Rafael Mangual joins Kay Hymowitz to discuss evidence suggesting that children are often better off when criminal parents are imprisoned—the subject of Mangual's story, " Fathers, Families, and Incarceration ," from the Winter 2020 Issue of City Journal . A common criticism of incarceration in the United States, notes Mangual, is that it harms children by taking parents or siblings out of their homes. But recent studies show that children living with a parent who engages in high levels of antiso...
Mar 04, 2020•31 min
John Tierney joins Brian Anderson to discuss the campaign to ban the use of plastic products and the flawed logic behind the recycling movement—the subjects of Tierney’s story, " The Perverse Panic over Plastic ," from the Winter 2020 Issue of City Journal . Hundreds of cities and eight states have outlawed or regulated single-use plastic bags. But according to Tierney, the plastic panic doesn't make sense. Plastic bags are the best environmental choice at the supermarket, not the worst, and cit...
Feb 26, 2020•20 min
Christopher Rufo joins Brian Anderson to discuss drug addiction and homelessness in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Skid Row, the subject of Rufo's story from the Winter 2020 Issue of City Journal , " The Moral Crisis of Skid Row ." "They call Los Angeles the City of Angels," writes Rufo, "but it seems that even here, within the five-by-ten-block area of Skid Row, the city contains an entire cosmology—angels and demons, sinners and saints, plagues and treatments." To address the growing public-h...
Feb 19, 2020•20 min
Catesby Leigh joins Seth Barron to discuss President Trump's draft executive order to give priority to classical-style architecture in the design of federal courthouses, agency headquarters, and other federal office buildings. The classical style has inspired the most revered and popular buildings in the country—the U.S. Capitol, the White House, and the Supreme Court. But as Leigh reports , new federal rules after World War II enabled modernist styles of design, such as Brutalism and Deconstruc...
Feb 12, 2020•26 min
Mark Mills joins Brian Anderson to discuss the enormous energy demands of the world's modern information infrastructure—"the Cloud"—the subject of his new book, Digital Cathedrals . "Tech companies confront an inconvenient fact," writes Mills. "The global cloud uses more energy than is produced by all the planet's wind and solar farms combined." In fact, digital traffic has become the fastest-growing source of energy use. While nearly every tech company has pledged to transition to renewable ene...
Feb 05, 2020•17 min
Karol Markowicz joins Kay Hymowitz to discuss raising young children in New York City. "Raising a family in the city is just too hard," concluded The Atlantic 's Derek Thompson last summer. But in Park Slope, one of New York's most desirable neighborhoods, thousands of families thrive. Still, parents must navigate a host of challenges unique to urban life, including pricey housing, complex schooling options, and sometimes-unfriendly public spaces....
Jan 29, 2020•36 min
Allison Schrager joins Brian Anderson to discuss how risk propels economic growth and why government efforts that go too far to mitigate risk undermine America’s economic vitality. “Risk, for better and worse,” writes Schrager for City Journal , “is at the heart of economic growth, and successfully apportioning it—not avoiding it—is the key to prosperity.” While government has a role to play in managing risk, the U.S. economy has thrived by trusting markets to allocate it efficiently. Overly int...
Jan 22, 2020•13 min
Steven Malanga joins Seth Barron to discuss efforts to restrict dollar stores in cities across the country—the subject of Malanga’s popular story for City Journal , “ Unjust Deserts .” For nearly 20 years, “food deserts”—neighborhoods without supermarkets—have captured the attention of public officials, activists, and the media, who often blame the situation on dollar-discount stores in these areas. These stores, it’s claimed, drive out supermarkets with their low prices and saturate poor neighb...
Jan 15, 2020•18 min
Manhattan Institute's Michael Hendrix interviews Mayer Brown partner Andrew Pincus, the lead attorney in a lawsuit taking on New York State’s sweeping rent-regulation laws. In 2019, New York strengthened its already-strict rent regulations, while state legislatures in Oregon and California approved caps on rent increases. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders have even proposed national rent-control policies. Pincus explains what's wrong with rent control, from viola...
Jan 08, 2020•29 min
Naomi Schaefer Riley joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss the state of the American child-welfare services, and describes and what some nonprofits are doing to improve foster care across the country. Nationally, Riley notes in City Journal, about 444,000 children are in foster-care. And in many states, "officials report a severe shortage of families to take in these children." On top of that, disturbing incidents like the death of Zymere Perkins in New York highlight the failure o...
