Podcasts about Amherst College

About Tracye McQuirter, MPH: Tracye McQuirter is a transformative leader in the field of plant-based nutrition and Black women's health and has been helping people go vegan for more than 30 years. McQuirter created 10 Million Black Vegan Women to change the paradigm of Black women's health. She is the author of Ageless Vegan and By Any Greens Necessary and created the first free African American Vegan Starter Guide. The New York Times cited her work as a key factor driving the rise in veganism among African Americans. McQuirter was also an advisor for the Black Women's Health Imperative and Spelman College, and an adjunct professor at the University of the District of Columbia Center for Nutrition, Diet, and Health. McQuirter has a Master's degree in Public Health Nutrition from New York University and a Bachelor's degree in Black Studies from Amherst College. Tracye McQuirter, MPH Leads Global Health Intervention for Black Women 10 Million Black Vegan Women Movement Launches Free 21-Day Vegan Fresh Start on 9/18 Washington, DC – September 18, 2022: Award-winning public health nutritionist, 35-year vegan activist, and best-selling author Tracye McQuirter, MPH, is thrilled to announce her free 21-Day Vegan Fresh Start program will take place September 18 - October 9, 2022. To commemorate the importance of this public health initiative, Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser has declared September “10 Million Black Vegan Women's 21-Day Fresh Start Month.” This marks the fourth free 21-Day Vegan Fresh Start program as part of McQuirter's 10 Million Black Vegan Women Movement, a revolutionary public health intervention that will change the health paradigm of Black women now and for generations to come. Studies show a plant-based diet can dramatically reduce the risk for chronic diseases and improve heart health. McQuirter's free 21-Day Vegan Fresh Start programs have helped thousands of Black women experience life-changing health benefits, including weight loss, lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels, improved mood and cognitive function, and more. The 21-Day Vegan Fresh Start features: Meal Plans Grocery Shopping Lists Online Cooking Classes Delicious Whole-Food Vegan Recipes Nutrition Tips Daily Support and Inspiration Live Sessions with Vegan Experts Online Fitness Classes Testimonials from participants include: “Feels good knowing that other Black women are trying to live healthier and will influence whole families and in turn whole communities.” “Your program is great for anyone that is thinking or wants to go plant-based but not sure how to start. The recipes are awesome. The dietary information is awesome.” “Since I have started the movement, I've lost 13 pounds, my blood pressure is down, and I feel amazing! I can't thank you enough.” “When you consider that Black women experience among the worst health outcomes, it's truly revolutionary that we have created a free global health intervention that has already helped thousands of Black women around the world improve their health,” said Tracye McQuirter, MPH. “Eating a whole-food, plant-based diet can be both life-changing and delicious, and the results from our 21-Day Vegan Fresh Start program prove just that!” For more information, please visit: https://10millionblackveganwomen.org/freshstart/

Today on That Tech Pod, Laura and Gabi speak with Rachel Stern is a Senior Vice President for InState Partners, the venture capital arm of private equity firm, Advantage Capital. As the founder of the business line, over the last decade she has invested in and advised InState's extensive portfolio companies on how to foster effective partnerships between innovative technology solutions and state and local governments across the country.Rachel is also a graduate of the CORO™ Fellows Program, an intensive, full-time, graduate-level fellowship in public affairs. Through CORO, she worked in multiple sectors of public affairs, including non-profits, public companies and private equity-backed businesses, state government and electoral campaigns.She received her MBA from University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business and her bachelor's degree from Amherst College.

Broadcast originally aired on Monday, September 19, at 9:30 am on WRCR RadioWe  turned our attention to the life and legacy of the actor Burgess Meredith, who lived in Pomona, NY for thirty years. Meredith's son, Jonathan Meredith, joined Clare Sheridan to share his memories of his father, growing up in Rockland County, and his father's eclectic group of creative friends and neighbors, including Maxwell Anderson, Alan Jay Lerner, and more.Jonathan is a professional musician living in Grass Valley, California. As a teen, he collaborated with Tony and Hunt Sales (sons of the comedian Soupy Sales) and fellow Rocklander Jon Pousette-Dart to form the group Tony and the Tigers, which opened for the Animals at Steel Pier in Atlantic City and performed twice on the popular television program Hullabaloo.Burgess Meredith, the raspy-voiced character actor with unruly hair and a grimacing yet humorous nature, displayed versatile acting skills that kept him before cameras and on-stage for more than seventy years. He began life as George Burgess, the son of a Cleveland doctor. The family dissolved early on, and Meredith said he took solace in acting in school plays. He was accepted at Amherst College on a scholarship in 1926, but finances forced him to leave school. He worked as a merchant seaman, tie salesman, and peddler of vacuum cleaners before drifting to New York City and Eva Le Gallienne's Student Repertory Group. “I had no money,” Meredith said in a 1976 interview, “but Eva took me in.”He left the group in the early 1930s for roles in The Threepenny Opera, Little Ol' Boy, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, and many other Broadway and off-Broadway productions. The playwright Maxwell Anderson, who was living in Rockland County at the time, became aware of Meredith's talents and wrote the play Winterset with him in mind. A melodrama of a son out to avenge his father's death, Winterset became not only a Broadway hit in 1935 but also a motion picture a year later, with Meredith re-creating his role as the son, Mio. It was the first of three stage portrayals that established Burgess Meredith as a significant actor. The other two were Van Van Dorn, who escapes civilization for a single evening in Anderson's play High Tor (1937), and Stephen Minch, who is permitted to return to the years of his youth in The Star-Wagon (also 1937). The critic Wolcott Gibbs praised him in the New Yorker as “brilliant, impressive, heartbreaking, vibrant and eloquent.”If the phrase “actor's actor” has any validity, Meredith was its prototype: His early credits also include Shakespeare's Hamlet and Macbeth. He found an entire new career late in life as a scheming villain on television and as Rocky Balboa's crusty manager in films. The image on this page is his portrayal of Van Van Dorn in High Tor.***The Historical Society of Rockland County is a nonprofit educational institution and principal repository for original documents and artifacts relating to Rockland County. Its headquarters are a four-acre site featuring a history museum and the 1832 Jacob Blauvelt House in New City, New York.www.RocklandHistory.org

Aditi Nayak finds herself enamored by all things science. But unlike others, she wants to make science accessible and allow you (yes, you!) to comprehend and love all those big science concepts that otherwise seem intimidating. But they're now so easy! At Amherst College, she started the Amherst STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math) Network (ASN). She's one of the most down to earth people that I've ever met. Between launching brain organoids into space (we'll learn what that is in this episode), researching at institutions beyond Amherst, running ASN, and being a fantastic friend, she has a lot of wisdom to share. Question of the episode: What is a question that you've been wanting to ask? Check out the Amherst STEM network. Listen to their podcast. Email Aditi at anayak23@amherst.edu. Music for this episode produced by Keegan Foley. Listen to his music and hire him for voice and music production.

Tricia Nelson is an internationally acclaimed author, transformational TEDx speaker and Emotional Eating Expert. She has been featured on dozens of radio and television networks, including FOX, NBC, CBS, KTLA and Discovery Health. Tricia has successfully helped thousands of people heal their relationship with food. Born and raised in Concord, Massachusetts, Tricia's own struggles began in early childhood, where she attempted to cope with life's stresses and emotional pain by overeating and other destructive behaviors. Continuing into adolescence, she began binge drinking, and eventually gained more than 50 pounds. After years of experimentation with 12-step programs, therapy and self-help books, Tricia finally hit a spiritual and emotional bottom. Tricia attended Amherst College and began her career working at the Seattle Art Museum. While in Seattle she began working with spiritual healer who helped her recognize and heal the root causes of her addictions. By creating a lifestyle steeped in positive self-care, self-love and improved self-esteem, Tricia was able to stop drinking and overeating. She has maintained a fifty-pound weight loss for over 30 years now. Tricia has spent the past three decades studying the addictive personality, and shares her findings in programs, workshops and retreats online. Many doctors, psychologists and other health practitioners benefit from her insight about what drives people to overeat and how to stop. Tricia's bestselling book, Heal Your Hunger: 7 Simple Steps to End Emotional Eating Now, is available through Amazon. https://healyourhunger.com/

Tricia Nelson is an internationally acclaimed author, transformational TEDx speaker and Emotional Eating Expert. She has been featured on dozens of radio and television networks, including FOX, NBC, CBS, KTLA and Discovery Health. Tricia has successfully helped thousands of people heal their relationship with food. Born and raised in Concord, Massachusetts, Tricia's own struggles began in early childhood, where she attempted to cope with life's stresses and emotional pain by overeating and other destructive behaviors. Continuing into adolescence, she began binge drinking, and eventually gained more than 50 pounds. After years of experimentation with 12-step programs, therapy and self-help books, Tricia finally hit a spiritual and emotional bottom. Tricia attended Amherst College and began her career working at the Seattle Art Museum. While in Seattle she began working with spiritual healer who helped her recognize and heal the root causes of her addictions. By creating a lifestyle steeped in positive self-care, self-love and improved self-esteem, Tricia was able to stop drinking and overeating. She has maintained a fifty-pound weight loss for over 30 years now. Tricia has spent the past three decades studying the addictive personality, and shares her findings in programs, workshops and retreats online. Many doctors, psychologists and other health practitioners benefit from her insight about what drives people to overeat and how to stop. Tricia's bestselling book, Heal Your Hunger: 7 Simple Steps to End Emotional Eating Now, is available through Amazon. https://healyourhunger.com/

Terry McMillan's novel was among a chorus of late twentieth-century books that signaled a reawakening in the African American cultural imagination and revealed a strong interest in the representation of Black love, romance, and marriage.Episode by Aneeka Ayanna Henderson. Episode read by Kassandra Timm. ****************Aneeka Ayanna Henderson is a professor of American Studies at Amherst College. She is the  author of Veil and Vow: Marriage Matters in Contemporary African American Culture.

In this episode, I have the privilege of hosting a conversation between Mark Beckwith and Paul Norris on the topic of gun policy. Mark Beckwith is a graduate of Amherst College and Yale Divinity School. He is the retired Bishop of Newark (of the Episcopal Church) and currently does coaching, spiritual direction and works part time in the diocese of Western Mass. Mark is a co-founder of Bishops United Against Gun Violence and serves on the community partners team at Braver Angels. He is the author of the book, “Seeing the Unseen: Beyond Prejudices, Paradigms and Party Lines” and regularly blogs as markbeckwith.net. Paul Norris graduated from UC Berkeley. He has a bachelor's degree in psychology and a masters' in counseling. A gun owner from age 12, he is an NRA Benefactor member and an advocate for gun safety. Paul is currently retired but still works part time in counseling. He is active in Braver Angels, serving as a moderator, state coordinator, and an Associate Director and Chair in the debate program. Debate topics covered: What values do you have in common and where do you find agreement on gun policy? Do you believe that "people" or "guns" are fundamentally the problem? Should we utilize red flags laws? To what degree? If we can trust people to act responsibly and sanely with guns, do we need government regulation? If we can trust the government to respect gun rights in the deepest sense, can we allow a little bit of regulation? What is the spiritual/mental state of our country and how is this contributing to violence and mass shootings? Finally, Paul, Mark, and I end by contemplating the image of the mandorla, symbolizing two halves (or two different ideologies) coming together within the broader context of the "one." Listen to Paul and Mark's prior conversations: Derate the Hate 08/10/22 - "What Role Does Fear and Trust Play in the Gun Safety Debate?" Derate the Hate 12/21/21 - "Squaring Enhanced Gun Safety Measures with Personal Gun Ownership and the 2nd Amendment" Watch this Episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/gvmnGJIw-IM Follow Dr. Goodman: Instagram: @matthewgoodmanphd The Middle Way Consulting: the-middle-way.com Improv + Mindfulness for Anxiety Course!: https://www.the-middle-way.com/class-mindfulness-improv You can support the show for as little as $1 per month. Other ways to support include leaving a rating/review or sharing it with someone who would enjoy it! Thanks for listening! ~May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you live with ease and joy. May you be free of suffering~ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/matthewgoodmanphd/support

I have never found over-the-counter cough and cold medicine to be very effective at relieving symptoms and I know a lot of people feel the same. However, research indicates that there is something in your kitchen cupboard that may be more effective and is totally free of side effects. This episode begins with a home remedy that really seems to work. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8641173/Honey-beats-antibiotics-curing-colds-Study-shows-effective-medication.html Most of the time you probably think of insects as pests. However, insects do a lot of good things that actually make your life better and easier. Edward Melillo is professor of history and environmental studies at Amherst College and author of the book The Butterfly Effect: Insects and the Making of the Modern World (https://amzn.to/34l5w9f). Listen as he explains just how important insects are and how they are becoming an important source of food around the world – maybe in your kitchen as well. Who hasn't spent time trying to get that last drop of lotion out of the bottle or toothpaste out of the tube or mustard out of the jar? Listen as I explain the best and most efficient way to do it. https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/how-to-squeeze-every-last-drop-80642 What would it be like if you struck it rich? Imagine winning the lottery or inheriting a fortune. Life would be good – right? Maybe. But maybe having everything isn't all it is cracked up to be? Marriage and family therapist Paul Hokemeyer specializes in treating ultra-high net worth individuals and celebrities and he is author of the book Fragile Power: Why Having Everything Is Never Enough; Lessons from Treating the Wealthy (https://amzn.to/2FEwUok). Listen as he explains the challenges of having everything and why wanting is sometimes better than having. PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! To match with a licensed therapist today, go to https://Talkspace.com. Use promo code SYSK to get $100 off of your first month! Helix Sleep is offering up to $200 off all mattress orders AND two free pillows for our listeners at https://helixsleep.com/sysk.  We really like The Jordan Harbinger Show! Check out https://jordanharbinger.com/start OR search for it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen!  Go to https://Shopify.com/sysk for a FREE fourteen-day trial and get full access to Shopify's entire suite of features! Redeem your rewards for cash in any amount, at any time, with Discover Card! Learn more at https://Discover.com/RedeemRewards So, if you think you're okay to drive after a few drinks, think again. Play it safe and plan ahead to get a ride. Drive sober or get pulled over! Paid for by NHTSA https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dr. Barret Rollins, Chief Scientific Officer Emeritus, Dana-Farber● After graduating from Amherst College, Dr. Rollins received his MD in 1979 and PhDin 1980 from Case Western Reserve University.● Dr. Rollins completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at Beth IsraelHospital, Boston.● He then served as a clinical fellow in medical oncology at Dana-Farber and apostdoctoral research fellowship with Dr. Charles Stiles.● Since joining Dana-Farber in 1989, Dr. Rollins has worked in the area of white bloodcell trafficking and the interactions between inflammation and cancer.● Dr. Rollins served as Chief Scientific Officer for many years, only recently steppingdown from that role.

Dr. Barret Rollins, Chief Scientific Officer Emeritus, Dana-Farber● After graduating from Amherst College, Dr. Rollins received his MD in 1979 and PhDin 1980 from Case Western Reserve University.● Dr. Rollins completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at Beth IsraelHospital, Boston.● He then served as a clinical fellow in medical oncology at Dana-Farber and apostdoctoral research fellowship with Dr. Charles Stiles.● Since joining Dana-Farber in 1989, Dr. Rollins has worked in the area of white bloodcell trafficking and the interactions between inflammation and cancer.● Dr. Rollins served as Chief Scientific Officer for many years, only recently steppingdown from that role.

Auditions show you a different version of your story…Katherine Vondy is a Los Angeles-based writer and director working in film, theater, and literature.She is the recipient of the Davey Foundation Theatre Grant for her play The Fermi Paradox, and The Broken Heart of Gnocchi Bolognese, her award-winning short film, has screened at festivals worldwide.Her plays have been developed with the Salt Lake Acting Company, The Athena Project, The Blank, Paper Wing Theatre Company, Campfire Theatre Festival, and The Vagrancy (where she currently serves as playwriting group moderator).Her prose and poetry appears widely in literary journals and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Queen's Ferry Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net.Kat received her BA in English and Music from Amherst College and her MFA in Film and Television Production from USC. Read about her creative adventures on her website and follow her on Twitter here.In this conversation Kat and I talk:Shooting on a Sony PD150 in her first year at USC.The value of limitations in filmmaking.Thinking through shots.Were classmates at USC more collaborative or more competitive?The most helpful class at USC…Why directors should take an acting class.The job of a director is to capture “authentic human performance.”Auditions show you a different version of your story…The essential components to adapting a story to film.The worst thing to do in storytelling is bore the audience.The impact of surprise on storytelling.The “popcorn scares” in Spielberg's Jaws.Richard Linklater's Boyhood“The taking away of a payoff can also be a payoff.”Starting not with story or plot but a moment.The value of our unconscious mind.Juxtaposing sadness and humor.Traumedy.Is USC worth the price? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit benbo.substack.com

This week I have the pleasure of introducing Dr. Anna Aizer, professor of economics at Brown University and editor-in-chief at the Journal of Human Resources. I am a long time admirer of Dr. Aizer's work and have followed her career with curiosity for a long time. Some of her papers imprinted pretty strongly on me. I'll just briefly mention one.Her 2015 article in the prestigious Quarterly Journal of Economics with Joe Doyle on juvenile incarceration, for instance, has haunted me for many many years. It was the first or second paper I had seen at the time that had used the now popular “leniency design” to examine the causal effect of being incarcerated as a youth on high school completion and other outcomes as well as adult incarceration. Simply comparing those outcomes for those incarcerated and those not incarcerated as a kid will not reveal the causal effect of juvenile incarceration if juvenile incarceration suffers from selection bias on unobservable confounders. So Dr. Aizer with Joe Doyle used a clever approach to overcome that problem in which they found quasi-random variation, disconnected from the unobserved confounder, in juvenile incarceration caused by the random assignment of juvenile judges. As these judges varied in the propensity to sentence kids, they effectively utilized the judges' own decisions as life changing lotteries which they then used to study the effect of juvenile incarceration on high school and adult incarceration. And the findings were bleak, depressing, enraging, upsetting, sad, all the emotions. They found that indeed being assigned to a more strict judge substantially raised one's chances of being sentenced as a kid. Using linked administrative data connecting each of those kids to their Chicago Public School data as well as Cook County incarceration data, they then found that being incarcerated significantly increased the effect of committing a criminal offense as an adult, and it decreased the probability of finishing high school. The kids, best they could tell, mostly didn't return after their juvenile incarceration, but if they did return, they were more likely to be given a emotional and behavioral disorder label in the data. My interpretation was always severe — incarceration had scarred the kids, traumatizing them, and they weren't the same. The paper would haunt me for various personal reasons as I saw a loved one arrested and spent time in jail on numerous occasions. I would see kids in my local community who had grown up with our kids arrested and think of Dr. Aizer' and Joe Doyle's study, concluding the most important thing I could do was bail them out. The paper was one of many events in my own life that led me to transition my research to mental illness within corrections and self harm attempts by inmates even. But there's other personal reasons I wanted to interview Dr. Aizer. Dr. Aizer went to UCLA where she studied with Janet Currie, Adriana Lleras-Muney and Guido Imbens. Recall that when Imbens was denied tenure at Harvard, he went to UCLA. Currie, who had attended Princeton at the same time as Angrist, Imbens' coauthor on many papers on instrumental variables in the 1990s, was an original economist focused on the family, but unlike Becker and others, brought with her that focused attention to finding variation in data that could plausibly recover causal effects. The story, in other words, of Princeton's Industrial Relations Section and design based causal inference, going back to Orley Ashenfelter, was spreading through the profession through the placements of scholars at places like UCLA, which is where Dr. Aizer was a student. In this storyline in my head, Dr. Aizer was a type of first generation member of the credibility revolution, and I wanted to talk to her not only for her scholarly work's influence on me, but also because I wanted to continue tracing Imbens and Angrist's influence on the profession through UCLA. The interview, though, was warm and interesting throughout. Dr. Aizer is a bright light in the profession working on important questions in the family, poverty and public policy. For anyone interested in the hardships of our communities and neighborhoods, I highly recommend to you her work. Now let me beg for your support. Scott's Substack and the podcast, Mixtape with Scott, are user supported. If your willingness to pay for the episodes and the explainers (I'm going to write some more I promise!), please consider becoming a subscriber! Scott's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.TranscriptScott Cunningham:In this week's episode of the Mix Tape podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Anna Aizer, professor of economics at Brown University in Rhode Island and editor in chief of the Journal of Human Resources. I have had a keen interest in Anna Aizer and her career and her work for a couple of reasons. Actually a lot, but here's two. First, she did her PhD at UCLA when Janet Currie was there, as well as when Guido Imbens was there. Imbens taught there after he left Harvard, for those of you that remember that interview I did with him. Recall my overarching conviction that Princeton's industrial relations section, which was where Orley Ashelfeltner, David Card, Alan Kruger, Bob Lalonde, Josh Angrist originated from, as well as Janet Currie.My conviction that this was the ground zero of design based causal inference. And that design based causal inference spread through economics, not really through econometrics, and econometrics textbooks, but really through applied people. She also worked with Adriana Lleras-Muney, who's also at UCLA now, who was a student of Rajeev Dehejia, who wrote a seminal work in economics using propensity score, who was also Josh Angrist's student at MIT. So you can see, Anna fits my obsession with a sociological mapping out of the spread of causal inference through the applied community.But putting aside Anna as being instrumentally interesting, I am directly interested in her and her work on domestic violence and youth incarceration among other things. I've followed it super closely, teach a lot of these papers all the time, think about them even more. In this episode, we basically walked through her early life in Manhattan to her time at Amherst College, to her first jobs working in nonprofits, in areas of reform and poverty, to graduate school. We talked about her thoughts about domestic violence and poverty and crime along the way, too. And it was just a real honor and a pleasure to get to talk to her. I hope you like it as much as me. My name is Scott Cunningham and this is Mix Tape podcast. Okay. It's really great to introduce my guest this week on the podcast, Anna Aizer. Anna, thank you so much for being on the podcast.Anna Aizer:Pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me.Scott Cunningham:Before we get started, could you tell us obviously your name and your training and where you work?Anna Aizer:Sure. I'm a professor of economics at Brown University. I did my PhD at UCLA oh many years ago. Before that actually I got a masters in public health. Sorry. I have a strong public health interest and focus in a lot of my work. I'm also currently the co-director of the NBR program on children. That is a program at the NBR that is focused entirely on the economics of children and families. I'm the editor in chief of the Journal of Human Resources.Scott Cunningham:Great. It's so nice to meet in person. I've been a long time reader of your papers because you write about these topics on violence against women. There's not a lot of people in economics that do. And the way that you approach it shares a lot of my own thoughts. I'm going to talk about it later, but it's really nice to meet in person.Anna Aizer:Sure. Nice to meet you, too.Scott Cunningham:Okay. I want to break up the conversation a little bit into your life. First part, just talk about your life growing up. And then the second part, I want to talk about research stuff. So where did you grow up?Anna Aizer:I grew up in New York City.Scott Cunningham:Oh, okay.Anna Aizer:Yeah, I did.Scott Cunningham:Which, borough was it?Anna Aizer:Manhattan.Scott Cunningham:Oh, okay.Anna Aizer:Yeah. Yeah. Upper side. But when I went off to college, I went to rural Massachusetts.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Anna Aizer:Yeah. I went to Amherst, which is a very small liberal arts college in the Berkshires. That was a very different experience for me. And believe it or not, I was not an econ major.Scott Cunningham:Oh, you weren't?Anna Aizer:In fact I was not. I only took one econ course my entire four years in college.Scott Cunningham:Oh, wow. Wait, so what'd you major in?Anna Aizer:I majored in American studies with a focus on colonial American history and literature.Scott Cunningham:Mm. On literature. Oh, that's what I majored in, too.Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. So early American history. So what, was this was the 1700s or even-Anna Aizer:Yeah. So I did a lot of 17, 1800s, a lot of the New Republic period. My undergraduate thesis was actually on girls schooling in the Early Republic.Scott Cunningham:Oh wow. What was the deal with girls schooling in the Early Republic?Anna Aizer:What was the deal with the girls schooling? Well, it depends. For most of the Northeast, the focused on girls schooling was really this idea that it was a new country, they were going to have to have leaders in this new country, and someone had to educate those leaders. Someone had to educate those little boys to grow up, to go ahead and lead this country. And so the idea was, well, we had to start educating moms so that they could rear boys who could then go on to this great nation.Scott Cunningham:I see. Women's education was an input in male leadership?Anna Aizer:That's correct.Scott Cunningham:Got it. Got it. Wow. Okay. Well, that's interesting. I get that. You start educating women though, I suspect that you get more than just male leaders.Anna Aizer:I think that's right. It was an unintended consequence.Scott Cunningham:Unintended consequence. They didn't think that far ahead. Okay.Anna Aizer:Yeah. That's a very good point to make, because two women who were educated in one of the first schools dedicated to educating women so that they could go on and rear their boys to be strong leaders were Katherine Beecher, who went on to create one of the most important girls schools in Troy, New York. And Harriet Beecher Stowe of course, who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin.Scott Cunningham:They're related?Anna Aizer:Yeah. They are sisters. They are sisters.Scott Cunningham:Oh, they're sisters.Anna Aizer:They were one of the first sets of girls who were educated in this mindset of we need leaders so let's have some educated moms. And they of course had other ideas and they went and formed schools and wrote incredibly important works of fiction that ended up playing a pretty significant role in the Civil War.Scott Cunningham:Wow. Was this the thing over in England too? Or was this just an American deal?Anna Aizer:I don't know the answer to that.Scott Cunningham:Huh. I guess they have a different production function for leaders in England where as we it's very decentralized here or something. Right?Anna Aizer:Right. So you're saying in England they already had their system of you go to Eaten, and then you go to Cambridge or Oxford. Right. I think that's probably right. So we didn't have that here.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. That's right. I mean, you're creating everything from scratch. And with such a reactionary response to England who knows what kinds of revolutionary approaches you're taking to... That's probably pretty revolutionary, right? Say we're going to teach women even though it's in order to produce male leaders, it's still thinking outside the box a little bit.Anna Aizer:Yeah. I suppose that's true. Yeah.Scott Cunningham:That's cool. How come you didn't end up in... So you end up at Amherst. As a kid in Manhattan, what were you doing? You were reading books and stuff? You were a big reader?Anna Aizer:I suppose. Yeah. I suppose so.Scott Cunningham:Is that what drew you to Amherst, a liberal arts college?Anna Aizer:I don't really know. I don't think I actually knew what I wanted until much later in life. I was an American studies major, which at the time I learned a lot. It took me a while to gravitate to economics. Once I did, it was clear that that was really the right path for me.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. One question I want to leave your kid. So your parents let you ride the subway when you were a little kid?Anna Aizer:Oh yes.Scott Cunningham:Oh gosh. I bet that was so cool.Anna Aizer:Oh yes. I grew up in New York City during the '70s and '80s, which was far more dangerous than it was today. But at that time parents had a much more hands off approach to parenting. I think I was eight years old when I started taking public transportation by myself.Scott Cunningham:Oh my gosh. There was latch key parents back then?Anna Aizer:Sure.Scott Cunningham:So you jump on the subway. Where are you going at eight years old in Manhattan?Anna Aizer:You go to school.Scott Cunningham:You're just catching the subway to go to school?Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Oh, that's so cool. I bet you had a great childhood.Anna Aizer:I have to say it was pretty good.Scott Cunningham:Oh man.Anna Aizer:I can't complain.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. I grew up in a small town in Mississippi, but it was the same kind of thing. Well, it was very different than Manhattan, but just being able to have that level of... It's all survivor bias. The other kids that are getting really neglected and abused. But those of us that made it out a lot it's like, all you have is great memories of being able to do whatever.Anna Aizer:Right. Agreed.Scott Cunningham:So you wrote this thesis. At Amherst, did everybody write a thesis? Is that real common?Anna Aizer:Most people did. I think a third of the students wrote a thesis. It was very common.Scott Cunningham:But you're gravitating towards research, though?Anna Aizer:Yeah. So it was clear that I really, really enjoyed that a lot. In fact, more recently in my economic research I have done a lot more historical work than I had done initially. So I think that training has really come in handy.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. What did you like about that project that you wrote your thesis on? What did it make-Anna Aizer:Well, it was really a lot of fun. I focused on two schools in particular. I focused on this school in Lichfield, Connecticut, and another school in Pennsylvania, a Quaker school in Westtown. I focused on those two schools because those two schools, for whatever reason, kept a lot of their records. They have really wonderful-Scott Cunningham:Oh my God. You had their records?Anna Aizer:Yeah. So you have really wonderful archives where you could just go through and read all about what they were thinking about, when they founded the schools, what the curriculum should be like. And even some of the writings of some of the students and teachers.Scott Cunningham:Oh my gosh.Anna Aizer:So it was really just a tremendous amount of fun to read all of that stuff, all that primary materials.Scott Cunningham:Oh my gosh. Wait. Did you actually have the names of the kids? Did you see their-Anna Aizer:Sure. They had all of that.Scott Cunningham:Did you have the census records and stuff?Anna Aizer:Oh, I guess you could. I mean, this was so long ago before people were doing all that cool linking, but yeah, you absolutely could.Scott Cunningham:Oh, that's so neat. I wonder where those kids ended up. What did it make you feel doing that research, that was so original and just being out there in these archives?Anna Aizer:Well, it was just amazing how much you could learn by just peeking into people's lives. It was really exciting. It was really fun. And you just felt like you were discovering something new.Scott Cunningham:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you liked that. But that's interesting because some people would be like, oh, discovering something new. I don't even care about that. When you were discovering something new, you were like, I like this feeling.Anna Aizer:Yeah. Yeah. I really did.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Anna Aizer:I really did.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. So what happened? So you graduate?Anna Aizer:I graduated. My first job was actually working for an Alternative To Incarceration program in New York City. So I moved back home. You have to remember, this was early mid '90s, and this was the peak in terms of crime rates in the country, and in New York City in particular. And the jails-Scott Cunningham:Before you say this, when you were growing up, did your parents... Was it like people were cognizant... I mean, now you know, oh, it was the peak because it's fallen so much, but what was the conversation like as a kid about crime?Anna Aizer:In the '90s in New York City at this time, that was really the crack cocaine epidemic, so there was a lot of talk about that. That really did dominate a lot of the media at the time. It really was a big concern.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Anna Aizer:As we know, the city and the state, not just in New York, but nationally, really responded with very tough on crime approach, started incarcerating a lot of people. So much so that they were really out of space in the New York City jail. So Rikers Island was at capacity, even upstate prisons were pretty full. The city, not because they were concerned that we were putting too many people in jail, which has... After the fact we know that we did put too many people in jail, that there was a cost to these incredibly high incarceration rates.Anna Aizer:At the time, the concern was that we don't have enough space, so what are we going to do? The city funded an Alternative To Incarceration program for youth. It was called the Court Employment Project. It was really focused on kids between the ages of 16 and 21 who were charged with a felony in New York state Supreme Court. And these were kids who were being charged as adults, treated as adults in the system. New York City has since raised the age of majority, but at that time it was 16. So we were focused on really younger 16 to 21. Well then, most of the kids we were working with were 16 to 18.Scott Cunningham:What kind of felonies are we talking about? Is this the drug felonies? Or is it [inaudible 00:15:51]?Anna Aizer:Yeah. So a lot of it was possession with intent to sell, selling. But also robbery, that was pretty common as well. We were only working with kids that were facing at least six months in adult prison, essentially. That was the rule for our program. Because again, our program was really focused on trying to reduce the number of people who were being detained and incarcerated for long periods of time. So we were only dealing with people who had-Scott Cunningham:Wait, real quick. So you're in your early 20s?Anna Aizer:Yeah. So I would've been about 23.Scott Cunningham:How'd you find this gig? You were just going back to New York City? Or what was the deal?Anna Aizer:Yeah. I knew I wanted to go back home. At that time, jobs were advertised in the paper, so you looked through the help wanted ads and you just sent cover letters and resumes by mail to whatever jobs appealed to you. I was interested in those jobs. I was also interested in working with public defenders, so the Legal Aid Society in New York, I applied for a number of jobs there.Scott Cunningham:Where's this coming from? What's your values exactly at this time? You're concerned about poverty or concerned about something? What's the deal?Anna Aizer:Yeah. I think I guess I already was really worried. I was really concerned about low income kids who were really... I felt already were getting derailed at very young ages in a way that I thought would be very hard for them to recover. I think that in that sense was really confirmed when I started working that these were kids who in a split minute their lives were just totally changed. So certainly in the case of things like robberies, these were often group of kids with not much to do, just getting into trouble, and it just getting too far too quick. And before they knew it, they were facing two to six years. I mean, it was just really tragic.Scott Cunningham:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I know. Six months. You think about it, too. You're looking at these six months in the program. You start looking at six months and you think, oh, that's six months. The thing is, those things cascade, because six months with a felony record serving prison becomes de facto a cycle of repeated six months, one year, two years.Anna Aizer:Sure.Scott Cunningham:You just end up... Well, that's going to be a paper that you end up writing, so I'll hold off on that. Okay. So you end up applying, you spray the city with all these resumes. And then this thing. So what is this company? This is a nonprofit?Anna Aizer:Yep. So it's a nonprofit that had a contract with the city. They had a contract with the city. Again, they were funded really because the city could not afford to put any more people on Rikers Island.Scott Cunningham:So it's like a mass incarceration response almost?Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Capacity constraints.Anna Aizer:They were at capacity, so they needed to do something. So what this program was, it was an intensive supervision program. The kids had to come in at least twice a week and meet with a counselor. The counselor would provide counseling services and also check in on them, make sure they were going to school or working or getting their GED. And then they would write up these long reports.Anna Aizer:I only worked in the courts, so I wasn't doing any of the counseling myself. I had no qualifications to do that. I worked in the courts, so my job was to screen kids for eligibility for the program, interview them, see if they were good candidates. Then talk to their families, talk to their lawyers. And then talk to the judge eventually about the program and about what we would be doing and why we thought this person was a good candidate. And then once they were in the program, I would then provide updates or reports back to the judge and the defense attorney to let them know how the individual was doing.Scott Cunningham:And wait. What is the treatment going to be that things are doing?Anna Aizer:Again, so it was really-Scott Cunningham:It's a deferment of you're going to go to jail?Anna Aizer:Yeah. That's exactly right. It was a six month program. If they made it through after six months, they would be sentenced to probation instead of jail time.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. They would refer adjudication type concept.Anna Aizer:Exactly.Scott Cunningham:Right. Yeah.Anna Aizer:Exactly. So that was the idea.Scott Cunningham:But it's non random. And I know you're not-Anna Aizer:It was, yeah.Scott Cunningham:You're not thinking about the future Anna Aizer [inaudible 00:21:17], but it's not random.Anna Aizer:No.Scott Cunningham:What is it conditioned on? Because you're doing all of it, right?Anna Aizer:Right. Right. So you look at a kid's record. You would look at whether or not the kid seem to have support. The downside was if a kid didn't make it through the program they might be sentenced to more time-Scott Cunningham:Really?Anna Aizer:than they would have... Maybe. I mean, the judge would-Scott Cunningham:Why? Because you're getting a new judge or something?Anna Aizer:No, it's the same judge. But the judges say, "Look, I'm going to give you a chance. Instead of sending you away now for six to 18, I'm going to give you an opportunity to prove yourself. Six months, stay out of trouble, complete this program. And then I'm going to send you to probation. But if you don't complete the program, I'm going to sentence you more." In the end, they might not have actually done that. They certainly didn't tie their hands in any way.Scott Cunningham:What do they doing? Why are they doing that? Why is a judge doing that? They're trying to deal with some sort of adverse selection or something? They don't want people to-Anna Aizer:They want to create an incentive for the kid to-Scott Cunningham:They're trying to create an incentive for the kid. Got it. Okay.Anna Aizer:Yeah. They-Scott Cunningham:Like a little scared straight thing?Anna Aizer:A little. I mean, the judges always think that. It's not clear that that works. I don't think that really matters so much in the decision making of young people. I think it's-Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Totally. Totally.Anna Aizer:But that certainly was on the mind I think of many of the judges.Scott Cunningham:It's funny though. When I think about this paper that we're going to talk about a little bit, it's like you're already aware of, oh, these judges have a little bit of discretion. They're saying a bunch of stuff that's not in the law. "If you don't do this, I'm going to give you penalize, I'm going to give you really bad grade at the end with another year in prison." Did that cross your mind that you were noticing that judges were... This judge does that and this other judge does not tend to do that, is that something you could have noticed?Anna Aizer:Absolutely.Scott Cunningham:Oh, wow.Anna Aizer:Yeah. So there were many, many judges. So this is Manhattan. This is the main criminal courts in Manhattan, so I had many, many judges, a lot of people. The way it works is once you've been indicted on a felony you come before one of these three judges. They're called conference judges. They try to dispose of the case. Either the case gets dismissed or they take the plea deal. But if that doesn't happen, they reach into a bin, literally a lottery-Scott Cunningham:It's like a bingo ball machine?Anna Aizer:It's a lottery with all these different judges' courtrooms. They pull out a number, and that's the number of the courtroom you get assigned to. You know right then if you get assigned to certain judges, for sure that kid is going to do jail time. And if you get assigned to other judges, for sure that kid is going to get probation.Scott Cunningham:Who knows this? The kids don't.Anna Aizer:The kids don't, but they don't know it.Scott Cunningham:They can't comprehend.Anna Aizer:But their attorney will know it.Scott Cunningham:And then maybe their parents.Anna Aizer:No, I don't think their parents would know.Scott Cunningham:Although, who in a group of kids that maybe their parents aren't as-Anna Aizer:I don't think their parents would know it, either. You would know it because you have to remember that all of the judges for the most part were either defense attorneys or prosecutors before they were judges, and you can tell. The judges who would-Scott Cunningham:Is that the main source of the discretion that you notice?Anna Aizer:I think so. I think so. I think the judges who previously prosecute-Scott Cunningham:I mean, they're such different. It does seem like the prosecutors and the defense attorneys are almost cut from a completely different worldview and set of values.Anna Aizer:I think that's right.Scott Cunningham:I had this friend that was a public defender in Athens and he was like... I think this is what he said. I'm not going to say his name because he probably didn't say this, but I thought he basically said, "I don't like prosecutors because they think they are always guilty."Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:And you could tell. The public defender, they were like, "My whole job is to not do that." I could just imagine that shaping... Either there's a lot of selection into that or that just really... You hear that all the time. There's got to be human capital with that.Anna Aizer:Yeah. I agree. I think they have a different perspective, which is what draws them to either defense work or prosecutorial work. But then you have to remember their jobs are really very different. So the prosecutor he or she is just dealing with the victims, so that's who they're talking to all day. The defense attorney is talking to the defendant and getting to know them and their families. They really just have very different sympathies. And the judges come from one or the other.Scott Cunningham:One or the other.Anna Aizer:So you can see it.Scott Cunningham:So you're a kid, you're young person. What are you feeling over the course of working with this? Tell me a little bit about your growth and the thoughts that you're thinking about.Anna Aizer:Yeah. I really felt like these were kids that just got derailed, that these were kids, they were in a very tough situation. They made a decision and they had no idea what the consequences of that were going to be. Nor should they have. They were 16. It's very hard to know where these things end up. I did feel as though the criminal justice system was way too harsh.Scott Cunningham:You could tell. Because the whole point of this nonprofit you're working on is a response to such an excessive amount of penalization. They literally don't have any room.Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. They don't have any room for anybody.Anna Aizer:Yeah. They had no room. That's exactly right.Scott Cunningham:We're doing so much punishment we can't even do it right.Anna Aizer:That's exactly right. In the juvenile and criminal justice system, more generally, there's a disproportionate involvement of Black and Hispanic youth.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Anna Aizer:But they are 100% poor.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Right.Anna Aizer:So that's the other thing. And that just seemed incredibly unfair to me.Scott Cunningham:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.Anna Aizer:And it's not the case that not poor kids don't also mess up. They do.Scott Cunningham:They just can avoid the 10,000... There's 10,000 events from the mess up to the things that these kids are facing in this program that they have many ways of mitigating it.Anna Aizer:Yeah. That's right.Scott Cunningham:There's even in terms of parents spending a ton of money, or just saying you can't hang out with these people. There's a bunch of stuff that poor families just are like... So you're feeling heavyhearted.Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:You could have gone in a different direction. You could have not gone to graduate school or gone to get this master's. What's the decision criteria where you're thinking I've got to go in a new direction?Anna Aizer:Yeah. At a certain point I just felt as though I needed more training. I wanted more of a professional degree, so I got a degree in public health where you learned a lot about the health system and financing and the social determinants of health. I felt like I needed, again, more training. I should say, I went from that job, not directly back to graduate school, but I went and I worked in not a homeless shelter, but a service center for homeless people also in New York City. I went from the criminal justice system to the homeless system. I was there for another year. And then I went back to school.Scott Cunningham:To what, two or three years total between Amherst and graduate school?Anna Aizer:That's correct. Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Anna Aizer:That's correct.Scott Cunningham:It's interesting you go to public health because I think a lot of people that don't know anything about anything, they'll be like, well, she's doing criminal justice so I could have seen her going to law school. Now she's going to the homeless thing. Okay, well, maybe she could do social work. What were the things you were thinking of? And how did you end up choosing public health? Because a lot of people don't associate either of those things with public health. They heard the word health.Anna Aizer:Right. So a couple things. One, I thought about law school, but I felt as though lawyers deal with the problem after it's happened.Scott Cunningham:Right.Anna Aizer:And I felt like maybe we should focus more on preventing.Scott Cunningham:Right.Anna Aizer:And the other thing, when I worked with homeless people I really did start to feel like this was a homeless individuals... Homeless families are different. I worked with homeless single adults, and for the most part in New York City at that time, all of the homeless single adults had serious mental health problems.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Right.Anna Aizer:I really came to see homelessness as a public health problem.Scott Cunningham:A mental health problem.Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:They hit public health. Got it.Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right.Anna Aizer:So that's really how... I could have done social work, but that's not really what I wanted to do.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. But it's funny you say preventative. To me when I hear that I'm thinking, oh, Anna's already starting to think about public policy.Anna Aizer:Yeah. I think I was.Scott Cunningham:I wouldn't necessarily think that if you were to tell me you went and got a master's in social work.Anna Aizer:Yeah. No, I think that's [inaudible 00:31:54]-Scott Cunningham:Because that cold be clinical or much more working with the... You would've had that experience and you'd be like, I want to work with these families. But that's not what you thought, so something else is going on. So you're thinking I want to do what?Anna Aizer:Yeah. I think I really was interested in policy already then.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. And that makes the masters of public health make a lot of sense.Anna Aizer:Correct. Yeah.Scott Cunningham:I see. So where'd you end up going, Harvard?Anna Aizer:I went to Harvard. Yeah. I got a masters in health policy and administration. And then I moved to DC. I worked for Mathematica policy research for two years, and I learned a lot about policy research.Scott Cunningham:Are you getting a quantitative training at the master's of public health when you went?Anna Aizer:Yeah, so that's where I really took my first micro theory class and my first statistics class. So I took biostatistics and micro theory there. And when I worked at Mathematica, I worked with a lot of economists. So most of the senior researchers at Mathematica were economists by training. That's where I really got exposure to the way economists think about, research and policy evaluation. It was then that I decided I wanted to go back and get a PhD in economics.Scott Cunningham:Okay. So what was it? What's the deal? Why do you like economics at this point?Anna Aizer:The senior researchers at Mathematica were either economists or sociologists or political scientists. I just felt like the economists had a very clear way in which they set up problems. I think that goes back to economic models of decision making.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Right.Anna Aizer:And it just struck me that that was just a very good way to conceptualize almost any problem. I also liked the way they thought about data. I think the people that I worked most closely with and came to admire were all economists. So that's how that-Scott Cunningham:And how long were you there? Were you doing public policy stuff at Mathematica?Anna Aizer:Yeah. I was doing a lot of evaluations of Medicaid programs. In particular, Medicaid managed care, moving from a different financing model for Medicaid and evaluating that, and various settings, and writing them policy briefs so that... God. It was either two or three years, I can't really remember, maybe three years. I think I was there three years and then I went back to graduate school.Scott Cunningham:And then you go to UCLA?Anna Aizer:And then I went to UCLA.Scott Cunningham:Am I right that you were working mainly with Janet Curry?Anna Aizer:Yes. So Janet Curry was my-Scott Cunningham:You worked pretty closely with her?Anna Aizer:Yeah. She was my main advisor. The other folks I worked with were Joe Huts and Jeff Grogger.Scott Cunningham:And who?Anna Aizer:Jeff Grogger.Scott Cunningham:Oh, Jeff Grogger?Anna Aizer:None of whom are there anymore.Scott Cunningham:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Right. I'm just curious. I associate you a lot with... Because I wrote that book on causal inference I'm obsessed with the causal inference stuff in all these weird ways, with all the people. I see Princeton industrial relations section, Card, Angres, et cetera. And then I see Janet Curry. And then I see you at UCLA, and I associate you so much with that methodological approach, especially for some of the papers that I've known really well. Did you get a sense when you were at UCLA, oh, this is causal inference, this is different, this is the credibility revolution? Or was it just really subtle, or this is just how you do empirical work?Anna Aizer:That's a great question. So I should also say that my first year econometrics teacher was Hero Inmans.Scott Cunningham:Was it, really?Anna Aizer:Yeah. Hero [inaudible 00:36:18] UCLA.Scott Cunningham:Oh my gosh. I didn't know that.Anna Aizer:For a short period of time. I was lucky enough that he was there when I was there. So he taught me in my first and my second years. So of course he was very much big part of this. And actually Enrico Moretti was also at UCLA when I was there, so I took courses with him. I think between Janet, Hero, Enrico and Joe Huts, they were really in the thick of it. That was the way it was done.Scott Cunningham:That was the way it was done.Anna Aizer:That was the way it was done.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. What did you learn? What do you think the salient concepts were that had you... This is a make believe, right? But I'm just saying, had you gone to a different school where you didn't have any of those people, what do you think the salient econometric causal inference kind of things were to you that you were like, oh, this is what I notice I keep doing over and over again, or keep thinking about?Anna Aizer:Well, I would say that the method was in service to the question. I feel as though I'm seeing it more these days. People, they find an experiment, a natural experiment, and then they figure out the question. That's not how I remember it. You had the question and then the method was in service to that question. I worry that that's getting a little bit lost these days, that people have the experiment and then they're searching for the question. I think that ends up being less interesting and less important.Scott Cunningham:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. There were certain economists, I think, that were so successful as approaching it that way. It seems like it was cut both ways, because it seems like applied causal inference grew on the back of that kind of natural experiment first, but it almost becomes... To a kid with a hammer, everything's a nail, so it's just like, look through the newspaper, look for a natural experiment. What can I do? How can I do this? How can I [handle 00:38:49]?Scott Cunningham:And it is funny. I don't think it's as satisfying too, just even emotionally. I guess you can find discoveries that way, like you were, but it does feel like you don't end up building up all the human capital with the importance of that question. It's almost like, you're like, well, how can I make this question really important? As opposed to it is important.Anna Aizer:Right.Scott Cunningham:What were you studying? I know what you were studying. At UCLA, what was the question that you were really captivated by?Anna Aizer:So I was really focused on health. You have to remember, I'd done a master's in public health and I just worked at Mathematica, so I was really focused on health. So really all of my dissertation was on health. My main dissertation chapter was actually on Medicaid in California. It was on the importance of enrolling kids early in Medicaids. I don't know if you know much about the Medicaid program, but there are many kids, 60% of kids, who are uninsured are actually eligible for the Medicaid program, but not enrolled in the Medicaid program. And that's partly because-Scott Cunningham:60%?Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Wow.Anna Aizer:We could reduce the number of kids who are uninsured in this country by more than half if you just enrolled all those kids who were eligible for Medicaid in the program.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Anna Aizer:And part of the-Scott Cunningham:We saw that in that Oregon Medicaid experiment.Anna Aizer:Yeah. Oregon was mostly adults. I don't know how these numbers differ for adults and kids. I'm really more focused on kids. It's partly by design because Medicaid is a program. If you show up at the hospital and you don't have insurance and you're eligible for Medicaid, the hospital will enroll you. And most people know that.Scott Cunningham:Oh, is that right?Anna Aizer:Yeah. I mean, because they have every interest. They want to get paid, so they'll enroll you in the Medicaid program, but there's a cost to that. Because what that means is that kids, if parents know that once they go to the hospital their kid will be enrolled in the Medicaid program should they need hospitalization, they don't end up getting them enrolled prior to that. So they miss out on the ambulatory preventative care that might prevent them from being hospitalized to begin with. And that's partly because of the structure of the program, but that's also because the states made it difficult for kids to enroll in the Medicaid program. In California, there was a big change. The application for Medicaid used to be 20 pages long. Imagine that, right? They cut it down to four.Scott Cunningham:What kind of stuff are they asking on those 20 pages?Anna Aizer:Who knows? Who knows what they're asking.Scott Cunningham:Good grief. I mean, they're wanting them on there. Are they screening them out or are they just-Anna Aizer:I think that's partly what they were trying to do, right?Scott Cunningham:Screen them out? Because it's expensive.Anna Aizer:It's expensive.Scott Cunningham:You've got some of these legislators, they're like, this is expensive and I don't even want to do this so add a dozen pages.Anna Aizer:Yeah. So just make it hard. Now, what happened in '97 was the child health insurance program, CHIP. And they said, "If you want CHIP money..." So that's federal money to ensure more kids. "If you want CHIP money, federal money, you are going to have to enroll more kids in the Medicaid program. You have to do outreach." So the states actually were forced, and that's actually what prompted California to go from a 20 page application to a four page application. They also spent about $20 million on advertisement and basically training community based organizations in how to complete a Medicaid application. So they train them. "Here, you can help your clients enroll in Medicaid. For every application that you help that ends up getting onto the Medicaid program we'll give you 50 bucks." And this really mattered. A lot of kids started enrolling in the Medicaid program who otherwise wouldn't, particularly Hispanic and Asian American kids.Scott Cunningham:Is this what your dissertation ends up being about?Anna Aizer:This is what my dissertation is about.Scott Cunningham:On both the shortening and the payment?Anna Aizer:So it was basically once they started doing this you started seeing big increases in the number of kids who were enrolled in the Medicaid program. And you saw declines in hospitalizations for things like asthma. Asthma is a condition for which if you're being seen and treated on an ambulatory basis, you shouldn't end up in the hospital.Scott Cunningham:Oh. Wait. So what's your control group and all this stuff?Anna Aizer:What the state did was they targeted different areas, and provided training to those community based organizations in how to complete a Medicaid application. So they gave me all that data.Scott Cunningham:Get out of here.Anna Aizer:So I had all the data.Scott Cunningham:So you're doing some IB thing? You're doing some-Anna Aizer:Yeah. It was, basically if you live in a neighborhood where a community based organization had already been trained then you were much more likely to be enrolled in the Medicaid program. So you can see that.Scott Cunningham:Oh my gosh. This is so cool. Were you excited when you found that?Anna Aizer:I was super excited.Scott Cunningham:I bet.Anna Aizer:I was super excited. This was so old. I was begging Medicaid to send me this data. Begging, begging, begging. And they weren't really answering. And then one day Janet came in to the office where all the graduate students sit, and she said, "I think I got this fax for you." She handed this 20 page fax that has all the data on what community organization got trained and when.Scott Cunningham:Okay. Anna, I want to ask a meta question real quick. You just said, these days people maybe start with natural experiment first, but originally it was question first. Okay. Not devil's advocate, but just a statement of facts. The one reason they may do that is because when you find these kinds of natural experiments or whatever, it almost just feels almost itself random. You're weren't even really looking for it. You read something in the newspaper, you're like, oh my gosh, they're doing this weird thing. And the risk of going question first is, you could have this incredibly important question, like the Medicaid project payment thing, and you're like, if everybody in my department, like Hero Inmans and Moretti and Curry, who are to answer a question either subtly or not so subtly, or to answer a question is going to require this credible design and we really need you to staple this dissertation together. You're going to have to have a-Anna Aizer:I think that's why you have lots-Scott Cunningham:It seems really risky. It seems really risky.Anna Aizer:Yeah. I think you have to have lots of ideas.Scott Cunningham:You have to have lots of ideas.Anna Aizer:I think you have lots of ideas. A good friend of mine in graduate school was Enrico Moretti's RA. He told me that Enrico had tons of ideas. Wes, this was my friend, his RA, would just do some really quick takes on all of these ideas. And if there was something there he'd pursue it. But if there was nothing there he'd drop it.Scott Cunningham:What does that mean, nothing there, something there? What does that mean?Anna Aizer:Either, if you can't find exaggerate variation or the exaggerate variation doesn't actually work, you don't have the first stage, he'd just drop it and move on to something else.Scott Cunningham:That's a skill. That's almost some therapeutic skill to be excited about something and willing to let it go.Anna Aizer:Yeah. I think that's right. I think that's actually-Scott Cunningham:You got a lot of ideas?Anna Aizer:I had a lot of ideas. It never worked out.Scott Cunningham:Never worked out. And that's normal.Anna Aizer:I think that's normal.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. That's not a bad thing.Anna Aizer:Yeah. I think that's how research should go. In fact, I'm not as good as Enrico, I probably hold on to things for longer than I should.Scott Cunningham:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Boy, where'd you end up publishing that work? I should know this, but I don't know.Anna Aizer:That published in Restat Review Economics Institute.Scott Cunningham:Oh, cool. So what'd you end up finding?Anna Aizer:So what I end up finding is if you pay these organizations to enroll... Well, a couple things. Advertisement, just blanketing the television and radio with information. Sign up for Medicaid, sign up for CHIP, that does not work at all.Scott Cunningham:Doesn't work?Anna Aizer:No.Scott Cunningham:Advertising doesn't work?Anna Aizer:It doesn't work. What works is having these communities organizations help families complete the application. That's incredibly important.Scott Cunningham:That's a supply demand kind of philosophy that you see in drugs, too. Mark Anderson has this paper on meth. They would post these advertisements of people that were addicted to meth. They look horrible. They lose their teeth and all this stuff. It didn't do anything.Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like you're talking about a group of people. They're like, they need more assistance. They need somebody... You think about that thing you were saying earlier about these kids that are higher income versus lower income. When I said there were 10,000 steps that the higher income people had, it wasn't really like the kids, it was external forces that were investing, going after them.Anna Aizer:Yeah. Right.Scott Cunningham:It seems like incentives need to be targeted to people to go after. For whatever reason it is not enough to just simply have it. You need people going in and helping along the way.Anna Aizer:Right. Agreed. I agree. They need support.Scott Cunningham:They need support.Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Okay. So that is amazing. I bet your advisors were so proud of you for that project.Anna Aizer:I don't know.Scott Cunningham:I think so.Anna Aizer:You'd hope so, but that'll be icing on the cake.Scott Cunningham:Right. Exactly. Yeah. I guess that's not super important.Anna Aizer:Yeah, it is. You do always want your advisor... I mean, I had tremendous respect for all my advisors. So yeah, I'd be very pleased if they liked the work that I did. Basically, states did spend this money to enroll kids early, but it paid off because it meant that they were less likely to be hospitalized. In fact, some of these programs can be very much cost effective.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah. I had told myself, I was like, well, I'm asking Anna about the juvenile incarceration paper with Joe Doyle. And then I was going to ask her about domestic violence. And I feel like I've got to make a hard choice now, because I don't have a lot of time. So I was thinking, well, let's see how this goes. And then we can fit. So domestic violence. First thing I want to ask is, how did you get interested in that topic? And when did it start? In a way I could almost imagine, oh, you've been thinking about domestic violence forever.Anna Aizer:Yes. So I actually-Scott Cunningham:You've been thinking about women ever since college.Anna Aizer:Yeah. That's true. And made that connection. This was basically my first big project after I started at Brown. After my dissertation I was thinking, okay, what's my next big project going to be? And I think that's a very important decision for junior faculty to think about. After you finish publishing your dissertation you got to think about what's my next big project? Because it takes so long to publish anything in economics, that's really going to matter a lot. That might be the only thing you publish before you're coming up for tenure given how long.Anna Aizer:I was thinking about it, and I just felt like I didn't have a clear question in mind, but just been looking at the numbers it's incredibly prevalent, domestic violence. But it's also shown some pretty encouraging trends. Domestic violence against women has been declining pretty significantly. In the US, I think about... I haven't looked the number up recently, but it was about 1,000 women a year were being killed, and so many more actually are victims of domestic violence. And if you look at victimization surveys, between one and three and one in four women in the US report ever being the victim of domestic violence. It's really prevalent. And it just struck me, this is a big problem and I don't know how to answer it, but we should know more about it given just how prevalent it is. And so that's how I started.Anna Aizer:I have a good friend from high school, and she's a lawyer in New York City. She was working with victims of domestic violence. She's a lawyer by training. She used to say, "These women have nothing. They have no resources. They are so poor." That, to me, just made me think about, okay, I need to start thinking about income and resources and poverty and domestic violence, because clearly that's a big part of this.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny. I feel like you and I ended up responding to the bargaining theory papers in the exact same way. That's when I was studying a lot of my stuff on couples and things and bad behavior on the part of the men, I was always thinking about sex ratios in the marriage market. Why I was thinking about that was the ability to exit the partnership could be really, really important. And I was curious. You can talk about people not having resources and not necessarily be thinking in terms of one of these Nash bargaining, like Manser and Brown, and McElroy and Horn, and Shelly Lundberg kinds of ways of thinking. I was curious, were you thinking about those theory papers a lot? Or am I just projecting?Anna Aizer:I had this friend, again, who was working and telling me just how poor many of the women she was working with were. And then once you actually look at the statistics, the survey statistics, it's true that any woman can be a victim of domestic violence, but it is really a poor woman problem. So it's very clear to me that poverty has a lot to do with it. It's because many of these women have no other source of support. They have low levels was in schooling. They have few prospects in the labor market. And they're really stuck. That is ultimately-Scott Cunningham:Stuck as in cannot leave.Anna Aizer:Cannot leave. I mean, they have a very-Scott Cunningham:Because that's the solution. That's one of the most important solutions, which is probably you need to leave the relationship.Anna Aizer:Yeah. Or you need to be able to threaten to leave.Scott Cunningham:You need to be able to threaten to leave. How important do you think the credible threat is? Because my sense is, that's to an economist, because they're like, you should thinking about unions and stuff. They're like, oh, credible threats. That's all you got to, you have to do it. I feel like, I don't know if that really works. I actually think the truth is you're going to have to leave. And maybe there's some marginal guy. We're talking about the marginal guy, but whatever, that's the info marginal, whatever. The extensive marginal guy, he's got narcissism personality disorder, substance abuse problems.Anna Aizer:Yeah. You may be right.Scott Cunningham:He's got major, major problems. And that stuff is very inelastic to everything.Anna Aizer:Yeah. You may be right. I can't answer this because I don't know for sure. At the same time I remember talking to some folks about this, and their feeling was that it's all a continuum of a bad relationship. Violence may be one extreme, but relationships have ebbs and flows. They can be better at some points and worse at others. So they did feel as though a relationship didn't always have to be violent, that you could have relationships that were violent at one point but then were no longer. Of course, you also have relationships in which that's not the case, and the only solution is to leave. But there could very well be relationships where you can have better and worse periods.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. The reason why I bring it up is because I feel like these days you hear a lot about mental health. Well, you hear about mental health period, but in domestic violence there'll be also an emerging story of the narcissist personality disorder. I've been always lately thinking, I've been like, I wonder if this is true. Anecdotally, what you see a lot is how manipulative... And that's like a very judgemental way of putting it, but I don't know how else to say it. How manipulative one of the person can be towards the other where they're like, "Well, if you loved me..." They get all this trepped up stories about love. What love becoming almost this story.Scott Cunningham:I've wondered for those people that can't or won't... It's actually won't, right? They can leave. I mean, there are some people they will be literally harmed if they leave, so I'm not talking about those people. But I mean, the person that literally you're watching an equilibrium where they don't leave, I've wondered lately if it's like, the victim is all tangled up with loyalty and love.Anna Aizer:Yeah. Sure.Scott Cunningham:And it is taken advantage of by a person that no one can tell them not to love this person. That's nobody's business.Anna Aizer:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is a really complicated thing.Scott Cunningham:It is so complicated. It is so complicated. Finding the policies that provide resources to a person. Some of that might be a person that's at those earlier ebbs too, those earlier ebbs in the bad relationship. And you're like, well, some people may not be ready to leave yet.Anna Aizer:I mean, this a thing where I do think the right policy response is providing resources to women, but also probably interventions aimed at the assailant is probably going to be just as effective. Sorry. My phone is ringing.Scott Cunningham:That's okay.Anna Aizer:Hello. Sorry about that. I thought it might be my kids.Scott Cunningham:I wonder about these battery courts. Have you heard about these [inaudible 01:00:05] courts?Anna Aizer:Yeah. I mean, they're-Scott Cunningham:I wonder what you know about those?Anna Aizer:Yeah. Not a lot, I would say.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. These issues of poverty and mental health and all of these things interacting in order to get healing and healthy meaningful lives to all everyone is... I do think this is something that economists can offer, but it's not something that... I wouldn't say there's a ton of people. You're one of a small number of people working on domestic violence, it seems like.Anna Aizer:It's a very hard thing to study. Data's very difficult to come by for obvious reasons, for a good reason. I mean, this is data that needs to be protected. Glenn Ludwig and the crime lab in Chicago, they're doing work around violence reduction more generally. And probably many of those principles and findings probably relate to domestic violence as well, changing the behavior of young people so that they are less quick to react and less quick to react in a violent way. When they do, we would probably have some pretty important spillover to domestic violence as well, I think.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah, yeah.Anna Aizer:I think there are ways to reduce violence more generally that would probably apply to the setting of domestic violence.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. It's funny, circling back to that judge who threatens with higher penalties. I think economists, when they think about violence and things like that, you're an exception for thinking about outside options and stuff like that, but the shadow of Gary Becker's deterrence hypothesis, it can just be this straight jacket for a lot of people, because they just only think in terms of relative price changes on the punishment margins. When you talk to psychologists, or you read that psychology literature about narcissism or borderline personality disorder or substance abuse, you're talking about a group of people that are, for variety of reasons, have really low discount rates or just have beliefs that things don't apply to them. Or in no uncertain terms, the elasticities of violent behavior with respect to some unknown punishment that you don't even know if it's going to real, it just seems like, we don't really know, but [inaudible 01:03:06] really big.Anna Aizer:Yeah. So there was this criminologist named Mark Kleiman. Do you know that name?Scott Cunningham:Oh yeah. Mark Kleiman. Yeah. Yeah.Anna Aizer:I mean his big thing was, it should be swift, sure and short. That's how we should do punishment. He felt as though that would be far preferable to the system in which there's uncertainty. But if it doesn't work out, you're going to spend a lot of time in jail. He thought that was a fair model.Scott Cunningham:The thing is, though, swift certain and did you say short?Anna Aizer:Short.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Well, with prison sentences lingering on your record it is by definition never short.Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:You face these labor market scarrings and you can't get housing, you can't get jobs and that does not go away. So even if the prison sentence is short, the person... I just feel like this is the tension around violence in the country, which is punishment has so many margins where it is permanent. It's got so many margins. And just being in a cage is only one of them.Anna Aizer:Yeah. I mean, particularly for young people, jail is incredibly scarring.Scott Cunningham:Incredibly scarring. Incredibly scarring. We've been studying suicide attempts in the jail and we-Anna Aizer:Yes, that's right.Scott Cunningham:We walked the jail for this one particular jail. I have never in my life seen anything like that. I've been working on this project for four years. I hadn't walked to the jail. I don't know. It's not the first thing that came to my mind. The team finally walked the jail. I spent the whole day there. The jails have so much mental illness in it. They just are in... It's not even cages. A cage has... Air gets in. It's a sealed box. It's like Houdini's box. They stay there, and for a variety of regulatory reasons and so forth, they stay in there. Can't have a lot of materials if they are at risk. If they've come in with psychosis because of substance abuse or underlying mental illness stuff, they might get moved into certain types of physical quarters. I just can't even imagine, just in an hour, let alone... And that's just jail. That's not even prison. It's just absolutely a trauma box.Scott Cunningham:Unfortunately, we didn't get to talk about your paper with Joe Doyle on the juvenile incarceration. But every time I teach that juvenile incarceration paper, where kids were incarcerated as a young person, and then end up not going back. It's not even the future prison part, it's the not going back to high school.Anna Aizer:Oh, of course.Scott Cunningham:And then when they go back, they're labeled with a behavioral emotional disorder. It's really like anybody that's had any exposure to a kid involved in corrections, you're like, oh, I know exactly what that is. They were traumatized. You don't even have to come up with some exotic economic theory. They were traumatized. That's why they come back to school with a behavioral emotional disorder. It is [inaudible 01:06:59].Anna Aizer:Yep. That's good.Scott Cunningham:That paper is one of the most important papers I have personally ever read. I teach it nonstop. And I've even cried teaching it in class. I get so emotional when I get to that part, because, I don't know about you, but it seems like it's really hard not to come away with... A lot of papers you read, you're like, well, we're not really sure exactly all to make of it. But when I read that paper that you wrote, I just think, especially when you think about the leniency design, I just think these kids probably didn't need to go to prison.Anna Aizer:Oh yeah.Scott Cunningham:Honestly, what else are you going to say? They end up committing more crimes. And they are not going back to school. How was this the policy goal? What was it like writing that paper when you started to realize what was going on?Anna Aizer:Again, when I worked in this Alternative to Incarceration program we had kids come into the program who had spent some time in jail. And we had kids who had spent very little time, maybe just a night. The kids who had spent even just three weeks in jail, they always did worse in the program. Always. It was a known fact. The program knew it. And the question was, well, are these kids somehow different? There was a reason why they were in jail and these other kids weren't. Is that why they do worse in the program? Maybe they're in jail because their family didn't show up for them in court. They couldn't make bail.Anna Aizer:Or was it something about spending three weeks in jail that just made it impossible for them to complete the program? This was a big question that was on everybody's mind. We talked about this quite a bit at the program, and we didn't know the answer. When I finally figured out how to do it, working with Joe, I wanted to know the answer to a question that I had been thinking about for over a decade.Scott Cunningham:Gosh. Were you emotionally upset when you started to see coefficients get really big?Anna Aizer:It really was not surprising. It really wasn't, because these are kids who are only marginally attached to school. These are not the kids who were going to school, doing well in school. These are kids who were not really that attached to school for whatever reason. So you take them out even for a month, they're not going to go back. I mean, it's obvious. We saw that in the program. What they ended up doing was moving a lot of kids from school to GED because they had not been involved in school, they were not involved in school. It just was much more likely that they would be able to complete a GED than actually go back to high school and finish.Scott Cunningham:Your paper, it like hit home for personal reasons. We had an event happen. I wrote a professor. I was like, this thing had happened. Anna and Joe find this result. I feel hopeless. There's this kid in town and I raised money for him. Basically, I was like, you just got to do everything in your power to not let them spend an extra minute in jail. And all this scared straight stuff. Parents get into it, too. They're exhausted. They're like, "Well, he's got to learn his lesson." Nobody learns a damn thing in jail. They don't learn a lesson. Because you're just so hopeless. You start grasping at straws. And people will tell you that might happen.Scott

