Recently on Planet Money, host Adam Davidson got into a tiff with Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard professor who oversees the Treasury's bank bailout. In the days since, their argument—which lasted all of two minutes—has ballooned into a comment war that taps into lefty passions about the economy, the future of the American family, and latent sexism.

Davidson is disappointed because he was hoping the Congressional Oversight Panel, which Warren chairs, would be something like the 9/11 Commission, a respected nonpartisan advisory board of "senior statesmen" that would sagely guide the administration on how to save the economy. "Senior statesmen" is a phrase he repeats a few times. In the clip, he raises his voice and needles her in a way that makes it clear he does not think she qualifies as one of these "senior statesman." Warren, deeply beloved by the left, is a longtime advocate of the American middle class she believes to be "under assault" by the credit economy. In the clip, he accuses her of pushing her "narrow" pet issues instead of thinking about what's best for the economy as a whole.

This is a reasonable exchange, as Warren is in a powerful position to influence the bailout, and she does have a very particular set of views. But NPR listeners did not hear it this way. "Acted disgracefully and should be reprimanded," wrote one listener of Davidson. "Disrespectful." "Calloused." "He will inherit Sheol"—a fancy NPR way of saying Davidson should go to Hell. And then the kicker, which is probably what forced him to apologize:

"His interview was disgusting for attacking Elizabeth, a woman. I seriously doubt Adam would have done the same type of attack on Timothy Geithner or Larry Sommers."

So is it true? Is Warren just another of those right-brain girly economists who choose to tug on heartstrings rather than crunching numbers? Or are NPR listeners all just too right brain for their own good?

Tags: adam davidson, elizabeth warren, planet money

Judy Berman writes a great story today in Salon's Broadsheet about transgender activists fighting to remove "gender identity disorder" as a category in the DSM, the Bible of psychiatric diseases. The activists argue that they are making the same case gay activists made in the 1970s, when they fought successfully to get "homosexuality" removed as a mental illness. Only, as I wrote in a story earlier this year in the Atlantic, it's not quite so simple.

For adults, the activists' case seems fairly straightforward. Strong feelings of identification with the opposite gender recur throughout history and across cultures. Many transgendered adults suffer a lifetime of shame and heartache before they finally get a sex change. More social acceptance would do them a world of good.

The real controversy centers around children. Many children identify with the opposite gender at a very young age, sometimes as soon as they can speak. And a growing group of parents are taking their kids at their word and letting them live as the other gender as early as kindergarten. I met many of these parents. They are in an impossible situation, and doing what they think is best for their kids. I started out totally sympathetic, until I began to look at the research, both sociological and biological. Existing studies—almost all done on boys—show that the great majority of boys who identify strongly as girls when they are young turn out to be gay men, not transgendered. Since I wrote the story, I've heard from many older gay men who swear that when they were little they insisted they were girls. Does this mean gender confusion should be pathologized? Probably not. But it does mean that gender identity might be like all other identities: fluid, confusing, and not meant for a tidy box, of any kind.

Tags: DSM, transgender

If you're interested in adding another woman-authored blog to your list, I recommend Sarah Scott's Mayday Productions. A former Martha Stewart Omnimedia employee, Scott ended up "tits-up in a ditch," as she put it to me once in a line borrowed from the title of an Annie Proulx short story, when she was in a cycling race accident in 2005. "I don't remember if the EMT woke me up, or I just came to on my own, but I remember looking down at my thighs and thinking about dead meat. Big hunks of dead meat." On her blog, she candidly chronicles the physical and psychological challenges of life post-spinal cord injury with blistering honesty.

The new me is paralyzed from the bottom of my sternum down, 100% reliant on a wheelchair for mobility. I'm no longer a size four with marilyn curves etched on taut muscles. I no longer wear heels, and I've had to give away most of my clothes from my old life. Some I'm still holding onto, but slowly and surely they continue to be discarded as I keep loosening my grip on the past.

Her bio adds: "My life is decidedly not tragic, despite my good looks." And, on a parallel blog, she covers her work training service dogs in words and photographs. If your interests include autonomic dysreflexia, apotemnophilism, and armoured women, Scott's blog is a must-read.

