PODCAST · news
Central Air
by Josh Barro, Megan McArdle & Ben Dreyfuss
Central Air, the show where the temperature is always just right. Join Josh Barro, Megan McArdle and Ben Dreyfuss every week for a well-centered conversation on American politics. www.centralairpodcast.com
Episodes
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Choose Your Own Religion
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This 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...
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Eating the Elephant (with Sarah Longwell)
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark and host of the The Focus Group, joins us to discuss persuadable voters and the extensive conversations she has with them (the topic of her new book How to…
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MeanToo (with Dave Weigel)
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: with another “MeanToo” scandal in the news — that’s when a politician gets in trouble, not for sexual harassment but because someone thinks they were mean — we thought it was a good opportunity to…
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A Declaration Against Interest (feat. Jonathan Chait)
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: Jonathan Chait joins Josh, Ben and Megan to talk about Nikole Hannah-Jones' candid and thought-provoking essay reckoning with her decision to send her daughter to a neighborhood public school that…
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Gays In Crisis
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: first, we are obligated to discuss Josh's newly blond hair and if it's a sign he's in crisis. Then: are we in the midst of a gay crisis? The first gay treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has failed…
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Don't Forget to Never Forget
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: how the attack that “changed everything” has come to define less and less of our politics. In part that's because many Americans today are too young to remember 9/11, and in part it's because of…
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The Time Tax (feat. Annie Lowrey)
This week: Annie Lowrey on the time, effort, money, and psychological costs some government policies impose on us. Filling out endless forms, repeatedly proving eligibility, telling the government what we owe in taxes even though it already knows what we owe — we love a conversation about how the...
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Calling All Cranks
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: Cranks make society work. We challenge the popular consensus, and we aren’t afraid to speak up even when we know what we have to say will be poorly received. Thank you to all the Central Air…
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The Best of the Worst
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: David Ellison is displeased about the California-led lawsuit to stop the Paramount-Warner merger, and he’s threatening to move both studios out of the state. Is this threat credible? Also this week:...
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Lower Education
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: UCLA sociology professor Gabriel Rossman joins us this week to talk about rough times in elite higher education. We start with a problem at the UC system itself: California’s top public universities...
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The Gen Z Takeover (feat. Kristen Soltis Anderson)
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson tells us all about the state of polling, what American voters are thinking about heading into the midterms, how AI and the death of the phone call are changing...
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Cheap Meats
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: It's another edition of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and Maxwell Tani from Semafor joins us to talk about it. Could this humiliation be enough to end the dinner for good? Then: Have you...
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The 'Woke' Odyssey (feat. Sonny Bunch)
This week: Sonny Bunch joins us to talk about “The Odyssey,” what we thought of the film, whether the controversy about some casting decisions materialized, and more. Also this week: we consider the likely effects of the WBD-Paramount merger (if it is allowed to go through) and why the studios…
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Seeking the Tribune of the Downwardly Mobile (feat. Tyler Austin Harper)
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: Tyler Austin Harper returns to Central Air to discuss the ignominious end of Graham Platner’s campaign for U.S. Senate. Free subscribers hear part of that conversation, and paying subscribers hear…
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Inflation Grades
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: Jason Furman joins the show this week for an economy-focused discussion. We start by looking at why public views about the economy have gotten so negative, the persistent economic problems people…
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AI Probably Won't Kill Everyone
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: the case for AI regulation and what it would look like, with Dean Ball, who helped to shape AI policy in the Trump White House and is soon to join OpenAI. Is bank regulation a good model for AI...
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Speaking of Getting Screwed (feat. Andrew Sullivan)
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: Andrew Sullivan joins us from Provincetown to assess the emergent Iran deal. Paying subscribers also get our discussion of racial unrest and immigration politics in the U.K., our debate how much...
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The Talent Show (feat. Matt Yglesias)
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: Matt Yglesias joins us to recap WelcomeFest and discuss “dog-whistle moderation," and why the factional forces seeking to drag the Democratic Party to the center need to advocate specific moderation...
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Central Air Live at WelcomeFest
Listen to two conversations Josh, Ben and Megan had at WelcomeFest, the center-left organizing conference: one with San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins, and the other with Tejano singing legend-turned-congressional candidate Bobby Pulido. More next week, and thanks to those of you who joined us for…
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Urban Centers
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com This week: Reihan Salam of the conservative Manhattan Institute on the state of the center and the right in cities. Why have we been asked to support politicians like Andrew Cuomo who discredit the center? Is...
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Central Air Live with Nate Silver
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com As noted last week, we don’t have a regular episode this week, due to the Memorial Day holiday. We’ll be back with two episodes next week — one with Reihan Salam, president of the Manhattan Institute, and one...
