Reasonably Optimistic

There’s a lot to complain about in the American political system: Congress lurches from deadline to deadline, presidents claim more and more power and each side of the aisle treats the other as an existential threat. So how did our political system get this way—and what would it take to make it work again?

Host Megan McArdle is joined by Yuval Levin, director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and editor-in-chief of National Affairs. They discuss why Congress no longer rewards negotiation, how primaries and a 50-50 party system fuel polarization, what Trump has changed about the presidency and the Republican Party, and the reforms that could help America move beyond gridlock.

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A viral debate over bringing iced coffee to a job interview may seem trivial. But it points to a bigger divide over what employers are looking for when college degrees, cover letters and résumés reveal less than they used to.

Host Megan McArdle explains why workplace norms still matter, why an interview can be one of the few ways applicants can stand out and what Gen Z workers miss when they begin their careers remotely. She also makes the case for giving young people a little grace.

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Artificial intelligence feels different from previous technological innovations because it can write, reason, analyze and generate ideas. In other words, it can do at least some of the things many white-collar workers thought made them irreplaceable. So, is AI going to eliminate jobs or transform them? And what will it do to the culture of the workplace — and to the way younger workers develop the judgment and expertise they need to build a career?

Fabien Curto Millet, Google’s chief economist, joins host Megan McArdle to discuss. Google recently examined 15 million interactions with its AI tools to understand how people are actually using this tech at work and in their everyday lives. Millet breaks down what Google's findings could mean for the future of work.

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What do you do when your research leads to a conclusion that challenges conventional wisdom? You can publish it and risk the backlash — or quietly bury the findings and move on to safer work. The Carob Trust Prize, a new $1 million award, aims to change that calculation by rewarding academics whose research challenges prevailing orthodoxies and withstands scrutiny. But can money really make telling the truth less costly?

Harvard professor Roland Fryer co-founded the prize after facing that choice himself. He joins host Megan McArdle to discuss the experiences that shaped his work and the pressures that discourage scholars from pursuing unpopular findings. They also examine his research on racial achievement gaps and failing schools, as well as Nikole Hannah-Jones’s recent New York Times essay about sending her daughter to a high-poverty, segregated public school.

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In the decades following World War II, the American right coalesced around fusionism — the idea that individual liberty and limited government could coexist with religious faith and traditional morality. Today, that coalition is divided. After a decade of Trump-era politics, can fusionism bring it back together?

Host Megan McArdle is joined by Stephanie Slade, senior editor at Reason magazine and author of “Fusionism: Liberty, Virtue, and the Future of the American Right.” They explore how fusionism came to shape modern conservatism, why that consensus faded and how President Donald Trump’s rise reveals the coalition’s deepest fault lines. They also ask whether fusionism’s core values of liberty and virtue can still provide common ground in a very different political era.

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