On today’s episode of Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon welcomes law professor Stephen Vladeck to nerd out about all things The Supreme Court. Stephen dives into the elusive behind-the-scenes “shadow docket,” and how 99% of what the court does is in the shadows – without public hearings, and without explanation. With approval ratings of the The Supreme Court at a historic low, what can Congress and the average American citizen do to hold the court accountable, and foster transparency? Spe...
Jul 31, 2023•39 min•Season 12Ep. 10
Today on Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon welcomes back author and friend, Natalie Franke. Natalie’s new book, “Gutsy” is all about how we develop the courage in our own lives to do what we need to do. When we treat failure as the scapegoat, we often ignore the fact that fear is truly the culprit for why we get stuck, or postpone handling even simple tasks. Learn what it means to live with bold, brave, and boundless courage. Special thanks to our guest, Natalie Franke, for joining us tod...
Jul 28, 2023•47 min•Season 12Ep. 9
On today’s episode of Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon has a conversation with Matson and Tawni Browning about their book, The Hate Next Door. Matt gets candid about his time working undercover in white supremacist groups and what it was like to balance his dueling realities: where the job ended and where his home life began. Matt and Tawni also talk about the type of person white supremacist hate groups target for recruitment and the types of messaging they rely on to spread their viole...
Jul 26, 2023•48 min•Season 12Ep. 8
Today on Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon is joined by author Amanda Montell to talk about all things cultish. There isn’t always a standard definition of a cult, but there are things to look for, and we’ve all fallen for cultish practices or groups before. Language is often used as a tool of influence, like thought-terminating cliches, mantra phrases that are used to shut down independent thinking or questioning. Cultish leaders also take advantage of people by relying on our confirmati...
Jul 24, 2023•39 min•Season 12Ep. 7
On today’s episode of Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon welcomes former Senator Russ Feingold to the show. Russ is a three-term senator from Wisconsin and his new book, The Constitution in Jeopardy, talks about Constitutional evolution; how the framers built in mechanisms to change it when necessary. One of those mechanisms is the Constitutional Convention–a convention that the United States has never held. What might a convention change, and what are the dangers of it? Could a convention...
Jul 21, 2023•45 min•Season 12Ep. 6
Today, on Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, we welcome a very special guest: Rainn Wilson. You may know him best as Dwight from The Office, or maybe you’ve listened to his podcast with author Reza Aslan, Metaphysical Milkshake. Rainn and Sharon discuss the majesty of Spirit Bears, travel, and starting a spiritual revolution as a way to help heal our worldwide, modern pandemics. They also get real with death, religion, and the temporary nature of materialism. Special thanks to our guest, Rainn Wi...
Jul 19, 2023•47 min•Season 12Ep. 5
Today, on Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon connects with author David Treuer who writes about the sweeping history of Native Americans in his book, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee. It’s a history that goes beyond what most Americans are taught about key events or standout figureheads. Native past and present doesn’t pivot solely around tragedy and suffering; and when we tell only those stories, it shapes how we think. David seeks to create a narrative of bounty; Native history may have a s...
Jul 17, 2023•36 min•Season 12Ep. 4
On today’s episode of Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, journalist Carla Power talks with Sharon about radicalism. Her book, Home, Land, Security, seeks to define and clarify extremism; having radical ideas does not necessarily make a person a resort to political violence. So what, then, does? What are the roads that lead people into committing radically extreme acts, and what are the roads that lead them back out from a state of violence? What does it take to de-radicalize people inside terrori...
Jul 14, 2023•39 min•Season 12Ep. 3
Today on Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon talks with author Victor Lukerson about the Tulsa Race Massacre. Victor’s new book, Built From the Fire, brings to light the atmosphere and events in Oklahoma that make up the 1921 riot–or as Victor calls it–the pogrom, or organized extermination of an ethnic group. Learn about the violence and destruction white Tulsa wrecked on the prosperous black community of Greenwood, the community's perseverance, and the effects that are still felt today, a...
Jul 12, 2023•42 min•Season 12Ep. 2
Today on Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon talks with author Kate Masur, whose book, Until Justice Be Done, shines a light on what we can consider to be the first Civil Rights Movement–the movement for free Black Americans to gain equality from our country’s inception through Reconstruction after the Civil War. We often think of the fight to gain rights as a movement that happened in the 1950s and 1960s, but even in the early 1800s, there was an organized effort to resist racist laws and ...
