From Ideas to Innovation Podcast

America has an affordability crisis. Most politicians agree on that. And we’re expecting to see this play out at the polls.

What politicians do disagree on (often loudly and counterproductively) is why it’s happening and who’s to blame. Too many of the proposed solutions treat the symptoms while ignoring the disease entirely.

But as Akash Chougule points out, failing to address spending that has lead to this affordability crisis is having consequences. Politicians are losing their job for ignoring this issue.

Welcome to Episode 16 of From Ideas to Innovation. Akash is the President of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP), a think tank focused on upward mobility for Americans on the bottom half of the economic ladder. He’s also one of the most experienced policy advocates working at the intersection of ideas and implementation — having spent time on Capitol Hill, at Americans for Prosperity, and at Stand Together before landing at FREOPP. His organization just released Affording the American Dream, a handbook that confronts the affordability crisis head on and identifies the specific policy reforms that would make the biggest difference for the most Americans.

In this episode, Akash shares a behind-the-scenes look at how policy actually gets made, and what it takes to change it.

About This Episode’s Guest

Akash Chougule came to appreciate free market ideas not merely from studying political theory but because he saw the impact on his own family.

His father grew up in lower-middle-class India, in a family of six children who lost their father at a young age. Starting in third or fourth grade, he woke at four in the morning to study — because he had a dream to come to America, a place where anything was possible if you were willing to work for it. In his mid-twenties, he left behind everyone he knew, arrived with $26 in his pocket, bought a 90-day bus pass, and traveled the country by overnight bus. He slept in bus stations in Cleveland and Newark. On the 89th day, he got his first job.

To this day, the family celebrates July 15th as the day he arrived in this country, his Americversary. This day marked the start of his family achieving the American Dream.

That story has shaped everything Akash believes about what America is and why it’s worth fighting for. It sent him to Washington, where he spent two years on the House Education and Workforce Committee, followed by roles in advocacy and research at Americans for Prosperity and Stand Together. Now as President of FREOPP, he leads an organization with a specific and underserved mission: improving the lives of Americans on the bottom half of the economic ladder using freedom, innovation, and pluralism. He does this through rigorous research, bipartisan coalition building, and a refusal to accept that the gap between good ideas and good policy is inevitable.

What You’ll Take Away

* Why high prices are the symptom and bad policy is the disease — and which policies are actually driving the affordability crisis

* Why populism is offering economic solutions to non-economic problems

* What working on Capitol Hill taught Akash about moving ideas into law — including why think tanks need to know how to redline existing statutes, not just write white papers

* How the benefits cliff means earning just $1,000 more can cost a family $25,000 in benefits

* Why childcare deregulation may be the most underrated affordability fix nobody is talking about

* What changed Akash’s mind about the people who work in government, and why it matters for how we build coalitions

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Cross-Sector Connection

Akash has been the researcher producing ideas, the advocate translating them, and the practitioner trying to move them through a political system that wasn’t designed to make it easy. His insights have something concrete to offer the three audiences that belong in this conversation:

Researchers and academics will find in Akash a direct challenge to stay closer to the implementation side of the ideas they produce. From his time on Capitol Hill, he saw having the right ideas is essentil but it isn’t enough. That the staffer who agrees with you is unable to help if you can’t show him exactly which words to change in the statute. Research that can’t be turned into legislative language for a young, overworked staffer juggling 12 issues at once is research that stays on the shelf.

Policymakers should take Akash’s warning seriously: failure to address the root causes of the affordability crisis will have political and human consequences. FREOPP’s handbook offers focused, specific reforms and a clear framework for understanding why housing, healthcare, energy, childcare, and college are the issues that most directly determine whether the American Dream is achievable for people who weren’t born into it. Akash’s point about the benefits cliff is particularly important: people on these programs are making economically rational decisions. The policy is the problem, not the person.

Business leaders and entrepreneurs will see how the affordability crisis is also a talent crisis, a workforce crisis, and a community crisis. When young people can’t afford to buy homes, start families, or stay in the communities they grew up in, the downstream effects reach every employer in every sector. The connection between housing policy, childcare policy, and the ability to attract and retain workers is not abstract — and Akash makes the case that business leaders have a stake in these fights that they aren’t always exercising.

