Americans love local government. In a December 2023 Pew Research survey, 61 percent of respondents had a favorable view of their local government while 77 percent had an unfavorable view of the federal government. But behind this veneer of goodwill is a disturbing truth: Local government is driving a housing crisis that is raising rents, lowering economic mobility and productivity, and negatively impacting wages. 

Host Jerusalem Demsas talks to Atlantic deputy executive editor Yoni Appelbaum and Yale Law professor David Schleicher about how local government is fueling the housing crisis.

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There’s a traditional line of thinking about the history of Black people and the law. It describes how slaves were entirely shut out of the legal system, disenfranchised and bereft of even a modicum of legal know-how or protection.

But research from the UC Berkeley professor Dylan C. Penningroth (in his book Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights) upends that narrative by tracing the overlooked history of how Black people used the law in everyday life: through rights of contract, property, marriage, and more—even under slavery and Jim Crow.

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The 2010s saw attitudes—on issues such as race, immigration, and gender—shift to the left. Liberals became more liberal. And then a "wokeness" backlash began.

The backlash, though, didn’t just come from conservatives. It came from people all over the political spectrum. Host Jerusalem Demsas talks with the New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg about the death of "wokeness"—and whether we might miss it when it’s gone.

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Is there such a thing as “balancing the ticket”? How much can a vice-presidential nominee influence the election? Host Jerusalem Demsas talks with political commentator and journalist Matt Yglesias about Kamala Harris’s recent pick of Tim Walz as her running mate and whether that choice could sway undecided voters.

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From 1999 and 2019, researchers found that the maternal-mortality rate in the U.S. more than doubled. Over the years, these findings filtered their way through academic journals and the news media to the general public.

But was there something more to this story? How had the U.S. become such a deadly place for pregnant women?

In this episode of Good on Paper, host Jerusalem Demsas talks to Saloni Dattani, a researcher at Our World in Data. Her work—built on the research of other skeptical scientists—found that the seeming rise in maternal deaths was actually the result of something very simple: a measurement change.

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If Democrats care more about climate change than Republicans, then why is Texas the nation’s leader in renewable energy?

Host Jerusalem Demsas talks to Jesse Jenkins, an assistant professor at Princeton University, about how the Lone Star State emerged as America’s No. 1 renewable-energy producer, despite its politics—and about the broken bureaucracy that’s preventing more states from going green.

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America is in a “loneliness epidemic.” But is turning to religion the answer?

Host Jerusalem Demsas talks to Arthur Brooks, a professor at the Harvard Business School who teaches classes on leadership and happiness. He’s also a contributing writer for The Atlantic where he has written that happiness comes, in part, through faith. 

Brooks argues that the “nones”—people who identify with no religion—are unhappier (at least, on average) than people who believe in a greater power.

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School choice is usually about providing parents an option outside the traditional public school system. Between 2010 and 2021, public charter school enrollment in the U.S. more than doubled.

But LAUSD did something different. It recognized the growing appetite for choice and wondered whether the normal public school system could help satisfy it. It set up a limited school choice program in 2012, the kind of experiment ripe for an economics paper, and thankfully economist Christopher Campos took notice. Host Jerusalem Demsas talks to Campos about his paper, revealing that when public high schools were forced to compete for enrollment, achievement gaps narrowed, and college enrollment took off.

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Does everyone really need therapy?

The destigmatization of mental health problems—and the normalization that many people do struggle with severe mental illnesses—has been one of the great cultural transformations of the 21st century. But has this shift carried unintended consequences?

After all, what if therapy is less like exercise—something everyone should do to be healthy—and more like prescription medication—something you should only really use if you need it? Host Jerusalem Demsas talks to Dr. Lucy Foulkes, a researcher at the University of Oxford who has become increasingly concerned that raising awareness is not unambiguously good.

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Does an aging workforce mean greater worker power?

One of the takeaways from pro-worker advocates during the pandemic financial crisis was that employees saw fantastic gain. As demand for workers skyrocketed, employees got to be choosy. What bosses called “The Great Resignation” was actually workers having the power to demand better wages and working conditions, as well as the willingness to quit jobs that wouldn’t offer those things.

But economist Adam Ozimek warns that people may be taking the wrong lesson about tight labor markets, and that the coming labor shortage isn’t cause for celebration—but concern.

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