Danny and Derek speak with sociologist Charles Derber about how American society is tearing itself apart, as explored in his book Bonfire: American Sociocide, Broken Relations, and the Quest for Democracy . They discuss the decline of civic trust, the rise of atomized “me” culture, the tech-driven Gilded Age, neoliberalism and loneliness, Silicon Valley’s alliance with the national security state, how a country built on expansion and individualism turned those forces inward, and what, if anythin...
Oct 14, 2025•1 hr 27 min
Few movies have ever been as timely as Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film One Battle After Another , which traces the battle between revolutionary resistance groups trying to protect immigrants and an authoritarian government run by racists. There are scenes from the movie that feel like they are being played out right now on the streets of Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland. Although it presents a stylized version of reality, the film raises important questions about different strategies of resi...
Oct 13, 2025•50 min
What does true climate justice look like when it’s rooted in sovereignty, resistance, and liberation? In this powerful episode of A People’s Climate, Shilpi Chhotray sits down with Nick Tilsen—Oglala Lakota land defender and CEO of NDN Collective—to unpack the meaning of LandBack, the historic fight for the Black Hills, the release of political prisoner Leonard Peltier, and the deep ties between Indigenous struggles and Palestinian resistance. From direct action at Mount Rushmore to building leg...
Oct 11, 2025•29 min
Yes, we will be releasing 25 subtle variations of this news roundup in order to catapult ourselves to the top of the podcast charts, and no, we are not sorry. This week: a ceasefire agreement was reached for Gaza, but there was too much information for us to cover in the news, so please check out our special here . Syria’s interim government handpicks a new “parliament” under tight presidential control (1:01); Iran debates moving its capital from Tehran as drought and other ecological issues wor...
Oct 10, 2025•39 min
Paris Marx is joined by Jacob Silverman to discuss Jacob’s new book Gilded Rage , which explores the radicalization of Silicon Valley leaders, who are exerting their growing influence to shape our society for the worse. Jacob Silverman is an independent journalist and the author of Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley . Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy...
Oct 09, 2025•55 min
As the Supreme Court begins its new term, Trump lost six different cases in district courts just last week, ranging from bans on deploying the National Guard, to defending freedom of speech for noncitizens, to yet another court rejecting his executive order abolishing birthright citizenship. At the same time, Trump is claiming an illegitimate legal basis for ordering the murder of civilians he claims are trafficing in drugs. David Cole will comment—he’s former national legal director of the ACLU...
Oct 08, 2025•37 min
Donald Trump has plunged the nation into another government shutdown. I spoke with my Nation colleague Chris Lehmann about the larger political stakes. We take up Trump’s shifting rhetoric, which has started with false and racist claims about undocumented immigrants receiving benefits and now seems to be about gloating over austerity. We also discuss the Democratic Party’s response, and the way the base of the party has forced the leadership to take a stronger stance. Chris’s article on the shut...
Oct 06, 2025•37 min
This is when people-powered movements matter most. In this episode of A People’s Climate , host Shilpi Chhotray sits down with Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, artist, abolitionist, and author. They explore the deep connections between racial justice, environmental justice, and the fight for a more just and caring world. From her childhood experiences in Los Angeles to organizing around police brutality, climate justice, and cultural work, Patrisse shares why her vision is roo...
Oct 04, 2025•38 min
Subscribe now to skip the ads and get more content. Don’t forget to vote for AP in the 2025 Signal Awards! Danny is back on American soil and joins Derek to bring you the news. This week: Trump circulates a Gaza ceasefire proposal with Hamas’ response pending (2:39), Israel issues its final evacuation notice for Gaza City (9:30), and the Samud flotilla is intercepted (11:04); Trump forces Netanyahu to apologize to Qatar while also giving Doha a NATO-style defense pledge (14:06); the UN reimposes...
Oct 03, 2025•48 min
Paris Marx is joined by Tina Nguyen to discuss the divisions within the American far-right between the Trump administration, the wider MAGA movement, and the tech executives trying to show they’re on their side. Tina Nguyen is a senior reporter at The Verge and author of The MAGA Diaries: My Surreal Adventures Inside the Right-Wing (And How I Got Out) . Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy...
