Shameless plug for an urban economics podcast I co-host, "Densely Speaking"

We released a new scholarly interview today that I think you'll find interesting. It is about a new paper on blockbusting as a barrier to Black wealth.

For those who may not know, I’m writing to share a podcast I co-host with Jeff Lin, an economist at the Philadelphia Fed, called Densely Speaking: Conversations about Cities, Economics & Law (Apple Podcasts, Spotify). Each episode, we interview an author of a recent book or paper about their scholarship. I’ve really enjoyed working on it with Jeff and have learned so much from him and our guests and discussants. In addition to economists and law professors, we’ve had folks on from political science, urban planning, history, statistics, engineering, and geography.

New Episode

We released a new episode (Apple, Spotify) today featuring Jonathan Rose, the historian of the Federal Reserve System and an economist at the Chicago Fed. We join Jonathan to discuss his working paper on a phenomenon called blockbusting as a limitation on the wealth-building potential of homeownership for Black families in the postwar United States. If you enjoy the subjects of this Substack, I think you will enjoy this conversation:

30+ Episodes

If you bring up the Densely Speaking show on your favorite podcast app (or here), you’ll also see a back catalogue over 30 episodes deep, each of them intended to be evergreen rather than current events-y. I realize that is somewhat contra the spirit of podcasts, at least as they have evolved, but that’s what we aspired to when we created the show during the first summer of the pandemic—as kind of a substitute for the academic seminars that weren’t happening, or had hastily been shifted to Zoom—and I think we have remained true to that. TLDR, there’s lots of good stuff there from a couple years ago that we could have recorded yesterday.

Will I Enjoy the Show?

If you like the topics of this Substack, I expect you would.

We aim for a generalist audience with an interest in cities, law, economics, and policy. In addition to academics from overlapping disciplines, there appear to be a lot of listeners who are just interested in deeper dives on areas within the podcast’s purview, including journalists who have reached out to some of our guests after learning about a topic from their interviews. We aim to release monthly on average, with breaks between seasons.

Let us know what you think (and subscribe to the show for more)! Densely Speaking is also on Twitter/X: @denselyspeaking.

My personal Twitter/X is @greg_shill, and my research can be accessed ungated here on SSRN.