The Politics of Everything

Since its approval by the Atlanta City Council in 2021, the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center—more commonly referred to as Cop City—has been a flashpoint of controversy. The $90 million facility is set to be built within a large forest adjacent to predominantly Black and poor neighborhoods; in protest, activists have taken up residence in the forest to try to stop its construction. In January, conflict between police and protesters turned deadly. On episode 72 of The Politics of Everything, co-hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk to New Republic senior contributing editor Molly Taft about the Cop City protest as an environmental justice movement and New York magazine senior writer Sarah Jones about the novel applications of law used to charge protesters with serious crimes.

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In the early 1970s, ranchers in the Southwest began to share strange reports of cattle mutilations—carcasses discovered with organs missing, and with no obvious physical explanation for the deaths. A variety of culprits were suggested—secret government programs, satanists, cults, or extraterrestrials—despite multiple forensic investigations that turned up nothing suspicious about the deaths. Then this spring, a minor police report about the mutilations of six cattle in Texas went from a Facebook post to multiple national articles in a matter of days. Why did such a seemingly small incident strike such a chord, and what does the American fascination with this particular conspiracy theory say about us? On episode 68 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene chat with Michael J. Goleman, a historian who researched the first great wave of cattle mutilations in the 1970s, and with cultural historian Colin Dickey, who has written extensively about American conspiracy theories, about their historical cycles and why, in the twenty-first century, they seem to have taken a very dark turn.

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Americans are in a toxic relationship with their automobiles. They’re bad for us—polluting, noisy, and increasingly dangerous to pedestrians—yet we remain fully committed to them. They’re also bad at their primary function: transport. Urbanists and environmentalists for years have proposed solutions to break the automotive spell: improved mass transit, walkable cities, congestion pricing. But cars (and their companion scourge, parking) still dominate our public spaces. On episode 66 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with authors Daniel Knowles and Henry Grabar about the obstacles that prevent us from constraining car culture—and, perhaps, a solution.

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Every week, it seems, brings a new report of an airport mishap or a near collision between airplanes. Why are so many of these happening now, and what does it tell us about the state of commercial air travel? On episode 74 of The Politics of Everything, co-hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with journalist and private pilot James Fallows about the particular circumstances of some of the more alarming recent incidents, and with author Ganesh Sitaraman about whether the current systems governing air travel are robust enough to support this ever-growing industry.

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On any given day, it’s easy to find a new video on the internet or social media purporting to show a violent retail theft. Such videos make riveting viewing, and—coupled with reports from chain retailers about a plague of theft affecting their bottom lines—might suggest we’re in a golden age of shoplifting. The reality, however, is likely much more complex. On episode 73 of The Politics of Everything, co-hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene chat with New York magazine staff writer James D. Walsh about how organized retail theft has evolved over the past decade, and with Amanda Mull, staff writer at The Atlantic, about the puzzling lack of data about theft and what other factors could be contributing to the perception of a great shoplifting surge.

This episode is sponsored by Cambridge University Press. To learn more, please visit www.cambridge.org/LBJsAmerica, and save 20% off with discount code LBJ20.

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Since its approval by the Atlanta City Council in 2021, the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center—more commonly referred to as Cop City—has been a flashpoint of controversy. The $90 million facility is set to be built within a large forest adjacent to predominantly Black and poor neighborhoods; in protest, activists have taken up residence in the forest to try to stop its construction. In January, conflict between police and protesters turned deadly. On episode 72 of The Politics of Everything, co-hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk to New Republic senior contributing editor Molly Taft about the Cop City protest as an environmental justice movement and New York magazine senior writer Sarah Jones about the novel applications of law used to charge protesters with serious crimes.

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In recent years, Saudi Arabia has been flexing its financial muscle in international sports. And despite the country’s dismal human rights record, an increasing number of athletes, teams, leagues, and even entire sports have become part of the Saudi portfolio. On episode 71 of The Politics of Everything, co-hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene discuss whether women’s tennis, with its legacy of social activism, will ultimately wind up there too.

This podcast is sponsored by Cambridge University Press. To learn more, please visit www.cambridge.org/hijacked, and save 20% off with discount code WORK20.

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Consumer boycotts were once thought of as a tactic primarily employed by the left, but the right has recently used them to great effect—just ask Anheuser-Busch and Target, to name just two companies that have recently been caught in conservatives’ crosshairs. Perhaps not surprisingly, given our polarized moment, there’s a movement among conservatives to create an economy of explicitly right-wing alternatives to everyday products. What caused the rupture between conservatives and big business? Is the notion of a parallel economy even realistic, or is it primarily about bringing corporations to heel on social issues? On episode 70 of The Politics of Everything, co-host Laura Marsh surveys the right’s parallel economy with Kathryn Joyce, who wrote about it in the October issue of The New Republic.

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It’s no coincidence that Stanford University was founded in Palo Alto, where many decades later scores of tech companies also got their start. Palo Alto is the birthplace of the “Palo Alto system,” an approach to training race horses that attempted to speed up the process by applying techno-scientific principles and injecting lots of cash. This ethos of optimization, argues the writer Malcolm Harris, defined Stanford, which in turn helped define Silicon Valley and the ideology it has spread throughout the world. On episode 62 of The Politics of Everything, Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with Harris about his new book, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World; the tradition of right-wing thought that underpins the tech industry; and the dark marriage of tech and military power.

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We’ve known for a while that gas stoves are bad for both your health and the environment. But a few weeks ago, the discourse went into overdrive. First, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced it would consider regulations on indoor air pollution from gas stoves. Not long after, a study asserted that gas-burning stoves are responsible for roughly 12.7 percent of childhood asthma cases nationwide. Suddenly, the appliance acquired a crowd of newly passionate defenders, including Tucker Carlson, who warned that the government was coming for your gas stoves, and Florida Republican representative Matt Gaetz, who tweeted a video of a gas stovetop flame accompanied by the words: You’ll have to pry it from my COLD DEAD HANDS! #FoodieRevolt. How did the debate about whether (and how) to regulate gas stoves so rapidly morph into political Kabuki? On episode 60 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk about the fossil-fuel industry’s misinformation campaign, how our political views inform our consumer choices, and the ways the right leverages the perpetual outrage machine to avoid confronting daunting issues facing the planet. Guests include TNR deputy editor Heather Souvaine Horn; Marc Hetherington, who co-wrote Prius Or Pickup? How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America’s Great Divide; and TNR staff writer Alex Shephard.

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