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Make Me Smart

Let's talk about Zeno's paradox

Make Me Smart

Marketplace

News, Business

4.6 • 5.4K Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Since President Donald Trump took office, his administration has ignored court rulings on a range of issues from press access to deportations. Now, a federal judge might hold him in criminal contempt of court. We’ll unpack the Zeno’s paradox of constitutional crises. Plus, where luxury goods actually come from and why you may want to think twice before buying one. And if you’re looking to zone out, turn on the “Great Moose Migration.”


Here’s everything we talked about today:




Got a question or comment for the hosts? Email [email protected] or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello everyone. I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense. It is Wednesday, April the 16th.

0:14.2

I'm Kyle Rosdahl. Thanks for downloading the pot today. We appreciate it. We're going to do a little news and some smiles.

0:19.1

We will start with the news. And I'm going to go first,berly adams just because the it's sequentially it kind of has to go

0:23.6

this way until today we have been looking at uh what i have seen on the socials and and i wish i

0:30.8

thought of at first has been zeno's contempt contempt citation that is to say zeno's paradox is

0:37.1

right that thing where you know one of which is you can never actually touch a wall.

0:40.6

Because if you start a foot away from a wall and you move halfway, you're half a foot away from the wall and you move halfway, you're a quarter foot away from the wall and you keep going.

0:46.7

And it goes to infinity and you never actually physically touch the wall.

0:51.3

We have been since January 20th, okay, at that paradox. The courts have

0:58.9

said something. The Trump administration has done whatever it wants to do. The courts have said

1:02.9

another thing. The Trump administration has said whatever it wants to do. And finally,

1:07.4

Chief Judge Boasberg of the federal district court in Washington, D.C., said, no, no, no, no, no, no more this paradox, BS.

1:15.4

So I first have to say I had never heard of that paradox until just now. I was really trying to figure out what you were talking about because in the script it says Zeno's contempt citation. I'm like, who is Zeno? Is this

1:28.5

one of the judges I haven't heard? I literally was looking this up trying to prepare for the show today.

1:35.2

So if you don't mind, could you do that again? Sure. I will do it more slowly. So Zeno's paradox is,

1:42.3

and Zeno was either a Greek or a Roman philosopher or whatever, the point is, he has four paradoxes, one of which was, I'm analogizing here, but if you start a foot away from a wall and you go to touch the wall, you move, and you don't quite get there. So you move closer. You move a half a foot from the wall.

2:02.0

You can't quite get there.

2:03.2

You move an quarter of a foot from the wall, an eighth of a foot from the wall, a 16th of a foot from the wall, a 32nd of a foot from the wall.

2:11.2

And you keep on going and going and going and going.

2:13.3

And by that logic train, you never actually touch the wall.

2:16.7

The gap gets really small, but you never actually get there.

2:19.5

And that kind of is what has been happening with these court decisions, right?

...

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