you Welcome to The Political Scene, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. I'm Jane Mayer, and I'm joined by my colleagues Susan Glasser and Evan Osnos. Hey, Susan. Hey there. Hi, Evan. Great to see you guys.
I don't think people quite understand what it's like to be in Washington right now. Our neighbor across the way is being forced out of her job. She has to retire early because she works for the government. Her brother, who has one heading to college and another heading to college next year.
Just lost his job. They've got no income. The teacher at an exercise class I go to every week, her husband just got laid off as a contractor to USAID. She's in the middle of an IVF cycle. She's got no insurance suddenly. Got nothing to pay the mortgage with other than her part-time work as an exercise teacher.
All over Washington, things are collapsing. The dry cleaner is talking about dropping a couple days a week from being open because business is just going to crater and it already has sort of dropped off. In our little town, these are great people who care about the world, who did not choose careers to make money. Totally. It's a lesson in what the federal government actually does. If anybody connects the dots and they're going to see that these are really.
important jobs that people have that help an awful lot of people. I don't know. I don't know if the reality is going to break through. And that's kind of what we're talking about today, actually. We're talking about the media and what's happening to the... free press in this country. This week, we watched with kind of horror as Donald Trump...
crossed a line that may not mean a lot to people who are watching from the sidelines. But what we understand is that he broke an institution and he did it in a certain way. The White House Correspondents Association for 100 years had And this week, Donald Trump and his minions... decided that they are going to choose who gets to cover them. The government?
The president are going to dictate to the press how they get covered rather than the press, the free press, deciding to cover the president and his administration the way they want. This was in some ways just an incredibly important turning point, I think. Do you guys feel the same? It does strike me as a red line being crossed. It's something that is at the top of the...
authoritarian playbook list, you know, go after the independent press. And I think, you know, we totally get it. It might seem like inside baseball, it's a, you know, sort of self-interested, but the bottom line is when... The most powerful man in the world gets to choose who asks him questions and why, and everyone is on the hook for knowing that if you stray too far you'll be kicked out. And it's not just a policy change. This White House moved very swiftly, very aggressively after already...
essentially going to war at the Associated Press, the backbone of American journalism all across the country and, you know, big cities and small. This is, you know, the definition of neutral, independent media after already going after the AP because they refused. to change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. They took control of the press pool this week, and they kicked out...
news organizations that they didn't like. This is the warning indicator lights in our society, guys, you know, absolutely blinking red, especially because the response is muted to the point of pointless. You know...
People who are not in the media, of course, will wonder, well, what is the press pool? Why is this really a big deal? It goes all the way back to the 19th century. I mean, it was back in the 1880s, actually. It was after James Garfield got shot, but they first had a pooler, meaning somebody who could go into small... And put an ear to the door to make sure that the president was still living. And that is the people's business ultimately is having somebody there present.
watching, observing, and then more importantly, asking questions of the person who serves in our name. You already saw... The effect of this change almost instantly, because some of the newer members of the press pool who are right leaning media outlets in some cases were given the opportunity to ask questions. And what kind of questions did they ask? One of the first.
ones came from a correspondent for Real America's Voice. This is a guy who is named Brian Glenn. He's Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend. And his question was, Basically, Mr. President, I'm paraphrasing here, tell us how great your new poll numbers are.
That was the question that was asked of the president. And of course, you know, Trump then went off and praised himself. So that's the difference. It sounds like journalism. It has the suggestion that it's all people doing the same business, but it has a very, very... And this is exactly why it conjured to mind. The Kremlin press pool that we saw in the early years of Vladimir Putin, it was one of those, again, those early warning lights. It was the tripwire when we were living in Russia.
At the beginning of Putin's tenure, you know, they were like organized like we were, had independent press corps. There was a young writer for Commersant newspaper. She wrote things that the Kremlin didn't like. They kicked her out. By the time we left Russia, only a few years later, Kremlin press pool is practically like a synonym for here's the handpicked.
State press. They actually would have phone calls by the end from the Kremlin's press operation to the media organization saying what questions were allowed and who was going to be in it and what the marching orders were for the week. We're still a few. days or weeks or months or hopefully years or hopefully never away from that. But it's the facsimile. It looks like Trump is being asked questions. It looks like there are real reporters there, but really they are set piece actors in the play.
