This is Fine

Andrew, Marshall, and Jerry get together for a Thanksgiving chat about the election.

Marshall and Andrew got together to chat about Marshall's piece on the LPE blog about higher education: https://lpeproject.org/blog/should-higher-education-ratify-privilege-or-public-service/.

Andrew and a couple of special guests go deep on the Turkish election. Sorry for the lack of content lately, it's been a busy spring for all of us.

With Marshall sidelined by actual work, Andrew and Jerry discuss the recent FTX meltdown, Musk's acquisition of Twitter, and develop a typology of billionaires. Along the way we also discuss the repudiation of expertise as a relevant aspect of decision-making and establish which games are good for dads.

We discuss the proliferation of scams of all kinds in late capitalism and the failure of regulators to come to grips with this problem. After Marshall departs, Andrew and Jerry talk about the shortcomings of localism and the most important thing in politics, owning your ideological enemies online.

Marshall, Andrew, and Jerry discuss the Dobbs decision, how we got here over the decades, and the ultimate failure of Democratic centrism to protect abortion rights. In the second half, we sketch an outline of the evolving American constitutional order and come up with an ingenious solution to the problem of global warming and world peace (must credit TSBW if implemented).

Andrew, Marshall, and Jerry take a dive into Olufemi Taiwo's book "Elite Capture" and try to figure out what diagnostic as well as prescriptive lessons it can teach us.

We welcome to the podcast Sanjukta Paul to talk about her work in untangling the ball of twine that is modern antitrust. Come for the detailed history of trucking deregulation in the 90s, stay for the debate over how and to what end we should formulate social theories.

In the absence of Marshall, Andrew and Jerry set about performing discourse surgery (spoiler: the patient died), trying to figure out why the vibes are fucked, and deploying our most sophisticated numerological tools to determine the most appropriate number of bullet points to have on your platform.

We're joined by Mike Cheyne, a genuine doctor of suburban studies, to walk us through the way that postwar sitcoms functioned as loci of formation of ideas about civic participation and citizenship, and how the TV revolution of the 70s steered into the neoliberal turn.

We welcome our first guest, Cory Haala, to talk about the populist tradition in the Midwest. We discuss its roots and legacy and whether any lessons for our present moment can be gleaned from it.

With Marshall luxuriating in the Utah mountains (probably) and thus unavailable, Andrew and Jerry formulate a programmatic and try to dig out why it is that everything feels like a shittier retread all the time.

Andrew and Jerry kibbitz about the Volcker shock, how to get from here to utopia, and whether solidarity is possible in the age of neoliberal atomization. Fun!

Marshall, Andrew, and Jerry become the dads of the entire economics profession. We discuss the mystificatory nature of economic ideology, cast a side-eye on expertise, and attempt to sow discord between Friedmannians and Hayekians.

Got My Mind on My Mannheim and My Mannheim on My Mind by Andrew Hart, Marshall Steinbaum, Jerry Vinokurov

Not quite in time for a Thanksgiving argument with your Facebook uncle, but well ahead of schedule for a Christmas argument with the same, we're pleased to bring you a breakdown of the November elections.

On this episode, we speak with writer and theater director Isaac Butler, who is the author, with Dan Kois, of a new oral history of Tony Kushner's "Angels In America," titled "The World Only Spins Forward." As always, we do a brief review of recent notable political events and then get to talking about what "Angels" accomplished and what it means today.

Welcome back, Finers! We've returned after a long, child-induced hiatus, just in time to fire up Season 2: Everything Is Still Fine, There's Nothing To Worry About, Really. On this episode, intrepid reporter Sam Thielman joins us for a retrospective on perhaps the dumbest year in American history; we discuss everything from Russian ad buys on Facebook to the Virginia governor's race, and make 100% ironclad predictions about how the following year is going to play out.

Part 2 of our conversation with Alex Wellerstein. This is a re-upload because the initial version was missing non-Alex tracks.

