You Don't Have to Yell

It should be a forgone conclusion that political polarization in America has reached an unhealthy level when the end of a presidential election cycle is marked by an angry mob storming the Capitol, the seat of the Senate President being occupied by a shirtless man in a buffalo headdress carrying a...

On July 2nd of this year, I celebrated America’s birthday early by driving through 10 of the original 13 colonies with my wife and four kids as we trekked from Boston to a house we rented about an hour south of Tampa, Florida. To add to the authenticity, my kids made sure to take enough bathroom...

In February, I kicked off Black History Month speaking with Nikki Brown of the University of Kentucky for episode 27 of YDHTY (full recording below). We began the conversation discussing Forrest Gump - title character of the novel and then film by the same name. In the novel, Gump’s mother explains...

Something I’ve harped on in recent episodes of YDHTY is how the current outbreak of COVID-19 is a byproduct of decades of globalization. In the less integrated, less dynamic global economy of 30-40 years ago, what happened in Wuhan stayed in Wuhan. This isn’t the first time this has happened,...

In an effort to marshall support around the expansion of the federal income tax in 1942, the US government enlisted the help of Donald Duck. The US had just entered into World War 2 and was oddly bound to the primitive notion that the government should have some way to pay for this vast increase in...

Heading into April, You Don't Have to Yell's editorial calendar was set to tackle the issue of taxes - a topic that seemed timely earlier this year. Then the city of Wuhan got everyone so sick that tax day was moved to July - the very month our Founding Fathers declared independence from England in...

When I was about 10, my brother fell and broke his arm during a trust building exercise at summer camp. At this time, it should be noted he has trust issues to this day. Adding insult to both physical and psychological injury, the physician attending to him in the emergency room had to go...

For many Americans, the national debt is an item that poses serious concerns about the nation’s ability to fund its military, infrastructure, and social programs over the long term. To others, it’s like America’s obesity problem – sure, the number keeps going up and that’s probably not good, but...

Depending on who you ask, the Second Amendment is either an anachronism from a time when most gun owners were farmers with muskets, or a clause that safeguards my right to walk into a Pizza Hut with an AK-47. Both pro and anti-gun activists are so far apart on this issue, there’s only one thing...

My grandmother, who came to the US from Ireland in the 1920s, had a story about taking my mom and her siblings into Boston to run some errands. There was a department store with a day care where you could drop off your kids for while you went shopping, and her plan was to bring them there. When my...