Next Comes What

Latest Episodes:

Do the Right Thing — Ukraine, Russia & How to Push Back Mar 06, 2025

Show notes

Russia and America have more in common than their betrayal of Kyiv, and we need to push back on this shift.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/blues-for-ukraine

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

This week's episode of Next Comes What looks at the meeting between Donald Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week in light of Andrea Pitzer's previous experiences in Russia. She looks at what Trump and JD Vance were up to in the Oval Office, as well as recounting the morning she woke up in Moscow on a 2022 trip for book research to discover that Russia had invaded Ukraine. Andrea addresses how disinformation works, why it's short-sighted to condemn a whole identity as evil, and the ways Fox News plays to the worst impulses in citizens of both countries. Putin fans are cheering on what Trump did because in the end, both leaders have a similar view of how to govern and prefer a mafia state to any real democracy. Andrea offers some simple approaches for how to support Ukraine and stresses the need to recognize the way that we, too, are succumbing to competitive authoritarianism here in the US. We have to find ways to stop the destruction of our democratic institutions before there's nothing left of them to save.

Jamming the Musk Machine — Effectively Tackling Authoritarianism Feb 27, 2025

Show notes

Effective resistance is happening around the country, but it still needs you to work.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/how-does-actual-resistance-work Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Summing up just one day of recent court rulings, Andrea Pitzer explores whether judges are being assertive in upholding the law against onslaughts from Donald Trump and Elon Musk. She explains why attacking Musk can be so effective and shares a few of the ways he's being strategically ridiculed. From demonstrations at Tesla dealerships to town halls—even where elected representatives don't show up—people are making their voices heard in ways that will build momentum. Andrea considers additional powerful examples from Nazi Germany and Hawaiian sugar plantations where those in terrible circumstances managed to throw sand in the gears of authoritarian or exploitative rule. The episode looks at the role of violence in structural change across a century of examples, and draws some working conclusions about how to build the biggest and most effective movement. Andrea finishes by giving you concrete ways to find a community of people willing to work with you, or even to get out a message on your own, to stall or stop the disintegration of democracy.

2 Ways to Avoid an Authoritarian Abyss — Courts & Crowds Not Kings Feb 21, 2025

Show notes

How the people and the courts will make or break American democracy under Trump 2.0.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/heroic-work-from-ordinary-people

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

This week Next Comes What visits one of the dozens of "No Kings" protests around the country on Presidents Day and discovers just how unpopular Elon Musk has become. Talking with federal workers, concerned students, former Republicans horrified by Donald Trump's actions, and other everyday people, Andrea Pitzer finds out why demonstrators are showing up in greater and greater numbers. She dissects the roles that our courts and public protest can play in reestablishing U.S. democracy. Looking at why Congress is unlikely to resist Trump's attempts to steamroll its authority, Andrea considers the small steps all of us can take to begin smothering the extremism dismantling our country today.

Trump's Time Bomb — Gitmo's Past Ticks into Our Next Nightmare Feb 14, 2025

Show notes

How decades of abuse at Guantanamo undermined democracy and built a black hole of detention for Trump today.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/choking-on-the-mess

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

The latest Next Comes What episode takes on the "worst of the worst" mythology that Trump's cabinet used to justify sending immigrants to Guantanamo this month, and how this bucket of lies is no different than those that have been handed to the American public for years about the island. Andrea Pitzer talks about her own visits to Guantanamo a decade ago for pretrial hearings of detainees and to see the conditions of detention. She considers the ways in which falsehoods about people held there, torture undergone by detainees, and the very nature of whether the government can own memories have warped American justice under six presidents. Andrea traces how Gitmo's past has been seized on by Donald Trump to launch a new era of mass detention on the island. The issue concludes with the ways the administration's efforts to mislead have been undermined by journalists and everyday people, which court cases are already having an effect, and what you can do to help keep the steroidal twenty-first century expansion of this nightmare from becoming permanent.

Incel Clown Posse — Seizing the Narrative from Musk and Trump Feb 06, 2025

Show notes

Freedom--how does it work? By putting a stop-work order on Trump and Elon.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/seizing-the-narrative

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

This week, Next Comes What headed into DC to see what would happen in front of USAID headquarters the day Donald Trump and Elon Musk shut it down. Andrea Pitzer talked to workers protesting out front and to the politicians who held a media event to point out the harm Trump was inflicting on millions of the poorest and least powerful people in the world--and to the U.S. itself. She considers how much our democracy depends on Americans holding onto power by asserting their rights and speaking their minds in public. That means our elected officials, too. Andrea considers what we—and they—ought to be doing these days, and how a robocall she got from her congressman was a good first step to pushing back against the kind of authoritarian state Trump is trying to impose.

Trump Corruption Overdrive — Who Pays? And How to Fight Back. Jan 31, 2025

Show notes

Trump isn't just pushing corruption to get a cut of the action--he wants to run the whole game.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/corruption-overload

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Today's episode of Next Comes What looks at the 31 flavors of Trump's corruption and ways to block him. Andrea Pitzer shares her experiences observing corruption in Russia and explains how the Trump administration seems to be trying to catch up. She looks at the relationship between racism and corruption, then outlines the perils of our polluted information sphere (and how it got that way). She explores the corruption of the Supreme Court, of Republican legislators, and the office of the presidency itself, as well as laying out the straight-up grift that undergirds nearly everything Trump does. Summarizing a Carnegie Endowment report on how people around the world have fought corruption in recent decades, she notes the difficulty of ridding a country of it once tipping points have been reached. Andrea then points to effective means of keeping corruption at bay or rolling it back on a local level, many of them available to you in your community.

Freezing Trump Out -- Lessons for a Grim Time Jan 24, 2025

Show notes

A cold day in hell on the streets of DC as the city shows us how to handle Trump. Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/a-cold-day-in-hell Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Today's episode of Next Comes What is a report from the nearly empty streets of DC, a tale of two cities, one of which snubbed DonaldTrump. Andrea Pitzer goes to Capitol Hill and Capital One Arena, talking to those visiting town for the inauguration. She finds pattern in the rhetoric served up to her by supporters of Trump and discovers the cold heart of his support. Andrea attends a Martin Luther King Jr. memorial at Metropolitan AME church, and hears Al Sharpton spin a very different story about America. She compares the two visions of the future on offer then runs into a tiny four-person protest of students who have come to the city with handmade cardboard signs. Looking at the executive orders announced later the same day, she points to a path forward in the grim era that has now begun.

A Better Way to Take On Trump 2.0 — Inauguration Episode Jan 17, 2025

Show notes

What to expect when you're expecting an authoritarian.

Our inauguration episode. Read the post that inspired this episode.

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What

This episode of Next Comes What is about how to manage the next four years, starting from Day One. Andrea Pitzer discusses the amazing ways that countries around the globe in danger of losing democracy are trying to save themselves right now, the new dangers that the twenty-first century presents to those facing authoritarianism, and some of the most effective ways to confront the threat barreling down on us.

She looks at heroic examples in Poland, Myanmar, Brazil, and South Korea, as well as times when everyday Americans have helped change the U.S. into the country they wanted it to become. And she outlines the very real risk, if we're not careful, of people on the left falling into an existence just as removed from reality as the one adopted by MAGA on the right. And she explains how to stay engaged during the crisis now confronting us.

How Authoritarians Abuse and Use the Homeless Jan 10, 2025

Show notes

Homelessness has long been used to criminalize suffering and expand detention.

Read the post that inspired this episode.

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What.

Today's episode of Next Comes What is about the relationship between homelessness and concentration camps around the globe, as well as a close look at those living without a home in America today. Andrea Pitzer explains how homelessness has historically been used as a political weapon to expand detention for other groups of civilians. She recounts how Mussolini, Hitler, and even Herbert Hoover went to war against the homeless between World War I and World War II, and narrates the terrible worldwide legacy of their actions. In the second half of the episode, she interviews Brian Goldstone, the author of the forthcoming book There Is No Place for Us, which tells the story of five families who are all part of Atlanta's Black working homeless population. Goldstone lays out the violence that consigns people to homelessness, and discusses with Andrea the concrete ways listeners can take action to secure housing for everyone currently without it — and keep those of us who are lucky enough to have it from losing it.

Why Determination Beats Inspiration Dec 31, 2024

Show notes

Not everything will go wrong. Some thoughts for the New Year. Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/everything-won-t-go-wrong

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Today's episode of Next Comes What is about finding holiday joy even in bleak times. In preparation for the New Year and a new administration coming in, Andrea Pitzer recounts how people in extreme conditions in the past held religious services, celebrated feasts, and even set up circus performances. She considers stories of Arctic explorers celebrating Twelfth Night or turning their clothes inside out to bring good luck in the New Year, with little possibility that they would survive the winter. Even presidents who tried to do the right things historically have often failed in their efforts. Andrea looks at actions by Jimmy Carter and Harry Truman that were undone by their political foes. And yet—just as in the camps and in the High Arctic—not everything that could have gone wrong did. She makes a plea for determination over inspiration and hopes that everyone might choose to embrace their agency in 2025.

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