The Nation Podcasts

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Finding the Balance | Contempt of Court with Elie Mystal Aug 01, 2023

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Beyond raw court expansion, or the (probably unconstitutional) big stick of forced term-limits, there are a number of other ways one might go about balancing the Supreme Court.

On this episode of Contempt of Court, Elie Mystal speaks with legal experts Dan Epps and Steve Vladeck about potential ways we might find that balance.

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The Case For Abolishing Harvard | Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer Jul 30, 2023

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It’s no secret that the rich have an outsized role in Ivy League colleges, both as students and alumni. But a new study, by a group of Harvard-based economists, documents in detail just how much elite private education in the Untied States favor the ultra-wealthy. As the New York Times reports, “At Ivy League schools, one in six students has parents in the top 1 percent.” The rich enjoy disproportionate access to these schools due to a mixture of legacy admission, sports admissions for specialized sport programs (like fencing), and weight given to personal essays as well as letters of recommendation.

In a very real sense, elite private universities are a major pillar of plutocracy, allowing a narrow caste to hold on to social and political dominance that goes hand in hand with their economic wealth.

Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy Project has written an excellent summary of the report. For this episode of The Time of Monsters, I talked with Matt about the problem of inequality in higher education. We take up possible reform policies and also the possibility that these institutions might be inherently harmful to democracy. This leads to a discussion of possible measures to nationalize elite private schools and absorb them into a proper and robust public education system.

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What Happened to Black Activism in Professional Sports? | Edge of Sports Jul 28, 2023

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The growth of the Black Lives Matter movement through the 2010s catalyzed a resurgence of Black activism in professional sports that had its climax in 2020 with the athletes' boycott following the shooting of Jacob Blake. Just a few years later, this energy seems to have dissipated. What happened, and how can we comprehend these recent events in the longer arc of Black activism in sports? Sports journalist and author Howard Bryant joins the Edge of Sports for a look at the build-up to 2020 and how many athletes' politics were co-opted in the aftermath.

Later in the show, we have Choice Words about the social cost of smartphone sports gambling becoming the economic lifeblood of sports.

And in our segment, Ask a Sports Scholar, we speak with Hofstra University Professor Brenda Elsey, whose research focuses on the development of women’s soccer internationally, as the FIFA Women’s World Cup tournament approaches.

Howard Bryant is the author of ten books, including the forthcoming Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America. He has been a senior writer for ESPN since 2007 and has served as the sports correspondent for NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday since 2006.

Dr. Brenda Elsey is a professor of history at Hofstra University, where she focuses on the history of popular culture and politics in twentieth century Latin America, in addition to gender, social theory, sports, and Pan-Americanism. She is the author of Futbolera: Women and Sport in Latin America.

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The Class Struggle This Summer | Start Making Sense Jul 26, 2023

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The Teamsters reached a historic agreement for UPS workers this week, protecting and rewarding more than 340,000 UPS Teamsters nationwide. We had been headed for the biggest strike in decades, scheduled to start next week, but now we have what looks like one of the biggest labor victories in decades. The Nation’s John Nichols is on the Start Making Sense podcast to report.

Also on this episode: Hollywood actors and writers have been on strike–the Writers Guild of America since May, and the Screen Actors Guild since July 14. The studios are showing no signs of settling. WGA member and Nation writer Ben Schwartz joins the show. He argues that the studios and streamers are likely to fracture before the unions do.

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Reform the Media | Contempt of Court with Elie Mystal Jul 25, 2023

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The court ended its most recent term completely off the chain. Having already killed reproductive rights, it accomplished another longstanding conservative goal: banning affirmative action in college admissions. That's not even the half of it.

And yet, a lot of the mainstream media coverage suggested that the Court turned *moderate* and worked hard to achieve a mainstream consensus.

Why does the media keep feeding us this bullshit? Let’s talk about it.

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Young Americans for Freedom Hates Freedom | Time of Monsters Jul 22, 2023

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There’s an old joke that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor even an empire. The right-wing student group Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), founded in William F. Buckley’s house in 1960, is similarly misnamed. It’s not young; the current head, Scott Walker, is 55. It’s definition of American is very narrowly partisan and reactionary in ways that most Americans would reject. And as for freedom, it has a long history of aligning with administrators and government authorities to suppress its political foes– something I wrote about in a recent column. Most recently, YAF launched a vexatious lawsuit designed to cripple Dissent magazine and its affiliated podcast, Know Your Enemy.

To talk about YAF, I spoke with historian Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, author of the forthcoming book Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America. In that book, Lauren documents how groups like YAF groomed the ideological extremists who have taken the GOP into authoritarianism. In our talk, Lauren and I look at the group's ties to powerful plutocrats and politicians as well as their strategy of using legal power as a political tool.

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150 Years of Black Activism In Sports | Edge of Sports Jul 21, 2023

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The central place of sports in American life lends immense influence to athletes to shift the culture of the country—and for more than 150 years, Black athletes have done just that. Few scholars are as attuned to the intricacies of this history as renowned sociologist Dr. Harry Edwards. From his role in shaping the events of the 1968 Olympics to the politics of Colin Kaepernick, Edwards is just as much a participant in this history as a student and teacher of it. Now 80 years old, Dr. Harry Edwards joins Edge of Sports as he embarks on his "Last Lectures," a final project to close his long career as a public intellectual.

Dr. Harry Edwards is a renowned sociologist whose work examines the relationship between race, sports, and politics. He is the author of The Revolt of the Black Athlete.

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The War on Black Studies, plus Hollywood on Strike | Start Making Sense Jul 19, 2023

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Remember how the state of Florida banned the African-American studies curriculum proposed by the College Board on the grounds that it might cause guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress in students? Now, teachers, scholars, and activists have been fighting back. Historian Robin D.G. Kelley explains.

Also: last week the actors joined screenwriters on the picket lines outside film and TV studios in LA and New York - the writers have been out for 75 days. The issues: compensation in the age of streaming, and protection against AI. Josh Gondelman comments—he’s a member of both SAG and the WGA.

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You're Wrong About Term Limits | Contempt of Court with Elie Mystal Jul 17, 2023

Show notes

Term limits are by far the most popular form of Supreme Court reform. According to a recent poll from the Associated Press, two-thirds of Americans favor term limits for Supreme Court justices.

On this episode of Contempt of Court, Elie Mystal is joined by Leah Litman and Aaron Belkin, to discuss what's wrong with everybody's favorite reform option.

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Start Making Sense: Cornel West Should Run as a Democrat, plus Supreme Court Wins and Losses Jul 12, 2023

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Cornel West is running for president as the Green Party candidate. On this episode of Start Making Sense, editor in chief, D.D. Guttenplan, explains why he ought to run in the Democratic primaries, instead.

Also: The Supreme Court, in the term that just ended, was not completely terrible. It surprised us all by doing some good things, especially with regard to voting rights. David Cole, the National Legal Director of the ACLU, is on the podcast to analyze what happened and why.

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