Nobody's In Charge

On November 3rd, control of Congress is up for grabs and a handful of seats could decide everything. This episode is about a tool both parties are using to tilt the odds before a single vote is cast: partisan redistricting.

I trace it from a 200-year-old cartoon salamander to a 2019 Supreme Court case that closed federal courts to gerrymandering challenges — then to Missouri, where a state ran a primary under a map its own court later said never existed, and to Texas and California, where redistricting became a tool of political retaliation.

After the trade talks between Canada and the U.S. collapsed, President Trump signed an order renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America. Google Maps changed it for US users only. MapQuest refused and promptly became the #1 free app in the US App Store for it. A YouGov poll found that most Americans disagree with the change, including most Republicans. But the numbers differ depending on whether those Republicans are MAGA or not.

In this episode, I talk through what a U.S. President actually has authority to do to a Great Lake, how shared resources are governed, and more with political scientist Vanita Clare.

A Canada-U.S. trade deal just collapsed over French-language labelling rules.

To understand why this happened, you need to a few decades of context. This episode contents a separatism explainer, a very snarky Pierre Trudeau, and multiple firebombed coffee shops.

I was invited onto a radio show to talk about prediction markets. Then I got stood up. Here's everything I wanted to say about prediction markets... and then some!