Final Thoughts

I was struck by Akash’s reframing of the populism debate — and a point he made almost in passing that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.

When I asked what he changed his mind on over the course of his career, he didn’t talk about a policy position. He talked about people. The people who work in government are smart and driven — they could be making their wealth in tech, finance, or energy. But they choose Washington, with the long hours and modest salaries, because they care. Including, he was quick to add, his Democratic counterparts.

That matters for how we approach the affordability crisis. Across the political spectrum, our leaders often aren’t wrong about the problems. Rural communities hollowing out, young men without direction, families unable to afford to get started — these are real issues.

What they get wrong is the solution. They’re offering economic answers to what are fundamentally cultural, social, and community problems.

If we can’t be honest about those non-economic dimensions — if we only talk about tariffs and tax rates and regulations — we’re going to keep losing the argument to people who at least acknowledge something deeper is broken.

The people in government trying to fix it are mostly there for the right reasons. It’s up to us to give them the right ideas to work with.

Related Reading & Listening

* Affording the American Dream — FREOPP’s handbook on the specific policy reforms that would most directly address America’s affordability crisis. Worth reading alongside this episode.

* Josh Bandoch’s recent FREOPP paper on the benefits cliff connects directly to Episode 2, where Josh joined the podcast to discuss persuasion and how to move ideas across ideological lines.

* For more on safety net reform and what it actually takes to turn good policy into real outcomes, listen to Episode 11 with Aly Rau Brodsky, also from FREOPP, on closing the gap between ideas and implementation.

* For more the abundance framework and where Akash’s analysis of its limits fits, see Episode 3 with Vance Ginn and Richard Morrison.

Next Time…

I hope you’ll tune in for my next conversation in two weeks. I’m joined by my Archbridge Institute colleague Clay Routledge to discuss the psychological benefits of nostalgia and how it can help us live better lives.

In the meantime, please subscribe and share the episode with a colleague who will find the topic interesting.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fromideastoinnovation.substack.com

Recent policy conversations have compared artificial intelligence development to a new cold war between the United States and China. But there's a different threat that almost no one is talking about.

In China, 80% of the population views AI positively. In America, it’s almost exactly the opposite.

That gap, more than the technology itself, may end up as the biggest threat to America’s AI future.

Welcome to Episode 14 of From Ideas to Innovation. Neil Chilson is Head of AI Policy at the Abundance Institute, a former Chief Technologist at the Federal Trade Commission, and one of the clearest thinkers working at the intersection of emerging technology, complex systems, and policy. He’s also the author of Getting Out of Control: Emergent Leadership in a Complex World — a book about why the most powerful systems in the world are the ones nobody controls.

In our conversation, Neil lays out a clear alternative to the doom and gloom narrative around AI.

About This Episode’s Guest

It all started for Neil Chilson with a desire to understand complexity. As a kid, he became obsessed with chaos theory after picking up James Gleick’s Chaos, a book full of fractals, those gorgeous, intricate shapes generated by simple formulas iterated over and over. That early fascination with systems that produce surprising outcomes from simple rules turned out to be the through line connecting everything that came after: a computer science degree, law school, telecom law, a stint as Chief Technologist at the FTC, and now his role at the Abundance Institute, where he focuses on getting ahead of emerging technologies before the panic (a policy surrounding it) sets in.

At the FTC, Neil witnessed the difference between two fundamentally different models of government intervention. The FCC writes detailed rules ahead of time — a Procrustean bed, as Neil calls it, that forces new technologies into the shape of old ones. The FTC takes a case-by-case approach, looking at specific facts and weighing harms against benefits, much like common law. That contrast shaped his beliefs around how to regulate fast-moving technology — and why getting it wrong with AI could be catastrophic.

His book Getting Out of Control makes the case that the most powerful systems in the world — markets, societies, governments — aren’t controlled by anyone. They’re emergent. And the moment you try to impose top-down control on them, you often destroy the very complex properties that made them valuable in the first place.

