Can you overdose on fentanyl just from being near it? Over the past few years, a number of police officers have said just that. In 2016, the Drug Enforcement Administration even issued a warning to cops about the dangers of such encounters. The stories have made national news, but they’ve also invited skepticism. On Episode 35 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene discuss the phenomenon of cop overdoses with Dan McQuade, who wrote about it for Defector; Timothy McMaha...
Sep 29, 2021•45 min•Ep. 35
How does a vaccine get developed, studied, approved, distributed, and administered, and then just … disappear? On Episode 34 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene explore what happened to LYMErix, a vaccine for Lyme disease that has been called the only safe and effective vaccine ever to have been voluntarily withdrawn from the market in the United States. What does the story of LYMErix tell us about vaccine hesitancy, liability, and how pharmaceutical companies decid...
Sep 16, 2021•30 min•Ep. 34
In the early 2000s, a group of libertarians moved to a small town in New Hampshire, where they set about slashing the municipal budget. The newcomers wanted to be free from taxes and government regulation, and they envisioned an experiment that would show the world the virtues of their political philosophy while allowing them to live as they liked. But before long, they found themselves fighting off packs of black bears. On Episode 19 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Par...
Sep 01, 2021•24 min•Ep. 19
The economy as we know it is populated by gigantic corporations, behemoths that have bought up not only their competition but also the businesses supplying or otherwise supporting them. Such monopolies act as a “rival form of government,” explains Zephyr Teachout, the author of Break ’Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom From Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money. On Episode 12 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with Teachout about the dangers of allowing these outsize com...
Aug 18, 2021•26 min•Ep. 12
Joe Biden ran for president promising to revive the spirit of bipartisanship and bring Americans together after an era of painful division. But when facing an intransigent, extremist Republican Party that has little to gain from compromise, such a vision of politics can seem quaint at best. On Episode 26 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene examine the history of bipartisanship as an ideal. The show features Paul Blest, a co-founder of Discourse Blog; Ed Burmila, the...
Aug 04, 2021•38 min•Ep. 26
Nobody enjoys going to the dentist. But, generally speaking, we don’t question what’s done to us when we’re there. On Episode 33 of The Politics of Everything, Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene speak with Ferris Jabr and Daryl Austin, two journalists who have investigated dental over-treatment and fraud, about whether we should. It’s impossible to say exactly how widespread gratuitous treatment is—and it can even be difficult to know what constitutes necessary treatment. Because of a lack of reliable...
Jul 21, 2021•29 min•Ep. 33
As its boosters have long argued, remote work offers a slew of obvious benefits. Companies save money on rent; employees don’t have to commute; and everyone, without the distractions of the office, can be more efficient. But for decades, telecommuting simply failed to take hold. On Episode 23 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with the writer Richard Cooke about why that is. And now that the pandemic has changed our habits so drastically, what does our histori...
Jul 07, 2021•42 min
In the early 2000s, a man named Erb Avore started selling a male sexual enhancement supplement he called Stiff Nights. The pills were amazingly effective—but the list of ingredients failed to mention a key component, and soon the FDA came calling. On Episode 32 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk to the journalist Matt Hongoltz-Hetling about the poorly regulated world of dietary supplements, Avore’s long quest to find an all-natural alternative to Viagra, and h...
Jun 23, 2021•27 min•Ep. 32
In late 2016, staff at the American Embassy in Havana began hearing strange noises and experiencing odd symptoms: headaches, nausea, dizziness. Had they been targeted by a secret weapon, perhaps deployed by Russia? Or was there some other explanation for the ailments? Hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk to four people who have closely followed Havana syndrome, as it came to be known: Jack Hitt, who covered the story for Vanity Fair in 2019; Tim Weiner, author of The Folly and the Glory: Amer...
Jun 10, 2021•44 min
It’s easier than ever to listen to practically the entirety of recorded music. But for musicians, it’s harder than ever to make money. On Episode 31 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk about the economics of the industry with David Turner, who writes the newsletter Penny Fractions, and the English musician Tom Gray, who founded the #BrokenRecord campaign. Did streaming save music, or is it killing it? Should we blame Spotify or the record labels? And what shoul...
May 27, 2021•36 min•Ep. 31
Andrew Yang—a man who has never held public office, nor even voted in a New York City mayoral election—is currently the frontrunner in the race to be the city’s next mayor. Why is Yang so popular? And what kind of mayor would he be? On Episode 30 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene discuss the unsettling success and national implications of Yang’s campaign with two guests: Annie Lowrey, who profiled Yang in The Atlantic, and Harry Siegel, who’s written about Yang’s ...
May 05, 2021•30 min•Ep. 30
What we grow determines how we eat, and what we eat determines how we live and die. These simple but overlooked truths drive the work of the longtime food writer Mark Bittman, whose new book, Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, From Sustainable to Suicidal, takes an ambitious look at the flaws of the industrialized food system and the politics of transforming it. On Episode 29 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with Bittman about the difficulty of eati...
Apr 21, 2021•30 min•Ep. 29
Andrew Cuomo has been mired in scandal for weeks, for actions that, in some cases, date back years. To what extent has the governor’s bullying been hiding in plain sight? On Episode 28 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene look into the long history of Cuomo’s coercive approach to state politics, why he’s so keen to hang onto his seat in the face of widespread censure, and how much his character and governance style can be explained by his relationship to his father, ...
Mar 31, 2021•41 min•Ep. 28
It’s no secret that Britain has in recent years been something of a mess. Yet the Conservative Party’s popularity continues unabated. Why don’t British voters blame Boris Johnson or his party for the chaos of Brexit, a botched pandemic response, or surging poverty? And why have the Tories been so successful over the decades? On Episode 27 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk to Samuel Earle and Ash Sarkar, two British journalists, about what explains the Tories’...
Mar 17, 2021•36 min•Ep. 27
Joe Biden ran for president promising to “revive” the spirit of bipartisanship, put an end to factional battles, and bring Americans together after an era of painful division. Yet faced with an intransigent, extremist Republican Party that has little to gain from compromise, such a vision of politics seems quaint at best. On Episode 26 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene look into the history of bipartisanship as an ideal. The show features Paul Blest, a co-founder ...
Mar 04, 2021•38 min•Ep. 26
What’s it like to be wrong? We have no idea. On Episode 25 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene discuss being right all the time. TNR staff writers Walter Shapiro and Matt Ford review their spot-on analyses of Trump and the Republican Party; Wired columnist Paul Ford talks about how the internet today looks exactly as he would have predicted in 2000; and the social psychologist Carol Tavris explains cognitive dissonance, the mechanism that protects people who do get ...
Feb 17, 2021•46 min•Ep. 25
In late 2016, staff at the American embassy in Havana began hearing strange noises and experiencing a range of odd symptoms: headaches, dizziness, ringing in the ears. Suspicion arose that they had been targets of a secret weapon. In the years since, doctors, scientists, journalists, and government officials have tried—with limited success—to get to the bottom of the illness that came to be known as Havana Syndrome. On Episode 24 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene ...
Feb 03, 2021•45 min•Ep. 24
As its boosters have long argued, remote work offers any number of obvious benefits. Companies save money on rent; employees don’t have to waste time commuting; and everyone, without the distractions of the office, can be more efficient. But for decades, telecommuting simply failed to take hold. On Episode 23 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with the writer Richard Cooke about why, and what our historical reluctance to work from home augurs for the future. L...
Jan 13, 2021•42 min•Ep. 23
On December 11, the Food and Drug Administration authorized Pfizer to begin distributing its vaccine for Covid-19. The triumphant moment comes on the brink of a grim winter, amid record case levels across the United States, and it is accompanied by countless unknowns. For Episode 22 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk to Nicholas Christakis, a physician and sociologist at Yale University and the author of Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coro...
Dec 16, 2020•38 min•Ep. 22
The country with the most powerful military in the world likes to pretend it has no choice in the matter. If the United States didn’t maintain order, the story goes, disorder would prevail. But as decades of messy wars drag on, this justification grows less and less plausible. On Episode 21 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk to the historian Stephen Wertheim about how the U.S. took on its role as a military superpower, and what might happen if we relinquished ...
Dec 02, 2020•33 min•Ep. 21
Who should President-elect Biden ask to join his cabinet? Everyone has an opinion, and most of the opinions are terrible. On Episode 20 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene interpret our cabinet dreams. What do they say about us, and what do they say about Joe Biden? Jason Linkins, a deputy editor at The New Republic, and Osita Nwanevu, a staff writer at the magazine, bravely join to help Alex and Laura appoint their own fantasy cabinet. Learn more about your ad choi...
Nov 18, 2020•24 min•Ep. 20
In the early 2000s, a group of libertarians moved to a small town in New Hampshire, where they set about slashing the municipal budget. The newcomers wanted to be free from taxes and government regulation, and they envisioned an experiment that would show the world the virtues of their political philosophy while allowing them to live as they liked. But before long, they found themselves fighting off packs of black bears. On Episode 19 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Par...
Nov 02, 2020•35 min•Ep. 19
With the likely confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett this week to the Supreme Court, conservatives will secure a majority they can use to strike down liberal legislation for years to come. Why do nine people who are not elected hold so much power over laws in this country? And what do you do when the justices favor one party so strongly over another? On Episode 18 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk to Samuel Moyn, a professor of history and law at Yale, about the...
Oct 21, 2020•35 min•Ep. 18
What will it take to save California? Around the world, fire season is growing increasingly severe and increasingly lethal. This year, wildfires have destroyed more than five million acres in the American West alone. The August Complex fire, which is burning California’s Mendocino Forest, has become the largest in the state’s history. On Episode 17 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene speak with the historian and urban theorist Mike Davis about the decades of poor de...
Oct 07, 2020•34 min•Ep. 17
While Democrats pin their electoral hopes on turning wealthy suburbs blue, Donald Trump tells “Suburban housewives” on Twitter that Joe Biden will “destroy” their “American dream.” But who are suburban voters really? On Episode 16 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene speak with four guests about how the suburbs have transformed since the 1960s, and what those changes mean for electoral politics. Katie McDonough, a deputy editor at The New Republic, offers a tour of t...
Sep 23, 2020•36 min•Ep. 16
Why is the period between Election Day and inauguration so long in the United States? What kind of trouble have past outgoing presidents made during the interregnum? And in the event Joe Biden wins, how can we expect Donald Trump to behave? On Episode 15 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene interview six guests about the presidential transition and how we might prepare for it: Michael Kazin, a professor at Georgetown University and co-editor of Dissent; Jason Linkins...
Sep 10, 2020•35 min•Ep. 15
Teachers feel frustrated and afraid. Parents are overburdened. Guidance from officials has been scant. For the schools preparing to welcome students back next month, nothing about the planning process has been easy. On Episode 14 of The Politics of Everything, the writer Keith Gessen joins hosts Alex Pareene and Laura Marsh to talk about why the city’s fight to safely return kids to public schools has been so difficult. Later in the episode, J.C. Pan, a staff writer at The New Republic, explains...
Aug 26, 2020•34 min•Ep. 14
As we celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment this month, it’s tempting to assume that women’s suffrage is complete. Yet millions of women—because they are incarcerated or on parole, because their legal name doesn’t match certain documents, because the polls are open only during the hours they are at jobs or caring for their families—still don’t have the franchise, either in effect or by law. On Episode 13 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene ...
Aug 12, 2020•34 min•Ep. 13
The economy as we know it is populated by gigantic corporations, behemoths that have bought up not only their competition but also the businesses supplying or otherwise supporting them. Such monopolies act as a “rival form of government,” explains Zephyr Teachout, the author of Break ’Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money. On Episode 12 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with Teachout about the dangers of allowing these outsize com...
Jul 29, 2020•37 min•Ep. 12
The mess of hystrionics and misinformation that passes for right-wing media these days didn’t spring from nowhere. How did this increasingly influential and well-funded sphere become what it is? On Episode 11 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with Moira Weigel, a postdoctoral scholar at the Harvard Society of Fellows and a founding editor of Logic magazine, about the early careers of pivotal figures such as Matt Drudge and Andrew Breitbart, and the regulatory...
Jul 15, 2020•40 min•Ep. 11
