{"podcast":{"title":"Paul Krugman Podcast","slug":"paul-krugman-podcast-7703924","podcast_index_feed_id":7703924,"rss_url":"https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/277517.rss","website_url":"https://paulkrugman.substack.com/podcast","image_url":"https://substackcdn.com/feed/podcast/277517/97debc08d318fda1d382063e54848600.jpg","author":"Paul Krugman","episode_count":81,"summary":"Notes on economics and more","last_synced_at":"2026-07-26T10:17:51.645609+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/paul-krugman-podcast-7703924"},"episode":{"title":"An Encouraging Encounter With Real Americans","slug":"an-encouraging-encounter-with-real-americans","published_at":"2026-07-10T10:30:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/paul-krugman-podcast-7703924/an-encouraging-encounter-with-real-americans","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/paul-krugman-podcast-7703924","url":"https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/an-encouraging-encounter-with-real","audio_url":"https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/206353510/cddf6bc0e34e65e20319f3b48f93b350.mp3","summary":"For all my interviews and more, subscribe on YouTube . Transcript Today i want to give you some encouraging news about the state of the heartland. Well, actually New Jersey, but you got a problem with that? But I did something kind of different yesterday — which has prevented me from producing a usual analytical Substack post — and it was actually a very uplifting experience. So hi, I’m Paul Krugman. What i did yesterday was participate in jury selection in Mercer County, New Jersey, where i am still a legal resident. That is something I’ve done before: back in 2020 I spent 16 weeks on a grand jury. It was done remotely, because it was the depths of Covid. It was a New Jersey grand jury, which is not high profile cases. It’s actually very ordinary cases in which the police want to bring someone to trial but 23 citizens must agree that they have provided sufficient evidence to bring the case to trial. You don’t have to judge guilt or innocence but you have to judge that there is sufficient evidence to warrant bringing charges. It was enlightening. I got to see a lot of the negative side of life, obviously, but it was just it was a pretty good experience on the whole. So I was summoned again this year. I wouldn’t have been able to do it, but I had to participate in the selection in order to explain to the judge, if necessary, why I could not be available during the period of this grand jury — a bunch of already agreed to conferences and talks in Europe. So it wasn’t going to be something I could do, but I did the right thing and went through the whole procedure of listening to the explanation, being pronounced present, and waiting to see the judge and explain the issue. Now, as it turned out, I didn’t even have to do that. By the time they had reached the people who had…","meta_description":"For all my interviews and more, subscribe on YouTube . Transcript Today i want to give you some encouraging news about the state of the heartland. Well, a…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":466,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/paul-krugman-podcast-7703924/episodes/an-encouraging-encounter-with-real-americans/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/paul-krugman-podcast-7703924/an-encouraging-encounter-with-real-americans.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}