Tags: blogs, disability, dogs

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When the focus of an economy changes from making stuff to helping people—that is, manufacturing to services—low-skilled men drop out of the labor market in droves. A new study of unemployed men in Manchester, England, suggests that "idealized embodied masculinity" is partly to blame. Manual labor, claims sociologist Darren Nixon, imbues working-class men with a sense of pride that helps compensate for the very fact of being working class. They may not be financially dominant, but they feel relatively masculine compared with their white, middle-class counterparts.

The kind of low-skill jobs that service economies create—receptionists, sales clerks, retail cashiers—offer no such compensation. And the men Nixon interviews find the "emotional labor" required to perform such jobs well incredibly taxing. "I've got no patience with people basically," one interviewee says, "I can't put a smiley face on, that's not my sort of thing." You might expect this kind of reaction from men who have spent years working labor-intensive jobs, where they've adapted to a male-only working environment and rarely encounter customers. But Nixon finds that even younger men, who haven't spent years absorbing a gendered workplace culture, find the deference required to work a sales job hard to muster. "If someone [a customer] gave me loads of hassle I'd end up lamping them," one reports.

Nixon concludes that "sticking up for yourself is a defining characteristic of the working class habitus," and it's a characteristic that's incommensurate with entry-level positions of the kind that working-class men are likely to be otherwise qualified for. Their gender identities are, in a sense, maladaptive; traditional gender norms and the needs of the modern economy are at odds. On Friday, Stephanie Coontz pointed out a study showing that middle-school boys "brutally police" one another's conformity to masculine ideals. Nixon's study suggests that these kind of cultural constraints have long-term economic consequences.

Photo by Digital Image/Getty Images

Tags: economics

As Slate columnist John Dickerson pointed out late last week, by saying that the CIA "misleads us all the time," Nancy Pelosi "put the spotlight on herself and has given weakened Republicans a fight they can enjoy, engage in, and possibly win." Newt Gingrich took to The Daily Show last night to promote his new book, 5 Principles for a Successful Life, but before getting into the heart of his shill, he called for Pelosi to step down from her post as speaker of the house:

I don’t care if she stays in Congress. To be speaker of the house means you’re third in line for president, it means you have access to all the national security, it means you have a responsibility for the safety of the country. Now a person who would lie about everybody in the intelligence community in the middle of a war is utterly irrational. Now she either has to prove her allegation, or I think she’s done a huge disservice. Why would anyone from the CIA ever want to brief the speaker of the house?

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Tags: Jon Stewart, Nancy Pelosi, Newt Gingrich, torture, waterboarding

New research published today sheds light on an old scientific puzzle: Why is cancer so rare in people with Down Syndrome? It turns out that a gene on chromosome 21, which Down syndrome patients have an extra copy of, may help to suppress tumors by blocking the development of blood vessels they need to grow. (The nitty gritty appears online in Nature.)

The finding builds on work by the venerable cancer researcher (and one of my scientific heroes), Judah Folkman, who died in 2008. It was Folkman who pioneered the idea of treating cancer by suppressing the growth of blood vessels that tumors need to develop. For years, Folkman was a lonely advocate of this approach. And early efforts to commercialize it in the U.S. largely fizzled. But the strategy of choking cancer's blood supply hit it big in 2004 when the biotech company Genentech introduced its (wildly expensive) blockbuster Avastin. Other drugs that work on similar principles are now available or in the pipeline. Folkman also argued that a related mechanism might explain why people with Down Syndrome are less likely to get cancer. Today's finding, by a member of his lab at Children's Hospital Boston, validates that view and serves as a posthumous tribute to his career. As for breakthroughs in cutting off cancer's blood supply: Expect more to come.

Tags: cancer, chromosome 21, Down Syndrome, Nature

I really, really wanted to love Glee, the new Fox comedy about show choir—that strange, unholy amalgam of drama club, choir, and dance team. After all, I have already made my love of such dorky performance activities rather public. And before the first commercial break, it seemed like Glee was really gunning for my affections in particular, showcasing all of the following:

- Clear allusions to one of my favorite movies, Election, as Willa has already astutely outlined

- A high school setting (as a former teacher myself, I'm a sucker for any show that prominently features a teachers' lounge)

- Lea Michele, star of Broadway's Spring Awakening

- An Indian guy in a nontrivial role

- A goth-lite Asian girl doing a raunchy rendition of "I Kissed a Girl"

- Jane Lynch, the funniest woman alive, as the captain of the cheerleading squad

But I felt like the show lurched around a lot, never quite finding its groove, either comedically or emotionally. For one thing, all five members of the team have fantastic (or at least very, very good) voices, so the whole Bad-News-Bears, we're-a-crummy-squad storyline felt a little off. And while I am always up for a little Journey in four-part harmony, the show hasn't quite captured the passionate, often hysterical (in all senses of the word), curiously subaltern nature of America's teenage musical theater subculture. For that I suggest the 2003 film Camp, which has a rickety, see-it-coming-from-a-mile-away narrative but absolutely nails the anthropological elements—particularly the funny, complicated ways sexuality can play out in these hothouse, Sondheim-loving environments.

I'll tune in next week, of course, if just to maintain my weekly jazz-hands intake. Maybe this pilot was just a shaky dress rehearsal?

Tags: Glee, theater, TV

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Women are unhappier than they have been in 35 years. So suggests a study released earlier this week by the National Bureau of Economics. Two economists at U Penn conducted an exhaustive study of happiness and found that women's "subjective well-being" has declined, "both absolutely and relatively to men," as they put it. In fact, though women have historically had higher self-reported levels of happiness than men, today women are "reporting happiness levels" that are "even lower than those of men." (Men's happiness has dropped, too, but not as much as women's.) Now, happiness is notoriously difficult to study—as I noted a few years back when I wrote about progressive women and unhappiness for Slate—but the findings are nonetheless noteworthy. Though women have made gains in every area over the past 35 years—from education to their place in the work force—these gains do not appear, by the study's measures, to translate into actual contentment. Nor do women's gains in the marketplace translate into zero-sum declines in happiness for men, as some have speculated.

Why might women be less happy? I'm curious to hear your thoughts. I would have to go back to an answer I offered when I wrote the Slate piece: that the drop in happiness is pegged to an anxiety caused by the plethora of choices available (Barry Schwarz's paradox of choice) and women's feeling that they have to perform well across more categories. This is not exactly the same as struggling to balance so-called work and life (i.e., children): The study's authors are quick to point out that the decline in happiness is consistent across many categories, irrespective of marital or employment status or whether you have young children. (A notable exception is African-American women, who report rises in well-being.) The authors observe, too, that one common explanation (the advent of the so-called second-shift for women) doesn't seem to be borne out: Time use surveys suggest that men and women experienced "relatively equal declines" in work hours since 1965.

But they do note, as I would, that it's likely that women are measuring their happiness over time using a broader set of criteria. As they crisply put it, it may be, paradoxically, that the women's movement has decreased women's happiness at this moment in time, because "the increased opportunity to succeed in many dimensions may have led to an increased likelihood in believing that one's life is not measuring up." The paradox of choice model might explain, too, why men's happiness has also declined—just not as extremely as women's.

And it suggests that we need to start rethinking the way we conceptualize success in this country. One of the most telling details comes from a study conducted over time of 12th graders. It now finds a dramatic difference in the happiness levels of boys and girls. Girls are less happy than ever. They also are "increasingly attaching greater importance to 13 of the 14 domains" studied—meaning they feel that they need to "succeed" more in those domains. The only one that hasn't risen in importance? "Finding purpose and meaning in my life."

I've always hated the phrase "having it all" for its tyrannical insistence on impossible perfection. Does this mean it's finally time to put that phrase to rest in the cemetery of bad language?

Photograph of woman by David De Lossy/Getty Images

Tags: happiness study, national bureau of economics, paradox of choice

It is not easy to stop being somebody's mommy, but there comes a time when your kids are done. The five-year-old gets on that damn carousel and only two or three horses go up and down before she has a tattoo and a boyfriend. Mimi Swartz in her Double X Empty Nest column wonders how she will restart her life as her son Sam transitions away to his own adult life. Over the next few months she writes that she will explore the burning question, What the hell is she going to do with herself now?

