Central Air

This week: Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark and host of the The Focus Group, joins us to discuss persuadable voters and the extensive conversations she has with them (the topic of her new book How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time). We talk about what drove these voters away from Democrats (high prices), what’s driving them back to Democrats (high prices), and what politicians should say and do in an economic environment where the government has limited ability to deliver relief from high prices. And since this is Central Air, we talk about the bond market, and why it’s very important to these voters, even if they don’t realize it.

That’s for all listeners this week. Paying subscribers get to stick around for cocktail hour, when we discuss:

The immigration trap facing the next Democratic president.

The president’s odd choice to go nuclear on Tom Cotton over Daylight Saving Time, and

In the wake of the drama at Last Ditch Bar, are lesbians okay?

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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 Mary Peltola, Alaska’s Democratic candidate for Senate, called someone a “retard.”

Plus: other developments across the Senate map and what kinds of candidate oddities matter these days, and in cocktail hour (for paying subscribers), we talk about the revealing conversation Nikole Hannah-Jones had with her daughter on “This American Life” over the weekend, and we close with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s likely ambitions to run for Senate or president.

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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 different path for her. We also discuss why Democrats have seemingly lost interest in making 'let's improve public education' part of their political project. And then we take on another thorny topic: the division within the Democratic Party about support for Israel. Paying subscribers hear that conversation and cocktail hour, in which we discuss pretty bad cocktails, Fed Chair Kevin Warsh raising rates last week, and the Paramount deal.

To hear the whole episode, upgrade your subscription at 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 Center have failed to produce a vibrant-yet-MAGAfied performing arts center. And now "the makers of AI keep saying AI might kill us all” has really broken through to the general public.

For paying subscribers: the absurdity of the president’s inflationary promise of $5,000 checks for every American (if they re-elect Republicans), the Calvinball rules of standing that have let the president build his illegal ballroom, and his sad and petty (and losing) campaign to get his name installed on the Kennedy Center, and Donald Trump Jr.'s sad and pitiful oligarch-funded second wedding. Finally, the AIs weigh in on Josh's hair and whether it carries a deep meaning.

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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 because many Americans came to regret foreign policy decisions circa 2001-2003 that seemed like a good idea at the time.

Josh, Megan and Ben also talk about whether we’re entering yet another phase of politics, defined by AI, and how difficult it is to make economic policy right now when the outlook is much more uncertain than usual. During cocktail hour, Josh has notes from his trip to Europe about ice, driving and French superiority.

To hear the full episode, upgrade your subscription at www.centralairpodcast.com.

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 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 returns be public documents that any citizen can look up? Should you be able to submit a standing order that all your votes should be cast for your favorite political party, instead of having to tediously complete a ballot at every election? Should we geo-engineer a tornado inside the Astrodome to produce clean energy? Should we do daylight saving time backwards, so we spring forward in the fall?

Probably not. But maybe. Let’s discuss.

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 Wisconsin governor, and we discuss the unhinged responses to the very grim news with the Jason Arday situation. And during cocktail hour, we look for silver linings — who in the Trump cabinet is actually doing a good job?

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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 admitting some students who are wildly unprepared for college-level work. Then, behind the paywall: star scholar Jason Arday has resigned from Cambridge University in scandal, and it reflects a phenomenon Tyler Austin Harper complains about in his Atlantic essay about his time as a professor at Bates College: universities being more interested in black academics’ political symbolism than their academic output, which is pretty racist, if you think about it.

Plus: ideological homogeneity in the humanities and humanistic social sciences (and in sociology specifically) and what could be done to combat it, and during cocktail hour, we talk about what “Woke 1” is and whether it’s really over, and we talk with Gabriel about his academic work on the laundering of disreputable financial exchanges — a useful lens for talking about both Melania Coin and the debate over whether men are really expected to send Ubers to fetch women for first dates.

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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 the Republican and Democratic parties, and how the middle-aged millennials and young adults of Gen Z are changing the landscape — that conversation is mostly for paying subscribers. Then, during cocktail hour (also just for paying subscribers), we discuss exciting food news: Alison Roman, like David Chang, shares my once-controversial-but-now-conventional opinion that grills ruin food.

To hear the whole episode (and all future episodes), upgrade your subscription now at www.centralairpodcast.com.