In chess notation a “?!” indicates a speculative attempt to complicate. A move that throws a wrench into things, and mostly comes up when someone is losing and they hope by creating some chaos they can turn things around. The same thing happens historically, desperate attempts to take a losing position, throw in some chaos and turn it into a winning position. In this episode we examine how this took place immediately preceding the French Revolution, and how it may be about to take place again in an eerily similar fashion.

There are lots of very smart people who tell us we don't have to worry about the national debt, despite the fact that it recently passed $20 trillion. Is this true, are we over-reacting? Or is this the classic case of deciding that because something is not a problem now that it will never be a problem? The US can borrow at historically low rates, there are countries worse than us, but what is the endgame? How long can we keep this up?

There are many trends which shape our world and the political landscape. These trends can either be getting better or getting worse (and often that depends on the person) or than can stay the same.

Sometimes this the metaphor of a pendulum is used. Things go one way, until they hit some kind of maximum and then they reverse direction. Is there any evidence current events are reaching some kind of maximum, or do we still have a long way to go.

There are only two paths to potential salvation: Religion and Science. Most people have placed their bets on science, but they may be overlooking some of the downsides attendant with relying on science, primarily the fact that science doesn't care about things like morality or kindness. And if you really have decided that we're going to be saved through science then you have to grapple with these downsides.

Featuring another appearance by Fermi's Paradox...