Today's Adam Ruins Everything podcast guest is the go-to person when it comes to internet infrastructure: Susan Crawford. Susan is a professor at Harvard Law School and the author of Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age and the co-author of The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data-Smart Governance.

 

On the podcast Susan tells us why the internet in the U.S. isn't as good as it should be; it's much slower than many other countries around the world because our cable conglomerates can control markets around the country. And unfortunately, these are leaving many of our communities in the technology dark ages. Susan tells Adam what we can do to promote internet infrastructure and how she's already seen that activism first-hand around the country.

 

Adam is on Twitter @AdamConover and you can find past episodes and bonus content from the TruTV show at AdamRuinsEverything.com.
Produced by Shara Morris for MaximumFun.org.

If you wear clothes, you're going to love this Adam Ruins Everything podcast. Our guest, Professor Laura McAndrews, appeared on Adam Ruins Shopping Malls where she discussed the deceptions surrounding outlets malls. But on the podcast, Laura really goes into depth about the inner-workings of fast fashion. And she would know - she lived it!

 

Laura worked in retail for years, primarily for Gap and Urban Outfitters. She traveled to factories all over the world to oversee fashion production. The clothes might have been cute, but the rest wasn't pretty. Laura recalls many of these experiences on the podcast - from noticing the poor construction of these clothes to the awful working conditions for the factory workers. Eventually, Laura left fashion for academia. She now teaches textiles, merchandising and interiors at the University of Georgia, and she encourages her students to speak up about working conditions once they enter the workforce.

 

Adam is on Twitter @AdamConover and you can find past episodes and bonus content from the TruTV show at AdamRuinsEverything.com.
Produced by Shara Morris for MaximumFun.org.

So much of what we've seen on TV and film about the Wild West depicts the rugged cowboy who is always ready for a showdown. But the Wild West was much more nuanced than that. In fact, many of the towns in the Wild West thrived because of the women who ran the towns - specifically women in the prostitution industry. While prostitution was at times extremely dangerous, it also gave women economic agency which was rare for the period. It allowed them to build brothels, schools, and stores and even yield political influence in the region.

 

Jan MacKell Collins, who appeared on Adam Ruins The Wild West, joins us on this week's episode to unpack this 'not so polite' (although just as crucial) section of our history books. Jan is the author of six books and is the contributor to Backwoodsman Magazine, Colorado Central Magazine, Frontier Gazette and True West Magazine.

 

Adam is on Twitter @AdamConover and you can find past episodes and bonus content from the TruTV show at AdamRuinsEverything.com.
Produced by Shara Morris for MaximumFun.org.