When it comes to politics, Americans don’t agree on much these days, but they do agree that they don’t like Congress. Just 16% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, according to a June Gallup poll, continuing a trend of low approval ratings for the legislative body. That may be for good reason. From repeated battles for the House speakership to threats of government shutdowns, the current Congress has been, in historic terms, more dysfunctional. Our guest today is Jeffery Jenkins, Provost Professor of Public Policy, Political Science and Law for the USC Price School. Jenkins literally wrote the book on contested speakership elections, co-authoring Fighting for the Speakership: The House and the Rise of Party Government. We discuss why this Congress is so dysfunctional, what’s driving increased polarization in U.S. politics and how Congressional Democrats are handling concerns over President Joe Biden’s age.

Thank you to all of our listeners for tuning into the podcast this year. We’re taking a short break this summer to record new conversations that explore the impact of public policy with USC Price School faculty. In the meantime, here are some highlights from our first season, where our guests offered evidence-based insights that paint a more nuanced picture of timely news topics – like policing, political polling and COVID-19 policies.

Four years ago, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett received some of the worst news imaginable: her son, Eliot, was diagnosed with a fatal neuromuscular disease. In her quest to save her son, she learned of a gene therapy that ultimately helped Eliot, but she ran into roadblocks that made it difficult to access this life changing treatment. Her story, recently published in The New York Times, illustrates the obstacles that prevent some patients from obtaining rare disease treatments. In this episode, we are joined by Currid-Halkett, a USC Price School professor of public policy, and Alice Chen, an associate professor of public policy who recently testified before Congress about making rare disease treatments accessible.

Recent elections outcomes have made many Americans question the accuracy of public polling. Political polls for the 2016 and 2020 presidential contests, for example, generally underestimated the support for former President Donald Trump. In many ways, measuring public opinion is more difficult than ever, but polls are still often accurate. They also play an important role in giving residents voters a voice and informing policymakers. With another presidential election looming, Christian Grose, a USC Price School professor and academic director for the Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy, joins the show to discuss how polling works, how it’s evolved, and how pollsters are approaching the 2024 race.

It’s been four years since the COVID-19 pandemic first swept the globe, shutting down schools and businesses and killing more than 1.1 million people in the U.S. alone. In response to the crisis, governments implemented public health policies that would come to define life for the next few years: Mask mandates, stay at home orders, vaccines and boosters. But were these policies effective in slowing the spread of the virus and saving lives? USC Price School Professor Neeraj Sood joins the show to share his research on pandemic policies.

Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell discusses the lack of trust between police and the communities they serve. The challenge climaxed in 2020 with the murder of George Floyd, which sparked nationwide protests and calls for police reform. But McDonnell, now director of the Safe Communities Institute (SCI) at the USC Price School, says police rely on public trust to investigate, solve and combat crime, making distrust of police a public safety challenge. In this episode, McDonnell discusses what police, SCI and USC researchers are doing to help, from organizing community meetings to examining body camera footage of traffic stops.

From combating climate change to improving sex education, Provost Professor Wändi Bruin de Bruin uses behavioral science to understand what motivates people’s behavior and how to change it for the better. In this episode, Bruin de Bruin shares how simpler language can make climate change easier to understand, why asking people who their friends are voting for produces more accurate polling, and why hardly anyone understands their blood pressure readings. Behavioral science – which brings together psychology, economics and other social sciences – is not typically