
Show Notes
High school is a time of massive change in any teenager’s life. But students today are going through this transition period at a time when the US is more polarized, there's a lot of economic anxiety and teens are far more plugged into social media than ever before. Host Sonja Hutson and FT data reporter Ian Hodgson went to a high school in Bethlehem to get a sense of what it's like growing up in Donald Trump's America.
Mentioned in this podcast: Anxious and disillusioned: being young in Trump’s America Inside Trump’s America
Swamp Notes: The Bethlehem Project is produced by Sonja Hutson and edited by Marc Filippino. The show was mixed by Breen Turner. The FT’s acting co head of audio is Topher Forhecz. Special thanks to Pierre Nicholson.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Swamp Notes
Democrats are looking for a bit of a rebrand after losing the White House and both houses of Congress in 2024. They have an opportunity this November to test out some new types of candidates. In a critical swing district in Pennsylvania, the party establishment has coalesced around a progressive, blue-collar candidate named Bob Brooks. The other frontrunner in the race, Ryan Crosswell, represents a very different vision for winning over swing voters. He’s a former Republican and former federal prosecutor who’s more centrist.
Iran and the US more or less came to the table earlier this week. But the agreed ceasefire is already starting to show cracks. For the final episode of Swamp Notes, the FT’s Washington bureau chief explains why both sides decided to pause the fighting, and what this conflict has revealed about Donald Trump’s foreign policy.
A year ago this week, US President Donald Trump rocked the world with his so-called liberation day announcement. America’s tariff regime affected all aspects of life from the global economy to the day-to-day of average business owners. As part of a special FT News Briefing series, the FT’s US economics editor Claire Jones explains what changed, and what didn’t, because of those tariffs.
It’s hard to square US President Donald Trump’s circle. Earlier this week, he said his administration was speaking with Iranian officials. Stocks shot up, oil crashed. Then, Iran denied that talks were ongoing and the US ordered more troops to the Gulf. The FT’s foreign affairs correspondent Abigail Hauslohner and markets columnist Katie Martin explain the role markets play in why Trump’s messaging doesn’t align with his actions.
When it comes to data centres, the Trump administration has been urging AI companies to “build, baby, build”. But the White House’s agenda is facing resistance from an unlikely place: the very states that won Donald Trump the presidency.