Jun 17, 2025 · 58 min · 10 segments
Two political scientists look back at a deadly pandemic and ask, "could we have done even less?"Where to find us: Peter's newsletterPeter's other podcast, 5-4Mike's other podcast, Maintenance…
Michael HobbesHost
Peter ShamshiriHost(Instrumental music)
So the full title of this book is In COVID's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us.
It is by Steven Macedo and Francis Lee, two political scientists at Princeton.
Not real jobs, folks.
(laughs)
Unemployed as far as I'm concerned.
There's really no reason for us to be talking about this book.
It's, I mean, this book, just to spoil it, like this book is awful.
It's reactionary.
It's just kinda janky throughout.
Yeah, you already said that they're political scientists, Michael.
(laughs)
We can move on.
Otherwise we wouldn't be talking about this, but these authors have been featured on episodes of The Daily, on a entire segment on PBS NewsHour.
They are being featured in all kinds of, like, mainstream respectable media, and the message of this book is providing, like, a backbone for this wave of COVID revisionism that has the costume of something that is, like, a serious reflection on the mistakes that we made during COVID-
...
but is actually just, like, right-wing agitprop.
I'm, I'm glad we're doing this just because I have noticed anecdotally the proliferation of arguments about COVID that are basically arguments that, like, we did too much.
Yes.
And implicitly that we should've just let it rip.
Yep.
Which, to me, a man of science-
(Instrumental music)
So the full title of this book is In COVID's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us.
It is by Steven Macedo and Francis Lee, two political scientists at Princeton.
Not real jobs, folks.
(laughs)
Unemployed as far as I'm concerned.
There's really no reason for us to be talking about this book.
It's, I mean, this book, just to spoil it, like this book is awful.
It's reactionary.
It's just kinda janky throughout.
Yeah, you already said that they're political scientists, Michael.
(laughs)
We can move on.
Otherwise we wouldn't be talking about this, but these authors have been featured on episodes of The Daily, on a entire segment on PBS NewsHour.
They are being featured in all kinds of, like, mainstream respectable media, and the message of this book is providing, like, a backbone for this wave of COVID revisionism that has the costume of something that is, like, a serious reflection on the mistakes that we made during COVID-
...
but is actually just, like, right-wing agitprop.
I'm, I'm glad we're doing this just because I have noticed anecdotally the proliferation of arguments about COVID that are basically arguments that, like, we did too much.
Yes.
And implicitly that we should've just let it rip.
Yep.
Which, to me, a man of science-
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