This week I have the pleasure of introducing Dr. Anna Aizer, professor of economics at Brown University and editor-in-chief at the Journal of Human Resources. I am a long time admirer of Dr. Aizer’s work and have followed her career with curiosity for a long time. Some of her papers imprinted pretty strongly on me. I’ll just briefly mention one.Her 2015 article in the prestigious Quarterly Journal of Economics with Joe Doyle on juvenile incarceration, for instance, has haunted me for many many years. It was the first or second paper I had seen at the time that had used the now popular “leniency design” to examine the causal effect of being incarcerated as a youth on high school completion and other outcomes as well as adult incarceration. Simply comparing those outcomes for those incarcerated and those not incarcerated as a kid will not reveal the causal effect of juvenile incarceration if juvenile incarceration suffers from selection bias on unobservable confounders. So Dr. Aizer with Joe Doyle used a clever approach to overcome that problem in which they found quasi-random variation, disconnected from the unobserved confounder, in juvenile incarceration caused by the random assignment of juvenile judges. As these judges varied in the propensity to sentence kids, they effectively utilized the judges’ own decisions as life changing lotteries which they then used to study the effect of juvenile incarceration on high school and adult incarceration. And the findings were bleak, depressing, enraging, upsetting, sad, all the emotions. They found that indeed being assigned to a more strict judge substantially raised one’s chances of being sentenced as a kid. Using linked administrative data connecting each of those kids to their Chicago Public School data as well as Cook County incarceration data, they then found that being incarcerated significantly increased the effect of committing a criminal offense as an adult, and it decreased the probability of finishing high school. The kids, best they could tell, mostly didn’t return after their juvenile incarceration, but if they did return, they were more likely to be given a emotional and behavioral disorder label in the data. My interpretation was always severe — incarceration had scarred the kids, traumatizing them, and they weren’t the same. The paper would haunt me for various personal reasons as I saw a loved one arrested and spent time in jail on numerous occasions. I would see kids in my local community who had grown up with our kids arrested and think of Dr. Aizer' and Joe Doyle’s study, concluding the most important thing I could do was bail them out. The paper was one of many events in my own life that led me to transition my research to mental illness within corrections and self harm attempts by inmates even. But there’s other personal reasons I wanted to interview Dr. Aizer. Dr. Aizer went to UCLA where she studied with Janet Currie, Adriana Lleras-Muney and Guido Imbens. Recall that when Imbens was denied tenure at Harvard, he went to UCLA. Currie, who had attended Princeton at the same time as Angrist, Imbens’ coauthor on many papers on instrumental variables in the 1990s, was an original economist focused on the family, but unlike Becker and others, brought with her that focused attention to finding variation in data that could plausibly recover causal effects. The story, in other words, of Princeton’s Industrial Relations Section and design based causal inference, going back to Orley Ashenfelter, was spreading through the profession through the placements of scholars at places like UCLA, which is where Dr. Aizer was a student. In this storyline in my head, Dr. Aizer was a type of first generation member of the credibility revolution, and I wanted to talk to her not only for her scholarly work’s influence on me, but also because I wanted to continue tracing Imbens and Angrist’s influence on the profession through UCLA. The interview, though, was warm and interesting throughout. Dr. Aizer is a bright light in the profession working on important questions in the family, poverty and public policy. For anyone interested in the hardships of our communities and neighborhoods, I highly recommend to you her work. Now let me beg for your support. Scott’s Substack and the podcast, Mixtape with Scott, are user supported. If your willingness to pay for the episodes and the explainers (I’m going to write some more I promise!), please consider becoming a subscriber! Scott's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.TranscriptScott Cunningham:In this week's episode of the Mix Tape podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Anna Aizer, professor of economics at Brown University in Rhode Island and editor in chief of the Journal of Human Resources. I have had a keen interest in Anna Aizer and her career and her work for a couple of reasons. Actually a lot, but here's two. First, she did her PhD at UCLA when Janet Currie was there, as well as when Guido Imbens was there. Imbens taught there after he left Harvard, for those of you that remember that interview I did with him. Recall my overarching conviction that Princeton's industrial relations section, which was where Orley Ashelfeltner, David Card, Alan Kruger, Bob Lalonde, Josh Angrist originated from, as well as Janet Currie.My conviction that this was the ground zero of design based causal inference. And that design based causal inference spread through economics, not really through econometrics, and econometrics textbooks, but really through applied people. She also worked with Adriana Lleras-Muney, who's also at UCLA now, who was a student of Rajeev Dehejia, who wrote a seminal work in economics using propensity score, who was also Josh Angrist’s student at MIT. So you can see, Anna fits my obsession with a sociological mapping out of the spread of causal inference through the applied community.But putting aside Anna as being instrumentally interesting, I am directly interested in her and her work on domestic violence and youth incarceration among other things. I've followed it super closely, teach a lot of these papers all the time, think about them even more. In this episode, we basically walked through her early life in Manhattan to her time at Amherst College, to her first jobs working in nonprofits, in areas of reform and poverty, to graduate school. We talked about her thoughts about domestic violence and poverty and crime along the way, too. And it was just a real honor and a pleasure to get to talk to her. I hope you like it as much as me. My name is Scott Cunningham and this is Mix Tape podcast. Okay. It's really great to introduce my guest this week on the podcast, Anna Aizer. Anna, thank you so much for being on the podcast.Anna Aizer:Pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me.Scott Cunningham:Before we get started, could you tell us obviously your name and your training and where you work?Anna Aizer:Sure. I'm a professor of economics at Brown University. I did my PhD at UCLA oh many years ago. Before that actually I got a masters in public health. Sorry. I have a strong public health interest and focus in a lot of my work. I'm also currently the co-director of the NBR program on children. That is a program at the NBR that is focused entirely on the economics of children and families. I'm the editor in chief of the Journal of Human Resources.Scott Cunningham:Great. It's so nice to meet in person. I've been a long time reader of your papers because you write about these topics on violence against women. There's not a lot of people in economics that do. And the way that you approach it shares a lot of my own thoughts. I'm going to talk about it later, but it's really nice to meet in person.Anna Aizer:Sure. Nice to meet you, too.Scott Cunningham:Okay. I want to break up the conversation a little bit into your life. First part, just talk about your life growing up. And then the second part, I want to talk about research stuff. So where did you grow up?Anna Aizer:I grew up in New York City.Scott Cunningham:Oh, okay.Anna Aizer:Yeah, I did.Scott Cunningham:Which, borough was it?Anna Aizer:Manhattan.Scott Cunningham:Oh, okay.Anna Aizer:Yeah. Yeah. Upper side. But when I went off to college, I went to rural Massachusetts.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Anna Aizer:Yeah. I went to Amherst, which is a very small liberal arts college in the Berkshires. That was a very different experience for me. And believe it or not, I was not an econ major.Scott Cunningham:Oh, you weren't?Anna Aizer:In fact I was not. I only took one econ course my entire four years in college.Scott Cunningham:Oh, wow. Wait, so what'd you major in?Anna Aizer:I majored in American studies with a focus on colonial American history and literature.Scott Cunningham:Mm. On literature. Oh, that's what I majored in, too.Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. So early American history. So what, was this was the 1700s or even-Anna Aizer:Yeah. So I did a lot of 17, 1800s, a lot of the New Republic period. My undergraduate thesis was actually on girls schooling in the Early Republic.Scott Cunningham:Oh wow. What was the deal with girls schooling in the Early Republic?Anna Aizer:What was the deal with the girls schooling? Well, it depends. For most of the Northeast, the focused on girls schooling was really this idea that it was a new country, they were going to have to have leaders in this new country, and someone had to educate those leaders. Someone had to educate those little boys to grow up, to go ahead and lead this country. And so the idea was, well, we had to start educating moms so that they could rear boys who could then go on to this great nation.Scott Cunningham:I see. Women's education was an input in male leadership?Anna Aizer:That's correct.Scott Cunningham:Got it. Got it. Wow. Okay. Well, that's interesting. I get that. You start educating women though, I suspect that you get more than just male leaders.Anna Aizer:I think that's right. It was an unintended consequence.Scott Cunningham:Unintended consequence. They didn't think that far ahead. Okay.Anna Aizer:Yeah. That's a very good point to make, because two women who were educated in one of the first schools dedicated to educating women so that they could go on and rear their boys to be strong leaders were Katherine Beecher, who went on to create one of the most important girls schools in Troy, New York. And Harriet Beecher Stowe of course, who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin.Scott Cunningham:They're related?Anna Aizer:Yeah. They are sisters. They are sisters.Scott Cunningham:Oh, they're sisters.Anna Aizer:They were one of the first sets of girls who were educated in this mindset of we need leaders so let's have some educated moms. And they of course had other ideas and they went and formed schools and wrote incredibly important works of fiction that ended up playing a pretty significant role in the Civil War.Scott Cunningham:Wow. Was this the thing over in England too? Or was this just an American deal?Anna Aizer:I don't know the answer to that.Scott Cunningham:Huh. I guess they have a different production function for leaders in England where as we it's very decentralized here or something. Right?Anna Aizer:Right. So you're saying in England they already had their system of you go to Eaten, and then you go to Cambridge or Oxford. Right. I think that's probably right. So we didn't have that here.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. That's right. I mean, you're creating everything from scratch. And with such a reactionary response to England who knows what kinds of revolutionary approaches you're taking to... That's probably pretty revolutionary, right? Say we're going to teach women even though it's in order to produce male leaders, it's still thinking outside the box a little bit.Anna Aizer:Yeah. I suppose that's true. Yeah.Scott Cunningham:That's cool. How come you didn't end up in... So you end up at Amherst. As a kid in Manhattan, what were you doing? You were reading books and stuff? You were a big reader?Anna Aizer:I suppose. Yeah. I suppose so.Scott Cunningham:Is that what drew you to Amherst, a liberal arts college?Anna Aizer:I don't really know. I don't think I actually knew what I wanted until much later in life. I was an American studies major, which at the time I learned a lot. It took me a while to gravitate to economics. Once I did, it was clear that that was really the right path for me.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. One question I want to leave your kid. So your parents let you ride the subway when you were a little kid?Anna Aizer:Oh yes.Scott Cunningham:Oh gosh. I bet that was so cool.Anna Aizer:Oh yes. I grew up in New York City during the '70s and '80s, which was far more dangerous than it was today. But at that time parents had a much more hands off approach to parenting. I think I was eight years old when I started taking public transportation by myself.Scott Cunningham:Oh my gosh. There was latch key parents back then?Anna Aizer:Sure.Scott Cunningham:So you jump on the subway. Where are you going at eight years old in Manhattan?Anna Aizer:You go to school.Scott Cunningham:You're just catching the subway to go to school?Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Oh, that's so cool. I bet you had a great childhood.Anna Aizer:I have to say it was pretty good.Scott Cunningham:Oh man.Anna Aizer:I can't complain.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. I grew up in a small town in Mississippi, but it was the same kind of thing. Well, it was very different than Manhattan, but just being able to have that level of... It's all survivor bias. The other kids that are getting really neglected and abused. But those of us that made it out a lot it's like, all you have is great memories of being able to do whatever.Anna Aizer:Right. Agreed.Scott Cunningham:So you wrote this thesis. At Amherst, did everybody write a thesis? Is that real common?Anna Aizer:Most people did. I think a third of the students wrote a thesis. It was very common.Scott Cunningham:But you're gravitating towards research, though?Anna Aizer:Yeah. So it was clear that I really, really enjoyed that a lot. In fact, more recently in my economic research I have done a lot more historical work than I had done initially. So I think that training has really come in handy.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. What did you like about that project that you wrote your thesis on? What did it make-Anna Aizer:Well, it was really a lot of fun. I focused on two schools in particular. I focused on this school in Lichfield, Connecticut, and another school in Pennsylvania, a Quaker school in Westtown. I focused on those two schools because those two schools, for whatever reason, kept a lot of their records. They have really wonderful-Scott Cunningham:Oh my God. You had their records?Anna Aizer:Yeah. So you have really wonderful archives where you could just go through and read all about what they were thinking about, when they founded the schools, what the curriculum should be like. And even some of the writings of some of the students and teachers.Scott Cunningham:Oh my gosh.Anna Aizer:So it was really just a tremendous amount of fun to read all of that stuff, all that primary materials.Scott Cunningham:Oh my gosh. Wait. Did you actually have the names of the kids? Did you see their-Anna Aizer:Sure. They had all of that.Scott Cunningham:Did you have the census records and stuff?Anna Aizer:Oh, I guess you could. I mean, this was so long ago before people were doing all that cool linking, but yeah, you absolutely could.Scott Cunningham:Oh, that's so neat. I wonder where those kids ended up. What did it make you feel doing that research, that was so original and just being out there in these archives?Anna Aizer:Well, it was just amazing how much you could learn by just peeking into people's lives. It was really exciting. It was really fun. And you just felt like you were discovering something new.Scott Cunningham:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you liked that. But that's interesting because some people would be like, oh, discovering something new. I don't even care about that. When you were discovering something new, you were like, I like this feeling.Anna Aizer:Yeah. Yeah. I really did.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Anna Aizer:I really did.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. So what happened? So you graduate?Anna Aizer:I graduated. My first job was actually working for an Alternative To Incarceration program in New York City. So I moved back home. You have to remember, this was early mid '90s, and this was the peak in terms of crime rates in the country, and in New York City in particular. And the jails-Scott Cunningham:Before you say this, when you were growing up, did your parents... Was it like people were cognizant... I mean, now you know, oh, it was the peak because it's fallen so much, but what was the conversation like as a kid about crime?Anna Aizer:In the '90s in New York City at this time, that was really the crack cocaine epidemic, so there was a lot of talk about that. That really did dominate a lot of the media at the time. It really was a big concern.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah.Anna Aizer:As we know, the city and the state, not just in New York, but nationally, really responded with very tough on crime approach, started incarcerating a lot of people. So much so that they were really out of space in the New York City jail. So Rikers Island was at capacity, even upstate prisons were pretty full. The city, not because they were concerned that we were putting too many people in jail, which has... After the fact we know that we did put too many people in jail, that there was a cost to these incredibly high incarceration rates.Anna Aizer:At the time, the concern was that we don't have enough space, so what are we going to do? The city funded an Alternative To Incarceration program for youth. It was called the Court Employment Project. It was really focused on kids between the ages of 16 and 21 who were charged with a felony in New York state Supreme Court. And these were kids who were being charged as adults, treated as adults in the system. New York City has since raised the age of majority, but at that time it was 16. So we were focused on really younger 16 to 21. Well then, most of the kids we were working with were 16 to 18.Scott Cunningham:What kind of felonies are we talking about? Is this the drug felonies? Or is it [inaudible 00:15:51]?Anna Aizer:Yeah. So a lot of it was possession with intent to sell, selling. But also robbery, that was pretty common as well. We were only working with kids that were facing at least six months in adult prison, essentially. That was the rule for our program. Because again, our program was really focused on trying to reduce the number of people who were being detained and incarcerated for long periods of time. So we were only dealing with people who had-Scott Cunningham:Wait, real quick. So you're in your early 20s?Anna Aizer:Yeah. So I would've been about 23.Scott Cunningham:How'd you find this gig? You were just going back to New York City? Or what was the deal?Anna Aizer:Yeah. I knew I wanted to go back home. At that time, jobs were advertised in the paper, so you looked through the help wanted ads and you just sent cover letters and resumes by mail to whatever jobs appealed to you. I was interested in those jobs. I was also interested in working with public defenders, so the Legal Aid Society in New York, I applied for a number of jobs there.Scott Cunningham:Where's this coming from? What's your values exactly at this time? You're concerned about poverty or concerned about something? What's the deal?Anna Aizer:Yeah. I think I guess I already was really worried. I was really concerned about low income kids who were really... I felt already were getting derailed at very young ages in a way that I thought would be very hard for them to recover. I think that in that sense was really confirmed when I started working that these were kids who in a split minute their lives were just totally changed. So certainly in the case of things like robberies, these were often group of kids with not much to do, just getting into trouble, and it just getting too far too quick. And before they knew it, they were facing two to six years. I mean, it was just really tragic.Scott Cunningham:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I know. Six months. You think about it, too. You're looking at these six months in the program. You start looking at six months and you think, oh, that's six months. The thing is, those things cascade, because six months with a felony record serving prison becomes de facto a cycle of repeated six months, one year, two years.Anna Aizer:Sure.Scott Cunningham:You just end up... Well, that's going to be a paper that you end up writing, so I'll hold off on that. Okay. So you end up applying, you spray the city with all these resumes. And then this thing. So what is this company? This is a nonprofit?Anna Aizer:Yep. So it's a nonprofit that had a contract with the city. They had a contract with the city. Again, they were funded really because the city could not afford to put any more people on Rikers Island.Scott Cunningham:So it's like a mass incarceration response almost?Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Capacity constraints.Anna Aizer:They were at capacity, so they needed to do something. So what this program was, it was an intensive supervision program. The kids had to come in at least twice a week and meet with a counselor. The counselor would provide counseling services and also check in on them, make sure they were going to school or working or getting their GED. And then they would write up these long reports.Anna Aizer:I only worked in the courts, so I wasn't doing any of the counseling myself. I had no qualifications to do that. I worked in the courts, so my job was to screen kids for eligibility for the program, interview them, see if they were good candidates. Then talk to their families, talk to their lawyers. And then talk to the judge eventually about the program and about what we would be doing and why we thought this person was a good candidate. And then once they were in the program, I would then provide updates or reports back to the judge and the defense attorney to let them know how the individual was doing.Scott Cunningham:And wait. What is the treatment going to be that things are doing?Anna Aizer:Again, so it was really-Scott Cunningham:It's a deferment of you're going to go to jail?Anna Aizer:Yeah. That's exactly right. It was a six month program. If they made it through after six months, they would be sentenced to probation instead of jail time.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. They would refer adjudication type concept.Anna Aizer:Exactly.Scott Cunningham:Right. Yeah.Anna Aizer:Exactly. So that was the idea.Scott Cunningham:But it's non random. And I know you're not-Anna Aizer:It was, yeah.Scott Cunningham:You're not thinking about the future Anna Aizer [inaudible 00:21:17], but it's not random.Anna Aizer:No.Scott Cunningham:What is it conditioned on? Because you're doing all of it, right?Anna Aizer:Right. Right. So you look at a kid's record. You would look at whether or not the kid seem to have support. The downside was if a kid didn't make it through the program they might be sentenced to more time-Scott Cunningham:Really?Anna Aizer:than they would have... Maybe. I mean, the judge would-Scott Cunningham:Why? Because you're getting a new judge or something?Anna Aizer:No, it's the same judge. But the judges say, "Look, I'm going to give you a chance. Instead of sending you away now for six to 18, I'm going to give you an opportunity to prove yourself. Six months, stay out of trouble, complete this program. And then I'm going to send you to probation. But if you don't complete the program, I'm going to sentence you more." In the end, they might not have actually done that. They certainly didn't tie their hands in any way.Scott Cunningham:What do they doing? Why are they doing that? Why is a judge doing that? They're trying to deal with some sort of adverse selection or something? They don't want people to-Anna Aizer:They want to create an incentive for the kid to-Scott Cunningham:They're trying to create an incentive for the kid. Got it. Okay.Anna Aizer:Yeah. They-Scott Cunningham:Like a little scared straight thing?Anna Aizer:A little. I mean, the judges always think that. It's not clear that that works. I don't think that really matters so much in the decision making of young people. I think it's-Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Totally. Totally.Anna Aizer:But that certainly was on the mind I think of many of the judges.Scott Cunningham:It's funny though. When I think about this paper that we're going to talk about a little bit, it's like you're already aware of, oh, these judges have a little bit of discretion. They're saying a bunch of stuff that's not in the law. "If you don't do this, I'm going to give you penalize, I'm going to give you really bad grade at the end with another year in prison." Did that cross your mind that you were noticing that judges were... This judge does that and this other judge does not tend to do that, is that something you could have noticed?Anna Aizer:Absolutely.Scott Cunningham:Oh, wow.Anna Aizer:Yeah. So there were many, many judges. So this is Manhattan. This is the main criminal courts in Manhattan, so I had many, many judges, a lot of people. The way it works is once you've been indicted on a felony you come before one of these three judges. They're called conference judges. They try to dispose of the case. Either the case gets dismissed or they take the plea deal. But if that doesn't happen, they reach into a bin, literally a lottery-Scott Cunningham:It's like a bingo ball machine?Anna Aizer:It's a lottery with all these different judges' courtrooms. They pull out a number, and that's the number of the courtroom you get assigned to. You know right then if you get assigned to certain judges, for sure that kid is going to do jail time. And if you get assigned to other judges, for sure that kid is going to get probation.Scott Cunningham:Who knows this? The kids don't.Anna Aizer:The kids don't, but they don't know it.Scott Cunningham:They can't comprehend.Anna Aizer:But their attorney will know it.Scott Cunningham:And then maybe their parents.Anna Aizer:No, I don't think their parents would know.Scott Cunningham:Although, who in a group of kids that maybe their parents aren't as-Anna Aizer:I don't think their parents would know it, either. You would know it because you have to remember that all of the judges for the most part were either defense attorneys or prosecutors before they were judges, and you can tell. The judges who would-Scott Cunningham:Is that the main source of the discretion that you notice?Anna Aizer:I think so. I think so. I think the judges who previously prosecute-Scott Cunningham:I mean, they're such different. It does seem like the prosecutors and the defense attorneys are almost cut from a completely different worldview and set of values.Anna Aizer:I think that's right.Scott Cunningham:I had this friend that was a public defender in Athens and he was like... I think this is what he said. I'm not going to say his name because he probably didn't say this, but I thought he basically said, "I don't like prosecutors because they think they are always guilty."Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:And you could tell. The public defender, they were like, "My whole job is to not do that." I could just imagine that shaping... Either there's a lot of selection into that or that just really... You hear that all the time. There's got to be human capital with that.Anna Aizer:Yeah. I agree. I think they have a different perspective, which is what draws them to either defense work or prosecutorial work. But then you have to remember their jobs are really very different. So the prosecutor he or she is just dealing with the victims, so that's who they're talking to all day. The defense attorney is talking to the defendant and getting to know them and their families. They really just have very different sympathies. And the judges come from one or the other.Scott Cunningham:One or the other.Anna Aizer:So you can see it.Scott Cunningham:So you're a kid, you're young person. What are you feeling over the course of working with this? Tell me a little bit about your growth and the thoughts that you're thinking about.Anna Aizer:Yeah. I really felt like these were kids that just got derailed, that these were kids, they were in a very tough situation. They made a decision and they had no idea what the consequences of that were going to be. Nor should they have. They were 16. It's very hard to know where these things end up. I did feel as though the criminal justice system was way too harsh.Scott Cunningham:You could tell. Because the whole point of this nonprofit you're working on is a response to such an excessive amount of penalization. They literally don't have any room.Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. They don't have any room for anybody.Anna Aizer:Yeah. They had no room. That's exactly right.Scott Cunningham:We're doing so much punishment we can't even do it right.Anna Aizer:That's exactly right. In the juvenile and criminal justice system, more generally, there's a disproportionate involvement of Black and Hispanic youth.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Anna Aizer:But they are 100% poor.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Right.Anna Aizer:So that's the other thing. And that just seemed incredibly unfair to me.Scott Cunningham:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.Anna Aizer:And it's not the case that not poor kids don't also mess up. They do.Scott Cunningham:They just can avoid the 10,000... There's 10,000 events from the mess up to the things that these kids are facing in this program that they have many ways of mitigating it.Anna Aizer:Yeah. That's right.Scott Cunningham:There's even in terms of parents spending a ton of money, or just saying you can't hang out with these people. There's a bunch of stuff that poor families just are like... So you're feeling heavyhearted.Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:You could have gone in a different direction. You could have not gone to graduate school or gone to get this master's. What's the decision criteria where you're thinking I've got to go in a new direction?Anna Aizer:Yeah. At a certain point I just felt as though I needed more training. I wanted more of a professional degree, so I got a degree in public health where you learned a lot about the health system and financing and the social determinants of health. I felt like I needed, again, more training. I should say, I went from that job, not directly back to graduate school, but I went and I worked in not a homeless shelter, but a service center for homeless people also in New York City. I went from the criminal justice system to the homeless system. I was there for another year. And then I went back to school.Scott Cunningham:To what, two or three years total between Amherst and graduate school?Anna Aizer:That's correct. Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Anna Aizer:That's correct.Scott Cunningham:It's interesting you go to public health because I think a lot of people that don't know anything about anything, they'll be like, well, she's doing criminal justice so I could have seen her going to law school. Now she's going to the homeless thing. Okay, well, maybe she could do social work. What were the things you were thinking of? And how did you end up choosing public health? Because a lot of people don't associate either of those things with public health. They heard the word health.Anna Aizer:Right. So a couple things. One, I thought about law school, but I felt as though lawyers deal with the problem after it's happened.Scott Cunningham:Right.Anna Aizer:And I felt like maybe we should focus more on preventing.Scott Cunningham:Right.Anna Aizer:And the other thing, when I worked with homeless people I really did start to feel like this was a homeless individuals... Homeless families are different. I worked with homeless single adults, and for the most part in New York City at that time, all of the homeless single adults had serious mental health problems.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Right.Anna Aizer:I really came to see homelessness as a public health problem.Scott Cunningham:A mental health problem.Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:They hit public health. Got it.Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Right. Right.Anna Aizer:So that's really how... I could have done social work, but that's not really what I wanted to do.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. But it's funny you say preventative. To me when I hear that I'm thinking, oh, Anna's already starting to think about public policy.Anna Aizer:Yeah. I think I was.Scott Cunningham:I wouldn't necessarily think that if you were to tell me you went and got a master's in social work.Anna Aizer:Yeah. No, I think that's [inaudible 00:31:54]-Scott Cunningham:Because that cold be clinical or much more working with the... You would've had that experience and you'd be like, I want to work with these families. But that's not what you thought, so something else is going on. So you're thinking I want to do what?Anna Aizer:Yeah. I think I really was interested in policy already then.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. And that makes the masters of public health make a lot of sense.Anna Aizer:Correct. Yeah.Scott Cunningham:I see. So where'd you end up going, Harvard?Anna Aizer:I went to Harvard. Yeah. I got a masters in health policy and administration. And then I moved to DC. I worked for Mathematica policy research for two years, and I learned a lot about policy research.Scott Cunningham:Are you getting a quantitative training at the master's of public health when you went?Anna Aizer:Yeah, so that's where I really took my first micro theory class and my first statistics class. So I took biostatistics and micro theory there. And when I worked at Mathematica, I worked with a lot of economists. So most of the senior researchers at Mathematica were economists by training. That's where I really got exposure to the way economists think about, research and policy evaluation. It was then that I decided I wanted to go back and get a PhD in economics.Scott Cunningham:Okay. So what was it? What's the deal? Why do you like economics at this point?Anna Aizer:The senior researchers at Mathematica were either economists or sociologists or political scientists. I just felt like the economists had a very clear way in which they set up problems. I think that goes back to economic models of decision making.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Right.Anna Aizer:And it just struck me that that was just a very good way to conceptualize almost any problem. I also liked the way they thought about data. I think the people that I worked most closely with and came to admire were all economists. So that's how that-Scott Cunningham:And how long were you there? Were you doing public policy stuff at Mathematica?Anna Aizer:Yeah. I was doing a lot of evaluations of Medicaid programs. In particular, Medicaid managed care, moving from a different financing model for Medicaid and evaluating that, and various settings, and writing them policy briefs so that... God. It was either two or three years, I can't really remember, maybe three years. I think I was there three years and then I went back to graduate school.Scott Cunningham:And then you go to UCLA?Anna Aizer:And then I went to UCLA.Scott Cunningham:Am I right that you were working mainly with Janet Curry?Anna Aizer:Yes. So Janet Curry was my-Scott Cunningham:You worked pretty closely with her?Anna Aizer:Yeah. She was my main advisor. The other folks I worked with were Joe Huts and Jeff Grogger.Scott Cunningham:And who?Anna Aizer:Jeff Grogger.Scott Cunningham:Oh, Jeff Grogger?Anna Aizer:None of whom are there anymore.Scott Cunningham:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Right. I'm just curious. I associate you a lot with... Because I wrote that book on causal inference I'm obsessed with the causal inference stuff in all these weird ways, with all the people. I see Princeton industrial relations section, Card, Angres, et cetera. And then I see Janet Curry. And then I see you at UCLA, and I associate you so much with that methodological approach, especially for some of the papers that I've known really well. Did you get a sense when you were at UCLA, oh, this is causal inference, this is different, this is the credibility revolution? Or was it just really subtle, or this is just how you do empirical work?Anna Aizer:That's a great question. So I should also say that my first year econometrics teacher was Hero Inmans.Scott Cunningham:Was it, really?Anna Aizer:Yeah. Hero [inaudible 00:36:18] UCLA.Scott Cunningham:Oh my gosh. I didn't know that.Anna Aizer:For a short period of time. I was lucky enough that he was there when I was there. So he taught me in my first and my second years. So of course he was very much big part of this. And actually Enrico Moretti was also at UCLA when I was there, so I took courses with him. I think between Janet, Hero, Enrico and Joe Huts, they were really in the thick of it. That was the way it was done.Scott Cunningham:That was the way it was done.Anna Aizer:That was the way it was done.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. What did you learn? What do you think the salient concepts were that had you... This is a make believe, right? But I'm just saying, had you gone to a different school where you didn't have any of those people, what do you think the salient econometric causal inference kind of things were to you that you were like, oh, this is what I notice I keep doing over and over again, or keep thinking about?Anna Aizer:Well, I would say that the method was in service to the question. I feel as though I'm seeing it more these days. People, they find an experiment, a natural experiment, and then they figure out the question. That's not how I remember it. You had the question and then the method was in service to that question. I worry that that's getting a little bit lost these days, that people have the experiment and then they're searching for the question. I think that ends up being less interesting and less important.Scott Cunningham:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. There were certain economists, I think, that were so successful as approaching it that way. It seems like it was cut both ways, because it seems like applied causal inference grew on the back of that kind of natural experiment first, but it almost becomes... To a kid with a hammer, everything's a nail, so it's just like, look through the newspaper, look for a natural experiment. What can I do? How can I do this? How can I [handle 00:38:49]?Scott Cunningham:And it is funny. I don't think it's as satisfying too, just even emotionally. I guess you can find discoveries that way, like you were, but it does feel like you don't end up building up all the human capital with the importance of that question. It's almost like, you're like, well, how can I make this question really important? As opposed to it is important.Anna Aizer:Right.Scott Cunningham:What were you studying? I know what you were studying. At UCLA, what was the question that you were really captivated by?Anna Aizer:So I was really focused on health. You have to remember, I'd done a master's in public health and I just worked at Mathematica, so I was really focused on health. So really all of my dissertation was on health. My main dissertation chapter was actually on Medicaid in California. It was on the importance of enrolling kids early in Medicaids. I don't know if you know much about the Medicaid program, but there are many kids, 60% of kids, who are uninsured are actually eligible for the Medicaid program, but not enrolled in the Medicaid program. And that's partly because-Scott Cunningham:60%?Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Wow.Anna Aizer:We could reduce the number of kids who are uninsured in this country by more than half if you just enrolled all those kids who were eligible for Medicaid in the program.Scott Cunningham:Yeah.Anna Aizer:And part of the-Scott Cunningham:We saw that in that Oregon Medicaid experiment.Anna Aizer:Yeah. Oregon was mostly adults. I don't know how these numbers differ for adults and kids. I'm really more focused on kids. It's partly by design because Medicaid is a program. If you show up at the hospital and you don't have insurance and you're eligible for Medicaid, the hospital will enroll you. And most people know that.Scott Cunningham:Oh, is that right?Anna Aizer:Yeah. I mean, because they have every interest. They want to get paid, so they'll enroll you in the Medicaid program, but there's a cost to that. Because what that means is that kids, if parents know that once they go to the hospital their kid will be enrolled in the Medicaid program should they need hospitalization, they don't end up getting them enrolled prior to that. So they miss out on the ambulatory preventative care that might prevent them from being hospitalized to begin with. And that's partly because of the structure of the program, but that's also because the states made it difficult for kids to enroll in the Medicaid program. In California, there was a big change. The application for Medicaid used to be 20 pages long. Imagine that, right? They cut it down to four.Scott Cunningham:What kind of stuff are they asking on those 20 pages?Anna Aizer:Who knows? Who knows what they're asking.Scott Cunningham:Good grief. I mean, they're wanting them on there. Are they screening them out or are they just-Anna Aizer:I think that's partly what they were trying to do, right?Scott Cunningham:Screen them out? Because it's expensive.Anna Aizer:It's expensive.Scott Cunningham:You've got some of these legislators, they're like, this is expensive and I don't even want to do this so add a dozen pages.Anna Aizer:Yeah. So just make it hard. Now, what happened in '97 was the child health insurance program, CHIP. And they said, "If you want CHIP money..." So that's federal money to ensure more kids. "If you want CHIP money, federal money, you are going to have to enroll more kids in the Medicaid program. You have to do outreach." So the states actually were forced, and that's actually what prompted California to go from a 20 page application to a four page application. They also spent about $20 million on advertisement and basically training community based organizations in how to complete a Medicaid application. So they train them. "Here, you can help your clients enroll in Medicaid. For every application that you help that ends up getting onto the Medicaid program we'll give you 50 bucks." And this really mattered. A lot of kids started enrolling in the Medicaid program who otherwise wouldn't, particularly Hispanic and Asian American kids.Scott Cunningham:Is this what your dissertation ends up being about?Anna Aizer:This is what my dissertation is about.Scott Cunningham:On both the shortening and the payment?Anna Aizer:So it was basically once they started doing this you started seeing big increases in the number of kids who were enrolled in the Medicaid program. And you saw declines in hospitalizations for things like asthma. Asthma is a condition for which if you're being seen and treated on an ambulatory basis, you shouldn't end up in the hospital.Scott Cunningham:Oh. Wait. So what's your control group and all this stuff?Anna Aizer:What the state did was they targeted different areas, and provided training to those community based organizations in how to complete a Medicaid application. So they gave me all that data.Scott Cunningham:Get out of here.Anna Aizer:So I had all the data.Scott Cunningham:So you're doing some IB thing? You're doing some-Anna Aizer:Yeah. It was, basically if you live in a neighborhood where a community based organization had already been trained then you were much more likely to be enrolled in the Medicaid program. So you can see that.Scott Cunningham:Oh my gosh. This is so cool. Were you excited when you found that?Anna Aizer:I was super excited.Scott Cunningham:I bet.Anna Aizer:I was super excited. This was so old. I was begging Medicaid to send me this data. Begging, begging, begging. And they weren't really answering. And then one day Janet came in to the office where all the graduate students sit, and she said, "I think I got this fax for you." She handed this 20 page fax that has all the data on what community organization got trained and when.Scott Cunningham:Okay. Anna, I want to ask a meta question real quick. You just said, these days people maybe start with natural experiment first, but originally it was question first. Okay. Not devil's advocate, but just a statement of facts. The one reason they may do that is because when you find these kinds of natural experiments or whatever, it almost just feels almost itself random. You're weren't even really looking for it. You read something in the newspaper, you're like, oh my gosh, they're doing this weird thing. And the risk of going question first is, you could have this incredibly important question, like the Medicaid project payment thing, and you're like, if everybody in my department, like Hero Inmans and Moretti and Curry, who are to answer a question either subtly or not so subtly, or to answer a question is going to require this credible design and we really need you to staple this dissertation together. You're going to have to have a-Anna Aizer:I think that's why you have lots-Scott Cunningham:It seems really risky. It seems really risky.Anna Aizer:Yeah. I think you have to have lots of ideas.Scott Cunningham:You have to have lots of ideas.Anna Aizer:I think you have lots of ideas. A good friend of mine in graduate school was Enrico Moretti's RA. He told me that Enrico had tons of ideas. Wes, this was my friend, his RA, would just do some really quick takes on all of these ideas. And if there was something there he'd pursue it. But if there was nothing there he'd drop it.Scott Cunningham:What does that mean, nothing there, something there? What does that mean?Anna Aizer:Either, if you can't find exaggerate variation or the exaggerate variation doesn't actually work, you don't have the first stage, he'd just drop it and move on to something else.Scott Cunningham:That's a skill. That's almost some therapeutic skill to be excited about something and willing to let it go.Anna Aizer:Yeah. I think that's right. I think that's actually-Scott Cunningham:You got a lot of ideas?Anna Aizer:I had a lot of ideas. It never worked out.Scott Cunningham:Never worked out. And that's normal.Anna Aizer:I think that's normal.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. That's not a bad thing.Anna Aizer:Yeah. I think that's how research should go. In fact, I'm not as good as Enrico, I probably hold on to things for longer than I should.Scott Cunningham:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Boy, where'd you end up publishing that work? I should know this, but I don't know.Anna Aizer:That published in Restat Review Economics Institute.Scott Cunningham:Oh, cool. So what'd you end up finding?Anna Aizer:So what I end up finding is if you pay these organizations to enroll... Well, a couple things. Advertisement, just blanketing the television and radio with information. Sign up for Medicaid, sign up for CHIP, that does not work at all.Scott Cunningham:Doesn't work?Anna Aizer:No.Scott Cunningham:Advertising doesn't work?Anna Aizer:It doesn't work. What works is having these communities organizations help families complete the application. That's incredibly important.Scott Cunningham:That's a supply demand kind of philosophy that you see in drugs, too. Mark Anderson has this paper on meth. They would post these advertisements of people that were addicted to meth. They look horrible. They lose their teeth and all this stuff. It didn't do anything.Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like you're talking about a group of people. They're like, they need more assistance. They need somebody... You think about that thing you were saying earlier about these kids that are higher income versus lower income. When I said there were 10,000 steps that the higher income people had, it wasn't really like the kids, it was external forces that were investing, going after them.Anna Aizer:Yeah. Right.Scott Cunningham:It seems like incentives need to be targeted to people to go after. For whatever reason it is not enough to just simply have it. You need people going in and helping along the way.Anna Aizer:Right. Agreed. I agree. They need support.Scott Cunningham:They need support.Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:Okay. So that is amazing. I bet your advisors were so proud of you for that project.Anna Aizer:I don't know.Scott Cunningham:I think so.Anna Aizer:You'd hope so, but that'll be icing on the cake.Scott Cunningham:Right. Exactly. Yeah. I guess that's not super important.Anna Aizer:Yeah, it is. You do always want your advisor... I mean, I had tremendous respect for all my advisors. So yeah, I'd be very pleased if they liked the work that I did. Basically, states did spend this money to enroll kids early, but it paid off because it meant that they were less likely to be hospitalized. In fact, some of these programs can be very much cost effective.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah. I had told myself, I was like, well, I'm asking Anna about the juvenile incarceration paper with Joe Doyle. And then I was going to ask her about domestic violence. And I feel like I've got to make a hard choice now, because I don't have a lot of time. So I was thinking, well, let's see how this goes. And then we can fit. So domestic violence. First thing I want to ask is, how did you get interested in that topic? And when did it start? In a way I could almost imagine, oh, you've been thinking about domestic violence forever.Anna Aizer:Yes. So I actually-Scott Cunningham:You've been thinking about women ever since college.Anna Aizer:Yeah. That's true. And made that connection. This was basically my first big project after I started at Brown. After my dissertation I was thinking, okay, what's my next big project going to be? And I think that's a very important decision for junior faculty to think about. After you finish publishing your dissertation you got to think about what's my next big project? Because it takes so long to publish anything in economics, that's really going to matter a lot. That might be the only thing you publish before you're coming up for tenure given how long.Anna Aizer:I was thinking about it, and I just felt like I didn't have a clear question in mind, but just been looking at the numbers it's incredibly prevalent, domestic violence. But it's also shown some pretty encouraging trends. Domestic violence against women has been declining pretty significantly. In the US, I think about... I haven't looked the number up recently, but it was about 1,000 women a year were being killed, and so many more actually are victims of domestic violence. And if you look at victimization surveys, between one and three and one in four women in the US report ever being the victim of domestic violence. It's really prevalent. And it just struck me, this is a big problem and I don't know how to answer it, but we should know more about it given just how prevalent it is. And so that's how I started.Anna Aizer:I have a good friend from high school, and she's a lawyer in New York City. She was working with victims of domestic violence. She's a lawyer by training. She used to say, "These women have nothing. They have no resources. They are so poor." That, to me, just made me think about, okay, I need to start thinking about income and resources and poverty and domestic violence, because clearly that's a big part of this.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny. I feel like you and I ended up responding to the bargaining theory papers in the exact same way. That's when I was studying a lot of my stuff on couples and things and bad behavior on the part of the men, I was always thinking about sex ratios in the marriage market. Why I was thinking about that was the ability to exit the partnership could be really, really important. And I was curious. You can talk about people not having resources and not necessarily be thinking in terms of one of these Nash bargaining, like Manser and Brown, and McElroy and Horn, and Shelly Lundberg kinds of ways of thinking. I was curious, were you thinking about those theory papers a lot? Or am I just projecting?Anna Aizer:I had this friend, again, who was working and telling me just how poor many of the women she was working with were. And then once you actually look at the statistics, the survey statistics, it's true that any woman can be a victim of domestic violence, but it is really a poor woman problem. So it's very clear to me that poverty has a lot to do with it. It's because many of these women have no other source of support. They have low levels was in schooling. They have few prospects in the labor market. And they're really stuck. That is ultimately-Scott Cunningham:Stuck as in cannot leave.Anna Aizer:Cannot leave. I mean, they have a very-Scott Cunningham:Because that's the solution. That's one of the most important solutions, which is probably you need to leave the relationship.Anna Aizer:Yeah. Or you need to be able to threaten to leave.Scott Cunningham:You need to be able to threaten to leave. How important do you think the credible threat is? Because my sense is, that's to an economist, because they're like, you should thinking about unions and stuff. They're like, oh, credible threats. That's all you got to, you have to do it. I feel like, I don't know if that really works. I actually think the truth is you're going to have to leave. And maybe there's some marginal guy. We're talking about the marginal guy, but whatever, that's the info marginal, whatever. The extensive marginal guy, he's got narcissism personality disorder, substance abuse problems.Anna Aizer:Yeah. You may be right.Scott Cunningham:He's got major, major problems. And that stuff is very inelastic to everything.Anna Aizer:Yeah. You may be right. I can't answer this because I don't know for sure. At the same time I remember talking to some folks about this, and their feeling was that it's all a continuum of a bad relationship. Violence may be one extreme, but relationships have ebbs and flows. They can be better at some points and worse at others. So they did feel as though a relationship didn't always have to be violent, that you could have relationships that were violent at one point but then were no longer. Of course, you also have relationships in which that's not the case, and the only solution is to leave. But there could very well be relationships where you can have better and worse periods.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. The reason why I bring it up is because I feel like these days you hear a lot about mental health. Well, you hear about mental health period, but in domestic violence there'll be also an emerging story of the narcissist personality disorder. I've been always lately thinking, I've been like, I wonder if this is true. Anecdotally, what you see a lot is how manipulative... And that's like a very judgemental way of putting it, but I don't know how else to say it. How manipulative one of the person can be towards the other where they're like, "Well, if you loved me..." They get all this trepped up stories about love. What love becoming almost this story.Scott Cunningham:I've wondered for those people that can't or won't... It's actually won't, right? They can leave. I mean, there are some people they will be literally harmed if they leave, so I'm not talking about those people. But I mean, the person that literally you're watching an equilibrium where they don't leave, I've wondered lately if it's like, the victim is all tangled up with loyalty and love.Anna Aizer:Yeah. Sure.Scott Cunningham:And it is taken advantage of by a person that no one can tell them not to love this person. That's nobody's business.Anna Aizer:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is a really complicated thing.Scott Cunningham:It is so complicated. It is so complicated. Finding the policies that provide resources to a person. Some of that might be a person that's at those earlier ebbs too, those earlier ebbs in the bad relationship. And you're like, well, some people may not be ready to leave yet.Anna Aizer:I mean, this a thing where I do think the right policy response is providing resources to women, but also probably interventions aimed at the assailant is probably going to be just as effective. Sorry. My phone is ringing.Scott Cunningham:That's okay.Anna Aizer:Hello. Sorry about that. I thought it might be my kids.Scott Cunningham:I wonder about these battery courts. Have you heard about these [inaudible 01:00:05] courts?Anna Aizer:Yeah. I mean, they're-Scott Cunningham:I wonder what you know about those?Anna Aizer:Yeah. Not a lot, I would say.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. These issues of poverty and mental health and all of these things interacting in order to get healing and healthy meaningful lives to all everyone is... I do think this is something that economists can offer, but it's not something that... I wouldn't say there's a ton of people. You're one of a small number of people working on domestic violence, it seems like.Anna Aizer:It's a very hard thing to study. Data's very difficult to come by for obvious reasons, for a good reason. I mean, this is data that needs to be protected. Glenn Ludwig and the crime lab in Chicago, they're doing work around violence reduction more generally. And probably many of those principles and findings probably relate to domestic violence as well, changing the behavior of young people so that they are less quick to react and less quick to react in a violent way. When they do, we would probably have some pretty important spillover to domestic violence as well, I think.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Yeah, yeah.Anna Aizer:I think there are ways to reduce violence more generally that would probably apply to the setting of domestic violence.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. It's funny, circling back to that judge who threatens with higher penalties. I think economists, when they think about violence and things like that, you're an exception for thinking about outside options and stuff like that, but the shadow of Gary Becker's deterrence hypothesis, it can just be this straight jacket for a lot of people, because they just only think in terms of relative price changes on the punishment margins. When you talk to psychologists, or you read that psychology literature about narcissism or borderline personality disorder or substance abuse, you're talking about a group of people that are, for variety of reasons, have really low discount rates or just have beliefs that things don't apply to them. Or in no uncertain terms, the elasticities of violent behavior with respect to some unknown punishment that you don't even know if it's going to real, it just seems like, we don't really know, but [inaudible 01:03:06] really big.Anna Aizer:Yeah. So there was this criminologist named Mark Kleiman. Do you know that name?Scott Cunningham:Oh yeah. Mark Kleiman. Yeah. Yeah.Anna Aizer:I mean his big thing was, it should be swift, sure and short. That's how we should do punishment. He felt as though that would be far preferable to the system in which there's uncertainty. But if it doesn't work out, you're going to spend a lot of time in jail. He thought that was a fair model.Scott Cunningham:The thing is, though, swift certain and did you say short?Anna Aizer:Short.Scott Cunningham:Yeah. Well, with prison sentences lingering on your record it is by definition never short.Anna Aizer:Yeah.Scott Cunningham:You face these labor market scarrings and you can't get housing, you can't get jobs and that does not go away. So even if the prison sentence is short, the person... I just feel like this is the tension around violence in the country, which is punishment has so many margins where it is permanent. It's got so many margins. And just being in a cage is only one of them.Anna Aizer:Yeah. I mean, particularly for young people, jail is incredibly scarring.Scott Cunningham:Incredibly scarring. Incredibly scarring. We've been studying suicide attempts in the jail and we-Anna Aizer:Yes, that's right.Scott Cunningham:We walked the jail for this one particular jail. I have never in my life seen anything like that. I've been working on this project for four years. I hadn't walked to the jail. I don't know. It's not the first thing that came to my mind. The team finally walked the jail. I spent the whole day there. The jails have so much mental illness in it. They just are in... It's not even cages. A cage has... Air gets in. It's a sealed box. It's like Houdini's box. They stay there, and for a variety of regulatory reasons and so forth, they stay in there. Can't have a lot of materials if they are at risk. If they've come in with psychosis because of substance abuse or underlying mental illness stuff, they might get moved into certain types of physical quarters. I just can't even imagine, just in an hour, let alone... And that's just jail. That's not even prison. It's just absolutely a trauma box.Scott Cunningham:Unfortunately, we didn't get to talk about your paper with Joe Doyle on the juvenile incarceration. But every time I teach that juvenile incarceration paper, where kids were incarcerated as a young person, and then end up not going back. It's not even the future prison part, it's the not going back to high school.Anna Aizer:Oh, of course.Scott Cunningham:And then when they go back, they're labeled with a behavioral emotional disorder. It's really like anybody that's had any exposure to a kid involved in corrections, you're like, oh, I know exactly what that is. They were traumatized. You don't even have to come up with some exotic economic theory. They were traumatized. That's why they come back to school with a behavioral emotional disorder. It is [inaudible 01:06:59].Anna Aizer:Yep. That's good.Scott Cunningham:That paper is one of the most important papers I have personally ever read. I teach it nonstop. And I've even cried teaching it in class. I get so emotional when I get to that part, because, I don't know about you, but it seems like it's really hard not to come away with... A lot of papers you read, you're like, well, we're not really sure exactly all to make of it. But when I read that paper that you wrote, I just think, especially when you think about the leniency design, I just think these kids probably didn't need to go to prison.Anna Aizer:Oh yeah.Scott Cunningham:Honestly, what else are you going to say? They end up committing more crimes. And they are not going back to school. How was this the policy goal? What was it like writing that paper when you started to realize what was going on?Anna Aizer:Again, when I worked in this Alternative to Incarceration program we had kids come into the program who had spent some time in jail. And we had kids who had spent very little time, maybe just a night. The kids who had spent even just three weeks in jail, they always did worse in the program. Always. It was a known fact. The program knew it. And the question was, well, are these kids somehow different? There was a reason why they were in jail and these other kids weren't. Is that why they do worse in the program? Maybe they're in jail because their family didn't show up for them in court. They couldn't make bail.Anna Aizer:Or was it something about spending three weeks in jail that just made it impossible for them to complete the program? This was a big question that was on everybody's mind. We talked about this quite a bit at the program, and we didn't know the answer. When I finally figured out how to do it, working with Joe, I wanted to know the answer to a question that I had been thinking about for over a decade.Scott Cunningham:Gosh. Were you emotionally upset when you started to see coefficients get really big?Anna Aizer:It really was not surprising. It really wasn't, because these are kids who are only marginally attached to school. These are not the kids who were going to school, doing well in school. These are kids who were not really that attached to school for whatever reason. So you take them out even for a month, they're not going to go back. I mean, it's obvious. We saw that in the program. What they ended up doing was moving a lot of kids from school to GED because they had not been involved in school, they were not involved in school. It just was much more likely that they would be able to complete a GED than actually go back to high school and finish.Scott Cunningham:Your paper, it like hit home for personal reasons. We had an event happen. I wrote a professor. I was like, this thing had happened. Anna and Joe find this result. I feel hopeless. There's this kid in town and I raised money for him. Basically, I was like, you just got to do everything in your power to not let them spend an extra minute in jail. And all this scared straight stuff. Parents get into it, too. They're exhausted. They're like, "Well, he's got to learn his lesson." Nobody learns a damn thing in jail. They don't learn a lesson. Because y