I mean, the problem is who gets to decide what really is actual media, though, because you've got all these news organizations that are joining the White House press corps that are basically people like Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend. This is a country that has a free press, and it's very hard to define who's really legitimate and who's not. And if you go back, I was thinking about how did we get to this point, even before Trump?
I think you have to go back to the year 2008. That's the year that the iPhone became prevalent. Social media took over and people... broke the tie between American readers and the mainstream media, which was really governed by editors who were professionals and excellent, and they began to choose their own.
information that confirmed their biases. That's the beginning. If you look at the long history of the loss of trust in the news media, it begins around then, and it has cratered since then. People don't trust the media because a lot of what they're...
looking at is not trustworthy. It's unreliable. And they're confused about what's real and what's not real. And honestly, the reason this is such an important moment is there is no straighter news organization than the Associated Press. That is just the... definition of just the facts. They feed local newspapers all over the country. They feed organizations around the world, and they're completely reliable and professional. And the fact that they are now being replaced by...
Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend just says it all. I mean, I think some people would say that there were precursors to this collapse of trust. I totally agree that the mechanisms and the ability to sort of curate and go to the buffet of news and choose essentially. Only what you want was essential. But look, back in 2003, when the press did not put enough pressure on the Bush White House, that became part of the popular understanding of the press.
failing in its public mission. And I think that contributed in its own way, too. But I think just as a purely practical matter, for the very first time, we now have a press pool that does not have not just the AP. Reuters was not in it. Wire services are different than newspapers and televisions. I mean, they are just doing the most elemental.
granular coverage. And that are in some ways is the foundation of the food chain, which then everything else is built upon. And this is a very important point as well, Evan. The rest of the media... talk all the time, opinion all the time, ecosystem has essentially been...
piggybacking off of the investment in real news that the Associated Press and others in the White House press pool have been making. So I think this week is illuminating for a couple other reasons as well that relate to that. Number one, we see the haphazard decision making of this new Trump 2.0 White House. This decision this week to take over the press pool.
Clearly not organized. And, you know, I should say on the front end, I obviously have a personal bias and stake here. My husband is chief White House correspondent for the New York Times. Peter Baker, the fantastic reporter for the New York Times, we should say. Well, and of course, this direct.
impacts his work and that of his colleagues, but the New York Times, the Associated Press and others, they invest a huge amount of money in covering the White House and being there for Americans and for the world to show what's happening. each day and to be there in a way standing in our stead as the public to ask critical independent questions of the president and his top advisors.
How can we tell that this White House acted so impulsively and quickly? The White House press secretary, they then go and offer one of the seats they've taken away from an independent news organization to a new media organization that says, well, how does it work? What do we have to do?
to pay. And it's thousands of dollars even for a regular, say, day trip to Florida or California with the president. It can go up to tens of thousands of dollars that these news organizations are paying just to go on a foreign trip. It's just for the aircraft alone. And so these news organizations were investing, whereas, you know, you and I can set up a microphone and say we're a new media company. But really what we're doing is we're taking the work of the associated.
Press and Reuters and Bloomberg. And we are using that to disseminate our opinion. It's revealing on so many scores, both about the new media ecosystem and also about this Trump White House. The political scene from The New Yorker will be back in just a moment. I'm Vincent Cunningham. I'm Alex Schwartz. And I'm Nomi Fry. And we're Critics at Large, the New Yorker's flagship culture podcast. Flagship. Flagship. I love that. We want to invite you to a special live event that's coming right up.
On March 11th at the Bell House in Brooklyn, we're doing a show about a classic conundrum for critics. What happens when you write a review and you get it wrong? We will be looking back at some of the classic pieces of New Yorker criticism that may have missed the mark. Like, for example, a scathing review that declared The Wizard of Oz a stinker review.
Marred by eye-straining technicolor. Not a stinkeroo. Oh, yes. And of course, we will also talk about critics who got it right as well. So if you're in New York or if you feel like traveling, come see us live at the Bell House on March 11th. You can buy tickets at thebellhausny.com. We'll see you there. The other thing that happened in this last week that is earth-shaking to the media is over at the Washington Post. Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, sent out a notice.
to the staff saying that he was changing the editorial page and that the new editorial page under his direction would include two topics. pretty much every day and would exclude the opposite of those two topics. And those two topics were to be essays that promoted the wonders of free markets.
and of personal liberties, which he defined as sort of the major tenets of Americanism. And he made a statement about how he's proud to be American. And this is what he wants his editorial page to say. Many people might say, well, he owns the paper. able to have his editorial page say what he wants it to say. Why should we take this as an important change? I think you have to see this.
