Andrew Heaton, host of The Political Orphanage and our favorite “tepid grab bag” of political punditry, returns to the pod to help us understand the big issues at stake before the midterm elections: abortion, inflation, and culture war stuff. Along the way, Heaton explains why having sex on the hood of a car isn’t always a good idea, why dating in our era of partisan politics is exhausting, and why we need electoral reforms (like rank choice voting and multi-party systems) to save us from ourselves.

 Check out our ‘Inscrutable’ blog and ‘Uncertainty’ newsletter for thoughts and rants. To support us and gain access to exclusive content, consider becoming a paid member of Uncertain on Substack. Follow @UncertainPod on your social media of choice.

On the agenda:

-Heaton and housekeeping [00:00-7:35]

-The arts of engaging celebrities and podcasting [7:36-14:07]

-Tribalism Games [14:08-25:13]

-Two party vs. Multi-party systems [25:14-38:03]

-Punditry part 1A: Abortion and Inflation [38:04-48:19]

-A tangent on expertise and authority [48:20-58:16]

-Punditry part 1B: Abortion, continued [58:17-1:09:25]

-Punditry part 2: Partisanship and Ron DeSantis [1:09:26-1:21:14]

Go deeper:

-Adaam’s newsletter about why everything feels so broken

-Andrew’s Uncertain Things debut

-Adaam on The Political Orphanage: cognitive dissonance FTW

Uncertain Things is hosted and produced by Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk. For more doomsday rumination, subscribe to: uncertain.substack.com.