Explain It to Me

Why isn’t school lunch free?

30 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The problem of school lunch debt is not a new one. But during the early days of the Covid-19 public health emergency, Congress had a solution: univers...

Trump’s RICO problem

23 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In case you missed it, Donald Trump was indicted once again, this time for his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. But t...

Biden messed with Texas

16 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In early July, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott installed a chain of buoys and barbed wire in the Rio Grande as part of his “Operation Lone Star” plan to cr...

Biden wants YOU (to go to therapy)

09 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Finding a therapist can be exhausting. Between connecting with a clinician you like and locating someone who takes your insurance, it can be a dauntin...

A new era for birth control

02 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For the first time ever in America, a birth control pill will be available over the counter. In July 2023, the Food and Drug Administration approved O...

Who broke student loans?

26 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Last month, the Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program. Student loan debt these days weighs in at about $1.7 t...

Expecting: Weed and Pregnancy

19 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Many states have extremely punitive policies around cannabis and pregnancy. But researchers don't actually have great data on cannabis's harms. This ...

It's an HOA world; you're just living in it

12 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

If you’re buying a new home, there’s a good chance it’s part of a homeowners association. HOAs are a form of common interest housing, and roughl...

The Republican plot to defund public libraries

28 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A popular saying is that public libraries are the last bastion of true democracy. But in recent months, Republican state lawmakers and local elected b...

A conversation with Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield

21 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this live taping of The Weeds from TruCon 2023, host Jonquilyn Hill sits down with Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations...

We need to rethink discipline in schools

14 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For many Black children, their first encounter with the discrimination that will trail them their whole lives comes from the school system — a syste...

The kids suing their state for climate change

07 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Do Montanans have a constitutional right to a clean and healthy environment? According to the state constitution they do. And a group of young people ...

The fate of affirmative action

24 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Summer is around the corner, which means the latest rulings from this Supreme Court are as well. Two cases will take on affirmative action. In this ep...

Why is child labor making a comeback?

17 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The first child labor law in America went on the books almost 200 years ago, and federal labor protections were enshrined in the Fair Labor Standards ...

The Weeds, Live – Anti-trans legislation, explained

10 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In recent years, there’s been a dramatic increase in the number of anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in state legislatures across the country. The ACLU is...

Policymaking on the high seas

03 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Question: What is the world’s largest habitat? Here’s a hint: It also takes up about half of the Earth’s surface. Any guesses? It’s the high s...

How Secretary Buttigieg wants to make America’s roads safer

26 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On this week’s episode of The Weeds, we sit down with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to talk about transportation policy in America. From s...

Mifepristone and the FDA’s exhaustive approval process, explained

18 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It’s been 10 days since a federal judge in Texas issued an unprecedented ruling that nullified the 2000 Food and Drug Administration approval of mif...

How corporations got all your data

11 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sean Illing speaks with Matthew Jones, historian of science and technology, and co-author (with data scientist Chris Wiggins) of the new book How Data...

Do assault weapons bans work?

04 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

After the shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville in late March, President Biden once again called for reinstating the federal assault weapons ba...

Medicaid’s “Great Unwinding”

28 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On April 1, 2023, a Covid-era Medicaid policy called continuous enrollment will end. The policy allowed recipients to retain their benefits, even if t...

Why Illinois wants to end cash bail

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This month, the Illinois Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case examining the Safe-T Act. The legislation would bring sweeping reform to the sta...

The debt ceiling drama

14 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

You’ve probably heard by now that President Joe Biden released his 2024 budget proposal. You’ve also probably heard that it has almost no chance o...

What East Palestine can tell us about the rail industry

07 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On the evening of February 3, 2023, a Norfolk Southern train carrying toxic chemicals derailed outside of East Palestine, Ohio. The environmental impa...

How a 1996 US immigration policy changed everything

28 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Almost 30 years ago, President Bill Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act into law. This policy would have fa...

Will the Supreme Court ruin the internet?

21 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On Tuesday, February 21, the Supreme Court will hear two cases that could dramatically change the way we use the internet. The cases are against two t...

The Ukraine war: past, present, and future

14 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It’s been almost one year since Russia invaded Ukraine. Since the invasion, thousands have died, millions have been displaced, and the world has fel...

