Background Briefing with Ian Masters - podcast cover

Background Briefing with Ian Masters

Background Briefing goes far beyond the headlines and deep under the radar to bring forward truths unheard elsewhere in American media. Background Briefing features international and national news, expert guests, policymakers, and critics offering analysis and insight on national security, foreign and domestic policy, political, cultural, and social issues. backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia facebook.com/ianmastersmedia
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Episodes

May 7, 2025 - Annelle Sheline | Sumit Ganguly | Faith Williams

After Claiming the Houthis Have Cried Uncle, Next Week in Saudi Arabia Will Trump Announce a Nuclear Deal With Iran? | Tit-For-Tat Military Strikes by India and Pakistan Appear Performative Not Escalatory | Musk's Alarming Plan To Build a Single Centralized Database For All the Confidential Government Data DOGE Has Scooped Up backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

May 07, 20251 hr

May 6, 2025 - Frank Vogl | Will Bunch | Laurence Rees

The Unprecedented Monetizing of the Oval Office by the Most Corrupt President in US History | How the Trump Mafia Family's Extortion Can be Stopped | Understanding the Nazi Mind and How it Applies to Trump backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

May 06, 20251 hr 1 min

May 5, 2025 - Dr. Guy Ziv | Paul Blumenthal | Michael Kimmage

Netanyahu's Plan to "Capture" Gaza Is a Death Sentence For the Remaining Hostages | Does Trump Want to Repeal the 20th Century? | What If America Abandons Ukraine, the Linchpin of European Security? backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

May 05, 20251 hr 4 min

May 4, 2025 - Lindsay Koshgarian | Craig Aaron | Timothy Naftali

Trump's Budget Cuts the Well Being of the American People While Boosting Exclusion, Retribution and Destruction | Trump Defunds PBS and NPR in His War Against the Truth and Facts | Trump Turns the World Against Us as First Canadians and Now Australians Vote Against Pro-Trump Candidates backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

May 04, 20251 hr 5 min

May 1, 2025 - Jacob Heilbrunn | James Liebman | Eric Blanc

Trump's Reality TV Reshuffle of His National Security Team | SCOTUS Appears Poised to Smash Through the Wall Separating Church and State to Force Taxpayers to Subsidize Religious Indoctrination | On This May Day, How Unions Would Be the Only Way Reindustrialized American Factory Workers Could Make a Living Wage to Support a Family backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

May 01, 20251 hr

April 30, 2025 - Christine Fair | Sidney Blumenthal | Paul Pillar

Two Nuclear Powers India and Pakistan are Poised to Go To War | Trump's 100th Day and the Record-Breaking Collapse of His Poll Numbers | Today's 50th Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon Which Trump is Boycotting While Slapping 46% Tariffs on Vietnam backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Apr 30, 20251 hr 1 min

April 29, 2025 - Andrew Latham | Rick Perlstein | Greg Grandin

Thanks to Trump's Bullying, Bluster and Bombast the Liberals Won In Canada | A Presidential Historian on Trump's 100 Day Reign of Ruin | The Intertwined Two Americas as the Colossus of the North Exports State Terror to the South backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Apr 29, 20251 hr 4 min

April 28, 2025 - Lisa DeMio | Moira Donega | Sean Wilentz

Governor Pritzker Wows Democrats in the Key New Hampshire Primary State | Thiel, Musk and Vance's Pro-Natalist Movement Wants More Superior White Children | The Historical Comparisons Between Hilter's Rapid Extinction of German Democracy and Trump's First 100 Days backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Apr 28, 20251 hr 3 min

April 27, 2025 - Simon Shuster | Craig Holman | Gareth Gore

On the Sidelines of the Pope's Funeral, Zelensky Meets With Trump to Discuss the White House's Charade of a Peace Plan/Giveaway to Putin | Trump Orders the DOJ to Investigate Act Blue to Get Private Data on 15 Million Democratic Donors | Opus Dei and "Traditionalist" Forces Inside the Catholic Church Maneuver to Replace a Pope They Hated With a Reactionary backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Apr 27, 202559 min

April 24, 2025 - Jacob Heilbrunn | Jameel Jaffer | David Graham

Why Should Putin Accept Trump's Peace Deal When He Can Wait for Him to Walk Away as Promised? | One-By-One News Organizations are Caving to Trump's Extortion | Inside Project 2025 and the Right Wing Zealots and Culture Warriors Who Crafted the Roadmap For Trump backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Apr 24, 20251 hr 3 min

