Model Citizen
18 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 3 years ago - ★★★★ - 47 ratingsMODEL CITIZEN is an interview podcast that explores big, new ideas in politics and policy with captivating original thinkers ... premised on the idea that we have a duty as citizens and neighbors to build our mental models of the world with as little error, bias, and lunacy as possible. Guests discuss how they've arrived at their conclusions, mistakes they've made, people and methods they trust and distrust, and how they've changed their minds.
Hosted by WILL WILKINSON, New York Times contributing opinion writer and former US Politics correspondent for The Economist
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Episodes
How Zoning Screws up Everything
April 16, 2021 18:18 - 1 hour - 97.2 MBThis is my question: can we YIMBY harder? Many people are awakening to the enormous costs of restrictive municipal land use and zoning. But what can we do about it? Most assume that restrictive zoning and skyrocketing housing costs are local issues that require local solutions. But as my guest, David Schleicher, makes clear, that's not really true. A few superstar cities choking off housing supply has huge national implications. It creates massive distortions in labor markets and patterns of...
Freedom from the Market
April 05, 2021 20:29 - 1 hour - 92.8 MBNearly everyone agrees that the American system is, in some sense, rigged. If it is, then how did it get that way. Mike Konczal, Director of Progressive Thought at the Roosevelt Institute, a left-leaning think tank, argues that America has come to rely too heavily on markets. In his new book, Freedom from the Market: America's Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand, Konczal pushes back against the idea that "neo-liberal" market dependency is natural, inevitable, or even...
Richard Florida on the Post-Pandemic City
January 30, 2021 05:19 - 49 minutes - 45 MBThis episode marks the beginning of a new chapter for Model Citizen. With the power of a single mighty tweet, I've broken off the shackles of formal institutional affiliation. So we're on our own. Let's just say it's been a hell of a week. In that time, I've launched a daily newsletter, also called Model Citizen, which I've integrated with this podcast. If you'd like to support me, and the burgeoning Model Citizen media empire, please consider subscribing at modelcitizen.substack.com. It's j...
Why Right-Wing Media Loves Lies
January 18, 2021 04:01 - 1 hour - 98.2 MBI never thought I'd see a seditious mob of Americans sack the Capitol building as Congress counted electoral votes. But, then again, I never thought the president of the United States would turn out to be a malignant narcissist who lies about everything all the time. The insurrectionists who sacked the capitol were fueled by lies. One thing that struck me when Trump became president was how other Republican officials didn't seem to care all the much that he lied all the time. By the end of h...
Personality and Partisan Polarization
January 09, 2021 02:11 - 1 hour - 73.1 MBThis week's guest, Christopher Federico, is co-author (along with Christopher Johnston and Howard Lavine) of one of the most illuminating books I've ever read in the field of political psychology, "Open Versus Closed: Personality, Identity, and the Politics of Redistribution." The American electorate is divided by geography, but also personality. "Open Versus Closed" explores the ways in which personality differences do and don't predict our political views. Christopher and I talk about all ...
The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World
December 17, 2020 21:57 - 1 hour - 100 MBIn my most philosophical moods (and I'm usually in a pretty philosophical mood) I tend to see pretty much anything as a window onto the cosmos. But I'd never considered my cotton slacks as a window onto the forward march of human progress. That is, until I read Virginia Postrel's new book, "The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World." Did you know that the microbial theory of disease starts with silkworm farming? That the origins of computing have something to do with the algo...
The Density Divide: Jazz Odyssey Monologue Edition
December 11, 2020 19:58 - 1 hour - 108 MBThe presidential election once again made clear that there is a striking and surprising relationship between population density and party vote share. The salience of the American electorate's polarization on density renewed interest in my 2019 paper, The Density Divide: Urbanization, Polarization, and Populist Backlash, which explores how the logic of long-term urbanization explains the density divide by spatially segregating the national population along the lines of ethnicity, personality...
Danielle Allen on Pandemic Policy and Constitutional Democracy
December 04, 2020 01:36 - 52 minutes - 47.7 MBAmerican democracy has gone more than a little awry. Nearly 300,000 Americans are dead in no small measure due to the failure of Congress to implement a nationwide testing and tracing regime. But this failure hasn't much hurt the incumbent Republican Party. The GOP gained ground in the House. They may hold their Senate Majority. Trump wasn't repudiated nearly as decisively as many of us wish, and he's still out there spreading outrageous lies about the credibility of the election he lost. ...
