This episode originally aired on Nov. 12, 2025.
Can you unpack the changes happening in U.S. politics by examining one small Ohio town?
For New York Times best-selling author Beth Macy, the answer is yes and it’s personal.
Her hometown of Urbana has changed in so many ways in recent years that Macy says she does not recognize it. She says the Urbana of her youth was not utopian, but it also was not so starkly divided.
Over several decades, Urbana has changed. Employers have left. Chronic absenteeism has skyrocketed. There are increasing rates of addiction and suicide.
A town that was once a stop on the Underground Railroad now flies Confederate flags.
On this hour of All Sides, author and journalist Beth Macy joins us to talk about our country’s political divide through the lens of her hometown Urbana, Ohio, and her new book Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America.
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