In her first essay, Mimi mentions a family therapist and includes psychotherapy in her hobbies, but I suggest she also consider lowering the volume and increasing her medication during this family shift. When my son graduated high school three years ago, I started writing again. Nevertheless, I was so conflicted to see my baby leave the nest, I metaphorically alternated between shoving him out the door and locking him in the basement. When my daughter left our Washington home, I missed her like crazy, but she called all the time, and that's how I got through it. That and having a toddler. When the former toddler finally started assembling his own tiny twigs in San Francisco, he ignored my e-mails, text messages, and cell phone calls. This is pretty normal behavior, I understand, but it drove me crazy. His silence was the only thing I talked about for months. A friend with three grown sons once assured me, "you can only raise a boy so far," until "some girl comes along and finishes the job." As I wait impatiently for someone to step up to complete Nate, I notice he has started to morph into a man on his own.

Meantime, you keep providing support. We get hooked on their need for us at their first hungry cry. My daughter was already an adult, with some respectable achievement under her belt, before I stopped looking for ways to be useful to her professionally and personally. When I complained how hard I'd worked to lend a hand on one project, she reminded me she hadn't asked for my help. Rachel was glad for my aid, but she didn't need it. "I'm pretty competent," she said "you taught me." She appreciated that I often got good results though, so, she cautioned, "I won't say no to you. ... If you offer to do something for me, I'll let you."

I had just had my first writing piece accepted by the Washington Post when she and her co-director were screening their first documentary at the Maryland Film Festival. I arrived at the theater as the local Baltimore news crew was interviewing the two excited directors. My daughter was so happy to see me she gave me a big hug before asking, "Mom, could you watch our purses?"

However Mimi Swartz and other newly childless mothers cope with having baby adults in their lives, the real challenge will be to the new selves they fashion from what remains. We are middle-aged women with aging parents, tired legs, and husbands who wonder if we'll ever cook again, but there are perks. We keep learning and have new victories. Our experience as managers, policymakers, and problem solvers will provide years of satisfying new adventures. A woman friend I met when our sons were in ninth grade together ran for office the year our boys graduated. She was the mom who wore a school cap and organized team snacks. She now wears one of the best accessories in D.C.: a gold lapel pin with the seal of the U.S. Congress. Capitol Hill police at House entrances wave her past the metal detector. No one asks her about her empty nest.

Tags: adult children, aging, grown children, parenting

The joyful, saccharine, karaoke-inspring Glee, which premiered last night on Fox, got me wondering: What did we do before Tracy Flick? She first appeared, embodied by Reese Witherspoon, in 1999's Election, a previously unidentified personality type, the driven, ruthless, terrifyingly ambitious striver who micromanages her inevitable rise to power in relentlessly cheerful tones. In the decade since Election, Flick has been transformed from a fresh, new character into an archetype, found frequently in both nature and fiction. Hillary Clinton, as Slate pointed out during the election, is a Tracy Flick. Kristen Gillibrand is the "Tracy Flick of New York politics." Amanda Lorber, of MTV's reality series about high school newspaper The Paper is "The Tracy Flick of Journalism." Amy Poehler's character in Parks and Recreation is a "dorkier version of Tracy Flick." And that's just the beginning. Tracy Flick is like the prostate—not so long ago, we didn't know she existed. Now you can scan to find her.

I bring this up because one of Glee's main characters, Rachel Berry, is a total Flick. She's a frighteningly focused performer who won her first dance contest when she was 3 months old. She gives compliments like, "You're really talented. I know because I'm really talented too." (Flick isn't the only character from Election to appear in Glee: the dumb hunk played by Chris Klein has been reimagined as a dumb hunk who sings. "My dad got killed in Iraq the first time we went over there to fight Osama Bin Laden," he narrates.) Given all these Flicks—and there are surely more to come— it seems logical that there must have been Flicks around before we got into the habit of identifying them as such. (Was Margaret Thatcher a Flick?) What did we call these women before there was a shorthand that simultaneously captured their drive and core unlikableness? Were they better off before they could be so easily labeled?

Tags: election, Glee, movies, Tracy Flick