March 24, 2019
EP. 284 — The Bizarre Hassles Women Face In Our World Designed For Men
The phone you are reading this text on is easy to hold…if you’re a man. That’s according to statistics on average hand size & average phone size. If you’re a woman? Good luck taking one-handed pictures on this slightly-too-big brick that might give you repetitive stress injuries men don’t experience. Of course a phone is merely a device (that you do everything in your life on). But what if there’s a mountain of data proving women get erased from all aspects of modern society, from design to media to medicine? And what if that erasure is a full-on life-or-death issue that (almost) no one is talking about?
On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by journalist, activist, and author Caroline Criado Perez. They dive into an array of facts, figures, and critical lacks of data, all gathered in her amazing new book ‘Invisible Women: Data Bias In A World Designed For Men’. They’ll also explore the conscious & unconscious biases that drive women out of the workforce, swing voters into screwing over their own countries, and cause massive problems we could fix with a little more awareness…and maybe even a modest investment in studying human organs besides the penis.
Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/the-bizarre-hassles-women-face-in-our-world-designed-men/
Recent Episodes
January 26, 2020
Freedom sucks…and that is why we have to defend it. Because our democracy involves doing a lot of stuff that takes energy, takes time, and lacks that Michael Bay Quality that only a surprise missile launch can provide. So on this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt and special guest Jason Pargin (who writes for Cracked as David Wong) are exploring the ways being afraid of everything (an easy action) can stop us from being free. Discover the decades-long tradition of some Americans wanting to give up everything in exchange for not needing to think, the centuries-long tradition of people inciting fake panics, and the reasonable ways you can help change things for the better.
Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/why-fear-based-democracies-arenE28099t-free-with-jason-pargin/
January 19, 2020
How’s your local shopping mall doing? Have you checked on it lately? Swing by sometime, because its department store might’ve turned into a call center or a hospital or a go-kart track. On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by the one and only Kai Ryssdal (Marketplace, Make Me Smart) for a look at surprising, strange, and shocking stories from all over the U.S. economy. Discover an international pig flu, a 26-word statement that built the modern Internet, and more amazing ways cash is ruling everything around you. By the way, if you’re an American listener, you spent the past few years funding an astonishingly huge bailout. Surprise! Listen for details!
Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/5-parts-u.s.-economy-that-are-stranger-than-you-think
January 12, 2020
Movies, TV, gaming: three things that are theoretically a waste of time. Oh sure, they deliver value in the art sense, and comfort in the goofing-off sense. But what if they’re more valuable than that? What if consuming shows and playing video games (accidentally) turns people into real-life heroes? On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by comedians/writers Caitlin Gill and Alex Watt for a look at the surprising number of times that exact thing happened. They’ll explore stories of regular people who saved a life thanks to skills gained randomly from cartoons, sitcoms, ‘World Of Warcraft’, and more silly entertainment.
Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/9-times-pop-culture-accidentally-taught-people-to-save-lives/