This is Fine

Welcome to This Is Fine episode 1.12. Thank you very much for listening, Finers.  Please subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and remember that this podcast is “in-network” for most insurance plans. 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….

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Welcome to This Is Fine episode 1.11: The New, New Marshall Plan. Thank you very much for listening, Finers.  Please subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and use a printout of this link as your token the next time you play Monopoly! 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…

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Welcome to This Is Fine episode 1.10: Fox Populi. Thank you very much for listening, Finers.  Please subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and share this link with your Comcast representative the next time you’re on hold. 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…

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Welcome to This Is Fine episode 1.9: Sons of Autarky. Thank you very much for listening, Finers. Please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and share this link with your favorite dad or uncle. 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…

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Welcome to This is Fine, Episode 1.8: Any Organized Party. Thank you for listening, Finers. Please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and disseminate it at the next party congress. 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…

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Welcome to This Is Fine, episode 1.7: How Deep Is Your State? Thank you very much for listening, Finers. Please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and share this link with your favorite subject of a FISA warrant. 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…

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Welcome to This Is Fine, episode 1.5: Trump of the Elites. Thank you very much for listening, Finers. Please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and share this link with your favorite Supreme Court appointee or lottery winner. 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. We’ll return in two weeks…

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Welcome to This Is Fine, episode 1.4, no state solution Thank you very much for listening, Finers. Please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and share this link with your adult children and child-like adult acquaintances. 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…

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Welcome to This Is Fine, episode 1.3, part 1: the media is the message. Thank you very much for listening, Finers. Please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and share the podcast with your fifth cousins and work spouses. 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…

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Welcome to This Is Fine, Episode 1.2: Argumentum ad populum. Thank you very much for listening, Finers. Please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and share the podcast with your friends and frenemies. 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…

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