Welcome to Episode 1.16: No Nukes Is Good Nukes, or Is It? Thanks for listening, Finers; please subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast app, and make sure to keep a copy of this episode in your local fallout shelter. In this two-parter, we get down into the details of nuclear weapons history with Alex Wellerstein of the Stevens Institute of Technology. We discuss various efforts intended to achieve nuclear disarmament, who has the authority for nuclear weapons use, what are the biggest threats facing us in the future, and what you can do to reduce your risk of perishing in a nuclear attack. This is part 1 of this episode, with part 2 coming approximately a week from today. In two weeks, we’ll return with a deep dive into post-Soviet Russian history, with a special focus on US-Russia relations. As always, the show notes can be found at: http://www.thisisfine.net/2017/07/30/episode-1-16-no-nukes-is-good-nukes-or-is-it/

Welcome to This Is Fine episode 1.15: Contraventional Wisdom. Thank you very much for listening, Finers. In this week’s podcast, we talk about Iran-Contra, a little over thirty years after Reagan’s apology to the country for the scandal in March 1987. We focus mainly on Malcolm Byrne’s conclusive 2014 book, “Iran-Contra: Reagan’s Scandal and the Unchecked Abuse of Presidential Power,” which takes advantage of extensive primary source documents unavailable to Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh during his investigation of the scandal in the late 1980s. We discuss the scandal and its parallels to the Trump administration today. As always, the show notes are available at http://www.thisisfine.net/2017/07/07/episode-1-15-contraventional-wisdom/.

Welcome to This Is Fine episode 1.14: Heads I Win, Tails You Lose. Thank you very much for listening, Finers. In this week’s podcast, Judith Miller, a law professor at the University of Chicago who worked as a federal public defender, joins us to give a public defender’s perspective on our criminal justice system. We discuss some of the criminal and civil protections for police officers, including ways in which the exclusionary rule has been hollowed out. We also discuss the ways that the defense is handicapped relative to the prosecution, in pre-trial evidence gathering, sentence reduction offers for testimony, permissible bending of the truth, and even penalties for misconduct. As always, the show notes are available at http://www.thisisfine.net/2017/06/23/episode-1-14-heads-i-win-tails-you-lose/

Welcome to This Is Fine episode 1.13: Mo' Prisons, Mo' Problems. Thank you very much for listening, Finers. In this week’s podcast, we discuss mass incarceration and some of the injustice in our criminal justice system. We discuss Michelle Alexander’s New Jim Crow and Chris Hayes’ A Colony in a Nation. We briefly touch on order: police shootings, underpolicing, and the difficulty of prosecuting police misconduct. We also look at the law: tax farming of citizens, prosecutorial discretion and misconduct, plea bargains, and the consequences of judicial elections. Finally we look at some possible criminal justice reforms. As always, the show notes are available at http://www.thisisfine.net/2017/06/04/episode-1-13-mo-prisons-mo-problems/.

Welcome to This Is Fine episode 1.12. Thank you very much for listening, Finers. In this week’s podcast, we take on the state of American health care, discussing at length the recently passed Republican zombie bill, the American Health Care Act, as well as Elizabeth Rosenthal’s book, An American Sickness, which discusses health care’s broken cost structure. We discuss some of the paths forward for health care reform, and then close with a rare foray into current events, as the Trump administration’s recklessness manages to flabbergast even us. As always, the show notes are available at http://www.thisisfine.net/2017/05/24/episode-1-12-health-care-more-like-health-dont-care/.

Welcome to This Is Fine episode 1.11: The New, New Marshall Plan. Thank you very much for listening, Finers. In this week’s podcast, guest Marshall Steinbaum, a senior economist and fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, joins us to discuss how there is no free market to be found in the state of nature and how the United States has always had an active industrial policy, often favoring the wealthy. We discuss why the movement to defund and privatize public goods like education coincided with the civil rights’ movement attempt to extend those goods to non-whites. Finally, we touch on the ways in which corporate and shareholder power, and the decline of progressive taxation have made the economy more favorable to capital and more hostile for labor. As always, the show notes are available at http://www.thisisfine.net/2017/05/02/episode-1-11-the-new-new-marshall-plan/.

Welcome to This Is Fine episode 1.10: Fox Populi. Thank you very much for listening, Finers. In this week’s podcast, guest Sam Thielman helps us understand the business model that has sustained Fox News. We also talk about the ways in which state and local politicians have conspired with large corporations in places like Chattanooga, Tennessee to keep rural services like broadband expensive and only available through corporate oligopolies. Is fighting against monopoly power a way forward for the Left? As always, the show notes are available at http://www.thisisfine.net/2017/04/20/episode-1-10-fox-populi/.

