About this podcast
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 facts and research that challenge the popular narratives of the day, to better understand why we believe what we believe.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 51 episodes
- The Myth of the Poverty Trap · 54 min · Episode 50In 1981, an estimated 44 percent of the global population lived in extreme poverty. In 2019, that number shrank to just 9 percent. We often think of poverty as a trap, but recent…
- The Death of Feminism · 47 min · Episode 49The ’90s are sometimes described as the beginning of the postfeminist era. But if feminism died 30 years ago, who killed it? The Atlantic staff writer Sophie Gilbert seeks to…
- The Problem of Finding a Marriageable Man · 49 min · Episode 48Women now outnumber men on U.S. college campuses. There’s a common belief that the college gender gap has led to a decrease in marriage rates for college-educated women, but the…
- Minority Rule in America · 53 min · Episode 47The Framers of the U.S. Constitution designed a government that they hoped would be impervious to tyranny of the majority. What they didn’t spend much time worrying about was the…
- Can We Stop Kids From Watching Porn? · 51 min · Episode 46States are cracking down on online porn—but is it working? The researcher Zeve Sanderson explains how age-verification laws backfire, why teens outsmart them, and what that means…
- Did Busing Turn Kids Into Democrats? · 54 min · Episode 45In the summer of 1975, white schoolchildren at some Louisville, Kentucky, public schools were faced with a choice: stay in the school system and undergo busing to integrate the…
- In Search of 100-Year-Old Paper Trails · 50 min · Episode 44Researchers have suggested that lifestyle choices explain the remarkably high number of very old people living healthy lives in regions of the world known as “blue zones.” That…
- Politicians Think Voters Are Dumb. Are They Right? · 60 min · Episode 43What do politicians really think of their voters? A new study looking at 11 different democracies finds that politicians hold an unflattering view of their constituents, while…
- Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein on Abundance · 1 h 20 min · Episode 42Donald Trump won back the White House last year by stoking fears of scarcity. The zero-sum thinking of the right that says there aren’t enough houses or jobs to go around laid…
- The Scientific Controversy That’s Tearing Families Apart · 51 min · Episode 41Shaken baby syndrome has been discredited, criticized, and even classified as “junk science” by a New Jersey judge, so why is it often being treated as settled fact in hospitals…
- Best of: Is Wokeness Dead? · 45 min · Episode 40As the second Trump administration dismantles federal DEI programs and removes trans Americans from the military, the crusade on “wokeness” seems to be a core focus of the…
- The Human-Neanderthal Love-Story Mystery · 53 min · Episode 39If researchers could go back in time 100,000 years, they’d find at least three different types of humans walking the Earth. Today, only the dominant group, Homo sapiens…
- The Real Origins of Public Education · 1 h 3 min · Episode 38Why 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…
- The Great Political Sorting of American Offices · 57 min · Episode 37We’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…
- Why Is One Chicago Neighborhood Twice as Deadly as Another? · 56 min · Episode 36Most 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…
- Why States Took a Gamble on Sports Betting · 53 min · Episode 35Seven 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…
- Is Elon Musk Right About Big Government? · 54 min · Episode 34Government 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 Scientist vs. the Machine · 52 min · Episode 33Editor’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…
- The Political Psychology of NIMBYism · 56 min · Episode 32What 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…
- RFK Jr.'s 'Seeds of Truth' · 51 min · Episode 31Robert 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…
