Since 2015, Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the American foreign policy establishment for being too belligerent and unwilling to negotiate with adversaries. But in office, Trump has carried out a foreign policy that has all the vices he has criticized and been even more inclined to risk war or get into new wars. In a recent essay in The New York Times , Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has written an in...
Jul 27, 2025•43 min
Don’t forget to buy our “Welcome to the Crusades” miniseries! Danny and Derek also rail against the war pigs, but lack the heavy riffs. This week: the International Court of Justice rules that wealthy nations must take action on climate change or bear responsibility (1:20); clashes escalate on the Thai-Cambodian border (4:08); a ceasefire holds in Syria’s Suwayda province after clashes between Druze and Bedouin groups (9:06); in Israel-Palestine, Gaza’s starvation reaches catastrophic levels (13...
Jul 25, 2025•42 min
Paris Marx is joined by Dan McQuillan to discuss the political push by global governments towards rapid AI adoption at all costs, and how citizens can critically rethink not only our dependence on these technologies, but imagine a collective future that benefits everyone. Dan McQuillan is a lecturer at Goldsmiths College, University of London and the author of Resisting AI . Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy...
Jul 24, 2025•58 min
A federal court in LA has stopped ICE from detaining people for deportation because they look Latino – that’s racial discrimination, and it’s unconstitutional, the court said. Mark Rosenbaum of Public Counsel will explain what’s next as he government appeals the case to the Ninth Circuit. Also: How does a movement build support when large parts of the country are opposed to its goals? How do you connect with people who disagree with you? For some answers we’ll turn to long-time organizer Michael...
Jul 23, 2025•43 min
Hugh Wilford, professor of history at California State University, Long Beach, is back on the program to conclude the discussion of his book The CIA: An Imperial History . In this episode they talk about figures like Edward Lansdale and James Angleton, “regime maintenance,” counterinsurgency, the agency’s use of publicity, the effect of the War on Terror on the CIA, and more. Listen to Part 1 here ! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com...
Jul 22, 2025•58 min
Tech lords such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are among the richest humans who have ever lived and have an enormous sway over the American political system but even that isn’t enough for them. They also want a compliant media, one that echoes their ideas, doesn’t investigate their business practices, and goes after their enemy. This is the subject of a new book by Eoin Higgins: Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left . I talked to Eoin about two of the majo...
Jul 20, 2025•46 min
Derek is in the shop for maintenance, so Danny presents the news with the Quincy Institute’s Alex Jordan. This week: Israel bombs the Syrian Defense Ministry in Damascus (0:39) as Netanyahu’s corruption trial carries on (7:05), plus US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee condemns settlers killing a US citizen (10:24), and the Hague Group coalition meets in Bogota to decide how to hold Israel accountable for its crimes (16:02); the saga of Trump’s flip-flopping on Ukraine military aid continues (2...
Jul 18, 2025•46 min
Paris Marx is joined by Nathan Grayson to discuss the latest round of Microsoft layoffs and how the company’s ambition to remake the video game industry around its streaming service has had significant consequences. Nathan Grayson is a co-founder of Aftermath and author of Stream Big: The Triumphs and Turmoils of Twitch and the Stars Behind the Screen . Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy...
Jul 17, 2025•55 min
There’s trouble in Trump world: Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is launching a Third Party to challenge Trump’s Republicans in the midterms and maybe in 2028. Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party, explains why Musk will fail. Also: Trump’s executive order abolishing birthright citizenship – guaranteed by the 14th Amendment – has been blocked for a second time, this time because of a class action suit. David Cole explains why Trump will lose this case at the Supre...
Jul 16, 2025•42 min
Pull yourselves up by your bootstraps, rise ‘n grind, and find your calling as we welcome historian Erik Baker to the program to talk about his book Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America . The group explores the Protestant work ethic and Jeffersonian yeoman farmer, influential figures like Henry Ford and Frederick Winslow Taylor, the seeds of entrepreneurialism in Harvard Business School, how it came to be seen as an American value during the Cold War, “entrepre...
Jul 15, 2025•58 min
Donald Trump’s foreign policy has been as unstable as the man himself, shifting quickly from pushes for restraint to escalating wars in the Middle East. This volatility is a function not just of Trump’s personality but the contradictions and competing factions that are gathered under the term America First, as well as the continued power of the foreign policy establishment that Trump has claimed he defeated but which maintains a strong capacity to shape policy. To talk about Trump’s foreign poli...
Jul 14, 2025•42 min
Remember that today is the last day to order our limited edition “Robo Washington Crossing the Delaware” poster! Paid subscribers get a 50% discount! AP’s retirement account is entirely tied to copper, so we’re not sure how long we have to do this. In this week’s news: Yemen’s Houthi/Ansar Allah fighters have resumed attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea, sinking two (1:47); in Israel-Palestine news, Benjamin Netanyahu (on a visit to the White House) rules out a Palestinian state (4:50), ce...
Jul 11, 2025•49 min
Paris Marx is joined by Laleh Khalili to discuss how the United States uses its control of key technologies to shift global power dynamics, and how that specifically plays out in the Middle East. Laleh Khalili is Professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter and author of the forthcoming book Extractive Capitalism . Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy...
Jul 10, 2025•54 min
Trump’s ICE is attacking undocumented people in LA County because there are a lot of them -- maybe a million, out of a total of 3.3 million Latinos, and also because LA is one of the most Democratic counties in the country. And LA has a big and militant alliance of immigrants rights groups that are fighting Trump. Harold Meyerson will explain the deportation battle in Southern California at this point. Also: Rachel Kushner will talk about the informant and provacateur who infiltrates an anarchis...
Jul 09, 2025•46 min
Get your limited edition "Robo Washington" poster now ! Economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Mark Weisbrot joins the show to talk about economic sanctions and how they affect people’s lives. They discuss the effect of sanctions on migration flows, how the PR about them targeting governments and not civilians is false, how the international financial system and dollar hegemony allow the US to sanction so freely, whether sanctions on other countries ...
Jul 08, 2025•51 min
Writing in The Nation , Pamela Alma Weymouth drew a contrast between Kay Graham, her late grandmother who was publisher of The Washington Post when it fought Richard Nixon’s administration on The Pentagon Papers and Watergate, with the current owner of the newspaper, Jeff Bezos. Unlike Graham, Bezos has been all too willing to bend the knee to a corrupt president. I talked to Pamela about Bezos and other contemporary corporate leaders who are undermining journalistic integrity at a moment when i...
Jul 07, 2025•37 min
Our news roundups are sometimes big, but never beautiful. This week: the PKK to begin its disarmament in Turkey (1:17); Iran suspends its cooperation with the IAEA (4:30), but remains open to negotiations with the US (6:53); the debate continues on how far the war set back Iran’s nuclear program (9:18); in Gaza, a new ceasefire push (12:24) while journalists investigate the massacres at “humanitarian aid” sites (16:15); Russia recognizes the Talbian-led government in Afghanistan (20:20); the Con...
Jul 04, 2025•42 min
Paris Marx is joined by Yangyang Cheng to discuss how Huawei became one of the most powerful companies in China and how current geopolitical narratives distract from the issues at the heart of surveillance capitalism in the US and China. Yangyang Cheng is a Research Scholar in Law and Fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy...
Jul 03, 2025•54 min
The surprise victory of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in New York City’s Democratic mayor primary over a well-funded establishment candidate shows that progressive politics, when pursued with discipline, vision and vigor, can win broad support. Bhaskar Sukara, President of The Nation and author of The Socialist Manifesto , has our analysis. Also: After going to court to challenge Trump’s cut of $2 billion in federal grants, Harvard is now in negotiations with the administration, seeking “c...
Jul 02, 2025•45 min
Derek welcomes back to the show Dalia Hatuqa , a journalist specializing in Israeli/Palestinian affairs and regional Middle East issues, to talk about the situation in Gaza and the West Bank. They recap what has been happening to Palestinians in Gaza while the world was distracted by Israel’s war with Iran, discuss the lost generations of Gazan children, the massacres at “aid distribution centers,” increased home demolitions and settler violence in the West Bank, the current relationships of the...
Jul 01, 2025•1 hr 3 min
The term “the nation”—as it refers to the country—has a relatively recent history in American political rhetoric. Until the Civil War, politicians more commonly used “the Union” or “the Republic.” That changed with Abraham Lincoln, who referenced “the nation” five times in his 1863 Gettysburg Address. Two years later, in July 1865, the first issue of our magazine was published. For our 160th Anniversary issue, we called on fifty of our best writers and artists to depict the current national land...
Jun 30, 2025•29 min
Over the last decade, centrist Democrats have diligent courted Never Trump Republicans, hoping that this cohort could help create a new consensus politics to oppose the MAGA coalition. From the start, this strategy seemed flawed: after all, this faction is very small and also carries a lot of baggage. In particular, neo-conservatives such as William Kristol and David Frum, now Never Trump stalwarts, were responsible for two of the biggest foreign policy disasters in American history, George W. B...
Jun 29, 2025•54 min
Don’t forget to purchase our “Welcome to the Crusades” series before the price increases next week. Paid AP subscribers get a 25% discount, so subscribe today ! Danny and Derek broadcast from an undisclosed resort location. This week: an update on the conflict with Iran, including the ceasefire (2:34), Trump’s disagreement with US intelligence assessments (5:25), the status of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities and material (10:15), and the potential for new US-Iran talks (15:46); with th...
Jun 27, 2025•40 min
On this episode of Tech Won't Save Us , Paris Marx is joined by Nitasha Tiku to discuss how AI companies are preying on users to drive engagement and how that’s repeating many of the problems we’re belatedly trying to address with social media companies at an accelerated pace. Nitasha Tiku is a technology reporter at the Washington Post . Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy...
Jun 26, 2025•54 min
Donald Trump, found guilty of sexual assault and defamation, owes E. Jean Carroll $88 million. She explains how she beat him in court, twice, proving that he attacked her in a Bergdorf dressing room and then lied about it. Her new book is Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President. Also, the leading autopsies on the 2024 defeat of Democrats are missing two big things, Steve Phillips argues: the centrality of racial hostility and of gender resentment as central organizing forces in American politics....
Jun 25, 2025•37 min
Ben Freeman and Nick Cleveland-Stout from the Quincy Institute join the program to talk about their Think Tank Funding Tracker , a repository that tracks funding from foreign governments, the U.S. government, and Pentagon contractors to the top 50 think tanks in the United States over the past five years. The group discusses think tanks’ role in the “military-intellectual” complex, what specific foreign funders like the UAE and UK might be looking to influence, why certain governments like Ukrai...
Jun 24, 2025•55 min
On a recent trip to El Salvador, writer Viet Thanh Nguyen noticed striking parallels between the small Central American nation and his own country of origin, Vietnam. Both endured the atrocities of war, each fueled by anti-communist U.S. intervention. And both conflicts—the Vietnam War and El Salvador’s civil war—triggered refugee and migrant crises whose consequences continue to reverberate today. The people of Vietnam and El Salvador – and Nguyen himself– have been caught in the crossfire of w...
Jun 23, 2025•41 min
Donald Trump has betrayed his promise to be a pro-peace president. Prodded by Washington hawks and the Israeli government, he has green-lit Israel’s attack on Iran, which the Untied States might soon join directly. A new Middle Eastern war would be a catastrophe. In order to stop it, Democrats will need to recover the anti-war politics that they adopted in opposition to George W. Bush’s Iraq War. I spoke with Matt Duss, vice-president of the Center for International Policy on how popular mobiliz...
Jun 22, 2025•39 min
No ChatGPT here—our em dashes are organic. This week: in the Iran-Israel war, an update on the casualties and targets (1:52), US involvement remains in question (7:45), Ayatollah Khamenei refuses to surrender (14:47), and US and Israeli intelligence agencies disagree over “evidence” of Iran pursuing a nuclear weapon (18:14); Trump quits the G7 summit early, possibly due to Israel-Iran, and later insults French president Emmanuel Macron (20:59); the IDF is still killing dozens per day in Gaza, mo...
Jun 20, 2025•48 min
On this episode of Tech Won't Save Us, Paris Marx is joined by Laís Martins to discuss the recent enforcement measures against tech companies like X and Rumble in Brazil, how the country is grappling with the overreach of US tech companies, and the wider discussion about tech policy in Brazil. Laís Martins is a technology reporter at The Intercept Brasil . Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy...
Jun 19, 2025•58 min
