The Odd Years

Latest Episodes:

From Title IX to Caitlin Clark Mar 04, 2025

Show notes

Last year, as March Madness kicked into gear, there was one athlete everyone seemed to be talking about: Caitlin Clark. The then University of Iowa guard was on her way to leading her team to the NCAA finals, selling out stadiums everywhere she went and creating an unprecedented level of excitement around women's basketball. This interest followed her to the WNBA when she signed with the Indiana Fever.

Our guest, USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan, is writing a book about Caitlin Clark called On Her Game, which tells the story of Clark's rise to become the most famous female team sport athlete in history.

Christine has been a long-time chronicler and advocate for women in sports. She's also deeply interested in politics and has a keen understanding and appreciation for how sports and politics intersect.

We wanted to have Christine on to help tell the story of how laws like Title IX helped pave the way for a phenom like Caitlin Clark. And we also wanted Christine to reflect on where we are today when it comes to politics, sports and gender.

These three topics have always been intertwined in our culture, but the Trump era has brought it to a different level. In Trump’s first few weeks in office alone he appeared at the Super Bowl and signed an executive order banning transgender athletes from competing in women’s athletics. We also had Canadians booing the U.S. national anthem at an international hockey game in response to Trump's tariff threats as well as his references to annexing our northern neighbor.

Christine Brennan is an award-winning national sports columnist for USA Today. She's a commentator for CNN, ABC News, and PBS NewsHour. Her book about Caitlin Clark is available right now for preorder on Amazon. It will be available wherever books are sold in early July.

Pre-order Christine Brennan's book: https://www.amazon.com/Her-Game-Caitlin-Revolution-Womens/dp/1668090198

Learn more about The Cook Political Report: www.cookpolitical.com/subscribe

Editors Roundtable: 2026 House Races We Couldn't Agree On And Why Our Ratings Will Change Feb 20, 2025

Show notes

This is a special episode in your podcast feed. You are about to hear a recent edition of Editors Roundtable, our Cook Political Report podcast where our team of editors trades behind-the-scenes analysis and dives into the weeds on races and elections.

If you're a political junkie - and chances are high that you are if you're listening to this - subscribe to Editors Roundtable today in Apple podcasts for just $1.99 a month.

You can also listen by subscribing to the Cook Political Report.

On this episode, Amy Walter, Erin Covey, and Matthew Klein take a look at our new 2026 House Race Ratings. They go over why these ratings look they way they do right now and explain why they will change over the next 21 months before election day. They also talk about which races they had disagreements over. In two cases, those races fell in districts that have been moving to the right.

To read about our 2026 House Race Ratings and see where each race stands go to: www.cookpolitical.com/subscribe

Chuck Todd on Political Journalism and Why He's Passionate About Local News Feb 18, 2025

Show notes

Few people in Washington have shaped the political media ecosystem like Chuck Todd. Amy first met Chuck more than 25 years ago when he was the editor of what was then one of the most innovative news media disruptors of its time - The Hotline. The Hotline was political media's first aggregator using the breakthrough technology of the 1990s - the fax machine - as a way to get and distribute local media coverage of campaigns and elections.

After helming that publication for years and seeing it through the Internet era, Chuck went over to a more traditional media institution, NBC News. But he brought his entrepreneurship with him, starting a daily MSNBC show that was modeled in many ways on The Hotline style of bringing campaigns and elections to the center of the conversation.

He became a household name in 2014 when he took the role of moderator on Meet the Press. He helped expand the footprint of the show to include a daily program, a podcast, and a blog.

He stepped down from that role in 2023 and recently announced he would leave NBC News.

Covering Washington looks a lot different now than when Chuck first started out, and he has had a front row seat to all of these changes. So we wanted to talk to him about political journalism today, covering Trump 2.0, and his own plans for what might come up next.

We recorded this conversation on Wednesday, February 12th.

