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Public Policy
Darts & Letters August 5, 2022

American Chernobyl, Part 2

The Most Poisonous Place in the USA

Hosted by Gordon Katic
Hanford is the most-polluted place in America. In our last episode, you heard about the nuclear plant's largely-forgotten history--how it poisoned the people living downwind. On our season finale: a …

Public Policy

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Interviews with scholars of public policy about their new books.

Economics August 4, 2022

The Effect

An Introduction to Research Design and Causality

Nick Huntington-Klein

Hosted by Peter Lorentzen
The Effect: An Introduction to Research Design and Causality (Routledge, 2021) is about methods for using observational data to make causal inferences. It provides an extensive discussion of causality and …
Darts & Letters August 4, 2022

America's Chernobyl, Part 1

Living in a Poison Town

Hosted by Gordon Katic
In this episode of Cited: What it means to live in a place where your home can give you cancer. Richland, Washington is a company town that sprang up almost …
Education August 3, 2022

Other People's Colleges

The Origins of American Higher Education Reform

Ethan W. Ris

Hosted by Joao Souto-Maior
For well over one hundred years, people have been attempting to make American colleges and universities more efficient and more accountable. Indeed, Ethan Ris argues in Other People's Colleges: The …
Popular Culture August 3, 2022

Teenage Dreams

Girlhood Sexualities in the U.S. Culture Wars

Charlie Jeffries

Hosted by Rebekah Buchanan
Utilizing a breadth of archival sources from activists, artists, and policymakers, Charlie Jeffries' Teenage Dreams: Girlhood Sexualities in the U.S. Culture Wars (Rutgers UP, 2022) examines the race- and class-inflected battles over …
Politics & Polemics August 3, 2022

Goliath

The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy

Matt Stoller

Hosted by Caleb Zakarin
In Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy (Simon & Schuster, 2019), Matt Stoller explains how authoritarianism and populism have returned to American politics for the first time …
Darts & Letters August 2, 2022

Socialise the Series of Tubes

Toward a Democratic Internet

Ben Tarnoff

Hosted by Gordon Katic
Recently a major outage took nearly a third of Canada offline. No phone, no internet… even access to 911 got shut down in some places. So why does one company …
Intellectual History August 1, 2022

Social Science for What? (Part 2 of 2)

Battles over Public Funding for the “Other Sciences” at the National Science Foundation

Mark Solovey

Hosted by Keith Krueger
This is part two of a two part interview. Mark Solovey’s Social Science for What? is essential reading for anyone in either the history of science policy or the history of …
African American Studies August 1, 2022

My Seven Black Fathers

A Young Activist's Memoir of Race, Family, and the Mentors Who Made Him Whole

Will Jawando

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Will Jawando tells a deeply affirmative story of hope and respect for men of color at a time when Black men are routinely stigmatized. As a boy growing up outside …
Gender Studies July 29, 2022

Sex Is as Sex Does

Governing Transgender Identity

Paisley Currah

Hosted by Sohini Chatterjee
Every government agency in the United States, from Homeland Security to Departments of Motor Vehicles, has the authority to make its own rules for sex classification. Many transgender people find …
Environmental Studies July 29, 2022

Water Always Wins

Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge

Erica Gies

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
Trouble with water – increasingly frequent, extreme floods and droughts – is one of the first obvious signs of climate change. Meanwhile, urban sprawl, industrial agriculture and engineered water infrastructure …
Education July 28, 2022

The Privileged Poor

How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students

Anthony Abraham Jack

Hosted by Joao Souto-Maior
The Ivy League looks different than it used to. College presidents and deans of admission have opened their doors—and their coffers—to support a more diverse student body. But is it …
Political Science July 28, 2022

Ugly Freedoms

Elisabeth R. Anker

Hosted by Lilly Goren
Freedom is often considered the cornerstone of the American political project. The 1776 revolutionaries declared it an inalienable right that could neither be taken nor granted, a sacred concept upon …
Education July 27, 2022

Safe Enough Spaces

A Pragmatist's Approach to Inclusion, Free Speech, and Political Correctness on College Campuses

Michael S. Roth

Hosted by Caleb Zakarin
From the president of Wesleyan University, a compassionate and provocative manifesto, Safe Enough Spaces (Yale UP, 2021) on the crises confronting higher education In this bracing book, Michael S. Roth stakes out …
Darts & Letters July 26, 2022

The Grift of Meritocracy

All About Grifting (Inside and Outside of the Academy)

Catherine Liu

Hosted by Gordon Katic
Our society is dominated by grifters. Cheats, cons, frauds: people who don’t really believe what they tell you. They’re just what they need to do to get ahead or to …
Critical Theory July 26, 2022

The Flexibility Paradox

Why Flexible Working Leads To (Self-)Exploitation

Heejung Chung

Hosted by Dave O'Brien
Why are we working harder? In The Flexibility Paradox: Why Flexible Working Leads To (Self-)Exploitation (Polity Press, 2022), Heejung Chung, a professor of sociology and social policy at the University of …
Scholarly Communication July 25, 2022

Effective Altruism: What it is, What it Does, and How You Can Help

A Discussion with Benjamin Todd of "80,000 Hours"

Benjamin Todd

Hosted by Caleb Zakarin
80,000 Hours provides research and support to help students and graduates switch into careers that effectively tackle the world’s most pressing problems. Benjamin Todd is the president and co-founder of …
Intellectual History July 25, 2022

Social Science for What? (Part 1 of 2)

Battles over Public Funding for the "Other Sciences" at the National Science Foundation

Mark Solovey

Hosted by Keith Krueger
This is part one of a two part interview. "The social sciences have prospered best in the federal government where they have been included under broad umbrella classifications of the …
The Future of Higher Education July 22, 2022

The Real World of College

What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be

Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
For The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be (MIT Press, 2022), Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner analyzed in-depth interviews with more than 2,00 …
Darts & Letters July 22, 2022

Exiled in America

About the Lives of Registered Sex Offenders

Chris Drum

Hosted by Darts and Letters
Before Darts and Letters there was a documentary series called Cited. This is one of those documentaries. This episode is about the lives of sex offenders in the USA. The …