Dec 31, 2019•15 min
Merry Christmas from the editors of City Journal . In another special episode of 10 Blocks, editor Brian Anderson extends his best wishes to all our listeners during the holiday season, reflects on a year of terrific guests, and more. If you're interested in supporting the Manhattan Institute and City Journal , please visit our website .
Dec 23, 2019•4 min
In a special holiday edition of 10 Blocks, Timothy Goeglein joins City Journal assistant editor Charles McElwee to discuss how people of faith can help renew American society—themes explored in his new book, American Restoration: How Faith, Family, and Personal Sacrifice Can Heal Our Nation . Coauthored with Craig Osten, American Restoration calls for a revival of spiritual values in America and offers a roadmap for people of faith to engage with our modern culture—especially at the local level....
Dec 18, 2019•34 min
Amity Shlaes discusses the economic history of the 1960s and the efforts of Presidents Johnson and Nixon to eradicate poverty—the subjects of her just-published book, Great Society: A New History . The 1960s were a momentous period, from the Civil Rights Movement to the Vietnam War, but Shlaes's book focuses on the incredibly ambitious government programs of the era, which expanded the social safety net beyond anything contemplated before. Overall, the Great Society programs, Shlaes writes, came...
Dec 11, 2019•22 min
Seth Barron talks with four City Journal contributors— Rafael Mangual , Eric Kober , Ray Domanico , and Steven Malanga —about former New York City mayor and now presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg's record on crime, education, economic development, and more. After years of teasing a presidential run, Bloomberg has entered the race for the 2020 Democratic nomination. Just a week before his official announcement, he made headlines by reversing his long-standing support of controversial policing...
Dec 04, 2019•52 min
Howard Husock interviews four remarkable leaders of nonprofit groups who were recently honored as part of Manhattan Institute's Civil Society Awards and Civil Society Fellows Program . Manhattan Institute and City Journal have long sought to support and encourage civil-society organizations and leaders who, with the help of volunteers and private philanthropy, do so much to help communities address serious social problems. In this edition of the 10 Blocks podcast, Husock speaks with: Luma Mufleh...
Nov 27, 2019•1 hr 10 min
Charles Marohn joins Michael Hendrix to discuss why the current approach to suburban development isn't working—the subject of his new book, Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity . "Strong Towns," notes Aaron Renn in his review of the book for City Journal , "resulted from [Marohn's] discovery that the highway projects he designed showed a negative return on investment." Marohn has dedicated his career to helping the country's older suburbs avoid such costly mistakes...
Nov 18, 2019•26 min
Kay S. Hymowitz joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss Pennsylvania’s Williamson College of the Trades, a three-year school for young men offering a debt-free path to high-paying work—and the life skills to help them get there. “Trade schools” have long had a stigma in American culture, but Williamson is no ordinary trade school: students wake up early to the sound of reveille and attend academic classes in coats and ties. As Hymowitz writes in City Journal ’s autumn issue , “With i...
Nov 13, 2019•18 min
Music critic and historian Ted Gioia joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss the 4,000-year history of music as a global source of power, change, and upheaval—topics explored in his new book, Music: A Subversive History . The music business is a $10 billion industry today. But according to Gioia , innovative songs have always come from outsiders—the poor, the unruly, and the marginalized. The culmination of his decades of writing about music, Gioia's new book is a celebration of the ...
Nov 06, 2019•23 min
Stian Westlake joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss the future of productivity and how institutions and policymakers can adapt to the new "intangible" economy. Throughout history, as documented in the book Capitalism Without Capital by Westlake and coauthor Jonathan Haskel, firms have invested in physical goods like machines and computers. As society has grown richer, companies have invested increasingly in "intangible" assets: research and development, branding, organizational de...
Oct 30, 2019•23 min
Rafael A. Mangual joins Seth Barron to discuss New York City's plan to replace the jail complex on Rikers Island with four borough-based jails and what it could mean for public order in the city. New York City jails currently house a daily average of about 8,000 people, in a city of 8 million residents. Under the new plan, the borough-based jails (once constructed) will be able to house 3,300 people—less than half the city's average daily jail population today. As Barron writes , the new target ...
