Dropping the Denominator – Epi-3749

The Survival Podcast

Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2025

⏱️ 120 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Have you ever heard the phrase, “the lowest common denominator”. While this is an actual mathematical principle it has also become a colloquialism meaning to cater to the lowest preforming member of a given group. Today that group is the people of the United States and the performance metrics are basic intelligence, critical thinking and the ability to use logic and reason. In essence a better title for this show may be “lowering the common denominator” with the sub title of “the dumbing down of America”, but I simply feel dropping the denominator sounds better and requires more thought, and … Continue reading →

Transcript

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0:00.0	And we're a better way to do this.
0:08.8	Let me show you a better way.
0:16.3	And we are alive.
0:20.8	Welcome folks to Monday, October the 20th, 2005. This is episode
0:26.2	3,749. And today's show is actually a remake of a show I did all the way back in about
0:35.3	2018. I believe it was 2018 or 2017.
0:39.3	Exact same title.
0:40.6	I'm even using mostly the same bullet points for today's presentation.
0:44.8	Of course, it will be different because what, eight years have gone by since then.
0:49.7	But every once in a while I like to take something that was kind of a big hit in the past
0:53.6	and redo it for the modern day. And we've been around long enough that we actually have, you know, shows that can be redone for the modern day. That's kind of crazy when you think about it. But 17 years will do that for you. And that's where we're headed. 17 years as we go in the next summer. we'll be officially at 17 years. I think 17 or 18. I'm not even sure now. 17. Let's just say it 17. Anyway, we're going to talk about that again, dropping the denominator. Missal launch said, oh, no, math. Well, you know, math does involve thinking and critical process and stuff like that.
1:28.2	And that is kind of what we're going to be talking about today.
1:30.5	But when I say the drop the denominator, I'm not talking about that horrible fractions,
1:35.6	part of your mathematical upbringing in like middle school or late grade school,
1:41.3	where you had to learn how to do math with fractions by finding the common
1:46.6	denominator. Notice is dropping the denominator. It is getting rid of it. It means lowering,
1:53.4	lowering the lowest common denominator in society. Now here's another way to think about this.
2:02.7	This was actually an appropriate use of this concept to a degree.
2:07.3	When I was in the Army, when we would run PT, we would run at the speed of the slowest man in formation.
2:13.6	Now, the reality was that wasn't necessarily true.
2:18.8	That means that we ran at the speed of the slowest man in the formation who was at least running at a speed that made it worth running.
2:26.0	So there were people that dropped out of the formation.
	...

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