Central Air

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: with another “MeanToo” scandal in the news — that’s when a politician gets in trouble, not for sexual harassment but because someone thinks they were mean — we thought it was a good opportunity to ask Dave Weigel, Semafor’s intrepid politics reporter, whether anyone in Alaska is likely to care that M...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: Jonathan Chait joins Josh, Ben and Megan to talk about Nikole Hannah-Jones' candid and thought-provoking essay reckoning with her decision to send her daughter to a neighborhood public school that was low-performing — and outrage from her daughter, now in high school, that she could have chosen a dif...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: first, we are obligated to discuss Josh's newly blond hair and if it's a sign he's in crisis. Then: are we in the midst of a gay crisis? The first gay treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has failed at his quest to keep the 10-year Treasury yield under 5%. The gays Donald Trump detailed to the Kennedy...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: how the attack that “changed everything” has come to define less and less of our politics. In part that's because many Americans today are too young to remember 9/11, and in part it's because of three subsequent crises — the global financial crisis, the migration crisis, and COVID — and it's also bec...

This week: Annie Lowrey on the time, effort, money, and psychological costs some government policies impose on us. Filling out endless forms, repeatedly proving eligibility, telling the government what we owe in taxes even though it already knows what we owe — we love a conversation about how the government is ineffective and how it could be more effective. This is a public episode. If you'd like...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: Cranks make society work. We challenge the popular consensus, and we aren’t afraid to speak up even when we know what we have to say will be poorly received. Thank you to all the Central Air listeners who answered our call for your crankiest policy proposals. We discuss some of them: Should tax retur...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: David Ellison is displeased about the California-led lawsuit to stop the Paramount-Warner merger, and he’s threatening to move both studios out of the state. Is this threat credible? Also this week: the Democratic establishment held off Thanksgiving-canceler Francesca Hong in the primary for Wisconsi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: UCLA sociology professor Gabriel Rossman joins us this week to talk about rough times in elite higher education. We start with a problem at the UC system itself: California’s top public universities haven’t considered test scores for admission since 2019, and that has led to the universities admittin...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson tells us all about the state of polling, what American voters are thinking about heading into the midterms, how AI and the death of the phone call are changing polling, and how polls identify fake responses. Kristen tells us about the “ political tribes ” that make up...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: It's another edition of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and Maxwell Tani from Semafor joins us to talk about it. Could this humiliation be enough to end the dinner for good? Then: Have you heard about the new mayor in New York City? This guy, Zohran Mamdani, has been running the city for seve...

This week: Sonny Bunch joins us to talk about “The Odyssey,” what we thought of the film, whether the controversy about some casting decisions materialized, and more. Also this week: we consider the likely effects of the WBD-Paramount merger (if it is allowed to go through) and why the studios are spending so much money to produce films they dump on streaming. We discuss why Netflix’s stock is in...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: Tyler Austin Harper returns to Central Air to discuss the ignominious end of Graham Platner’s campaign for U.S. Senate. Free subscribers hear part of that conversation, and paying subscribers hear the whole thing, plus our discussion about the legacy of Lindsey Graham — even the respectful remembranc...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: Jason Furman joins the show this week for an economy-focused discussion. We start by looking at why public views about the economy have gotten so negative, the persistent economic problems people are so mad about, the obvious solution (it's fiscal consolidation — that is, tax increases and spending c...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: the case for AI regulation and what it would look like, with Dean Ball, who helped to shape AI policy in the Trump White House and is soon to join OpenAI. Is bank regulation a good model for AI regulation, where companies follow rules about making their own rules? We discuss that, and whether we have...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: Andrew Sullivan joins us from Provincetown to assess the emergent Iran deal. Paying subscribers also get our discussion of racial unrest and immigration politics in the U.K., our debate how much Europe really needs to learn from the United States (a lot, I’d say, and not just about air conditioning),...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: Matt Yglesias joins us to recap WelcomeFest and discuss “dog-whistle moderation," and why the factional forces seeking to drag the Democratic Party to the center need to advocate specific moderation on specific issues. Then: why Maine Democratic voters are attached to Graham Platner despite his manif...

Listen to two conversations Josh, Ben and Megan had at WelcomeFest, the center-left organizing conference: one with San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins, and the other with Tejano singing legend-turned-congressional candidate Bobby Pulido. More next week, and thanks to those of you who joined us for our happy hour in Washington last week. Sign up for updates about the show and future happy hours at www...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: Reihan Salam of the conservative Manhattan Institute on the state of the center and the right in cities. Why have we been asked to support politicians like Andrew Cuomo who discredit the center? Is Zohran Mandani really doing such a bad job? Can conservatives and cities be persuaded to take interest...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com As noted last week, we don’t have a regular episode this week, due to the Memorial Day holiday. We’ll be back with two episodes next week — one with Reihan Salam, president of the Manhattan Institute, and one with content from Welcomefest , including an interview with Mark Cuban. We do have some bonus content f...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com On this week's show: Why is Europe poor? Megan wrote about the issue this week , and Sam Bowman of Works in Progress magazine joins us from London to discuss our differences in work culture, leisure, and how we dry our clothes. Plus, we talk about the ignominious unpopularity of Keir Starmer’s Labour, which has...

On this week's show: Robinson Meyer , executive editor of the excellent Heatmap News, talks with us about why oil has not gotten even more expensive, if there is hope for permitting reform, why Republicans hate windmills so much, and if there ever been a greater environmental advocate than ‘Degrowth Donald.' And where can we put data centers so they won’t bother anyone? Also this week: Josh's desp...

On this week's show: Gary Leff, author of the View From the Wing blog on the airline industry, joins us to discuss who killed Spirit Airlines — the airline made strategic errors, but it could have been profitably acquired by JetBlue years ago if not for a series of Biden-era anti-trust policy failures . The Trump administration tried to commit its own policy error — it wanted to buy the airline, m...

On this week's show: Sean Trende joins us to discuss the continued devolvement of the gerrymandering wars. Sean is an election analyst for Real Clear Politics and lecturer in political science at The Ohio State University. With this week’s Supreme Court decision in Callais , even more opportunities to seek partisan advantage will arise. We talk with Sean about how to define and measure ‘fairness,’...

On this week's show: We joined in the discourse about whether dog owners have gotten too big for their britches . (Dogs are sycophants, I say — at least cats have self-respect.) We discussed the wisdom of New York’s proposed tax on fancy pied-à-terre apartments. Axios reporter Alex Thompson, who caused a bit of consternation at last year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner , joined us to talk abo...

On this week's show: Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini joins to discuss the strength of Trump's multiracial populist coalition amid the Iran war. He offers his take on how the Republican party can avoid a cataclysm in this year’s midterm — it has, in part, to do with the semiquincentennial — and we discuss whether every election is going to be a “change” election from now onward. Also this week,...