tanks out there that can help you out.
And there's a new thing that's happening with think tanks
these days is they're starting to solicit corporate donations. And
one of the saddest stories is the story of the
Brookings Institution, the most centrist think tank that has put
out the Martial Plan that helped figure out the New
(32:47):
Deal and it's and how it addressed the depression, like
has done all this amazing stuff. Is now they hired
a lobbyist for their strategic development chief and they're now
soliciting corporate donations left and right, and they're basically this
is this is what you can get, Like if you
(33:07):
hire a think tanker, I'm sorry, you're you're not supposed
to say higher. If you enter into a partnership or
donate to a think tank and your your corporation or
a very wealthy person. You What the think tank will
do is they will basically get your ideas out there.
They will deploy. So first of all, let's say there's
(33:30):
this really great New York Times article about them. What
was the name of that company, the Lennar Corporation. They
wanted to build in San Francisco. They wanted to redevelop
the site in San Francisco, which whatever, apparently there was
pushback on it, or they were getting some sort of
pushback from the residents of San Francisco. So I guess
(33:52):
the Brookings Institution went to them and said, hey, we've
got some ideas for you. We can support this as
basically like a great idea of cities of the future,
and and we're going to lend the credibility of our
experts in our think tank to your project and make
it like a champion kind of thing, like a blue
type and archetype for how to further cities in America
(34:15):
your development projects. Their their home builders, but but with
Brookings Institution behind it, there was a veneer of something
bigger than building homes, bigger than redeveloping, something about the
future in progress, and Brookings like went to them and
in exchange for four grand Brookings like added this credibility
to it, got talking heads out there on the news
(34:37):
to talk up this development and like what it meant
for the future. And um, one of the other things
they did and can do is they can set up
summits conferences on cities of the future and get the
home builders and lawmakers into the same room to hang
out together. And so that's lobbying. Sure, there's no other
(34:58):
way to put it. That is lobbying, and they were
doing it on behalf of a specific corporation. There should
be no tax exemption whatsoever any longer. It doesn't matter
what side of the aisle you're on. If you're a taxpayer,
you are funding that bye bye through these tax exemptions
because we foot the bill for tax deduction. So if
(35:20):
a single corporation's interests are being served, even if society
in general is benefiting in some way, that's too much
of a slippery slope. That breaks the tax exemption status.
And then that that should go away. And that, sadly
is is apparently where Brookings the direction Brookings is going. Yeah,
and others too, I should say, oh, sure, sure, um,
(35:43):
even the ones that aren't maybe as outright uh are
on his bald face about this stuff. Um, Like a
lot of scholars say that you know, bought and paid
for research is sort of the exception. Still. But even
even so, there's still places where you know, you may
not it. Um, you may not push out certain research
(36:03):
if you think you're it might piss off your boss. Yeah,
which is the same thing or sort of self censor
yourself if you think, like, oh man, I don't know,
like we're getting donations now, like this might not please them,
it might make them look bad, so I probably should
just avoid this conclusion. Yeah. So maybe not of like
completely inventing a study or something, but being very selective
(36:24):
in what you choose to research or how you research
it or what you release is uh, you know, it's
another version of the same thing. It totally is. And
one of one of the other things that they've been
found to do a lot of think tanks um, or
one of the new things that think tanks do is
they will circulate drafts before there's a final draft two
donors like what do you think about this? And sometimes
(36:46):
their opinions will be incorporated into the final draft. That
is the antithesis of the spirit of think tanks and
what they were originally meant to do. They were supposed
to be, like, here's the facts, here's the research to
back it up. It is what it is. We think
you can apply it to make the world better in
this way, not what you know, what do you guys
(37:06):
think does this? Does this jibe with the kind of
sinks you selected for this redevelopment because we can change
this part to to jibe with the sinks you chose.
You know, that's just not what it's supposed to be.
And the reason that I think tanks are doing this
is they are in um existential danger through the death
of expertise that I remember I talked about in the
(37:28):
Elimination Diet episode. The problem is, it's not like America
just said we're sick of expertise, we're tired of you experts,
like you're always right, and we're tired of here and
you're always right. People got tired of being lied to
and misled and misinformed and manipulated, and they finally said,
you know what, experts, that's enough enough of you are
(37:49):
full of it, enough of you have let your credibility
be co opted. We're just not going to listen to
any of you anymore because we don't know who to trust.
And the experts brought about the death of expertise themselves
in large part. Yeah, and there's another Uh. There was
this article from the Washington Post called or think Tanks Obsolete,
which sort of argues along those lines um about and
(38:12):
also incorporates the Internet and the length of like a
research cycle, like with the Internet and Twitter and Facebook
and things like Ted talks. Uh. There's a guy, Donald Abelson,
a professor at University Western Ontario, wrote a book called
The Think Tanks Matter, where his conclusion basically is that
the marketplace of ideas, he says, has become congested and
(38:33):
you don't have time anymore to do a twelvemonth research
proposal to come to the following conclusions. When hundred Ted
talks over that twelve months will be published. Not picking
on ted talks are great, No, it's a good example though.
