The Political Orphanage

By Andrew Heaton

Politics minus bile plus jokes. Comedian and avowed independent Andrew Heaton interviews authors and thought leaders about policy and big thinky stuff.... more

4.9

969969 ratings

FAQs about The Political Orphanage:

How many episodes does The Political Orphanage have?

The podcast currently has 662 episodes available.

Best of The Political Orphanage

The most played episodes among Podcast App listeners.

Number 1: I Read the DSA's Platform. They're Socialists.
The DSA recently released a policy platform establishing the goals of their political movement. In this episode we got through the main planks of that document, namely the bits about "socialism" and "democratic." We likewise go through a few articles and interviews of prominent DSA members to get an idea of what, in their own words, they're actually up to. (Spoiler: it's socialism.)
August 28, 20261h
Number 2: Chinese Lobbyists Hate California Pig Laws
The Save Our Bacon Act, now repackaged into the Farm Bill, would upturn state rights in favor of federal prohibitions on animal cruelty laws. It's being pushed, in large part, by Chinese-owned conglomerates irritated by federalism. Lewis Bollard is the Farm Animal Welfare Managing Director at Coefficient Giving on Substack. He joins to discuss the Save Our Bacon Act, and the economic tradeoffs of better animal welfare against higher meat prices. Senate switchboard number: (202) 224-3121 Prior Episode: "Big Ag's Meat Ethics"
August 20, 202658min
Number 3: Guys with Swords Control the French Language
Donald Trump has renamed Lake Ontario "Lake America" for federal purposes—but can a president actually rename a place, or only change what the government calls it? Andrew Heaton traces the strange history of who gets to control language, from ancient river names that survived Romans and Normans, to Cardinal Richelieu's Académie française, to Noah Webster, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and America's long refusal to appoint an official authority over English. Along the way: French language purism, loanwords, bad translations, official English, and why language usually belongs less to governments than to the people who actually speak it.
September 04, 202650min
Number 4: How Do Other Countries do Healthcare?
Healthcare in America is more expensive than anywhere else in the world—but what are other countries actually doing differently? Physician and Slice of Life MD author Sally Primus joins me to tour healthcare systems from Germany and Britain to Japan, Australia, and Estonia. We look at single payer, private insurance, wait times, doctor shortages, drug prices, bureaucracy, and the strange economics of American healthcare—and ask which ideas the United States might actually want to steal.
September 10, 20261h 12min
Number 5: What Does Nolan Owe The Odyssey?
What is The Odyssey actually about beyond a clever guy trying to get home? Classicist Isabella Reinhardt joins to dig into the poem's deeper themes of civilization, hospitality, identity, belonging, and what it means for a warrior to return from war. Then we turn to adaptation itself, and the choices involved in translating an ancient epic for a modern audience. Using Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey as our case study, we ask what an adaptation is free to change, what it has to preserve, and at what point a new version stops being The Odyssey at all. "All the Gods Suck Except Circe" https://alienating.libsyn.com/all-the-gods-suck-except-circe
August 13, 20261h 15min