What You’ll Take Away

* Why the AI doom narrative gets the fundamental nature of complex systems wrong, and what the doomer camp actually gets right

* The “tech panic arc” — why every major technology goes through a backlash before being absorbed into culture, and how to move through it faster

* A better approach to AI regulation than the popular prescriptive model

* The case for federal versus state AI regulation, and the difference between “laboratories of democracy” and “meth labs of democracy”

* Why AI companies calling for an antitrust exemption to slow down development is a bad idea and who are set up to be the most disadvantaged

* What the US-China AI race is really about, and why America may be losing the adoption race even if it wins the frontier model race

* Why the data center water panic is the biggest piece of misinformation in AI policy right now

* One underrated AI application that Neil thinks will change how most people interact with computers within a decade

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fromideastoinnovation.substack.com

Polling shows Gen Z is discontent with capitalism. A new survey from the Cato Institute found 45% view capitalism favorably, while 53% view socialism favorably— and even worse, 38% viewed communism favorably.

This is a generation that has grown up experiencing all the benefits free markets have to offer: two-day delivery, rapid technological innovation, and abundant consumer goods. So why the growing animosity toward free markets and rising approval of socialism?

Welcome to Episode 13 of From Ideas to Innovation. Sam Raus and Maggie Anders are writers, commentators, and content creators at Young Voices. They are two of the sharpest young communicators working on these issues today. We discuss the underlying reasons for Gen Z’s discontentment with capitalism, the branding problem facing the liberty movement, and everything from Huey P. Long to AI slop to whether we should just ditch the word “capitalism” entirely.

We cover a lot of ground in this episode, and I felt like I was along for a ride in the Young Voices newsroom. So buckle up.

About This Episode’s Guests

Sam Raus has been writing about tech and economic issues for almost three years, first as a college student posting on Substack between classes, and now as a full-time writer at Young Voices. He describes himself as a conservative driven by a libertarian impulse — someone who thinks the divide between libertarianism and conservatism is mostly overdone and weaponized by people who don’t fit under either umbrella. His work focuses on innovation, regulation, and the role of government in emerging industries. He brings to this conversation a writer's instinct for why words and framing matter as much as the underlying argument.

Maggie Anders discovered the social justice left as a tween online, worked herself away from that ideology over time, and eventually landed at the Foundation for Economic Education, where she launched a podcast and fell in love with video journalism. Now based in New York City, she creates news commentary, podcasts, and video content for Young Voices. She uses her platform to normalize the idea that a woman can be a “girl’s girl” and also believe in free markets, and she makes a compelling case that visible representation in the liberty movement matters more than most people realize.

Together, they co-host Young Voices’ new podcast Breaking Containment — a show about the stories that break out of their original context and dominate the broader conversation. The feel of their show is like a behind the scenes look at the newsroom: how stories are shaped and opinions are formed. You’ll get a feel for that energy in today’s episode too.

What You’ll Take Away

* Why Gen Z blames capitalism for problems that are actually caused by the lack of it — and what the liberty movement keeps getting wrong in response

* Competing theories for why Gen Z hates capitalism: cost of living or historical amnesia about socialism?

* The liberty movement’s biggest blind spot, according to both guests

* Why Huey P. Long is the Argentinian Juan Perón of Louisiana — and what that tells us about the Vice President’s recent comments

* The effect of AI slop on trust in both business and media

* The biggest threat facing Gen Z: risk aversion, expanding entitlements, consumerism hangovers, or something else entirely

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fromideastoinnovation.substack.com

Americans who are functionally illiterate earn about the same as the average Briton.

And you are more than 2 times more likely to die from extreme heat in Europe than from gun homicides in America. No wonder young people are fleeing Britain in droves. Today, we’re speaking to one of them.

Welcome to Episode 12 of From Ideas to Innovation. Reem Ibrahim is a writer and commentator at Reason Magazine — a classically liberal voice covering economic freedom, regulation, and the lessons Europe’s stagnation holds for America. She moved from London to Washington DC eight months ago, not because she stopped loving Britain, but because Britain stopped working for people like her.

Our conversation touches on economic history, her personal story, and includes a serious warning. If you care about what America’s future could look like, keep listening.

About This Episode’s Guest

Reem Ibrahim didn’t always hold libertarian views. As a teenager in London, she felt sad watching homeless people on the street and concluded, as most 16-year-olds do, that the government should do something about it.

