Best of: George Saunders on Kindness in a Cruel World
We’re taking a week off from releasing new episodes, so today I wanted to re-up one of my favorite episodes of the show, a conversation with fiction writer George Saunders that covers much more than j...
17 Aug 20211h 15min
How Identity Politics Took Over the Republican Party
One problem with the conversation around political polarization is that it can imply that polarization is a static, singular thing. That our divisions are fixed and unchanging. But that’s not how it i...
13 Aug 20211h 16min
We’re Living in the World the War on Terror Built
The Sept, 11 attacks might have taken place almost 20 years ago, but we’re still living in the America that the war on terror built. Its legacy is not just mass surveillance and drone strikes but birt...
10 Aug 202158min
The Good and Bad News About the Delta Variant
“The war has changed.” That’s what the leaked C.D.C. document says about the way the Delta variant has upended our coronavirus policies. Delta is astonishingly contagious. It can generate 1,000 times ...
6 Aug 202158min
41 Questions For The Technologies We Use, and That Use Us
We all know by now that Zoom causes fatigue, social media spreads misinformation and Google Maps is wiping out our sense of direction. We also know, of course, that Zoom allows us to cooperate across ...
3 Aug 202157min
Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Fight Over U.S. History
You’ve heard plenty by now about the fights over teaching critical race theory and the 1619 Project. But behind those skirmishes is something deeper: A fight over the story we tell about America. Why ...
30 Jul 20211h 17min
Ross Douthat Has Been ‘Radicalized a Little Bit, Too’
Am I too panicked about the future of American democracy?My colleague Ross Douthat thinks so. He points to research suggesting that voter ID laws and absentee voting have modest effects on elections a...
27 Jul 20211h 7min
How Blue Cities Became So Outrageously Unaffordable
Joe Biden’s economic agenda is centered on a basic premise: The United States needs to build. To build roads and bridges. To build child care facilities and car-charging stations. To build public tran...
23 Jul 20211h 8min
