The Argument

America's literacy problem is a policy choice. As schools shifted away from phonics toward guessing-based instruction, a generation of kids paid the price. But a quiet reversal is underway in an unexpected place. Mississippi rebuilt reading instruction from the ground up and saw real gains. If it worked there, why are other states so resistant to copying it?

The Argument is a podcast dedicated to honest, unflinching debate about the biggest questions facing democracy, culture, and our future. As the host, Jerusalem Demsas brings together voices across the political spectrum to argue, challenge, and persuade. Each episode...

Duration: 01:22:21

Why do so many people believe immigrants are screwing them even when the evidence says otherwise? Economist Sahil Chinoy joins host Jerusalem Demsas to break down his massive 20,000-person study on zero-sum thinking — the worldview that assumes someone else’s gain must be your loss. 

They dig into how family histories of enslavement and immigration shape attitudes today, why young Americans are so much more zero-sum than older generations, and how economic stagnation fuels a sense of scarcity. They also explore why some policy fights (housing, redistribution, trade) trigger zero-sum instincts more than others, and what can actua...

Duration: 00:51:17

Rising income inequality hurts democracy, health, happiness, and basically anything you can think of … right? 

Sociologist Lane Kenworthy doesn't think so. In his new book Is Inequality The Problem? Kenworthy argued that inequality is overrated as “the” cause of our problems — and discussed why the data pushes him toward a different set of priorities. Host Jerusalem Demsas is skeptical. Together, they dig into happiness, health, and populism, and they discuss why expanding the social welfare state might matter more than obsessing over the 1%.

The Argument is a podcast dedicated to honest, unflinching debate about the biggest q...

Duration: 00:56:29

Climate activists spent a decade arguing that if Democrats passed a huge climate bill, created green jobs, and centered “climate justice,” voters—especially the young—would reward them.

They got their bill: the Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest climate law in U.S. history. Then youth support for Democrats, Republicans tore key pieces out all while red states took the money and blue states made it almost impossible to build wind, solar, or transmission.

In this episode, Jerusalem Demsas talks with Rob Meyer, founding editor of Heatmap News, about what the last few years have revealed...

Duration: 01:17:10

Silicon Valley’s sharp right turn didn’t come out of nowhere. Former tech worker and current tech writer Jasmine Sun walks us through how a once-solidly liberal sector became MAGA-curious. 

We talk about:

The rise of “effective accelerationism” (E/acc)Why parts of the tech elite feel betrayed by the Biden administrationHow backlash to regulation, internal employee revolts, crypto crackdowns, and AI safety debates pushed founders toward Trumpworld 

Sun maps the ideological split between the engineers who see themselves as the last “live players” in American so...

Duration: 01:10:22

What if climate policy can’t survive voters, courts, and NIMBYs?

Bill McKibben is a pioneering climate writer and activist whose books and campaigns helped mainstream the case for rapidly replacing fossil fuels with clean energy. On today's episode, McKibben and host, Jerusalem Demsas, argue about the politics and economics of climate and discuss his new book Here Comes The Sun.

McKibben's case: sun, wind, and batteries are now the cheapest new power on earth and China is sprinting ahead while America stalls. But Demsas is skeptical about McKibben's political strategy, particularly when it comes to...

Duration: 01:17:07

Why is free speech losing ground? From crackdowns on immigrants, protesters, and law firms to campus speech codes, social-media “jawboning,” and government pressure – we're witnessing the erosion of the free speech culture that once defined American democracy.

Greg Lukianoff is the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a free speech organization. In this episode, he and Jerusalem discuss why defending free speech always means defending the unpopular, how bureaucratic cowardice and partisan outrage feed each other, and what a real revival of liberal tolerance would look like. 

The Argument is a podcast...

Duration: 01:15:06

Economics writer Joey Politano joins host Jerusalem Demsas to explain the great tariff comeback story. From bananas and coffee to washing machines and Christmas ornaments, Trump’s new trade war is making life more expensive – but why? 

They unpack how tariffs actually work, why Trump’s obsession with them never went away, and what it says about America’s growing economic nationalism. Plus: why are politicians obsessed with reviving a 1950s manufacturing economy and can tariffs even make that happen?

The Argument is a podcast dedicated to honest, unflinching debate about the biggest questions facing democracy...

Duration: 01:35:57

Was everything we did during COVID-19 a mistake — or are critics rewriting history? In this episode, Jerusalem Demsas talked with The Atlantic's Roge Karma about his reporting on “COVID revisionism,” which is gaining popularity across the political spectrum. The belief posits that not only were lockdowns, masking, and other public-health measures ineffective, but officials knew they wouldn’t work. 

Together, they traced how early uncertainty, mixed messaging, and political polarization created today’s crisis of trust in public health. They debated what the data actually showed about nonpharmaceutical interventions, how institutions weighed (or ignored) trade-offs, and what lessons we...

Duration: 01:29:18

Last week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the Trump administration's Health Secretary, outdid himself. During a Thursday Cabinet meeting, he alleged that "children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism." This is part of Kennedy's ongoing quest to link Tylenol use in pregnancy to autism, a theory he previewed in September alongside the president. 

My guest today is worried about RFK Jr. Not just because some pregnant women may refrain from taking Tylenol unnecessarily, but because liberals seem to be missing what a dangerous political animal he really is. 

"As with Trump, liberals ha...

Duration: 01:28:04

The day-to-day chaos of the Trump administration can make it easy to ignore slow-moving threats on the horizon — like the $37 trillion national debt. How can you pay attention to a crisis building months or years away when every morning brings reports of basic freedoms being stripped away?

In this episode of The Argument, host Jerusalem Demsas interviews economics journalist Jordan Weissmann about the U.S. debt crisis, whether Jordan's advancing age has anything to do with his sudden concern about the national debt, and how expanding social welfare programs may rest on taking the national de...

Duration: 01:06:07

In our very first live show in Washington, D.C., Derek Thompson, Ezra Klein, and Matt Yglesias joined host Jerusalem Demsas for a disagreement-ridden conversation to tape the first episode of our new video podcast The Argument.

We talk about why Matt spends so much of his time arguing with the left, whether Ezra thinks it matters “who shot first” as the right ramps up its attacks, why Derek picked a fight with the New Antitrust Movement, and much, much more.

The Argument is a podcast dedicated to honest, unflinching debate about the biggest questions faci...

Duration: 01:34:56

We’re in the age of attention. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are trying to remake America into a poorer, more dangerous and less free version of itself. Liberals have to fight back.

Enter The Argument.

We are a new media company with a mission to revitalize liberalism. We’re going to argue about AI and education, NIMBYs and affordable housing, and present our own issue polling on the biggest questions of the day.

Join us. We’re libbing out.

Get full access to The Argument at www.thearg...

Duration: 00:04:25