University Of Chicago Public Policy Podcasts

The City of Chicago’s Commissioner of Public Health Department discusses all things Covid-19: vaccine distribution and equity, pandemic preparedness for major cities, mental health, and global implications for US vaccinations.

Nimit Sawhney, Co-Founder and CEO of Voatz, discusses the company’s mission to make mobile voting a reality and the role that blockchain technology plays in this movement.

University of Michigan Professor Robert Mickey discusses subnational authoritarianism with Sidhant Wadhera in the context of historical and contemporary U.S. politics.

Dr. Jeff Martin and Dr. Gretchen Sneegas discuss their work on Critical Worldbuilding, which uses a social scientific lens to analyze the built worlds in speculative media like sci-fi, fantasy, games, movies, and more. They discuss the broader applications of their work for pedagogy, politics, and policy.

Lisa Rosen, the Associate Director of the Committee on education at UChicago, sat down with UC3P to discuss the benefits that could come from CPS adopting a culturally responsive curriculum and explain the challenges facing the implementation of these curricular changes.

University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy Professor Dan Black talks about the polling error in the 2020 election and the futures of polling and election forecastingPodcast Production Credit:Sidhant Wadhera

Sociologist and native Chicagoan Robert Vargas sat down with UC3P to discuss the evolution of his views on policing, the origins of the CPD as we know it today, and why he’s become an advocate of police abolition.

A diverse group of six University of Chicago students discuss their views on the election on November 4th, when several states were still considered to be toss-ups.

Dr. John Gastil, Professor of Communication and Political Science at Penn State discusses deliberative democracy and how its lessons and techniques can be applied to the United States.

Supreme Court Reporter for Slate, Mark Joseph Stern joins Andrew Weis to discuss the Supreme Court and the underlying ideological and political factors that affect its decisions. Podcast Production Credit:Olu Ogidan / David Raban

NYU Law Professor Samuel Isacharoff discusses the United States Supreme Court and the impact it has had on democracy and election.

Olu Ogidan (MPP ’21), for co-producing and co-interviewingSowmya Karun (MAIDP ’20), for co-producing and co-interviewingBryce Fields (MAPSS ’17), for co-producing and co-interviewingDavid Raban (JD/MPP ’20), for engineering and editing.Big ups as well to 2019-20’s other APMs: Arjun Motta, Sidhant Wadhera, and Suo Wu.Congratulations to Sidhant Wadhera, who will now be the new Main Page Production Manager.Finally, thank you to everyone who made this happen during the last four years, including: Bryce Fields, Meghana Chandra, Max Hamrick, Beth Karp, Peter Biava, Jack Coghlan, Matthew Foldi, Gil Gustavo, Lucía Delgado Sanchez, Himanshu Dave, Elaine Li, Coco Yim, Julian Lake, Anita Joshi, Jason Zukus, Sid Ramakrishna, Vishwanath Venkata, Giorgi Tsintsadze, Kjersten Adams, Nick McFadden, Gregory Wong, Jessica Breznick, Thomas Krasnican, Nick Paraiso, Haz Yano, Aishwarya Kumar, Kat Burnham, Stormy Kim, Susan Paykin, Lauren Li, Lilian Huang, Alec MacMillen, Iszy Licht, Edoardo Otiz, Prabhat Singh, Sushmita Singha, Jo

Content Warning: This episode contains explicit language.Welcome to our newest mini-series: Policy Jam. In this series of quarterly episodes, we’ll first explore a topic through an interview with a policy expert, and then we’ll write a song about it. Today’s topic is immigration. Carmelo de Grazia and Olu Ogidan spoke with Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute. Her research expertise includes U.S. legal immigration processes, the employment-based immigration system, and unaccompanied child migrants. Later in the episode, Olu Ogidan and David Raban rap about immigration policyCarmelo de Grazia (BA ’23), for interviewingOlu Ogidan (MPP ’21), for producing, interviewing, scripting, rapping, and editingDavid Raban (JD/MPP ’20), for scripting, rapping, and editing

In Naked Love 6, we explore what folks’ relationships have been like during the current COVID-19 pandemic. We hosted a group conversation to hear how both new and long-term relationships have adjusted during these strange times. Brianne Johnson, a graduate student at VCU’s Brandcenter, takes us through reconciling commitment with her own changing ambitions as she thinks through graduation, while Jenish Patel and Reema Rao-Patel talk about how the dynamics in their marriage have shifted since quarantining together.Because of the pandemic, the Naked Love team could not produce the episode as it normally does, so this episode features Arjun Motta leading the group interview. Thanks to Brianne Johnson, Reema Rao-Patel, and Dr. Jenish Patel for their participation. Special thanks to Ivanna Shevel (College ’21) & Emily Kelin (MPP ’20) for their input throughout the process.

In this episode, the Main Page team got to speak with Dr. Jeffrey Butts, Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Director of the John Jay Research and Evaluation Center. Dr. Butts walked us through gun violence as a public health issue – what sorts of interventions have been researched, the degrees of success, and how we should be approaching this issue to solve it at its root.Podcast Production Credits: Arjun Motta (MBA/MPP ’22), for producing and engineeringSidhant Wadhera (MPP ’21), for interviewing and editing

In this episode, the Main Page team got to speak with Mary Stonor Saunders, Executive Director of Strides for Peace. Strides for Peace is an organization that aims to empower, amplify, and collaborate with community groups working to end gun violence in Chicago. Podcast Production Credits:Arjun Motta (MBA/MPP ’22), for producing and engineeringSidhant Wadhera (MPP ’21), for co-interviewingCaroline Kubzansky (BA ’21), for co-interviewing and editing

For the next three episodes, UC3P: The Main Page presents a three episode mini-series: Gun Violence: The Other Epidemic. In this episode, we focus on policy advocacy. We spoke with Kris Brown, the President of Brady. Brady is a nonprofit organization working to help end America’s gun violence epidemic. In our conversation, Ms. Brown spoke about Brady's policies and initiatives, what’s missing at the federal level, and gun violence’s impact as a voting issue.You can see the video of Ms. Brown's talk at the University of Chicago Law School's symposium on gun violence here: https://www.law.uchicago.edu/recordings/symposium-gun-violence-politics-and-policy-issuesPodcast Production Credits:Arjun Motta (MBA/MPP ’22), for producing and engineeringCaroline Kubzansky (BA ’21), for co-interviewing Sidhant Wadhera (MPP ’21), for co-interviewing and editing

Dr. Raghuram Rajan discusses the economic impact of COVID-19 and the associated policy responses in both the United States and developing countries. Dr. Rajan is a former head of the Reserve Bank of India –– which is India’s equivalent of the Federal Reserve –– and is now the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.Sidhant Wadhera (MPP ’21), for producing, co-interviewing, and editingArjun Motta (MBA/MPP ’22), for co-interviewing

Anna Carroll of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) analyzes the US policy responses to COVID-19 and gives insight into the best and worst-case scenarios for how the virus could play out.Here are Ms. Carroll's most recent articles:On Privacy: https://www.csis.org/analysis/find-my-friends-pandemic-future-contact-tracing-americaOn Scenarios: https://www.csis.org/analysis/which-covid-19-future-will-we-chooseOn Prevention: https://www.csis.org/analysis/ounce-prevention-worth-pound-curePodcast Production Credits:Caroline Kubzansky (BA'21), for co-producing, co-interviewing, and editingDavid Raban (JD/MPP'20) for co-interviewingSidhant Wadhera (MPP'21) for co-producing

Last week, we shared some reflections from the Harris community to tell us how they’ve been coping at this moment. Today, we asked students how they've been sheltering at home.Podcast Production Credits: Yi Ning Wong (MPP '21), for producing and interviewingRachel Li (MPP'20), for editingDavid Raban (JD/MPP '20), for supervisingSpecial thanks to Arjun Motta, TJ Chatto, Aliya Bean, Yahan Cheng, and Nelson Puc Cruz for sharing their stories.