$14 trillion and no mules

07 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Paying the price. One of the typical questions asked during conversations about reparations is how to pay for them. Fabiola talks with economist Willi...

The Biden policy that could change your neighborhood

31 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation in American history is the Fair Housing Act of 1968. It is also a piece of legislation th...

Insulin is for the world

24 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When insulin was discovered in 1923, the scientists sold the patent for only a dollar, hoping to make it accessible to those who need it. At the time,...

Weeds Time Machine: The Voting Rights Act

17 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Buckle up for another trip in the Weeds Time Machine! Today, we are going back in time to 1965 to talk about one of the most significant pieces of civ...

Reintroducing The Weeds

16 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Politics is how people achieve power. Policy is what they do with it. Every week on The Weeds, host Jonquilyn Hill and guests break down the policies...

The great American gerrymander

10 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Gerrymandering shapes our political maps, which in turn shape our policies. While there are concerns about how hyperpartisan voting maps are becoming,...

The scourge of the “time tax”

27 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

(Originally aired May 2022) Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind are joined by Annie Lowrey (@annielowrey), a staff writer at the Atlantic, to talk about why ...

Climate optimism in 2023

20 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 2022, we saw a lot of climate change news. Europe hit record-high temperatures, Pakistan was devastated by flooding, and in the United States, the ...

Our mental health doom loop

13 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Last month, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced a new mental health policy that lowers the threshold for involuntary commitments for psychiatric ...

The bipartisan bill that could protect elections

06 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

With the 2022 midterm elections mostly over, members of Congress are back on the Hill to wrap up loose legislative ends. One of the bipartisan bills f...

The rebirth of industrial policy

29 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

(Originally aired August 2022) Vox senior correspondent Dylan Matthews sits down with Felicia Wong (@FeliciaWongRI), president and CEO of the Roosevel...

It’s time to regulate crypto

22 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The world of cryptocurrency is infamously unregulated, but what happens when a major crypto exchange crashes, uprooting almost the entire crypto ecosy...

The Weeds’ weed episode

15 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Let’s be blunt: Weed policy is complicated. As with many elections in the past decade, recreational marijuana was on the ballot again during the 202...

How to call an election

08 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We did it, y’all – we made it to Election Day! And if you’re like us, tonight you’ll be glued to your TV and constantly refreshing Vox.com wai...

How to fix inflation

01 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

With only a week to go until the US midterm elections, inflation is the issue at the top of most voters’ minds. As Democrats and Republicans make th...

Why scaring voters works

25 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Midterm elections are around the corner, and while voters are concerned about the economy, inflation, and abortion, there’s one other issue jumping ...

The most interesting issues on the ballot

18 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The midterm elections are three weeks away, and candidates aren’t the only ones on the ballot. Voters across the country will decide new laws and po...

The candidates haunting the GOP

11 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The midterm elections are four weeks away. Senate control is on the line, and races in battleground states are tightening. Few things say “close ele...

AMERICA HAS A (POLLING) PROBLEM

04 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Pollsters are starting to panic. There’s headline after headline after headline ahead of the midterms on whether this election cycle’s polling is ...

Abbott and DeSantis: Stunt queens or policy makers?

27 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

US immigration policy is complicated. And when Republican Govs. Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis chartered buses and planes to relocate migrants to “blu...

The fastest growing voting bloc in America

20 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

For the September issue of The Highlight, the Vox politics team examined the fastest growing voting bloc in the country: Latino voters. But the 32 mil...

Who decides how we’ll save the future?

13 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How do we make life better for future generations? Who gets to make those decisions? These are tough questions, and today’s guest, philosopher Willi...

Vitamin X

06 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today on The Weeds, we are sharing an episode of another Vox podcast, Unexplainable, that originally aired in June 2022.  Millions of Americans take...

It’s a policy team takeover!

30 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Join editor Libby Nelson (@libbyanelson) and reporters Rachel Cohen (@rmc031) and Madeleine Ngo (@maddiengo) for a summer policy wrap-up. Inflation, t...

The rebirth of industrial policy

23 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Vox senior correspondent Dylan Matthews sits down with Felicia Wong (@FeliciaWongRI), president and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute, to talk about a ne...

