ABOUT THIS PODCAST
A weekly discussion about politics, hosted by The New Yorker's executive editor, Dorothy Wickenden.
Latest Episodes
The postwar years were a true flowering of American culture. Even as the United States was locked in an arms race with the Soviet Union, which culminated in the terrifying doctrine known as mutually assured destruction, the country evolved from…
Joe Biden promised to be the country’s Unifier in Chief, emphasizing his history as a consensus builder. But the first major bill of his Administration, the $1.9-trillion American Rescue Plan, passed with no Republican votes in the House or the Senate.…
The investigative reporter Jane Mayer recently received a recording of a meeting attended by conservative power brokers including Grover Norquist, representatives of PACs funded by Charles Koch, and an aide to Senator Mitch McConnell. The subject was the voting-rights bill H.R. 1,…
This week, testimony began in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer accused of killing George Floyd, in May of 2020. Floyd’s death set off a wave of protests across the country and something like a new reckoning with…
No sooner had Joe Biden won the Presidential election than Republican state legislatures began introducing measures to make voting more difficult in any number of ways, most of which will suppress Democratic turnout at the polls. Stacey Abrams, of Georgia,…
On March 16th, a gunman killed eight people—six of them women of Asian descent—in a series of shootings in Atlanta-area spas and massage parlors. Although the shooter has not been charged with committing a hate crime, he told the police…
American naval vessels routinely patrol the South China Sea. It is a shared maritime space, but China claims much of the area as its own. That much is true. What if one of the ships was torpedoed? The retired admiral…
Donald Trump’s controversial “zero tolerance” policy, and the resulting images of migrant children being wrenched from their parents arms, were defining moments of his administration. On Biden’s first day in office, he proposed a raft of changes to America’s immigration…
Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Meghan and Harry, the Duchess and Duke of Sussex, was riveting celebrity television, but it may also be a significant turning point in the history of the British royal family. Revelations about racism and about Meghan’s…
Last spring, as the federal government seemed unable or unwilling to concoct a national plan to confront the pandemic, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo became something of a hero to people looking for stable leadership. But, recently, Cuomo’s profile has…
