Week 29 - July 17, 2026
Supreme decisions and policy debates
Spent a week in Downeast Maine with my family and can’t say enough good things about the area. Fun fact, the term ‘Downeast’ is from 18th-century nautical terminology where boats from Boston or New York would leverage the prevailing summer winds to sail ‘downwind and east’ to reach the region.
Here are the episodes to enjoy on your own summer road trip.
IMMIGRATION
What’s Actually Happening Inside ICE’s Tent Cities
New Yorker writer Jonathan Blitzer spent months reporting on Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss, the tent facility built to hold detainees after the “alligator Alcatraz” site in Florida filled up.
He describes people arriving to find no protocol at all: a diabetic detainee begged for weeks for his medication and was threatened with isolation cells instead, dust everywhere from a facility still under construction, and tablets for contacting lawyers that never worked.
Three deaths at the facility between December and January, including a Cuban man whose death was ruled a homicide by asphyxiation after ICE first called it a suicide, are what finally broke through. It’s a hard listen, but one that we should all hear.
The Bulwark Podcast · Tim Miller with Jonathan Blitzer · 1h 13m · Spotify · YouTube
SOCIAL POLICY
The Teen Social Media Ban Nobody’s Sure Is Working
Under-16 social media bans are now live in Australia, Texas, and half a dozen other places. Early data out of Australia is messy: 85 percent of banned teens are reportedly still using the apps three months in, mostly by fooling age verification with old family photos, and Casey argues that’s not proof the policy failed so much as proof it needs time, the same way seatbelt laws took years to actually change behavior.
Hard Fork · Kevin Roose, Casey Newton · 1h 19m · Spotify · YouTube
AI LAWSUIT
Apple Sues OpenAI
Apple just sued OpenAI over an ex-employee accused of taking hardware trade secrets, the opening shot in a fight over who builds the next post-iPhone device.
The Journal. · WSJ, with Rolfe Winkler · 19m · Spotify
POLITICS
Where Is Mitch McConnell?
A month of near-silence from Mitch McConnell’s office after a cardiac arrest became a case study in how little accountability Congress has for an absent member.
Today, Explained · Vox, with Annie Grayer, Burgess Everett · 28m · Spotify
SCOTUS
The Supreme Court’s “Banner” Term
A rundown of this year’s biggest Supreme Court rulings, from presidential removal power to birthright citizenship, with the Judicial Crisis Network’s Carrie Severino explaining why conservatives are calling it a landmark year.
Morning Wire · The Daily Wire, with Carrie Severino · 18m · Spotify · YouTube
FAITH & WORK
The Faith Behind a Silicon Valley Career
Former TaskRabbit CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot spent most of her career keeping her Christian faith separate from her professional life, until she started an interfaith group at the company almost by accident.
She talks about the moment she decided to write “we leverage faith as much as intellect” into her VC fund’s pitch deck, and why she thinks work has quietly become many founders’ actual religion.
WorkLife with Adam Grant · TED, with Molly Graham and Stacy Brown-Philpot · 40m · Spotify · YouTube
HEALTH
The Case Against Optimizing Your Life
Bioethicist Zeke Emanuel wrote the famous 2014 essay on why he wants to die at 75, and revisits it here with a softer message: stop obsessing over biohacking and WHOOP scores, and worry about actual risk instead.
His real thesis, backed by Harvard’s 85-year adult development study, is that close friendships predict a long healthy life better than diet or exercise, and that talking to strangers is one of the highest-leverage things you can do for your health.
The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk · Ryan Hawk with Zeke Emanuel · 54m · Spotify · YouTube
CLIMATE & POLICY
What the Big Beautiful Bill Actually Did to Clean Energy
Climate modeler Jesse Jenkins and former Biden climate aide Jane Flegel walk through what got gutted when Republicans rolled back the Inflation Reduction Act’s wind, solar, and EV tax credits, and what, surprisingly, survived.
The headline is that America’s emissions reductions by 2030 just got cut roughly in half, electricity bills are headed up 13 percent, and the US just handed China a head start in the exact technology race it claims to be winning.
