Danny and Derek welcome actor Morgan Spector ( The Gilded Age , The Plot Against America ) to the show for a conversation on politics, Hollywood, and capitalism. They trace his political development from the Iraq War and Obama era to Bernie Sanders and democratic socialism, discuss his documentary The Big Scary “S” Word , and reflect on how Hollywood politics skew liberal but not radical (particularly when it comes to Palestine). They also explore Spector’s role as a Gilded Age robber baron, how...
Sep 09, 2025•1 hr 19 min
On August 27, journalist Taylor Lorenz reported for Wired on a dark-money project funded by anonymous Democratic Party donors to shape social media. Her article documented that, "In a private group chat in June, dozens of Democratic political influencers discussed whether to take advantage of an enticing opportunity. They were being offered $8,000 per month to take part in a secretive program aimed at bolstering Democratic messaging on the internet. But the contract sent to them from Chorus , th...
Sep 07, 2025•41 min
Danny is in talks with the Kremlin to unfreeze his accounts, so Derek is joined instead by the Quincy Institute’s Alex Jordan to bring you the news. This week: a new study warns that the Atlantic circulation system could collapse (2:32); Ukraine introduces AI-driven drone swarms, raising the prospect of autonomous killing machines (5:55); in Israel-Palestine, Israel declares Gaza City a “dangerous combat zone” (9:45), The Washington Post details the “Trump Riviera” plan (13:50), more European st...
Sep 05, 2025•1 hr 4 min
Paris Marx is joined by Brian Merchant to discuss whether the AI bubble is about to burst and how bosses are deploying AI tools to kill jobs and degrade work. Brian Merchant is the author of Blood in the Machine and writes a newsletter of the same name. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy...
Sep 04, 2025•1 hr
At a time when almost everything seems to be going wrong, Bill McKibben sees one thing that is suddenly going right – a really big thing: solar power, and wind, which now provide cheaper electricity than fossil fuels. Bill’s new book has the wonderful title “Here Comes the Sun” – he says solar is “A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for civilization.” Also: historian Eric Foner provides some historical perspective on what seems like the unique threat Trump poses to our freedoms. His...
Sep 03, 2025•38 min
Danny and Derek welcome back to the program historian Udi Greenberg to discuss his reinterpretation of modern Christianity in The End of the Schism: Catholics, Protestants, and the Remaking of Christian Life in Europe, 1880s–1970s . They explore the alliances Catholics and Protestants forged under the pressures of fascism, the Cold War, and decolonization, and how both Christian Democracy and radical left-Christian movements were shaped as much by expedience as reconciliation. Advertising Inquir...
Sep 02, 2025•58 min
The Iran-Israel conflict in June was terrifying but brief: it lasted 12 days. But that war is not over. Trita Parsi , vice president and cofounder of the Quincy Institute, has been warning that both the United States and Israel are planning for another round , with their European allies providing the groundwork. I spoke to Parsi about the likelihood of war, the rationale behind the current sabre-rattling, and ways to stop the impending catastrophe. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/br...
Aug 31, 2025•39 min
Danny and Derek get in one last news update before Danny moves to an undisclosed American Prestige satellite campus. This week: In Israel-Palestine, the IPC formally declares a famine in Gaza (3:21), Israel bombs Nasser Hospital (6:34), and Trump hosts a White House “day after” meeting (13:25); Europe moves to reimpose UN sanctions on Iran (16:16); Trump’s 50% tariff on Indian goods goes into effect (12:04); changes to de minimis rules force postal services to suspend US-bound shipments (27:23);...
Aug 29, 2025•54 min
Paris Marx is joined by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay to discuss the geopolitics behind China’s investments in green tech and electrification, and how it presents the prospect of a new development model based on renewables instead of fossil fuels. Kate Mackenzie is an adjunct fellow at Macquarie University. Tim Sahay is co-director of the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab at Johns Hopkins University. They are the co-writers of the Polycrisis newsletter from Phenomenal World. Advertising Inquiries...
Aug 28, 2025•1 hr 1 min
What is Trump’s strategy in deploying the National Guard to L.A., then D.C., and now probably Chicago and New York? Does he want the military in the street of blue cities for the midterms next year? They will still elect Democrats to the House. John Nichols comments. Also: ‘Huckleberry Finn’ is America's great anti-slavery novel, but there's a secret behind it: Mark Twain, the author, wasn't always anti-slavery and anti-racist; in fact he fought, briefly, for the Confederacy. Adam Hochschild exp...
