Draft/Deliberative Podcast

In the 1950s and 1960s, planners weren’t thinking of women when they mapped out mass transit systems. They planned for the (mostly male) commuter patterns of the time – a straight shot from the suburbs to downtown and then back again. You can see this pattern lingering across the country, including in Washington, D.C. As for the women? Presumably they’d be staying at home – but even if they weren’...

The five-year-olds could point northeast without blinking. Lera Boroditsky , now a professor of cognitive science at UC San Diego, could not. Boroditsky studies how language shapes thought. Years ago, she spent time with the Pormpuraaw, an indigenous community in Cape York, Australia. Their language doesn’t use words like “left” or “right” to navigate, but instead only cardinal directions like nor...

On September 29, 2008, I sat stunned in front of the television. The House of Representatives had failed to pass a proposed $700 billion bank bailout plan. The Dow was dropping, second by second, finally landing nearly 778 points below where it had started that morning. Nearly 18 years later, that day — and everything that happened in response — still reverberates in our politics. In recent weeks,...

Welcome to the official launch of the Draft/Deliberative podcast! We have a name (ok, the same one — but we’re sticking with it), three wide-ranging topics, and our first guest(!) coming later this week to discuss what’s happening in the private credit market and the implications. AI and the Labor Market: What States Can Do Now Last week brought another breaking development about the rapid progres...

A few weeks ago, I previewed that my friend and colleague Cyrus Garrett and I are working on a podcast. The wait is over! This is a sneak peek for the (select and very special) Draft/Deliberative subscriber list. Cyrus and I met several years ago through the nonprofit America Achieves. It was the middle of the pandemic, and I was still living in London and getting ready to move with my family back...