Have you ever heard a commonly held belief or a fast-developing worldview and asked: Is that idea right? Or just good on paper? Each week, host Jerusalem Demsas and a guest take a closer look at the…
Why do governments educate their citizens? More than 200 years ago, Western regimes shifted the responsibility of education from the family to the state. The political scientist Agustina Paglayan…
We’re often told that there’s “no room for politics at work,” and yet the workplace is one of the most politically segregated spaces in adult life. The Harvard economics researcher Sahil Chinoy…
Most gun deaths aren’t premeditated, so how can we stop gun violence before it happens? The University of Chicago economist Jens Ludwig makes the case for thinking differently about the source of…
Seven years after the Supreme Court struck down a ban on state-sanctioned sports betting, a more complete picture of the downstream effects of legalization is starting to emerge. As some states see…
Government reform isn’t an exclusively partisan issue, so why does it seem to fall under the purview of Republicans? The researcher Jennifer Pahlka says Democrats need to “get in the game” of…
Editor’s note: After this episode aired, MIT issued a statement raising concerns about the integrity of Aidan Toner-Rodgers's working paper “Artificial Intelligence, Scientific Discovery, and Product…
What makes someone a NIMBY? The prevailing theory suggests that people support or reject new housing in their neighborhood based on what’s best for them personally. The political scientist David…
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is poised to lead the Department of Health and Human Services under President-Elect Donald Trump. He has said “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective,” but Dr. Rachael…
Are young men becoming radicalized? Could they be further to the right than even their fathers and grandfathers? These questions have yet to be answered definitively, but in some countries, electoral…
