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Good on Paper

by The Atlantic
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Latest episodes

  • The Myth of the Poverty Trap

    May 13, 2025 · 54 min

    In 1981, an estimated 44 percent of the global population lived in extreme poverty. In 2019, that number shrank to just 9 percent. We often think of poverty as a trap, but recent research shows it doesn’t have to be. The economist and…

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    Women now outnumber men on U.S. college campuses. There’s a common belief that the college gender gap has led to a decrease in marriage rates for college-educated women, but the economist Benny Goldman says the data just don’t support that…

  • Minority Rule in America

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    The Framers of the U.S. Constitution designed a government that they hoped would be impervious to tyranny of the majority. What they didn’t spend much time worrying about was the reverse: a tyranny of the minority. The political scientist…

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    April 15, 2025 · 51 min

    States are cracking down on online porn—but is it working? The researcher Zeve Sanderson explains how age-verification laws backfire, why teens outsmart them, and what that means for the future of internet regulation.  Further…

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  • Did Busing Turn Kids Into Democrats?

    April 8, 2025 · 54 min

    In the summer of 1975, white schoolchildren at some Louisville, Kentucky, public schools were faced with a choice: stay in the school system and undergo busing to integrate the schools, or leave the system entirely. A remarkable new study…

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    Researchers have suggested that lifestyle choices explain the remarkably high number of very old people living healthy lives in regions of the world known as “blue zones.” That research has spawned cookbooks, docuseries, and diets and…

  • Politicians Think Voters Are Dumb. Are They Right?

    March 25, 2025 · 60 min

    What do politicians really think of their voters? A new study looking at 11 different democracies finds that politicians hold an unflattering view of their constituents, while voters view themselves as thoughtful, policy-oriented decision…

  • Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein on Abundance

    March 18, 2025 · 1 hr 21 min

    Donald Trump won back the White House last year by stoking fears of scarcity. The zero-sum thinking of the right that says there aren’t enough houses or jobs to go around laid the groundwork for the forces of illiberalism currently at play…

  • The Scientific Controversy That’s Tearing Families Apart

    March 11, 2025 · 51 min

    Shaken baby syndrome has been discredited, criticized, and even classified as “junk science” by a New Jersey judge, so why is it often being treated as settled fact in hospitals and courtrooms? The neuroscience researcher Cyrille Rossant…

  • Best of: Is Wokeness Dead?

    March 4, 2025 · 45 min

    As the second Trump administration dismantles federal DEI programs and removes trans Americans from the military, the crusade on “wokeness” seems to be a core focus of the president’s second term. In this encore episode, host Jerusalem…

  • The Human-Neanderthal Love-Story Mystery

    February 25, 2025 · 53 min

    If researchers could go back in time 100,000 years, they’d find at least three different types of humans walking the Earth. Today, only the dominant group, Homo sapiens, survives. The scientist Johannes Krause explains how new discoveries…

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About the show

Have you ever heard a commonly held belief or a fast-developing worldview and asked: Is that idea right? Or just good on paper? Each week, host Jerusalem Demsas and a guest take a closer look at the facts and research that challenge the popular narratives of the day, to better understand why we believe what we believe.