Dear listeners,
The Trump administration has been very clear: they have four key objectives in the Iran war, and reopening the Strait of Hormuz is not one of them. That’s England’s job! We could end the war without doing it. Also, we won’t end the war until the strait is open. Who knows? It’s almost like they’re making the whole thing up as they go along.
Marc Caputo, White House Correspondent for Axios, joins the podcast this week to help us understand how Trump and his advisers are deciding what to do, and how they are preparing (or not) for the domestic political blowback from an extended disruption in oil markets. We also get his view from south Florida on the ongoing Republican dominance of that state — what the party did right to win solid majorities of Florida voters, and whether they face any danger from Trump’s national unpopularity and a cost of living crisis that, in Florida, takes the particular form of high housing prices and skyrocketing homeowner’s insurance costs.
Plus, Megan came in for a two-minutes hate this week for describing how she uses AI in her writing process — primarily, in the way one would use a human research assistant. We talk about the right way to use AI as a journalist, and the roots of the anti-AI fervor among journalists: one obvious reason is that many people are badly misusing AI — see the New York Times book reviewer who used an AI engine to plagiarize the Guardian — but another is that slop is a product category that long predates the rise of AI, and it used to be labor intensive in a way that it will not need to be going forward.
We hope you enjoy the show. Also, we hope you join us on Thursday at 1pm eastern for my conversation with opera director Phil Chan, who stood up to Timothée Chalamet by taking me to see the Metropolitan Opera’s production of La Traviata this week. We’re going to talk about why people should care about the opera, and what opera institutions can do, other than complain about remarks like Chalamet’s, to convince younger generations that they should “give a shit” about the art form. To catch that live chat, go to centralairpodcast.com or join us in the Substack app.
We hope you enjoy the episode,
Josh