"This is not chaos for chaos's sake." Molly Ball on Trump 2.0. Feb 03, 2025

Show notes

Whether you expected it or not, it seems pretty safe to say that President Trump's first days have been defined by its intensity, a very fast moving news cycle, and often, the trademark chaos we remember from his first term. And that's why we love conversations like this one with The Wall Street Journal's Molly Ball.

She's the kind of journalist who offers clearheaded insight into the many twists and turns and helps us consider the bigger questions we should be asking about what success or failure might look like for Trump this time around.

So we wanted to have Molly on to give us some context for these early days of Trump's second term. But we also wanted to ask her about how she approaches her job of political storytelling - especially when it involves accessing some of our highest profile politicians - which is what she did when she wrote a book about Nancy Pelosi a few years back.

Molly Ball is The Wall Street Journal senior political correspondent. You can check out her podcast, Trump 2.0, which comes out every Friday for the first 100 days of the second Trump administration.

Molly is also the author of Pelosi, a biography of Nancy Pelosi, the first woman Speaker of the House.

We recorded this conversation on Wednesday, January 29th at 10:30am

To learn more about The Cook Political Report go to www.cookpolitical.com/subscribe

Gen Z's Gender Divide Goes Beyond Politics Jan 21, 2025

Show notes

We are kicking things off with a topic Amy has been fascinated by - the gender divide in American politics and why it’s so pronounced among Gen Z.

In the past, young voters have reliably supported the Democratic candidate for president, regardless of gender. Just four years ago, a majority of both young men and young women voted for Joe Biden.

But in 2024 the picture looked different.

A majority of young women did support Kamala Harris. But a majority of young men cast their vote for Donald Trump. In fact, 56% of young men voted for Trump compared to only 4% of young women.

None of this was a surprise to Daniel Cox, our guest today. He’s been watching this gender divergence unfold for years now, and he says it’s happening on so many levels: that gender informs Gen Z’s views on a range of issues from social, to culture to, of course, political.

So Amy wanted to talk to him about why this is, will it last, and what's making this cohort so different from previous generations.

Daniel Cox is Director of the Survey Center on American Life and a senior fellow in polling and public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Uncoupled, which will focus on the growing gender gap in American society. He also writes the Substack American Storylines.

To learn more about The Cook Political Report go to: www.cookpolitical.com/subscribe

Get ready for a new season of The Odd Years! Jan 16, 2025

Show notes

We started The Odd Years in 2023, which was both a literal odd numbered year, and also a political odd year; a year when there were no national elections. But Amy enjoyed these conversations so much - and so did you - that we kept going into 2024 even though it was an even year. We just couldn’t help ourselves. As we head into another odd year, we are ready to launch the third season of The Odd Years.

As many of you have noted, our title has a few layers of meaning. Odd describes so much happening in our world now, and we'll get into that with our guests. What's making the times we live in interesting, unpredictable, surprising?

Amy will talk to people who live and breathe politics (like ourselves) and plenty who do not. So be sure to follow and listen in.

Season 2, Episode 12: A Deeper Understanding of Swing State Voters Dec 19, 2024

Show notes

For our final show of 2024, we are bringing you a conversation we recorded a couple weeks ago with the Cook Political Report's David Wasserman and the two pollsters who collaborated with the our team on 2024 Swing State Project.

We started the project in the spring of 2024 in order to get a deeper understanding of the issues, concerns, and priorities of voters in the seven key battleground states.

We teamed up with two amazing pollsters, Patrick Toomey, partner at the Democratic firm BSG, and Greg Strimple, president of GS Strategy Group, a Republican polling company.

What we really loved about working with Greg and Patrick and their teams is that these are campaign pollsters. They understand the dynamics involved, not just in what voters are saying, but also how candidates and campaigns would respond to them.

We conducted three surveys with Greg and Patrick, one in May, one in August, right after Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden on the top of the ticket, and a final one in September. You can find all of those at here along with our analysis.

The one consistent theme we saw throughout those three polls was that voters' concern about the state of the economy and inflation dominated even as events like Biden's last minute dropping out and an assassination attempt on Trump roiled the campaign.

