Podbit · The Indicator from Planet Money
In 2017, Obama was directly asked whether the Obama Foundation would sign a community benefits agreement to protect housing. He declined, saying no group speaks for the whole community and that people should trust him. The irony: he built his entire political identity as a community organizer.
Where this was said
At 25:40 · chapter starts 22:35
The conversation reaches its most data-grounded moment when Myra Kwadja cites a recent Illinois Answers Project report on real estate in Woodlawn. The numbers are stark: the median sale price of a single-family home in the neighborhood has jumped 4.6 times over the past decade. [1] — Myra Kwadja "The median sale price of a single-family home in Woodlawn has jumped 4.6 times in the past decade. Zillow now lists some homes in the neigh…" 22:35 If you browse Zillow, you'll find listings at $1 million in a neighborhood that was historically working-class. 'So yes, people have been displaced,' Kwadja says plainly. Gene Demby then asks how the Obama Foundation responded to all this pushback over the years. Natalie Moore explains that they largely stayed on message — 'This development is for the community, the South Side matters to us' — while effectively punting on housing questions by noting that the city of Chicago, not the Foundation, owns the land in question. Moore broadens the frame: Woodlawn is not unique. Chicago as a whole is experiencing a citywide housing crisis, rents are high everywhere, and very few neighborhoods are exempt from affordability pressures. The Obama Center is a catalyst in a pre-existing crisis, not its sole cause.
The median sale price of a single-family home in Woodlawn has jumped 4.6 times in the past decade. Zillow now lists some homes in the neighborhood at $1 million. People have been displaced. The data is not ambiguous.
The median sale price of a single-family home in Woodlawn has jumped 4.6 times over the past 10 years, with some homes now listing for $1 million on Zillow.
Social media feeds men and women the absolute worst caricatures of each other while stripping away the everyday, imperfect relationships that would calibrate their expectations. Combine that with smaller families and fewer cross-sex friendships, and you get a generation that talks about the opposite sex constantly but almost never to them.
The 'would you rather be alone with a man or a bear' debate went viral not because men are objectively more dangerous than ever, but because an entire fear industrial complex of influencers and safety products had already primed women to feel that way. Once the algorithm identifies you as worried about personal safety, the content and the scrunchie drink-covers never stop.
Women feel less safe not because danger has increased, but because trust in institutions — police, churches, schools — that used to enforce safety norms has collapsed. Young women are far less likely than older women to believe those institutions will handle sexual assault responsibly, leaving them with only individual self-protection as a fallback.
Even self-identified feminist women consistently told Daniel Cox in interviews and surveys that they want men to open doors, pay for dates, and show demonstrable care. The internet noise around 'benevolent sexism' drowns out this widespread, quietly held preference.
In focus groups in Philadelphia and Raleigh, every single hand went up when participants were asked if parents discussed financial stability and education. Zero hands went up for marriage or parenthood. Parents are shaping their children's ambitions with total silence on the experiences that matter most.
American families are smaller than ever, with roughly 1 in 5 children now growing up as only children. Without the daily friction of siblings — shared bedrooms, shared bathrooms, resolving disagreements — young people enter adult relationships without the negotiation muscles relationships require.
Online dating optimises for your existing preferences rather than expanding your horizons. People who meet online give bad first dates almost no second chances; people who meet through mutual friends are far more forgiving. The disembodied, checklist-driven nature of apps removes all the social cues that actually reveal character.
A split-sample survey found that men judge male and female cheating identically harshly, and women judge male cheating the same way men do. The outlier: young women are dramatically less likely to call female infidelity morally wrong, suggesting shared-fate thinking and personal experience of being cheated on are reshaping the moral calculus.
The monk mode trend encourages men to withdraw from social life to work on themselves — but this is precisely backwards. The research is clear: close friendships are the single most powerful predictor of whether a man dates, commits, and becomes his best self. Self-improvement without social reintegration is just sophisticated avoidance.
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