Episodes
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This week, we are joined by Jared Holt, who researches domestic extremism at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, to talk about how Congressional Republicans are using their power and your tax dollars to harass and attempt to silence those who study and attempt to mitigate dangerous disinformation.
Then Joshua Holland welcomes journalist Parker Molloy to consider whether the political press has really failed to learn any lessons about how to cover Trump and his authoritarianism movement over these past eight years.
Playlist
Cornershop: "Brimful of Asha"Paul McCartney: "Live and Let Die"The Bangles: "Hazy Shade of Winter"
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On this week's show, we are joined by journalist Evan Urquhart, who is transgender, to talk about a topic that's rarely covered by the legacy media: The psychological and emotional toll that the right's relentless assault on the LGBTQ community's rights--and in many cases, on their very existence--takes on queer people. It is hard to be the target of an energized neo-fascist movement with a lot of power.
Then we take a look at a more positive side to the same story, as veteran legal reporter Chris Geidner tells us about some important recent wins that civil rights activists have secured in the courts against some of the laws that red states have passed to punish their perceived enemies in the queer community and beyond.
Playlist:
The Cramps: "Goo Goo Muck"The English Beat: "Save It For Later"Music Machine: "Talk Talk"
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Missing episodes?
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Joshua Holland kicks off this week's show with a look at how the GOP's performative approach to governing led them to stake out a position on the debt limit negotiations that will add hundreds of billions of dollars to federal budget deficits over the next decade.
And then we're joined by legal analyst Marcy Wheeler to talk all about the historic federal indictment of Donald Trump--and preview what may lie ahead as our country's most lawless president finally faces some real efforts to hold him accountable for his crimes.
Playlist:
Talking Heads: "Psycho Killer"Boogie Down Productions: "The Bridge Is Over"A Tribe Called Quest: "I Left My Wallet In El Segundo"
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Joshua Holland kicks off this week's show with a look at a... very busy news week marked by some manifestations of the climate emergency that were impossible to ignore in much of the country.
Then we'll speak with The Hill's Saul Elbein about how polluters, the gun industry and private prison companies--among others--are desperately trying to make socially responsible investing a new front in the right's endless "culture wars."
And then we'll be joined by Matt Scott of the Atlanta Community Press Collective to bring us up to date on the latest in the unprecedented campaign to suppress activism against the completion of "Cop City," The Big Peach's massively expensive police training center.
Playlist
Courtney Barnett: "If I Don't Hear From You Tonight"Israel Nash: "Down In The Country"Black Pumas: "Strangers"
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Joshua Holland kicks off this week's show with a look at how Republicans always derail every effort to combat America's top terror threat: White supremacists and anti-government extremists.
Then Heather "Digby" Parton joins us to talk about the deal Joe Biden cut with Speaker Kevin McCarthy to raise the country's borrowing limit and avert a catastrophic default. There's a glass-half-full reading and also one that's not so rosy.
And journalist Evan Urquhart explains how the legacy media tends to obscure the dangers of the right's campaigns of harassment and intimidation against companies that dare celebrate Pride Month.
Playlist
Cage The Elephant: "Cold Cold Cold"Wild Child: "End of the World"Stevie Nicks: "For What It's Worth" -
Joshua Holland kicks off this week's show by violating his no-presidential-punditry-before-Thanksgiving rule with a look at the shambolic rollout of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's (ill-fated?) presidential campaign on Twitter.
Then we're joined by author and analyst David Pepper to talk about his new book, Saving Democracy: A User's Manual for Every American. Pepper sounded an alarm over the growing extremism evident in red state legislatures in 2021 with The Laboratories of Autocracy, and now he's followed up with a plan to fight back.
Playlist
Altın Gün: "Yüce Dağ Başında"Bruce Springsteen: "Because the Night"
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Joshua Holland kicks off this week's show with a look at why the GOP is incapable of pivoting away from their most unpopular positions.
Then we're joined by Oliver Willis from The American Independent to talk about the press and the majestic flop of Special Counsel John Durham's much-hyped report detailing various imaginary grievances against the FBI.
And Salon columnist Amanda Marcotte helps us understand how Republican women tolerate their party's misogyny.
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Joshua Holland kicks off this week's show with a look at how Trump once again implicated himself in various criminal acts during his controversial CNN 'town hall' event.
Then we are joined by John Stoehr, managing editor of The Editorial Board, to talk about some curious polling around the GOP's debt limit hostage-taking, containing autocratic red states, the Dems' geriatric leadership and serial fabulist George Santos's indictment on 13 federal charges.
Playlist
Bahamas: "Trick To Happy"David Bowie: "Man Who Sold the World"Baby Huey: "Mighty Mighty"
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The benign-sounding "Moms for Liberty" has largely flown under the radar, in large part because political reporters tend to portray it as a grassroots movement of conservative parents fighting for "parental choice." The reality, explains Vice's David Gilbert, is that Moms for Liberty is a dark money-funded organization with close ties to the GOP that has terrorized educators, school board members and other perceived enemies with vicious campaigns of harassment and intimidation.
Then we welcome WaPo's Greg Sargent back to the podcast to talk about the GOP hurtling toward a debt limit breach and the Supreme Court's ethics crisis.
Playlist
Cannonballers: "Colony House"Meghan Trainor: "Made You Look"King Schascha: "Rudeboy Skankin (feat. Neville Staple)" -
Cliff Schecter is joined by Dan Perry for the view on American politics from Israel. Then Matt Robison reflects on how traditional media have characterized debt ceiling negotiations as a "juice political standoff" instead of hostage-taking by Republicans.
Cliff Schecter is a former ad writer for President Joe Biden, author of the bestselling book, "The Real McCain" and founder of the Blue Amp Channel w/ Cliff Schecter on Youtube, which features regular commentary, and takedowns of Republican lies & conspiracies.
Dan Perry is the former Top Editor for Associated Press in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He writes a substack on politics, international affairs and cultural issues called "Ask Questions Later" that can be found at danperry.substack.com.
Matt Robison was Chief of Staff on Capitol Hill to former Congressman Paul Hodes, a congressional and senate campaign manager and co-hosts the podcast "Beyond Politics" with Hodes and creates video commentary for the Blue Amp Channel.
Playlist
Garbage: "I Think I'm Paranoid"Allen Halloween: "Crescer"The Beatles: "Sexy Sadie"
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The QAnon movement that emerged with the rise of Trumpism has been marked by a great fluidity, morphing as events dictate. It draws on old antisemitic conspiracy theories and more recent moral panics and has inspired quite a bit of deadly violence, but its inherent goofiness made many people slow to recognize the dangers it poses.
This week, we are joined by one reporter who has been covering QAnon since its inception, Will Sommer from The Daily Beast. Sommer is the author of Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America. Will tells us about QAnon's roots, how it has adapted to Trump's loss and what new permutations might change this reactionary movement going forward.
Playlist
Ma: "Freedom"Sampa The Great: "Final Form"Mollie Tuttle: 'She's a Rainbow'
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This week, we're joined by Amanda Litman, the co-founder of Run for Something, to talk about how a new generation of younger Democrats who have come to age in an era of right-wing extremism are getting national attention for standing up and fighting back--and offering a model for defending their values and their communities that their older colleagues could emulate.
Then Sabrina Talukder, Director of the Women’s Initiative at the Center for American Progress, helps us understand how an activist Trump judge hand-picked by a religious-right litigation group has seized the power to regulate abortion drugs from the FDA--and tells us where the case could go from here.
Playlist
Wet Leg: "Wet Dream"Leon Bridges: "Smooth Sailin'"Wu-Tang Clan: "C.R.E.A.M."
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Joshua Holland kicks off this week's show with a look at a new effort to pressure the Supreme Court to adopt a code of ethics—and a revelation of what appears to be some naked corruption by Clarence Thomas that drives home the need for some ethics rules.
Then we're joined by legal analyst Marcy Wheeler to talk about the 34 felony charges filed this week against Donald Trump and get her view of the likely status of three other criminal probes working their way toward the former president. Wheeler does not think the Manhattan DA is likely to have the final say on holding Trump accountable.
Playlist
Patti Smith: "Redondo Beach"Caro Emerald: "Perfect Day"Joy Oladokun & Noah Kahan: "We're All Gonna Die"
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Joshua Holland kicks off this week's show with a look at a Florida lawmaker who may perfectly represent the modern GOP--he wrote the state's infamous 'Don't Say Gay' law while swindling tax-payers out of fraudulent covid relief funds.
Then we're joined by Dave Karpf, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University to talk about how Elon Musk is steering Twitter straight toward bankruptcy, the saga surrounding the Silicon Valley Bank and the pitfalls of covering the right's endless moral panics.
Playlist
The Big Takeover: "Love Understands"Boogie Down Productions: "The Bridge Is Over"Sonny & Cher: "The Beat Goes On"
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This week, we spoke with two journalists about some of their recent reporting.
First, we're joined by The Texas Observer's Josephine Lee to talk about how the campus culture wars, which are fueled by deep-pocketed conservative donors, have shifted from an emphasis on "free-market" economics to a violent form of Christian Nationalism.
Then, Natasha Lennard shares her reporting for The Intercept on the movement to stop the "Cop City" project in Atlanta--a massive, corporate-funded, environmentally destructive police training facility that's being built in a forested area of a Black community--and local law enforcement's extreme over-reaction to the protesters, some of whom face up to 35 years in prison on flimsy "domestic terror" charges.
Playlist
Lewis OfMan: "Attitude"Fiona Apple: "Across the Universe"Lewis OfMan: "Attitude"
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This week, Joshua Holland kicks off the show with a look at how election conspiracy theorists in Arizona have turned on some of the very Republicans who fed their fantasies about the 2020 election.
Then we're joined by veteran journalist Judd Legum to take a good, hard look at Florida's pint-sized wannabe strongman, Ron DeSantis, who has become a darling of conservative pundits and influencers and has been enjoying some soft coverage from the so-called "liberal media" even as he has launched multiple attacks on press freedom.
Playlist
Rihanna: "Desperado"Caro Emerald: "Pack Up The Louie"Brothers Johnson: Strawberry Letter -
You knew the United States was an outlier when it comes to gun violence but Joshua Holland kicks off this week's show with a look at a study that found truly eye-opening disparities.
Then we're joined by AR Moxon to talk about Dilbert creator Scott Adams and other bigoted right-wingers who claim that they're being silenced when their real problem is that we can hear them quite clearly and reserve the right to judge them by their words and actions.
And then we speak to Parker Molloy about the challenges of criticizing the often slanted reporting from legacy media outlets like the NYT from the left given how deeply entrenched the right's ubiquitous claims that they are "biased" against conservatives have become after decades of working the refs.
Playlist:
CeeLo Green: "The Way"El: "Mysterioso"Love: "Always See Your Face" -
Joshua Holland kicks off this week's show by pointing out that the pro-Russian right's attempts to portray themselves as "antiwar" are pure gaslighting--and arguing that cutting support for Ukraine is ultimately the pro-war position.
Then we're joined by Washington Post data journalist Andrew Van Dam to try to solve a puzzle: Why do people in the Southern states have significantly worse credit scores than the rest of America? Some of the reasons that first come to mind don't explain it.
And then Jennifer Mercieca, a professor of communications and journalism at Texas A&M, helps us understand how fascist movements use control of the language to normalize their extreme ideology and justify their cruelty toward "the other." Think about the American right's current obsession with "wokeness" or obsession with "groomers." But as Mercieca tells us, there are some straightforward strategies to thwart them.
Playlist
Sara Bareilles: "Single Ladies"Klaxons: "No Diggity"Vanessa Fernandez: "When The Levee Breaks"
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This week, Joshua Holland offers a rant about all of the nearly identical pieces he's read about how the law is about to catch up to Donald Trump and his minions.
Then we speak with Dan Froomkin about how normalcy bias and both-sideism makes America's political press an enabler for an energized far-right movement that poses an ongoing threat to our democratic tradition.
And then we're joined by The American Prospect's Jarod Facundo to talk about how the right's relatively new propaganda about "critical race theory" and "wokeness" in our schools is just thin cover for its longstanding project to undermine public education and destroy teachers' unions--and how it isn't working out quite like they'd hoped.
Playlist
The National: "Tropic Morning News"Maneskin: "Beggin'"Paulina Singer: "Milkshake"
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Joshua Holland kicks off this week's show with a solemn pledge to not start covering the 2024 election until at least Thanksgiving.
Then we are joined by Karoli Kuns, the managing editor of Crooks and Liars, to give us a recap of Joe Biden's State of the Union Speech, which she found to be a master class in dealing with an often unruly audience.
And then New York Magazine's Eric Levitz tells us why Republicans are so eager to avoid laying out any concrete demands as they take the full faith and credit of the United States hostage.
Playlist
COIN: "Chapstick"Rolling Stone: "The Spider And The Fly"Dave Matthews Band: "Madman's Eyes" - Show more