But she hadn’t yet connected that instinct to her own family’s story which is a case study in what happens when governments do too much. Her father’s side came from Egypt, where her great-uncle, a man who had built a construction business from nothing, had his assets seized by Nasser’s socialist government despite personal connections to the regime. The family eventually emigrated to the UK. And then, in a similar flight from stagnation, Reem moved to the US.

She first stumbled across classical liberalism in high school. It was the first time she noticed that you could believe in limited government intervention and social liberalism, and that the two ideas did not clash. That discovery sent her on an intellectual journey that introduced her to Hayek and Mises, Hannah Arendt and the concept of natural rights, and Murray Rothbard’s Anatomy of the State — which she says she threw across the room in rage — through a brief stint as an anarcho-capitalist, and eventually to the classical liberalism she practices today.

She explored these ideas publicly through social media. At 18, when she couldn’t sleep, she went live on TikTok to read excerpts from Anatomy of the State to strangers. She built a UK libertarian following. While she loved her job at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, she realized that if she wanted to become a better communicator of economic freedom, she needed to learn from the best. So she made the move to the US.

Now a research fellow at Reason, she turns public policy into sharp journalism and video. She mainly writes on regulation, trade, and economic freedom.

What You’ll Take Away

* How much richer and freer Americans are than our friends across the pond — and what that tells us about the cost of big government

* The real Brexit: why young, ambitious Brits are leaving the UK and where they’re going

* Why Europe doesn’t have a Tesla, and what labor market regulations have to do with it

* What “free” healthcare actually looks like in practice, including the story of Reem’s father who nearly went blind waiting for NHS surgery

* Why 12,000 people a year are arrested in the UK for online speech crimes, and what that means for freedom of expression

* The Falkland Islands dispute, France’s nicotine pouch ban, and what both tell us about governments that can’t stop themselves

* The countries Reem predicts are most likely to turn the clock back on bad policy — and the least likely

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fromideastoinnovation.substack.com

Whether in politics or policy research, most debates today focus on ideas while missing a vision for implementation. But when it comes to improving lives, the right idea simply is not enough.

Aly Rau Brodsky has spent her career working in that gap, making sure people don’t get lost in the politics.

Welcome to Episode 11 of From Ideas to Innovation. Aly is the Executive Vice President at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP), where she leads initiatives that turn ideas into implementation across child welfare, workforce, and safety net reform. She has examined the safety net from nearly every angle — from her work at a state think tank and in the governor’s cabinet to her experience as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) and foster mom.

This conversation is about what happens when ideas and implementation are aligned and what stands in the way when they don’t.

About This Episode’s Guest

Growing up in poverty in Louisiana, Aly Rau Brodsky developed what she calls a deep “justice sensitivity” — an early and abiding awareness of what it means to be born into hard circumstances without community, resources, or voice. She developed that sense of justice as a CASA and medical advocate for sexual assault survivors before finding her way into policy and, later, politics. But she ultimately realized that the ideas behind the decisions matter just as much as the people making them, which brought her back to the world of policy.

Her policy career began at the Pelican Institute for Public Policy, where she worked her way through many roles at the organization, founding their leadership program and the Kevin Kane Center for Opportunity Policy. Then the governor of Louisiana asked her to join his administration.

She became one of the youngest women ever appointed to a cabinet-level position in Louisiana, spending the next several years as Assistant Secretary of Family Support and leading some of the boldest human services reforms the state had ever attempted. In that role, she oversaw child welfare, disability services, food and cash assistance, child support enforcement, and employment and training programs, while bringing her firsthand experience as a CASA and former foster parent to the policies and systems affecting families.

Today, at FREOPP, she is doing what she has always done: connecting the right ideas to the right implementation and refusing to accept that the gap between them is inevitable. There, she helps ensure that opportunity is real and reachable for those too often left behind.

What You’ll Take Away

* Why the right idea can still fall completely flat — and the implementation details that actually determine whether a policy works

* The summer EBT story: how a group of non-experts figured out in 45 days what the subject matter experts said was impossible

* What five broken chairs in a government visitation room taught Aly about the gap between policy and lived experience

* Why America’s social services system is designed to make poverty survivable rather than escapable, and what it would take to change that

* The case for One Door to Work, and the specific federal barriers preventing most states from doing what Utah already does

* Why technology is the most overrated solution in social services right now

* What every policymaker should be taught about social services, but rarely is

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fromideastoinnovation.substack.com

Most people think sports economics is about Moneyball. Keri Lawson Rubenstein thinks it’s about everything.