CCAR Chief Executive Rabbi Hara Person defends abortion rights, in the wake of Dobbs. Rabbi Hara Person is the Chief Executive of Central Conference of American Rabbis. She is the first woman Chief Executive in the history of the CCAR. As Chief Executive, Rabbi Person oversees lifelong rabbinic learning, professional development and career services, CCAR Press -- liturgy, sacred texts, educational materials, apps, and other content for Reform clergy, congregations and Jewish organizations -- and critical resources and thought leadership for the 2,200 rabbis who serve more than 2 million Reform Jews throughout North America, Israel, and the world. She was ordained in 1998 from HUC-JIR, after graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst College (1986) and receiving an MA in Fine Arts from New York University/International Center of Photography (1992). Rabbi Person served as Educator at the Brooklyn Heights Synagogue from 1990-1996, and was the Adjunct Rabbi there from 1998-2019. She also serves as the High Holy Day Rabbi of Congregation B'nai Olam, Fire Island Pines, NY. Previously, she was the CCAR's Chief Strategy Officer. In that capacity, she oversaw communications, served as Publisher of CCAR Press, and worked on overall organizational strategy. Prior to joining the CCAR, she worked at the URJ, where she was Managing Editor of The Torah: A Women's Commentary, named the National Jewish Book Award Book of the Year in 2008.

