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The question on everyone's minds right now is what can be done to tame inflation...and can we do it without creating a recession.  Zach Moller, the Director of Third Way’s Economic Program, oversees a team that specializes in developing innovative economic policy, and he has a few ideas about dealing with supply chains, increasing the labor force, lowering people's out of pocket expenses, and investing in longer term growth. 

Homelessness is America's national shame, a problem that we out to be able to solve in the wealthiest country in the world. There has been a growing awareness of the many factors that contribute to homelessness and a determination from political leaders, including our current president, to end homelessness in America. And yet, homelessness remains an intractable problem and in some of our biggest cities seems to be growing even more acute. So are any of the currently applied solutions working? And is there a realistic prospect of ending homelessness in America anytime soon? Dr. Stephen Eide is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor of City Journal. He researches social policy questions such as homelessness and mental illness. Eide has written for many publications, including National Review, the New York Daily News, New York Post, New York Times, Politico, the Wall Street Journal.  Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Author Seth David Radwell has a theory about where the great divide in America comes from. It was here at the start. His book American Schism traces those roots to two different views of the Enlightenment, and then follows the course of how we've compromised around -- and fought over -- those differences ever since.  He argues that understanding this history, and returning to finding strength in the differences, is the key to finding a path forward as a country. 

Like many people, we are still reeling from the mass shooting in Texas that killed 19 children and two adults and injured many others. Parents like me are raw with anger, despair, and hopelessness. And what feeds our hopelessness is that at the federal level, there is no prospect of doing even the slightest thing to stop more of this from happening again. Which is why an article caught my eye this morning that is about the real, achievable, practical things that counties and cities can do to curb gun violence. One of the authors of that article, Alex Barrio, is the Director for Advocacy for Gun Violence Prevention at the Center for American Progress, and he joins us to talk about the very real prospect of making a difference on the local level even if our federal government won't. This is a crossover episode of Great Ideas and Beyond Politics. Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash

Today, we cover the system we use for determining the winner of an election. It has as much impact on our current political dysfunction -- including lack of trust in elections -- as any other factor. Many scholars contend that if we could get the system right, we could fundamentally improve faith in our democracy and lower the chances of a complete meltdown (which are uncomfortably high). One of those experts is Aaron Hamlin, the Executive Director of the Center for Election Science. He’s been featured as an electoral systems expert on MSNBC, NPR, and many other outlets, and he not only believes that better election systems using alternative voting methods would be better for America, but he also has a particular favorite to suggest.  Approval voting" is a system that fewer people have heard about than Ranked Choice Voting, but it may deliver many of the same benefits while being simpler, easier to understand, and better for restoring trust in the system.

America is still reeling from the landmark, albeit draft, opinion that was leaked from Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, holding that the 50 year precedent of Roe V. Wade is no longer going to be valid constitutional law in America. There are obviously deep ramifications for the issue of abortion, but there are also implications that extend well beyond the question of a woman's right to choose, and that impact all kinds of economic, social, and legal questions for the future of how we live and work in America. Elyssa Spitzer is a policy analyst for the Women’s Initiative at the Center for American Progress. She’s served as a clerk in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, and now also serves as the senior fellow in law and neuroscience with the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior.

The idea that men and women are different is baked into our culture, from rhymes about sugar and spice and all things nice to the notion that we are from entirely different planets - Mars and Venus in particular. A new study from the Survey Center on American Life suggests that the differences between men and women - in the ways they live their lives, spend their time, interact with each other, and engage in politics - are actually growing. This isn’t just about men and women migrating to different political parties, it is about an increasing divide in the mental worlds that we inhabit in America. One of the authors of that study is Daniel Cox, the Director of the Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute. Dr. Cox‘s work is frequently featured in the Atlantic CNN and the Washington Post.

**This episode was immediately popular in the Beyond Politics podcast (please subscribe to it!!!), so we are bringing it to our Great Ideas Listeners**  Today, in America, the system is blinking red. Experts are sounding increasingly dire alarms that our politics have become so distorted by anger, partisanship, lies, manipulation, and disinformation – not to mention deliberate steps to subvert American elections – that American democracy itself is in real peril. There may be no more widely respected  expert on election law and the role of disinformation that Rick Hasen.  He's a Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of  California, Irvine and is Co-Director of the Fair Elections and Free  Speech Center. Dr. Hasen also served in 2020 as a CNN Election Law  Analyst, and is the author of numerous books and articles, including  op-eds and commentaries in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Politico, and Slate. His most recent book is “Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics—and How to Cure It.”

Today, breaking the West's addiction to Russian oil and gas. The war in Ukraine has unified the US and most European countries and led to almost unprecedented cooperation on sanctions and economic measures to try to stop Russian aggression. But the hardest area to navigate has been energy. Oil is a global commodity that is very sensitive to price shocks like the current war, while Europe is highly dependent on both oil and gas from Russia's vast supply. Already, gas prices in the US have risen because of the war and European leaders have balked at cutting off Russian sources of supply fearing the consequences for their own economies. Is there a way out of this Russian energy trap? Our guest today says yes. Josh Freed is Senior Vice President for the Climate and Energy Program at Third Way, a center-left think tank in Washington DC.

During the 2020 presidential primaries, talking about relieving or even outright canceling student loan debt became all the rage. Even Joe Biden, who was much less aggressive on this issue than his fellow candidates, supported canceling $10,000 for each of the 43 million federal student loan borrowers in America. Now President Biden is facing mounting pressure to do more. The president's supporters point out that he has already canceled $17 billion, more than any other president in history. But advocates are agitating for him to go farther, and warning of serious political consequences if he doesn't. So what's what's the case for and against, and are there other things that policymakers could and should be doing to deal with the problem? Our guest Michelle Dimino is Senior Policy Advisor in Education at Third Way, a center-left think tank in Washington DC and she’s here to unpack it all for us. 

More than 3.5 million people have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, the fastest-moving refugee crisis in Europe since the end of World War II. The massive displacement of millions of people threatens not only a humanitarian disaster, but an ongoing challenge for European nations and the United States. Elisa Massimino is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Executive Director of the Human Rights Institute at Georgetown Law. She led a team that recently issued a report titled “What the European Union and United States Need to Do to Address the Migration Crisis in Ukraine.” Photo by Kevin Bückert on Unsplash

Today, it appears that we are on the verge of the Federal Reserve Bank taking a major step to control inflation, which remains the number one topic on Americans’ minds after setting a 40-year high in February.  But what exactly is the Fed doing, and why? Why is their step today different from anything they have tried before?  And what will the consequences be?  Our guest is Steve Robinson, the chief economist at the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to educating the public and finding common sense solutions to our nation’s fiscal policy challenges.