But you can push out of Ted talk. You can
push out uh Facebook live video as as an economist
(38:56):
and have a lot of sway you can They mentioned
in here the UH and the article about vaccines for instance. UH.
When as far as it goes with the vaccines. The
Rand Corporation one of the largest thing thanks that we
already mentioned. They did like a very thorough deep dive
in research, uh, debunking the notion that vaccines cause autism.
(39:19):
And it took a long time. But you can get
on Facebook and go to a group called Educate before
You Vaccinate and watch videos by non experts in people
are swayed these days by this stuff like why wait,
you know, the site the new cycle is so shortened.
You can't wait for a long deep dive research paper
to come out with some abstract summary that no one
(39:42):
reads anyway. And apparently now they're you know, they're written
in such a way where they will just say, uh,
abstract summary, this stinks. We shouldn't do it, you know,
they become so opinionated. I don't know, man, it's just
it's it's depressing to think that Facebook and Twitter have
outsized a think tank as far as they definitely have influence. Yeah,
(40:05):
and YouTube and basically anything that gives a voice to
the average person, which on the one hand is really
cool and great sort of democratizes it in a way,
but but at times, but it's tied into this death
of expertise in a really toxic manner. You know what
I'm saying, Like the two that that democratization of like
(40:27):
a like giving everybody like a mouthpieces, not in and
of itself like a bad thing, but when since it
coincided with the loss and trust and experts and expertise,
That's what where the problem came from. And that was
the reason why we couldn't be a think tank. Sadly,
we could be a think tank now, but we couldn't
be a bona fide think tank because, Chuck, we don't
(40:49):
have enough time in any given week to do so
much thorough um primary source research into stuff. If we do,
if we released one of these every couple of months,
sure we could be like a real think tank, but
it wouldn't be near least fun six episodes a year.
People would love that, Yeah, they love you. Got anything else? Nope,
(41:14):
I guess I don't either. Sorry for going off, everybody,
Thanks for listening. I'm sure I'll gets an email, But
what els is worth it? Uh? If you want to
know more about think tanks, well, I don't know, go
on the internet and look up some think tanks and
see if there's any that you agree with. A lot
of them have like daily interpretations of news that kind
of go through their lens. Um it's it's it's a
(41:36):
way to keep up with things. Uh. And you can
also read this article on how stuff works just not
a think tank, called how think tanks Work. And since
I said that's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call
this a ballpoint pen addiction for just pin addiction. Hey guys,
been listening for a couple of months or so, new listener.
You were my first foray into podcast. I just really
(41:58):
enjoy listening to you two. I saw the Ballpoint Pin
podcast and I could not pass it up. I have
a bit of a pin problem, you see. I own
many many pins, especially the gael type inc rollerball pins.
You got taken a test by quite a few people
who were just like Josh Clark harresy gel pins. Yeah,
(42:21):
there are a lot of I guess traditionalists to bhoopoo
that I think they're great. I got a lot of
support for that one too. I agreed, we got a
lot of pin recommendations. It was good to see. Uh.
And here's another one. I own many many pins, especially
the gel Inc roller ball pins. I also own a
collection of Sharpie's in various tip widths and colors. I
probably have a couple of gallon size zip block bags worth.
(42:44):
You mentioned the way certain pins right on certain types
of paper. I think it's probably the rollerball gel pins
that work best on the thermal paper that they use
the most restaurants. And I was talking about signing the check.
I think that's what she's talking. We still never found
out what that thing is called thermal paper. No, No,
the thing that the check comes out in the little portfolio,
the clamshell. Someone actually said, did you see that this
(43:05):
great couple sent in a picture of a clamshell check
delivery system. What are they called? I don't know, check Catty.
We're gonna we're gonna name them clamshells. Now, that's the
new name for him. So I have a favorite pin,
though guys by them by the box. Uh. It's the
pilot V ball B green pin, the point five millimeter.
(43:28):
I love the way they feel when they write. I
can't go back to ballpoint pins. Use them at work.
I carry at least three in my bag and I
draw and doodle with them. Using them on a newsprint
pad is my favorite thing when doing word art. Sorry
for the ramble, guys, have a great day. That is
from Davini and Barry, Davini Berry, Davini and Berry M. Berry.
(43:49):
I wasn't going okay, well, I didn't know if Davini's
middle initial was M, or if I was missed hearing
you and Davini and Berry. It's actually Davina, excuse me,
Davina M. Berry. If I would have said Davina and Barry,
that would have been much more clear. Or Embury. It
might be Davina Embury. What does it say Davina or Davinah?
Oh God about d E. Thanks d It's d I.
(44:15):
At any rate, we're glad that you started listening to us.
We appreciate and thanks for taking the time to let
us know about the Your benediction um totally fine with us.
If you want to let us know about something you're
super into, you can hang out with us on social meds.
You can go to stuff you Should Know dot com
and find all of our social media links. You can
also send us an email to stuff podcast at how
(44:36):
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com
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