Author Francis Fukayama thinks Zelensky’s communication-style, and his creative team, will be one of the main factors in overcoming Russian forces. Both he and former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch joined this episode The New Abnormal to talk about the Ukrainian president’s transformation from comedian to hero and what they each think will be the outcome of the war (hint: it doesn’t look good for Russia.) Yovanovitch also details what she was told the night Trump ordered her to be remov...
Mar 18, 2022•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 198
Putin may not realize how poorly the war is going for him, but his troops do. Ukrainian diplomat Olexander Scherba joins the pod to explain what he’s hearing from soldiers on the ground, including stories of them refusing to fight. Plus, The Nation ’s Elie Mystal pleads with Biden to say the word “abortion” and hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Andy Levy discuss whether Tucker Carlson can feel embarrassment and Molly actually sorta defends Mitt Romney when it comes to Tulsi Gabbard. Hosted on Acas...
Mar 15, 2022•54 min•Season 1Ep. 197
Retired NYPD sergeant Valarie Carey joins today’s bonus episode along with Adell Coleman, co-host and executive producer of the podcast Say Their Name, to talk about her sister Miriam Carey, who was shot by law enforcement 26 times when she drove into a restricted zone outside of the U.S. Capitol. Plus, co-hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Andy Levy talk about why Ted Cruz is full of crap about vaccines—no one is hugging him as much as he says they are—and listen to clips of Don Jr. defending his dad, w...
Mar 13, 2022•32 min
In a jam-packed new episode of The New Abormal, co-host Molly Jong-Fast rips into the “contingent of very stupid Republican Congresspeople” who don’t want the U.S. aiding Ukraine before building a border wall here, which makes sense since “the country of Mexico is shelling, Texas and they're using cluster bombs and stud missiles—Oh wait… There is no war at our Southern border, but no one has told Rep. Doug Collins.” Plus, Melissa Moss of the 65 Project explains how that was “set up to protect de...
Mar 11, 2022•50 min•Season 1Ep. 196
Nearly two weeks into Russia’s invasion, News Lines news director and Daily Beast editor at large Michael Weiss joins the pod to explain how and why the Ukranians have defied everyone’s expectations except their own. Plus, Steven Brill of NewsGuard looks back at his group’s conversations with Facebook. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Mar 08, 2022•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 195
On this bonus episode of the New Abnormal, Kyiv-based film producer Egor Olesov— an executive producer at FilmUA, one of the largest film studios in Ukraine, where we worked extensively with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during his acting career — calls in from Lviv. Olesov—in a conversation also joined by John Wynn, a Vietnamese-American filmmaker who worked with Egor on the film The Rising Hawk, which was shot in Ukraine in 2019 and 2019—tells host Molly Jong-Fast that “We ...
Mar 06, 2022•33 min
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has become an icon around the world for his bravery and leadership since the Russian invasion began—and New Abnormal co-host Molly Jong-Fast herself has a special place in her heart for him. Zelensky “is my age and a Jewish comedian, so I feel very connected to him,” she says on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “My generation, we’ve had a tough time of it. We’ve never really had our moment. So this may be as close as we ever get to our moment.” Later...
Mar 04, 2022•53 min•Season 1Ep. 194
The attack on Ukraine isn’t going how Russian President Vladimir Putin thought it would, co-host Molly Jong-Fast posits in today’s episode of The New Abnormal. Vladimir Ashurkov, a colleague of anti-Putin opposition leader Alexei Navalny, joins the pod to explain what’s next for Putin—whether he wins or loses the war. Then, NBC News’ Jonathan Allen talks about what he saw at CPAC (the The Conservative Political Action Conference), including a screaming match at a bar where two men argued about U...
Mar 01, 2022•50 min•Season 1Ep. 193
Barbara McQuade, a former Michigan prosecutor, joins the first unlocked bonus episode of The New Abnormal to explain how Trump’s big lie is a provable crime. Plus, Andy Levy makes his Sunday episode debut, just in time to listen to clips of Josh Mandel sounding stupid and to unpack Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott’s criminalization of trans kids. It’s a move Andy calls “full-on fascist.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Feb 27, 2022•26 min
Biden is not doing much with Russian sanctions as they now stand, says PBS NewsHour Special Correspondent and documentary filmmaker Simon Ostrovsky, who is also Russian-American. He came on this episode to share what he thinks Biden really needs to bring to the negotiating table with Putin. Speaking of Putin, co-hosts Andy Levy and Molly Jong-Fast discuss all the ways they’re sure the dictator turns on right-wingers like Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro. Plus, Charlie Sykes, editor-at-large at The...
Feb 25, 2022•51 min•Season 1Ep. 192
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is not pleased with Mitch McConnell’s handling of dark money. He came on the pod to explain why he’s pinning the lack of dark money legislation on McConnell as well as what’s happening with climate change legislation. Plus, author Wes Moore tells TNA co-host Molly-Jong-Fast why he’s running for Governor of Maryland and what he wants to change. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Feb 22, 2022•1 hr•Season 191Ep. 1
Gal Beckerman, editor at The Atlantic, explains why places like Twitter are no longer cutting it when it comes to social movements and makes the case with a story from the Black Lives Matter movement. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Feb 20, 2022•19 min
Donald Trump is closer to wearing an orange jumpsuit than he’s ever been. That’s what TrumpNation author Tim O’Brien thinks anyway. He came on this episode of The New Abnormal to share why he thinks this Trump Org investigation is going south for Trump. Plus, Molly asks former Biden White House Senior Advisor Andy Slavitt if COVID will ever go away, what the new Pfizer COVID-19 pills will be able to do, and if we should try to stay cautious or just live as normally as possible. And D...
Feb 18, 2022•54 min•Season 1Ep. 190
Truckers part of the so-called “Freedom Convoy” have co-opted a conspiracy theory about Justin Trudeau’s biological father, which Canadian author and frequent New Abnormal guest Jeet Heer tells co-host Molly Jong-Fast all about on Tuesday’s episode. Plus, Molly and co-host Andy Levy run down the “terrifying” political candidates who billionaire Peter Thiel is backing and Imani Perry, author of South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation ...
Feb 15, 2022•54 min•Season 1Ep. 189
The first thing Donald Trump noticed about Sarah Palin was her looks according to New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters, the author of Insurgency: How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted. That’s not all that caught his attention, though, and Peters fills co-host Molly Jong-Fast in on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal. Plus, Peters tells Molly about the time he interviewed the former president in Mar-a-Lago a few weeks after the Jan. 6 ins...
Feb 13, 2022•20 min
The TNA crew considers who in the GOP is really a moron and who’s just playing one. Plus, former Rep. Max Rose previews his rematch with Trump-loving Nicole Malliotakis, and the Beast’s Zachary Petrizzo explains what it means to be in “Facebook jail.” If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media l...
Feb 11, 2022•45 min•Season 1Ep. 188
In this episode of The New Abnormal, Rep. Ilhan Omar breaks down the toxic ‘high school’ cliques in Congress, defends progressives, and explains why she’s so disappointed in President Joe Biden. Plus, Jared Bernstein, Economic Policy Advisor for the Biden Administration, breaks down how the Biden admin is trying to fix inflation and makes an admission about student loan forgiveness. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Feb 08, 2022•55 min•Season 1Ep. 187
Writer and filmmaker Rupert Russell and author of PRICE WARS explains how a move by longtime former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan to deregulate the commodity markets in 1998 has caused decades of market trouble and sparked a “butterfly effect” of problems around the world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Feb 06, 2022•19 min•Season 1Ep. 168
There were rumors just a year ago that Jeff Zucker was going to run for mayor of New York, and now the chief who was “in some ways the voice to the network” and “the guru for a lot of the top anchors” is out. Daily Beast media editor Andrew Kirell breaks it all down with The New Abnormal crew, as co-host (and former CNN guy) Andy Levy says “pretty much everyone knew that the two of them were in a relationship for a long time. I mean, I knew it and I couldn't have been lower on the totem po...
Feb 04, 2022•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 186
Joe Rogan might be a moron. But at least he’s an honest moron. On Tuesday’s episode of The New Abnormal, Andy Levy and Molly Jong-Fast discuss the nuance of podcaster Joe Rogan on the heels of his Spotify misinformation apology. Plus, Margaret Sullivan, a media columnist at The Washington Pos t and author of Ghosting the News , joins the show to discuss “four billion dollars worth of defamation lawsuits” including Sarah Palin’s against the New York Times and Dominion Voti...
Feb 01, 2022•56 min•Season 1Ep. 185
Garry Kasparov is one of the great strategists and a longtime critic of Putin, so naturally, in this bonus episode of The New Abnormal, Molly Jong-Fast asked the chess Grandmaster how he thinks the current crisis in Ukraine and Vlad’s stronghold on Russia will end. He shares a few theories that could checkmate Putin once and for all—and details how Biden’s presidency is part of the endgame. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jan 30, 2022•21 min
“They are literally killing their viewers. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that,” says The New Abnormal co-host Andy Levy. “It was really interesting to see actual correlations between Trump voting counties and Fox News viewership and rates of death from COVID. It’s just amazing what they're doing." “Fox News has one job, right?” says Molly. “Get Republicans in power, keep them in power. So it's worth branching out into the idea that like Tucker Carlson is the kind of the spiritual leader ...
Jan 28, 2022•58 min•Season 1Ep. 184
George Conway joins this episode of The New Abnormal to address the possibility of a Mark Meadows indictment from Merrick Garland’s DOJ, co-hosts Andy Levy and Molly Jong-Fast talk about why Newt Gingrich is ‘minutes away’ from becoming the next Rudy Giuliani and Johann Hari, aka the guy who gave a viral TED Talk on rats and addiction, talks about his new book Stolen Focus and how getting stoned during work is actually more productive than answering emails during a task. Hosted on Ac...
Jan 25, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 183
Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of Media Matters for America, joins this bonus episode of The New Abnormal to break down the fall of One America News Network, also known as OAN, and how the channel is trying to save itself. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jan 22, 2022•18 min
“He’s essentially persona non grata in the royal family, and you know, the royal family survives because – it may look like this sort of a constitutional structure made entirely of cobwebs, but in fact it's got a really kind of canny PR operation behind it,” says Dunt. “And they know when to cut their losses. It’s a family, kind of, but it's not a family like any other kind of family. And when you got a bad (one) in there, you are gonna cut your losses and that's pretty much what they've done. ”...
Jan 21, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 182
Preet Bharara, former Southern District of New York Attorney General and Justice Is …, is very concerned that Merrick Garland has likely not yet investigated Trump in relation to the Jan. 6 riots. He tells co-host Molly Jong-Fast why on this episode of The New Abnormal. Then, CNBC’s Fast Money panelist Dan Nathan joins to explain what’s happening with inflation in the U.S. and the Biden administration’s potential plan to fix it. But not before co-host Andy Levy and Molly discuss Paul Gosar...
Jan 18, 2022•58 min•Season 1Ep. 181
Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein joined co-host Molly Jong-Fast on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal to talk about his book Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom and what a journo who has seen it all thinks about today’s distrust of the media, outlets like Fox News and today’s Republicans, or as Bernstein calls them, “a party of sedition.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jan 16, 2022•19 min
The “Joe Rogan” experience is off the cuff, unedited, and very often entirely off the rails. Alex Patterson of Media Matters says the podcast is “a bastion of toxic masculinity… that leads listeners further down rightwing rabbit holes,” and notes that Rogan’s “dedicated listeners are mostly young men… listening to all three hours and taking in completely unfounded conspiracy theories without any of the fact-checking that would come for a more traditional journalistic enterprise.” Plus, Samuel Wo...
Jan 14, 2022•59 min•Season 1Ep. 180
Co-hosts Andy Levy and Molly Jong-Fast parse out whether Jim Jordan is telling the truth about his Jan. 6 knowledge, Jared Holt, a fellow at AtlanticCouncil’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, explains two big tactics far-right kingpins like Steve Bannon are using to take over democracy and Nandini Jammi and Claire Atkin of Check My Ads join the pod to explain how to play a role in bankrupting people like Charlie Kirk, Dan Bongino and other notorious disinfo machines. If you haven't heard, every si...
Jan 11, 2022•53 min•Season 1Ep. 179
Canadian author Stephen Marche, whose new book The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future chronicles what he saw while reporting in far-right Ohio aka Oathkeepers’ Country, came on The New Abnormal to share the troubling stories with host Molly Jong-Fast, including dreams of a Civil War, and explains how one little Trump decision could destroy an entire city. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jan 09, 2022•15 min