Oct 02, 2025•58 min
For the Senate Democrats this is a big week for defiance. At last they are making popular demands as part of a deal to pass a budget and avoid a government shutdown. But Trump still holds a lot of cards. Harold Meyerson will comment. Also: None of us were prepared for the double whammy of last week's White House press conference, where Trump made false claims not only about vaccines, but also about Tylenol causing autism. We’ll have analysis from Gregg Gonsalves. He teaches at the Yale School of...
Oct 01, 2025•37 min
Don't forget to vote for American Prestige in the Signal Awards! Danny welcomes to the show journalist and historian Garrett Graff, host of the podcast Long Shadow . They talk about the show’s latest season on the internet, tracing how its promise of democratization and liberation devolved into an engine of polarization and conspiracies. Topics include: Facebook’s cynical algorithmic choices, Watergate’s enduring influence on American political culture, the economic wreckage of deindustrializ...
Sep 30, 2025•39 min
For over 50 years, Bob Woodward has had an uncanny ability to get sources talking—and to sell books. From Watergate to Trump, no political era has gone by without at least one Woodward tome promising to peel back the curtain on how Washington really works. Now, Woodward is out with his latest, the bluntly titled “War.” It’s billed as a look at the end of the Joe Biden presidency and beginning of the second Trump era. But what it really shows is what happens when a reporter evolves from a muckrak...
Sep 29, 2025•41 min
The United States continues to be roiled by political violence, with the recent shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas coming hot on the heels of the assassination of Charlie Kirk and a school shooting in Colorado committed by a neo-Nazi. Some of the best reporting on these events has been done by Ken Klippenstein for his Substack. I spoke with Ken about what he’s discovered when he interviewed those who knew the alleged shooters, how his findings go against the simplistic partisan interpretation...
Sep 28, 2025•42 min
In this episode of A People’s Climate, Shilpi Chhotray sits down with Diane Wilson, a fourth-generation shrimper and relentless environmental activist, to explore her decades-long fight against Formosa Plastics—a $250 billion petrochemical giant polluting the Texas Gulf Coast. From hunger strikes to scaling the White House fence, Diane’s unwavering activism has not only won a historic $50 million settlement, but transformed her community’s fisheries and galvanized citizen-led environmental justi...
Sep 27, 2025•29 min
Danny and Derek speak with historian Gretchen Heefner about how the US military (unsuccessfully) set out to conquer extreme environments and what those efforts reveal about empire, climate, and power. They discuss the US Army training for a desert war that turned out to be mud, the Pentagon’s disastrous attempts to master Greenland’s ice, early blueprints for building on the moon, efforts to gather “environmental intelligence” across the globe, and other failed endeavors showing the limits of Am...
Sep 26, 2025•53 min
Paris Marx is joined by Ed Niedermeyer to discuss the mission to turn Elon Musk into the world’s first trillionaire, Tesla’s growing interest in making robots instead of cars, and how other automakers are coming for the EV market it once dominated. Ed Niedermeyer is the author of Ludicrous and co-host of the Autonocast . Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy...
Sep 25, 2025•1 hr
Trump is trying to block speech that criticizes him. Last week began with JD Vance complaining about an article in The Nation that criticized the ideas of Charlie Kirk. Two days after that, ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel. And a few days after that, a protest movement forced ABC to put him back on the air. Bhaskar Sunkara comments on the fight over freedom of speech - he's president of The Nation Magazine. Also: Attacking Harvard is not unique to Trump -- for decades, indeed for centuries, American p...
Sep 24, 2025•44 min
Danny and Derek once again speak with historian Greg Grandin about his recent book, America, América: A New History of the New World . In this second part of the conversation, they follow US–Latin American relations from the American Civil War through the present. The discussion covers the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the contradictions of U.S. expansion cloaked in the language of human rights, the Mexican Revolution as a defining challenge to US power, Woodrow Wilson’s and FDR’s occupations...
Sep 23, 2025•1 hr 7 min
Donald Trump and his MAGA movement haven’t just taken over Republican politics. They’ve also taken over Republican fashion. Gone is the stuffy, genteel uniform of the elite. In its place: a loud, anti-establishment, even vulgar sartorial agenda. But what does this style actually say about MAGA politics? What do these clothes suggest about the authenticity of the movement’s leaders—especially when so many of Trump’s policies remain old-school conservative? And what messages do these looks send wh...
Sep 22, 2025•34 min
Bari Weiss, founder and editor of The Free Press , has often been profiled in the media, but usually in a superficial way that focuses on her personality and disputes with fellow journalists. She is currently on the cusp of great power, reportedly working on a deal to sell The Free Press and take a senior position at CBS. David Klion, Nation columnist and frequent guest on the podcast, has written an exceptionally trenchant analysis for The Guardian of Weiss’s politics and the way they align wit...
Sep 21, 2025•42 min
Derek is joined once again by guest co-host Alex Jordan to bring you the news. This week: in Israel-Palestine, Israel commences its ground operation in Gaza City (1:50), a UN commission rules that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza (8:14), and Netanyahu touts a “Sparta” model for Israel while Smotrich talks Gaza real estate (9:39); fallout from Israel’s strike in Qatar continues (15:04); nuclear talks between Iran and European nations make little progress (20:39); India’s Maoist rebels suspen...
Sep 19, 2025•1 hr 4 min
“A People’s Climate” is a new climate podcast by Counterstream Media and The Nation. Hosted by Shilpi Chhotray. This isn’t climate talk as usual. This is environmental justice. Over nine powerful episodes, we bring together activists, organizers, and movement leaders who are fighting on the frontlines. Every conversation reveals not only why the fight matters, but how communities are already putting solutions into practice and power back in the hands of the people. The future we need is being bu...
Sep 18, 2025•2 min
In suburban DC, southern Pennsylvania and Iowa, Democrats have won special elections by significant margins – and the polls for this year’s upcoming elections for mayor in New York City, governor in Virginia, and redistricting in California show Democrats well ahead. Also: J.D. Vance attacks The Nation. John Nichols comments. Also: Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT and one of our leading progressives, explains “Why Fascists Fear Teachers” – the title of her new book. Advertising Inquiries: ...
Sep 17, 2025•34 min
Danny and Derek welcome back historian Greg Grandin to talk about his recent book, America, América: A New History of the New World . In this first part of the discussion, they explore how the Spanish conquest produced unprecedented violence while also sparking debates about human rights, the role of Bartolomé de las Casas and the Salamanca School, how English settlers dealt with their own brutality, and the emergence of social democracy in Latin America. They also discuss the Monroe Doctrine, t...
Sep 16, 2025•1 hr 4 min
Yolanda Díaz, Spain’s high-profile labor minister, has managed a tightrope walk unthinkable in the country’s recent history. Much to the astonishment of her critics, she’s mitigated inflation while staving off the far right and delivering material improvements for the people of Spain. Can her model of leadership and reform be adopted by a broader leftist international movement, as she hopes? Labor journalist Sarah Jaffe wrote about Díaz in the latest issue of The Nation and joins us to discuss t...
Sep 15, 2025•30 min
Matt Duss, vice-president of the Center for International Policy, wrote an excellent review for The Nation of Bob Woodward’s book War , which is a celebration of Joe Biden as a foreign policy sage. Duss is rightly skeptical of the book. We discuss Biden’s actual record on Ukraine and especially Gaza. Matt’s essay on this topic for Foreign Policy is also worth reading. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy...
Sep 14, 2025•40 min
While Danny remains in talks with Russia, Alex Jordan again helps Derek bring you the headlines. This week: Israel targets Hamas negotiators in a Doha strike (3:30), effectively ending ceasefire talks (8:43); the IDF orders the evacuation of Gaza City (13:11) while reports emerge that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation hired an anti-Islam biker gang for “security” (15:42); in Russia-Ukraine, Russian drones entered Polish airspace, prompting an Article 4 NATO meeting (18:36); Iran and the IAEA anno...
Sep 12, 2025•1 hr 10 min
Paris Marx is joined by Aaron Benanav to discuss his vision for a multi-criterial economy and how it would alter the type of technology our society creates. It’s a plan to center human experience through democratic discourse while driving true social and technological innovation. Aaron Benanav is an Assistant Professor at Cornell University and the author of Automation and the Future of Work . Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/p...
Sep 11, 2025•1 hr 1 min
Trump had four major court decisions against him in a single week last week: on tariffs, defunding Harvard, sending troops to LA, and deporting Venezuelans, different courts and appellate panels said he was violating the law. Erwin Chemerinsky comments – he’s Dean of the Law School at Berkeley. Also: The new film “Caught by the Tides” by Jia Zhangke, considered worldwide to be the most important director in China: Over the last 30 years, his great project has been to tell stories that show the r...
Sep 10, 2025•42 min