Welcome to This Is Fine episode 1.9: Sons of Autarky. Thank you very much for listening, Finers. In this week’s podcast, we talk about how the crisis of declining male labor force participation, the opioid epidemic, the Trump vote, and racism are all connected by one powerful narrative, autarkic patriarchal white labor (APWL). That’s the belief that a man's purpose is to provide for his family and that purpose can be only honored by certain types of work. Examining APWL, we look at some of the damage this story many men tell themselves has caused, and we look for a way out. As always, the show notes are available at www.thisisfine.net/2017/04/06/episode-1-9-sons-of-autarky/.

Welcome to This is Fine, Episode 1.8: Any Organized Party. Thank you for listening, Finers. In this week's podcast, we talk with writer, academic, activist, and erstwhile Twitter-opinion-haver Freddie DeBoer about the challenges of left organizing in the runup to the 2018 elections. We contemplate whether the left can usefully cooperate with the Democratic Party, ask what a more small-d-democratic platform would look like, and bemoan the broken media ecosystem. Show notes are available at our website, http://www.thisisfine.net/2017/03/23/episode-1-8-any-organized-party/

Welcome to This Is Fine, episode 1.7: How Deep Is Your State? Thank you very much for listening, Finers. In this week’s podcast, we talk Turkey, or specifically the differences between the Deep State in a country like Turkey and the law enforcement and intelligence services in the U.S., particularly their leaks about the Trump campaign's involvement with Russia. As always, the show notes are available at www.thisisfine.net.

Episode 1.6 - part 2 - It's Time For Some Game Theory by Jeremy Reff and Jerry Vinokurov

Episode 1.6 - part 1 - Organize, Organize, Organize by Jeremy Reff and Jerry Vinokurov

Welcome to This Is Fine, episode 1.5: Trump of the Elites. Thank you very much for listening, Finers. In this week’s podcast, we use Chris Hayes' Twilight of the Elites as a jumping off point for a discussion of elites, experts, and ways that we might improve institutional trust and accountability. As always, the show notes are available at www.thisisfine.net.

Welcome to This Is Fine, episode 1.4, no state solution. Thank you very much for listening, Finers. In this week’s podcast, we look at foreign policy in the Obama and Trump eras, asking whether Obama really constitutes a break from previous presidencies, when intervention might be justified, how much disruption we can expect from Trump, and whether there's any hope for Israel. Here's hoping we survive the inauguration. As always, the show notes are available at www.thisisfine.net.

Hello friends, and welcome to the second half of our discussion of the state of American news media. You can find the show notes at our website (http://www.thisisfine.net/2016/12/21/episode-1-3-the-media-is-the-message/), and make sure you take a listen to part 1 to get the full context.

Welcome to This Is Fine, episode 1.3, part 1: the media is the message. Thank you very much for listening, Finers. In this week’s podcast, we look at the Shorenstein Center's review of media coverage in the election, shake our heads in disbelief at the Times' need for approval and dismal new public editor, and ask if the media's coverage of Trump is newly dangerous or part of a continuum of decline in political reporting.

Welcome to This Is Fine, episode 1.2: argumentum ad populum. Thank you very much for listening, Finers. In this week’s podcast, we share our origin story in Southern California; explore what populism is and if it can turn left (verdict: not an ambi-turner); make the case that a Nazi political theorist is not in the best position to diagnose liberalism's faults; and sketch out our visions of protest in the Trump era. Articles discussed in this episode: Jedediah Purdy, "Populism's Two Paths" in The Nation https://www.thenation.com/article/the-two-populisms/ Malloy Owen, "Don't Mourn, Repoliticize" in The Point Magazine https://thepointmag.com/2016/politics/dont-mourn-repoliticize

Welcome to This Is Fine, episode 1.1: WTF? This is Not Fine! Thank you very much for listening. In this week's podcast, we ask: How the fuck did that happen? How heroic really were Wright Patman and other segregationist Democrats who fought against corporate power until the changing of the Democratic guard in the 1970s? How did Trump make hate taste so great to so many? And what are our views of the horrific near future and how we might combat it? Remember: please try to not kill your relatives at Thanksgiving, and please send us reader questions for This is Fine, 1.2: argumentum ad populum, where we say populism out loud a thousand times until it becomes a meaningless collection of syllables. Articles discussed in this episode: Matt Stoller, "How Democrats Kiled Their Populist Soul" http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/how-democrats-killed-their-populist-soul/504710/ Rembert Browne, "How Trump Made Hate Intersectional" http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/how-trump-made-hate-intersectional.html Other references can be found at http://www.thisisfine.net/2016/11/22/episode-1-1-what-the-fuck-this-is-not-fine/