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We warned you last month to “Throw Out Your Black Plastic Spatula.” In a recent study conducted about consumer products, researchers concluded kitchen utensils had some of the highest levels of flame retardants, which you do not want anywhere near your hot food. After the article was published, its author received reports, possibly exaggerated, of people in Burlington, Vermont, throwing their black plastic spatulas out en masse. You should too.

That article was just the appetizer. This episode of Radio Atlantic is the entire meal, coming to you in time for Thanksgiving. We talk to its author, staff writer Zoë Schlanger, about every other plastic thing in your kitchen: cutting boards, nonstick pans, plastic wrap, slow cookers, sippy cups. Read it before you cook. And prepare to hassle your plastic-loving hosts. Politely.

The following is a transcript of the episode:

Hanna Rosin: Well, it’s Thanksgiving—the day on the American calendar centered most around food, when we gather together to cook for our families and friends. And in this episode, we’re going to talk about our kitchens and the things in them that we should maybe be worrying about.

I’m Hanna Rosin. This is Radio Atlantic. And this week, we’re here to ruin your Thanksgiving. A little bit. Just kidding. Mostly.

What I’m talking about is an Atlantic story from a few weeks ago that hit a nerve with people.

The headline of that story was, “Throw Out Your Black Plastic Spatula,” and I’m joined in the studio by the author of that story, staff writer Zoë Schlanger, who writes about science and the environment. Hi, Zoë.

Zoë Schlanger: Hi, Hanna.

Rosin: Um, I have a black plastic spatula.

Schlanger: Oh no.

Rosin: I do. I’ve been using it for so many years that I can’t—you know what, Zoë? I have two black plastic spatulas.

Schlanger: Because the first one started melting?

Rosin: (Laughs.) Because the first one just ate into my brain, and I didn’t—

Schlanger: It told you to acquire a second.

Rosin: It told me to acquire a second. Exactly.

So, okay. You said the black plastic utensils are “probably leaching chemicals” into our cooking, and I want to understand why. But I will say that your story opened up a whole bunch of worries besides the spatula that I want to run by you, not just for me, but for a lot of my friends. And I’m sure that happened to you as well.

Schlanger: Oh yes.

Rosin: Yeah. Were a lot of people writing you?

Schlanger: Everyone was texting me. Someone texted me that the entire town of Burlington, Vermont, was throwing their spatulas out the window at the same time.

Rosin: (Laughs.) You know what? I absolutely believe that. That’s an incredible image. Were people texting you like, What about this? And what about that? And what about this other thing?

Schlanger: Absolutely. There’s a lot of discussion about how to tell silicone apart from plastic, whether different color plastic was okay, which, like—spoiler alert—probably not, but black is worse.

Rosin: I feel like what’s going to happen on Thanksgiving—sorry, everyone. Happy Thanksgiving. We really do wish you the best and most peaceful Thanksgiving. People are going to be sneaking into—if they’re not the cooks, they’re going to be sneaking into the kitchen of whoever is cooking and, like, monitoring their kitchen utensils and implements just in case.

Schlanger: I love that.

Rosin: Anyway, it’s better than political arguments, so it’s not so bad.

Okay, let’s start with what you wrote about. Why should I throw out my black plastic spatula? Which by the way, I haven’t done. It’s only because you’re here with me in person in the studio.

Schlanger: So I have to convince you?

Rosin: You have to convince me face-to-face because it sounds like other people you know have thrown theirs out, but I haven’t.

Schlanger: So the reason black plastic spatulas are particularly concerning, and I will caveat this by saying you should really throw out any plastic spatula you have of any color, but black plastic has this particularly noxious place in our product stream because it can’t be fully recycled.

Recycling plants just ignore black plastic. They can’t really see the plastic that’s black, because they use optical sensors. So that means, instead of coming from a clean recycling stream, some black plastic products seem to be made out of dubious recycled products, particularly e-waste—electronic waste—often abroad with very little oversight.

And electronics are imbued, often, with flame retardants. So we’re talking about, like, the black plastic housing on your computer monitor or your cell phone or your keyboard. Those can all have flame retardants in them to keep them from catching fire. And flame retardants are associated with a huge range of health hazards, from cancer, diabetes, thyroid issues.

And then they may end up remolded into implements that are touching your food, which they were never meant to be part of. And then you use those implements with heat and oil, which are all things that encourage these compounds in the plastic to migrate out of the object. And then you just eat a lot more of those gross things.

Rosin: Wow. That was a lot. I’m going to slow that down, so I understand. Okay, there are so many facts I learned there. I just want to make sure I learned them correctly. Black plastic is probably recycled from electronics?

Schlanger: Right. Not all of it is. Certainly there could be new, pure black plastic that is not coming from recycled e-waste, but there’s no way to tell.

Rosin: Now, regular plastic in a recycling facility gets rid of these toxins—is that what happens? Like, it can notice them and get rid of them, but in black plastic it just can’t be treated properly?

Schlanger: No, actually. There’s lots of toxins in all recycled plastic, but we’re mostly just talking about flame retardants here. And in the U.S. and in lots of other places, there are laws against or rules against combining electronic waste with the general-consumer recycling flow. So really, these flame retardants are never supposed to get into your consumer products, but they are.

Rosin: Okay, so that’s the black plastic. It can have flame retardants in it. It might come from e-waste. What about gray, white, red—all the other color spatulas? I do have two black ones and one gray one. So what about those?

Schlanger: Why plastic, though? It’s just, it’s—well, first of all, from a purely utilitarian perspective, plastic’s just a terrible thing to use when you’re dealing with a hot pan.

I mean, the thing melts. It’s just not a very durable product. But plastic of all colors probably has stuff in it that you don’t really want interacting with your food. I mean, at the very bottom of this long list is microplastics. If you have a piece of plastic that you’re using regularly in the kitchen, it’s sloughing off microplastics into your food.

Rosin: No matter what? This is nothing to do with heat. It’s just giving off little flakes?

Schlanger: It’s, like, use.

Rosin: Dandruff—just like plastic dandruff is coming off.

Schlanger: (Laughs.) Exactly like dandruff. I mean, one thing I also noticed in people’s kitchens is how common a plastic cutting board is. And that’s just you slicing chunks of plastic into your tomatoes every single time. And I get why people have it. It’s easier to make it sanitary, and they wash quite well. But it’s just not worth it. You can use anything else.

The other problem with most plastics is that there are other molecules in that material—in that base polymer—that are added there to make the plastic flexible or make it really thin, and those things are broadly called “plasticizers.”

They include things you might have heard of, like phthalates, that have also been associated with lots of harmful health outcomes. Basically, there’s no good plastic, particularly not in your kitchen.

Rosin: Okay, so no cutting boards. I’m not going to give you “no good plastics” yet. I have to go through it a little slowly. What about storage containers? Like, I have just a million plastic storage containers.

Schlanger: Can you tell me more about them? Are they hard and sturdy, or are they like what you got your takeout in, like, seven months ago, and you’re still using them?

Rosin: Both? (Laughs.) Both. I have a couple of these very hard ones with the click-in tops, but then those get lost because those are the most used. So they end up in my kid’s backpack, and they end up at school. And so then we just revert to the 3,000 takeout containers that we have sitting around.

I can already see—I already feel bad. Okay. What’s coming?

Schlanger: I mean, I get it. It’s like, there’s so much convenience to this. So typically, my understanding is—one rule of thumb is that harder, sturdier plastic is maybe shedding fewer phthalates than the very flexible ones, but they could be shedding other compounds of concern.

And the thing about containers is that if you’re putting something in that container that is fatty—if it has an oil, an animal fat, anything like that—lipids encourage these compounds to migrate out of the plastic and into the food. These plasticizers I was talking about are lipophilic, meaning they easily transfer when in contact with fats. So we’re often putting our leftovers in these bins, and, almost always, those have some kind of fat. And then it also depends if you’re heating things in that plastic. Heat is something that degrades plastic quite readily.

(Laughs.) I see you smirking and—

Rosin: —I am going to confess something now. This is what I think happens to most of us: We know, and we don’t know. So we sort of know what you said, and then it goes into a short-term memory hole.

So what I know and don’t know is that my son loves leftovers. He loves leftovers. Like, he’ll take it over anything for lunch the next day. Of course he microwaves it. Like, of course he puts it in the takeout container, takes it to school, and then microwaves it. That’s like a perfect storm, right?

Schlanger: Yeah. It’s not the best. It’s great that he is eating leftovers. We don’t like food waste either.

Rosin: Right. Right.

Schlanger: Yeah. Microwaving plastic is one of those ones that I just don’t do anymore.

So heat degrades plastic. Cold—my understanding is that cold actually makes plastic a bit more chemically stable, at least in the short term. But then, I have seen at least one paper that found that the cycle of heating and freezing, if you use the same container to do both many times, will also enhance degradation and also enhance those plasticizers leaching out.

And that was a study that was looking at, actually, farmers. They put these big plastic tarps over their fields to suppress weeds, and those get heated and frozen over and over again. So I assume you could apply that to consumer plastic goods too. It’s all polymers. It’s all the same base material, but that was done in farm fields.

Rosin: Interesting. So is where we’ve landed with plastic, no plastic at all? Or, Use the hardest plastic you can find? Like, what about those very sturdy plastic containers, or are we just going for Pyrex glass?

Schlanger: I have now transitioned entirely to glass in my own kitchen. And I think that that’s more of a risk-tolerance thing. We all do things that will slowly kill us, and it’s sort of choosing which things those are. I mean, we’re bombarded by problematic compounds in every aspect of our life, and you cannot eliminate them all. So if you want to use your sturdy plastic containers to store fat-neutral things, like crackers, that’s probably fine.

Rosin: I think what you’re saying is that I should send my son to school with his leftovers in a glass Pyrex container.

Schlanger: Yeah. It’s heavier, which is a pain, but I’m saying yes, definitely.

Rosin: You’re saying yes.

Schlanger: And I don’t know how old your kids are, but some of these things matter a lot for children, because one of the big concerns about plastic additives getting into our bodies is that they mimic estrogen and can have endocrine-disrupting properties, meaning they mess with your hormone system.

And for a developing hormone system in a child, that’s especially crucial. It’s also crucial for pregnant people or people of childbearing age. So there’s different moments when it’s really critical to avoid this stuff.

Rosin: Okay, so we have to throw out those plastics. We do have to cook, though. We’re back preparing the Thanksgiving meal. What is a substitute for the plastic spatula? What kind of spatulas do you have?

Schlanger: I have silicone spatulas—they’re great—wooden spatulas, and stainless-steel spatulas.

Rosin: Interesting. I just got my first wooden spatula. My friend’s mother, who lives in Norway, gave it to me, and it was made by hand by her neighbor on the farm. And I don’t understand why I’ve never used a wood spatula before. It’s fantastic. Like, it’s so good.

Schlanger: It’s a great material. I think people hate that you can’t really put them in the dishwasher, but you just rinse it off. No big deal.

Rosin: Yeah. Okay. So silicone. Is silicone always okay? What is silicone?

Schlanger: Silicone, to my understanding, is made out of a number of things, but notably silica, which is essentially sand, which is the same thing that glass is made out of.

So as far as we know now, silicone is inert. It’s considered not reactive with food or with body material, with fat, or anything like that. So I think all signs right now point to silicone being a very good choice. I know that at very high temperatures, I think if you’re baking at above 400 or 500 degrees, silicone can emit a gas of some kind that might be a problem, but if you have to bake in something that isn’t stainless steel or ceramic or cast iron, that’s not the worst thing in the world. I’m pro-silicone for now. I mean, maybe we’ll learn something else later.

[Music]

Rosin: When we return, Zoë and I keep going through the kitchen list, from sippy cups to gas stoves.

[Break]

Rosin: All right. So no plastic spatulas. Sort of no plastic storage containers. I asked people on Instagram—I posted your article, and I asked people on Instagram, and I got a lot of questions from people about other things in their kitchen. So can I run them by you?

Schlanger: Please.

Rosin: Okay. No. 1: sippy cups. They’re always labeled as BPA-free plastic. I remember that. Even when I had little kids, everything was BPA-free. Does that make a difference?

Schlanger: In a way, it does. BPA was researched intensively. We know it’s bad, and so everyone’s trying to avoid making things with it. But then what companies went and did was create a bunch of alternatives to BPA, which at least some research finds is not any better than the BPA. The way that chemicals are regulated in this country is: No one has to really prove they’re safe before they go in the market.

And so we have a trickle of information coming out that suggests that the replacements aren’t any better. I would say no to plastic sippy cups.

Rosin: Whoa. Whoa. You said it, though. Okay. Just to be very accurate about this, you said “a trickle of information.”

So there was a kind of panic about BPA. People created replacements for BPA. But we just don’t know yet if they’re better, and the early signs are that they may not be. Is that a fair summary?

Schlanger: Exactly. There was this moment in, like, 2015, 2016 when there was a smattering of studies coming out highlighting the BPA replacements and looking at their potential toxicity and finding that they might just be as endocrine disrupting as BPA was. So the thing with BPA is that it mimics estrogen in the body, which is not something you want to keep adding through your diet.

And it’s associated with all kinds of issues—thyroid issues, fertility issues. And researchers on these few studies I saw back then found that the replacements were as estrogenic or more so.

Rosin: Wow. Okay. I really want to Google, What is a safe sippy cup? But instead, I’m going to ask you. Do you know what a safe sippy cup is?

Schlanger: I was actually talking to this pediatrician about this for a story, and she was talking about how the rest of the world gives their kids things in stainless-steel containers. Like, it’s just, you know—you don’t have plastic plates for kids. You just have stainless-steel ones that they can throw on the floor.

And I know they make stainless-steel ones with, like, the silicone sippy tops and stuff for kids now.

Rosin: It’s interesting. I think we think of stainless steel as something—like metallic. There’s something that we resist about stainless steel, like it’s going to taste different or something. But you’re saying it’s safer.

Schlanger: Oh yeah.

Rosin: Yeah. Okay. “Oh yeah,” you say. That means it’s definitely safer. (Laughs.)

Okay. Another one that people ask me a lot about—a lot, actually—were the black plastic lids on coffee cups.

Schlanger: This just occurred to me recently. I mean, yeah. Presumably, if it’s black plastic, there is a chance it came from that material stream of recycled e-waste. And the last thing you want is scalding hot, foamy, creamy coffee passing through a little black plastic hole into your mouth. It’s not ideal. So I actually just got coffee right before this and did not take a lid.

Rosin: Yes, this is absolutely true: Someone sent me that request on Instagram—Please ask Zoë about black plastic coffee lids—almost at the instant that the barista in the place that I was put the black plastic coffee lid on top of my coffee, and I had the same reaction you did. I was like: Of course! And just flipped it right off again.

Schlanger: (Laughs.)

Rosin: Oh boy. Okay. So No. 2 on Instagram that people asked a ton about—I bet you can guess: nonstick cookware.

Schlanger: Mm-hmm.

Rosin: So many questions about nonstick cookware. Are there different kinds? Do I throw it out the second it has a scratch on it? Like: What do I do about nonstick cookware?

I think there’s a whole bunch of sort of short-term memory-hole feelings about it. Like, Ah, I kind of read this thing. But then, I like my pan, so I forgot about it.

Schlanger: Yeah. So I’d start by saying that the issue with nonstick—Teflon is one brand name for this, but there’s a bunch of them—nonstick pans are coated in a class of chemicals called PFAS. And these are also coating things like our raincoats, our hiking boots. Just anything that is nonstick is basically made out of these compounds that we’ve now found are very bad for our health in high concentrations.

So the people who are really affected by this are the ones living near a plant that made PFAS, and now their water supply has been contaminated for 30 years, or people who live near an Army base where they are using a lot of firefighting foam, which is full of PFAS. But then you zoom in on people using individual products, and it becomes a little hazier.

We do know that the PFAS in your pan becomes unstable at high temperatures. So there’s lots of warnings on these things that you’re not really supposed to use them to cook at, you know, temperatures higher than 400 or 500 degrees.

But who doesn’t accidentally leave their pan on the stove sometimes and scorch it, and then it smells terrible? You’re breathing in fumes from PFAS, most likely. You mentioned scratched coatings. It’s super easy to scratch. Actually, the No. 1 response to the “Throw Out Your Black Plastic Spatula”—when I was like, Just get stainless-steel ones—people were like, But it’ll scratch my nonstick pan. And just, my response to that is: Throw out your nonstick pan.

But we can’t necessarily ask everyone to do that. I get that. It’s so convenient to make an egg in a nonstick pan. I haven’t done it in years, but I hear it’s great.

Rosin: (Laughs.) That was amazing, Zoë. That was a great judge-but-not-judge.

Schlanger: (Laughs.) I don’t mean to sound judgy, but honestly, cast iron is just so much better.

Rosin: I’ve recently come to that conclusion. I noticed that my first reach for everything, including an egg these days, is my cast-iron skillet. So I’m like, Why don’t I just get a few more of those and call it a day, you know?

Schlanger: Yeah.

Rosin: So you do not use nonstick pans?

Schlanger: So I grew up in a house with a parrot when I was young, and bird owners know that cooking with nonstick pans could result in the death of your bird, so I just grew up not having them around.

Rosin: Why?

Schlanger: I think it’s because the gas volatilizes. PFAS, the nonstick compound, its fumes get in the air, and birds are much more sensitive than humans, like all small animals.

Rosin: This is a literal canary in a coal mine.

Schlanger: Yeah, it’s kind of like that.

Rosin: I feel like that image, more than anything you’re gonna say, is gonna convince people: If they had a bird, that bird would be dead. So these are real.

Schlanger: I mean, yeah. I feel like it’s the kind of thing with, like, dogs and chocolates. Like, they won’t die every time. But there was a chance, so we didn’t have it in the house. But there was never a discussion about it being bad for human health. It was just like, No, you have a pet bird. You can’t have nonstick.

Rosin: Wow. Okay. So no nonstick pans. Another one that came up, and this is specifically related to Thanksgiving: marinating things in plastic. Like, it is something that people do. It’s something that people do on Thanksgiving. Is that a problem?

Schlanger: I wouldn’t do it. My understanding is that—I was thinking about, like, sous vide bags too, you know?

Rosin: Yeah, like brining turkeys or sous vide bags. There’s a whole bunch of ways that meat and plastic have to do with each other.

Schlanger: It would violate my personal rule about, like, putting fatty things next to plastic, because I just know the chemistry of that means it encourages migration of compounds out of the plastic and into your food.

But my understanding is that the bags specifically designed for this are considered food grade and often can be labeled “phthalate-free” now. So there is knowledge about this in the consumer market enough for companies to make things that are less harmful. That’s not to say they’re not potentially problematic.

I mean, the way I think about this is: Everything could affect you negatively a little bit. And we are so bombarded by problematic things in our everyday life getting into our bodies, and you just want to lower your dose. So it’s kind of choosing how to lower your dose.

It’s not that your turkey bag is going to kill you. It’s that you’re just adding a little extra, and you don’t need to.

Rosin: Right. So if you needed to brine something, and you put it in, say, a glass bowl with plastic wrap on it, is it just that—oh God.

Schlanger: (Laughs.)

Rosin: Okay, so no to that, just because the plastic wrap would touch it. So in fact, you should just use tinfoil, is what you’re saying.

Schlanger: Mm-hmm. Or you just put a plate over it. Like, you don’t even need all this stuff. You know, plastic wrap’s gone through all these iterations. It used to be made out of much more harmful stuff, and then they eliminated some of it. I just avoid it.

Rosin: Really? You have no plastic wrap?

Schlanger: No.

Rosin: So you’re making a cake. What do you put over it? You just put a cake topper?

Schlanger: A bowl.

Rosin: You put a bowl or a cake topper? Okay. I’m trying to think of any other use I have for plastic wrap, particularly on Thanksgiving.

Schlanger: I wrap—you know, you get cheese, and you have to wrap it in something, so it doesn’t go bad immediately. I have—this is going to make me sound so crunchy—but I have those beeswax wraps. It’s like cloth waxed in beeswax, and that’s what people—people used to just use wax paper for everything. You can just do that.

Rosin: And you can reuse that, so that’s good. Okay.

I’m already imagining some of the people listening to this podcast walking into the kitchen of their parents and friends and causing all kinds of trouble. And this one is real trouble, but I’m going to ask you anyway, because a couple of people asked me about it: natural-gas stove.

So like, hassling your friends or parents about their natural-gas stove would be, like, a really, really low move. But I’m going to ask you anyway. There’s just so much talk about this. It was a big deal, like, a year ago. What about it?

Schlanger: So we know it’s not great to be in a home with a natural-gas stove. We know that it is associated with higher rates of child asthma, just breathing problems in general. You’re inhaling things like benzene. That said, many people have them. I have one. I’m a renter in New York. There’s no way I’m not going to have a gas stove. I can’t ask my landlord to buy a beautiful induction stove for me.

But one thing that makes a big difference is using your overhead vent, just gently turning on your family’s overhead vent while they’re cooking can actually take a lot of the problematic compounds out of the air.

Rosin: Oh really?

Schlanger: Yeah.

Rosin: Okay.

Schlanger: It’s not totally a fail-safe. It doesn’t get it all out. It would be nice if we all had induction stoves. But I also get, it does sometimes feel good to cook over fire.

Rosin: Yeah. One day I will make the transition, but I’m so used to seeing the fire. But I understand.

Schlanger: I will say that that is a really elaborate PR job by the natural-gas industry too. Do you remember this? There was this moment when they were, like, hiring Instagram influencers to promote gas stoves and things like that.

Rosin: Because it’s one of those things that seems good and natural but is the exact opposite. Like, it looks like the thing that you should be cooking things on, but in fact, it’s the unnatural option.

Schlanger: Exactly.

Rosin: Yeah, that was pretty good. Okay. So what else are we missing for Thanksgiving that we don’t know about? One just came to me: parchment paper. I bake a lot with parchment paper.

Schlanger: As do I. And I only recently learned that some parchment paper is coated in PFAS. That’s what makes it nonstick. So you actually want to check. And I recently got parchment paper that’s coated in silicone instead and is nice and nonstick because of that, and it doesn’t cost any more.

Rosin: Oh really? You have to look online and see what it’s coated with. Interesting.

Anything else we’ve forgotten about the Thanksgiving dinner? Let’s just do a tour. So you walk into an average kitchen. There are containers with plastic wrap on them. We’ve already covered that. There are things that have been cooked with nonstick pans. We’ve already covered that. There are deadly spatulas. We’ve covered that. (Laughs.)

Schlanger: (Laughs.)

Rosin: Anything else that we are forgetting for a typical Thanksgiving meal that could kill you?

Schlanger: Right. None of this is going to kill you, but I recently went down the rabbit hole of trying to buy a slow cooker and pressure cooker, and I really wanted to get an Instant Pot. And then I went online and looked at their disclosures on the website, and it turns out those can contain PFAS. I was really surprised by that because the basin of an Instant Pot is just a stainless-steel bowl, but my assumption is there’s something in the lid that is in the food-contact surface that is also PFAS.

So just basically, many, many other kitchen appliances are coated in a nonstick layer of PFAS. I also tried to buy a toaster oven, like, for the counter, so I wouldn’t have to turn on my gas oven every single time I wanted to bake something, and a lot of those—the entire interior is just coated in PFAS.

Rosin: Interesting. So how do you figure—so your rule is: Very much limit plastics to almost no plastics, and definitely no PFAS.

Schlanger: Yeah.

Rosin: And how do you know if something has PFAS? Like, I wouldn’t have guessed about an Instant Pot, which I do have, or about a toaster oven, which I don’t have. But I wouldn’t have guessed about either of those.

Schlanger: They put it on their website. If you look in, like, the Materials and Care section of most of these things, it’ll let you know.

Rosin: Okay. So maybe now that we have—would you say, is there any way to say that we haven’t ruined people’s Thanksgivings? Like, no. We’ve made them less stress-free? Possible? Depends when they listen to this?

Schlanger: Well, it’s so important to remember: Stress is also a major health hazard, so I don’t want anyone to get super stressed out about this or blow it out of proportion. You’re not going to die because of any of this, but you are just accumulating things you don’t need in your body.

Rosin: Your kitchen is just slightly less stress for you. Like, you look around your kitchen, and because you’re attuned to microplastics, you just don’t see them everywhere. So in fact, for you, it’s less stress.

Schlanger: Yeah. I walk around all day. There’s so many inputs to my body I can’t control. But at least I can control the ones in my kitchen.

Rosin: Right. Your kitchen is a little sphere of control. I actually really like that idea.

Now, I’m having a Friendsgiving this year, and I am now actually gonna drive to my friend’s house who does most of the cooking and “evacuate” the dangerous utensils from his kitchen.

Schlanger: (Laughs.) I hope he thanks you and doesn’t get really pissed off. That could go either way.

Rosin: (Laughs.) As I fling away all his spatulas.

Schlanger: Are you going to bring him replacements?

Rosin: I guess you’re right. If I throw away all his spatulas, before I do that, I have to bring him silicone replacements for sure.

Schlanger: That seems only reasonable. I will say, you know, on other Thanksgivings, my two sides of my family have very different ideas about all this. So there is, like, one home I’d go into where basically everything is, you know, natural products and the other side where everything would be microwaved in plastic.

Rosin: Wow. So how do you handle that situation?

Schlanger: You just mostly have to live and let live. It’s like, also, you know, if I’m their daughter, and they’re not reading my articles, there’s not much I’m going to do, you know?

Rosin: (Laughs.) Right. I didn’t realize that was your actual parents. That’s funny. Yeah, I suppose the last thing we should do is give advice to people who walk into a kitchen, and everything has been, you know, baked in the microwave in plastic containers.

Schlanger: You just eat that meal, and go back to your own kitchen, and think about your own choices. I mean, okay, this is all to say: You eat in restaurants all the time. Restaurants are using plastic constantly. It’s really just like, you lower your own dose when you can.

Rosin: Yes. I think that’s what it comes down to. It’s not about policing everybody’s plastics and everything you put in your body. It’s about controlling what you can. And your own tiny or big or however size your kitchen is, that is a sphere you can control, so you might as well do that. And that’s a lovely thing. And everything outside of that, don’t worry about it.

Schlanger: I think so. I think that’s the moral here.

Rosin: Okay. Excellent. Thank you, Zoë.

Schlanger: Thank you.

Rosin: Happy Thanksgiving.

Schlanger: Happy Thanksgiving.

Rosin: This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Kevin Townsend. It was edited by Claudine Ebeid, fact-checked by Will Gordon, and engineered by Rob Smierciak. Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer of Atlantic audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. I’m Hanna Rosin.

Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy the turkey. Enjoy the mashed potatoes. Enjoy the stuffing. And enjoy all the plastic you’re eating.

Passing judgment on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was never going to be simple for the International Criminal Court. Even harder than acting fairly and impartially would be appearing to have done so, in a conflict that stirs fierce passions the world over.

On top of that, equality before the law is a basic principle of justice, but until this point, the ICC has mainly prosecuted authoritarian and non-Western leaders. Almost all of the court’s top funders are Western democracies or their allies. Now, for the first time in its history, the ICC would be asked to assess the actions of a democratically elected government allied with the West, and to show that it could do so without special favor.

Last Thursday, the ICC rose to this challenge. A three-person panel at the court approved arrest-warrant requests for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The Israeli officials are accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the murder and starvation of Palestinians.

[Eugene Kontorovich: The International Criminal Court’s folly]

Back in May, prosecutors also asked for arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders, who stand accused of extermination, murder, rape, and sexual assault against Israeli citizens during the attacks of October 7. Two of the three (Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar) have since been killed by Israel. The ICC issued the arrest warrant for the third, Mohammed Deif. Israel claims to have killed him too, but Hamas has not confirmed his death.

The three judges who made the decision hail from Benin, France, and Slovenia, but were elected by all 124 member states of the ICC and went through a rigorous vetting process. Their months-long deliberations included engaging with the Israeli government and assessing its claim that its own courts could handle the matter.

Since its foundation, in 2002, the ICC has investigated crimes all over the world. It is limited in both the types of crimes it can investigate (genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression) and its territorial jurisdiction (restricted mostly to its member states, which include countries in the European Union, Latin America, the antipodes, and half of Africa). Yet it has managed to levy charges for crimes committed in 17 countries and issue arrest warrants for despots such as Vladimir Putin, Muammar Qaddafi, and Omar al-Bashir.

For years, however, many non-Western leaders have accused the court of having a pro-Western bias. The arrest warrants against Israeli leaders offer the ICC an opportunity to prove otherwise. But much will depend on how seriously countries allied with Israel take the court’s orders.

The court’s members include the majority of Western countries, which will now be obligated to arrest Netanyahu or Gallant if either sets foot in their territory. Canada, one of the court’s biggest funders, was among the first to commit to doing so. Belgium, Ireland, Portugal, Norway, Australia, Spain, Liechtenstein, the Czech Republic, Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Slovenia have followed suit. Most other Western countries have treated the warrant with vagueness, generally agreeing that it is valid without committing specifically to arresting Netanyahu and Gallant.

Initially, only one EU member, Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, a self-described “illiberal democracy,” outright opposed the warrant and even asked Netanyahu to visit. But on November 27, France declared that it considered Netanyahu immune from the ICC’s order because Israel is not a member of the court. If this principle is to be applied elsewhere, Putin, too, should be considered immune, given Russia’s non-membership in the ICC. The United States is also not a member of the court and is in fact openly hostile to its operations. The Biden administration has declared its disagreement with the arrest warrants, and surrogates of President-Elect Donald Trump have accused the court of anti-Semitism, promising a much tougher approach when Trump comes into office.

Netanyahu, like many others wanted by the court, will probably never appear before it. But that doesn’t make the ruling meaningless. International law has always been aspirational, in part because the world lacks an international law-enforcement agency (Interpol serves only to coordinate among various national police forces). But international justice has more significance in the world today than at any previous time in human history. Dozens of treaties obligate countries around the world and are referenced every day in national and transnational courts, sometimes leading to real results for victims and perpetrators. Viewed from a long historical perspective, this is a grand achievement. And last week’s ruling, by demonstrating an equal application of international law to a Western country, advances that cause.

In Governing the World: The History of an Idea, the historian Mark Mazower writes that the quest for a global court began before the First World War, with an enthusiastic, international group of peace activists who hoped that arbitration could bring an end to war. President Theodore Roosevelt, an ardent supporter of that movement, helped give tooth to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, founded in 1899 at The Hague. But advocates’ hopes soon crashed into the gory realities of the 20th century. The First World War killed millions. The League of Nations, created in its aftermath, was soon overtaken by events: Liberalism retreated behind fascism and communism in the 1930s, and a Second World War followed the first, culminating in atrocities with little precedent in human history.

[Arash Azizi: The problem with boycotting Israel]

Still, the quest for international justice did not die. The defeat of Nazi Germany and of Japan, and the revelation of the extraordinary extent of their crimes, led to international trials in Nuremberg and Tokyo and the foundation of the United Nations.

Nearly a century later, the International Criminal Court was founded during the optimistic period that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1991. Democracy appeared ascendant, maybe even inevitable. The genocides in Rwanda and the territories of the former Yugoslavia tempered that period’s hopes—but they were met with international tribunals, which held out the promise that war criminals could no longer expect impunity. A United Nations conference in 1998, attended by representatives of 161 states, adopted the Rome Statute, which established the ICC four years later.

Many of the legal professionals who went to work for the ICC had been shaped by the experience of working for the ad hoc tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, which were relatively successful in delivering verdicts against human-rights offenders. For example, the Iranian Canadian lawyer Payam Akhavan served as a legal adviser at the tribunals for both Rwanda and Yugoslavia and then argued cases before the ICC, where he represented post-Qaddafi Libya as the country attempted to bring officials of the former regime to justice. In his book, In Search of a Better World: A Human Rights Odyssey, Akhavan describes the establishment of the ICC as the consummation of the idea of justice propounded at Nuremberg.

But the ICC has been bedeviled by controversy for much of its short life. In its early years, the court focused largely on African war criminals, because many of its member states were African. This led to allegations of bias. In the years since, it has expanded its operations across the world. And yet, most people live in countries where the court has no jurisdiction. Powerful nations such as China, India, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia never joined. The United States, Israel, and Russia signed the Rome Statute but then withdrew their signatures. The year the court was founded, the United States adopted the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, in which it promised to take any necessary measures to release “any U.S. or allied personnel” detained by the court.

A far simpler way of denying the court’s authority is to ignore it. In 2015, South Africa refused to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir despite an ICC warrant. Earlier this year, Mongolia all but rolled out the red carpet for a visit from Russian President Vladimir Putin, the ICC’s warrant for his arrest notwithstanding.

But none of this means that the court, or the quest for international justice more broadly, is ineffectual. Putin has had to skip many an international summit (he skipped the recent Group of 20 meeting in Brazil, just as he did last year’s BRICS meeting in South Africa). And the ICC’s legal work can be used by other courts to prosecute alleged perpetrators. In the case of Israel, Netanyahu and Gallant are unlikely to ever be tried in The Hague, but the world has become much smaller for them. The warrants also provide an opportunity for Israel’s judicial system to prove its mettle: The ICC has declared that if Israel chooses to prosecute the allegations in its national court system, the warrants will be dropped.

The quest to have human conflicts decided by men and women in robes and wigs, and not just those in berets and boots, should resonate deeply with Israel’s founding ideals. The state’s declaration of independence in 1948 promised that it was “the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.” But it anchored this right in international law, pointing to the newly formed United Nations, which is mentioned seven times in the declaration.

Israel’s first government was led by nationalists and socialists. But the country’s first justice minister, and the architect of its judicial system, was one of the few signatories of the declaration who defined himself primarily as a liberal. A Berlin-born lawyer, Pinchas Rosen had moved to the British Mandate for Palestine in 1926, at the age of 39, having earned law degrees in Germany before the country’s liberal traditions were destroyed by Nazism.

Israel was hardly a liberal paradise in its early years. It enforced a military rule over its Arab citizens until 1966. But Rosen did establish a robust court system and was adamant that the State of Israel was to be a state of law. The country joined the United Nations and, with such legendary diplomats as the British-educated Abba Eban, overcame the isolation of its early years to establish a seat for itself at the table of international law. Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories since 1967 has rightly called that commitment to the law into question; but it has also been the subject of contestation within the country.

[Gershom Gorenberg: Israel’s disaster foretold]

Practically all of Israel’s political leaders have condemned the ICC’s decision. But some voices of dissent are audible. Naama Lazimi, a progressive member of the Knesset, called Thursday “a sad day for Israel” and put the blame for the decision on Netanyahu, not the court. “This was unnecessary,” she wrote on X, adding that it could have been avoided if the Israeli government had undertaken an independent inquiry and pursued a settlement to end the war and return the hostages held by Hamas. “But Netanyahu chose and still chooses his own position and cynical and personal interests,” she concluded: “The Hague has come out against Netanyahu, Netanyahu against Israel.” The Israeli organization Peace Now has taken a similar position, blaming the country’s leadership.

The long-term interests of Israel and those of enthusiasts for international law need not diverge. As a small country with many ill-wishers, surrounded by militias that clamor for its destruction, Israel often feels itself under siege and classifies any action against it as an unforgivable betrayal. But the country owes much of its past success to its recognition under international law and its membership in the community of democratic nations. Illegally occupying the Palestinian territories, and disregarding competent international forums such as ICC, serve to undermine that status. A world where liberal democratic norms, such as respect for international legal institutions, are more prevalent will ultimately be a safer one for Israel, especially if it wishes to fulfill the dream of its founders to be a Jewish and democratic state.  

The call from The Hague should thus be seen as an urgent message that the country needs to correct its course and step back from the campaign it has pursued since October 2023. True friends of Israel are not those who attempt to shield it from international justice. They are those who remind it that as a sovereign nation, it has the right to defend itself—but not the right to be immune from legal judgment.

Photographs by Ross Mantle

Maybe the tell was when the mayor of Philadelphia didn’t say Kamala Harris’s name. Cherelle Parker looked out at her fellow Democrats inside a private club just northeast of Center City last night. Onstage, she beamed with pride about how, despite Donald Trump’s fraudulent claims on social media, Election Day had unfolded freely and fairly across her city. But Parker did not—could not—telegraph victory for her party. “You’ve heard us say from the very beginning that we knew that the path to the White House had to come through our keystone state. And to get through the keystone state, you had to contend with our city of Philadelphia. And I want to thank each and every Philadelphian who participated in democracy in action,” she said. Her remarks were bland, vague, safe. Soon, the mayor slipped out of the venue.

The watch party trudged along. Four ceiling fans blew hot air. Stacks of grease-stained Del Rossi’s pizza boxes filled a rear table. Anxious Philadelphians sipped $5 bottles of Yuengling from the cash bar. But no single word or phrase could encompass the swirl of emotion: anticipation, dread, denial, despair. Across two floors of what might technically be considered “partying,” attendees peered up at projection screens that showed MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki pacing and pointing. His big map was glowing red. The revelers were blue.

Early on, many partygoers were still clinging to fleeting moments of zen. Around 9 p.m., after Rachel Maddow declared Michigan “too early to call,” the venue erupted in earnest applause. The hooting grew even louder when, shortly thereafter, Maddow announced that Pennsylvania, the place that most of these voters called home, was also in toss-up territory. But by 9:30, when Kornacki showed Trump comfortably up in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, enough people could grasp that the “Blue Wall” of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania—which Harris had been counting on to win the White House—was now crumbling, brick by brick, county by county.

[Read: This was the second COVID election]

I saw genuine fear in people’s eyes when, just after 9:50, zooming in on the Pennsylvania map, Kornacki mentioned Trump and Lackawanna County. A union leader named Sam Williamson told me about all the door-knocking he’d done. He had been “really confident” Harris would win Pennsylvania. But by 10:30 or so, even the formerly blue Centre County, where Penn State University is located, had flipped red. Was this actually happening? Hardly anyone even murmured when Kornacki spoke of Harris’s success right there in Philadelphia. People were pissed. Demoralized. Many began to filter out. Democrats had spent this twisty, complex presidential campaign with a narrow path to victory, and now that path was narrowing to a close.

People gather for an election night watch party at the Ruba Club in Philadelphia, PA (Ross Mantle for The Atlantic)

Each voter I spoke with processed the night a little differently. A 38-year-old nurse named Abena Bempah conceded, somewhat sheepishly, that she had tuned out this election until late June, when President Joe Biden had his disastrous debate against former (and future) President Donald Trump. After that night, Bempah had an awakening: “It actually reminded me that I need to be an engaged citizen throughout a candidate’s entire term.” So she spent the summer and fall volunteering with the Philadelphia Democrats. She told me that to preserve democracy, people need to do so much more than vote—they need to voice their concerns to elected officials. “I think that Republicans are planning on Democrats to rest on our laurels and not be as active,” she said.

Near a billiards table, I met a father and son, Shamai and Liv Leibowitz, who live in Silver Spring, Maryland, and had driven up to Pennsylvania to volunteer. Liv, who is 21, is taking a year off from school, and had recently been canvassing in nearby Bucks County and Chester County. He wore a baseball hat with Representative Jamie Raskin’s name on the dome. “I was here for the past two weeks,” he told me with a smile. Half of the undecided voters he’d met felt that they didn’t know enough about Harris and her positions. But many, he said, were staying home because of her support of Israel.

Liv’s father, Shamai, told me that he had the gut feeling that Trump would win. Shamai had grown up in Israel, and he moved to the United States in the early 2000s. He believed that Harris was doomed in this election because she wouldn’t substantively deviate from Biden’s Middle East policy. “I’m worried right now because she didn’t come out forcefully for a weapons embargo, or even hint at a weapons embargo. We met people canvassing who told us, ‘We’re voting Green Party’; ‘We’re staying home,’” he said. Shamai knew it would have been politically risky for her to criticize Israel, but, he told me, in the end, not changing course was hurting her more.

Philadelphia, PA (Ross Mantle for The Atlantic)

I also spoke with two people who might be considered interlopers. One was a 27-year-old Swede named Gabriel Gunnarsson, who had flown to Philadelphia from his home in Stockholm just to witness the U.S. election with his own eyes. As he nursed a beer, he told me that everyone he knew in Sweden had been following our election particularly closely this year. “I’m feeling bad,” he told me. “I’m sort of dystopic about the future, I think, and just seeing this, it’s a horrible result for the world.” I asked him if he recalled one of Trump’s more vile comments from his first term in office: He’d said that America was bringing in people only from “shithole countries,” and he’d lamented that we don’t have more immigrants from places like Norway. Gunnarsson laughed and shook his head. “He did this when he was president as well: He just randomly said, ‘Look at what’s happening in Sweden!’” Gunnarsson recalled. “And we were all like, ‘What did happen?’”

[Read: Voters wanted lower prices at any cost]

Finally, as the evening was winding down, I met a man named Tim Brogan, who very quietly told me he was an independent, not a Democrat. Would you care to share whom you voted for today? I asked. Brogan looked down at his feet, then off to the corner, then back at me. “I voted for the other party,” he said. “I did in fact vote for Trump, yes.”

He had come out to this particular event because he lives in the neighborhood and wanted to be around some friends. He told me he works in real estate, and as a lifelong Philadelphian, he was distressed to see inflation and more crime in the city. This was, in fact, Brogan’s third consecutive time voting for Trump, even though he had previously voted for Barack Obama. He earnestly believed that Trump was the only person who could set America back on the right path. “There’s just so many things that we missed—and we’re allowing—with the Democratic Party,” he said. “I think my choice was a good direction for my beliefs.”

I asked him how he talks about politics with his friends, family, and neighbors.

“Simple,” he said. “We don’t like to get into it.”