Podcast
Central Air
Hosted by Josh Barro, Megan McArdle & Ben Dreyfuss · EN
Central Air, the show where the temperature is always just right. Join Josh Barro, Megan McArdle and Ben Dreyfuss every week for a well-centered conversation on American politics.
www.centralairpodcast.com
www.centralairpodcast.com
24episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Major Podcast Incoming
2w ago01:17:57Tap to summarizeOn this week's show: Gary Leff, author of the View From the Wing blog on the airline industry, joins us to discuss who killed Spirit Airlines — the airline made strategic errors, but it could have been profitably acquired by JetBlue years ago if not for a series of Biden-era anti-trust policy failures. The Trump administration tried to commit its own policy error — it wanted to buy the airline, making Spirit’s troubles into taxpayers’ problem — but fortunately, Spirit’s existing creditors refused to be crammed down, and there was no deal to be had.We have a wide-ranging conversation for you with Gary on the relationship between the government and the airlines — whether United could really be allowed to buy American, what’s going to become of the financially-troubled JetBlue, why Europe has a more robustly competitive low-cost airline industry than the U.S. does, and much more.Also this week: We discuss hopeful federal news on housing policy and a grim housing policy outlook in our nation’s capital.Sign up for updates from Central Air at www.centralairpodcast.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.centralairpodcast.com/subscribe
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No Rules, Just Fight (w/ Sean Trende)
2w ago01:12:51Tap to summarizeOn this week's show: Sean Trende joins us to discuss the continued devolvement of the gerrymandering wars. Sean is an election analyst for Real Clear Politics and lecturer in political science at The Ohio State University. With this week’s Supreme Court decision in Callais, even more opportunities to seek partisan advantage will arise. We talk with Sean about how to define and measure ‘fairness,’ and about the ways the gerrymandering debate remains stuck in the 2010s.Also this week, we talk about food inflation. Sean had a viral tweet in 2023 bemoaning how a family-size DoorDash order from Outback Steakhouse had climbed to $125. Well, today that same order would be $190, in part due to the spiraling cost of lobster tails. This sounds trivial, but it gets at a key fact about politics — inflation bothers everyone, from those scraping by to those who simply notice that the things they like to buy cost more than they used to.Plus, Ben, Megan and Josh talk about the assassination attempt on President Trump, and the low-intensity public response to it — why is it no longer even that interesting when someone tries to kill the president?Sign up for updates from Central Air at www.centralairpodcast.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.centralairpodcast.com/subscribe
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This Podcast Is Going to the Dogs
4w ago01:11:07Tap to summarizeOn this week's show: We joined in the discourse about whether dog owners have gotten too big for their britches. (Dogs are sycophants, I say — at least cats have self-respect.) We discussed the wisdom of New York’s proposed tax on fancy pied-à-terre apartments. Axios reporter Alex Thompson, who caused a bit of consternation at last year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, joined us to talk about whether there should even be a White House Correspondents’ Dinner. And we even discussed a controversy that’s literally about air conditioning.Sign up for updates from Central Air at www.centralairpodcast.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.centralairpodcast.com/subscribe
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Party of the People?
Apr 1501:17:46Tap to summarizeOn this week's show: Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini joins to discuss the strength of Trump's multiracial populist coalition amid the Iran war. He offers his take on how the Republican party can avoid a cataclysm in this year’s midterm — it has, in part, to do with the semiquincentennial — and we discuss whether every election is going to be a “change” election from now onward.Also this week, Ben, Megan and Josh discuss what “everybody knew” about Eric Swalwell, and whether we’d be better off with more insider gossip thrown out into the open. And we look at the prospect of a United Airlines-American Airlines merger, which United CEO Scott Kirby reportedly floated to the president himself.Sign up for updates from Central Air at www.centralairpodcast.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.centralairpodcast.com/subscribe
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AIPAC Throwdown
Apr 801:17:28Tap to summarizeOn this week's show: Daniel Biss joins to discuss the changing way Democrats are relating to Israel. Daniel is the mayor of Evanston, Ill., and very likely soon to be a member of Congress representing Chicago’s north side and northern suburbs. He just won the Democratic nomination in a hugely expensive primary election — over $10 million was spent, much of it by AIPAC-linked groups dissatisfied with his positioning as a “progressive Zionist.”Plus: Medicare for All, a check in on the Iran war, and Gavin Newsom’s emergent strategy when fighting Republicans on the internet (calling them gay). Jamie Kirchick sits in for Ben who’s off this week.Sign up for updates from Central Air at www.centralairpodcast.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.centralairpodcast.com/subscribe
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We All Live in Florida Now
Apr 101:02:15Tap to summarizeOn this week's show: Marc Caputo, White House Correspondent for Axios, joins the podcast to help us understand how Trump and his advisers are deciding what to do with the Iran war, and how they are preparing (or not) for the domestic political blowback from an extended disruption in oil markets. We also get his view from south Florida on the ongoing Republican dominance of that state — what the party did right to win solid majorities of Florida voters, and whether they face any danger from Trump’s national unpopularity and a cost of living crisis that, in Florida, takes the particular form of high housing prices and skyrocketing homeowner’s insurance costs.Plus, Megan came in for a two-minutes hate this week for describing how she uses AI in her writing process — primarily, in the way one would use a human research assistant. We talk about the right way to use AI as a journalist, and the roots of the anti-AI fervor among journalists.Sign up for updates from Central Air at www.centralairpodcast.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.centralairpodcast.com/subscribe
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Every Centrist's Favorite Socialist (feat. Tyler Austin Harper)
Mar 2501:32:30Tap to summarizeOn this week's show Tyler Austin Harper joins to talk about his reporting on the Mellon Foundation and its role in pushing humanities academia in the direction of progressive social activism, his on-the-ground take from Maine on Graham Platner’s Senate campaign, what literature can teach us about the politics of human extinction, and why the commentariat is souring on all these polyamory memoirs we keep getting.Sign up for updates from Central Air www.centralairpodcast.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.centralairpodcast.com/subscribe
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The Gay of Hormuz
Mar 1801:12:04Tap to summarizeOn this week's show: congressional candidate Alex Bores — he’s a New York state representative and author of the controversial AI regulation law, the RAISE Act — joins us to talk about the fight between the Department of Defense and Anthropic, and about how rules should be made about how AI gets used in the public sector. We also got to talk with him about Ben’s “Free Willy” experiment, how to deal with the electrical demands of data centers, and what Manhattan in particular needs from Congress.Plus: we have an update on Iran — Ben now thinks he may have been a little too optimistic about how this war would go, we check in again on the financial markets, and we discuss the rumors that the new ayatollah doesn’t exactly spend a lot of time in the straight of Hormuz, if you catch our drift. We also talk about the disappointing housing bill working its way through congress with a big, bad idea from Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren, and we look at McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski and his pride in his hot new product, the Big Arch.Sign up for updates from Central Air at www.centralairpodcast.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.centralairpodcast.com/subscribe
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Revolt of the Billionaires
Mar 1101:14:13Tap to summarizeOn this week's show: Mike Solana of Pirate Wires joins us to talk about Silicon Valley. He’s been talking with lots of billionaires who are taking steps to exit California in anticipation of a proposed wealth tax. We discuss how credible those threats are, and what makes the wealth tax different from prior soak-the-rich tax proposals. Plus: the alleged “Gay Tech Mafia,” of which Wired magazine says Mike is a member, the gyrating price of oil, and the outrage over Timothée Chalamet saying “no one cares” about ballet or opera.Sign up for updates from Central Air at www.centralairpodcast.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.centralairpodcast.com/subscribe
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Real Accounts (feat. Jesse Singal)
Mar 401:11:29Tap to summarizeOn this week's show: Jesse Singal, co-host of the Blocked and Reported podcast, joins us to discuss the shift toward more cautious thinking among (some of) the U.S. medical societies about youth gender medicine. (Jesse wrote on this for The New York Times last week.) We talk about how “The Science” got so far ahead of the science on this topic, and the forces that made a change in thinking faster to come to Europe than the U.S. We also talk about the bizarre, totalitarian media environment that has surrounded these issues, and about why the side question of sports has often gotten more media attention than the issue of medical treatment.Plus: Ben, Megan and I discuss Ben’s surprising optimism about the situation in Iran, which I do not share.Sign up for updates from Central Air at www.centralairpodcast.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.centralairpodcast.com/subscribe
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