Dr. Michael Valdovinos is a board-certified clinical psychologist and U.S. Air Force veteran. His new book is Moral Injuries: When Good Conscience Suffers in a World of Hurt . His writing has appeared in The Guardian and Time Magazine. Valdovinos argues that the Age of Trump has inflicted a collective moral injury on millions of Americans — the psychological wound that comes from witnessing or being powerless to stop something that violates your deepest sense of right and wrong. He warns that a ...
May 18, 2026•1 hr 39 min•Ep. 450
Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush is President and CEO of Interfaith Alliance, an ordained Baptist minister, and a leading voice on religion, civil rights, and religious freedom. He is a frequent commentator on CNN, NPR, The New York Times, and the BBC. What does it mean to be a person of faith in the Age of Trump? Rev. Raushenbush argues we must speak boldly and directly and with great moral clarity about evil, neofascism, and the idolatry of Christian Nationalism. He shares what he witnessed on t...
Apr 26, 2026•29 min•Ep. 449
Fatima Bhutto is an acclaimed journalist and novelist. She is the author of the novels The Runaways and The Shadow of the Crescent Moon . Her nonfiction works include New Kings of the World and Songs of Blood and Sword . Fatima Bhutto's new book is The Hour of the Wolf: A Memoir . Her essays and other work have been featured in New Statesman, The Daily Beast, The Guardian, and The Nation . Fatima's life has been shaped by political violence. She is the granddaughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the P...
Mar 25, 2026•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 448
Jeffrey Stern is an award-winning journalist and the author of five books, including his latest, The Warhead: The Quest to Build the Perfect Weapon in the Age of Modern Warfare . His reporting has appeared in The New York Times Magazine , Vanity Fair , and The Atlantic . Stern shares his anger at how President Trump and Pete Hegseth are treating America's war with Iran as though it were a videogame or an action movie, rather than a matter of life and death. He reflects on his New York Times feat...
Mar 15, 2026•41 min•Ep. 447
This special episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show honors the life and legacy of Robert Duvall , who recently transitioned to the next plane of existence at the age of 95. Duvall's extraordinary career includes unforgettable performances in The Godfather , Apocalypse Now , To Kill a Mockingbird , and Tender Mercies . His cult film classics include THX 1138 , The Killer Elite , Colors , and Falling Down . Yet it was The Apostle — Duvall's passion project — that may stand as his most intimate and fe...
Mar 04, 2026•44 min•Ep. 446
Steve Cash is Executive Director of The Steady State, a non-profit advocacy organization whose members are former senior national security officials. He explains the findings of the organization's new report, Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline . Its conclusion is dire: with Donald Trump's return to power, the country is rapidly sliding toward authoritarian rule. According to Steve Cash, the United States now faces its most serious internal threat since the Civi...
Feb 12, 2026•45 min•Ep. 445
Heather McGhee is a leading expert in economic and social policy and the New York Times–bestselling author of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together . A former president of the think tank Demos, McGhee is a frequent commentator on national affairs and now serves as chair of the board of Color of Change, the nation's largest online racial justice organization. McGhee explores one of the central tragedies of American life: how a majority of white Americans have h...
Jan 20, 2026•52 min•Ep. 444
Thom Hartmann is the nation's #1 progressive talk radio host and a New York Times bestselling author. His new book is The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink . Hartmann reflects on the first year of Trump 2.0 and the destruction and chaos it has unleashed on American democracy, society, and the world. Yet he insists that despair and surrender are not options as we enter 2026. Drawing on history and the cycles of great social change, Hartmann points to...
Jan 02, 2026•53 min•Ep. 443
On this special Christmas holiday episode of the podcast, Chauncey DeVega reflects on this very surreal and challenging year and tries to find some mirth, merriment, positive energy and joy to refill his (and our) hope tanks. Chauncey taps into the joy of childhood nostalgia and a longing for a simpler time as he looks through store catalogues from the 1980s in search of his favorite Transformers and G.I. Joe toys, and then calculates how much they would cost in today's dollars. Chauncey soon re...
Dec 26, 2025•47 min•Ep. 442
Rodney Barnes is an American screenwriter, producer, and author. He has written and produced such TV shows as The Boondocks , Everybody Hates Chris , Marvel's Runaways , American Gods , Wu-Tang: An American Saga , and HBO's Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty . His graphic novels and comic books include Killadelphia , Blacula , Monarch , Marvel's Falcon , and the adaptation of the first season of Star Wars: The Mandalorian. Rodney Barnes' newest comic book series, the horror-noir Crowns...
Nov 29, 2025•1 hr 43 min•Ep. 441
This is a special joint episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show and The Truth Report . Mechele Dickerson is the Arthur L. Moller Chair in Bankruptcy Law and Practice at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law and author of Homeownership and America's Financial Underclass . Her new book is The Middle-Class New Deal: Restoring Upward Mobility and the American Dream. In this wide-ranging conversation, Mechele explains how the historic federal shutdown and other economic and political policies h...
Nov 07, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 440
This is a special joint episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show and The Truth Report . Mechele Dickerson is the Arthur L. Moller Chair in Bankruptcy Law and Practice at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law and author of Homeownership and America's Financial Underclass . Her new book is The Middle-Class New Deal: Restoring Upward Mobility and the American Dream. In this wide-ranging conversation, Mechele explains how the historic federal shutdown and other economic and political policies h...
Nov 07, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 440
John J. Lennon is a prison journalist who is currently serving a 25-year sentence in Sing Sing prison in New York. His work has been featured by such leading publications as New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and New York magazine. John's new book is The Tragedy of True Crime . John shares his surreal experience of being on a book tour while inside prison and reflects on his own personal experiences with the "true crime" genre. He also wa...
Oct 24, 2025•1 hr 55 min•Ep. 439
Dr. Carol Anderson is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of African American Studies at Emory University. She is the author of several books including the New York Times bestseller White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, and One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy . Her most recent book is The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America. Dr. Anderson has appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show, PBS NewsHour, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, and Democr...
Sep 19, 2025•1 hr 42 min•Ep. 438
Yaroslav Trofimov is Chief Foreign-Affairs Correspondent for The Wall Street Journal . He is the author of several books including Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence . Yaroslav shares what he experienced on the ground in Ukraine and the moral clarity of the war as compared to the wars and conflicts in the Middle East and other parts of the world. He also warns about the dystopic realities of modern warfare, and highlights how the experiences of the Uk...
Sep 01, 2025•39 min•Ep. 437
Professional wrestling legend Hulk Hogan (real name: Terry Bollea) passed away on Thursday, July 24 in Clearwater, Florida. He was 71 years old. Hulk Hogan was and remains one of the most important figures in American and global popular culture. Hulk Hogan/Terry Bollea also leaves behind a very complicated legacy. Brian R. Solomon is a leading professional wrestling journalist, historian, and author. He is the host of the popular Shut up and Wrestle podcast. His new book is Irresistible Force: T...
Aug 03, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 436
Brittany Friedman is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Southern California. She is also a 2023-2024 American Association of University Women faculty postdoctoral fellow and an Affiliated Scholar of the American Bar Foundation, whose writing and other work have been featured by The Washington Post, C-SPAN, NPR, The Associated Press, and Vox. Her new book is Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons . Dr. Friedman explains how America is a type of "...
Jul 23, 2025•1 hr 45 min•Ep. 435
Sabrina Haake is a federal trial attorney with twenty years of experience specializing in First and 14th Amendment defense. Her essays have been featured in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Reader, and Raw Story. Her Substack newsletter is The Haake Take . Sabrina Haake reflects on how the Age of Trump and his return to power have negatively impacted the interpersonal relationships and mental and emotional health of the American people -- and how they need to hold on to hope and a belief in huma...
Jun 30, 2025•31 min•Ep. 434
Andrew Goldberg is an Emmy-Award-winning investigative producer and journalist. He has directed 14 prime-time documentary specials for PBS/public television, and both long and short-form segments for outlets like CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC News, Live From Lincoln Center, and National Public Radio. His new documentary film is White With Fear . Andrew Goldberg details how Donald Trump and his propagandists, the Republican Party, the larger "conservative" movement, and the Fox News right-wing ech...
Jun 13, 2025•36 min•Ep. 433
Rob Edwards is a thirty-year veteran of movies and television who wrote and produced shows including The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air , Full House , and In Living Color before writing two classic animated films for Walt Disney Feature Animation: the Academy Awards and Golden Globe nominated The Princess and The Frog , and the Academy Awards nominated Treasure Planet . His new project is the graphic novel Defiant: The Story of Robert Smalls. Rob Edwards reflects on being creative for a living, the dif...
May 26, 2025•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 432
Phil Tinline is the author of the new book Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax of the Century, Its Enduring Impact, and What It Reveals About America Today . Over the course of twenty years working for the BBC, Tinline has made and presented many acclaimed documentaries about how political history shapes our lives. He has also written for The Times (London), The Guardian , The Daily Telegraph , The New Statesman , BBC History Magazine , and Prospect. In this wide-ranging conversation, Phil Tinline...
May 14, 2025•1 hr 53 min•Ep. 431
Norman Solomon is an author, journalist, media critic and activist. He is co-founder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. Solomon's books include War Made Easy , and Made Love, Got War . His new book is War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine . In this wide-ranging conversation, Norman Solomon reflects on the first 100 days of Trump's return to power. He counsels that the struggle to defend, restore, and then improve...
May 01, 2025•59 min•Ep. 430
On this impromptu Easter Day installment of the podcast, Chauncey DeVega reflects on our collective discombobulation (and mass disinhibition), building our inner Noah's Ark to survive these dark times that are getting much worse and much faster with Trump's return to power, and the symbolism and metaphorical power of the Easter holiday and the spring season . Following through on the importance of building our inner Noah's Ark and filling it with things that bring us joy, Chauncey shares his tho...
Apr 23, 2025•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 429
There are two guests on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show . Dr. Justin Frank is a former professor of psychiatry at George Washington University. He is the author of several books including Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President . Dr. Frank returns to the podcast and explains the importance of listening to and trusting our feelings and emotions in this time of fear, exhaustion, and collective trauma. Dr. Frank also interprets some of the common dreams that people expe...
Mar 31, 2025•1 hr 51 min•Ep. 428
This is a special joint episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show and The Truth Report . M. Steven Fish is a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley. His new book is Comeback: Routing Trumpism, Reclaiming the Nation, and Restoring Democracy's Edge . Professor Fish returns to the podcast to warn that the Democrats continue to be weak and ineffective in their opposition to Donald Trump and his MAGA movement because they refuse to be high-dominance leaders who shape the p...
Mar 18, 2025•53 min•Ep. 427
There are two guests on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show . Dr. Justin Frank is a former professor of psychiatry at George Washington University. He is the author of several books including Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President . Dr. Frank reflects on how the American people and their collective sense of normal, safety, and security has been dramatically disrupted by Trump's return to power and his "shock and awe" campaign against American democracy and society. Dr. ...
Feb 20, 2025•1 hr 57 min•Ep. 426
Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and a Senior Advisor for Public Trust in Science at the Aspen Institute. He is the author of many books including On Disinformation and How to Talk to a Science Denier . Lee McIntyre explains how the American people are being systematically targeted in a disinformation and propaganda war by malign actors both here in the United States and from abroad with the goal of breaking reality, confu...
Feb 06, 2025•33 min•Ep. 425
Dayton Ward is a New York Times bestselling author or co-author of more than forty novels and novellas. His most recent Star Trek novel is Pliable Truths . Ward's essays and other writing have been featured at Tor.com, StarTrek.com, and Syfy.com Dayton Ward reflects on his decades-long love of Star Trek , what it means to be creative for a living and his decision to "take the leap" later in life to become a full-time professional writer, how Star Trek fandom has changed over the decades, and wha...
Jan 19, 2025•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 424
David Altheide is the Regents' Professor Emeritus on the faculty of Justice and Social Inquiry in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University and author of many books including his most recent, "Gonzo Governance: The Media Logic of Donald Trump." David Altheide explains how and why Donald Trump was and continues to be so amazingly skilled and gifted at manipulating the American news media – so much so that he was able to easily win back the presidency by defeating Joe Biden a...
Jan 10, 2025•26 min•Ep. 423
Blair Kelley is an award-winning author, historian, and scholar of the African American experience. She is currently the Joel R. Williamson Distinguished Professor of Southern Studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and the incoming director of the Center for the Study of the American South, the first Black woman to serve in that role in the center's thirty-year history. Her new book is Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class . Blair Kelly discusses the relationship of t...
Dec 19, 2024•2 hr 25 min•Ep. 422
