How we built a government that can’t build anything

Hogging seats on a crowded train, not saying excuse me, watching videos on your phone with no headphones in. Sometimes it feels like we don't know how to act anymore. What we have been seeing, increasingly, is people breaking rules. Why should I play by the rules if nobody else is going to do that for me? This week on Explain It to Me, how to mind your manners.

New episodes Sundays wherever you get your podcasts. America is full of contradictions. We love freedom, we love individuality, but we also celebrate collective projects and national purpose. We've got Jefferson's faith in the people, well, some people, on one side, and Hamilton's faith in the state. On the other, when the country has been at its best, when we've actually built things, it's because we lived somewhere in the middle of those dueling impulses.

Today, to put it mildly, we are not at our best. As a country, We're too dysfunctional to reliably keep the government open, and we can't build or really do anything at scale. So what happened? Why does nothing seem to work anymore?

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