What’s the difference between believing a lie and being blinded by ideology? AEI’s Christina Hoff Summers joins Avik this week to dismantle the male-demonizing environment of academia that was the intellectual foundation of Rolling Stone‘s discredited report on rape at the University of Virginia.

We also learn the truth behind the big lie that one-in-five women have been sexually assaulted at universities across the country. There may be a lot of awful things taking place on American campuses, but according to Sommers, an epidemic of sexual assault is not one of them.

Watch here to learn more about why Sommers thinks this story went viral:

In the latest installment of American Wonk, Avik Roy sits down with Scott Winship—an expert on income equality at the Manhattan Institute and Forbes—to discuss the latest intellectual frenzy on the left: Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

Piketty argues that argues that capitalism “automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities” in times like ours because “the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income.” Furthermore, as this purported gap between the rich and the poor widens over time, there will be a populist rebellion against capitalism.

Winship, who writes about this issue for Forbes and in the May 19, 2014 issue of National Review, tells Avik that Piketty’s book, while important, makes several important empirical errors in measuring the evolution of income distribution, and furthermore, that Piketty’s policy solutions—a massive and punitive tax on wealth and income—will have a tough time breaking through the American political debate.

Direct link to MP3 file

With the economy still struggling to get going, and Obamacare stumbling, the President and his progressive allies are trying to change the subject by focusing on “income inequality.” Specifically, Dems are pushing for another extension of unemployment benefits, and an increase in the minimum wage. Are these efforts economically wise or unwise? And do the Republicans have an adequate agenda to address the problems facing low-income Americans? In the latest episode of American Wonk, Avik Roy discusses these issues with National Review associate editor Patrick Brennan.

This week, Avik Roy gets wonky with Mark McClellan, MD, PhD, a Senior Fellow and Director of the Health Care Innovation and Value Initiative at the Brookings Institution, who was previously the adminstrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services when the prescription drug benefit was rolled out in the mid 2000s. What lessons could and should have been learned from that roll out? Tune in and find out.

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