Introducing: <em>Good on Paper</em>

Have you ever heard a commonly held belief or a fast-developing worldview and asked: Is that idea right? Or just good on paper? Each week, host Jerusalem Demsas and a guest take a closer look at the facts and research that challenge the popular narratives of the day, to better understand why we believe what we believe. Good on Paper launches Tuesday, June 4.

Listen to the conversation here:

The following is a transcript of the episode:

Jerusalem Demsas: What’s an idea that you’ve felt was good on paper but didn’t pan out in real life?

Alice Evans: Oh my God. So much of my life, so much of my life.

Demsas: [Laughs]

Demsas: What if the conventional wisdom driving our public discourse isn’t quite right?

Natalia Emanuel: This is the question in many ways.

Demsas: What if new evidence on housing or immigration or relationships flies in the face of what we believe?

Evans: Wow, okay. Big question.

Demsas: What if the policies we support give us results we don’t like?

Nick Papageorge: We were playing with data, and we found a pattern that didn’t make sense.

Emanuel: One of the first people we presented to said, Are we sure this isn’t mansplaining?

Evans: Okay, great. So I maybe sound a little bit Marxian now.

Demsas: My name’s Jerusalem Demsas. I’m a staff writer at The Atlantic. And I’m hosting a new podcast called Good on Paper. It’s a policy show that will question what we really know about the world and challenge the popular narratives of the day. Like, were the 2020 protests—both the Black Lives Matter and anti-lockdown ones—actually full of radicals?

Papageorge: That was one part of the caricaturization, right? That there are these gun-toting vigilantes and then there are these privileged leftist extremists going to these BLM protests. But then, you start to look.

Demsas: Or—is remote work actually good for workers?

Emanuel: If you have even one colleague who is remote, that yields about 30 percent of the loss from having everyone be remote.

Demsas: Wait, so if one person on your team goes remote, that you just lose all of that?

Emanuel: Well, a third of it, yeah.

Demsas: A third of it, that’s huge!

Emanuel: Right, it’s huge—from just one person.

Demsas: From The Atlantic comes Good on Paper. First episode drops June 4 wherever you get your podcasts. Come be surprised.

Evans: I do a Lara Croft roly-poly, spinning off to the side. At this point, I hand over the phone, and I sprint, and I’m bleeding, and I’m covered in blood.

Demsas: Well, I just think it’s—

Evans: So, yeah, that is something that had not gone to plan. Getting punched in the face was not on the agenda.

Demsas: Not good on paper.