Stress Test, from Mother Jones

Latest Episodes:

Doctors on the Pandemic Frontlines Speak Out Mar 25, 2020

Show notes

On the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic, there’s a dire shortage of supplies and a deadly surplus of bad information. Dr. Michael Brumage, the medical director of Cabin Creek Health Systems in West Virginia joins host Jamilah King to sound the alarm about the critical shortfalls of resources needed to fight the outbreak across the nation. Later in the show, Dr. Rob Gore, an emergency room physician, shares his experiences working and living in New York City, which has become the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Many Restaurants May Never Re-Open After Coronavirus Mar 18, 2020

Show notes

The coronavirus pandemic is devastating the hospitality industry. Millions of Americans are in lockdown. Events are being cancelled. The day before the release of this podcast episode, New York City's restaurants and bars have been forced to stop sit-down service. In the midst of a crisis, the worst thing that could happen to the restaurant industry has happened. This week, we talked to restaurant owners in the Chinatown in Flushing, Queens. This is a thriving immigrant community, and food-lover’s paradise, that has been turned upside down by COVID-19. For restauranteurs already operating on slim profit margins, staying open during the shutdown was already near-impossible. The question is whether they’ll be able to reopen at all. Also on the show: you share with us your stories about stepping up to help others through the crisis, and they are seriously inspirational. Tune in for all sorts of strategies, big and small, for giving your community a helping hand.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Surviving Trump’s Border Crossing is Just the Beginning. Here’s What Happens Next. Mar 13, 2020

Show notes

The Trump administration has slammed the door on asylum seekers in the last year, forcing more than 60,000 migrants to wait upwards of a year in Mexican border cities as their cases moved through US immigration court. But on this latest episode, we take you to New Mexico to meet some of the select few asylum seekers who have defied odds to be admitted to the United States—and who now must face a new set of challenges as they settle into life here. Mother Jones' Fernanda Echavarri and Julia Lurie spend the day with a so-called family navigator from a local direct-services organization called Las Cumbres whose main job is to do "whatever the families need": from driving them around to a clinic to helping them enroll in school. Las Cumbres is a nonprofit that helps families with resources—including mental health services—in a city without the type of support systems that immigrants can find in bigger cities such as Los Angeles, New York City, or Chicago. Many newly arrived immigrants are often preoccupied with trying to find employment and a safe place to live first, before addressing any mental health issues. They've fled dangerous situations and traumatic experiences in their home countries before experiencing the infamous harsh conditions inside US immigration detention facilities. Mental health experts have said it can be difficult to recognize signs of trauma in these communities, not only because trauma shows up differently when they're still in the middle of processing it, but also because they are still in the middle of it with so much stress to handle.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

I’m Self-Quarantined for Coronavirus After Attending Trump's Big GOP Love-in Mar 11, 2020

Show notes

Schools are closing. Workplaces are sending people home. The stock market is going berserk. Conferences and festivals are being cancelled. The coronavirus is already a major disruptive force as the disease spreads. But it didn't stop the Conservative Political Action Convention (CPAC) from hosting more than 19,000 attendees in late February. On March 7th day, organizers announced that one of those attendees had tested positive for the coronavirus. Many CPAC attendees have gone into self-quarantine, including five members of congress. Also under self-imposed distancing is Stephanie Mencimer, a Mother Jones reporter who was covering CPAC. Mencimer joined Jamilah King on the Mother Jones Podcast to talk about her experience, not only of the conference's aftermath, but of the swirl of coronavirus disinformation coming out of the White House. Also on the show: Mother Jones readers and listeners called into the Mother Jones Podcast to tell their coronavirus stories: total lockdown in Milan; cancelled college classes; struggling small businesses; and worries about the most vulnerable people in their communities. Touching stories from you, our listeners: thank you for sharing them.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Sci-Fi Genius William Gibson's Trump-Free Alternate Reality Mar 06, 2020

Show notes

There are many alternate futures. But what if there were also ... alternate pasts? That's the premise of William Gibson's latest novel, Agency. Gibson is the pioneering science fiction writer who coined the word "cyberspace" and whose 1984 debut novel, The Neuromancer, is the book that inspired The Matrix. In, Agency, the second novel in Gibson's Peripheral trilogy, we've arrived back in 2017, at a fork of the past, called a "stub," in which Trump was never elected and Brexit never happened. In this universe, an app-whisperer named Verity Jane is testing a beta super-AI named Eunice, and crisis communication expert named Wilf Netherton has teamed up with a cop named Ainsley Lowbeer to try to avert nuclear war. In other words, it's a novel that looks unflinchingly at the importance of choice and the complex decision trees that could precipitate, or prevent, the end of the world as we know it. Mother Jones Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery sat down for a conversation with William Gibson at Public Works in San Francisco last January to talk about his new book. They discuss how politics has influenced his writing, how he uses his imagination to predict future realities, and how the real-life climate crisis intersects with his fictional imaginings of the end times.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Super Tuesday Special: Biden's Big Night. Bernie's Long Fight. Mar 04, 2020

