Episodit
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There seems to be no end to the violent conflict around the world. This violence seems to produce no end of human suffering, but as Stalin said, “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic." OUr guest this week is a master of telling the story of the one person. Arwa Damon is an award-winning journalist, president and founder of INARA, a non-profit that provides access to life-altering medical and mental health care to children impacted by human-induced or natural disasters, and the director of the new film Seizing the Summit.
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Friends, it's a hard week.
We lost, badly, and we learned more than we wanted to know about our neighbors. History gives us a lesson or two on what befalls those who govern with hate and abuses of power, and the resilience of the people who suffer under them.
They are lessons Trump would do well to remember, if only he was capable of learning them.
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Puuttuva jakso?
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The election is this week. The choice is yours: do we elect a convicted felon who has been adjudicated responsible for rape, who tried to overthrow the government, who pushed the Supreme Court to a never-before-seen level of extremism, who has threatened journalists, Democrats, his opponent, and others with violence, who promises economic and immigration plans that will cause incredible chaos and harm and almost certainly crash the economy, and who has based his campaign on hate for women, trans people LGBTQ people, immigrants, Black people, Jewish people, Muslim people, the disabled, the poor, and anyone who is not a rich white man, or do you want to elect Vice President Harris?
This week, we take one last look at what is at stake.
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For most of the past 200 years, the United States has held itself in a nearly mythical esteem–and sometimes, used that esteem to justify doing terrible things in the name of the greater good. In their new book The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World, Noam Chomsky and Nathan Robinson confront that ideology and its dangerous global effects. Robinson joins us this week to discuss.
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Since the fall of Roe v Wade, the Republican extremists in Congress and in the states have been giddy at taking away the right to bodily autonomy–especially aimed at women and pregnant people. Jessica Valenti takes a clear look at what is happening and how to stop it in her New York Times bestselling book “Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win.” She joins the show this week.
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The American right is weaponizing state-sponsored and endorsed vigilantism in an effort to impose Christian Nationalism in the United States. That’s the argument Jon Michaels and David Noll make in their new book “Vigilante Nation: How State Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy.” Noll, a professor of law at Rutgers University, joins us to discuss.
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You’ve seen his videos–the hilarious sendups of Trump and his cronies almost always with a particular musical flare. Well, Randy Rainbow has a new book out–Low-Hanging Fruit: Sparkling Whines, Champagne Problems, and Pressing Issues from My Gay Agenda. We’re delighted to have him here this week to chat about it.
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JD Vance made some news recently when he decried “childless cat ladies” as the downfall of America. And while that is a clearly ridiculous statement on its face, it does cut to something true in our culture: women are expected to have kids, whether they want them or not. Our guest this week, Therese Shechter is a leading voice in the childfree movement. She is a member of the Alliance of Childfree Voters which is a non-partisan coalition fighting for visibility and policy priorities for people without children. Her documentary “My so-called selfish life” is available for streaming
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There is perhaps no industry which intersects more completely with immigration, labor, and health and safety than meat packing. In her new book “The Life and Death of the American Worker” Alice Driver takes the industry head on through the stories of Tyson Food employees in Arkansas, and she’s joined us to discuss.
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As the American right becomes more and more authoritarian, it is attempting to rewrite history. From its claims that the United States isn’t a democracy to its attempts to remove books from libraries and rewrite curricula, the reshaping of the past risks our future. In light of this evolving reality, bestselling author Jason Stanley joins us to discuss his new book Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future.
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For the Labor Day holiday, we're revisiting a critical bit of ongoing organizing happening in the United States.
One of the interesting side effects of the post-Covid economy has been a surge in the power and influence employees hold. Wages in service industry jobs have risen dramatically as employers struggle to find workers. However, there have also been increasing stories of worker exploitation, leading to a surge in new unionization efforts. To discuss all of it, we’ve invited Michelle Eisen onto the show. Michelle is a Starbucks Barista and organizing member of Starbucks Workers United.
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The traditional way of influencing a foreign nation’s policy is through diplomacy. But, as recent headlines have shown us, that’s certainly not the only way. Foreign lobbyists are working to shape our policies globally, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Casey Michel’s new book Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World examines this dark underside of international relations.
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The voting rights act of 1965 restored voting power to people of color across the United States. Of course, the American right couldn’t have that, and it begane a 50-year fight to overturn it. In his new book “Undemocratic,” David Daley, bestselling author of “Ratfucked,” takes us inside that fight and its consequences.
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On January 20th, 2001, Donald Trump left Washington in disgrace. After losing the election, losing every court case related to the election, his supporters attacking the capitol, and his second impeachment, it should have been for good. Yet somehow, in his years of exile, he solidified his power base and may well retake the white house. Politico’s Meridith McGraw was in constant touch with Trump’s inner circle during this time, and her new book Trump in Exile examines how it happened.
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There are more guns than people in the United States. About half of the guns in the world are owned by Americans. About 45,000 Americans die from gunshot wounds each year, and more than 100,000 survive shootings. We view guns as inherently masculine, and there is distinct racial coding in how we perceive guns and gun use in this country. Still the fastest growing demographic of gun owners is women, and Black women in particular. In a new essay on the Everand platform called “Stand Your Ground: A Black Feminist Reckoning with America’s gun Problem”, Roxane Gay unpacks gun culture and gun ownership in America from a Black feminist perspective.
Read Roxane's essay here: https://try.everand.com/roxanegay/
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In early July, Russia’s illegal and immoral bombardment of Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in Kyiv forced doctors, nurses, and hospital administrators to work to save the lives of hospitalized children while scrambling to stay alive themselves. In this episode, we’ll hear from several of those workers who will share their stories of trying to help children overcome disease and injury in a war zone. We’ll also hear from Helen Kovalska, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, who will talk about United 24 and their critical mission in that country.
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Well, the news changes quickly. President Biden has dropped out of the race. This episode was recorded prior to that withdrawal, and considers the complexities surrounding that then potential decision and what might come next. In this episode, we talk about what it means, what’s on the line, and how we as Democrats, patriots, and pro-democracy Americans from all political stripes might want to think about the situation.
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The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is a Trump-aligned nightmare that the extreme right wants to enact if Trump is re-elected. It is a wide-ranging reshaping of our society in a mold that leaves us wondering if “Under his eye” will be the new “see you later” should it come to pass. This week, we’re looking back at just a few of our former guests to show some of what’s at stake. We hear from Amanda Zurawski, Kate Brookes, Tim Alberta, and Sadvhi Siddhali and Sadvhi Annabhuti.
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It’s hard to believe that when President Obama was elected, we barely had social media. In less than two decades, giant tech companies have completely changed how we interact with one another–and in doing so have fundamentally changed our perceptions of reality. In his new book “The Death of Truth” bestselling author Steven Brill, cofounder and co-CEO of NewsGuard, examines how this happened and how to recover from it.
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