The Most Profoundly Not-Normal Facts About Trump’s 2024 Campaign

The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss the consequences of a major moment in American history and politics: the first-ever trial and conviction of a former President in a court of law. Will Donald Trump’s guilty verdict threaten his campaign, or will it only shore up support from his party? This week’s reading: “The Revisionist History of the Trump Trial Has Already Begun,” by Susan B. Glasser “Trump Is Guilty, but Voters Will Be the Final Judge,” by David Remnick “When the Verdict Came In, Donald Trump’s Eyes Were Wide Open,” by Eric Lach To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to [email protected] with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

Kyle Chayka, a New Yorker staff writer and the author of the Infinite Scroll column, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the latest ChatGPT release—which uses a voice that sounds, suspiciously, like Scarlett Johansson’s character in the dystopian sci-fi movie “Her.” Chayka has reported extensively on artificial intelligence, and he describes some recent blunders that tech companies, including OpenAI and Google, have made in trying to push their products through.This week’s reading: “Faux ScarJo and the Descent of the A.I. Vultures,” by Kyle Chayka  “Your A.I. Companion Will Support You No Matter What,” by Kyle Chayka, from November  To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to [email protected].

On the reality-TV dating show “Love Is Blind,” the most watched original series in Netflix history, contestants are alone in windowless, octagonal pods with no access to their phones or the Internet. They talk to each other through the walls. There’s intrigue, romance, heartbreak, and, in some cases, sight-unseen engagements. According to several lawsuits, there’s also lack of sleep, lack of food and water, twenty-hour work days, and alleged physical and emotional abuse. The New Yorker staff writer Emily Nussbaum has been reporting on what these lawsuits reveal about the culture on the set of “Love Is Blind,” and a push for a new union to give reality-TV stars employee protections and rights. “The people who are on reality shows are a vulnerable class of people who are mistreated by the industry in ways that are made invisible to people, including to fans who love the shows,” Nussbaum tells David Remnick. Nussbaum’s forthcoming book is “Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV.”

The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss why global events—such as the death of Iran’s president, a recent meeting between Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, and the worsening situation for Ukraine—should not be overlooked in favor of domestic issues during the 2024 campaign.This week’s reading: “There Is Literally Nothing Trump Can Say That Will Stop Republicans from Voting for Him,” by Susan B. Glasser “What Raisi’s Death Means for the Future of Iran,” by Robin Wright “Is the Biden Campaign Running on False Hope?,” by Isaac Chotiner “Lara Trump’s R.N.C. Sets Its Sights on—California?,” by Antonia Hitchens “The Biden Administration’s Have-It-Both-Ways Report on Gaza,” by Isaac Chotiner To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to [email protected] with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has never held elected office but is related to many people who have, is emerging as a potential threat to Democrats and Republicans in the 2024 Presidential race. “There’s nothing in the United States Constitution that says that you have to go to Congress first and, then, Senate second, or be a governor before you’re elected to the Presidency,”  he told David Remnick, in July, when he was running as a Democrat. Now, as a third-party Presidential candidate, his numbers have grown in the polls—enough to push votes away from both Biden and Trump in November, especially, it seems, among younger voters. Besides his name, the seventy-year-old environmental lawyer is known as an anti-vaccine activist and a proponent of conspiracy theories. This election season, we’re eager to hear from you. What questions do you have? Let us know at: [email protected] interview originally aired on the New Yorker Radio Hour on July 7, 2023.

The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss  the unusual and dangerous aspects of Donald Trump’s reëlection campaign, from his quid-pro-quo offer to oil executives to his daughter-in-law’s new leadership position in the Republican National Committee.This week’s reading: “On Trump and the Elusive Fantasy of a 2024 Election Game-Changer,” by Susan B. Glasser “Can You Believe What Michael Cohen Just Said at the Trump Trial?,” by Eric Lach “It’s a Climate Election Now,” by Bill McKibben “Stormy Daniels’s American Dream,” by Naomi Fry “The Historic Trump Court Cases That We Cannot See,” by Neal Katyal To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to [email protected] with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

Naomi Fry, a staff writer and co-host of the New Yorker podcast Critics at Large, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss her impressions of Stormy Daniels’s testimony in the hush-money trial of former President Donald Trump. Having spent weeks doing a deep dive on the adult-film star’s life, Fry explains her understanding of Daniels’s motivations in accepting the hush money and what the sordid tale says about American culture today.This week’s reading: Stormy Daniels’s American Dream, by Naomi Fry Can You Believe What Michael Cohen Just Said at the Trump Trial?, by Eric Lach To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to [email protected].

David Remnick talks with Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired magazine, about the TikTok ban that just passed with bipartisan support in Washington. The app will be removed from distribution in U.S. app stores unless ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, sells it to an approved buyer. TikTok is suing to block that law. Is this a battle among tech giants for dominance, or a real issue of national security? Drummond sees the ban as a corporate crusade by Silicon Valley to suppress a foreign competitor with a superior product. She finds the claim that TikTok is a national-security threat to be “a vast overreach that is rooted in hypotheticals and that is rooted in hypocrisy, and in … a fundamental refusal to look across the broad spectrum of social-media platforms, and treat all of them from a regulatory point of view with the same level of care and precision.”  For another perspective on the TikTok ban, listen to David Remnick’s conversation with the tech executive Jacob Helberg, who lobbied lawmakers to pass it. The segment will publish on the New Yorker Radio Hour feed on Tuesday.

The Washington Roundtable: Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos discuss the campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza and the potentially decisive role that the youth vote will play in the Presidential election. Cyrus Beschloss, the C.E.O. of The Generation Lab, a company that studies trends among young people, joins the show to break down the latest polling data. This week’s reading: “Biden’s Public Ultimatum to Bibi,” by Susan B. Glasser “Israel’s Politics of Protest,” by Ruth Margalit “The Kids Are Not All Right. They Want to Be Heard,” by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor “A Generation of Distrust,” by Jay Caspian Kang To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to [email protected] with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

The New Yorker staff writer Eric Lach joins Tyler Foggatt to share a firsthand account of the bizarre stories coming out of the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. President. Lach explains why the former publisher of the National Enquirer testified about catch-and-kill schemes involving celebrities like Tiger Woods and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and describes Trump’s real-time reaction as adult-film star Stormy Daniels testified in lurid detail about the alleged affair at the heart of the prosecution’s case. This week’s reading: What Is Hope Hicks Crying About?, by Eric LachTo discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send feedback on this episode, write to [email protected].