Could the war on terror be over?

16 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Vox senior correspondent Zack Beauchamp and Vox senior foreign writer Jonathan Guyer discuss the killing of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of ...

The new politics of abortion

09 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In a surprise to many, last week Kansas overwhelmingly voted down an anti-abortion ballot initiative. If abortion rights can win in a deep-red state, ...

Maybe we’re not doomed?

02 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

As the Earth swelters through yet another record-breaking summer, a surprise push for climate legislation on Capitol Hill gave us a shimmer of optimis...

Weeds Time Machine: The ADA

26 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Matthews, Dara Lind, and special guest Ari Ne’eman (@aneeman) fire up the Weeds Time Machine for a special episode on the Americans with Disab...

What the hell is up with SCOTUS?

19 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dara Lind is joined by Vox senior correspondent Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) to discuss the major decisions handed down by the Supreme Court this term....

The legal limbo of abortion rights

12 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Vox Supreme Court correspondent Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) speaks with Michele Goodwin, a law professor, bioethicist, and leading expert on reproduct...

Pregnancy in a post-Roe America

28 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind are joined by Vox senior reporter Keren Landman, M.D., (@landmanspeaking) to discuss the extremely high maternal mortalit...

ConGRADulations, fellow kids

21 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Hey, Weeds listeners: Today, we are bringing you an episode of Today, Explained that originally aired in early June.  Ten months ago, the faculty of...

How the world became rich

14 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Matthews sits down with economic historians Jared Rubin and Mark Koyama to discuss their new book, How the World Became Rich. It tries to answer...

Does the US need a National Guard of nurses?

07 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind are joined by Vox senior correspondent Dylan Scott (@dylanlscott) to discuss the shortage of nurses in the American healt...

The gun control stalemate, explained

31 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind are joined by Vox politics reporter Nicole Narea (@nicolenarea) to talk about gun violence. They discuss the findings of ...

The Most Dangerous Branch: A well-regulated militia

27 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This episode originally published in October 2021 as the second installment of our “Most Dangerous Branch” miniseries about the Supreme Court. Vox...

Immigration, democracy, and the rise of the Western far right

24 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This special episode of The Weeds was taped live at TruCon 2022! Join Dara Lind, Zack Beauchamp, and Jen Kirby for a live panel discussion about the s...

The scourge of the “time tax”

17 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind are joined by Annie Lowrey (@annielowrey), a staff writer at the Atlantic, to talk about why it’s so hard for people to...

Ukraine and the global food supply crisis

10 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind talk with Washington Post economic columnist Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) about the global food supply crisis spinning o...

What the Alito leak means for Roe — and everything else

05 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dara Lind sits down with Vox Supreme Court correspondent Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) for a deep dive into the leaked draft opinion on abortion written...

The Most Dangerous Branch: Roe v. Wade

03 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This episode originally published in October 2021 as the first installment of our “Most Dangerous Branch” miniseries about the Supreme Court. Vox ...

Why do we go to war?

26 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Matthews interviews economist Chris Blattman (@cblatts) about his new book Why We Fight, which examines the root causes of war and what can be d...

Weeds Time Machine: The Clean Air Act

19 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Buckle up! The Weeds Time Machine is back. Today, Dylan Matthews, Dara Lind, and special guest Maureen Cropper, economist and professor at the Univers...

Tax time at the culture wars

12 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind are joined by Washington Post reporter Toluse Olorunnipa (@ToluseO) to talk more taxes for our hot! tax! policy! episodes...

Taxes! Let’s get right Intuit.

05 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Weeds co-hosts Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind are joined by Vox policy editor Libby Nelson (@libbyanelson) to talk about some hot! tax! policy! But most...

The Great Expiration

29 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind are joined by Washington Post columnist Christine Emba (@ChristineEmba) to discuss the end of Covid-era welfare programs....

The art of the gerrymander

22 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind are joined by Vox Senior Politics Correspondent Andrew Prokop (@awprokop) for a dive deep into the newly redrawn 2022 con...

The myth of US energy independence

15 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind are joined by Robinson Meyer (@robinsonmeyer), a staff writer at the Atlantic, to talk about the illusion of US energy in...

Why it’s so hard to move in America

08 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Matthews and Jerusalem Demsas are joined by Nick Buttrick (@NickButtrick), a psychologist at Princeton, to talk about interstate mobility in the...

Russia's terrible invasion

01 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Matthews and Jerusalem Demsas are joined by Vox senior correspondent Zack Beauchamp to talk about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They discuss U...

A quick update

25 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We’re hitting snooze on Friday episodes, but they’re not going away forever. We’re just slowing things down while we work on some special projec...

Why San Francisco’s school board got booted

23 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Matthews, Jerusalem Demsas, and Dara Lind discuss the recent school board recall election in San Francisco and also whether the Great Resignati...

Democracy in crisis: The two-party problem

18 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Vox Senior Correspondent Zack Beauchamp talks with political scientist Lee Drutman, author of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop. They discuss the histo...

The curse of the midterms

15 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Matthews and Jerusalem Demsas are joined by Vox’s Andrew Prokop (@awprokop) to talk about the midterm elections. More specifically, why the pr...

Beijing, boycotts, and the enduring politics of the Olympics

11 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Matthews talks with Victor Cha (@VictorDCha) about the international politics surrounding the 2022 Beijing Olympics. The US and several other co...

Affirmative action could be doomed (again). What comes next?

08 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Matthews, Dara Lind, and Jerusalem Demsas talk about affirmative action. They dig into the current Supreme Court case about Harvard’s admissio...

It’s not about Ukraine. It’s about Putin.

04 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Matthews talks with Mark Galeotti (@MarkGaleotti), director of Mayak Intelligence, about what’s going on in Ukraine. They discuss in depth the...

Think of the children

01 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Matthews, Dara Lind, and Vox policy editor Libby Nelson discuss the findings of two recent studies on early childhood development. One study fou...

Unions!

28 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dara Lind talks with professor Gabriel Winant of the University of Chicago about the new Bureau of Labor Statistics report that showed a topline decli...

What happens to voting rights now?

25 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Matthews and Jerusalem Demsas talk with Emily Rong Zhang, a PhD candidate in political science at Stanford and a former Skadden Fellow at the AC...

Are corporations winning at inflation?

21 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Jerusalem Demsas and Dylan Matthews talk with Joey Politano (@JosephPolitano), economics blogger and self-described "mid-tier take-haver," to go over ...

What BBB means for climate policy

19 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Weeds co-hosts Jerusalem Demsas and Dara Lind talk with Robinson Meyer (@yayitsrob), staff writer at the Atlantic, about the climate provisions in Pre...

How the 1918 flu pandemic ended

14 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan talks to John M. Barry, distinguished scholar at Tulane University and author of The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in His...

The case for more babies

11 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan, Jerusalem, and special guest Bryan Walsh discuss the slowing population growth in America, and what a smaller-than-expected America could mean....

The building blocks of radicalization

07 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How does someone get radicalized? What do political scientists see as the building blocks of political violence? Is there anything we can do to stop r...

Why hasn’t student debt been canceled?

04 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan and Dara are joined by Vox’s Libby Nelson to talk about the policy merits and political implications of plans to cancel some or all student lo...

Best Of: The coming climate exodus

28 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Vox senior reporter Rebecca Leber (@rbleber) joins The Weeds to explain the problem of migration caused by climate change, such as that due to wildfir...

America’s Public Health Experiment: Federal failures

21 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the final episode of our series, America’s Public Health Experiment, Dylan, Dara, and Jerusalem discuss how the CDC and the FDA failed the Americ...

America's Public Health Experiment: More checks, less politics

17 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the penultimate episode of our series America’s Public Health Experiment, Vox policy reporter Jerusalem Demsas talks to Arnab Datta, senior couns...

Can school be normal again?

14 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan and Jerusalem are joined by Vox Policy Editor Libby Nelson to talk about the current state of Covid-19 and schools. They discuss vaccine mandate...

America’s Public Health Experiment: The agencies Covid broke

10 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the second episode of our series, America’s Public Health Experiment, Weeds co-host Dara Lind looks at two government agencies that went from qui...

Learning to love rent control

07 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Dara and Dylan talk to Jerusalem about her new article defending rent control laws. The three discuss the policy impacts of rent limits and the politi...