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Europe Needs Central Air
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.com On this week's show: Why is Europe poor? Megan wrote about the issue this week, and Sam Bowman of Works in Progress magazine joins us from London to discuss our differences in work culture, leisure, and how we...
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Central Heat (w/ Robinson Meyer)
On this week's show: Robinson Meyer, executive editor of the excellent Heatmap News, talks with us about why oil has not gotten even more expensive, if there is hope for permitting reform, why Republicans hate windmills so much, and if there ever been a greater environmental advocate than…
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Major Podcast Incoming
On this week's show: Gary Leff, author of the View From the Wing blog on the airline industry, joins us to discuss who killed Spirit Airlines — the airline made strategic errors, but it could have been profitably acquired by JetBlue years ago if not for a series of Biden-era anti-trust policy...
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No Rules, Just Fight (w/ Sean Trende)
On this week's show: Sean Trende joins us to discuss the continued devolvement of the gerrymandering wars. Sean is an election analyst for Real Clear Politics and lecturer in political science at The Ohio State University. With this week’s Supreme Court decision in Callais, even more…
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This Podcast Is Going to the Dogs
On this week's show: We joined in the discourse about whether dog owners have gotten too big for their britches. (Dogs are sycophants, I say — at least cats have self-respect.) We discussed the wisdom of New York’s proposed tax on fancy pied-à-terre apartments. Axios reporter Alex Thompson, who...
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Party of the People?
On this week's show: Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini joins to discuss the strength of Trump's multiracial populist coalition amid the Iran war. He offers his take on how the Republican party can avoid a cataclysm in this year’s midterm — it has, in part, to do with the semiquincentennial —…
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AIPAC Throwdown
On this week's show: Daniel Biss joins to discuss the changing way Democrats are relating to Israel. Daniel is the mayor of Evanston, Ill., and very likely soon to be a member of Congress representing Chicago’s north side and northern suburbs. He just won the Democratic nomination in a hugely...
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We All Live in Florida Now
On this week's show: Marc Caputo, White House Correspondent for Axios, joins the podcast to help us understand how Trump and his advisers are deciding what to do with the Iran war, and how they are preparing (or not) for the domestic political blowback from an extended disruption in oil markets.…
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Every Centrist's Favorite Socialist (feat. Tyler Austin Harper)
On this week's show Tyler Austin Harper joins to talk about his reporting on the Mellon Foundation and its role in pushing humanities academia in the direction of progressive social activism, his on-the-ground take from Maine on Graham Platner’s Senate campaign, what literature can teach us about...
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The Gay of Hormuz
On this week's show: congressional candidate Alex Bores — he’s a New York state representative and author of the controversial AI regulation law, the RAISE Act — joins us to talk about the fight between the Department of Defense and Anthropic, and about how rules should be made about how AI gets...
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Revolt of the Billionaires
On this week's show: Mike Solana of Pirate Wires joins us to talk about Silicon Valley. He’s been talking with lots of billionaires who are taking steps to exit California in anticipation of a proposed wealth tax. We discuss how credible those threats are, and what makes the wealth tax different...
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Real Accounts (feat. Jesse Singal)
On this week's show: Jesse Singal, co-host of the Blocked and Reported podcast, joins us to discuss the shift toward more cautious thinking among (some of) the U.S. medical societies about youth gender medicine. (Jesse wrote on this for The New York Times last week.) We talk about how “The…
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No Audience Capture at Central Air (feat. Tim Miller)
On this week's show: The Bulwark's Tim Miller joins to discuss his recent trip to Minnesota, the apparent continuation of significant but less bombastic ICE operations in the state, and why we differ on the extent to which immigration is a political pitfall for Democrats in 2026, 2028 and 2029 —...
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Presidentmaxxing
On this week's show: Cartoons Hate Her joins us to make her argument that Democrats need a presidential candidate who “fucks.” First we try to figure out what this figurative sense of “fuck” means exactly — “fucking is in your heart,” says CHH — and then we apply the analysis to the field of...
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This Podcast Is Affordable
On this week's show: everyone loves to talk about affordability these days, or more specifically, they love to complain about unaffordability. But what are they actually complaining about? At least four things, we think: inflation, interest rates, real incomes, and income distribution — or,...
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We're All in the Epstein Files (feat. Ross Douthat)
On this week's show: we’re really excited to have Ross Douthat, columnist for The New York Times and host of the Times’s “Interesting Times” podcast, join us. We give the Epstein Files the Washington Read and make a sincere effort to learn something useful from this Epstein experience. Plus: how...