Welcome to Episode 10 of From Ideas to Innovation. Keri is an assistant professor of sport analytics at Syracuse University in one of the country’s leading sport analytics programs, and one of the most interesting applied economists working today. Her research covers women’s labor markets in professional sports, unintended consequences of safety mandates, and the economics of the WNBA — and she brings to all of it the same tool kit: rigorous economic thinking applied to questions people actually care about.

Fair warning: if you care about sports at all, you may lose track of time.

About This Episode’s Guest

Keri Lawson Rubenstein was pursuing the path toward becoming a traditional economist until she took Brad Humphreys’ sports economics class at West Virginia University and couldn’t go back.

The conventional path for a sports economist is to either wait until after tenure to write sports papers or pivot entirely to a sport management department. Keri found a third option: Syracuse University David B. Falk College of Sport, where a group of economists and computer scientists had built a sport analytics program from scratch because the field didn’t exist as a traditional academic discipline yet.

It was the right place at the right time. And it gave her the freedom to pursue the research agenda she’d been building in her head for years, particularly on women’s sports where she believed important questions were going unanswered because not enough researchers were asking them.

Today, Keri is one of the leading researchers in her field, with a growing body of work on WNBA labor markets, safety mandates and their unintended consequences, the economics of the women’s sports boom, and the tension between analytics and the eye test. She is also, by her own admission, a devoted cycling fan and a very opinionated Bengals supporter.

What You’ll Take Away

* Why the NFL’s Guardian Cap mandate backfired and how this applies more broadly to regulations

* The perfect storm that created the women’s sports boom and what it will take to make it stick

* The economics of Caitlin Clark: why she was simultaneously underpaid and making more money than almost anyone in the league

* Why the WNBA’s dual labor market with international leagues is structurally changing and the implications for player salaries, career longevity, and league growth

* Why comparing the WNBA and the NBA as apples to apples is bad economics and why Keri’s is passionate about stopping it

* The most underrated stat in sports right now and why a double-double is basically meaningless

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fromideastoinnovation.substack.com

The story of the Gilded Age goes something like this: robber barons got obscenely rich, workers were exploited, and inequality soared. You can find that story in history books, TV shows, and political speeches.

But what if that narrative is completely wrong?

Welcome to Episode 9 of From Ideas to Innovation. I’m sitting down with a good friend and collaborator, prolific economist, and professor at George Mason University to discuss his upcoming book, The Great Enrichment. Vincent Geloso takes on one of the most contested periods in American economic history, arguing that what actually happened was almost the opposite of what we’ve been told.

This is one of the most intellectually fun conversations on this podcast. Buckle up and get ready to shift the way you’ve heard the historical narrative.

About This Episode’s Guest

Vincent Geloso didn’t dream of being an economist. He planned to study art history — until his father pointed out the distinction between a hobby and a job.

So he started by dabbling in politics, landing a summer internship in the Canadian Prime Minister’s office in Ottawa as one of the very few French-speaking Conservatives from Quebec. He tried journalism next. Neither stuck.

Then, in the final year of his undergraduate degree at the University of Montreal, he took a class he’d been avoiding: Leonard Dudley’s Economic History of the Western World. A quarter of the way through the semester, he knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life.

Since then, Vincent has built one of the most prolific careers in economics, with over 120 peer-reviewed papers on topics spanning economic history, inequality, public choice, and social mobility. He has written on everything from the economics of lobotomies to why lighthouses aren’t public goods. As a professor at George Mason University, he is one of the most distinctive voices in his field — a true economic historian who can speak both the language of an economist and that of a historian.

His upcoming book, The Great Enrichment, is the culmination of years of research into what actually happened to living standards in America from 1865 to 1945 — and why the standard account gets it so badly wrong.

What You’ll Take Away

* How to do economic history well and how to avoid the most common mistake people make when they look to the past to make present-day arguments

* Why both the popular and academic accounts of the Gilded Age are wrong — and what the data actually shows about who benefited from that era’s growth

* The difference between income inequality and living standards inequality, and why that distinction completely changes the story

* How the experiences of Black Americans in that period demonstrates the power of markets to mitigate even the most severe legal and social discrimination

* Who Peg Leg Williams was and how he made labor markets more competitive

* Why the U.S. has a smaller welfare state than France, and what that tells us about the relationship between growth and poverty reduction

* Who would make it on Vincent’s Mount Rushmore of economists

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fromideastoinnovation.substack.com

Many have studied the American Dream. Few of those researchers have also lived it.

Gonzalo Schwarz came to the United States for graduate school and never left. He drove for Uber to keep his dream of starting a think tank alive. Today he runs one of the most distinctive research institutions in the country, which he calls his own American Dream.

Welcome to Episode 8 of From Ideas to Innovation.

There is a striking gap in how Americans think about the American Dream. Gallup has found that less than half of Americans believe everyone in the country has the opportunity to achieve it. But flip the question and ask people about their own lives: 67% say they've either achieved the American Dream or are actively on their way, and 71% say they have similar or more opportunity than their parents.

Even more surprising, this uniquely American ideal may be the common ground we've been searching for in today's polarized political climate. 64% of Americans believe the Dream can still unite people across different backgrounds and politics.

As we celebrate the nation's 250th anniversary, it's fitting to explore this distinctly American ideal. If it's still alive and well, as the data suggests, can we elevate that truth to reinvigorate national pride, unity, and drive our nation's future forward?

About This Episode’s Guest

Gonzalo Schwarz is the founder and president of the Archbridge Institute and, full disclosure, my boss. But he didn’t set out to start a think tank. He started by examining how to solve poverty.

When Gonzalo came to the United States for a master’s degree in economics at George Mason University, he found more than simply a better education. He was struck by the spirit of this country where entrepreneurship was celebrated, ambition was admired, and the promise of a better life wasn’t just a slogan.

He fell in love with that idea. Then he noticed that most Americans were taking it for granted, or giving up on it entirely.

In 2016, he founded the Archbridge Institute to research the economics, psychology, and culture of human flourishing and social mobility. The early years were hard: there were payroll crises, half-salaries, and a stretch where he drove for Uber to make ends meet.

Still, he kept going. And as he’d be the first to tell you, that’s the whole point.

This year, Archbridge celebrates its tenth anniversary. Gonzalo joins the podcast to reflect on what makes America unique, share insights from our recent American Dream Snapshot survey, and weigh in on what he still sees as unfinished business for the American Dream as an idea.

What You’ll Take Away

* Why social mobility — not income inequality — should be the central frame for economic policy debates

* What a Disney reveals about the American Dream as a cultural ethos and how it shaped Archbridge’s founding mission

* The surprising finding from Archbridge’s American Dream Snapshot

* Why more Americans define the dream as freedom of choice — and very few define it as becoming wealthy

* What native-born Americans take for granted about the American Dream that immigrants almost never do

* Why Argentina has the most momentum of any Latin American country toward its own version of the American Dream

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fromideastoinnovation.substack.com

America has a housing supply problem. Most people agree on the diagnosis. Almost nobody agrees on the cure. Recent discussions in Washington over housing affordability and institutional investors are the perfect example.

Alex Cartwright thinks the cure is hiding in plain sight — in the lobbies of distressed hotels that nobody wants anymore.

Welcome to Episode 7 of From Ideas to Innovation. Alex is the co-founder of HotelShift, a real estate company converting distressed hotels into affordable multifamily housing. He’s also a former economics professor who spent years teaching price theory — and then decided to live it.

This conversation is one of the most practical, grounded explorations of housing economics this podcast has produced. If you care about affordability, entrepreneurship, or what it actually looks like to transform academic insight into a real-world business, this episode is for you.

About This Episode’s Guest

Alex Cartwright didn’t leave academia because he was unhappy. He left because he saw a free market solution to the housing problem that was too compelling to ignore.

As an assistant professor of economics, Alex was winning teaching awards, taking students abroad, serving as department chair, and living what he describes as “the life of the mind.” He also happened to be working on real estate projects on the side for personal financial security and intellectual curiosity.

