The Impact

By Vox

Society & Culture

What's The Impact about?

In Washington, the story often ends when Congress passes a law. For The Impact, that’s where the story begins. Each season, Sarah Kliff investigates the way policy shapes people’s lives. This season, she’s crisscrossing the country to explore how cities and states are trying to solve our country’s biggest problems. Produced by Vox and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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LAST EPISODE

Introducing Land of the Gia...

07.03.2020

In the new season of Land of the Giants, Recode's Peter Kafka and Rani Molla examine how Netflix has disrupted entertainment and completely changed the way we watch TV. Listen to the first episode and then subscribe to Land of ...

The Impact episodes:

07.03.2020 Introducing Land of the Giants: The Netflix Effect In the new season of Land of the Giants, Recode's Peter Kafka and Rani Molla examine how Netflix has disrupted entertainment and completely changed the way we watch TV. Listen to the first episode and then subscribe to Land of ...
06.10.2020 The Toll In this bonus, chat episode of The Impact, Jillian is joined by Vox's Matt Yglesias and Course Correction's Nelufar Hedayat to talk about how the data collected on Covid-19 deaths will help shape our world, now and in the future. ...
02.19.2020 Where the US already has a border wall Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora, are known as “Ambos Nogales” — “both Nogaleses.” The city straddles the border of Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. For a long time, a hole-riddled chain-link fence ran along that border. Residents could cross back and ...
02.12.2020 Free tuition is not enough Free college tuition seems like a solution to so many problems. After all, the price of tuition is the No. 1 reason students give for leaving school. And when students don’t finish, they can’t access the many benefits of a ...
02.05.2020 Family Dollar(s) Natasha Razouk wants to give her 7-year-old the best possible life. She buys big boxes of fresh tomatoes at Costco, and she gets her daughter warm boots, a good coat, and school supplies each year. But all that is expensive. ...
01.31.2020 Saving Private Health Care Janet Feldman has been paying for private insurance for years. She does so even though Australia has a robust public insurance option. But when she was diagnosed with a serious illness, her doctor told her not to use the private ...
01.29.2020 How Taiwan got Medicare-for-All In the early 1990s, the government of Taiwan decided to try an experiment. In just nine months, they completely revolutionized their health care system, covering every Taiwanese citizen through a single-payer program. It’s a system that looks very similar to ...
01.22.2020 Green New Germany Two decades ago, Hans-Josef Fell quietly started a revolution in his home country, with a law that looks a lot like part of the Green New Deal endorsed by many Democratic candidates. That law transformed Germany, and that has the ...
01.15.2020 After conviction, a second chance President Gerald Ford took office during one of the most difficult times in the country’s history. In August 1974, the US had just lived through Watergate, President Richard Nixon’s resignation, and more than a decade of divisive fighting over its ...
01.08.2020 How to stop an epidemic Sen. Elizabeth Warren is running for president with a plan to fight the opioid epidemic. Her legislation would dramatically expand access to addiction treatment and overdose prevention, and it would cost $100 billion over 10 years. Addiction experts agree that ...
01.06.2020 The Impact of 2020 In this season preview, Vox’s Jillian Weinberger calls a fellow native Ohioan to discuss the perils of Swing State pride during presidential elections, and their frustration with the way election coverage casts their home state. Facing yet another presidential election, ...
12.16.2019 New season, new host Sarah Kliff returns for a farewell and a handoff to The Impact's new host, Jillian Weinberger, who has a preview of what's to come in our next season. If you're not already, subscribe to The Impact on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, ...
12.14.2018 Denmark’s paternity leave problem Denmark gives new parents nearly a year off work after they have a baby. Most of that time can be taken by either parent — but dads take barely any time at all. That has consequences for Danish men and ...
12.07.2018 The incredible shrinking city For decades, Memphis grew by bringing its suburbs into the city limits. City officials thought this suburb-gobbling policy would be an economic boon-- that it would bring in tax revenue. Instead, the policy was an economic disaster, especially for the ...
11.30.2018 Leaving Baltimore behind Baltimore is running a unique housing experiment that gives longtime residents vouchers to leave the city’s poorest, most violent neighborhoods for new homes in more affluent suburbs nearby. In this episode, we follow a mom named Alethea through this policy ...
11.23.2018 What schools look like when we fund them fairly All across the country, it seems like a given: places with more expensive houses have nicer schools because they can pay higher taxes. That’s just how education seems to work. Except in Vermont. Two decades ago, the state passed a ...
11.16.2018 Food fight! 22% of New Yorkers are obese. In Chicago it is more than a quarter of the city. Obesity puts people at risk of diabetes, heart disease, even certain kinds of cancer. A couple of years ago, both cities decided to ...
11.09.2018 Deportation without representation While the federal government is trying to deport as many immigrants as possible, Oakland, California, is running a policy experiment to help immigrants stay in their communities. The city is giving as many immigrants as possible attorneys in court, free ...
11.02.2018 Sit in a circle. Talk to other pregnant women. Save your baby’s life? A decade ago, South Carolina was one of the most dangerous places in America for a baby to be born. But now, it’s taking an unconventional approach to fixing it: having pregnant women sit in circles with other pregnant women ...
11.02.2018 Is fixing campaign finance as easy as giving everyone $100? Seattle is running the country’s most radical experiment to fix campaign finance. Last year, the city sent every resident $100 that they could donate to the local campaign of their choice. Seattle flooded its election with small donations to try ...
10.26.2018 Season 2: The most interesting policy experiments across the country The Impact’s second season focuses on states and cities as laboratories of democracy. Unlike our gridlocked Congress, local governments are constantly implementing exciting new policy. This season, the team crisscrossed the country to find the most interesting policy experiments and ...
01.08.2018 Help us make season 2! We're making season 2, and we need your help! We want to know about local policy experiments from around the country. These can be at the state, county, or city level, and can cover any kind of policy—environmental or housing ...
12.04.2017 How California saves moms from dying in childbirth The United States has an astoundingly high maternal death rate. It is three times higher than the UK, eight times higher than Norway, and still climbing. But California does way better than the rest of the country. Over the last ...
11.27.2017 The black robe effect What is the best way to care for patients with severe mental illness? The United States has struggled with this question for decades. In 1963, President Kennedy signed a law that was supposed to transfer patients with severe mental illness ...
11.20.2017 This robotic pelvis reduces teen pregnancy American women are changing up their birth control. The use of IUDs and implants has increased 6000% in the United States since 2002. That's the result of specific policy choices made in Washington and in state houses. These policies have ...
11.13.2017 The controversial way doctors fight pain without opioids On this episode of The Impact, we’re looking at a possible future for pain treatment. It’s an idea known as “pain acceptance,” and in the wake of the opioid epidemic, it is gaining traction among American doctors. Music from Podington ...
11.06.2017 The policies that created the opioid epidemic There's a well-known narrative about the opioid epidemic: pharmaceutical companies and dirty doctors pushed misinformation and addictive drugs on patients. But there's also a policy story here, about well-meaning doctors who tried to find the best solution for their patients ...
10.30.2017 It’s time to face the fax Why are fax machines still such a staple of American health care? We talk to a pair of policy makers who hatched a plan to replace paper files and fax machines with electronic medical records. We explain why that plan ...
10.23.2017 Car crash hospitals vs. plane crash hospitals Central line infections can be deadly. And they used to be extremely common: just a decade ago, hundreds of thousands of patients got them every year. Now, that number is closer to 9,000 annually. That's still high, but it's a ...
10.16.2017 The curious case of the $629 Band-Aid How does a Band-Aid wind up costing so much money? Why are American health care prices so incredibly high? Vox’s new podcast, the Impact, explores how policy affects real lives. This season, we’re focusing on healthcare, and we wanted to ...
10.09.2017 Introducing The Impact The Impact is a show about how policy affects people. In Washington, the story often ends when Congress passes a law. For us, that’s where the story begins. We follow the choices that legislators, leaders, and researchers make out into ...

The Impact

What's The Impact about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Impact episodes:

Introducing Land of the Giants: The Netflix Effect

The Toll

Where the US already has a border wall

Free tuition is not enough

Family Dollar(s)

Saving Private Health Care

How Taiwan got Medicare-for-All

Green New Germany

After conviction, a second chance

How to stop an epidemic

The Impact of 2020

New season, new host

Denmark’s paternity leave problem

The incredible shrinking city

Leaving Baltimore behind

What schools look like when we fund them fairly

Food fight!

Deportation without representation

Sit in a circle. Talk to other pregnant women. Save your baby’s life?

Is fixing campaign finance as easy as giving everyone $100?

Season 2: The most interesting policy experiments across the country

Help us make season 2!

How California saves moms from dying in childbirth

The black robe effect

This robotic pelvis reduces teen pregnancy

The controversial way doctors fight pain without opioids

The policies that created the opioid epidemic

It’s time to face the fax

Car crash hospitals vs. plane crash hospitals

The curious case of the $629 Band-Aid

Introducing The Impact

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