Explain It to Me

Latest Episodes:

How does the pandemic end? Nov 16, 2021

Show notes

Now that nearly 60 percent of the US population is fully vaccinated, Dylan, German, and Jerusalem discuss potential exit strategies for policies such as mask mandates and mandatory quarantines. They also talk about what an “endemic” Covid might be like in the US and which aspects of pandemic life might stick around. Finally, they discuss how better access to mental health care could affect crime.

References:

Mandate the vaccines, not masks

The case for ending school mask mandates at the end of the year

The case for keeping mask mandates

Emily Oster on kids and masks

The Black Death and its Consequences for the Jewish Community in Tàrrega

Against “deep cleaning” surfaces for COVID

Vaccines are coming along for children under 5

Do booster shots make vaccinating the world harder?

White paper of the week: Better access to outpatient psychiatric care reduces crime

Cognitive-behavioral therapy reduced crime in Liberia

Hosts:

Dylan Matthews (@dylanmatt), senior correspondent, Vox

German Lopez (@germanrlopez), senior correspondent, Vox

Jerusalem Demsas (@jerusalemdemsas), policy reporter, Vox

Credits:

Sofi LaLonde, producer & engineer

Libby Nelson, editorial adviser

Amber Hall, deputy editorial director of talk podcasts

Want to support The Weeds? Please consider making a donation to Vox: bit.ly/givepodcasts

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Reshaping America’s cities Nov 12, 2021

Show notes

Vox policy reporter Jerusalem Demsas talks with the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) about how the future of remote work could reshape America’s cities, upend US labor markets, and cause fundamental shifts in where people live. Derek and Jerusalem discuss how it would take only a small percentage of remote workers to impact the urban geography of the US — with complicated implications for electoral politics and the climate.

References:

Jerusalem's Q&A with housing economist Enrico Moretti on the future of remote work: Remote work is overrated. America’s supercities are coming back.

Superstar Cities Are in Trouble [The Atlantic]

How America Lost Its Mojo [The Atlantic]

The Coronavirus is Creating a Huge, Successful Experiment in Working From Home [The Atlantic]

Where Americans Are Moving [Bloomberg]

Could a Heartland visa help struggling regions? [Economic Innovation Group]

Host:

Jerusalem Demsas (@jerusalemdemsas), policy reporter, Vox

Credits:

Sofi LaLonde, producer & engineer

Libby Nelson, editorial adviser

Amber Hall, deputy editorial director of talk podcasts

Want to support The Weeds? Please consider making a donation to Vox: bit.ly/givepodcasts

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pass the SALT? Nov 10, 2021

Show notes

Dylan, Jerusalem, and Dara discuss congressional Democrats’ efforts to uncap the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, and how the party found itself proposing a massive tax cut for high-income households. They also dive into the deduction’s stated purpose (encouraging states to spend on social programs) and talk about other programs that could encourage states to invest in health and education. Finally, they examine a white paper showing that domestic violence crimes didn’t increase during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

References:

The state and local tax deduction, explained [Vox]

SALT cap repeal would overwhelmingly benefit high income households [Tax Policy Center]

Reconciliation may deliver a tax cut to the rich [Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget]

5-Year SALT cap repeal would be costliest part of Build Back Better [Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget]

Senators Menendez and Sanders show the way forward on the SALT cap [Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy]

Easy on the SALT: A qualified defense of the deduction for state and local taxes [Daniel J. Hemel, University of Chicago Law School]

Congress can help state and local governments prepare for a rainy day without repealing the SALT cap [Tax Policy Center]

What you don’t know about fiscal federalism can hurt you [Milken Institute Review]

Progressive politics from the ground up [CommonWealth Magazine]

California is making liberals squirm [The New York Times]

Effects of COVID-19 shutdowns on domestic violence in US cities [Amalia R. Miller, Carmit Segal, and Melissa K. Spencer, National Bureau of Economic Research]

One explanation for conflicting reports on domestic violence during the pandemic [Aaron Chalfin, Twitter]

