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Ep. 95 Steve Kornacki, Host of "The Revolution" Podcast Jan 03, 2023

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Steve Kornacki, our guest this week, is the national political correspondent for NBC News. You see him often around campaigns and election nights in front of what the network calls the "Big Board." He recently finished a 7-part podcast series called "The Revolution with Steve Kornacki." It's the story of how the Republicans took over the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. That happened in 1994 and was organized and led by former Georgia congressman and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

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Ep. 94 Author and Opinion Writer Gordon Chang on China and Its Future Dec 27, 2022

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Gordon Chang, our guest this week, is a well-known opinion writer, book author, and graduate of Cornell Law School. His father was born in China. His mother is of Scottish ancestry. Gordon Chang was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up 25 miles outside of New York City. At Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, he was president of his class. Mr. Chang spent almost two decades in China, where he practiced international law. In the past 20 years, he has appeared regularly in the American media. Gordon Chang was the author of "The Coming Collapse of China" in 2001. We asked him if he's still sticking by that prediction.

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Ep. 93 Mark Bergen, "Like, Comment, Subscribe" Dec 20, 2022

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On the cover of Bloomberg reporter Mark Bergen's most recent book, "Like, Comment, Subscribe," it says it will take the reader "Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination." Mr. Bergen, our guest this week, has reported on Google for the past seven years. YouTube was bought by Google in 2014 for $1.6 billion. In the prologue to the book, Bergen reports that more than 2 billion people visit YouTube every month, making it the second most visited search engine on Earth, second only to Google. He adds that YouTube is still dominated by music, gaming, and videos for children.

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Ep. 92 Matthew Delmont, "Half American" Dec 13, 2022

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The title of Dartmouth history professor Matthew Delmont's latest book is "Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad." Prof. Delmont, our guest this week, writes in his introduction that: "Nearly everything about the war – the start and end dates, geography, vital military roles, home front, and international implications – looks different form the African American perspective." He points out that ultimately, over one million Black men and women served in World War II.

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Ep. 91 Winslow Wheeler on the United States' Military Posture Dec 06, 2022

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A couple of weeks ago, the conservative Heritage Foundation published its 2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength. At that time, we discussed the Index's findings with the editor, Dakota Wood. The Heritage study concluded that the current U.S. military is at significant risk of not being able to meet the demands of a single major regional conflict.

We wanted another point of view on the current U.S. military posture. So this week, we asked longtime observer and critic of the U.S. military procurement process, Winslow Wheeler, to talk with us. He has spent over 40 years working on national security defense budgets and military reform for both political parties, the Government Accountability Office and the Center for Defense Information.

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Ep. 90 Adam Hochschild, "American Midnight" Nov 29, 2022

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Adam Hochschild, in his new book "American Midnight," writes about what he says is left out of the typical high school American history book, especially when the subject is the United States during and immediately after World War One. "This book is about what's missing," writes Hochschild, "It's a story of mass imprisonments, torture, vigilante violence, censorship, killings of Black Americans, and far more that is not marked by commemorative plaques, museum exhibits, or Ken Burns documentaries." Adam Hochschild joins us to discuss it all.

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Ep. 89 Mark Dimunation, Library of Congress Rare Book & Special Collections Division Chief Nov 22, 2022

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To people who know him well, Mark Dimunation is, first and foremost, an accomplished storyteller. Second and not least, he has been for twenty-five years the chief of the Library of Congress' Rare Book and Special Collections Division. The library has over 850,000 items in the collection, including Charles Dickens' walking stick, the Bay Psalm Book, published in 1640, and the contents in Abraham Lincoln's pockets on the night he was assassinated. Mark Dimunation, our guest this week, has a lot more to add to a conversation about his work.

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Ep. 88 Stacy Schiff, "The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams" Nov 15, 2022

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Stacy Schiff has written books about Benjamin Franklin, Cleopatra, and the Witches of Salem. And now it's Samuel Adams, a Massachusetts man Thomas Jefferson called the Father of the American Revolution. Stacy Schiff, appropriately born in Adams, Massachusetts, is our guest this week. Her book is titled "The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams." Mr. Adams was born in Boston and lived for 81 years from 1722 to 1803. He's also been called the most Puritan and the most populist of the American Founders. If you met him before his forty-first birthday, according to author Schiff, you probably wouldn't consider him much of a success.

Includes bonus interview material.

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Ep. 87 Dakota Wood, Editor, "2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength" Nov 08, 2022

Show notes

In October, the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC, released its 578-page 2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength. Retired Marine Lt. Col. Dakota Wood edited the Index, which includes essays and analysis from over 16 experts chosen by the Heritage Foundation. The introduction to the Index concludes: "America’s leadership role remains in question, and its security interests are under substantial pressure. Challenges continue to grow, long-standing allies are not what they once were, and the U.S. is increasingly bedeviled by debt and domestic discord that constrain its ability to sustain its forces at a level that is commensurate with its interests." Lt. Col. Wood joins us to talk about the findings.

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Ep. 86 Vivek Ramaswamy, "Nation of Victims" Nov 01, 2022

Show notes

At age 37, Vivek Ramaswamy has already built and sold several companies. Before he began his career as an entrepreneur, he managed to serve as the valedictorian of his 2003 senior class at St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was a nationally ranked junior tennis player. Then there was a Harvard biology degree and graduation from Yale Law School. Ramaswamy has written two books. His latest is "Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence."

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