April 23, 2025 - Fred Turner | Olga Lautman

The Incredible Shrinking Billionaire Who is Destroying Our Government Blames Tesla's Sales Slump on "Paid" Demonstrators | Vance Announces a Shameful Sellout Of Ukraine Allowing Russia to Conquer and Subjugate What Putin Could Not Win on the Battlefield backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Apr 23, 20251 hr 1 min

April 22, 2025 - J.W. Mason | Kate McElwee | Malcolm Harris

Trump's Self-Inflicted Wound on Our Economy as Overseas Investors Retreat from Treasuries and the Dollar | An Update From Rome on the Conclave With Cardinals From the Global South in the Mix For a New Pope | On This Earth Day Strategies For Collective Political Action to Make Climate Change the Unifying Crisis of Our Time backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Apr 22, 20251 hr

April 21, 2025 - Kenneth Briggs | Frances Kissling | Lawrence Korb

Sadness Around the World at the Death of a Good Man, Pope Francis | The Gap Between a Tolerant and Empathetic Pope and the Reactionary Male-Dominated Institution He Headed | Another Scandal From the White Nationalist, Racist, Book-Burning Reality TV Hire of Trump's at the Pentagon backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Apr 21, 20251 hr

April 20, 2025 - Charles Kupchan | Justin Wolfers | Jake Werner

Putin's Brief Easter Ceasefire and Trump's Warning he Might "Take a Pass" if a Russia/Ukraine Peace Deal Can't be Made | Trump Threatens To Fire the Chairman of the Fed Which He Can't Do But That Won't Stop Him From Trying | In Picking a Trade War With China, Trump Might End Up With a Real War backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Apr 20, 20251 hr 4 min

April 17, 2025 - Bruce Fein | Bill Scher | Scott Kennedy

The Looming Constitutional Crisis as Trump Continues to Defy the Supreme Court and Federal District Courts With "The Dog Ate My Homework" Excuses | A Little-Noticed FEC Ruling Opens the Door For the Next Frontier of Plutocracy | The Tariff War Trump Has Launched Against China That He Will Surely Lose backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Apr 17, 20251 hr 2 min

April 16, 2025 - Edward McCaffery | Nancy Altman | Craig Unger

Trump Appoints Another Unqualified Hack as the Deliberate Destruction of the IRS Continues | The Deliberate Destruction of Social Security With Biden the Wrong Person to Lead the Effort to Save it | An Assessment of Rumors about Witkoff's Ties To Russian Money-launderers backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Apr 16, 20251 hr 2 min

April 15, 2025 - Ryan Enos | Aram Shabanian | Nader Hashemi

Harvard Stands up to Trump Then He Hits Then For $2.2 Billion and Threatens Their Tax-exempt Status | Trump's Escalating War on the Press as he Threatens CBS Over an Accurate 60 Minutes Report on Ukraine | A Professor Who Just visited His Postdoctoral Student in an ICE Detention Camp backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Apr 15, 202559 min

April 14, 2025 - Ben Wizner | Ana María Méndez-Dardón | Steven Simon

Is Trump Using El Salvador's Techno-Autocrat Bukele as an Excuse to Defy the Supreme Court? | Trump and Erik Prince's Plans to Rendition 100,000 Prisoners from American Jails to El Salvador | The New Hegemon in the Middle East: Israel backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Apr 14, 20251 hr 4 min

April 13, 2025 - Manuel Pastor | Stephen Walt | Christopher Whipple

How to Ruin a Country | From a Nation of Immigrants to a Nation of Hate, Xenophobia, Exclusion and Cruelty | An Inside Look Into the Fateful Campaign That Brought Back Trump to Finish Off America Host: Ian Masters Producer: Graham FitzGibbon Assistant Producer: Asher Price

Apr 13, 20251 hr 2 min

April 10, 2025 - Joseph Stiglitz | Barry Eichengreen | Christopher Meissner

Trump's MAGA Economy Driven by Greed, Stupidity and Cowardice | Will Trump's Weakening of the Dollar Lead to a New Global Reserve Currency? | The Hollow Nature of Trump's Promise of Gain After the Pain backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Apr 10, 20251 hr

April 9, 2025 - Robert Hockett | Matt Gold | Gregory Brew

Trump's Amateurism on Display or is He Shorting the Market for His Family and Cronies? | An Assessment of the Amount of Damage Ahead From Trump's Trade War | Today's Drop in Oil To $56 From $72 a Barrel Last Week and What Kind of a Deal Could Emerge Between the US and Iran on Saturday? backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Apr 09, 20251 hr 3 min

April 8, 2025 - Barry Naughton | Trita Parsi | Alexander Sammon

Chinese Response to 104% Tariffs and Insults From Vance | Trump Announces Talks Between Iran and the US in Oman on Saturday | Trump's DOJ Will No Longer Stop Crypto Scams and Cyber Command Will No Longer Stop Ransomware Attacks backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Apr 08, 202559 min

April 7, 2025 - William Cohan | Mike Lofgren | Michael Kazin

Trump Urges Americans Not to Be "Weak or Stupid" as the Meltdown on Wall Street Continues | Who Benefits From Trump and Musk's Deliberate Destruction of the American Economy, Our Government and Our Standing in the World? | Saturday's 1,200 "Hands Off" Demonstrations in American Towns and Cities and Others Around the World backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Apr 07, 20251 hr 1 min

April 6, 2025 - Denver Riggleman | Stephen Wertheim | Karthik Sankaran

Trump's Looney Girlfriend Purges the NSC and NSA | The Future of NATO and a Europe Without the US | In Search of a Methodology Behind the Economic Lunacy of Trump's Tariffs? backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Apr 06, 20251 hr 2 min

April 3, 2025 - Jeremi Suri | Sarang Shidore | Jonathan Cohn

The Growing Grassroots Revolt Against the Slash and Burn of the American Government, Our Institutions and Our Democracy by Trump and Musk | Trump's Broadside of Tariffs Amid a Blizzard of Lies From the Rose Garden | After Trump, Musk and RFK Jr. Have Purged Scientists, Researchers, Innovators and Experts, Who Will Make America Great Again? backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Apr 03, 202559 min

April 2, 2025 - Richard Parker | Jonathan Guyer | Simon Billenness

Hope on the Horizon for Democrats | Trump's Erratic Middle East Policy as He Threatens to Bomb Iran While Israel Annexes Gaza | Will the Earthquake in Myanmar Spell the End of the Military Junta? backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Apr 02, 20251 hr 2 min

April 1, 2025 - Michael Martin | Matthew Klein | Michael John Williams

Thanks to Musk, the US is Not Helping the Victims of the Earthquake in Myanmar Because There Are Only 15 Employees Left at USAID | Who Will be Freed on Trump's "Liberation Day" Tomorrow When We'll All Be Paying More? | More Nuclear Proliferation as Europeans Plan to Develop Their Own Nuclear Deterrent and Tactical Battlefield Nukes backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Apr 01, 20251 hr 3 min

March 31, 2025 - Paul Pillar | Henry Giroux | Lloyd Green

Is Trump Bluffing With Nuclear Threats Against Iran or Does he Want to Nuke Their Underground Nuclear Facilities | Trump and Stephen Miller are Borrowing From the Argentine Junta, Pinochet and the Nazis | A Former Republican Opposition Researcher on Republican Vulnerabilities and How the Democrats Can Up Their Game backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Mar 31, 20251 hr 4 min

March 30, 2025 - Harold Meyerson | Aziz Rana

Trump's Top Aides Dig the Hole Deeper on Signalgate Speaking Lies on Behalf of Power | An Examination of the Emerging Resistance and How the Only Pathway Out of Institutional Collapse as Our Democracy is Destroyed is on the Left backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/ianmastersmedia

Mar 30, 20251 hr 2 min

March 27, 2025 - Annelle Sheline | Thomas Bollyky | Ruth Conniff

Team Trump's Amateurs and Incompetents Exposed on the Signal Group Chat Prepare to Bomb the Houthis Again, Maybe This Time With "Clean Opsec"? | RFK Jr's Brutal Cuts to HHS as His Quackery Harms Kids From Cod Liver He Recommends Instead of a Measles Vaccination | Are We About to See a Defeat of Musk in Wisconsin After Successfully Buying the White House, the Senate and the House? backgroundbriefing.org/donate twitter.com/ianmastersmedia bsky.app/profile/ianmastersmedia.bsky.social facebook.com/i...

Mar 27, 20251 hr 1 min
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