IRS Audits, Recorder Lessons, Blaseball

The IRS Disproportionately Audits Lower-Income Families (0:30) Guest: Paul Kiel, Business and Consumer Finance Reporter, ProPublica The IRS does tax audits on the working poor at about the same rate as it does the wealthiest 1%. Mostly everyone else in the middle gets ignored. Why do lower-income families come under such scrutiny? Well, it’s just easier for the IRS–those audits take significantly less time and fewer resources. IRS officials have directly acknowledged this but say they can’t do anything about it due to budget constraints. Their budget has fallen by nearly 15% in the last decade. Why Is The Recorder Taught in School? (18:22) Guest: Nina Stern, Recorder Player and Classical Clarinetist, Recorder Teacher, Juilliard, Founder of S’Cool Sounds Most Americans are familiar with the sound of a bunch of first and second graders playing the recorder. A lot of American kids learned–and still learn–the recorder in elementary school. But why? What’s so special about the plastic instrument? It’s not by accident that the recorder is so commonplace, according to professional recorder player Nina Stern. Aquarium's Grand Plan To Show Deep Sea Creatures (37:33) Guest: Beth Redmond-Jones, Vice President of Exhibitions, Monterey Bay Aquarium The deep sea is full of strange, other-worldy creatures, but most of us will only be able to see these animals through photo and video. Monterey Bay Aquarium is hoping to change that. They are currently working on an exhibit where guests will be able to get up close and personal with some of these bizarre aquatic animals. This is the first time this has ever been attempted. But how can creatures that are used to thousands of pounds of pressure and no light live that close to us? The GOP's Generational Divide on Climate Change (52:48) Guest: Kiera O’Brien, Founder and President, Young Conservatives for Carbon Dividends, Incoming Graduate Student, Columbia University It’s extremely difficult to get Republicans and Democrats to agree on environmental policy. Many conservati