Mary in America

Mary Childs

Mary in America is a weekly conversation about how the machine of society works. Journalist and author Mary Childs jumps into the minds of the greatest, most interesting people who are shaping the world we live in, to understand the structures we build, the stories we tell, the games we play, and the choices we make. Why is it like that? Who made it that way? Should we change it? Can we?

Episodes

  1. 2d ago

    What is the International Criminal Court and why are "we" "dismantling" it?

    The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio just announced his intention to “dismantle” the International Criminal Court “brick by brick.” Which raised some important questions. Like, what IS the ICC, actually? Where did it come from, and what power does it have? Why does the US want to dismantle it, and is that even possible? We sit down with Maria Elena Vignoli, a lawyer at Human Rights Watch who calls herself a “constructive critic” of the Court. She walks us through the Court’s history, its mission, and its fragile future.  “The United States does not recognize the authority of international bureaucrats an ocean away who seek to upend America’s 250-year history of self-governance and impose an illegitimate legal order on our sovereign nation,” says State Department Spokesperson Tommy Pigott. “America’s sovereignty is and always will be non-negotiable. A wide range of options are available to ensure the ICC is completely and utterly incapable of threatening the U.S. and our people. No diplomatic option will be off-limits in the campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the ICC to Americans.”  This episode was fact checked by Francis Carr.  Further reading: State Department Launches Campaign to Dismantle International Criminal Court’s Threat to American Sovereignty Why does the US want to ‘dismantle’ the international criminal court? By Kenneth Roth   Subscribe to the show! YouTubeInstagramTikTokWebsite

  2. Jul 17

    Has the Government Borrowed Too Much?

    Martha Gimbel, economist and cofounder of the Yale Budget Lab, is a normal, cool person, but she has the same disease as me: she’s obsessed with the US debt. How much our government has borrowed. Like me, she thinks constantly about what the potential consequences of all that borrowing might be. So what happens when we’ve borrowed too much? How will we know if it’s happened? Is it already too much? How will my life change once we are beyond too much? Further Reading "Americans Are Already Paying Dearly for the National Debt", The Atlantic   Subscribe to the show! YouTubeInstagramTikTokWebsite

  3. Jul 10

    How the Dollar Became a Weapon

    The US dollar is completely dominant all around the world. It shows up in 90% of all foreign exchange transactions every day. Pretty much anywhere in the world, you can whip out a dollar and use it. Central banks around the globe hold dollars in reserve. And for the past few decades, US government officials have started to take advantage of that global dominance in a new way: using the dollar itself as a weapon of diplomacy, of economic warfare.  Edward Fishman was one such official. He worked at Treasury and the State Department as they were pioneering these novel tactics, and last year, he wrote a book about it, called “Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare.” In this week’s conversation, we go deep on peer-pressuring banks and sliding manila envelopes across tables, how abstract chokepoints stack up against physical ones, and what this new diplomatic strategy means for a world at war. This episode was fact checked by Francis Carr.  Subscribe to the show! YouTubeInstagramTikTokWebsite

  4. Jul 3

    How Much Does Extreme Heat Cost Us?

    It’s really hot. Extreme heat is one of the more invisible – and pernicious – climate-related threats that we have to figure out how to live with. It claims 2.3 million lives every year, and reduces productivity 2-3%, for every one degree Celsius above 20 degrees. Kathy Baughman McLeod, CEO of Heat Resilience Action, has been trying for figure out what tools we can borrow from financial markets and from the world of insurance to help mitigate the economic effects. She’s created insurance for nature, helped start naming heat waves like we do for hurricanes, and created tiny insurance for laborers that pays out when it’s too hot to work – which enabled thousands of people to safely sit out of the heat without losing out on wages. Kathy shows us a useful way to think about climate risks, and how simple it can be to price them. This episode was fact checked by Francis Carr.  Subscribe to the show! YouTubeInstagramTikTokWebsite