Then someone at a conference pointed him toward a distressed hotel in Michigan and said it might be convertible to multifamily housing. But despite thinking that idea sounded like a terrible pain to execute, Alex went to look at it anyway.

When he sat down to run the numbers he discovered a $35,000-per-room hotel didn’t sound so bad in a market where multifamily buildings sold for $300,000 per unit. He sat down and put prices on all the problems. The math worked — and a business was born.

Today, HotelShift acquires distressed hotels, converts them into affordable apartments, and builds the kind of housing that the market desperately needs but rarely produces. Alex brings to that work something most real estate developers don’t have: a deep academic grounding in free market economic thought — and the firsthand experience to know when theory matches reality.

What You’ll Take Away

* Why America is chronically undersupplied on housing

* What academics could learn from talking to the industries they study — and what entrepreneurs could learn from going back to first principles

* What theories explain why building codes only ever get stricter and more expensive and the systematic bias toward luxury housing

* How Hotel Shift’s cap rate arbitrage works — and why the gap between hotel and multifamily valuations creates a durable, scalable opportunity

* What factors actually kill real-estate deals

* How one policy change would unlock more affordable housing overnight

Cross-Sector Connection

Alex didn’t just study housing economics — he built a business around it. And in doing so, he became a living example of what happens when academic insight meets entrepreneurial execution.

Researchers and academics spend careers studying housing affordability, zoning reform, and price theory. Alex’s story is a direct challenge to stay connected to the industries they study. He shares how firsthand experience of markets shapes worldviews in ways that academic models simply can’t replicate, and the best policy research accounts for that gap.

Policymakers are often the biggest obstacle to the very solutions entrepreneurs like Alex try to build. Parking minimums, impact fees, energy retrofit mandates, and quiet resistance to affordable rezoning all show up in this conversation as real-world deal killers. Alex highlights a Texas law that allows commercial properties to be rezoned for housing by right is a replicable model that any state or city could adopt tomorrow to address this crisis.

Business leaders and entrepreneurs might recognize themselves in Alex’s description of entrepreneurship as getting punched in the face multiple times a day and coming back anyway. They also will appreciate his framework for identifying durable market inefficiencies, building a niche around solving them, and creating a business that the market won’t easily arbitrage away.

The conversation doesn’t end here. I hope it sparks your curiosity and gives you a place to start some cross-disciplinary dialogue.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fromideastoinnovation.substack.com

Populism is hard to define. Is commonly labeled by whatever the speaker doesn’t like. But João Pedro "JP" Bastos argued we can do better than that, and helped build an index that measures it.

Welcome to Episode 6 of From Ideas to Innovation. JP recently defended his PhD in economics at my alma mater, Texas Tech University, and his research focuses on populism, institutions, and economic development in Latin America. Our conversation is an exploration into why these topics matter far beyond the region and should be discussed beyond academic circles.

About This Episode’s Guest

JP Bastos didn't set out to become a skeptic of state-led development. He started in local government in Brazil, an atmosphere he describes as similar to Parks and Recreation, working to simplify the legislation required to open a business. What he found motivated his entire research agenda.

When he asked bureaucrats why certain permitting requirements existed, the answer was rarely a law. It was usually: "that's how we've always done it." This search pulled him toward public choice economics and a career-defining question: is underdevelopment less about labor and capital than it is fundamentally an institutional problem?

JP pursued that question through a PhD at Texas Tech, where he became a Research Assistant at the Free Market Institute. There, alongside Nicolás Cachanosky and Alexandre Padilla, he helped build the first index to measure Latin American populism using actual policy outcomes, not just rhetoric.

This fall, he joins the University of Austin as an Assistant Professor of Economics in the Center for Economics, Politics, and History

What You’ll Take Away

* How to define and identify populism, beyond the common packaging of “what I don’t like”

* Why populist governments in Latin America made their countries roughly 20% poorer than expected

* How a single populist leader can wipe out a generation of progress on liberal democracy almost overnight, including the staggering example of Venezuela’s Supreme Court

* The difference between good and bad inequality, and the deeper institutional problems behind it

* Why crime and public safety, not economics, may be the most misunderstood driver of Latin American politics

* A surprising take on Argentina’s reforms under Milei, and what a smarter long-term strategy might have looked like

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