by Digging a Hole Podcast
Yale Law School professors Samuel Moyn and David Schleicher interview legal scholars and dig into the debates heard inside law school halls.
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April 25, 2025
<p>Liberals have been introspecting (some may say self-flagellating) since the 2024 election, to varying degrees of convincingness and success. There’s the usual genre of complaints—NIMBYism, identity politics, the crisis of masculinity, forgetting about the factory man—but the one thing liberals agree on is that they can’t be blamed for following their good, apolitical science. Today’s guests want you to rethink that. We’re thrilled to have on Frances Lee, Professor of Politics and Public Affairs, and Stephen Macedo, Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics and the University Center for Human Values, both at Princeton University, to discuss their new book, <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691267135/in-covids-wake">In Covid’s Wake</a>: How Our Politics Failed Us.</p><p>We open up the book by asking our guests why they wrote this book—why attack liberals’ response to the COVID pandemic, and why now? Lee and Macedo argue that liberal science and policymaking early in the pandemic faced multiple epistemic failures, from undisclosed conflicts of interest to the silencing of opinions outside the mainstream. David defends the United States’s COVID policy response, but Lee and Macedo press their point that value-laden judgments were made by state and local officials who avoided responsibility by claiming to follow the science. We wrap up the episode with a discussion of scientific expertise in modern democracies.</p><p>This podcast is generously supported by Themis Bar Review.</p><p><strong>Referenced Readings</strong></p><ul><li><p><a href="https://gbdeclaration.org/"><u>Great Barrington Declaration</u></a></p></li><li><p>“<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-the-coronavirus-as-deadly-as-they-say-11585088464"><u>Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?</u></a>” by Eran Bendavid and Jay Bhattacharya</p></li><li><p>“<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00426-3"><u>What Sparked the COVID Pandemic? Mounting Evidence Points to Raccoon Dogs</u></a>” by Smriti Mallapaty</p></li><li><p>“<a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30418-9/fulltext"><u>Statement in Support of the Scientists, Public Health Professionals, and Medical Professionals of China Combating COVID-19</u></a>” by Charles Calisher et al.</p></li><li><p>“<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/04/02/everyone-wore-masks-during-1918-flu-pandemic-they-were-useless/"><u>Everyone Wore Masks During the 1918 Flu Pandemic. They Were Useless.</u></a>” by Eliza McGraw</p></li><li><p>“<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/opinion/covid-fifth-anniversary.html"><u>The Covid Alarmists Were Closer to the Truth Than Anyone Else</u></a>” by David Wallace-Wells</p></li><li><p><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25032342/">The Swine Flu Affair: Decision-Making on a Slippery Disease</a> by Richard E. Neustadt and Harvey V. Fineberg</p></li></ul>
April 7, 2025
<p>In the face of what is inarguably bad governance and fake—but spectacular!—technocracy (the list goes on and on, but we’ll stop at <a href="https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/will-careless-stupidity-kill-the" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">AI-generated tariffs</a>), we thought we’d take a moment to join the conversation about what good governance looks like. A couple of weeks ago, one of us <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/books/review/abundance-ezra-klein-derek-thompson.html" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">reviewed</a> Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s new book, <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Abundance/Ezra-Klein/9781668023488" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Abundance</a>, for the New York Times, and then the other one of us <a href="https://www.niskanencenter.org/what-left-wing-critics-dont-get-about-abundance/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">reviewed</a> the review. So we figured: let’s work it out on the pod? No guests on this episode, just the two of us in a brass-tacks, brass-knuckles discussion of the abundance agenda and the goals of twenty-first century economic policy.</p><p>We dive right into what the abundance agenda is and who its enemies are: innovators and builders against NIMBYs and environmentalists on David’s account; techno-utopians who discount the environment and politics on Sam’s. We agree that housing policy, at least, has helped the better-off create a cycle of entrenching their position through stymieing construction and production. We find another point of agreement on how Klein and Thomson’s abundance agenda attempts to harness the power of the state to build, and that certain left-wing critiques are off base, but disagree about whether their proposal is a break from the neoliberal era of governance and what that even was. In some ways, we end up right where we started, disagreeing about whether the abundance agenda seeks to unleash a dammed-up tide that can lift all boats, or whether the abundance agenda leaves behind everyone but a vanguard of “innovators” in the technology and finance sectors. Let us know if you’ve got a convincing answer.</p><p>This podcast is generously supported by Themis Bar Review.</p><p><strong>Referenced Readings</strong></p><ul><li><p><a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/marc-j-dunkelman/why-nothing-works/9781541700215/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress―and How to Bring It Back</a> by Marc Dunkelman</p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/700580/stuck-by-yoni-appelbaum/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity</a> by Yoni Appelbaum</p></li><li><p><a href="https://zandoprojects.com/books/on-the-housing-crisis/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">On the Housing Crisis: Land, Development, Democracy</a> by Jerusalem Demsas</p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/636499/one-billion-americans-by-matthew-yglesias/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger</a> by Matthew Yglesias</p></li><li><p>“<a href="https://static.newamerica.org/attachments/4209-kludgeocracy-the-american-way-of-policy/Teles_Steven_Kludgeocracy_NAF_Dec2012.d8a805aa40e34bca9e2fecb018a3dcb0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Kludgeocracy: The American Way of Policy</a>” by Steven Teles</p></li><li><p><a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691175805/the-rise-and-fall-of-american-growth" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War</a> by Robert Gordon</p></li><li><p><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-neoliberal-order-9780197519646?cc=us&lang=en&" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era</a> by Gary Gerstle</p></li><li><p><a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393634044" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Public Citizens: The Attack on Big Government and the Remaking of American Liberalism</a> by Paul Sabin</p></li><li><p>“<a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5188510" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">The State Capacity Crisis</a>” by Nicholas Bagley and David Schleicher</p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/red-state-blues/79FF52A9FCDDE94A9D6948044EE86662" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Red State Blues: How the Conservative Revolution Stalled in the States</a> by Matt Grossmann</p></li><li><p><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-captured-economy-9780190627768?cc=us&lang=en&" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality</a> by Brink Lindsey and Steven Teles</p></li><li><p>“<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094119017300591" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Why has Regional Income Convergence in the U.S. Declined?</a>” by Peter Ganong and Daniel Shoag</p></li><li><p>“<a href="https://wlr.law.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1263/2021/11/15-Schleicher-Camera-Ready.pdf" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Exclusionary Zoning’s Confused Defenders</a>” by David Schleicher</p></li><li><p>“<a href="https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Cost-Disease-Socialism.pdf" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Cost Disease Socialism: How Subsidizing Costs While Restricting Supply Drives America’s Fiscal Imbalance</a>” by Steven Teles, Samuel Hammond, and Daniel Takash</p></li><li><p>”<a href="https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/sites/scholar.harvard.edu/files/dani-rodrik/files/on_productivism.pdf" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">On Productivism</a>” by Dani Rodrik </p></li></ul>
February 18, 2025
<p>Happy February, listeners, and welcome to season ten of Digging a Hole! When we started the pod five years ago, we had our eyes on the Grammys, or maybe the Emmys, whatever award show we could finagle our way into. Turns out we have bigger fish to fry than whether or not we’re more deserving of an award than Call Her Daddy — Greenland, anyone? We’re thrilled to be kicking off this season with someone who knows a great deal about United States Empire: Allison Powers Useche, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and author of the new book, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/58922?login=true">Arbitrating Empire</a>: United States Expansion and the Transformation of International Law.</p><p>Powers Useche kicks us off with a discussion of the use of the arbitration forum as a place to hear what we now think of as international public law claims, including challenges to racial violence and Jim Crow. We dive into some case studies about how ordinary people across the Americas fought the United States in arbitration and offer competing interpretations about how to think about what happened from a legal realist perspective. Finally, we get Powers Useche’s take on how environmentalists, Indigenous groups, and others are using the tools of private economic law to contest empire today. </p><p>This podcast is generously supported by Themis Bar Review.</p><p><strong>Referenced Readings</strong></p><ul> <li><p><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/mestizo-international-law/337681C12C70A6F686ABF2C49F022F92">Mestizo International Law: A Global Intellectual History 1842–1933</a> by Arnulf Becker Lorca</p></li> <li><p><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-hidden-history-of-international-law-in-the-americas-9780190622343?cc=us&lang=en&">The Hidden History of International Law in the Americas: Empire and Legal Networks</a> by Juan Pablo Scarfi</p></li> <li><p><a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/2480">Legalist Empire: International Law and American Foreign Relations in the Early Twentieth Century</a> by Benjamin Allen Coates</p></li> <li><p><a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674244825">The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas</a> by Monica Muñoz Martinez</p></li></ul>
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