The Weeds, Vox’s new policy podcast, launches today

One of the best parts of my job is getting to talk about the really nerdy details of policy with some of the smartest people I’ve ever met. People like, well, Sarah Kliff and Matt Yglesias. And as much as I try, as an editor, to get the great points they make up on the site, there’s a quality to actual conversations that’s very, very hard to recapture through polished, formal writing.

That’s basically where the idea for Vox’s first podcast, The Weeds, comes from. Once a week, Sarah, Matt, and I will nerd out on the wonkiest policy topics we can think of, record the conversation, and put it on the interwebs. It’s not meant to go viral, and it’s not meant to be for everyone. But if you really enjoy hearing people talk about tax incidence, health-care policy, and structural theories of American politics, you may like it!

Speaking of which, the first episode is about Hillary Clinton’s plan to repeal Obamacare’s Cadillac tax; my theory of how American politics might be changing in ways that will favor outsider candidates like Donald Trump and hurt insider candidates like Jeb Bush; and why Trump’s tax plan was a huge disappoint, even for Trump. We also engage, at the end, in a good old-fashioned Marxist self-criticism session. You can download the podcast on iTunes here, or listen here:

Which brings me to the show notes. One thing you can’t do on a podcast is link to the various articles, white papers, and candidate plans you talked about. So every week, we’ll put the footnotes here. Like this: