City Journal Audio

Kay Hymowitz joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss a challenge facing aging populations in wealthy nations across the world: loneliness. Her essay in the Spring 2019 issue, "Alone," explores this subject. "Americans are suffering from a bad case of loneliness," Hymowitz writes. "Foundering social trust, collapsing heartland communities, an opioid epidemic, and rising numbers of 'deaths of despair' suggest a profound, collective discontent." Evidence of the loneliness epidemic is dramatic in other countries, too. Japan, for example, has seen a troubling rise in "lonely deaths." The challenge, Hymowitz says, is to teach younger generations the importance of family and community before they make decisions that will further isolate them.

Economist Allison Schrager joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss her new book, An Economist Walks Into A Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk. Risk is a universal fact of life, but some of us manage more of it than others. Schrager examined how a broad cross section of people handle it: horse breeders in Kentucky, members of an elite tank unit during the Gulf War, paparazzi who stalk celebrities, prostitutes in Nevada brothels. She lays out five principles for dealing with risk and explains how financial tools can help guide people through uncertainty.

Charles McElwee joins Seth Barron to discuss the decline of the Catholic Church in the Rust Belt and the impact of immigration on a working-class community in Pennsylvania. The Catholic Church faces a crisis in an area that remains disproportionately Catholic. In 2018, a Pennsylvania grand jury report detailed how clergy covered up the abuse of children by more than 300 priests over a period of 70 years. Congregations continue to shrink, deepening the region's fragmentation and leaving a hole in its community life. McElwee has just joined City Journal as assistant editor. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The American Conservative, National Review Online, The Weekly Standard, and other publications.

Myron Magnet joins Brian Anderson to discuss his new book, Clarence Thomas and the Lost Constitution. Magnet contends that Justice Thomas's originalist jurisprudence offers a path forward for recovering our nation's "lost Constitution" and restoring America as a free, self-governing nation made up of self-reliant citizens. Author of The Founders at Home: The Building of America, 1735-1817 and other books, Magnet was City Journal's editor from 1994 through 2006 and is now editor-at-large.

Urbanist Alain Bertaud joins Michael Hendrix to discuss how urban planners and economists can improve city management. Bertaud's book Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities argues that markets provide the indispensable mechanism for cities' growth. The book is a summation of what Bertaud has learned in a lifetime spent as an urban planner, including a stint at the World Bank, where he advised local and national governments on urban-development policies. Previously, Bertaud worked as a resident urban planner in a number of cities around the world: Bangkok, San Salvador, Port Au Prince, Sana'a, New York, Paris, Tlemcen, and Chandigarh. He is currently a senior research scholar at New York University's Marron Institute of Urban Management.

At the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma, Professor Jacob Howland writes in City Journal, "a new administration has turned a once-vibrant academic institution with a $1.1 billion endowment and a national reputation in core liberal arts subjects into a glorified trade school with a social-justice agenda." Speaking with Seth Barron, Howland describes how, in early April, TU's new administration announced a wholesale reorganization of academic departments, including the elimination of traditional liberal arts majors. Students and faculty have responded by organizing protests and launching a petition to "save the heart and soul of the University of Tulsa."

Nicole Gelinas and Aaron Renn join Seth Barron to discuss recent developments in New York and Chicago. In the first week of April, both cities marked milestones: Manhattan got the nation's first congestion-pricing plan, courtesy of the state legislature, while Chicago elected its first black woman as mayor. New York City's transit system badly needs improvement, but Gelinas argues that this congestion-pricing plan is effectively a state money grab. Meantime, Mayor-Elect Lori Lightfoot is a political outsider, but Renn writes that she has an opportunity to change the "Chicago Way" of doing business.

Joel Kotkin joins Seth Barron to discuss China's urbanization, class tensions in Chinese cities, and the country's increasingly sophisticated population surveillance. Rapid migration from China's countryside to its cities began in 1980. Many of the rural migrants arrived without hukou, or residential permits, making it harder to secure access to education, health care, and other services. The result: the creation of a massive urban underclass in many Chinese cities. Rising tensions in urban areas has led Chinese officials to look to technology for alternative methods of social control, ranging from facial-recognition systems to artificial intelligence.

Steven Malanga joins Seth Barron to discuss expanding efforts to legalize recreational marijuana use, a movement helped along by extensive misinformation about the drug's supposed health benefits. This year, at least eight states are debating laws that would permit recreational pot. Marijuana advocates claim that the drug is therapeutic and that legalizing it will end the unjust imprisonment of casual users, especially in minority communities. But as Malanga writes in City Journal, "Even as the legalization push gains momentum, scientific journals report mounting evidence of the drug's harmful psychological effects and social consequences."

Rafael Mangual joins Seth Barron to discuss the disturbing leftward trend among urban prosecutors in major cities and the consequences of undoing the crime-fighting revolution of the 1990s. In recent years, cities like Philadelphia and Chicago have elected district attorneys dedicated to the principles of social-justice and the goal of "dismantling mass incarceration." The shift away from proactive law enforcement has opened a rift between police and local prosecutors and points to more trouble ahead for many cities.