There's no other way to put it, as a demonstration of extraordinary obedience to the president. And you have to only look at Jeff Bezos' own words to see the pattern here. There was a great piece that was done by Joshua Benton at Nieman Lab who looked at at how Jeff Bezos
talked about his own decision in October to withhold an endorsement of Kamala Harris. At the time, he said, I'm paraphrasing here, we're not going to do that because we don't want to put our own opinion, my own opinion on the pages.
of this newspaper. And then fast forward just a few months, and here we are in February, and he says, actually, if you want opinions that are other than what I care about, go find them in another publication. Put it also in this broader pattern. He withholds an endorsement. that the editorial board wanted to make in favor of Kamala Harris, then in...
November, right after the election, he comes out and publicly praises Donald Trump and applauds him for what he called an extraordinary political comeback and a decisive victory. And then Amazon comes out and... makes this unbelievable deal agreeing to pay $40 million to license a documentary that Melania Trump was promoting about her return to being first lady. Okay, just stop there for one second. Does anybody think that...
That will be recouped in public support. And she's actually been reported to personally be receiving a very large chunk of that. Let's just say I don't think most documentaries sell for $40 million. And, you know, just the icing on the cake is Amazon. donated money to the inauguration, quadruple the level done for previous inauguration, and then Bezos appears on stage right off the president's shoulder. So we are witnessing...
Kind of an amazing evolution in real time. And again, not only is The Washington Post one of our pillars of Washington journalism, it also represents, I think, a broader... difference in Trump 2.0 from Trump. 1.0, the astonishing sort of rapidity and speed with which a portion of the country's wealthiest men are rolling over, not just standing back from Trump politics, but
actively facilitating, enabling, and getting on board with Trump 2.0 in a way. Most of these men were Democratic donors, espoused publicly a very different form of politics from the one they're now in. Obviously, Mark Zuckerberg is another example of that. But I look at this in the context of... how democracies around the world have lost their footing in recent decades and almost always the would-be leaders are finding weak links at the top.
It turns out that it's the people who have the most at stake who are the weakest when it comes to standing up to authoritarianism. And Jane, you started us out today, I think, really powerfully. talking about the everyday people who are being sacrificed on the altar of- Muskism and Trumpism, you know, the regular people who are earning modest government salaries who literally find themselves out of a job with no notice, no process, no accountability, no transparency. And then you have.
This incredibly wealthy man. Evan, how much money did Jeff Bezos spend on his yacht? I'm so glad you asked, Susan. The answer is that Jeff Bezos is said to have spent $500 million. So about the cost of a naval vessel. $500 million. Imagine how many government scientists could stay in their jobs. if Jeff Bezos just skipped that damn yacht.
We can say, oh, this is all kind of a frivolous detail to focus on. No, it's actually an almost archaeologically significant detail in the sense that when a future civilization goes back and says, what were they doing in those years when... The country was...
beginning to fray and the climate was getting more and more extreme. People were spending money on these kinds of things, and that's why it's important to write about it. You do have to wonder, though, getting back to the Washington Post, why did he want to buy that? It's not a yacht.
It's not just a bauble. Is it that these billionaires want to feel that they have a role in history that makes them significant beyond just their money? Why do they buy these? Yeah, I mean, as you guys know, this is a favorite parlor game right now in Washington. understand what is the motive? What is it that Jeff Bezos wanted and what does he want now? Look, it's easy to forget this now. In the first Trump run, Bezos was...
openly hostile to Trump. He mocked him, criticized him, said we should send him to space. And then over time, as Trump started to intimidate him and to talk about, for instance, maybe they would change the postal service's handling of Amazon shipments. And all of a sudden, there was just more pressure on Bezos's.
finances, his ability to continue building his fortune, that he underwent this transformation. There was a point when he wanted, in effect, to be seen as a steward of great American values, of an institution like the Washington Post, which represented. The power of the press and the transformation from that person to this person is in its own way a kind of metaphor for the.
