The Politics of Everything

5-4 is a podcast about the ideological battles at the heart of the Supreme Court’s most important landmark cases, and an irreverent tour of all the ways that politics shape the law.

On this episode, hosts Peter, Michael, and Rhiannon discuss Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, which recognized the power of the U.S. government to detain "enemy combatants." A foreign "prisoner of war" can communicate with their family. An American "traitor" can argue their case in court. But according to the Supreme Court, American "enemy combatants" can do neither: They belong to a third category of prisoner that has very few legal rights. America immediately post-9/11 was very chill and normal. Follow Peter (@The_Law_Boy), Rhiannon (@AywaRhiannon), and Michael (@_FleerUltra) on Twitter.

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Fires and overheating accidents attributed to lithium-ion batteries killed 19 people in the United States in 2022, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. In New York City alone, six people were killed in these uniquely fast-burning infernos. Experts say poorly made batteries, like those often found on cheaper e-bike models, are the primary culprit. So why is it still so easy to purchase them? Does a typical bike owner know how to safely charge and maintain a bike battery? And are lower-paid workers, such as delivery people, essentially being forced to purchase unsafe bikes just to be able to do their jobs? On episode 59 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with writers Greg Smith, Stephanie Clifford, and Ross Barkan about the New York fires and the populations most at risk, the regulatory challenges of reining in the e-bike industry, and the unintended consequences of our on-demand culture.

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We’re sharing a preview from another podcast, The Last Archive. The Last Archive is a show about the history of truth -- or the lack thereof. It's about how we've arrived at the current "fake

news" moment. And it's about how we know what we know, and why it seems, these days, as if we can't agree on anything at all. Harvard historian Jill Lepore uncovers the secrets of the past

the way a detective might. In this preview, Jill explores some of the roots of human knowledge: the encyclopedia and how the idea of it has grown to information sharing via sites like

Wikipedia. Hear more of The Last Archive at https://podcasts.pushkin.fm/tla3?sid=poe.

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Since its approval by the Atlanta City Council in 2021, the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center—more commonly referred to as Cop City—has been a flashpoint of controversy. The $90 million facility is set to be built within a large forest adjacent to predominantly Black and poor neighborhoods; in protest, activists have taken up residence in the forest to try to stop its construction. In January, conflict between police and protesters turned deadly. On episode 72 of The Politics of Everything, co-hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk to New Republic senior contributing editor Molly Taft about the Cop City protest as an environmental justice movement and New York magazine senior writer Sarah Jones about the novel applications of law used to charge protesters with serious crimes.

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In the early 1970s, ranchers in the Southwest began to share strange reports of cattle mutilations—carcasses discovered with organs missing, and with no obvious physical explanation for the deaths. A variety of culprits were suggested—secret government programs, satanists, cults, or extraterrestrials—despite multiple forensic investigations that turned up nothing suspicious about the deaths. Then this spring, a minor police report about the mutilations of six cattle in Texas went from a Facebook post to multiple national articles in a matter of days. Why did such a seemingly small incident strike such a chord, and what does the American fascination with this particular conspiracy theory say about us? On episode 68 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene chat with Michael J. Goleman, a historian who researched the first great wave of cattle mutilations in the 1970s, and with cultural historian Colin Dickey, who has written extensively about American conspiracy theories, about their historical cycles and why, in the twenty-first century, they seem to have taken a very dark turn.

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