So Amy started this conversation with Dave, Greg, and Patrick by asking: even though Kamala Harris was able to narrow the gap on economic issues from where Joe Biden stood earlier in the year, in the end, was this simply it's an economy stupid election?

**We're excited that we'll be back in 2025 with a brand new season. Our guests will include people who live and breathe politics - like us! - and plenty who do not. We'll be back soon in the New Year, but for now, enjoy our final show of 2024.**

Season 2, Episode 11: If Americans Are Unhappy With Politics, Why Didn't They Vote For Electoral Reform? Nov 22, 2024

Show notes

Americans often say they hate how vitriolic and polarized our politics has become, and yet our current political system helps to promote this very behavior. That's why there's been a push for electoral reforms that incentivize candidates to appeal to voters across the political spectrum instead of just focusing on the most ideological and extreme voices in their party.

Reforms like a primary system that all candidates, regardless of party, run on the same ballot, with the top two or more advancing to the general election. Another reform is ranked choice voting, which asks voters to rank their pick of candidates in order of preference.

The thinking behind these ideas is that the American public is less divided than the elected officials we send to congress, and that makes it harder to pass legislation that many people actually support. So if there's a way to run our elections so that candidates didn't have to appeal to the more extreme elements of their parties, shouldn't we move towards that kind of system? That all sounds like something voters would like to see, right?

Reformers thought so too. And in 2024, they helped get ranked choice voting on the ballot in a bunch of states like Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, and Idaho, as well as Washington, DC. But while Americans are quite unhappy with how politics and governing worked these days, these reforms ultimately were rejected in almost all the places where they appeared on the ballot.

Why was that? We asked Nick Troiano to join Amy on the podcast to help answer this question and learn more about where the electoral reform movement goes next. Nick has long been a part of the electoral reform movement. He's the executive director of Unite America, a nonpartisan election reform organization.

He's also the author of The Primary Solution: Rescuing Our Democracy From The Fringes.

Season 2, Episode 10: Why Presidential Elections Are Razor Thin in Wisconsin Oct 15, 2024

Show notes

Presidential elections in Wisconsin the last two cycles have been incredibly close. In 2016 and 2020, they were decided by less than one percentage point. Of course, polling in the state has been notoriously "off" - or maybe fickle - which makes it more important than ever to talk to people who have been covering politics in Wisconsin for quite some time and can help us understand the many whims and changes there. That's why we invited Craig Gilbert to talk today. He is a self-described chronicler of close Wisconsin elections and he calls it one of the "most enduring" of the battleground states. Craig has covered politics in Wisconsin since 1988. He was the Washington bureau chief and national political reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He is now a fellow at Marquette Law School's Lubar Center.

Season 2, Episode 9: Why Pennsylvania is the Swingiest of Swing States Sep 30, 2024

Show notes

It's hard to overstate just how important Pennsylvania plays in deciding the Electoral College winner. If Kamala Harris loses the state, she'd need to win North Carolina or Georgia, as well as Nevada and the remaining blue wall states of Wisconsin and Michigan. If Trump were to lose Pennsylvania, he'd need to pick off at least one of those other Midwestern swing states - Michigan or Wisconsin - and would need to win Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, as well as North Carolina.

Right now, polling suggests the outcome in Pennsylvania is on a knife's edge, which isn't surprising given that President Biden carried the state by just about 80,000 votes in 2020 and in 2016, Trump won the state by just over 68,000 votes.

So what makes Pennsylvania the swingiest of swing states? Way back in the 1980s, Democratic strategist James Carville dubbed the state Philadelphia on one side, Pittsburgh on the other, and Alabama in the middle. But our guests today, Philadelphia Inquirer reporters Julia Terruso and Aseem Shukla, recently took a detailed look at voting patterns in the state and identified five distinct places that are critical to a candidate's success there. Julia Terruso covers politics and our divided electorate for the Inquirer. And up until recently, Aseem Shukla was a data reporter for the Inquirer. You can now find him at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Please check out their really fantastic interactive piece, The Five Kind of Places That Win you Pennsylvania.

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