Fascinating conversation with Jack Betts, a Division III student-athlete at Amherst College that has made the most of his ability to utilize his Name, Image, and Likeness. Jack talks about how he got started in the NIL space, and ultimately built relationships with more than 35 companies. Jack gives insight into how he finds new sponsors, how he manages his time, and lessons learned along the way. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jim-abbott/support

“I've been blessed with a somewhat pragmatic view, and I had a good sense of who I was and what I had to offer.” Charles Busch has been around a while… and in the meantime. He is one of the first self-producers and self-advocates in the industry. Since he was eleven, he was writing three act places and found out very early at Northwestern that he would not find success in mainstream showbusiness. “Too gay” for the industry in the 70's he says… so maybe the things that made him uncastable and unemployable could actually be what brings him success.  Even after going to an incredible acting program, Busch still didn't feel he was able to find himself in the industry. He sold numerous pilots to networks, but still found himself back to putting on a show with people he loves. And sometimes even finding himself in places at the top of the food chain (like writing a book for a new musical) and saying to himself, “I really hate this!” And yes, we talk about Taboo, one of Broadway's biggest flops. We also talk about his huge success on Broadway, The Tale of the Allergist's Wife.  Charles also takes us down discovery lane as he found his love of drag, cabaret, a symbiotic relationship with his beloved manager, taking the road less traveled, and the upcoming 54 Below show, Backstage Babble, which he'll be appearing in on September 6th at 7pm.  Charles Busch has forged a unique place in the world of entertainment as playwright, actor, director, novelist, cabaret performer and drag icon. He is the author and star of over twenty-five plays including The Divine Sister, The Lady in Question, Red Scare on Sunset, The Tribute Artist, The Confession of Lily Dare and Vampire Lesbians of Sodom; one of the longest running plays in the history of Off-Broadway. His play The Tale of the Allergist's Wife ran for 777 performances on Broadway, won the Outer Circle Critics' John L. Gassner Award for playwrighting, received a Tony nomination for Best Play and is the longest running Broadway comedy of the past twenty-five years.  He wrote and starred in the film versions of his plays, Psycho Beach Party and Die Mommie Die, the latter of which won him the Best Performance Award at the Sundance Film Festival. For two seasons, he appeared as Nat Ginzburg on the HBO series OZ and is the author of the auto-biographical novel Whores of Lost Atlantis. He has directed two films; the Showtime short subject, Personal Assistant, and a feature, A Very Serious Person, which won an honorable mention at the Tribeca Film Festival. Due to his love and knowledge of film and theatre history, he has appeared as a guest programmer and in numerous documentaries for Turner Classic Movies, and has lectured and conducted master classes at many colleges and universities including NYU, Harvard, UCLA and Amherst College. In 2003, Mr. Busch received a special Drama Desk Award for career achievement as both performer and playwright and was given a star on the Playwrights Walk outside the Lucille Lortel Theatre. He is also the subject of the acclaimed documentary film The Lady in Question is Charles Busch. He is a two-time MAC award winner and has performed his cabaret act in many cities including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia, London, Paris, Barcelona and New York. In winter of 2016, his show The Lady at the Mic premiered at Jazz at Lincoln Center's American Songbook series. His first CD, Charles Busch Live at Feinstein's 54 Below, was released by Broadway Records. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[Note: we recorded this episode before Attorney General Merrick Garland gave a statement about the warrant the FBI received to search Donald Trump's residence at Mar-a-Lago.  In the statement, Garland said the Department of Justice has filed a motion to unseal that warrant and the property receipt. As of right now, we don't know if Trump will support or oppose that motion, but it will be up to a federal judge to decide either way.] Lanae Erickson (Senior Vice President for the Social Policy & Politics Program at Third Way) and Catherine Sanderson (Poler Family Professor of Psychology and Chair of Psychology at Amherst College) join host Ron Steslow to unpack some of the most important stories of the week: (03:00) The FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago (21:20) Republicans' reaction to the search (39:39) Lessons from John Fetterman's campaign to win over rural voters in Pennsylvania [Politicology+ Members Only] Liz Cheney's primary election is next week. Her latest ad attacking Donald Trump features her father, Dick Cheney. // To get your private, ad-free Politicology+ podcast feed with extra episodes, go to politicology.com/plus or subscribe in Apple Podcasts. Follow this week's panel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RonSteslow https://twitter.com/LanaeErickson https://twitter.com/SandersonSpeaks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we welcome newcomer Rachel Stern the show to chat with Jim about their shared enjoyment of NCSL as well as Rachel's work with InState Partners. Rachel Stern is a Senior Vice President for InState Partners, a business line of Advantage Capital. As the founder of the business line, over the last decade she has invested in and advised InState's extensive portfolio companies on how to foster effective partnerships between innovative technology solutions and state and local governments across the country. Rachel is also a graduate of the CORO™ Fellows Program, an intensive, full-time, graduate-level fellowship in public affairs. Through CORO, she worked in multiple sectors of public affairs, including non-profits, public companies and private equity-backed businesses, state government and electoral campaigns. She received her MBA from University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business and her bachelor's degree from Amherst College. Help us grow! Leave us a rating and review - it's the best way to bring new listeners to the show. Don't forget to subscribe! Have a suggestion, or want to chat with Jim? Email him at Jim@ThePoliticalLife.net  Follow The Political Life on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter for weekly updates.