Hosts:

Dylan Matthews (@dylanmatt), senior correspondent, Vox

Jerusalem Demsas (@jerusalemdemsas), policy reporter, Vox

Dara Lind (@dlind), immigration reporter, ProPublica

Credits:

Sofi LaLonde, producer & engineer

Libby Nelson, editorial adviser

Amber Hall, deputy editorial director of talk podcasts

Want to support The Weeds? Please consider making a donation to Vox: bit.ly/givepodcasts

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Most Dangerous Branch: Covid-19 v. The Constitution Nov 05, 2021

Show notes

Vox senior correspondent Ian Millhiser talks to law professor Nicholas Bagley about the pandemic — and how the courts are undermining the government's ability to respond to emergencies. They discuss the constitutionality of vaccine mandates, religious exemptions to public health laws, and court decisions undermining the power of public health agencies.

References:

Delegation at the Founding (Columbia Law Review)

The Supreme Court’s coming war with Joe Biden, explained

Religious conservatives have won a revolutionary victory in the Supreme Court

A New Supreme Court case could gut the government’s power to fight climate change

Hosts:

Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser)

Credits:

Sofi LaLonde, producer and engineer

Libby Nelson, editorial adviser

Amber Hall, deputy editorial director of talk podcasts

Want to support The Weeds? Please consider making a donation to Vox: bit.ly/givepodcasts

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Is Facebook really that bad? Nov 02, 2021

Show notes

Dylan, German, and Dara talk about Facebook and the controversy surrounding it in recent weeks. They cover just how much — and how little — we know about Facebook’s impact on the world and talk about whether there are good policy solutions to Facebook’s problems. For the white paper of the week, they break down a study on free school lunch programs.

References:

Hosts:

Dylan Matthews (@dylanmatt), senior correspondent, Vox

German Lopez (@germanrlopez), senior correspondent, Vox

Dara Lind (@dlind), immigration reporter, ProPublica

Credits:

Sofi LaLonde, producer & engineer

Libby Nelson, editorial advisor

Amber Hall, deputy editorial director of talk podcasts

Want to support The Weeds? Please consider making a donation to Vox: bit.ly/givepodcasts

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Housing policy, but make it British Oct 29, 2021

Show notes

America’s housing market is failing to meet the needs of most Americans. Rents have skyrocketed, homeownership is slipping out of grasp for young and other first-time homebuyers, and policymakers have struggled to meet the moment. But we’re not alone. The UK is also facing a dire housing shortage, one that is leading to skyrocketing rents and home prices. Usually, the solution to this problem is pushing higher levels of government to step in where local government has failed, but today’s guest, John Myers, the co-founder of London YIMBY, thinks his country should go in the opposite direction: more local.

References:

More Housing? YIMBY, Please (Bloomberg)

Strong Suburbs: Enabling streets to control their own development (Policy Exchange)

Seoul searching – does the Korean capital have the solution to the housing crisis? (CapX)

How Houston Achieved Lot Size Reform (Planetizen)

California is ending a rule that helped cause its housing crisis (Vox)

Hosts:

Jerusalem Demsas (@jerusalemdemsas), policy reporter, Vox

Credits:

Sofi LaLonde, producer & engineer

Libby Nelson, editorial adviser

Amber Hall, deputy editorial director of talk podcasts

Want to support The Weeds? Please consider making a donation to Vox: bit.ly/givepodcasts

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The case for and against open borders Oct 26, 2021

Show notes

Dylan, German, and Jerusalem get together to discuss one of the world’s least likely but most interesting utopian ideas: open borders. They discuss the moral and economic logic for making it easy to move to and work in different countries, and the political constraints that make such an idea anathema in most rich countries. Also, they discuss a new paper about how housing regulation is making it hard for Americans to move to where they’d get the best jobs.

