America's best hot dog 🌭

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It's that time in the summer calendar where it's really not peak summer anymore, as much as we might still want it to be. We’re still not even officially in August yet, but as many people are coming back from beach vacations as are going out on them. And now, we’re asking each other what you’ve been up to this summer instead of what your plans are. The internet is again disagreeing on what — if anything — was the song of this summer. Not to mention that I saw Halloween displays up in two stores in the mall last weekend, and everyone was shopping for jeans. 

And once we’re shopping for jeans, we’re definitely in midterms season. So, with political ads swarming your TV airways, Vox is here to center in on the big themes in politics. We also had some summer celebrations left in us this week in Vox coverage, so sit pretty in your jorts and sundresses and read on.  

—Miranda Kennedy, executive producer of Today, Explained and Explain It to Me

It’s not the left rising. It’s the center falling.

This week, Vox launched a newsletter for this primary season. Astead Herndon, host of the podcast America, Actually, will be sharing one big political idea and one in-the-know voice on the ground each week. With Michigan heading to the polls Tuesday in what looks to be the midwestern version of the classic 2026 primary showdown — Centrist (Haley Stevens) versus Progressive (Abdul El-Sayed) — Astead digs into the ideological argument roiling the Democratic Party. It’s not only that an insurgent left wing of the party has defined its positions clearly this political season, he argues, but also that the moderates have failed to do so. They have “seemed frozen in time,” he writes, making this year’s story one of “establishment collapse” as much as anything. A Detroit-based reporter amplifies this argument while giving the specifics of next week's big moment in the midwest. Sign up here to get Midterms, Actually, or get it on Substack. 

Marco Rubio and Ben Shapiro have a new attack line on the left

If you happened to catch President Trump’s widely panned speech a couple weeks ago in which he accused various foreign actors of interfering in US elections, a particular phrase might have caught your ear. Trump referred to the US being worse than the “third world” twice in that speech. The phrase "third world” stood out to me as deliberately retrograde and insulting, but not until Zack Beacham’s piece this week did I realize the president was probably testing newish MAGA world messaging. Increasingly, Zack points out, when influencers on the right say “third worldism,” they are trying to invoke a scary version of wokeism, the bogeyman of the last couple election cycles. Zack also traces the origins of the phrase “third worldism” on the left. Plus, he looks at whether today’s DSA-led wing of the Democratic Party could in any way be fairly compared to the American communist left of yore who aligned themselves with any government that opposed the American-led bloc. 

📹 How a Super El Niño affects the global climate

One less-than-fun fact about summer of 2026: A massive El Nino storm is in the making. It's creating weird weather-related events on multiple continents and changing the global ecosystem. Did you hear about the sharks near the coastline in waters outside LA? Notice the spate of early wildfires blazing worldwide? All of it can apparently be explained by the “Godzilla El Nino,” the storm likely to worsen through this winter and end up the worst El Nino in history. A recent episode of The Gray Area podcast explains how we ended up with such intense global weather disruption, but also points out that we are making the green energy transition at breakneck speed. And the snappy, informative Vox video shared above is a clear and accessible explainer about the Godzilla El Nino of 2026 and 2027 that makes you smarter about the impact on climate worldwide. 

 🎧  America’s best hot dog

Jeans and Halloween displays, I refuse to acknowledge your existence. For those of you still in the center of summer joy, I give you this celebration of Americana: the hot dog, that icon of easy days and long nights. On this episode of Today, Explained, host Sean Rameswaram interviews iconic chef José Andrés, who recently served as an enthusiastic judge of a Wirecutter contest for America’s best hot dog. But this episode is much more than a ranking of Chicago style versus a classic ketchup dog. Andrés tells a romantic tale of his own immigration to the United States through an early and transformative hot dog encounter on the streets of New York. He chronicles his experience of American culinary creativity through immigrant food traditions. And, along the way, he hilariously assails his host — giving him the nickname “Sean dog” — for not bringing hot dogs to the interview. It’s not to be missed. 

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