The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The Washington Roundtable travels to Madison, Wisconsin, for a conversation about the politics of artificial intelligence before a live audience at the Cap Times Idea Fest. The group discusses the stakes of Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington, D.C.; the potential for coöperation between the U.S. and China on A.I., which the staff writer Evan Osnos likens to “private nuclear weapons”; and whether American policymakers can even agree amongst themselves on how to approach regulating the technology. “The executive branch is approaching this not as an existential-level threat to our society,” the staff writer Susan B. Glasser says, “but as a pot of gold that our wealthy business leaders, and presumably the politicians who support them, win if they get to the end of the race first.”

This week's reading:

“Our A.I. Problem,” by Gideon Lewis-Kraus

“Is A.I. Above the Law?,” by Jill Lepore

“There Is No A.I. ‘Race,’” by Chang Che

“What China’s Vibe-Coding Capital Can Tell Us About the A.I. Boom,” by Afra Wang

The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week.
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The New Yorker staff writer Ruby Cramer joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how the Make America Healthy Again movement is influencing debates within families over vaccines and medical care. They talk about the rise of vaccine skepticism, fuelled by Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and how measles cases have surged across the country, reaching their highest level in three decades. They also explore what happens when parents disagree over their children’s medical care, especially as concerns about parental rights and America’s worsening health, alongside growing distrust of the medical and pharmaceutical establishments, draw more people into the MAHA movement.

This week’s reading:

“The MAHA Custody Battle,” by Ruby Cramer

“Is R.F.K., Jr., Winning or Losing?,” by Dhruv Khullar

“One Vaccine-Schedule Change That Actually Makes Sense,” by Rivka Galchen

Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts.
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Malcolm Gladwell, a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker, often uses ideas from the social sciences and epidemiology and applies them to surprising topics. But his new book tackles an issue that’s in the headlines every day. The book is called “The American Way of Killing,” and the subject is America’s unique association with gun violence. Death statistics, he says, fail to convey the scale of the problem because advances in medical care save countless lives that are nevertheless scarred by violence. Gladwell talks with David Remnick about how gun-control advocates have got the problem wrong, and why he thinks that a persistent dynamic of under-policing and over-incarcerating is at the root of America’s problem. “I can’t even utter the phrase ‘defund the police,’ ” Gladwell says, “without nearly blowing a gasket.”

Further reading:

“What We Get Wrong About Violent Crime,” by Malcolm Gladwell

“Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, and the Modern Whistle-Blower,” by Malcolm Gladwell

“Thresholds of Violence,” by Malcolm Gladwell

The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week.
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The Washington Roundtable will be back next week. In the meantime, we would like to introduce “The Journey,” an audio investigation hosted by our colleague Ava Kofman. Throughout five episodes, it unravels the mystery of how Guojun Xuan and Silvia Zhang, a wealthy Los Angeles couple, obtained dozens of children through nearly as many surrogates—and exposes a scandal that threatens to undermine the entire surrogacy industry.

In Episode 1, “Gifts,” a woman in Texas agrees to carry a child for the couple. She thinks she’s helping a family in need. Then she becomes a whistle-blower.

In the Dark is an acclaimed investigative-journalism podcast that launched in 2016. Its third season won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for audio.

To keep listening to “The Journey,” search for In the Dark wherever you get your podcasts.
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The New Yorker staff writer Joshua Rothman joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss recent calls from industry leaders to slow the development of A.I. technology for safety reasons. They talk about an industry-wide fear that A.I. could disrupt or even end human life within a decade, what an A.I.-related extinction event might look like, and whether the people developing the technology can be trusted to play a role in regulating it. They also explore recent incidents involving A.I. models going “rogue” and the difficulty of making increasingly capable autonomous systems trustworthy and controllable.

This week’s reading:

“The Long Doomsday of A.I.,” by Joshua Rothman

“My Weekend with an A.I. Agent,” by Brady Brickner-Wood

The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices