In this episode, Ron is joined by Lucy Caldwell (Board Advisor to the Renew Democracy Initiative) to confront the question hanging over Democratic politics: Can the Democratic Party keep pretending we’re not in a populist era? Lucy breaks down the party’s internal struggle between centrists and insurgents—and why both sides are wildly overinterpreting recent election results. Using the Maine Senate race as a case study, they examine how primaries reward disruption and narrative power, often at the expense of general-election viability, and why nationalized politics makes it harder than ever for candidates to outrun the Democratic brand. Finally, Ron and Lucy dig into affordability—the disconnect between elite economic narratives and everyday experience—and why dismissing those pressures only fuels the kind of toxic populism Democrats say they fear.
Last weekend, eleven Politicology listeners from all over the country joined Ron and Mike in person for a salon style retreat called Unscripted: A Politicology Gathering. They explored big questions like “What is the point of America?” and “What does it mean to be a citizen in the digital age?” In this episode, those same listeners share what they learned and how it’s changing how they think about the evolving world we’re all living in.
Have you ever thought about what it means to be anonymous? Have you considered what it means that you can walk down the street or go to the grocery store or out to dinner without someone you’ve never met knowing your name, everything you’ve posted online, or your political leanings? Or when you go on a first date with someone, they’d walk in knowing your dating history, your political affiliations, your credit score or what groceries you buy? Advancements in facial recognition and a secretive startup could end privacy as we know it. In this two-part conversation, New York Times Tech Reporter Kashmir Hill joins host Ron Steslow to discuss privacy, anonymity, facial recognition software and her book Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup’s Quest to End Privacy as We Know It.
Molly McKew (writer and lecturer on Russian influence and information warfare) joins Ron to break down a whirlwind of revelations about Trumpworld’s back-channel contacts with the Kremlin—and what they mean for Ukraine’s survival.
In a special Thanksgiving-week episode of The Weekly, Ron Steslow and Mike Madrid sit down to answer your questions — about the deep fractures emerging inside the Republican Party, the escalating ICE raids in smaller cities, the boundary between sharp-elbowed politics and institutional destruction, the rise of AI, and the future of American civic life.
Last week, a “peace plan” to end the war in Ukraine leaked to the press. It would force Kyiv to abandon its NATO ambitions, cap its armed forces and shower Moscow with concessions. In this episode Ron talks to Gabrielius Landsbergis (former Foreign Minister of Lithuania ) and Molly McKew (writer and lecturer on Russian influence and information warfare) about what’s in the plan, what it means for Ukraine, Europe, and Nato and what it says about America’s role in the world.
This week, Ron Steslow and Hagar Chemali (Fmr. spokesperson for the U.S. Mission to the UN) break down the newly released Epstein emails, what they show, what they don’t and why the national security implications are far bigger than the headlines. They dig into Epstein’s attempts to insert himself into global politics including offering Russia “insight” on Donald Trump and the strange connection between Larry Summers and China’s Belt and Road Initiative
Washington just lived through a “Seinfeld shutdown”—a 43-day government closure over… basically nothing. Or was it nothing? This week, Ron Steslow is joined by Peter Suderman (features editor at Reason and host of the Reason Roundtable) to unpack the weirdest shutdown in modern memory and the deeply broken healthcare system underneath it. They dig into why Democrats picked this fight, why they folded even while winning the blame game, and what it says about Obamacare that it now needs emergency subsidies for the emergency subsidies. Then, from World War II wage controls to Hillarycare to the ACA, Peter walks through how America accidentally built three-and-a-half overlapping healthcare systems—and why both parties are in denial about the bill coming due.
Ron Steslow and Peter Suderman dive into the battle between the Abundance Agenda (Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson’s answer to America’s scarcity mindset) and the newly ascendant socialist wing embodied by New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani.
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