The Politics of Everything

Since its approval by the Atlanta City Council in 2021, the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center—more commonly referred to as Cop City—has been a flashpoint of controversy. The $90 million facility is set to be built within a large forest adjacent to predominantly Black and poor neighborhoods; in protest, activists have taken up residence in the forest to try to stop its construction. In January,...

In the early 1970s, ranchers in the Southwest began to share strange reports of cattle mutilations—carcasses discovered with organs missing, and with no obvious physical explanation for the deaths. A variety of culprits were suggested—secret government programs, satanists, cults, or extraterrestrials—despite multiple forensic investigations that turned up nothing suspicious about the deaths. Then...

Americans are in a toxic relationship with their automobiles. They’re bad for us—polluting, noisy, and increasingly dangerous to pedestrians—yet we remain fully committed to them. They’re also bad at their primary function: transport. Urbanists and environmentalists for years have proposed solutions to break the automotive spell: improved mass transit, walkable cities, congestion pricing. But cars...

Every week, it seems, brings a new report of an airport mishap or a near collision between airplanes. Why are so many of these happening now, and what does it tell us about the state of commercial air travel? On episode 74 of The Politics of Everything, co-hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with journalist and private pilot James Fallows about the particular circumstances of some of the more...

On any given day, it’s easy to find a new video on the internet or social media purporting to show a violent retail theft. Such videos make riveting viewing, and—coupled with reports from chain retailers about a plague of theft affecting their bottom lines—might suggest we’re in a golden age of shoplifting. The reality, however, is likely much more complex. On episode 73 of The Politics of Everyth...

Since its approval by the Atlanta City Council in 2021, the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center—more commonly referred to as Cop City—has been a flashpoint of controversy. The $90 million facility is set to be built within a large forest adjacent to predominantly Black and poor neighborhoods; in protest, activists have taken up residence in the forest to try to stop its construction. In January,...

In recent years, Saudi Arabia has been flexing its financial muscle in international sports. And despite the country’s dismal human rights record, an increasing number of athletes, teams, leagues, and even entire sports have become part of the Saudi portfolio. On episode 71 of The Politics of Everything, co-hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene discuss whether women’s tennis, with its legacy of socia...

Consumer boycotts were once thought of as a tactic primarily employed by the left, but the right has recently used them to great effect—just ask Anheuser-Busch and Target, to name just two companies that have recently been caught in conservatives’ crosshairs. Perhaps not surprisingly, given our polarized moment, there’s a movement among conservatives to create an economy of explicitly right-wing a...

It’s no coincidence that Stanford University was founded in Palo Alto, where many decades later scores of tech companies also got their start. Palo Alto is the birthplace of the “Palo Alto system,” an approach to training race horses that attempted to speed up the process by applying techno-scientific principles and injecting lots of cash. This ethos of optimization, argues the writer Malcolm Harr...

We’ve known for a while that gas stoves are bad for both your health and the environment. But a few weeks ago, the discourse went into overdrive. First, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced it would consider regulations on indoor air pollution from gas stoves. Not long after, a study asserted that gas-burning stoves are responsible for roughly 12.7 percent of childhood asthma cases nat...

Fires and overheating accidents attributed to lithium-ion batteries killed 19 people in the United States in 2022, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. In New York City alone, six people were killed in these uniquely fast-burning infernos. Experts say poorly made batteries, like those often found on cheaper e-bike models, are the primary culprit. So why is it still so easy to...

Tech futurists have been saying for decades that artificial intelligence will transform the way we live. In some ways, it already has: Think autocorrect, Siri, facial recognition. But ChatGPT and other generative A.I. models are also prone to getting things wrong—and whether the programs will improve with time is not altogether clear. So what purpose, exactly, does this iteration of A.I. actually...

Are we headed back to the 1970s? Politicians and commentators from across the political spectrum insist we are. They also make clear that nothing could be worse. Why is the decade so feared? What kinds of policy to the grim warnings justify? On episode 56 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene speak with the writer Aaron Timms about “nostophobia,” a term he coined to des...