References:

Bryan Caplan’s case for open borders, on Vox and in comic book form

Matt Yglesias’s case for more immigration

Michael Clemens’s economic case for broader migration

A review of the evidence on voter backlash to immigration

Angela Nagle’s leftist case against open borders

Arlie Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land

Jerusalem on the intersection of refugee policy and housing policy

”Angela Merkel Was Right” by NYT's Michelle Goldberg

“Does Immigration Produce a Public Backlash or Public Acceptance? Time-Series, Cross-Sectional Evidence from Thirty European Democracies”

White Paper: “Location, Location, Location” by David Card, Jesse Rothstein, and Moises Yi

Hosts:

Dylan Matthews (@dylanmatt), senior correspondent, Vox

German Lopez (@germanrlopez), senior correspondent, Vox

Jerusalem Demsas (@jerusalemdemsas), policy reporter, Vox

Credits:

Sofi LaLonde, producer & engineer

Libby Nelson, editorial advisor

Amber Hall, deputy editorial director of talk podcasts

Want to support The Weeds? Please consider making a donation to Vox: bit.ly/givepodcasts

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Most Dangerous Branch: A well-regulated militia Oct 22, 2021

Show notes

Vox senior correspondent Ian Millhiser talks with law professor Joseph Blocher and historian Carol Anderson about the Second Amendment, the triumph of the NRA's vision for that amendment, and an upcoming Supreme Court case that endangers more than a century of American gun control laws.

References:

The Positive Second Amendment Rights, Regulation, and the Future of Heller, Joseph Blocher

The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America, Carol Anderson

Hosts:

Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser), senior correspondent, Vox

Credits:

Sofi LaLonde, producer & engineer

Libby Nelson, editorial advisor

Amber Hall, deputy editorial director of talk podcasts

Want to support The Weeds? Please consider making a donation to Vox: bit.ly/givepodcasts

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Is inflation out of control? Oct 19, 2021

Show notes

Dylan, German, and Dara talk about the whopping 5.4 percent inflation rate the Consumer Price Index estimated last week, what it means, and if inflation is going to get worse. They dig into a paper out of the Federal Reserve arguing that we're thinking about inflation all wrong. And they close out with a fascinating new study on what the Great Migration meant for African Americans who moved northward.

References:

Ben Casselman explains where prices are rising

Why looking at “trimmed” inflation measures can be useful

Neil Irwin from the New York Times on “shadow inflation”

Back when Dylan was less worried about inflation

JW Mason explains why “America’s inflation debate is fundamentally confused”

Jeremy Rudd, "Why Do We Think That Inflation Expectations Matter for Inflation? (And Should We?)"

Ricardo Reis’s critique of the Rudd paper; Joe Gagnon’s critique of the Rudd paper

Rudd and Blinder on the oil explanation for the inflation in the 1970s

This week’s white paper: Ellora Derenoncourt, "Can you move to opportunity? Evidence from the Great Migration"

Leah Boustan's book on the economic effects of the Great Migration on migrants and those left behind

Hosts:

Dylan Matthews (@dylanmatt), senior correspondent, Vox

German Lopez (@germanrlopez), senior correspondent, Vox

Dara Lind (@dlind), immigration reporter, ProPublica

Credits:

Sofi LaLonde, producer & engineer

Libby Nelson, editorial adviser

Amber Hall, deputy editorial director of talk podcasts

Want to support The Weeds? Please consider making a donation to Vox: bit.ly/givepodcasts

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The home care fight in Congress Oct 15, 2021

Show notes

Joe Biden has proposed a landmark $400 billion expansion of funding for home and community-based services (HCBS), the part of Medicaid that funds support services for older adults and people with disabilities living at home rather than in institutions. But with Congress fighting over which of Biden's priorities to cut to appease moderate Democrats, that proposal could be in peril.

Mia Ives-Rublee is a longtime disability rights activist who helped organize the Women's March in 2017 and now serves as director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress. She spoke with Vox's Dylan Matthews about how HCBS works now, and how Democrats' plans for additional funding would change it.

References: