Dear readers,Due to the holiday weekend, this week’s schedule for Very Serious is out of order. The podcast is out today, there will be a regular issue tomorrow, and a special Fire Island edition of the Mayonnaise Clinic will be coming on Friday.One striking fact about three-term New York mayor Ed Koch’s life in the closet — the subject of a recent New York Times feature — is that he stayed in the closet long after he could plausibly claim that he needed to.An openly gay man would not have been elected mayor of New York City in 1977; once in office, he would have had good reason to fear he would not have been re-elected had he come out. Politicians simply didn't do that at the time. But in retirement, Koch had no reputation to protect from the knowledge that he was gay. In fact, coming out probably would have earned him sympathetic news coverage and softened his image at a time when his record as mayor was often criticized for reasons related to race relations and the AIDS crisis — including the specific allegation that he shied away from leadership on AIDS for fear that association with a “gay issue” would fan the (true) rumors that he was gay.One theory the Times piece considers is that, after denying his sexuality for so many years in the face of detractors like Larry Kramer who wanted him outed, Koch felt coming out would be tantamount to letting them win. But if you lie about your sexuality long enough, it can simply become hard to tell the truth. A lot of people stay in the closet for expediency, but a lot of people stay there because of their own shame, and it’s sad.And it’s sad how common the need to hide was until not very long ago.This week’s episode of the Very Serious podcast is an interview with James Kirchick, author of the new book Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, which chronicles the powerful roles that gays (mostly gay men) played in our federal government from World War II through the Reagan administration. Just because gays couldn’t announce themselves didn't mean they weren't around — in fact, some of them arguably sublimated their sexual desires into drive that propelled them to the heights they achieved in American government.Jamie’s book describes the creation of the modern closet as an artifact of World War II, the Cold War, and the security state. Gays had long been considered disgusting, but with world war they came to be considered security threats, at risk of blackmail over their appalling secrets. As a concept, that this would be a risk makes intuitive sense, though Jamie notes the surprising difficulty American officials had when asked to identify any specific cases where gays in government were blackmailed over their sexual orientation. And besides, whatever security risk homosexuals posed was not really a product of their sexual orientation itself, but of the government’s and society’s reaction to their sexual orientation — if you let people freely admit they are gay, then there’s no shameful secret to threaten anyone over. Nonetheless, gays were vilified, investigated, and until 1995, prohibited from holding security clearances.Through the decades covered in Jamie’s book, allegations of homosexuality were wielded as political weapons — true allegations and also false ones. Jack Kemp, for example, was not gay, and he was definitely not part of a right-wing gay cabal that controlled Ronald Reagan. But that didn’t stop a cadre of Republican officials — many of them moderates — from pushing that fantastical narrative to reporters in an effort to block Reagan's nomination in 1980. That madcap story is the subject of an excerpt from Jamie’s book that you can read in Politico Magazine.The 1980s would bring in the AIDS crisis, and an aloof response to it from the Reagans, despite Nancy Reagan’s coterie of gays, ranging from her hairdresser to Merv Griffin. The AIDS crisis would also lead to the waning of the political closet as it had been established in the 1940s, with gay political figures forced out of it, often in death. The era also brought the first two openly gay congressmen who sought and attained re-election: Gerry Studds and Barney Frank, both from Massachusetts, and both far from the idealized image of a gay politician you might mold on the basis of a focus group.I encourage you to listen to the podcast and, if it intrigues you, read the book. It's dishy and full of odd stories like the one about Reagan and the alleged secret right-wing gay cabal; and of correctives to wrong things you’ve likely heard about figures such as J. Edgar Hoover, who probably was not actually a cross-dresser. The story as a whole is sad and maddening — Jamie has, for example, handwritten edits to Ronald Reagan’s draft statement about Rock Hudson’s death, removing all reference to the closeness of Hudson’s relationship to Ronald and Nancy — but also very interesting, and well worth your time.Very seriously,JoshP.S. As we’ve mentioned, the Very Serious podcast is now hosted directly on Substack, coming to you through the same series of tubes as the newsletter. We think the migration has been pretty seamless — if you already subscribed to the podcast, it should still be coming into your player of choice just like before; and if you want to sign up now, we have a button here for you to press.We are now offering episode transcripts. You can see this episode’s transcript here.Questions about the process? Technical issues with your feed? Email podcasting@substackinc.com for support. For any other inquiries, please email mayo@joshbarro.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.joshbarro.com/subscribe

Elon Musk, the world's richest man, doesn't just behave in ways that run afoul of regulators. He does things most CEOs don't because they think it would cost them business relationships, and therefore money. JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon wouldn't Tweet that he has "funding secured" to take JP Morgan private at $169 per share, especially if he didn't actually have the funding secured. I've never seen him tweet a poop emoji at a takeover target. And he would never tweet a rude question to a United States senator. Is Dimon leaving money on the table? Musk doesn't just make cars and rockets -- he's made a persona that turns investors into fans and helps his companies access cheap capital to expand and grow. His model has even thrown off enough money for him to buy Twitter on a lark -- a decision he already seems to regret. I talk with Bloomberg's Matt Levine on why Elon Musk gets away with what he does, and what his seeming imperviousness to rules means for our financial markets. Plus, we talk about the deal with ESG investing, and how Matt invests his own money. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.joshbarro.com/subscribe

Questions about identifying and matching talent underlie a lot of political and economic discussions in our society. Are we admitting the right people to universities? Giving them the right training? Preventing labor market discrimination? Setting policies around work and family that make it possible for people (especially mothers of young children) to do the jobs that align with their talents? Doing better on all these measures can mean not just fuller lives and better organizations but stronger economic growth. So this week, Josh spoke with economist Tyler Cowen, co-author of the Marginal Revolution blog and co-author with Daniel Gross of a new book called Talent: How To Identify Energizers, Creatives, And Winners Around The World. Tyler has thoughts about how to better identify talent that might scramble your preconceptions, given his libertarian politics. One of his arguments is that we are over-weighting both IQ and grades in assessing talent: these matter (as do the underlying traits they measure, such as conscientiousness) but not as much as you might think. So what does matter? Listen to find out. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.joshbarro.com/subscribe

It's been a tumultuous decade for news media. Publications have been upended financially by technological shifts, and they face employee and subscriber pressure to become more openly ideological. The result is a media that's more siloed, more preachy, and more financially precarious. What can be done to restore trust, build sustainable businesses, and get more Americans on the same factual page about what's going on in this country? This week's Very Serious comes to you from the Milken Institute's 2022 Global Conference: Josh Barro's conversation on the future of media with Substacker Bari Weiss, Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, MSNBC president Rashida Jones, and Axios CEO Jim VandeHei. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.joshbarro.com/subscribe

Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell says he thinks there's a good chance for a "soft-ish" landing: taming inflation without pushing the economy into recession. But how difficult will that be? Economist Jason Furman joins Josh to talk about this challenge and what might be needed if the Fed’s rate hikes over the next few months prove to be far from enough — plus, how student debt cancellation could exacerbate inflation. Jason talks about the clear path ahead for the Fed in the short term, and he recounts lessons learned from the Obama administration's attempt to change the tax status of 529 college savings plans.Become a subscriber to Very Serious and join the conversation about this podcast episode at joshbarro.com.We are now offering episode transcripts. You can see this episode’s transcript here.The Very Serious podcast is now hosted directly on Substack. If you already subscribed to the podcast, it should still be coming into your player of choice, just like before. Technical issues with your feed? Email podcasting@substackinc.com for support. For any other inquiries, please email mayo@joshbarro.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.joshbarro.com/subscribe

Dear readers,I know, I said yesterday that today’s cocktail post was only going to be for paying subscribers. But this is the first edition of the podcast where we’re actually pushing the audio through Substack’s pipes. We’re still kicking the tires on that system — and for boring technical reasons, we couldn’t find a good way to paywall the text while sending the audio to everyone who subscribes to the podcast through players like Spotify. We’re working on it! But in the meantime, that means you all get to read about cocktails. How bad could that be?It’s almost summer. Well, it’s not almost summer, but it’s starting to feel like it might be about to be almost summer. It got up to 63° on Fire Island last Friday, which isn’t beach weather, but it’s good enough weather to write the newsletter out on the deck. And it’s going to keep getting warmer.One of the things that makes me excited for summer is that summer cocktails are starting to make sense again.I love sour drinks. A “sour” is any cocktail containing spirits, citrus juice, and a sweetener. The most popular sour is the margarita, but the most basic one is the daiquiri: two parts light rum, one part simple syrup, one part fresh-squeezed lime juice, shaken with ice and strained into a coupe glass. Every other sour you might drink, including a margarita, is just a variation on the daiquiri — change up the base spirit, include a liqueur as part of the sweetening, use lemon instead of lime, add bitters or an egg white; the possibilities are extensive.But these drinks make the most sense in the summer — they’re cool, sweet drinks for a hot day. There’s a reason so many of these drinks are served at resort bars in the Caribbean and Hawaii. They feel like they belong near the beach. That said, some sours are beachier than others.On this week’s Very Serious podcast, we did something a little different: I invited Peter Suderman, author of the Cocktails With Suderman newsletter on Substack, to talk with me about cocktails — how to approach them as an amateur at home and make them especially delicious, without doing anything extremely fussy or expensive. And Peter’s view is there’s a season within a season: late spring is for gin sours, with the rum drinks to come out later, when it’s hotter.My favorite sour is the mai tai — light rum, golden rum, orange curaçao, orgeat (almond syrup), and lime juice, shaken, strained, and served over ice, ideally garnished with an orchid blossom. I’ve talked before about how partial I am to Hawaii, where Zach and I went on our honeymoon, and part of why I love a mai tai is it reminds me of being there. But it’s also a beautiful, balanced drink, with surprisingly complex flavors — with a high quality orgeat and orange liqueur, you can really taste those almond and orange notes punching through the otherwise-overpowering lime and rum.But I also think Peter is right that drinks like mai tais are not quite yet in season. I wouldn’t generally serve one in April, nor would I serve one at any time of year as an aperitif. Mai tais are for the afternoon. If I want to greet guests at dinner with a sour, I’m more likely to reach for an aviation: A gin sour made with lemon juice, maraschino liqueur, and creme de violette.Peter wrote recently about the aviation. It’s one of the great gimmick drinks, because it’s purple on account of the creme de violette, and yet it actually tastes good. I personally like the drink’s astringency — when you use the classic recipe, its balance is less sweet and more sour compared to, say, a margarita — but Peter advises to balance the drink out with a little extra sweetness from honey syrup, and a few drops of saline solution. Yes, saline solution: You salt your food, so why wouldn’t you salt your cocktails? Salt is a flavor enhancer even in liquid form.I’m pretty good at home bartending, but Peter is better at it than I am, and I learned a lot from him during this conversation. And I think you’ll find it very interesting, too. You can listen through the embedded player above — the podcast is now hosted through Substack, which we believe will help us give you better integration with the newsletter — or you can listen, as previously, through any of the usual podcast apps — your access to the show through any of those platforms shouldn’t be impacted, but please reach out and let us know if you have any technical issues.This is also the first episode of the podcast for which we’re providing a glossary and a transcript. Peter and I discussed a number of recipe books and products; the links for those are below. As always (unfortunately!) we collect no affiliate fees for any purchases you make through these links, but we think these products are good and we appreciate your support as a subscriber to the podcast and the newsletter. Below the list of product links is a link to a transcript of the podcast — we’re experimenting with this, but please let us know if you find it useful to be able to read the podcast in addition to listening to it.Finally, a note about the old fashioned. I complained on the podcast that I often find this cocktail too sweet, and Peter’s response was that many people put too much sugar in their old fashioneds. An old fashioned — made with whiskey, sugar, and bitters — is supposed to be balanced between bitter and sweet, and because it doesn’t contain that much bitters, it also shouldn’t get that much sugar — sometimes as little as one teaspoon of syrup per cocktail, Peter says. And yet, some recipes call for as much as a fluid ounce. Blech.Sara has a good old fashioned game, and she has advice about the drink she learned from a sadly defunct neighborhood bar. She says:Old fashioneds were $7 during happy hour at Sonny’s Hideaway on York Boulevard. Chris and I would walk there frequently at 5pm on Fridays, especially after Left, Right & Center. We got to know the bartenders, and they told us that because they sold so many of them during happy hour, they batched the bitters with demerara sugar and orange peel ahead of time. When they would make the drink, it would be a shallow spoonful of that infused angostura bitters, a three-count pour of Four Roses (later they switched to Evan Williams), a Luxardo cherry, and a healthy amount of stirring with a large ice cube (the stirring is important). In the winter, we pretty much always keep a tiny container of angostura bitters with sugar and orange peel in it.Actually, this leaves me with one more thing to say, and it’s about that three-count pour. I would reiterate something that Peter and I discussed on the podcast: You should not free-pour your cocktails. A professional bartender might do a pretty good job pouring consistent amounts out of a bottle equipped with a speed pourer by counting the seconds, but he’s not getting the drink exactly right, and you’re going to do even worse since you’re an amateur.If you’re trying to make a cocktail well-balanced, you need to know the ratio of the ingredients you’re putting in it, and you can’t know that ratio without measuring. Some of the measuring products we list below will help you do that. Cocktails are not that complicated — they’re a lot simpler than cooking — and I’m confident you have the wherewithal to get out a jigger and accurately measure the drinks you’re making. It will pay off for you in the form of better flavor.I hope you enjoy the episode. Please post in the comments if you have reactions, questions, or favorite ideas for sour drinks we didn’t address in the conversation.Very seriously,JoshReferences:Peter’s newsletter Cocktails With Suderman* His adaptation of the classic Aviation and the SidecarCocktail books and resources:The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks — David EmburyDeath & Co — the original is in New York City, and newer locations are in Denver and Los AngelesDeath & Co Modern Classic Cocktails and Cocktail Codex: Fundamentals, Formulas, EvolutionsBarware:Dropper bottles for saline solution - pack of 2 (Amazon)OXO Steel Angled Measuring Jigger - 2oz (Amazon)OXO Steel Double Jigger - 1oz & 1.5oz (Amazon)Cresimo Boston shaker set - 18 oz & 28 oz (Amazon)* Note this needs a strainer and a bar spoon to go with it.Nick and Nora cocktail glasses - 5 oz (Amazon)Sara’s favorite citrus peeler. Much more control than a standard vegetable peeler. No pith!Episode transcript can be found here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.joshbarro.com/subscribe

In early 2020, we were told the COVID crisis was supposed to cause a housing price crash. State government budget crises. The eviction of 30 million or more Americans. A "she-cession." None of these problems came to pass -- instead, we got a rapid recovery of GDP and employment, state budgets in surplus, and a huge spurt of inflation few people expected. Why were the predictions so wrong? Jerusalem Demsas of the Atlantic talks with Josh about the factors that led the experts and the journalists to get it wrong -- and the lessons that can help us get it right next time. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.joshbarro.com/subscribe

The war in Ukraine has added urgency to Europe’s efforts to end its dependency on Russian natural gas. In the US, a shift toward efficiency and renewables is important for both geopolitical and environmental reasons. So, how can we do it? How much natural gas can we export to Europe? How can we reinforce our electrical grids and power them with non-carbon-emitting sources? And how can consumers play their part? Josh talks with Joshua D. Rhodes of the University of Texas about speeding the energy transition on this electrifying episode of Very Serious. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.joshbarro.com/subscribe

Disaster management hasn’t been a bright spot for Western governments lately. So, how can we do better? Juliette Kayyem, former assistant secretary of homeland security, says we need to “fail safer,” with more focus on mitigating the disasters that happen instead of believing we can stop them from happening at all. She joined Josh to talk about lessons of disasters, from Fukushima to COVID, as discussed in her new book, The Devil Never Sleeps. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.joshbarro.com/subscribe

It’s the other big global crisis right now: China faces a new COVID surge, and it’s responding with lockdowns that will worsen global shortages and inflation. China has other troubles, too: a bursting real estate bubble, and a geopolitical partner – Russia – that’s waging a war of choice and roiling global energy markets. With China’s economic and epidemiological successes under threat, how will Chinese leaders respond? What will that mean for the US economy? And what does the Ukraine war mean for the Russia-China partnership and China’s designs on Taiwan? Patrick Chovanec, an expert on the Chinese economy, joins Josh for a tour of the risks and opportunities in the US-China relationship at this critical time. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.joshbarro.com/subscribe