Highway Signs and Prison Labor

It’s a hard time to run a university: public trust is low, political pressure is high, and finances are fragile. But Daniel Diermeier, who trained as a political scientist, has Vanderbilt humming. How? He says the key is choosing magnets over wedges. SOURCES: Daniel Diermeier, ch ... Show More

Insurance forms that make no sense. Subscriptions that can’t be cancelled. A never-ending blizzard of automated notifications. In this update of a 2025 episode, Stephen Dubner discovers where all this sludge comes from — and how much it’s costing us. SOURCES: Benjamin Handel, pro ... Show More

New York is the latest state to legalize medical aid in dying. Stephen Dubner speaks with the governor who signed the law, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, a death doula — and an ethicist who thinks the very idea is wrong. SOURCES: Kathy Hochul, governor of New York. Suzanne O'Br ... Show More

In this episode we interview Brian Koehn, Co-founder, CEO, & Co-chair of the Board of of Social Profit Corrections (SPC)  Brian's shared passion for corrections reform and social justice prompted him to end his 28-year career in corrections and start SPC.  Through his tenure as w ... Show More

Episode 2: A look into the history of the Murdaugh family and their rise to prominence in the legal profession as adept personal injury attorneys and also the top prosecutors in South Carolina's 14th Judicial Circuit, which includes Hampton County and four other surrounding count ... Show More

<p>In this urgent episode of <em>Working People</em>, we focus on the Trump-Musk administration's all-out assault on federal workers and its takeover and reordering of our entire system of government. "At least 20,000 federal workers have so far been fired by the Trump administra ... Show More

Mike Rowe is an Emmy award-winning TV host, producer, narrator, podcaster, spokesman, bestselling author, and advocate for the skilled trades. As the creator and host of DIRTY JOBS, he explored over 350 vocations across all 50 states, celebrating the grit and ingenuity of the Ame ... Show More

The U.S. immigration detention system is spread out across federal facilities, private prisons, state prisons, and county jails. It’s grown under both Democratic and Republican presidents. And it’s been offered up as a source of revenue for over a century, beginning with the firs ... Show More

The Trump administration's push to expand immigration enforcement -- as part of its deportation efforts -- has created job opportunities in small towns and cities.We head to one of them -- Folkston, Georgia, a community of about 2,800 residents..That number will soon swell as imm ... Show More