Aug 27, 2025•39 min
Danny and Derek welcome historian Rashid Khalidi back to the program, this time to talk about Columbia University’s agreement with the Trump administration. They discuss the university equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, the school bringing in outside monitors, bipartisan U.S. support for Israel despite shifting public opinion, and how donor influence and neoliberal management are both reshaping universities and eroding the humanities. They also preview Dr. Khalidi’s upcoming free pu...
Aug 26, 2025•1 hr 4 min
Subscribe now to skip the ads and hear the full interview on the Bolivia election. Don’t forget our Welcome to the Crusades and Of This World series! Derek took away Danny’s iPad, so now Danny has to help with the news. This week: the great Trump-Putin summit takes place (1:39) as Zelensky visits the White House (5:44); Hamas accepts the newest ceasefire (9:39), the IDF appears to have begun its Gaza City operation (12:44), and the Israeli government approves the E1 settlement in the West Bank (...
Aug 22, 2025•48 min
Paris Marx is joined by Cecilia Rikap to discuss how countries’ dependence on US tech companies is harming them and why they need to get serious about digital sovereignty. Cecilia Rikap is Associate Professor in Economics at University College London and Head of Research at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy...
Aug 21, 2025•1 hr
In The Nation’s interview with Zohran Mamdani, he talks how he won the New York City Democratic primary for mayor, by addressing the city’s affordability crisis—and what the Democrats can learn from his victory. Katrina vanden Heuvel and John Nichols, who conducted the interview, introduce our excerpts and set the stage. Also: It’s time to take a step back from the daily barrage of bad news to look at the big picture of the strategy Trump has been following: David Cole explains how he’s exploite...
Aug 20, 2025•46 min
Danny and Derek Davison welcome to the program economist Glenn Loury, host of The Glenn Show , to talk about the re-release of his 1994 book Self-Censorship . They discuss the reasons he originally wrote the book, including self-censorship among intellectuals in late 1980s Eastern Europe as well as the response to Glenn’s critiques of US debates on race and civil rights at the time. They then tie these themes to postwar economics, current debates about “wokeness,” discourse around Gaza, and acad...
Aug 19, 2025•1 hr 14 min
In April, the Liberal Party of Canada, under the leadership of Mark Carney, won an election that heartened opponents of the right-wing. Carney had run on the promise of fighting Donald Trump’s threats to annex Canada and also to bolster the Canadian state to deal with issues like affordable housing. But in office, Carney has been delivering something different than his rhetoric suggested: he has been servile to Trump and is promoting austerity. The journalist Luke Savage has written about Carney...
Aug 17, 2025•43 min
Don't forget to check out our series "Welcome to the Crusades" and "Of This World." Danny and Derek’s The Life of a Go-Go Boy album is shelved indefinitely. Meanwhile, in world news: Armenia and Azerbaijan sign a U.S.-brokered peace deal (1:35); Israel prepares for an operation in Gaza City as it continues its search for countries willing to take in expelled Palestinians (8:36); Australia announces plans to recognize Palestine (12:59); Iran hosts an IAEA representative (14:58) as European states...
Aug 15, 2025•43 min
On a special edition of American Prestige , Mohammad Alsaafin, journalist at AJ+, returns to the program to discuss recent events concerning Palestine. He and Derek talk about journalists killed by Israel in Gaza, including Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif; the broad dehumanization of Palestinian journalists by many mainstream outlets; the planned military occupation and potential ethnic cleansing of the Strip; the use of starvation as a weapon; why certain countries are re-recognizing a Pal...
Aug 13, 2025•56 min
In WWII, Denmark rescued a larger proportion of their Jewish population than any other country – 95%. How they did it suggests how we can resist Trump’s attacks on undocumented residents. Sarah Sophie Flicker explains – she’s an organizer who’s a co-founder of the Women’s March on Washington. Also: Donald Trump is demanding that UCLA pay a $1 billion fine for antisemitism on campus – in addition to the $584 million in cuts to medical and scientific research already imposed by his administration....
Aug 13, 2025•44 min
In lieu of a typical Tuesday episode this week, we are happy to present the first episode of our new miniseries with Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, Of This World .Subscribe now at the annual tier for access to this series and other AP series going forward. First, Danny Bessner speaks with Daniel about what inspired this series. In the episode itself (6:25), Daniel speaks with Carlo Invernizzi Accetti about his recent book (published in Italian) Twenty Years of Rage: From No-Globals to Trumpism ....
