May 28, 2013

This American Life | Trends With Benefits

This weekend I spent a lot of time in the car, which gave me a good opportunity to catch up on a few of my favorites podcasts; This American Life, Radiolab, and even some Roderick on the Line.

This American Life and Radiolab are great programs I am usually not interested in government and politics, but when they choose to tackle it, This American Life does an excellent job at making the subject matter interesting and easy to connect with.

A few years ago their episode about the banking crisis called Bad Bank. It was excellent. A few weeks ago they had an episode about the growing problem of people drawing disability payments from the federal government. One thing I didn't realize is that when somebody starts getting disability they don't get counted in the numbers for well-fare and unemployment. Since states pay a large portion of the well-fare payments and none of the disability it is definitely in the states' best interest to get residents off of well-fare and onto disability. And of course, lawyers and companies in the private sector are taking advantage of the rules to make money for themselves. This episode is worth a listen...

➔ Trends With Benefits | This American Life

May 22, 2013

Life has been busy the last couple months. Several weeks ago my wife and I found out we were going to have our second child this fall. Shortly after that, after searching for a few months, we bought a new house. In the past 6 weeks I have moved into our new place, traveled for work, and got our old house ready to sell. It has been hectic. I haven't been watching movies and I haven't taken time to write.

I just wanted to let you all know that I am still here. Hopefully things will calm down a little bit as we get settled into our new place and I can get back to it.