Remember the Joe Biden and Barack Obama friendship bracelets from the 2020 campaign? That — and the whole Obama-Biden bromance meme — was cringe, and it was also an oversimplification of a much more interesting story. Gabriel Debenedetti, national correspondent for New York magazine, talks with me about their two-decade relationship that has shaped American politics in the 21st century. Gabe's new book (out Tuesday) is called The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama. We talked about Obama's behind-the-scenes work to set up Hillary Clinton as the 2016 nominee, effectively boxing out Joe Biden; Biden's reputation for gaffes and his newsmaking interview endorsing gay marriage before Obama did; and Biden's relationship with his own vice president, Kamala Harris.

For a transcript of this interview and to subscribe to our newsletter, go to www.joshbarro.com.

“I think remote work really is a general purpose technology… It's more comparable to electrification. It's more comparable to the invention of the internal combustion engine or automobiles or something like that in the way that it's going to ripple through everything and it's going to have these longstanding big impacts." This week, I talk with Adam Ozimek, an economist whose recent work focuses on the intersection between labor markets and housing, about how the sharp increase in partial or fully remote work is transformative and simply very important for the ways it will change how many parts of the economy operate.

Visit www.joshbarro.com or a transcript of this episode and links.

Lis Smith is a veteran Democratic communications consultant, best known as communications director for the Pete Buttigieg presidential campaign. Her 'more is more' instinct about engaging with the media was an essential component of the strategy to bring Mayor Pete out of nowhere and turn him into a major contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination — much to the irritation of various US senators he leapfrogged in Iowa and other contests. Fittingly, she has a revealing new memoir, 'Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story,' about her career highlights and lowlights working for Pete, Barack Obama, Bill de Blasio, Andrew Cuomo and others. She shares favorite stories from the book, and also offers ideas about how an increasingly insular party can re-learn how to connect with ordinary voters.

Nearly five months into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Western governments have a problem: despite international sanctions and rebukes for Russia's actions, the world's reliance (especially Europe's) on Russian energy is sustaining Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The world is already feeling the effects of the invasion on energy prices, and now Europe has announced it will impose an embargo on Russian oil by the end of the year — a move that would significantly impede Russia’s ability to benefit from high oil prices, but would also further constrict Europe’s energy supplies going into what could be a cold winter. If actually implemented as described, the embargo is also likely to drive the global price of oil far higher, triggering recessions around the world. Because of those… problems… world leaders from the G7 have been discussing possible solutions.

I talk with Margarita Balmaceda, a professor of diplomacy and international relations at Seton Hall University and an expert on the energy trade in Eastern Europe, about those ideas, whether they might work, how Europe allowed itself to get so dependent on Russia despite manifest signs of Russia’s unreliability as an energy partner.

Visit www.joshbarro.com for a transcript of this episode.

A lot of things aren’t working quite like they’re supposed to these days, and air travel is a prime example. Travelers are getting increasingly unreliable airline operations with more flights delayed and canceled, and a more chaotic experience at the airport even when flights go on time — at a moment when fares are very expensive and still rising. And as with so many problems like this, there are multiple reasons for why this is happening.

Brian Sumers, editor-at-large at the travel industry publication Skift, walks me through a lot of the “why”— listen to hear our analysis and Brian’s best advice for what you as a passenger can do to manage through it as best you can.

Find show notes, a transcript, discussion and more at www.joshbarro.com

Financial economist Allison Schrager says you can't have nice things anymore — or at least, you can't have all of them, not in this interest rate environment. After 40 years of falling interest rates, they're sharply rising again, and those higher rates force more discipline on everyone: not just consumers, but businesses and governments, all of which need to confront the higher cost of capital and decide what's really worth spending on. This is the intended effect of the Federal Reserve’s rate-hiking campaign: Excess consumer demand is fueling inflation, and getting people to cool it a little will hopefully take some of the upward pressure off prices. In some ways, this discipline can be good, if it forces businesses and governments to figure out how they're inefficient and what they can do to spend more wisely. And it's taking the wind out of some of the most annoying investing bubbles of the last decade, including crypto. But it also means pain for consumers, and if the Fed doesn't get things exactly right, it could drive us into recession. In this episode, Allison discusses whether you should hold your breath for the return of sub-3-percent mortgages (no) and the pitfalls and surprising benefits of our new world of higher rates.

What happened on January 6 (and in the lead-up to it, with Donald Trump trying to steal the election) was very important. But I have been very bearish on the usefulness of talking to the public more about it — it happened right in front of our faces, it’s not a top priority for persuadable voters, and more time spent marinating on it can simply distract Democrats from more urgent political tasks to hold onto any part of power.
As such, I wasn’t very eager for the televised January 6 hearings. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the effectiveness of the hearings.

The presentation is how focused it is on presenting Trump’s actions as a crime, and the committee is making a compelling case that the Department of Justice can and should charge Trump with crimes related to his effort to pressure Mike Pence to spurn his constitutional duties and refuse to count the electoral votes that gave Joe Biden the election win.

This week’s episode of the Very Serious podcast is an excerpt of the debut episode of Serious Trouble, my new weekly podcast with attorney Ken White.
Here’s a transcript of the episode.

Dear readers,

Due to the holiday weekend, this week’s schedule for Very Serious is out of order. The podcast is out today, there will be a regular issue tomorrow, and a special Fire Island edition of the Mayonnaise Clinic will be coming on Friday.

One striking fact about three-term New York mayor Ed Koch’s life in the closet — the subject of a recent New York Times feature — is that he stayed in the closet long after he could plausibly claim that he needed to.

An openly gay man would not have been elected mayor of New York City in 1977; once in office, he would have had good reason to fear he would not have been re-elected had he come out. Politicians simply didn't do that at the time. But in retirement, Koch had no reputation to protect from the knowledge that he was gay. In fact, coming out probably would have earned him sympathetic news coverage and softened his image at a time when his record as mayor was often criticized for reasons related to race relations and the AIDS crisis — including the specific allegation that he shied away from leadership on AIDS for fear that association with a “gay issue” would fan the (true) rumors that he was gay.

One theory the Times piece considers is that, after denying his sexuality for so many years in the face of detractors like Larry Kramer who wanted him outed, Koch felt coming out would be tantamount to letting them win. But if you lie about your sexuality long enough, it can simply become hard to tell the truth. A lot of people stay in the closet for expediency, but a lot of people stay there because of their own shame, and it’s sad.

And it’s sad how common the need to hide was until not very long ago.

This week’s episode of the Very Serious podcast is an interview with James Kirchick, author of the new book Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, which chronicles the powerful roles that gays (mostly gay men) played in our federal government from World War II through the Reagan administration. Just because gays couldn’t announce themselves didn't mean they weren't around — in fact, some of them arguably sublimated their sexual desires into drive that propelled them to the heights they achieved in American government.

Jamie’s book describes the creation of the modern closet as an artifact of World War II, the Cold War, and the security state. Gays had long been considered disgusting, but with world war they came to be considered security threats, at risk of blackmail over their appalling secrets. As a concept, that this would be a risk makes intuitive sense, though Jamie notes the surprising difficulty American officials had when asked to identify any specific cases where gays in government were blackmailed over their sexual orientation. And besides, whatever security risk homosexuals posed was not really a product of their sexual orientation itself, but of the government’s and society’s reaction to their sexual orientation — if you let people freely admit they are gay, then there’s no shameful secret to threaten anyone over. Nonetheless, gays were vilified, investigated, and until 1995, prohibited from holding security clearances.

Through the decades covered in Jamie’s book, allegations of homosexuality were wielded as political weapons — true allegations and also false ones. Jack Kemp, for example, was not gay, and he was definitely not part of a right-wing gay cabal that controlled Ronald Reagan. But that didn’t stop a cadre of Republican officials — many of them moderates — from pushing that fantastical narrative to reporters in an effort to block Reagan's nomination in 1980. That madcap story is the subject of an excerpt from Jamie’s book that you can read in Politico Magazine.

The 1980s would bring in the AIDS crisis, and an aloof response to it from the Reagans, despite Nancy Reagan’s coterie of gays, ranging from her hairdresser to Merv Griffin. The AIDS crisis would also lead to the waning of the political closet as it had been established in the 1940s, with gay political figures forced out of it, often in death. The era also brought the first two openly gay congressmen who sought and attained re-election: Gerry Studds and Barney Frank, both from Massachusetts, and both far from the idealized image of a gay politician you might mold on the basis of a focus group.

I encourage you to listen to the podcast and, if it intrigues you, read the book. It's dishy and full of odd stories like the one about Reagan and the alleged secret right-wing gay cabal; and of correctives to wrong things you’ve likely heard about figures such as J. Edgar Hoover, who probably was not actually a cross-dresser. The story as a whole is sad and maddening — Jamie has, for example, handwritten edits to Ronald Reagan’s draft statement about Rock Hudson’s death, removing all reference to the closeness of Hudson’s relationship to Ronald and Nancy — but also very interesting, and well worth your time.

Very seriously,

Josh

P.S. As we’ve mentioned, the Very Serious podcast is now hosted directly on Substack, coming to you through the same series of tubes as the newsletter. We think the migration has been pretty seamless — if you already subscribed to the podcast, it should still be coming into your player of choice just like before; and if you want to sign up now, we have a button here for you to press.

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Elon Musk, the world's richest man, doesn't just behave in ways that run afoul of regulators. He does things most CEOs don't because they think it would cost them business relationships, and therefore money. JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon wouldn't Tweet that he has "funding secured" to take JP Morgan private at $169 per share, especially if he didn't actually have the funding secured. I've never seen him tweet a poop emoji at a takeover target. And he would never tweet a rude question to a United States senator. Is Dimon leaving money on the table? Musk doesn't just make cars and rockets -- he's made a persona that turns investors into fans and helps his companies access cheap capital to expand and grow. His model has even thrown off enough money for him to buy Twitter on a lark -- a decision he already seems to regret. I talk with Bloomberg's Matt Levine on why Elon Musk gets away with what he does, and what his seeming imperviousness to rules means for our financial markets. Plus, we talk about the deal with ESG investing, and how Matt invests his own money.

Questions about identifying and matching talent underlie a lot of political and economic discussions in our society. Are we admitting the right people to universities? Giving them the right training? Preventing labor market discrimination? Setting policies around work and family that make it possible for people (especially mothers of young children) to do the jobs that align with their talents? Doing better on all these measures can mean not just fuller lives and better organizations but stronger economic growth. So this week, Josh spoke with economist Tyler Cowen, co-author of the Marginal Revolution blog and co-author with Daniel Gross of a new book called Talent: How To Identify Energizers, Creatives, And Winners Around The World. Tyler has thoughts about how to better identify talent that might scramble your preconceptions, given his libertarian politics. One of his arguments is that we are over-weighting both IQ and grades in assessing talent: these matter (as do the underlying traits they measure, such as conscientiousness) but not as much as you might think. So what does matter? Listen to find out.