The "Smoking Up Behind the Bleachers" Edition

This year’s midterm elections produced big gains for Republicans – and pot smokers. On this week’s episode of Slate Money, host Felix Salmon of Fusion, Slate's Jordan Weissmann, and Cathy O'Neil of Mathbabe.org discuss the rise of legal weed, private funding for public schools, and Taylor Swift's breakup with Spotify.  Here are some of the links and references mentioned during this week's show: Felix’s article on Taylor Swift yanking her entire catalog from Spotify More Slate takes: Chris Molanphy on “Why Taylor Swift Is the Super Bowl of Pop” and the Culture Gabfesters split bitterly Tay-tay Cathy pointed out the crowdsourcing project Price of Weed: A Global Price Index for Marijuana Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on education and inequality USC’s Lawrence O. Picus’ New York Times op-ed, “School Fundraising Is Unfair But Unavoidable.” Felix mentioned the addictive site Import IO: Instantly Turn Web Pages Into Data Cathy’s number for this week was inspired by this study, which was the subject of an Economist article. Slate Money will appear every Saturday in the Slate Daily Podcast and its own feed.

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