  5. Jun 26

    One Default After Another

    Liaquat Ahamed is a legendary and Pulitzer-prize-winning author and economic historian who is obsessed with scouring history to find the worst possible unforced financial errors. He wrote The Lords of Finance, about 1929, and just published 1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World, which tells the story of a bond-fueled boom, bubble, and bust. The events of that era set the stage for the world we live in. Liaquat jumps into some conspiracy-theory origins and defuses them with facts. He’s a celebrity to Mary, and she wanted to sit him down to find out what—if any— parallels we can draw and lessons we can extract from this history.  Further Reading: The Lords of Finance, by Liaquat Ahamed 1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World, by Liaquat Ahamed Smile, by Charlie Chaplin Subscribe to the show! YouTubeInstagramTikTokWebsite

  6. Jun 19

    Gary Shteyngart, our National Psychic

    Bestselling novelist Gary Shteyngart has spent the past 20 years predicting, with trademark pessimism and terrifying accuracy, the immediate future. His novel Super Sad True Love Story was written and published in the internet-as-savior optimistic early-2010s but predicts all of the negative consequences of technology that most of us failed to even remotely anticipate. The MySpaceification of formerly objective information, the concentration of influence, the factioning of identity groups -- he saw it all coming. How?? Can we also learn to see like this? Is it useful or terrible to have this kind of vision? Further Reading -  Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shtyengart Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart The Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart  Confessions of a Watch Geek, The New Yorker Subscribe to the show! YouTubeInstagramTikTokWebsite

  7. Jun 12

    Who Owns Ancient Art?

    Did you hear the one about the lady in Austin, Texas who bought a marble bust at a Goodwill for $34.99 and it turned out to be a Roman antiquity? Well. When she took it to an auction house to sell it, she learned it had been looted during WWII. Which meant it had all kinds of history. To untangle what to do, that lady called Leila Amineddoleh, a lawyer who works to repatriate art where it "belongs" — whatever that means. FURTHER READING Goodwill Sold a Bust for $34.99. It's an Ancient Roman Relic., The New York Times Sotheby’s Just Lost Its Lawsuit Against Greece Over an 8th-Century BC Horse Statue—and the Decision May Have Lasting Implications for the Trade, ArtNet News Alec Baldwin's Legal Tussle Over a Painting, The New Yorker   Subscribe to the show! YouTubeInstagramTikTokWebsite

  8. Jun 5

    "Class Apartheid" in America (and cigarettes)

    Xochitl Gonzalez is a bestselling novelist, but, to me, she’s an economist. Her books are about collisions between economic classes; she captures precarity and luxury, access and scrappiness, often with gentrification as the site of these collisions. She has this freakishly astute lens because, she says, she herself has “changed economic classes,” not once but three times — an experience she’s now writing about in a forthcoming memoir.  Further Reading: Last Night in Brooklyn Need Blind: A Memoir of Class in America “I Mean, Why Shouldn’t We All Smoke Cigarettes Again?”, New York Magazine What the Comfort Class Doesn’t Get, The Atlantic A Year of Confronting the Gentrification of Self, The Atlantic Subscribe to the show! YouTubeInstagramTikTokWebsite

  9. May 29

    How to Price the Priceless

    Al Roth won a Nobel prize for his work helping create a market for matching kidney donors with people who needed kidneys. You know what would really help people who need kidneys though? If they could just buy them. But almost no country allows that, because it feels like it would create bad outcomes, and because it feels gross. Al loves thinking about these awkward intersections of money and morality. He calls these “repugnant markets.” And he has pretty thoroughly convinced me that it would be GOOD to let people pay for organs. Further Reading:  Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal about How Markets Work Subscribe to the show! YouTubeInstagramTikTokWebsite

  10. May 27

    Introducing Mary in America

    Mary in America, a new show from journalist Mary Childs about why we are the way we are. Out now. Join us. Subscribe to the show!  YouTube Instagram TikTok Website

Trailer

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About

Mary in America is a weekly conversation about how the machine of society works. Journalist and author Mary Childs jumps into the minds of the greatest, most interesting people who are shaping the world we live in, to understand the structures we build, the stories we tell, the games we play, and the choices we make. Why is it like that? Who made it that way? Should we change it? Can we?

Information

  • Creator
    Mary Childs
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    10
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Mary in America
  • Show Website
    Mary in America

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