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The von Trapps Were Not Jewish
On this week's show: we’re joined by Jerusalem Demsas, Editor-in-Chief of avowedly liberal publication The Argument. Jerusalem makes the case for immigration advocates to ride the thermostatic shift toward support for immigration without avoiding the political traps that befell Democrats under…
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Snow NIMBYs
Listeners: join Josh, Megan and Ben on Friday at 12:30 pm Eastern / 9:30 am Pacific for a video chat on Substack. Go to centralairpodcast.com for more details. This week: we discuss our exasperation at Greenlandpolitik and consider an endgame where Trump simply declares that he has Greenland...
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Jay Powell's Emergency Podcast
This week: the bombshell at the Federal Reserve — the bank was served with subpoenas related to a criminal investigation into Jerome Powell’s congressional testimony about renovation cost overruns, and Powell's direct-to-camera video pledging to resist this use of a pretextual criminal...
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Rabbit, Rabbit
On this week's show: the arrest of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela and President Trump’s statement that we’ll be “running” the country now. What does the US stand to gain? Plus: a fraud scandal brings down Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and why both parties love to hate a VP figure. Megan makes the…
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Don't Tear Up Your Lawn
Listeners: join Josh, Megan and Ben on Friday at 1pm Eastern/10am Pacific for a video chat on Substack. Go to centralairpodcast.com for more details. This week: we discuss President Trump’s gross and remarkably self-centered response to the murder of Rob and Michele Reiner, and the strangely…
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We Judge Because We Love
On this week's show: Warner Brothers Discovery is up for sale, and Netflix and Paramount are fighting over the opportunity to buy it. We discuss the fate of CNN, the future of moviemaking and theaters, the Trump administration’s apparent intent to interfere on Paramount’s behalf, and who's really...
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$140,000 Is Not Poor, $400,000 Is Not Middle Class
On this week’s show: is $140,000 a year the new poverty line? Is $400,000 a moderate income? Is the softening in car buying an indication that middle-income Americans have grown more financially pressed in recent months? Plus: we revisit the “you must refuse illegal orders” video in light of news...
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Bring Your Husband to Work Day
In the spirit of Thanksgiving gatherings, Megan brought her husband to visit with us this week. Peter Suderman joins us to discuss holiday cocktails, an overly sympathetic story about an illegal immigrant who stole a man’s identity so he could work, the controversy over the “illegal orders” video...
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Conceal the Epstein Files!
We finally have word that the Epstein files will be made public, but is that a mistake? Ben and Megan offer their arguments for keeping the secrets secret, and Josh isn't sure about that — what is in there? And doesn't President Trump, who campaigned on releasing the files, deserve whatever…
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Shutdown Fold 'Em, with Nate Silver
Josh, Ben, Megan and special guest Nate Silver stress-test alternative ends to the government shutdown. What outcomes were actually available to Democrats? Then: Donald Trump’s poll numbers have materially deteriorated in the last month, and Democrats way outran their polls in elections last…
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Neither Glee Nor Panic: Our Moderate Take on Zohran Mamdani
Josh, Ben and Megan take stock of the lessons for Democrats from Tuesday’s strong election result — and a look at how Republicans failed to speak to voters’ concerns about the cost of living. Also this week: hopes and fears for Zohran Mamdani, the ongoing meltdown at the Heritage Foundation, the...
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Deciding to Win, with Liam Kerr
This week, we’re Deciding to Win, or at least talking about a new manifesto about how to improve and moderate the Democratic Party’s image. Liam Kerr, one of the report’s authors joins us to talk about it. Also this week: the demolition of the East Wing of the White House and those who are very...
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Immigration, with Matt Yglesias
Matt Yglesias joins Josh, Megan and Ben to discuss immigration: why (and how) the Biden administration bungled the issue so badly and how the Democratic party could start to regain voters' trust on the issue. Also in this episode: the problem of “the algorithm” and how it's really a problem of…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Central Air, the show where the temperature is always just right. Join Josh Barro, Megan McArdle and Ben Dreyfuss every week for a well-centered conversation on American politics.
www.centralairpodcast.com
HOSTED BY
Josh Barro, Megan McArdle & Ben Dreyfuss
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Central Air have?
Central Air currently has 50 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Central Air about?
Central Air, the show where the temperature is always just right. Join Josh Barro, Megan McArdle and Ben Dreyfuss every week for a well-centered conversation on American politics. www.centralairpodcast.com
How often does Central Air release new episodes?
Central Air has 50 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Central Air?
You can listen to Central Air on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Central Air?
Central Air is created and hosted by Josh Barro, Megan McArdle & Ben Dreyfuss.
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