150 episodes

Join The New Yorker’s writers and editors for reporting, insight, and analysis of the most pressing political issues of our time. On Mondays, David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, presents conversations and feature stories about current events. On Wednesdays, the senior editor Tyler Foggatt goes deep on a consequential political story via far-reaching interviews with staff writers and outside experts. And, on Fridays, the staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss the latest developments in Washington and beyond, offering an encompassing understanding of this moment in American politics.

The Political Scene | The New Yorker The New Yorker

    • News
    • 4.2 • 2.9K Ratings

Join The New Yorker’s writers and editors for reporting, insight, and analysis of the most pressing political issues of our time. On Mondays, David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, presents conversations and feature stories about current events. On Wednesdays, the senior editor Tyler Foggatt goes deep on a consequential political story via far-reaching interviews with staff writers and outside experts. And, on Fridays, the staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss the latest developments in Washington and beyond, offering an encompassing understanding of this moment in American politics.

    Should Big Tech Stop Moderating Content?

    Should Big Tech Stop Moderating Content?

    The New Yorker staff writer Jay Caspian Kang joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the tension between protecting children from the effects of social media and protecting their right to free speech. Kang considers the ways in which social-media companies have sought to quell fear about misinformation and propaganda since Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election, and why those efforts will ultimately fail. “The structure of the Internet, of all social media,” he tells Foggatt, “is to argue about politics. And I think that is baked into it, and I don’t think you can ever fix it.”Read Jay Caspian Kang’s latest column.To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com.

    • 34 min
    Adam Gopnik on Hitler’s Rise to Power

    Adam Gopnik on Hitler’s Rise to Power

    In 2016, before most people imagined that Donald Trump would become a serious contender for the Presidency, the New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik wrote about what he later called the “F-word”: fascism.  He saw Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric not as a new force in America but as a throwback to a specific historical precedent in nineteen-thirties Europe.  In the years since, Trump has called for “terminating” articles of the Constitution, has marked the January 6th insurrectionists as political martyrs, and has called his enemies animals, vermin, and “not people,” and demonstrated countless other examples of authoritarian behavior.  In a new essay, Gopnik reviews a book by the historian Timothy W. Ryback, and considers Adolf Hitler’s unlikely ascent in the early nineteen-thirties. He finds alarming analogies with this moment in the U.S.  In both Trump and Hitler, “The allegiance to the fascist leader is purely charismatic,” Gopnik says. In both men, he sees “someone whose power lies in his shamelessness,” and whose prime motivation is a sense of humiliation at the hands of those described as élites. “It wasn’t that the great majority of  Germans were suddenly lit aflame by a nihilist appetite for apocalyptic transformation,” Gopnik notes. “They [were] voting to protect what they perceive as their interest from their enemies. Often those enemies are largely imaginary.”

    • 29 min
    The Political Books That Help Us Make Sense of 2024

    The Political Books That Help Us Make Sense of 2024

    The Washington Roundtable reflects on the books they’ve been reading to understand the 2024 Presidential campaigns and the state of international politics. Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos swap recommendations of works about all things political, from the anger of rural voters to the worldwide rise of authoritarian rule, including a fictionalized imagining of a powerful real-life political family. Read with the Roundtable: “America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators,” by Jacob Heilbrunn“Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism,” by Rachel Maddow“The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism,” by Joe Conason“Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism,” by Brooke Harrington“The Wizard of the Kremlin,” by Giuliano da Empoli“The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family,” by Joshua Cohen“The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq,” by Steve Coll (The New Yorker)“The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China,” by Minxin Pei“White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy,” by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman“Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture,” by Kyle Chayka (The New Yorker)“Romney: A Reckoning,” by McKay Coppins“The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism,” by Tim Alberta“Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind,” by Sarah Posner“Playing God: American Catholic Bishops and The Far Right,” by Mary Jo McConahay“Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism,” by Stephen Breyer“The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court,” by Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong“What It Takes: The Way to the White House,” by Richard Ben CramerTheodore Roosevelt Trilogy: “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt,” “Theodore Rex,” and “Colonel Roosevelt,” by Edmund MorrisTo discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback about this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

    • 34 min
    Why Robert Hur Described Joe Biden as an “Elderly Man with a Poor Memory”

    Why Robert Hur Described Joe Biden as an “Elderly Man with a Poor Memory”

    The New Yorker contributor Jeannie Suk Gersen joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss her interview with Robert Hur, the special prosecutor who caused a political uproar with his report on his investigation into President Biden’s handling of classified documents. The report, which referred to Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” elicited a furious response from the White House—but, Gersen argues, its meaning and Hur’s motivations may have been misunderstood. Gersen and Foggatt also discuss the likelihood that the federal cases against Trump will go to trial before Election Day, and what Americans might expect if they do not.Read Jeannie Suk Gersen’s piece on Robert Hur here.To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com.

    • 38 min
    Judith Butler on the Global Backlash to L.G.B.T.Q. Rights

    Judith Butler on the Global Backlash to L.G.B.T.Q. Rights

    Long before gender theory became a principal target of the right, it existed principally in academic circles. And one of the leading thinkers in the field was the philosopher Judith Butler. In “Gender Trouble” (from 1990) and in other works, Butler popularized ideas about gender as a social construct, a “performance,” a matter of learned behavior. Those ideas proved highly influential for a younger generation, and Butler became the target of traditionalists who abhorred them. A protest at which Butler was burned in effigy, depicted as a witch, inspired their new book, “Who’s Afraid of Gender?” It covers the backlash to trans rights in which conservatives from the Vatican to Vladimir Putin create a “phantasm” of gender as a destructive force. “Obviously, nobody who is thinking about gender . . . is saying you can’t be a mother, that you can’t be a father, or we’re not using those words anymore,” they tell David Remnick. “Or we’re going to take your sex away.” They also discuss Butler’s identification as nonbinary after many years of identifying as a woman. “The young people gave me the ‘they,’ ” as Butler puts it. “At the end of ‘Gender Trouble,’ in 1990, I said, ‘Why do we restrict ourselves to thinking there are only men and women?’ . . . This generation has come along with the idea of being nonbinary. [It] never occurred to me! Then I thought, Of course I am. What else would I be? . . . I just feel gratitude to the younger generation, they gave me something wonderful. That also takes humility of a certain kind.”

    • 26 min
    How Gaza, Ukraine, and TikTok Are Influencing the Election

    How Gaza, Ukraine, and TikTok Are Influencing the Election

    The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss how foreign policy is shaping the 2024 campaign, such as a possible ban on Chinese-owned TikTok and the wars in Europe and the Middle East. The panel also considers Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s sharply conflicting views of America’s role in the world.This week’s reading:“I Listened to Trump’s Rambling, Unhinged, Vituperative Georgia Rally—and So Should You,” by Susan B. Glasser
    To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback about this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

    • 37 min

Customer Reviews

4.2 out of 5
2.9K Ratings

2.9K Ratings

fanfromohio ,

Round table

Lately I find SG to be too combative. She is very smart, but so are the other two. JM has an amazing amount of reporting experience and she is often shut down or shut out. EO has a great radio voice and is the best moderator. I am listening for their intelligence, experience and respectful interaction. Let’s not lose the latter.

Felix Frederick ,

Brilliance Bathed in Affability

The Political Scene is the high point of my listening of the week. Susan, Evan, and Jane are the smartest columnists anywhere. The touch of magic that makes the Political Scene special is the affability that is readily evident among three brilliant friends.

CarleneWebbBurton ,

Book reviews

Excellent choices, thank you for the enlightening conversation!

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