Jul 10, 2023•40 min•Season 12Ep. 1
Disinterment and repatriation is important work, but it’s only just begun, and it’s not the only work that needs to be done to acknowledge and atone for the history of Indigenous boarding schools. The Federal Government has not yet provided a centralized place for survivors or descendants of survivors of Federal Indian boarding schools, or their families, to voluntarily detail their experiences in the boarding school system. Which means that there are still generations within the Indigenous comm...
Jul 07, 2023•46 min•Season 11Ep. 9
By the 1960s and early 1970s, activist movements across the country had begun to call for better national policies to support minority groups and the government made attempts to some of the wrongs of the past. But it didn’t always lead to success. So let’s dive in, and talk about the gap between the government’s policy intentions for Native American communities and its not-so-effective execution. Note: We would like to issue a content warning for this episode. Some parts of this episode may not ...
Jul 05, 2023•42 min•Season 11Ep. 8
On today’s episode of Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, we are going to explore an explosive pendulum swing in the mindset of the American people, when the government basically told Native communities: “No more interventions. You’re on your own!” The ominous-sounding Termination Policy fundamentally changed the relationship between the Federal Government and Native Tribes, again, and its reverberations can be felt even today. Note: We would like to issue a content warning for this episode. Some ...
Jul 03, 2023•37 min•Season 11Ep. 7
Today, we are going to explore the Native boarding school systems in Canada, and in our 49th and 50th states, Alaska and Hawaii. The US wasn’t the only nation setting up mandatory residential schools for Indigenous populations, and in the beginning, many of these programs mirrored those of the US with a focus to “civilize” Indigenous children. We’re not referring to merely hundreds of students who were taken from their families, but hundreds of thousands spanning decades. With many students unab...
Jun 30, 2023•40 min•Season 11Ep. 6
In 1880, Richard Pratt opened the Carlisle School’s Outing Program. Pratt framed the programs as an opportunity to give boarding school students real-world experience and cultivate practical skills they learned at school, but in reality, the Outing Programs were nothing more than indentured servitude. By the 1930s, most programs were so corrupt that they were discontinued. Were the programs nixed due to a sudden change of heart? No, it was the result of an independent research organization and t...
Jun 28, 2023•36 min•Season 11Ep. 5
In 1908, an anthropologist traveled to the Western states to examine an outbreak of tuberculosis and found that 20 percent–or one in every five–of the residents of Indian Country had contracted the disease. In an effort to contain it, authorities asked the anthropologist to trace the cause of the outbreak and he found it – in the Native American boarding schools. Educating native children was an enterprise that quickly turned lethal as epidemics and contagious illnesses swept through the schools...
Jun 26, 2023•40 min•Season 11Ep. 4
As the idea that the best way to handle the “Indian Problem” in America was to civilize their youth took hold in the late 19th century, the amount of boarding schools grew rapidly. But the government couldn’t rely on Native tribes to send their children to schools willingly, so they had to accomplish it another way: by force. Attendance became mandatory, and children were rounded up and sent to live at boarding schools, sometimes hundreds of miles away. They were cut off from their homes, famili...
Jun 23, 2023•43 min•Season 11Ep. 3
Richard Pratt’s boarding schools for Native American children didn’t just materialize out of thin air. The idea that it was the job of the government to try to assimilate Native Americans into European settler culture had been around since the first Europeans stepped foot onto North American soil. So today, let’s jump back in time and connect the dots from the Constitution to forced education. Hosted by: Sharon McMahon Executive Producer: Heather Jackson Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Written and ...
Jun 21, 2023•39 min•Season 11Ep. 2
Welcome to our new series, Taken: Native Boarding Schools in America where we dive into the complex history of the United States Government's intervention of Indigenous tribes and culture. We’re going to go beyond the Trail of Tears and into the federally mandated programs that took Native children from their homes and placed them in boarding schools. It’s a history of erasure, dominance, violence, and trauma–some of it so concealed that the Department of the Interior is still investigating it t...
Jun 19, 2023•39 min•Season 11Ep. 1
Writer Ally Henny joins Sharon today to talk about Bruno. But in this context, Bruno–always around, but only talked about in hushed tones–is race. Ally and Sharon have a candid conversation about the pitfalls of Respectability Politics and how white people can do better when it comes to getting uncomfortable in conversations about race. Ally’s new book, I Won’t Shut Up: Finding Your Voice When the World Tries to Silence You, is a great place to start if you are looking to understand the ways in ...
Jun 16, 2023•44 min•Season 10Ep. 9
On today’s episode of Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon talks with author of the book Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America's Imperfect Union, Richard Kreitner. Richard and Sharon talk about the theme of division throughout American history. We may say we are one nation, united, but there have always been ideas, events, and people who have challenged that notion of unity and union, even back at the very start of the nation’s founding. Special thanks to our gu...
Jun 14, 2023•38 min•Season 10Ep. 8
On today’s episode of Here’s Where It gets Interesting, Sharon welcomes guest Dr. Kerry Sautner, the chief learning officer at the National Constitution Center. Kerry and Sharon talk about civic education, and how it can be a building block for a great democracy–but just as important as learning from our past is learning how to communicate and collaborate in the present. Join us to learn more about the National Constitution Center, and the value of civic friendships and access to America’s full ...
Jun 12, 2023•46 min•Season 10Ep. 7
Today on Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon welcomes back David Rubenstein to talk about his new PBS series, Iconic America. The series takes a look at eight different American symbols, from Cowboys to the Hollywood sign. These recognizable pieces of America have surprising histories, and Sharon and David discuss how symbols evolve and take on new meaning over time. Special thanks to our guest, David Rubenstein, for joining us today. Catch his new PBS series, Iconic America, streaming now....
Jun 09, 2023•37 min•Season 10Ep. 6
Sharon’s guest on today’s episode on Here’s Where It Gets Interesting is author Alexandra Robbins, the author of several New York Times bestsellers. Her newest book, The Teachers, goes behind the scenes to show readers what life is like for teachers in America. She follows three teachers through their trials and triumphs over the course of one school year. Learn about their challenges with being under-resourced and over-scrutinized while they try to make connections and safe learning environment...
Jun 07, 2023•43 min•Season 10Ep. 5
Joining Sharon today is Colin Woodard, the director of the Nationhood Lab. Colin is an expert on the regional cultures that make up the United States, and while we tend to think of regional differences as disagreements about our political views, the cultural history goes much deeper than that. Colin has studied how these geographical regional divides pertain to gun violence in America, and his conclusions may surprise you. Special thanks to our guest, Colin Woodard, for joining us today. Learn m...
Jun 05, 2023•50 min•Season 10Ep. 4
Today on Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon talks with Jonathan Eig, the author of the new Martin Luther King Jr. biography, King: A Life. Eig spent six full years researching and writing about King’s life. He shares countless moments and pieces of King’s story that get left out of the general image we have of the I Have a Dream preacher. He also argues that, through honoring the Civil Rights activist with a holiday and through flashy quotes and merch like mugs and tees, we lose sight of t...
Jun 02, 2023•42 min•Season 10Ep. 3
On today’s episode of Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon talks with Yale professors and two of the authors behind Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most. Initially a class in Yale’s humanities program, Life Worth Living sought to find answers to the age-old philosophical question: what’s the meaning of life? The book brings the classroom lessons to a new audience, and Sharon talks to Volf and McAnnally-Linz about how to go beyond TikTok and Cheetos and find true fulfillment. Speci...
May 31, 2023•41 min•Season 10Ep. 2
To kick off a new season of guest interviews, Sharon sits down with the amazing Nedra Tawwab: bestselling author, relationship therapist, and boundaries expert. Nedra and Sharon talk about some of the key ideas Nedra shares in her latest book, Drama Free, and about how to navigate unhealthy family dynamics and relationships and move them into a healthier space. The change starts with us. Special thanks to our guest, Nedra Tawwab for joining us today. Find Drama Free here. Hosted by: Sharon McMah...
May 29, 2023•41 min•Season 10Ep. 1
Do you celebrate National Beer Day on April 7th every year? Did you even know that the U.S. has a National Beer Day? We do! And it’s all thanks to our 32nd president, Franklin D. Roosevelt and his signing of the Cullen-Harrison Act. Celebrated across the country in 1933, the act was just one small step on the path to the ratification of the 21st Amendment and the final nail in the coffin for Prohibition. Hosted by: Sharon McMahon Executive Producer: Heather Jackson Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder W...
May 26, 2023•38 min•Season 9Ep. 12
At its beginning, prohibition was spearheaded by outspoken women. Women who saw a need for social change and then set up the scaffolding to build, what they thought, would be a better America. So maybe it won’t be a surprise to hear that the repeal of Prohibition began in pretty much the same way. By the late 1920s, it was clear to many that Prohibition was a big flop. It was especially clear to one of its initial supporters who realized it was time to change her mind. Hosted by: Sharon McMahon ...
May 24, 2023•40 min•Season 9Ep. 11
