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Welcome back to Insider Pix, where we uncover what entertainment and culture insiders are watching, reaching, and listening to! Next up:
Jeremy Ney
Jeremy Ney is the author of the forthcoming book The Opportunity Map and creator of American Inequality, a Substack newsletter that delivers thoughtful data analysis of America’s regional divides to over 25,000 subscribers and 100,000 readers. Jeremy is also an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School and works at Google in the Trust and Security team. His work has been featured in The New York Times, TIME Magazine, Los Angeles Times, NPR, BBC, PBS, and on the TEDx stage.
American Inequality Substack
Using data visualization and economic policy, every article dives into a U.S. inequality topic that gets less coverage than it should—everything from inequality in life expectancy, food deserts, credit scores, generational wealth, and more. Because data is nothing without the people behind it, Jeremy interweaves place-based stories into every article.
Jeremy’s 5 Picks
A 5-star-worthy book you’d recommend to anyone?
Why Nothing Works by Marc Dunkelman is a clear-eyed diagnosis of how America went from pioneering bold projects to barely being able to build at all. Marc traces our progressive failures from Hamilton and Jefferson all the way through, FDR, Robert Moses, and a singular $1.7 million public toilet in San Francisco. At a moment when the country desperately needs to build housing, energy capacity, and public infrastructure, this is probably the book I’ve gifted more than any other—and it was a joy getting to interview Marc for the American Inequality Substack.
Best TV show you’ve watched recently?
I was late to the game, but I just finished watching Homeland and thought it was absolutely terrific. The show came out in 2011, a decade after 9/11, and I think it so poignantly captured these fears that many Americans had and the ethical dilemmas that the country had to answer. Patriotism. Politics. Power. Every season is a new maze of trying to figure out whether anyone is the good guy in this story or everyone is just deciding between a bad option and a worse one.
Podcast on your weekly rotation?
The Freakonomics podcast is still unbeatable to me. I love the way they continue to find unconventional ways of seeing the world and find these hidden influences that make a huge impact on our lives, like the impact of professional licensing on the cost of haircuts, or whether the rich are less generous than the poor. Although it isn’t a weekly episode, I also just finished listening to Who Blew Up The Georgia Guidestones? and it is the perfect mix of Americana mystery with cults, conspiracies, and a whole lot of dynamite.
Best movie you’ve watched recently?
I recently rewatched Boyhood after The New York Times published a list of the 100 best movies of the 21st century. I had seen the movie when it first came out, but now watching it after having a son every triumph and tribulation felt so much more powerful. They shot the movie over 12 years and you watch this young boy grow up in 2.5 hours - the passage of time is so honest and real it will make you want to hug your kids very tightly. Plus in a time when I feel like we are getting so many sequels, it is cool to remember the big risks that directors were willing to take and the huge payoffs that came from that.
A hidden gem you wish more people knew about?
I teach a class at Columbia where we make students think about ethical problems and one of the hidden gems that we share with students in that class is a tool built at MIT called Moral Machine. The premise is that you are the programmer for a self-driving car. The brakes have failed and you have to choose between two catastrophic outcomes. The test reveals some cool things about whether you are a utilitarian (most lives saved) or if you have a specific bias that maybe you didn’t know about. As self-driving cars take over more U.S. cities, I wish more people knew about Moral Machine so they could ask more questions about the ethics behind the algos.
Pix: What has been one of the more surprising connections between opportunity and inequality revealed in your research?
JN: The outrageous chasm between inequality and opportunity in America never ceases to surprise me. On one hand, we have the best-ranked universities, the most unicorn startups, the highest number of billionaires, and some of the world’s most successful companies. On the other hand, we lead other OECD nations in mass shootings, incarceration rates, insulin costs, income spent on childcare, working hours needed to exit poverty, and income spent on healthcare, even though our life expectancy is far lower than many of our peers. In my upcoming book, I talk about how we can close the divide between inequality and opportunity through place-based solutions.
Pix: What is the most hopeful thing your research has revealed?
JN: One of the most uplifting things that I see time and again in this work is that change is always possible in America. This country is full of outliers who have broken the mold and managed to rise up the economic ladder, even when the odds were stacked against them. What gives me hope in this work is that we have clear data on many of the public policy choices that can help people achieve economic mobility, but we need to actually implement those in communities. Increasing the supply of housing, investing in early childhood education, improving access to healthcare, and paying people a living wage can meaningfully move a family from poverty to prosperity.
Pix: What's the secret to making complicated data accessible and engaging for your average reader?
JN: Everyone loves a map. You know where you were born, where your parents live, your friends live, and it is a great way to easily begin digging into some data around a specific issue. But once I visualize the data, the real secret is connecting it to a story. People often forget that there is a real person behind every datapoint, and so I try to find someone in that specific place who might be struggling with rising gas prices or A.I. job loss to help really bring those numbers to life.