Stress Test, from Mother Jones

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I'm a New Dad Freaking Out About Pandemic Day Care. So I Called the Expert. Aug 12, 2020

Show notes

With schools and parents around the country facing tough decisions about safety and education, one author and academic has become something of a hero to parents everywhere for her sane, data-driven approach to surviving parenting during a pandemic. Emily Oster, a Brown University economist, is the pregnancy and early childhood guru for millennial parents. Expecting Better and her 2019 followup, Cribsheet, rethink the pregnancy-and-baby-literature cannon by adding something that’s been lacking: empiricism. Oster separates the good studies from the bad and lays out the best evidence to answer such critical questions as whether it’s safe to eat sushi while pregnant. Now, as the country finds itself in a fraught and deeply partisan fog of confusion about child care and education, Oster decided to apply the same type of analysis to COVID-19 research as she did to pregnancy and parenthood, through her newsletter and a website she co-authors with Harvard medicine professor Galit Alter and a team of researchers, called COVID-Explained. Aaron Wiener, a senior editor in MoJo’s DC bureau, spoke to Oster to see if she could bring together her research on young children and on COVID-19 to answer key questions about returning to school and day care facilities. And as a new dad himself (Cole is now 10-months-old), Aaron asks her for her guidance on what his young family—and all the other parents out there—should be considering as they decide whether it’s advisable to send their kids back to school.

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An Unhinged President Declares War on Protesters. (No, Not Trump.) Aug 05, 2020

Show notes

An embattled president. A mass movement. A military used against citizens. We’ve been here before. In Mayday 1971, thousands of anti-Vietnam War protesters descended on Washington DC to try to shut down the federal government. By 10:30am, more than 5000 protesters had been arrested, stuffed into overflowing jail cells—eventually police had to commandeer RFK Stadium to accommodate all the arrests. It was America’s largest act of mass civil disobedience and ended in America’s biggest mass arrest: over 12,000 people. The Pulitzer-prize winning editor Larry Roberts joins the podcast this week as we bring to life this incredible moment in history. From President Nixon’s unconstitutional tactics, to dragnet mass arrests, to streets filled with teargas, to some unexpected support for these illegal actions from the future Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Roberts gets into the untold story of Mayday 1971. It is impossible to ignore one more important fact: This historical event carries eerie echoes of the moment we’re living through today. Roberts’ full investigation is detailed in his book, Mayday 1971: A White House at War, a Revolt in the Streets, and the Untold History of America’s Biggest Mass Arrest, which is out now.

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Samantha Bee: What Using the C-Word Taught Me About Trump-Era Comedy Jul 29, 2020

Show notes

Samantha Bee doesn’t think comedy will take Trump down. She calls her craft “impotent beyond belief” in the face of the daily presidential wrecking ball. But then, the creator and star of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee thinks preaching to the choir is absolutely fine—moral, even.“Talking to the people that you agree with is very good,” she tells Washington D.C. bureau chief David Corn, in this wide-ranging conversation recorded onstage at the Comedy Cellar in New York City. “I think it’s important to have as many voices as possible just go, ‘This is wrong. I disagree with this. This is how it should be. We’re not all crazy!”

When she started, Bee felt sure that airing just six episodes would result in the whole show being canceled for being too sharply opinionated. Now she thinks of her weekly, Emmy Award-winning (and just re-nominated) program—in its fifth season despite the pandemic—as “my own little historical record of this age.” It’s become a platform from which to educate, commiserate, and shock, with a panoply of facts, jokes, and mini-seminars about how the hell we got here and how to fix it. And she couldn’t care less if her critics call her an activist.“Look, when you have a show, you’ve got to do something with it,” she tells Corn. “To not use it to do something with it in a time of great distress feels like a huge waste to me. Why wouldn’t you?”

This interview, taped in February, is part of a limited series co-produced by Mother Jones and the Comedy Cellar, the venerable stand-up venue. Don’t miss Corn’s recent interviews with Debbie Harry and John Leguizamo by subscribing to the podcast.

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Debbie Harry on Blondie, Bowie, and Bees Jul 22, 2020

Show notes

Debbie Harry is an icon, punk rock star, and self-proclaimed spokesperson for bees. As the frontwoman of Blondie, she came up through the avant-garde art scene in 1970s New York, trading artistic inspiration with Andy Warhol, Basquiat, and Patti Smith. After breaking into the mainstream with its 1979 album Parallel Lines, Harry and the rest of the band have been bending musical genres ever since.

In this raw and in-depth interview with Mother Jones DC Bureau Chief David Corn, Debbie Harry opens up about her past and her compulsive creative drive. She shares stories about what it was like breaking into the male-dominated music industry, why she loves David Bowie, and how she came up with her alter-ego Blondie. Plus, she shares how she is using her fame to protect the honeybees.

Corn’s interview with Harry is one in a series of several notable guests featured over three episodes of the Mother Jones Podcast. It’s a special summer interview series with a very “2020” origin story: Earlier this year, the coronavirus pandemic stalled work on a new podcast, co-produced by Mother Jones and the Comedy Cellar, but not before three fascinating guests joined Corn for in-depth interviews about art, politics, comedy, and the philosophies that infuse their work. These chats were too good to simply shelve; last week we heard from actor and comedian John Leguizamo, and next week we’ll hear from talk show host Samantha Bee.

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John Leguizamo on Trump, Dirty Jokes, and Whitewashing Latinx History Jul 15, 2020

Show notes

Actor, activist, author and educator John Leguizamo loves that his comedy makes people feel angry. In his 2018 one-man Broadway show, Latin History for Morons, the 55-year-old star splices jokes with history about the genocide of Native American people, his experience being racially profiled in the United States, and a welter of statistics about the underrepresentation of Latinx people in American media. Born in Colombia and raised in Queens, New York, Leguizamo grew up seeing negative portrayals of Latinx people in Hollywood and in the pages of the New York Times. This feeling of being an outsider, of not belonging, was a power that he eventually came to value—and harness as fuel for his comedy and acting career.

In January, Leguizamo sat down with Mother Jones’s DC Bureau Chief David Corn onstage at the Comedy Cellar, the historic New York City stand-up venue, to talk about his work, ego, process, and his favorite subject⁠: Latinx history.

Corn’s interview with Leguizamo is one in a series of several notable guests featured over the next three episodes. It’s a special summer interview series with a very “2020” origin story: Earlier this year, the coronavirus pandemic stalled work on a new podcast, co-produced by Mother Jones and the Comedy Cellar, but not before three fascinating guests joined Corn for in-depth interviews about art, politics, comedy, and the philosophies that infuse their work. These chats were too good to simply shelve; in the coming week’s you’ll also hear from music icon Debbie Harry, and talkshow host Samantha Bee.

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Screaming and Christmas Trees: A Beloved Rehab's Dark Side Jul 08, 2020

Show notes

Over nearly five decades, Delancey Street Foundation in San Francisco has built a reputation as one of the nation's highest-profile rehab centers and prison diversion programs. It's earned a cult-like following among judges, politicians, and celebrities, including Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, Gavin Newsom, Jane Fonda, and Clint Eastwood. But Delancey it has been subject to little oversight or scrutiny. On this episode of the Mother Jones Podcast, senior reporter Julia Lurie investigates an eccentric program with a number of long-standing practices that are rarely discussed in public. Participants work long hours with no pay, get not mental health services, are forbid from using psychiatric medications, and undergo rituals that some describe as psychological torture. Many Delancey alums credit the program's tough-love approach with saving their lives. But for others, it led to their unraveling.

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"Our Job Is to Unlearn All That Shit": Actor Diane Guerrero Reckons With Whiteness in Hollywood and Beyond Jul 01, 2020

Show notes

You might recognize Diane Guerrero for her roles in big TV shows like Orange is the New Black, Jane the Virgin, and Doom Patrol. Off-screen, Guerrero has used her very public platforms to engage in activism and political causes. On Instagram, on Twitter, and in two books, Guerrero brings her deep knowledge and adept campaigning skills to the fight for immigration, voting rights, and racial justice reform. Mother Jones immigration reporter Fernanda Echavarri recently interviewed Guerrero for a live conversation that was streamed across Mother Jones’ social media platforms. Today’s podcast is an edited version of that conversation. Echavarri and Guerrero dig into their personal experience with racism in the Latinx community, the horrors of ICE detention, the current Black Lives Matter movement, and why the whiteness of the entertainment industry, on-screen and off, is such an urgent problem.

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Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies. How Much More Can America Take, Mr. President? Jun 24, 2020

Show notes

Donald Trump loves to lie. We know that. But as the editor and chief writer of the Washington Post’s “Fact Checker,” it’s Glenn Kessler’s job to keep count. Donald Trump has earned over 18,000 Pinocchios from the “Fact Checker” team for his many, many falsehoods, exaggerations, and outright lies. On this week’s episode of the Mother Jones Podcast, Washington DC Bureau Chief David Corn interviews Kessler about his new book, Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth, which he co-wrote with his “Fact Checker” colleagues Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly. Kessler gets into all of it—lies about the coronavirus, about rallies, about climate change—and assesses what might happen if Trump's lies are allowed to thrive for another four years.

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Defunding the Police Is Only the Beginning Jun 17, 2020

Show notes

After spending the last decade covering America’s criminal justice system, one thing is clear to activist, journalist and scholar Josie Duffy Rice: a grab-bag approach to policy reform isn’t going to fix all the problems with policing in America. Josie is the president of The Appeal, a non-profit news publication focused on criminal justice, and the co-host of the podcast, "Justice in America". She has been working in the weeds on issues that many Americans are now paying attention to in the wake of George Floyd’s killing—issues like police brutality, bloated police budgets, surveillance, pre-trial detention, cash bail, and the disproportionate police presence in communities of color. On this week’s show, Josie joins Jamilah King for a discussion about the recent police killing of Rayshard Brookes in Atlanta, the deep racist and classist structural issues with policing in America, and why defunding the police is only step one.

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"Bigotry Is a Lethal Weapon": Ibram X. Kendi's Guide to Fighting Racism Jun 10, 2020

Show notes

As national protests extend into a second week, associate producer Molly Swartz surveys the intersection of America’s twin crises, by profiling a group of out-of-work chefs hit by coronavirus closures who have banded together to provide protest-sustaining food in New York City. Also on the show, you’ll hear a repeat of our 2019 interview with Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, whose book, “How To Be An Antiracist”, has climbed to third place on the New York Times bestseller list in the wake of the renewed protest movement, as Americans everywhere engage with his ideas about how to combat racism and the systems that abet it. Kendi combines searing autobiography with pointed analysis to show just how deeply racism is woven into our national—and global—fabric. He argues that the opposite of a racist isn’t someone who’s not racist, but instead an antiracist—someone who acknowledges how race has been constructed, and works actively against it.

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