Aug 12, 2025•47 min
Almost everyone who is on line or even has a cell phone has encountered a familiar and perplexing nuisance: an email or text with a job offer to make lots of money while working from home. These messages seem like obvious scams but how do they work? Alexander Sammon, a feature writer for Slate, conducted a personal experiment to find out by taking one of the jobs he was offered. The result is a hilarious article detailing not just what it’s like to be ripped off but also illuminating the new gri...
Aug 10, 2025•42 min
Don't forget to purchase our "Welcome to the Crusades" miniseries ! The AP team will wear formal Tevas to the new White House ballroom. Otherwise, in this week’s news: Danny and Derek reflect on the 80th anniversary of the US dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima (1:46); in Israel-Palestine, Netanyahu announces his “full occupation” plan (8:24) as the US expands the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (13:58); the Lebanese government moves to disarm Hezbollah (16:48); the US looks to host an Armenia-...
Aug 08, 2025•49 min
Paris Marx is joined by Matt Pearce to discuss how Google’s use of generative AI is sending far less traffic to all manner of websites, but especially news publications, and what that might mean for the future of journalism. Matt Pearce is Director of Policy at Rebuild Local News and a former reporter at the Los Angeles Times . Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy...
Aug 07, 2025•1 hr 1 min
How do we face how bad things are now, while also understanding the reasons for hope, and the opportunities for action? Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, will comment. Plus: Robert Reich says the origin of our troubles with Trump and MAGA go back to the sixties; he says it started with the sixties movements – which created “a giant political void that would eventually be filled by Donald Trump’s angry, bigoted cultural populism.” His new memoir is “Coming Up Short.” Adve...
Aug 06, 2025•42 min
Michael Albertus, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, joins the program to talk about his book Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn’t, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies . The group explores notions of land from archaeological evidence thousands of years ago, the enclosure movement of the medieval era, the European mindset vs those of indigenous peoples in the era of colonization, South Africa land redistribution, gender in Canadian homesteading, how changing not...
Aug 05, 2025•50 min
Writing in The New Republic, Greg Sargent called attention to Zohran Mamdani’s highly effective media strategy which has allowed him to reach many voters that have been drifting away from the Democratic Party, especially young people and immigrants. In punchy, short videos, Mamdani has offered an optimistic message that celebrates big city life and diversity while showing how government policies can help make life better. I talked to Greg about the lessons of the Mamdani campaign. We also talk a...
Aug 03, 2025•37 min
Don’t forget to purchase our “Welcome to the Crusades” special series! Danny and Derek are monitoring the Liam Neeson-Pamela Anderson situation. Otherwise, in this week’s news: a new study says most countries are exploiting groundwater aquifers at an unsustainable rate (2:26); in Israel-Palestine, another Gaza ceasefire breaks down (4:56), Israel’s “humanitarian pause” has little effect on the starvation in Gaza (7:22), the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is under scrutiny (10:13), West Bank violen...
Aug 01, 2025•50 min
Paris Marx is joined by Jacob Silverman to discuss Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire’s Islamophobic attack on Zohran Mamdani, what it tells us about the state of tech’s politics, and how Donald Trump is enriching himself through crypto scams. Jacob Silverman is a journalist and the author of the forthcoming book Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley . Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy...
Jul 31, 2025•1 hr
Six million Democrats who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 did not vote in 2024. What’s wrong with them? Pollster and strategist Celinda Lake explains who they are, and what it would take to get them back to the polls in the 2026 midterms – and in 2028. Also: a suggestion for summer reading: M: Son of the Century is a 750-page historical novel about the rise of Mussolini, by Antonio Scurati. John Powers, critic-at-large for NPR’s Fresh Air, says the book suggests some parallels between 1920s Italy an...
Jul 30, 2025•41 min
Great Power Week continues here at American Prestige as historian Michael Brenes joins the show to talk about how prolonged competition with China threatens democracy, peace, and prosperity. They compare Biden and Trump’s respective approaches to China, whether the national security establishment is trying to manufacture an existential threat out of The People’s Republic, whether there is any national interest in a new Cold War, the degradation in American leaders, why rivalry is bad economicall...
Jul 29, 2025•59 min