Sonya Clark is a multidisciplinary textile artist, Professor at Amherst College and ACC Fellow. Hosted by ACC Honorary Fellow Stuart Kestenbaum, this interview is one in a series developed by Kestenbaum and  craftschools.us. You can find Sonya's work at https://sonyaclark.com/ and learn more about the artist at https://www.craftcouncil.org/magazine/article/connector.

Today, we are joined by Patricia Angus, Founder and CEO of Angus Advisory Group LLC. For more than 25 years, Patricia has provided legal and strategic advice to global families and firms with multi-generational businesses, trusts, and philanthropies. She and Arden discuss estate planning with mental health and addiction issues in mind. Patricia outlines the first steps that families need to take before starting their estate plans. She explains the important mix of legal and psychological training that advisors need to best serve their clients. Listen for insightful information and tools that families can use when they begin their estate plan preparation.    IN THIS EPISODE:    [02:22] Learn about the Angus Advisory Group and how to create an estate plan with mental health and addiction issues in mind.  [05:50] Issues that advisors face when they work with clients who have substance use or mental health issues, plus information families need to share when planning their estate.  [10:20] What tools can families use to prepare for estate planning?  [12:29] What happens when families withhold important information?   [17:45] Siblings serving as trustees for their siblings' trust.  [22:15] The exciting legal future of supporting high net worth families.    KEY TAKEAWAYS:     If you are a trained lawyer, your education did not include psychological training. However, it behooves lawyers to get psychological training so they may better serve their clients.  The most important thing to do before scheduling any meetings to plan your estate is to engage in some soul-searching. Think about your values, goals, and the messages  you want to leave behind.  When assigning a trustee, make sure they have the right qualifications to do what trustees must do, which include three basic things. They have to administer, invest, and distribute the assets of the trust  they received from the grantor or set loan.     BIO:  Patricia M. Angus, JD, MIA, TEP: Founder and CEO, Angus Advisory Group LLC; Adjunct Professor, founding Managing Director of the Global Family Enterprise Program, and Faculty Director of Enterprising Families Executive Education, Columbia University's Graduate School of Business. For over 25 years, she has provided legal and strategic advice to global families and firms with multi-generational businesses, trusts, and philanthropy. Publications include: The Beneficiary Primer: A Guide for Beneficiaries of Family Trusts and The Trustee Primer: A Guide for Personal Trustees. Advisory Boards of Trusts & Estates and the Carter Center. Fellow of and faculty member for FFI. Advanced Certificate in Family Wealth Advising and a Certificate in Family Business Advising from FFI. 2019 FFI Achievement Award in the Field of Family   Enterprise, the Interdisciplinary Award.    B.A. cum laude, Amherst College; Masters in International Affairs, Columbia University   School of International and Public Affairs; J.D. George Washington University Law School    https://angusadvisorygroup.com/        https://www.linkedin.com/in/pangus/    The Trustee Primer    The Beneficiary Primer 

As a child, our guest said she would attend the University of Nairobi. She forgot that goal but years later she attended the University of Nairobi and her mother reminded her of the goal she set many years before. Hear this story and more about Ashley Allen's destiny with entrepreneurship. Acacia trees thrive in adverse conditions and thrive in healthy climes. They are remarkably strong and resilient. Ashley Allen fosters that same strength and resilience in her clients. As president of Acacia Insights LLC, Ashley helps individuals, teams and organizations transform from good to great: enhancing awareness, increasing productivity, managing change and accelerating growth. With a focus on interactive workshop development and facilitation, leadership coaching, personal brand and strategic planning, her client list is diverse: entrepreneurs, multi-unit nationals and global organizations. She has extensive domestic and international experience, in recent years having facilitated programs in 13 countries. Prior to launching her own company, Ashley was an executive with Tribune Company's Orlando Sentinel for more than two decades – with vice president roles in new business development, planning and corporate communications, among other business management and marketing positions. She has been engaged in the community for many years, serving on the regional boards of directors of organizations including Junior Achievement and United Arts, and has mentored managers throughout the U.S. for WOMEN Unlimited. Originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma, Ashley both advocates and exemplifies lifelong learning. She was graduated from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and attended the University of Nairobi, Kenya, Amherst College, the University of Tulsa and the Advanced Executive Program at Northwestern University.

