What happens to democracy when one political party has near complete power?

That's the question at the heart of supermajority.

The series The New Yorker just named one of the 10 best podcasts of 2024.

Listen and hear what all the hype is about.

It's season 19 of NPR's Embedded Podcast.

This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest, Miranda, July, was a bit afraid of what people

would think of her after publishing her second novel, All Fours. The book is partly about

sexuality and has some very explicit sexual scenes. But that's true

of many books. Her larger fear was the theme of a woman reaching midlife and entering perimenopause,

the time in a woman's life when she's transitioning into menopause, and is experiencing some of the

many symptoms associated with that time of life.

For her main character, it's the fear of losing her libido,

dealing with mysterious moods and anxiety,

and the thought of being seen as an old woman.

But the book has gotten the opposite reaction she feared.

It's on many of this year's 10 best lists,

including the New York Times, in which it was described as this year's literary conversation piece. And in The New Yorker, where it was

described as a study of crisis, the crisis of being how middle age changes sex, marriage, and

ambition. July's moving, very funny book, is at once buoyant about the possibilities of

starting over and clear-eyed about its costs. When our critic John Powers reviewed it, he said,

I gasped in surprise at all fours, Miranda July's hilariously unpredictable novel. All fours is

sometimes described as a book about perimenopause,

...