Almost a decade ago, economist Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century changed the way many people understood capitalism and inequality. In the years since, his research and ideas have helped jolt our politics out of autopilot and elevate solutions like a wealth tax into the mainstream. This episode—recorded in Paris following a panel discussion Thomas and Felicia participated in with...

For a few days in early November, it seemed like Twitter might go down in flames. That hasn’t happened—yet—but the prospect of the platform’s end has forced a reckoning. What would its loss mean for the countless journalists, academics, and politicians who rely on it? Would we be better or worse off? And could a diminished Twitter augur the death of social media in general? On episode 58 of The Po...

Elderly lawmakers are nothing new in Washington. Strom Thurmond didn’t retire until he was 100; Robert Byrd was still in office when he died at 92. By those standards, Dianne Feinstein, who will turn 90 this month, is practically a youngster. But after her return to the Senate this spring following illness, questions about her ability to serve began to grow more frequent. On episode 69 of The Poli...

In the early 1970s, ranchers in the Southwest began to share strange reports of cattle mutilations—carcasses discovered with organs missing, and with no obvious physical explanation for the deaths. A variety of culprits were suggested—secret government programs, satanists, cults, or extraterrestrials—despite multiple forensic investigations that turned up nothing suspicious about the deaths. Then...

Tech futurists have been saying for decades that artificial intelligence will transform the way we live. In some ways, it already has: Think autocorrect, Siri, facial recognition. But ChatGPT and other generative A.I. models are also prone to getting things wrong—and whether the programs will improve with time is not altogether clear. So what purpose, exactly, does this iteration of A.I. actually...

Americans are in a toxic relationship with their automobiles. They’re bad for us—polluting, noisy, and increasingly dangerous to pedestrians—yet we remain fully committed to them. They’re also bad at their primary function: transport. Urbanists and environmentalists for years have proposed solutions to break the automotive spell: improved mass transit, walkable cities, congestion pricing. But cars...

In ways large and small, the changing climate affects how we live and, for a growing number of people, where we live. Many have already relocated because conditions have become too dangerous back home, whether due to sea level rise, wildfires, or drought. Others are moving preemptively, aiming to settle in a region with less perceived climate risk. On episode 65 of The Politics of Everything, host...

As a matter of course, pundits and academics quarrel about political descriptors. Someone’s neoliberal is another’s conservative; someone’s democratic socialist is another’s Marxist. Within this realm, Donald Trump’s presidency and his continued power within the Republican Party have given rise to a passionate disagreement over the use of the term fascist. As Trump prepares his 2024 run, the debat...

Roald Dahl’s children’s books are not exactly the nicest. Dahl’s characters glory in insults and meanness. The adults are generally horrible, the children gleefully vengeful; his bullies usually get their comeuppance. So when it came out recently that Dahl’s publishers had edited new editions of his work with the help of “sensitivity” readers, it was hardly surprising—and it was also hard not to l...

It’s no coincidence that Stanford University was founded in Palo Alto, where many decades later scores of tech companies also got their start. Palo Alto is the birthplace of the “Palo Alto system,” an approach to training race horses that attempted to speed up the process by applying techno-scientific principles and injecting lots of cash. This ethos of optimization, argues the writer Malcolm Harr...

It wasn’t long after his election to Congress last fall that people began to realize that George Santos was not what he’d seemed. But how did he get elected to begin with? Why did it take so long for the national media to pick up on Santos’s many, many embellishments? Where was the opposition research on this guy? On episode 61 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene chat...

We’ve known for a while that gas stoves are bad for both your health and the environment. But a few weeks ago, the discourse went into overdrive. First, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced it would consider regulations on indoor air pollution from gas stoves. Not long after, a study asserted that gas-burning stoves are responsible for roughly 12.7 percent of childhood asthma cases nat...