Reactionary Conservative Thought after Trump
November 20, 2020 20:22 - 1 hour - 89 MBDonald Trump may be going away, but the coalition, movement, and intellectual tendencies that grew up around him aren't. For many, Trump seemed to herald a new dawn for reactionary conservative nationalism political thought aligned against pluralism, social justice and even liberal democracy itself. In a fascinating series of essays for Niskanen and the Bulwark, political theorist Laura Field has been probing to the philosophical underpinnings of the emerging illiberal right more insightfull...
Trust in a Polarized Age
November 13, 2020 05:00 - 2 hours - 124 MBSuccessful societies run on trust, but trust in America's institutions and electoral system is in the pits. Partisans distrust each other and polarization has turned politics into war. Kevin Vallier's new book Trust in a Polarized Age applies empirical research on the causes and consequences social and political trust to develop a distinctive conception of liberalism. He offers a novel argument for a number of core liberal rights, free markets, the welfare state, and democratic institutions ...
Will Party Unity Break Down After Trump?
November 02, 2020 17:08 - 1 hour - 67.9 MBPRE-ELECTION SPECIAL EPISODE! Opposition to Donald Trump has been a unifying force for Democrats. Progressive and moderate factions of the party set aside their differences during the race, but what happens if Joe Biden wins? How do Democrats maintain cohesion when progressives are gaining strength and formerly Republican college-educated whites stream into the party? What happens to a post-Trump GOP? Does it continue to hang together or split up into rival factions vying for control of th...
Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?
October 29, 2020 14:29 - 1 hour - 62.5 MBIf winning the most votes made you president, Joe Biden would have it in the bag by now. But voters don't get to pick the president here in America. The Electoral College does. Which is why Biden's supporters can't rest easy, even though it's a lock that he'll win the popular vote. Donald Trump, who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, owes his presidency this baffling, archaic kludge of an institution and he's still got an outside shot at a second term because of it. So why did ...
A Plan for Faster, Fairer Economic Growth
October 18, 2020 03:15 - 1 hour - 78.3 MB"Faster Growth, Fairer Growth: Policies for a High Road, High Performance Economy" by Brink Lindsey and Samuel Hammond
The Fight Over "Defund the Police"
October 09, 2020 21:17 - 1 hour - 79.2 MBWhat do people really mean when they say they want to "defund the police," and who wants to do it? In a new paper, "Reconstructing Justice: Race, Generational Divides, and the Fight Over 'Defund the Police'" this week's guest, Michael Fortner, shows, among other things, that differences in opinion over police reform reflect age differences more than racial differences. We talk about how living through the crime wave of the '80s and '90s continues to affect the views of older Americans, black ...
The Roots of America's Lawless Immigration Regime
October 02, 2020 04:33 - 1 hour - 81.2 MBIn cities around the country, citizens assembled to demand racial justice and an end to police brutality have been met with ... border patrol agents? Why are CBP agents clubbing and gassing peaceful citizen protesters many, many miles from any border? Why are tens of thousands of completely innocent migrants, who pose no danger to anyone, imprisoned in abusive and subhuman conditions in a sprawling network of camps and detention centers? In her new book, "Illegal: How America’s Lawless Immigr...
Matthew Yglesias on "One Billion Americans"
September 25, 2020 02:37 - 1 hour - 68.3 MBAbout 330 million people inhabit the good ol' US of A. Seems like a lot. But is it enough? Policy journalist and Vox.com co-founder Matthew Yglesias argues it's not even close. In his new book, "One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger," Yglesias argues that if America's going to remain top dog on the geopolitical block and stay a step ahead of rising giants with 10-figure populations, like China and India, we need to double our numbers ... and then some. That means boosting birthr...
Why We Honor the Dishonorable
September 18, 2020 08:23 - 1 hour - 81.8 MBHere's a question we rarely explicitly ask: Who should we honor, celebrate, and remember ... and why? What's the point of it? Scores of statues to confederate soldiers, slaveowners, and other dubious but celebrated characters have been recently toppled from their pedestals. Was this a good idea? Should we worry that we'll forget our history? This week's guest, Jacob T. Levy, argues that the greater risk is that we won't go far enough. We might need to topple a few more statues. We discuss L...
Introducing Model Citizen
September 11, 2020 05:50 - 11 minutes - 10.4 MBA freestyle introduction to Model Citizen with host Will Wilkinson.