Oct 23, 2019•26 min
Beth Osborne , director of Transportation for America, joins City Journal contributing editor Nicole Gelinas to discuss the state of U.S. infrastructure and how federal spending could be used more effectively to improve safety and reduce fiscal waste. The federal government spends between $40 billion and $60 billion on transportation infrastructure annually. In recent years, congressional leaders and the White House have pushed a $2 trillion plan to upgrade roads, bridges, and more. But such pro...
Oct 16, 2019•30 min
Heather Mac Donald joins Seth Barron to discuss homelessness on the streets of San Francisco and the city’s wrongheaded attempts to solve the problem. "San Francisco has conducted a real-life experiment in what happens when a society stops enforcing bourgeois norms of behavior," writes Mac Donald in City Journal . For nearly three decades, the Bay Area has been a magnet for the homeless. Now the situation is growing dire, as residents and visitors experience near-daily contact with mentally dist...
Oct 09, 2019•31 min
Howard Husock joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss Husock's new book, Who Killed Civil Society? The Rise of Big Government and Decline of Bourgeois Norms . Government-run social programs funded with tax dollars are thought to be the "solution" to America's social ills. But in his new book, Who Killed Civil Society? , Husock shows that historically, it was voluntary organizations and civic society, operating independently from government and its mandates, that best promoted the hab...
Oct 02, 2019•25 min
John Tierney joins City Journal assistant editor Charles McElwee to discuss Pittsburgh's recent resurgence. "If you want to see how to revive a city—and how not to," John Tierney writes, "go to Pittsburgh." Pittsburgh has transformed itself from the Steel City to central Pennsylvania's hub of "eds" and "meds." But before that could happen, the city nearly destroyed itself under various misguided urban plans dating back to the 1950s. Tierney's essay, "A Renaissance Runs Through It," appears in Ci...
Sep 24, 2019•29 min
Edward L. Glaeser discusses how the proliferation of unfair laws and regulations is walling off opportunity in America's greatest cities at the Manhattan Institute’s 2019 James Q. Wilson Lecture . We like to think of American cities as incubators of opportunity, and this has often been true—but today's successful city-dwellers are making it harder for others to follow their example. In this year's Wilson Lecture, Glaeser addresses the conflict between entrenched interests and newcomers in its ec...
Sep 18, 2019•39 min
City Journal contributing editor Christopher Rufo joins Brian Anderson to discuss an increasingly influential progressive faction in many cities—one that seeks to rebuild the urban environment to achieve a wide range of environmentalist and social-justice goals. According to Rufo , these "New Left urbanists" rally around controversial (and often dubious) ideas like banning cars and constructing new public housing projects. While all urban residents want to improve their city's quality-of-life, r...
Sep 11, 2019•29 min
Labor unions have dramatically declined as a percentage of the American workforce over the last 30 years. A new proposal from presidential candidate Bernie Sanders seeks to double union ranks, City Journal senior editor Steven Malanga reports , which would mean adding nearly 15 million new members. Malanga joins associate editor Seth Barron to discuss Senator Sanders's proposal, which would put new restraints on employers, limit workers' rights to opt-out of union membership, and make other chan...
Sep 04, 2019•23 min
Corey Johnson, Speaker of the New York City Council, joins Seth Barron to discuss the state of New York City’s transit system and his plan to break up the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), allowing the city to take control of its buses, subways, bridges, and tunnels. According to Johnson, direct control of the MTA would enhance its responsiveness, accountability, and transparency.
Aug 28, 2019•25 min
Brian Riedl and Shai Akabas discuss the U.S. federal budget, budget negotiations, and why Congress hasn’t addressed the rising national debt—even as it gets worse. The case for a “grand deal” on the budget has never been more evident: within a decade, annual budget deficits are projected to exceed $2 trillion. Entitlement programs are projected to drive trillions in new government debt over the next few decades. Yet increasing partisanship and political polarization—both in Washington and among ...
Aug 21, 2019•45 min
James B. Meigs joins Seth Barron to discuss last month's power blackout in Manhattan, California's self-inflicted energy crisis, and potential energy sources for the future. "As power outages go," Meigs writes , "the Broadway Blackout of 2019 was pretty modest." But energy reliability is becoming an issue in states across the country. California's largest power supplier, Meigs reports , recently announced that it will begin shutting down parts of the grid to help reduce the risk of wildfires. En...
Aug 14, 2019•29 min