transformation of the role of the wealthiest people in this country in politics. Yeah. And in Trump's first term, Jeff Bezos signed off on a new motto for The Washington Post, much mocked, democracy dies in darkness. And I thought it was really notable that the legendary editor of The Washington Post from that period of time, who's now retired, Marty Baron, spoke out this week, and he said that he was saddened and disgusted.
by what Bezos was doing to the paper and that it was a different man and a different approach from the man who had supported him. journalistically through the battles of the first Trump term. Yeah, I was really struck at his use of the word disgusted. That is a very strong word from someone who's always been very careful in what he has said. It's a talismanic paper. It's a paper that did magnificent coverage.
of the Nixon administration, most famously, the Watergate coverage that brought down a corrupt president and since then has really had some of the best journalism in the world. And it still has wonderful journalists working. very hard. But of course, everybody is shaken and afraid that it's now a corrupted institution and a significant change in the free press in this country that is going to only get worse. So listen, when we come back...
We are actually going to talk a little bit about what the press is like in countries that are less free. One of the tremendous things about this podcast is we have correspondents here China and in Russia. And I have worked in the White House press corps, so we're going to talk about that when we come right back from break. The political scene from The New Yorker will be back in just a moment.
If you've been enjoying the show, please leave us a rating and review on the podcast platform of your choice. And while you're there, don't forget to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. Thanks so much for listening. Hi, I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior writer at Wired. I'm Michael Kalori, Wired's director of consumer tech and culture. And I'm Zoe Schiffer, director of business and industry.
And we're the hosts of Wired's Uncanny Valley. It's a show about the people, power and influence of Silicon Valley. Every week we get together to talk about how technology and culture from the Valley are influencing our everyday lives. The internet really was. no longer about the early days. It was about minting.
money. He was swapping out the hoodie for a suit. And it just became like the shorthand for I'm the Silicon Valley hustle coder guy. Or we'll dive deep into the history of some of Silicon Valley's most important institutions. And figures. So a lot of people point to parallels between Sam Altman and Steve Jobs. Very good for engagement for meta, for its bottom line, possibly or probably bad for humanity. I don't know if there's any single person that I would trust with this.
Whether you're optimistic or absolutely terrified about what Silicon Valley will do next, this is the podcast for you. We'll be there to bring the analysis and reporting you can only get from Wired. Listen to and follow Wired's Uncanny Valley wherever you get your podcasts. Susan, you recently wrote what I thought was a terrific column about Donald Trump's Putinization of America. Is that what we're seeing here in the press?
I was really struck by the kind of shocking turn in American foreign policy that we've seen from Donald Trump, literally this week on the third anniversary of Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. What was the United States doing at the United Nations? We were voting. On the side of Russia and Belarus and North Korea against Ukraine and against a vast majority of our own...
Democratic small d allies. So first of all, there's just the Putinization of our foreign policy. Donald Trump, he's been a longtime admirer with Vladimir Putin. on the world stage. But just as jarring from my perspective is the extent to which Trump is deploying Putin-like tactics here at home in America now. And it's important, of course, to stipulate.
The United States is not Russia. We have a different history, tradition, institutions of democracy, and in particular an independent judiciary and genuine power in the states that would make it much, much harder, you know, for any Putin-like regime to take. cold here, but the Putin-like tactics that you're seeing.
It's almost as if he's running down a checklist. I'm sure Evan finds this familiar too. In China, does it bring it back to you with the censorship in China and the crushing of dissent? Are you seeing echoes here? Look, I mean, it can sound hyperbolic, but it's not. I mean, this is a bit like the bad old days. I'll tell you this.
Culling and cleansing of the press pool reminds me of this phenomenon that used to have, which is that a couple of times a year when the Communist Party would come out and have a press conference and they would, of course, decide in advance who was going to be able to ask a question. way they would do it partly was that they would call up people in advance and they would sort of softly, gently try to solicit your question or encourage a line of inquiry. But of course,
They would only say yes and then call on you if it was a docile enough line of questioning. So I'm sorry to report I was never given the opportunity to ask a question. I guess it's a sign of honor. But in a way, what's happening. here and this is what's so insidious it's a version of what we experienced in the social media age which is that we've learned something powerful about ourselves as creatures who consume information which is a subtle change to the algorithm of what we see
see and hear changes deeply what we believe, that we might think, I think it looks like news, it sounds like news, but actually a subtle change. And what the White House has done here is in effect change the algorithm of journalism. At the very atomic level next to the president. So the most important details are simply not going to be asked about. He's not going to be pressed on them. And instead, that time, that space, that.
Those soundbites are going to be filled with promotional self-congratulation. That's a profound change. You know, Putin, when he first came to power, again, before he consolidated power. We were given the chance, Evan, to ask questions of Putin. And in the spring of 2001, right after... George W. Bush and Putin met for their famous first summit in which George Bush famously looked into Putin's eyes and saw somebody he could work with.
Putin came back to Moscow and he decided that he would invite the bureau chiefs from the major American news organizations to the Kremlin. And this is something he had not done. We were summoned to the Kremlin in the spring of 2001. Putin, in kind of like Trump 1.0 terms, he's still eager for the approval of the old establishment, if you will. He spends hours.
hours with this roundtable of American bureau chiefs. He's young at this time. Everyone's wondering, you know, is he qualified for this job? Who is Mr. Putin? He's this former KGB guy. And he was an insecure guy. who had, like, memorized his briefing books. It goes around the table, and I'm realizing with a sinking feeling, I'm like the newbie there, I'm the youngest person, and I realize no one has asked yet about...
Putin's brutal, awful war in Chechnya that was one of the main vehicles by which he rose to power. And I'm thinking, well, you know, for the honor of the American press corps, I'm going to have to ask this. And I'm waiting and waiting. And finally, by the time it gets to me, I kind of ask him about, you know, all the human rights violations in the war in Chechnya.
eager, aspiring technocrat who's spouting facts and figures and very kind of mild-mannered. His visage completely changed. He gets furious because, again, he's being poked by an impertinent question from an independent news source.
not the kind of thing even then he's taking from the Russian media. And he gets really pissed off. And I recently reread the transcript of this thing. And he's like, what would you have me do? You know, would you like me to sit and read the Koran with the mullahs in Chechnya? And it was this really revealing...
And, you know, surprise, surprise, obviously, he's no longer invading American journalists for events in the Kremlin. Well, I mean, I think that gets a fundamental dynamic that you can see in this country. I've seen when I was in the White House press corps for the Wall Street Journal covering Ronald Reagan, which is nobody in power, no president loves the press corps. We are impertinent and we annoy them. And we, you know, they don't like dissent.
wish we would go away. But in the past, in America anyway, they've had to put up with us anyway. And we've had the support of the public in the past. And we've also seen, I think very importantly in the past, that the media has supported each other. So if you go back to a moment in the Obama presidency, when there was an effort by Obama and his administration to keep Fox News from asking questions and it was not necessarily that
The rest of the press corps loved Fox News or was on its side, but they had Fox's back. And they all protested in unity and forced the White House to back off of Fox and allow it to... ask its impertinent questions. I'm sorry to say I am not seeing enough of that right now. There are some murmurs coming. There are some statements of high principle coming out of the White House Correspondents Association.
most part. They have divided the press corps. The press corps is filled with new members who don't see this kind of unity and purpose, and they're just becoming opportunistic and taking the seats of the peers that have been expelled.
You know, and I think it's worth noting that actually the Fox News White House correspondent, Jackie Heinrich, came out and said actually that she does not think that they should change the press pool so that the White House is in charge of it. So a member of the White House correspondent.
board. And I think she made the point to her own audience. She said in her statement, listen, guys, this is not in your interest because when a future liberal president comes in. But they could do so much more. That's my question. Absolutely. They should walk out. They should – I mean this president would wilt and have a tantrum if people didn't pay attention to him. And so they have leverage. They have power. Isn't it already too late? I mean I agree.
I agree with you, by the way, but I worry that they already caved in. I don't think it's too late. Here's my question. I think everybody is struggling with the strategic issue, which is, all right, if everybody starts saying we're going to boycott covering the president, well, then maybe he's just going to be happy to fill it with. A genuine Kremlin. Yeah. So is the solution essentially.
one-off days where you say, we're going to go on strike, essentially, of coverage for that day? Or do you think they just go off and say, we're not coming back? I think both. First, they have to make a show of it. They've got to scream. They've got to make more noise about this whole thing. And also...
Honestly, as someone who was a White House correspondent, a lot of what goes on in there is very routine and sort of stenography. And you can do a great job and probably in many ways a better job of covering the president. sitting there every day and going through those briefings. And they should just keep up the pressure and the accountability journalism on Trump and say, we're not going to do the dutiful, silly stuff that we have to do that helps you then.
