“We have no greater friend, no greater partner, no greater ally than Australia,” declared Antony Blinken, America’s secretary of state, during a recent visit down under. Is that really true, and how is the threat from China reshaping America’s relationships in the Indo-Pacific? John Prideaux hosts with Charlotte Howard and Anton La Guardia. They’re joined by Eleanor Whitehead, The Economist’s Australia correspondent. Sign up for Economist Podcasts+ now and get 50% off your subscription with our limited time offer.You will not be charged until Economist Podcasts+ launches. If you’re already a subscriber to The Economist, you’ll have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription. For more information about Economist Podcasts+, including how to get access, please visit our FAQs page.The Economist Live is coming to New York and Washington, DC this October. Learn more about our live events. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Joe Biden likes to boast that he is the most pro-union president in American history. His fondness for unions, though, has been tested by a wave of strikes. In office, President Biden has regularly voiced support for workers, and handed unions more power. But white working-class Americans, once his party’s reliable base, now mostly vote Republican. Can Democrats win back working-class voters?The Economist’s Simon Rabinovitch assesses Joe Biden’s union credentials. The Economist’s James Bennet ponders one of the great “what-ifs” of American political history. And political scientist Ruy Teixeira considers how Democrats could solve their working class problem.John Prideaux hosts with Charlotte Howard and Idrees Kahloon.Sign up for Economist Podcasts+ now and get 50% off your subscription with our limited time offer. You will not be charged until Economist Podcasts+ launches.If you’re already a subscriber to The Economist, you’ll have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription.For more information about Economist Podcasts+, including how to get access, please visit our FAQs page. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Countries with a collective population of four billion will vote for leaders next year. There are fears that recent advances in generative artificial intelligence will make voters more vulnerable to deception than ever. But disinformation has long been a problem, well before the age of deepfakes and large-language models. How worried do we really need to be about AI’s potential to undermine democracy?Chihhao Yu of the Taiwan Information Environment Research Centre explains the threat posed by Chinese misinformation campaigns. We go back to when sensationalist journalism drove America towards war. And Senator Josh Hawley explains why he wants AI to be regulated.John Prideaux hosts with Charlotte Howard and Idrees Kahloon.Runtime: 44 minYou can now find every episode of Checks and Balance in one place and sign up to our weekly newsletter. For full access to print, digital and audio editions, as well as exclusive live events, subscribe to The Economist at economist.com/uspod. To help us to continue to improve our podcasts, we’re inviting listeners to participate in some research, particularly those who haven’t filled in one of our surveys before. We’re looking for people to keep in touch with us via WhatsApp over eight weeks. You can sign up here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The perfect weather and booming economy of the City of Angels has drawn in generations of California dreamers. But now America’s second-largest city is getting smaller—losing both population and businesses. As the Hollywood strike has revealed, the high costs of housing, living and running a business are pushing Angelenos away. Can the city reverse the big shrink? But is a smaller Los Angeles even a problem?The city’s mayor Karen Bass and a picketing actor lay out the affordability problems facing the city, while Shannon Sedgwick of the Los Angeles County Economics Development Corporation explains what is behind the business exodus. We revisit the city’s past boom days, and Hans Johnson, of the Public Policy Institute of California, explores how to bring them back.John Prideaux hosts with Charlotte Howard and Idrees Kahloon.You can now find every episode of Checks and Balance in one place and sign up to our weekly newsletter. For full access to print, digital and audio editions, as well as exclusive live events, subscribe to The Economist at economist.com/uspod. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We take a break from the news this week to convene the first ever Checks and Balance Book Club. All summer we’ve been reading three works, picked by the team, from the canon of American literature. In this episode, we’ll present our analysis, hear what listeners thought, and work out what it means to be a Great American Novel. Plus, a very special quiz. If you want to read along, the books we discuss are “The Age of Innocence” by Edith Wharton, “The Sound and the Fury” by William Faulkner and “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison. For more reading recommendations, The Economist has published a longer list of Great American Novels, collated from suggestions from our correspondents. John Prideaux hosts with Charlotte Howard, Idrees Kahloon and Jon Fasman.You can now find every episode of Checks and Balance in one place and sign up to our weekly newsletter. For full access to print, digital and audio editions, as well as exclusive live events, subscribe to The Economist at economist.com/uspod. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.