The Ezra Klein Show · NYT Opinion, with Jesse Jenkins and Jane Flegel · 1h 25m · Spotify · YouTube
POLITICS
Alastair Campbell Debates Why Populism Won
Tony Blair’s old spin chief sits down with Konstantin Kisin for an unusually honest argument about why populism is winning across the West. Campbell traces it back to the 2008 crash and “socialism for the banks, austerity for the people,” while Kisin pushes back that the real driver is mass immigration debates that got suppressed rather than argued honestly. Neither fully convinces the other, which is what makes it worth hearing.
TRIGGERnometry · Konstantin Kisin, Francis Foster with Alastair Campbell · Spotify · YouTube
PSYCHOLOGY
Charisma Is a Skill, Not a Gift
Charisma coach Olivia Fox Cabane breaks down how Marilyn Monroe could turn her fame on and off at will, and why the real ingredient behind Steve Jobs, Bill Clinton, and Oprah is simply being fully present.
3 Takeaways · Lynn Thoman with Olivia Fox Cabane · 25m · Spotify · YouTube
TECH
Smart Home… Security
John Lunsford argues the real risk of AI agents isn't chatbots buying things online, it's AI agents talking to the insecure smart devices already inside people's homes, from door locks to refrigerators.
The former Uber AI safety lead spends most of the conversation on that gap, but the more interesting point is what he's building in response: software that lets a home's devices actually coordinate, something IoT promised for 20 years and never delivered, without giving up control over what that coordination can do.
Founder’s Story · John Lunsford · Spotify · YouTube
TRUE CRIME
Stolen Identify & Disbelief
For three decades, an IT administrator in Wisconsin lived under a stolen identity, while the real William Woods slept on the streets of Los Angeles insisting, to judges, cops, and eventually a university detective, that he was telling the truth. Nobody believed him. It took a campus police detective noticing a mismatched middle name on a driver’s license to unravel one of the strangest identity theft cases on record.
Swindled · Matthew D. Keirans · 43m · Spotify
MILITARY HISTORY
The Man Who Invented the Navy SEAL Brand
Richard Marcinko, the founder of SEAL Team 6, wrote the first Navy SEAL tell-all memoir and basically invented the modern “operator” aesthetic in the process. It’s an origin story for everything we now think of around tactical operator culture.
Behind the Bastards · Andrew Ti · 54m · Spotify · YouTube
TRUE CRIME
The 13-Year-Old Kidnapped by a Country
In 1977, a Japanese schoolgirl vanished two blocks from her house on the walk home from badminton practice, and it took nearly twenty years and a defected North Korean spy’s confession for her family to learn she’d been kidnapped to teach Japanese to intelligence agents. It’s one of the more chilling true crime episodes of the year, mostly because it’s not really a mystery so much as a slow, devastating reveal of state-sponsored kidnapping the world refused to believe was real.
Casefile True Crime · Casefile Presents · 1h 23m · Spotify · YouTube
Singer Tucker Pillsbury (aka Role Model) returns for an hour of pure chemistry with Jake Shane.
Actors Tracee Ellis Ross and Keke Palmer catch up like the old friends they are, covering everything from why Tracee added “Ellis” to her name for her dad’s sake to her solo Broadway debut.
Actor Millie Bobby Brown opens up about shaving her head at 10 for Stranger Things, getting bullied for it, and how becoming a mother illuminated her life.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty · 1h 26m · Spotify
Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger gives an unusually candid postmortem on how Intel lost a decade to Nvidia and TSMC by letting finance people run a technology company.
Author & Marketer Ryan Holiday spends three hours with Shawn Ryan on Stoicism, fatherhood, and why Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations was never meant to be published.
Beastie Boys’ Mike D tells Louis Theroux how a bunch of Jewish kids from Manhattan ended up inventing a hip-hop sound that topped the Billboard charts.
The Louis Theroux Podcast · 1h 13m · Spotify
Authors Chuck Klosterman and Bill Simmons go long on why the US can’t crack soccer, the return of movie theaters, and the state of reading in 2026. It’s the kind of sprawling, no-agenda conversation only two longtime friends can have.
The Bill Simmons Podcast · 2h 7m · Spotify
This week we reviewed 772 episodes across 218 podcasts. Our picks run 24 hours and 54 minutes if you listen to every recommendation.