About Tricia Nelson: Tricia Nelson is an internationally acclaimed author, transformational speaker, and Emotional Eating Expert. She lost fifty pounds by identifying and healing the underlying causes of her emotional eating. She has spent over thirty years researching the hidden causes of the addictive personality. Tricia is the author of the #1 bestselling book, Heal Your Hunger, 7 Simple Steps to End Emotional Eating Now.  She also certifies health coaches so they can get better results, referrals and revenue by helping their clients overcome emotional eating.  Tricia is the host of the popular podcast, The Heal Your Hunger Show and is a highly regarded speaker. Tricia has been featured on NBC, CBS, KTLA, FOX and Discovery Health.  Tricia's own struggles began in early childhood, where she attempted to cope with life's stresses and emotional pain by overeating and using other destructive behaviors. After years of exhausting 12-step programs, therapy and self-help books, to no avail, Tricia finally hit a spiritual and emotional bottom. Tricia attended Amherst College and began her career working at the Seattle Art Museum. While in Seattle she began working with a spiritual healer who helped her create a lifestyle of positive self-care, self-love and improved self-esteem. Tricia was able to stop drinking and overeating and has maintained a fifty-pound weight loss for over 30 years now What We Discuss In This Episode: What is your journey with emotional eating and how did it lead you to start Heal Your Hunger? Why do 98% of diets fail? What is the difference between an emotional eater and a food addict? How does one know which one they are? How does one differentiate between emotional hunger and physical hunger? Is there more to emotional eating than just eating too much for emotional reasons? What are three things you recommend a person do to end emotional eating now? Why “comfort foods” are so comforting How to differentiate between physical and emotional hunger 3 Hidden causes of emotional eating and how to heal them How to deal with obsessive food thoughts The #1 weight loss mistake you should never make How to manage stress before it drives you to the kitchen Free Resources from Tricia Nelson: Find out it you're an emotional eater or food addict:  https://healyourhunger.com/are-you-an-emotional-eater-or-food-addict/   Connect with Tricia Nelson:  TedX Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVSe2vaxXXM Website: https://www.healyourhunger.com/ Podcasts: https://www.healyourhunger.com/heal-your-hunger-2/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HealYourHunger Instagram: https://instagram.com/tricianelson Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/secretsaucetoendemotionaleating/ Connect with Lynne: If you're looking for a community of like-minded women on a journey - just like you are - to improved health and wellness, overall balance, and increased confidence, check out Lynne's private community in The Energized & Healthy Women's Club. It's a supportive and collaborative community where the women in this group share tips and solutions for a healthy and holistic lifestyle. (Discussions include things like weight management, eliminating belly bloat, wrangling sugar gremlins, and overcoming fatigue, recipes, strategies, and much more so women can feel energized, healthy, confident, and joyful each day. Website:  https://holistic-healthandwellness.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/holistichealthandwellnessllc The Energized Healthy Women's Club:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/energized.healthy.women Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lynnewadsworth LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynnewadsworth   Free Resources from Lynne Wadsworth: 5 Simple Steps to Gain Energy, Feel Great & Uplevel Your Health: Are you ready to create a Healthier Lifestyle?  Would you like to feel lighter, more energized, and even add joy to your life? If it's time to find more balance of mind~body~soul, then I've got the perfect FREE resource to help.  In this guide, you'll find my most impactful strategies and I've made applying them in your life as simple as 1-2-3 (plus a couple more) to help you create a healthier, holistic lifestyle. Uplevel your holistic health and wellness and download the 5 Simple Steps to Health  here:  https://holistic-healthandwellness.com/5-simple-steps-to-a-healthier-you/   How to Thrive in Menopause:  Hot flashes? Low Energy? Difficulty with weight management? If MID-LIFE & MENOPAUSE are taking their toll then I've got a solution for you! I've taken all my very best strategies and solutions to help you feel energized, vibrant, lighter & healthy, and compiled them into this FREE resource! Thrive in midlife and beyond - download my guide here: https://holistic-healthandwellness.com/thrive-through-menopause/   Did You Enjoy The Podcast? If you enjoyed this episode please let us know! 5-star reviews for the Living Life Naturally podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or Stitcher are greatly appreciated. This helps us reach more women struggling to live through midlife and beyond. Thank you. Together, we make a difference!

Seems like there is always new research coming out about the benefits of coffee. This episode begins with another one – and maybe one you haven't heard before. You just need to drink 3 cups a day – or more. https://rightasrain.uwmedicine.org/body/food/can-your-coffee-habit-help-protect-you-skin-cancer Probably everyone has been witness to a bully or some other inappropriate behavior and didn't intervene. And later regretted it. It's called “The Bystander Effect.” Why don't people step in and callout bullies? Why do we leave it to someone else or no one at all? What would happen if we did step in when we see bad behavior in others? What's the best way to intervene and not escalate a situation? Here to discuss and answer these questions is psychologist Catherine Sanderson, a professor in Life Sciences at Amherst College and the author of Why We Act. Turning: Bystanders into Moral Rebels (https://amzn.to/3vfUgrs) Summer is the favorite time of year for many people. Yet, too much of a good thing can have consequences. Listen as I discuss how summer weather can impact your mood and state of mind. https://www.livescience.com/21431-hot-temperatures-mood.html Idioms are interesting. They are those little phrases that work their way into our language to help us make a point. For example, play with fire, drink the Kool-Aid, move the goal posts or drop the mic. Where do these phrases come from? Why do some idioms last and others don't? Do other languages also have idioms or is English unique in that way. Joining me to talk about this is Gareth Carrol a senior lecturer and researcher in linguistics at the University of Birmingham and author of the book, Jumping Sharks and Dropping Mics: Modern Idioms and Where The Come From (https://amzn.to/3J5XnaX). PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! We really like The Jordan Harbinger Show! Check out https://jordanharbinger.com/start OR search for it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen!  Get $100 off of your first month with Talkspace! To match with a licensed therapist today, go to https://Talkspace.com & make sure to use the code SYSK to get $100 off of your first month! Go to https://Shopify.com/sysk for a FREE fourteen-day trial and get full access to Shopify's entire suite of features! Redeem your rewards for cash in any amount, at any time, with Discover Card! Learn more at https://Discover.com/RedeemRewards https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mike is a Director at Altfest Personal Wealth Management, helping clients with all aspects of their investment and personal financial planning lives. In addition, he is the Director of the Altfest Dental Practice Group and sits on the firm's Financial Planning and Healthcare Professionals Committees. Mike regularly advises clients on planning for retirement, structuring investment portfolios, various financial planning areas specific to healthcare professionals, as well as on Social Security, estate planning, and charitable giving. Mike joined Altfest Personal Wealth Management in 2002 and has served in both the financial planning and investment departments. He received his BA in Russian studies from Amherst College and his MBA from the Stern School of Business at New York University. He is a CFP® licensee who graduated from the Pace University Financial Planning program and a member of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) and the New York Tax Study Group. Listen in! Key Highlights: [00:01 - 12:53]  How to Stay Calm during Market Volatility Inflation is high, markets are volatile, and clients are concerned about their investments. Mike discusses how to communicate with clients and how to stay calm during these times. Over long periods, the market is usually up, but there have been down years too. Clients can use this information to help them feel more confident about their investments. People who take action solely based on volatility and not analysis have worse returns over long periods. .[12:54 - 26:56]  The Rise of Fee-Only Financial Advisors The number of financial advisors in the US is growing, and fee-only advisors are a growing percentage of this population. The growth in advisors is due to increasing education about advisor conflicts of interest and the benefits of working with a fee-only advisor. Changes in the tax code, social security, and other policies are to be observed to find opportunities for higher returns on the upside or protect against risk on the downside. Mike discusses how their firm is investing in technology and developing in-house investment strategies. [26:57 - 26:56]  Questions to Ask Your Financial Advisor Comprehensive wealth management is critical - ensure that this is what the financial advisor can offer. This way, you can get to your goals faster with less stress. Check out https://www.napfa.org/ (https://www.napfa.org/) for more information. Proactive clients who ask the right questions are more likely to succeed. Delegating tasks to experts can help reduce stress and prevent over-analysis. Sometimes, the best thing to do is nothing. It may be better to take a step back to reevaluate instead of taking action triggered by panic. [36:58 - 41:57] Closing Segment Get in touch with Mike Prendergast to learn more about wealth management! Key Quotes: “It's very easy when things are going crazy at this moment to let your emotions get take over. It's very natural…  But a few things that we need to remember is that one, you know, we've been through this before… We've had periods of extreme volatility before… and so, we'll get through this.” - Mike Prendergast “If the goal is for the medium to the long term, it usually doesn't make sense to change the strategy based on short-term, temporary events.” - Mike Prendergast “The clients that tend to be successful definitely tend to be proactive. They tend to be asking the right questions. They tend to be doing some research.” - Mike Prendergast Connect with Mike: Website: http://www.altfest.com/about (www.altfest.com/about)  Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-michael-prendergast-aa013918/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-michael-prendergast-aa013918/)  Connect with me onhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-c-adams/ ( LinkedIn)! LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, AND LEAVE US A REVIEW on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or whatever platform you...

Find out how so many aspects of your life are greatly impacted by the way you think about yourself. Our guest is Dr. Catherine Sanderson, Amherst College psychology professor and author of the book, "The Positive Shift: Mastering Mindset to Improve Happiness, Health and Longevity".  Her website is https://sandersonspeaking.com/ Note: This episode was previously aired. BetterHelp BetterHelp online therapy is a great way to invest in yourself. It's more affordable than traditional offline therapy and financial aid is available. This is professional therapy, done securely online, available to people around the world. BetterHelp online therapy will assess your needs and can match you with your own licensed professional therapist in less than 48 hours. You can schedule weekly video or phone sessions, so you don't have to be on camera if you don't want to, and getting therapy every week is as easy as a few clicks on your laptop or phone. Visit their website and read the testimonials that are posted daily. In fact, so many people have been using BetterHelp that they're recruiting additional therapists in all 50 states. And they have a special offer for our listeners: get 10% off your first month at BetterHelp.com/NOBODY. That's 10% off your first month of online therapy at BetterHelp.com/NOBODY Ora Organic's Trust Your Gut Ora Organic's Trust Your Gut probiotic and prebiotic supplement contains some of the world's most powerful probiotic strains, along with prebiotics to help the good bacteria thrive in your gut so your probiotics work smarter, not harder. Trust Your Gut helps optimize your digestion and support common gut health issues like constipation and bloating with 20 billion CFUs of dairy-free probiotics and organic prebiotics. Trust Your Gut is available in a capsule or powder format. With its variety of products, Ora is your one stop shop for clean, quality, plant-based nutrition that works! Try Ora's products and if you're not happy for any reason within 60 days, get a full refund. No questions asked. Get 30% off your first subscription when you text T-O-L-D to sixty-four thousand. Text TOLD to sixty-four thousand and get 30% off your first subscription. Message and data rates may apply. Terms apply, available at OraOrganic/terms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are we in the midst of a genuine constitutional crisis?After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, we asked our experts: what's next? Are our other constitutional right in jeopardy.It has been a mere two weeks since that show aired. In those few days, many of the dire consequences that our guests mentioned have come true. Many others are on the horizonTwo weeks ago we asked: are reproductive rights safe? Tonight, we ask: are we in the midst of a genuine constitutional crisis? Are any of our rights safe?YLR guest host, Dean Johnson, is joined by Ben Feuer, Chairman California Appellate Law Group, Professor Lawrence Douglas, the James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought at Amherst College, and Anne Voigts, partner at King & Spalding.Questions for Dean and his guests? Call us, toll-free, at (866) 798-8255.

What role do money, IQ, marriage, friends, children, weather, and religion play in making us feel happier? Is happiness stable over time? How can happiness be increased? Professor Catherine Sanderson describes cutting-edge research from the field of positive psychology on the factors that do (and do not) predict happiness. She provides practical (and relatively easy!) ways to increase your own psychological well-being. Catherine Sanderson is the Poler Family Professor and Chair of Psychology at Amherst College and is often cited as the school's most popular professor. Her research has received grant funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health. She has published over 25 journal articles in addition to five college textbooks.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tom Shakely introduces an important recent joint-webinar hosted by Americans United for Life and the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding, held in the wake of the Dobbs decision and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Glenn Foster, President & CEO of Americans United for Life, Hadley Arkes, Founder of the James Wilson Institute, and Josh Craddock, Affiliated Scholar at the James Wilson Institute, come together to discuss the Dobbs decision and how it changes the pro-life movement. Hadley Arkes is Professor emeritus at Amherst College, Founder of JWI, main advocate, and architect of the Born-Alive Infants' Protection Act, and leading natural rights scholar. Catherine Glenn Foster, J.D is President & CEO of Americans United for Life, leading scholar on abortion, and litigator of precedent-setting § 1983 and other constitutional questions and on abortion and maternal health. Josh Craddock, J.D is a affiliated scholar with JWI, public speaker, and writer. Josh's writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Newsweek, National Review, First Things, Public Discourse, The Stream, and Providence Magazine. The webinar, held July 7th, 2022, was moderated by Garrett Snedeker, Deputy Director of the James Wilson Institute. Dobbs and What It Means for the Pro-Life Movement https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jwi-and-americans-united-for-life-webinar-tickets-377399761847 Video: Dobbs and What It Means for the Pro-Life Movement https://jameswilsoninstitute.org/events/show/video-dobbs-and-what-it-means-for-the-pro-life-movement

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Hadley Arkes, the founder and director of the James Wilson Institute and professor at Amherst College, joins Federalist Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to analyze the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision and evaluate whether the ruling went far enough.

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Hadley Arkes, the founder and director of the James Wilson Institute and professor at Amherst College, joins Federalist Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to analyze the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson decision and evaluate whether the ruling went far enough.

Han Chen is the Co-Founder and CEO of ZeaKal, a plant traits innovator that helps crops capture more carbon and sunlight, leading to healthier, nutrient-rich food and feed. ZeaKal is committed to building a more equitable and resilient agricultural system on a smaller environmental footprint. Their plant traits dramatically improve the yield and composition of staple crops, resulting in carbon capture for better nutrition, as well as higher incomes, lower costs, and efficiencies along the ag supply chain. Han brings with him over fifteen years of management and venture experience. He has been a pioneer in changing how agricultural trait technologies are commercialized, focusing on innovative public-private partnerships between industry, venture, and research. To date, Han has started and successfully raised financing for three startups, totaling over twenty million in capital. Han is also the co-founder and Managing Director of Kapyon Ventures, a technology incubation firm behind the pre-venture development of ZeaKal. Prior to founding ZeaKal and Kapyon, Han was the Investment Manager for Finistere Partners, a San Diego based life science venture capital firm. He was responsible for seeding the deal flow of a nine million dollar strategic investment fund that resulted in the formation of several startups, generation of millions in research funding and also several technology licensing opportunities. Han graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College and has a master's degree in international business from the University of California, San Diego. He is also a CFA Charterholder. Connect with ZeaKal Website | LinkedIn Join the Co-op! Co-op Details | Buy an Pass | Resources | Follow us on Twitter

In this episode of New Books in Literary Studies, John Yargo spoke with Mahshid Mayar about how children's puzzles and schoolbooks at the turn of the 20th century helped shape U.S. political relations with the world. Professor Mayar is an assistant professor of American Studies at Bielefeld University and research associate at the English Department, Amherst College. Mahshid has just published Citizens and Rulers of the World: The American Child and the Cartographic Pedagogies of Empire, with the University of North Carolina Press. Citizens and Rulers of the World recovers how American children at the turn of the 20th century navigated knowledge about world geography in the shadow of the rapidly expanding American empire. John Yargo recently received his PhD in English literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, specializing in the environmental humanities and early modern culture. His articles have been published or are forthcoming in the Journal for Early Modern Culture Studies, Studies in Philology, and Shakespeare Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this episode of New Books in Literary Studies, John Yargo spoke with Mahshid Mayar about how children's puzzles and schoolbooks at the turn of the 20th century helped shape U.S. political relations with the world. Professor Mayar is an assistant professor of American Studies at Bielefeld University and research associate at the English Department, Amherst College. Mahshid has just published Citizens and Rulers of the World: The American Child and the Cartographic Pedagogies of Empire, with the University of North Carolina Press. Citizens and Rulers of the World recovers how American children at the turn of the 20th century navigated knowledge about world geography in the shadow of the rapidly expanding American empire. John Yargo recently received his PhD in English literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, specializing in the environmental humanities and early modern culture. His articles have been published or are forthcoming in the Journal for Early Modern Culture Studies, Studies in Philology, and Shakespeare Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In this episode of New Books in Literary Studies, John Yargo spoke with Mahshid Mayar about how children's puzzles and schoolbooks at the turn of the 20th century helped shape U.S. political relations with the world. Professor Mayar is an assistant professor of American Studies at Bielefeld University and research associate at the English Department, Amherst College. Mahshid has just published Citizens and Rulers of the World: The American Child and the Cartographic Pedagogies of Empire, with the University of North Carolina Press. Citizens and Rulers of the World recovers how American children at the turn of the 20th century navigated knowledge about world geography in the shadow of the rapidly expanding American empire. John Yargo recently received his PhD in English literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, specializing in the environmental humanities and early modern culture. His articles have been published or are forthcoming in the Journal for Early Modern Culture Studies, Studies in Philology, and Shakespeare Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history