In our first installment of the Maker City Podcast, Maker City Chairman Peter Hirshberg speaks with James Fallows who early in his career was a speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter and — for the last 25 years — a prolific author and national correspondent for the “The Atlantic” magazine. Jim and his wife Deb, who is also a journalist, have spent the last two years crisscrossing the U.S. in their small plane chronicling economic change in America, as it happens, with a local perspective that’s often missed by the national media. James’s new book on all this, Our Towns, will come out in May 8.