Show notes

Our Super Tuesday Mother Jones Podcast special is all about the knock 'em down, drag 'em out battle for the Democratic party! If you're a math nerd, you might be in heaven. But if you thought tonight was going to provide some simple answers, no such luck. Because just as we're releasing this, it's all about the numbers—a bare knuckle-fight for delegates in a race for who will be the Democratic nominee. After a broad field and innumerable debates the race has basically boiled down to two men: former Vice President Joe Biden, and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders So on this week's Mother Jones Podcast, we're counting votes and analyzing the results with our Senior Reporter Tim Murphy, who joins the show from where Bernie's political career began in Burlington, Vermont. Also in the show: Inside Bernie Sander's California ground operation that he hopes will turn out a historic turnout of nonvoters and new voters determined to kick Trump out. Fernanda Echavarri reports from the Coachella Valley, California, where a band of young Latinx activists are knocking on doors, phone-banking, nagging their relatives, and trying to unleash the kind of wave of enthusiasm Bernie touts as his biggest strength. Did these efforts make a difference in the Golden State on Super Tuesday?

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Pramila Jayapal on Bernie's Historic Candidacy and Trump's Toxic Presidency Feb 28, 2020

Show notes

Pramila Jayapal, the freshman Democratic congresswoman from Washington, dubbed a" rising star in the Democratic caucus” by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has been fighting for immigrants’ rights since waves of xenophobia swept the nation after 9/11, and is now one of Congress’s leading critics of President Donald Trump’s draconian immigration policies. Following a hectic few months serving on the House Judiciary Committee, championing Bernie Sanders as one of his campaign’s leading surrogates, and pushing Medicare for All legislation in Congress, Jayapal sat down with Mother Jones’ Editor-in Chief Clara Jeffery to discuss the 2020 race, whether or not “Bernie Bros” really exist, Trump’s immigration policy horror show, and so much more.

Listen to this special Friday bonus edition of the Mother Jones Podcast to hear the conversation, recorded on stage in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco earlier this month.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

How the QAnon Conspiracy is Adapting to Help Trump in 2020 Feb 26, 2020

Show notes

Remember "Pizzagate"? That far-right fever dream about Hillary Clinton's allies running a pizza parlor child-sex ring turned out to be a precursor to QAnon, a bizarre and sprawling trove of pro-Trump conspiracy theories. Its strains have been mutating and adapting ever since 2017, finding new ways to infect our politics. Mother Jones' disinformation reporter Ali Breland and digital producer Mark Helenowski will take you inside the Trump rallies that served as offline nerve centers for the movement to ask supporters clad in Q-paraphernalia if the conspiracy is still alive and thriving, or has it peaked? They found that this once unmissable presence has faded to a crew of Q-diehards as a decline in the volume of related social media content took hold. But in an election year, QAnon is still shaping Trump's base and could be just one presidential tweet away from roaring back to life stronger than ever. Listen to hear how this far-right mega-conspiracy lives on, and about the danger it poses to an election already steeped in disinformation.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

She Killed Her 3 Kids. Does She Belong in Prison? Feb 19, 2020

Show notes

In March 2014, Carol Coronado was a new mother who committed an unthinkable act of violence: She stabbed and killed her three daughters, who were all under the age of three. Coronado's lawyer unsuccessfully argued that she was in the grip of an acute mental illness when she attacked her children. The judge said he thought Coronado was suffering from a mental condition and then sentenced her to three consecutive life terms without parole. In this week’s episode of the Mother Jones Podcast, host Jamilah King is joined by KQED health reporter April Dembosky to talk about her yearlong investigation into a devastating but under-reported condition called postpartum psychosis. The condition afflicts one to two moms out of 1,000 births, but psychiatrists believe that could underestimate the frequency because the symptoms are so easy to miss. Dembosky constructs and analyzes the data behind postpartum psychosis and looks into how the health care and legal systems could better serve women affected by this frightening condition. This radio documentary was first aired on KQED's California Sunday Magazine show earlier this month.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

How Bernie Sanders Won New Hampshire Feb 12, 2020

Show notes

Mother Jones is on the ground in New Hampshire, reporting from the candidates’ after-parties following Sen. Bernie Sanders’ second win in the state’s Democratic primary. Calling in from Sanders’ victory party is senior reporter Tim Murphy, who weighs in on the tight race between the Vermont senator and former South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg. Reporter Russ Choma fills us in on the latest from Buttigieg's celebration, who came in second in New Hampshire following a narrow delegate win over Sanders in last week’s Iowa caucuses. And for the word on Amy Klobuchar’s surprising third-place finish, we’ll hear from politics reporter Kara Voght. Following a chaotic first week of the primary season, Mother Jones’ reporters iron out all the details you need to know as the race for the nomination moves forward.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Stress Test, from Mother Jones

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected