The Nation Podcasts

Latest Episodes:

The New Voters of 2020 and the Democrats: Steve Phillips, plus Ben Ehrenreich on Climate and Commerce and Amy Wilentz on Haiti’s Notre Dame May 08, 2019

Show notes

For the 2020 election, we’ve been focusing mostly on the candidates who want to challenge Trump – but we also need to consider the voters, and the changes in the electorate since 2016. Especially significant: young people of color. Steve Phillips explains – he’s the author of the best-seller "Brown Is the New White: How a Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority." Also: climate change and living in the city, where the health effects of hyrdocarbon production and global trade are felt most intensely. Ben Ehrenreich reports on local organizing in the city of Commerce, California, a transit point for the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Plus: Paris isn’t the only place where a cathedral of Notre Dame is in ruins and awaiting rebuilding – there’s another Notre Dame in Haiti, destroyed in the earthquake of 2010. Amy Wilentz has a modest proposal about a source for the money: reparations -- from France.
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Does it Have to Be Biden? Joan Walsh on the Candidates, plus Joshua Holland on Impeachment and Peter Richardson on Carey McWilliams May 01, 2019

Show notes

When Joe Biden finally declared his candidacy, he immediately pulled way out in front in the polls of Democratic candidates. The polls also show him the one most likely to beat Trump. Joan Walsh points to some of the problems with Biden, and considers the alternatives. Also: should the House Democrats open impeachment hearings? The politics may be debatable, but congress’s duty is clear. Joshua Holland says impunity always breeds more lawlessness, and there’s plenty of evidence that Trump plans to continue to act without regard for the law. Plus: we take a trip back back to the darkest days of the Cold War, when muckraking journalists, independent Marxists, trade-union rebels, freedom riders, beatniks, and peace protesters all found a home at America’s Oldest Weekly, The Nation magazine. That was the work of a great editor—who was also a great historian—Carey McWilliams. Peter Richardson explains—his new book is American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams.
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‘We’re capable of doing remarkable things to combat climate change’: Bill McKibben plus Richard J. Evans on Eric Hobsbawm Apr 24, 2019

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What can we do to reduce the speed of climate change? Bill McKibben argues that we're at a bleak moment in human history -- and we'll either confront that bleakness, or watch the civilization our forebears built slip away. Bill was one of the first people to warn of the dangers of global warming, 30 years ago with his book The End of Nature. Then he founded the environmental organization 350.org, the first truly global citizens movement to combat climate change. It offers some possible ways out of the trap. His new book is FALTER: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? Also: Eric Hobsbawm was everybody’s favorite Marxist historian. His books, especially “The Age of Revolution,” “The Age of Capital,” “the Age of Empire,” and “The Age of Extremes,” have been translated into 50 languages and sold millions of copies. He was also a lifelong member of the British Communist Party, and his fight against Stalinist orthodoxy in the Party shaped his understanding of the past. Richard J Evans explains – he’s the author of a big new biography of Hobsbawm.
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Trump’s Tax Returns: Why We Will See Them, and What We Will Find: David Cay Johnston, plus Zoe Carpenter on plastics and Laurie Winer on Stephen Miller Apr 17, 2019

Show notes

The chair of the House Ways and Means Committee formally requested six years of Trump’s personal & business tax returns earlier this month. Trump has said he won’t do it—and that the law is “100 per cent” on his side. He’s 100 per cent wrong about that. David Cay Johnston explains why the IRS Director is required to hand over the returns—or face 5 years in jail—and also what we’re likely to find in Trump’s tax returns—about his tax cheating and his money laundering for Russian oligarchs. David is a Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative reporter who is founder and editor of DCReport.org. Also: Plastics and pollution: the problem isn’t just all the plastic in the oceans; it’s the manufacturing of plastics, a toxic petro-chemical. The Nation’s Zoe Carpenter reports from the Texas and Louisana gulf coasts. Plus: In Trump’s latest blowup over immigration, Stephen Miller has played the central role — goading him to close the border, warning him of the dangers of looking weak, and encouraging his sudden purge of his homeland security team. But who is this Stephen Miller? He grew up in liberal Santa Monica-- what happened? What went wrong? Laurie Winer will report—she wrote about Stephen Miller for LA Magazine.
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Kirsten Gillibrand’s Journey to the Left: Joan Walsh, plus Eric Foner on Reconstruction and Amy Wilentz on Jared Kushner Apr 10, 2019

Show notes

Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren are the women in the Senate who have announced campaigns for the Democratic nomination—and Gillibrand is running on Medicare for All and a Green New Deal. She started out in Congress as more of a centrist Democrat—how authentic has her transformation been? Joan Walsh reports. Also: ‘Reconstruction: America After The Civil War’—that’s the new show premiering on TV this week. It’s a four-hour PBS documentary produced and hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., exploring the years after the Civil War, when the defeated South faced revolutionary social change—the world’s first interracial democracy. Eric Foner comments – he was chief historical advisor on the documentary. Plus: we’re still waiting for the text of the report of the special counsel Robert Muller, but in the meantime we’ve been told he did not recommend bringing charges against Jared Kushner in connection with Russian interference in the 2016 election. But that does not mean Jared is innocent of everything. Amy Wilentz explains.
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Stacey Abrams: How We Fight for the Right to Vote; plus Harold Meyerson on the Trouble with Beto Apr 03, 2019

Show notes

* When Stacey Abrams ran for governor of Georgia last November as the first African-American and the first woman candidate, she got more votes than any Democrat in Georgia history, including Obama and Hillary Clinton. She tripled Latino turnout; she increased the youth turnout by 139 per cent and black turnout by 40 per cent. But because of Republican vote suppression she was not elected. In 2020 she could run for the Senate, or even for president. In our interview, she talks about her campaign strategy and the centrality of the fight for the right to vote. Her new book is "Leading from Outside." Also: The Trouble with Beto--he’s got a huge following, but what exactly does he stand for? And what does his narrow defeat in the Texas senate race last year tell us about what kind of campaign he would run if he won the Democratic nomination for president? Harold Meyerson comments—he’s executive editor of The American Prospect.
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Don’t Trust Barr on the Mueller Report: John Nichols; Plus Greg Grandin on Trump’s Wall and Adam Hochschild on Woodrow Wilson Mar 27, 2019

Show notes

Nobody should be satisfied with Attorney General William Barr’s account of the Mueller report, says John Nichols. We had assumed that the independent counsel’s investigation into obstruction of justice would conclude one way or the other. Instead we have Barr making exactly the kind of political decision by a Trump appointee that the independent counsel’s office was created to prevent. There’s no substitute for seeing the full Mueller report, Nichols concludes. Also: In the wake of the Barr letter, Trump is calling his opponents “treasonous.” He’s vowing to pursue and punish those responsible for the Russia investigation. What would it be like if he got his way, if there were no way to restrain him? Historian Adam Hochschild says it would be like the three-year period of censorship, mass imprisonment, and deportations during World War I, under Woodrow Wilson. His new book is “Lessons from a Dark Time.” Plus: Trump’s Wall has become a powerful symbol of a radically new idea about what America stands for—replacing the myth of the frontier as a place of possibility, rebirth, and freedom. Historian Greg Grandin talks about the wall, the border, and the frontier--his new book is “The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America.”
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College Admissions Scams, from Jared Kushner to the Present: Amy Wilentz, plus Medicaid in Arkansas and Abortion in Mississippi Mar 20, 2019

Show notes

50 people in six states were accused by the Justice Department last week of taking part in a major college admission scandal. They include Hollywood stars and business leaders, who paid bribes to elite college coaches. But that’s not the way Jared Kushner got in to Harvard—his father paid the university directly. Amy Wilentz comments on the legal, and the illegal, ways wealthy people get their unqualified children into elite schools. Also: In 2017, the Trump administration announced that, for the first time in history, states could impose a work requirement on the low-income people who rely on Medicaid for health nsurance. Arkansas was the first state to implement one, staring last June. A number of other states, including Arizona, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin, are chomping at the bit to follow suit. Bryce Covert reports on the impact of the work requirement in Arkansas. Plus: Mississippi has only one place you can get an abortion--it’s in Jackson, and the state also has a wonderful organization based there called the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund. Rebecca Grant reports on the remarkable woman who founded and leads that organization.
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How to Beat Trump in 2020: John Nichols on Strategy, Michael Kazin on Southern Democrats, and Katha Pollitt on Women Mar 13, 2019

Show notes

The Democrats’ picking Milwaukee for their convention in 2020 indicates how that Wisconsin is a key battleground the party must win in order to recapture the White House. John Nichols talks about what it going to take for the Democrats to carry Wisconsin—and Michigan and Pennsylvania—and about the far-reaching tasks that face the party after four years of Trump. Also: southern Democrats were an all-white party before the voting rights act of 1965; and then, as LBJ predicted, its members all became Republicans. And yet throughout the 20th century Southern Democrats in Congress supported Progressive legislation—as long as it didn’t help black people. Historian Michael Kazin comments—and talks about the party in the South now, where Stacey Abrams and Betto O’Rourke are building something new. Plus: Halfway through Trump’s term, and the week after International Women’s Day, it’s a good time to look at the big picture of where women stand in the US and in the world—where the US ranks in terms of women’s political representation, legal equality, and recent reports of discrimination and violence. Katha Pollitt surveys the good news, and the bad news.
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Bill McKibben: From Coal and Gas to Wind and Sun; plus Maia Szalavitz on the Opioid Epidemic and Sean Wilentz on Impeachment Mar 06, 2019

Show notes

To replace coal and oil, do we need nuclear power? Is switching from coal powered electric plants to natural gas a step in the right direction? And what lessons can we draw from the recent victories—and setbacks--for the climate movement in California? Bill McKibben comments--and talks how to get to a Green New Deal. Bill’s new book, “Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?”, will be published on April 16. Plus: The House Judiciary Committee is moving toward impeachment proceedings, and asking what kind of precedents—and what kind of lessons--can be found in the Republican effort to impeach Bill Clinton 20 years ago. Sean Wilentz comments--he’s an award-winning historian who teaches at Princeton. He writes for the New York Times, the New Republic, Rolling Stone, and the New York Review, where he wrote recently about the Clinton impeachment. Also: what can we do to reduce the death toll in the current epidemic of opioid overdoses? Maia Szalavitz suggests our focus should be on harm reduction, and especially on the creation of safe injection sites—Philadelphia may be the first US city to follow the example of Vancouver and many West European cities.
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