The Politics of Everything

Over the past few years, deaths from car accidents in the United States have spiked dramatically. Journalists and commentators have been quick to point to pandemic-induced stress and anxiety to explain the increase. But is that account too pat? On episode 44 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with three guests about road design, automobile regulation, and what’s...

Romania is home to one of the largest and most important old-growth forests in the world—but its trees are disappearing at an astonishing rate. Meanwhile, a spate of attacks has shaken environmentalists and activists in the country. On episode 43 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with the reporter Alexander Sammon, who recently traveled to Romania to investigat...

British politics are in an uproar over … happy hour. How did Prime Minister Boris Johnson—shameless, disheveled Boris Johnson—end up here? On episode 42 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene try to make sense of the scandal gripping 10 Downing Street. Guests include Libby Watson, a British writer living in the United States; Nate Bethea, an American writer living in Lon...

When Joe Biden was elected, he promised to treat the pandemic differently from his predecessor. And, for a while, it seemed that his approach was working. But a year into his administration, omicron is surging, and many of Biden’s more ambitious plans have fallen by the wayside. On episode 41 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with Melody Schreiber, a regular co...

5-4 is a podcast about the ideological battles at the heart of the Supreme Court’s most important landmark cases, and an irreverent tour of all the ways that politics shape the law.  On this episode, hosts Peter, Michael, and Rhiannon discuss Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, which recognized the power of the U.S. government to detain "enemy combatants." A foreign "prisoner of war" can communicate with their fam...

Today’s youth are overwhelmingly left-wing. So who are the young conservatives? On Episode 40 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk to Sam Adler-Bell, a writer and the host of the podcast Know Your Enemy, about an energetic cohort who call themselves the New Right. They differ in many ways from the median right-wing voter. They hate the Republican establishment. Th...

The rats are everywhere, more of them all the time, in our streets and our apartment complexes, cavorting on picnic tables and playgrounds—or so the pandemic’s hyperventilating news reports would suggest. Is the rodential bonanza real, or are we just noticing rats more? How are outdoor dining, gentrification, and climate change implicated? And why does our anxiety about rats seem to intensify afte...

In the past decade, the number of original, scripted television shows being produced each year has more than doubled. Meanwhile, subscriptions to streaming services have surpassed one billion worldwide. We have the shows; we have the access. Why does it feel next to impossible to find anything good to see? On episode 38 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene discuss how...

For the extremely wealthy who want to stash their money where nobody can find it, South Dakota is the place to go—or so recent reporting in the Pandora Papers has suggested. The state’s lax regulations have made it possible for all kinds of unsavory characters to protect unthinkable sums from taxes or scrutiny. Is it time to make South Dakota just go away? On episode 37 of The Politics of Everythi...

The acclaimed TV series Succession is a comedic drama about a handful of monstrously rich, often monstrous people fighting over who will succeed the patriarch in running the family business. But is Succession also a crime show? On Episode 36 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with Jennifer Taub, the author of Big Dirty Money: Making White Collar Criminals Pay, a...

Can you overdose on fentanyl just from being near it? Over the past few years, a number of police officers have said just that. In 2016, the Drug Enforcement Administration even issued a warning to cops about the dangers of such encounters. The stories have made national news, but they’ve also invited skepticism. On Episode 35 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene discu...

How does a vaccine get developed, studied, approved, distributed, and administered, and then just … disappear? On Episode 34 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene explore what happened to LYMErix, a vaccine for Lyme disease that has been called the only safe and effective vaccine ever to have been voluntarily withdrawn from the market in the United States. What does the...

In the early 2000s, a group of libertarians moved to a small town in New Hampshire, where they set about slashing the municipal budget. The newcomers wanted to be free from taxes and government regulation, and they envisioned an experiment that would show the world the virtues of their political philosophy while allowing them to live as they liked. But before long, they found themselves fighting o...

The economy as we know it is populated by gigantic corporations, behemoths that have bought up not only their competition but also the businesses supplying or otherwise supporting them. Such monopolies act as a “rival form of government,” explains Zephyr Teachout, the author of Break ’Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom From Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money. On Episode 12 of The Politics of Everything, h...

Joe Biden ran for president promising to revive the spirit of bipartisanship and bring Americans together after an era of painful division. But when facing an intransigent, extremist Republican Party that has little to gain from compromise, such a vision of politics can seem quaint at best. On Episode 26 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene examine the history of bipar...

Nobody enjoys going to the dentist. But, generally speaking, we don’t question what’s done to us when we’re there. On Episode 33 of The Politics of Everything, Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene speak with Ferris Jabr and Daryl Austin, two journalists who have investigated dental over-treatment and fraud, about whether we should. It’s impossible to say exactly how widespread gratuitous treatment is—and...

As its boosters have long argued, remote work offers a slew of obvious benefits. Companies save money on rent; employees don’t have to commute; 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...

In the early 2000s, a man named Erb Avore started selling a male sexual enhancement supplement he called Stiff Nights. The pills were amazingly effective—but the list of ingredients failed to mention a key component, and soon the FDA came calling. On Episode 32 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk to the journalist Matt Hongoltz-Hetling about the poorly regulated...

In late 2016, staff at the American Embassy in Havana began hearing strange noises and experiencing odd symptoms: headaches, nausea, dizziness. Had they been targeted by a secret weapon, perhaps deployed by Russia? Or was there some other explanation for the ailments? Hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk to four people who have closely followed Havana syndrome, as it came to be known: Jack Hitt...

It’s easier than ever to listen to practically the entirety of recorded music. But for musicians, it’s harder than ever to make money. On Episode 31 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk about the economics of the industry with David Turner, who writes the newsletter Penny Fractions, and the English musician Tom Gray, who founded the #BrokenRecord campaign. Did str...

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 gu...

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 Polit...

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, ...

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 P...

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 Pare...