The Politics of Everything

Andrew Yang—a man who has never held public office, nor even voted in a New York City mayoral election—is currently the frontrunner in the race to be the city’s next mayor. Why is Yang so popular? And what kind of mayor would he be? On Episode 30 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene discuss the unsettling success and national implications of Yang’s campaign with two guests: Annie Lowrey, who profiled Yang in The Atlantic, and Harry Siegel, who’s written about Yang’s candidacy for the New York Daily News.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What we grow determines how we eat, and what we eat determines how we live and die. These simple but overlooked truths drive the work of the longtime food writer Mark Bittman, whose new book, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, From Sustainable to Suicidal, takes an ambitious look at the flaws of the industrialized food system and the politics of transforming it. On Episode 29 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with Bittman about the difficulty of eating ethically, the way food connects to nearly every other important issue of our time, and how change starts less with what we buy or cook than how we vote—and organize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Andrew Cuomo has been mired in scandal for weeks, for actions that, in some cases, date back years. To what extent has the governor’s bullying been hiding in plain sight? On Episode 28 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene look into the long history of Cuomo’s coercive approach to state politics, why he’s so keen to hang onto his seat in the face of widespread censure, and how much his character and governance style can be explained by his relationship to his father, Mario Cuomo. Guests include Rebecca Traister, who reported on the governor’s toxic workplace for New York Magazine; Ross Barkan, the author of a forthcoming book about the governor; and Julia Salazar, a state senator for New York’s 18th district. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s no secret that Britain has in recent years been something of a mess. Yet the Conservative Party’s popularity continues unabated. Why don’t British voters blame Boris Johnson or his party for the chaos of Brexit, a botched pandemic response, or surging poverty? And why have the Tories been so successful over the decades? On Episode 27 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk to Samuel Earle and Ash Sarkar, two British journalists, about what explains the Tories’ extraordinary dominance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joe Biden ran for president promising to “revive” the spirit of bipartisanship, put an end to factional battles, and bring Americans together after an era of painful division. Yet faced with an intransigent, extremist Republican Party that has little to gain from compromise, such a vision of politics seems quaint at best. On Episode 26 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene look into the history of bipartisanship as an ideal. The show features Paul Blest, a co-founder of Discourse Blog; Ed Burmila, the author of a forthcoming book on the mistakes of the Democratic Party; Osita Nwanevu, a staff writer at The New Republic; and Julian Zelizer, a professor of history at Princeton University. Does bipartisanship have a future in American politics? And, more to the point, should it? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What’s it like to be wrong? We have no idea. On Episode 25 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene discuss being right all the time. TNR staff writers Walter Shapiro and Matt Ford review their spot-on analyses of Trump and the Republican Party; Wired columnist Paul Ford talks about how the internet today looks exactly as he would have predicted in 2000; and the social psychologist Carol Tavris explains cognitive dissonance, the mechanism that protects people who do get things wrong—unlike the hosts, producers, editors, and guests of this podcast—from ever realizing it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In late 2016, staff at the American embassy in Havana began hearing strange noises and experiencing a range of odd symptoms: headaches, dizziness, ringing in the ears. Suspicion arose that they had been targets of a secret weapon. In the years since, doctors, scientists, journalists, and government officials have tried—with limited success—to get to the bottom of the illness that came to be known as Havana Syndrome. On Episode 24 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk to four people who have followed the story closely: Jack Hitt, who covered it for Vanity Fair; Tim Weiner, the author of The Folly and the Glory: America, Russia, and Political Warfare 1945-2020; Adam Gaffney, a physician; and the journalist Natalie Shure. What was the diplomatic context in which Havana Syndrome appeared? How have Republicans, Democrats, and the foreign policy establishment exploited the secret weapon theory? And is there a likelier explanation for the mysterious syndrome? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As its boosters have long argued, remote work offers any number of obvious benefits. Companies save money on rent; employees don’t have to waste time commuting; and everyone, without the distractions of the office, can be more efficient. But for decades, telecommuting simply failed to take hold. On Episode 23 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with the writer Richard Cooke about why, and what our historical reluctance to work from home augurs for the future.Later in the show, Katie McDonough, a deputy editor at The New Republic, investigates the fantasy of escaping from work altogether, with a look at the politics of early-retirement advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On December 11, the Food and Drug Administration authorized Pfizer to begin distributing its vaccine for Covid-19. The triumphant moment comes on the brink of a grim winter, amid record case levels across the United States, and it is accompanied by countless unknowns. For Episode 22 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk to Nicholas Christakis, a physician and sociologist at Yale University and the author of Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live, about what to expect in the coming year and beyond—what it will take to recover from the pandemic’s devastation, and how our lives may be permanently changed. Later in the show, Melody Schreiber, a frequent contributor to The New Republic, and Rebecca Coyle, the executive director of the American Immunization Registry Association, join to discuss the challenges of the vaccine rollout. When will vaccines be available to ordinary people? What kinds of problems may arise as they’re distributed and tracked? How long, in other words, will all this last? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The country with the most powerful military in the world likes to pretend it has no choice in the matter. If the United States didn’t maintain order, the story goes, disorder would prevail. But as decades of messy wars drag on, this justification grows less and less plausible. On Episode 21 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk to the historian Stephen Wertheim about how the U.S. took on its role as a military superpower, and what might happen if we relinquished it.Later in the episode, TNR staff writer Alex Shepherd analyzes the runoff elections in Georgia that will determine which party controls the Senate. Republican Kelly Loeffler, who’s favored to win, is a political newbie with an insider trading scandal in her past. Why don’t voters care? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices