Reasonably Optimistic

There was a time when shopping for clothes meant walking into a department store and hoping the limited sizes and styles available at that exact moment might fit. Then, the internet changed everything. Online shopping didn’t just make fashion more convenient; it expanded what retailers could offer, what customers could demand and who got to dictate trends.

Host Megan McArdle is joined by Shawn Grain Carter, a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology and former Bloomingdale’s buyer who helped launch the Macy’s website. They discuss the shift from department store floors to the infinite shelves of the internet.

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Millions of Americans have moved to the South in recent years. The usual explanations — lower taxes, cheaper housing and warmer weather — are only part of the story. Host Megan McArdle explores the economic and historical forces driving the century-long transformation of America’s fastest-growing region.

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Host Megan McArdle talks with culture writer Kat Rosenfield about how dating apps, therapy-speak and online gender wars have changed romance — making flirtation feel risky, rejection feel catastrophic and desire feel suspect. They discuss the lost art of approaching people in real life, what older courtship norms got right and Rosenfield’s new novel, “How to Survive in the Woods.”

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Political parties keep asking voters to overlook scandals, bad judgment and unstable behavior because the other side is worse. Senate candidates Graham Platner and Ken Paxton are only the latest examples. Host Megan McArdle argues that character still matters in politics — and that voters are not helpless victims of polarization.

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Is empathy destroying the West? That's the provocative claim at the center of Gad Saad's new book, "Suicidal Empathy." Host Megan McArdle is joined by Saad, a professor at the University of Mississippi, to discuss the trade-offs societies make in the name of compassion and whether America has the capacity to absorb differences.

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