Central Air

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.comThis week: Adam Jentleson’s book Supermajority, released in September, calls for Democrats to stop eking out Senate majorities and instead broaden their appeal to win 55-60 Senate seats and a comfortable House majority. Last week’s election puts the party most of the way there. We talk with Adam about why that happened and what Democrats need to do to maintain it. Plus: Adam makes a case for Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries to keep their leadership positions, and we talk about what the Democratic party can do if it wins full control in 2029 and actually has to make policy choices. That later part of the conversation is for paying subscribers, as is this week’s cocktail hour, in which we discuss the Jensen Huang honeypot scandal. Finally: do you want advice from us? Email your problems, big and small, to [email protected] and we may take them on in a future episode.

This week: well, Republicans got absolutely shellacked in the midterms. Megan, Ben and Josh discuss what comes next: After a loss this bad, will the Trump-era Republican politics of gratuitous nastiness finally fade away? Can Ron DeSantis position himself as the Republican who can actually make a positive pitch to voters? What should Democrats do with their new majorities, and who is positioned to lead the party into the 2028 election? (This week’s show is free for all subscribers.) 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

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.comThis week: friend-of-the-pod Nate Silver prepares us for next week's elections and lays out why his model gives Democrats overwhelming odds to reclaim the House of Representatives and a nearly three-in-four chance to retake the Senate, despite the unfavorable map.Also this week, for premium subscribers: We talk about the spate of fake pollsters putting out made-up polls this cycle and we get Nate’s guidance for interpreting early returns on Election Night. In cocktail hour this week, we discuss Cheesecake Factory-gate and what kind of gay President Trump is.For that list of special opportunities to see us next week — online, and, if you are in New York, in person, go to www.centralairpodcast.com.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.comThis week: Washington D.C. is in a recession, partly driven by DOGE and exacerbated by local policies that make it excessively costly to do business. Local elected officials want to copy the Mamdani playbook, but New York enjoys unique economic advantages other cities can’t rely on. We consider the diverging tracks of these two cities, and the lessons lawmakers can learn around the country. During cocktail hour: we consider New York magazine’s cover story that alleges, with some justification, that chocolate is getting worse, and we discuss l’affaire Clarkson — singer Kelly Clarkson’s feud with a curiosity shop in Brooklyn, and the social media consumers around the world who increasingly can’t mind their own business when confronted with disputes between strangers.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.comThis week: is it “depraved” to worry about whether AIs can feel pain? A lot of people in Silicon Valley really buy into the idea that they might be building the machine god, and they think this might even be a good idea, even if they also think we might end up enslaving the machine god and/or that the machine god might kill us all. Mike Solana, founder of Pirate Wires, joins us to help understand these influential weirdos and the influential weirdos they disagree with. We also, necessarily, talk some about what consciousness even is.In cocktail hour this week for paying subscribers:* SlutCon, an annual conference in San Francisco with lanyards and PowerPoints and what-not that is organized by an honest-to-god prostitute and which for some reason is popular among the AI safety crowd.* The Cornell Seven case — which, rather like Silicon Valley, is an object lesson in why straight people shouldn’t be allowed to do ketamine.* The bizarre conspiracy theory that James Talarico was in an mental institution, and how Republicans have mis-learned the lesson of the successful “they/them” ad.Upgrade your subscription at centralairpodcast.com to hear the entire episode.