Episodes
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Maybe American Politics Isn't Broken? It's Playing Out as the Game Was Invented
Why do elections reward division, punish compromise, and resist reform? Game theory exposes the hidden incentives shaping our democracy. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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Have We Lost Sight of What Politics Is For?
Can we defend democracy without sacrificing the friendships and human connections that make it worth saving? The paradox of political obsession. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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What One Subway Death Reveals About a Country That Stopped Listening
A man died on a subway and a divided country knew whose fault it was before it knew his name. The real story is a country that sorts before it thinks. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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How Fast Food Became the for Modern Capitalism
Fast food didn't just change how America ate. It was the testing ground for today's economy: weakened unions, low-wage labor, and concentrated corporate power. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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AI Is Making Work Sadder: And What Happens When Everyone Shares the Same Brain?
AI can do the work — but as it drains the humanity from our jobs and makes every company sound alike, our messy, human imperfection may be our last edge. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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One Win Is Not a Lasting Majority
Democrats may win big in November. Whether they can turn a midterm won on backlash into lasting power depends on a distinction most candidates get wrong. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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In the War Room: How Israel's Longest War Was Actually Conducted
A handful of men who couldn't stand each other, with no plan or shared vision, deciding a region's fate one agonizing meeting at a time. The inside story of Israel's war. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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Reign of Terror: How 9/11 Armed Trump
The war on terror was supposed to keep America safe. Twenty-five years later, it handed Trump the weapons he's now turning on Americans. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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The Bond Market Always Gets the Final Vote
The bond market is getting restless. What rising yields, $40 trillion in debt, AI spending, and Scott Bessent reveal about the price of money. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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The Religious Movement That's Done With Democracy
Christian nationalists are no longer trying to win democracy, Rep. Jared Huffman argues. They want to replace it with religious rule — and control American life. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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The Rule of Law Dies When People Get Too Comfortable
He spent 18 years watching Russia turn law into a weapon. Americans see the same signs but miss where it leads — rule of law dies when people get too comfortable. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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A Timeline of Western Decline
Our current chaos and dislocation didn't start in 2016. We've been the frog on a slow boil since 1945. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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1,500 Companies, $4 Trillion, and No One's Allowed to Look Under the Hood
The biggest companies shaping how we ride, rent, borrow, and think are private — and private means they owe you nothing. A former SEC director on the economy you're not allowed to see. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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After 250 Years: The American Origins of Fascism
What if the roots of fascism weren't European at all, but embedded in America's founding struggles over democracy and race? Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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Can Code Have a Conscience?
The AI debate is endless. One writer decided to measure it by asking not how smart the machines are, but how humane they are. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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Building the Future, Not Arguing About It
We spend our time arguing about change. The future may belong instead to the people who quietly build it. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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Progress Should Be Our Most Important Product
The future is arriving faster than ever. So why are we more anxious than excited? A conversation about progress, innovation, and American ambition. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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Past Its Sell-By Date? America at 250
Five scholars, one uncomfortable question on America's 250th: Is our democracy's trouble a rough patch — or built into the 18th-century design itself? Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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As America Becomes a Gerontocracy, Its Future Keeps Getting Delayed
What if the real crisis isn't aging leaders, but an aging democracy where power never seems to change hands? Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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Can AI Actually Be the Tool That Brings Government Back to Life?
The real threat to democracy isn't AI. It's a government that never learns to use it. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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Before the Trillions, There Was Once Joy in Silicon Valley
A veteran of three tech eras on how the innocence was lost — and whether AI actually might win it back, through what he calls "enlightened AI." Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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Russia's Descent Into Madness: Slowly, Then All at Once
Putin didn't seize a democracy — he hollowed one out. Twenty-five years inside Russia's slow spiral, and what it tells us about our own moment. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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No Rules, No Order: The World on a Knife's Edge
From Beijing to Washington to Cuba, the old world order has collapsed. Is this the most dangerous moment since 1945? One man says yes, and the clock is ticking. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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How Civilizations Lose the Signal
Everything feels broken at once — but the failures aren't separate. They're the same collapse, playing out at different scales. Yet there's surprising reason for hope. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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Iran's Nuclear Program Isn't the Real Story
Iran's real conflict may have less to do with uranium than with a regime losing control of its people, its proxies, and its purpose. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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Betting on Reality
Prediction markets are everywhere. But nobody's explaining how they work, why they beat experts, or why institutions fight them so hard. Until now. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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What We Don't Know About Iran Will Hurt Us
Understanding Iran's power structure, nuclear future, missile red lines, the negotiations, and what both sides are getting dangerously wrong about each other. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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Power Without Ideology Is Doomed
When an authoritarian regime offers no ideology, no story, no reason to believe, it plants the seeds of its own destruction. Minneapolis and Iran show this story. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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Iran, Hungary, Ukraine: The World Is Running on Legacy Software
The old rules are gone. The new ones aren't written yet. And no one in charge knows how to write them. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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AI Is All Humans, All the Way Down
The inside story of how greed, ambition, and rivalry destroyed AI's safety mechanisms — and why human failings, not technology, are driving us toward catastrophe. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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Social Media Had Gun-Level Immunity. That Just Ended
A jury just shattered Big Tech's legal shield. Meta and YouTube: guilty of engineering addiction. This is social media's tobacco moment — and AI is next. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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Inside the Black Box: The Questions No One Is Asking About Iran
New questions about Iran challenge what we think we know — about power, society, and risks that rarely surface in mainstream coverage. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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The Unexplained War: Stumbling Toward World War III
War without strategy. Drones without limits. Data without wisdom. How the Iran conflict is stumbling toward World War III — and no one can explain why. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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We Cut Off China's Oil, Attacked Their Partners. They Wait.
China loses two oil partners to US action. Their response? Strategic patience. Are we watching restraint or preparation for what's next?
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The Iran Nobody in Washington Wanted to Listen To
Iran didn't ask for regime change. It asked for bread. How a protest movement got hijacked — and turned into a war nobody planned for. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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American Democracy Isn't Broken… It Never Worked As Advertised
The guardrails weren't real — they were simply norms. The Constitution wasn't a firewall. And the Madisonian dream? Always more myth than reality. So now what? Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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We Are All Wrong About China. We're Creating the Enemy We Fear!
China is the justification for our AI policy, our defense spending, our tariffs, even our alliances. What if we're wrong about all of it? Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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Living Next Door to the Predator
They're booing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in Canada. What's happening to our closest neighbor is a preview of what Trump does to both countries and companies. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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Iran's Maximum Moment: Why This Uprising Is Different
The largest massacre in modern history happened in 48 hours. Shay Khatiri on what comes next in an Iran on the brink. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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The Climate Fight Without America: Why Hope Isn't Optional
While America abandons climate action, the world races ahead—and watches in dismay. A look at the cost of US denial and what's happening without us. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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Democracy's Pulse Is Beating — But For How Long?
Can democracy survive computerized vote counting? Systemic and man-made vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure may threaten integrity. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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From Ocean to Bloodstream: The Reality About Plastic
Two garbage trucks of plastic hit the ocean every minute. Microplastics are in your brain. Recycling doesn't work. What the plastic industry never told you. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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What 'Law and Order' Really Costs Democracy
Arkansas whipped prisoners until 1968. Now we celebrate El Salvador's concentration camps. A reckoning with punishment's price. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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It's Not Always About Guns or Monsters
University of Chicago economist Jens Ludwig challenges nearly everything we think we know about gun violence — and, by extension — violence itself. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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Fired by Email: What It Felt Like To Be Targeted by DOGE's Federal Purge
Eleven federal workers reveal what it felt like to be fired by Musk's DOGE — the emails, the trauma, and the institutional destruction we've never heard about. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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What If the America We Think We Live in Never Existed?
We're not one nation split by politics — we're 11 regional cultures that have been at war since the colonies. And now the divisions are life and death. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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Who's Building Our Tech Future? Innovation Without a North Star
When billionaires mock the Pope with memes and fund "cheating apps," something's gone seriously wrong.The collapse of tech idealism; betting takes its place. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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What's Really Happening in Latino Communities
Families who voted for Trump now carry passports to prove they belong here. Inside the fear, resistance, and betrayal reshaping Latino communities. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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The Radicalization of Silicon Valley: Democracy Is Optional
Tech oligarchs abandon democracy, embrace Trump. Performance or conviction? When they control the platforms shaping reality, does it matter? Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org
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The Assassin Next Door: Luigi Mangione and America's Angry Young Men
Mangione isn't alone. A generation of alienated young men are reaching the same dark conclusion: The system is broken and only violence can fix it. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org