Well, I think, unfortunately, their initial response suggests that the possibility for collective action is really diminished. And I think it's kind of a stand-in for the broader... Questions and failures of a meaningful and successful opposition to Trump to kind of rise up in the first five weeks. And, you know, we talked about the collapse of the, you know, the billionaire oligarchs who've rolled over for Trump.
it in many news organizations who are practically like clambering over the corpse of the Associated Press to, you know, say, oh, pick me, pick me. I'm good. I'll call it the Gulf of America. I mean, you know, there are prominent news organizations that, you know, seem to.
almost go out of their way to poke the Associated Press by putting out a statement saying, hey, we're good guys. We've decided the president is right and we're going to follow his lead. I mean, that is really, that is anathema to the principles that you're talking about, Jane, first of all.
although I do worry this whole little case study in how hard it is to get people to work together to defend principles that are under assault by the Trump administration. I can't let us finish without talking about this. Quite remarkable argument in The New York Times from James Carville saying that his advice to Democrats and the opposition right now.
is to literally roll over and play dead. And I was quoting that in my column this week, and Peter's suggestion to me was that I should actually make sure to put in parentheses, those were his actual words, roll over and play dead. Awesome. You know, anything I've seen about how to stand firm for democracy and against encroachments like this suggests that, you know, a would-be authoritarian like Donald Trump, he doesn't just stop.
When there's no friction and there's no opposition, he keeps rolling right on through. It was exactly the opposite advice of our guest last week, Larry Diamond. And, you know, the amazing thing though is a lot of the people I've talked to who are sort of –
powerful positions in the Democratic Party are buying it. They're saying, okay, we just stand back and let them do themselves in. You know, everybody knows that there is a political... clock running, and we don't know if it will be a short-term or medium-term question of when the public begins to feel the bite on a large scale of the kinds of things we've been talking about, these layoffs, this kind of chaos that's been introduced in the
federal workforce. And the key moment is what do Democrats have to offer at that moment? It can't be enough to just... play possum and say, well, look at that, didn't work out so well. You have to have an affirmative answer at that moment and be teed up and ready to say, we have answers for you. We have actual. Also, though, we here are...
Independent. We are civil society. We're the press. And I think this kind of advice from Democratic Party leaders is exactly why you need an independent and nonpartisan free press. Civil society can't wait. to speak out until the midterm elections. And so, you know, when I read that from Carville and we've all talked to very senior people here in Washington who are privately echoing that point of view, his interests are not the same.
They do not converge at this moment in time with the interests of civil society, with the national interest in speaking out and saying and documenting. you know, something historic that's happening right here as we speak. It's not about, you know, coming up with a five-point plan that's going to help you win a marginal House seat two years from now. It's about what are we going to do?
with our democracy right now because you don't get a do-over. It implies there's a cynicism embedded in this argument that I find very worrisome. But basically, the implication here, right, is that forget about all that stuff we told you on the campaign trail. how Donald Trump is a fascist, destroying American democracy. Actually, what James Carville seems to really think is that this is just a regrettable but...
essentially normal oscillation in American politics. And we'll just, you know, wait for the pendulum to spring back. We'll wait for the approval ratings to go down and then we'll strike and Democrats. will benefit. It comes down to what's your theory of the case? Do you believe that this is essentially a break and a rupture with our democratic traditions? Or do you actually just see it as a kind of an extreme swing of the pendulum that's going to swing back? Well...
I am glad – at this table anyway, we are independent-minded. And we are here to talk about what's happening right now. And we are not waiting for the midterms before we try to say what we think is true. We're not playing dead at this table. So thank you so much for joining me this morning. This has been The Political Scene from The New Yorker. I'm Jane Mayer. We had research assistance today from Alex D'Elia. Our producer is Julia Nutter, mixing by Mike Kutchman.
Stephen Valentino is our executive producer, and Chris Bannon is Condé Nast's head of Global Audio. And our theme music is by Alison Leighton Brown. Thanks so much for listening. I'm David Remnick, host of the New Yorker Radio Hour. There's nothing like finding a story you can really sink into that lets you tune out the noise and focus on what matters.
In print or here on the podcast, The New Yorker brings you thoughtfulness and depth and even humor that you can't find anywhere else. So please join me every week for The New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts.