Joe Biden’s performance on the first presidential debate, held on Thursday in Atlanta, has been widely criticized. Much of the criticism has focused on Biden’s style: his horse voice, frequent halting digressions and verbal flubs. But the substance of Biden’s comments, as Moira Donegan pointed out in her Guardian column, was equally troubling. In this podcast, Moira and I dissect Biden’s weak and incoherent arguments with a particular emphasis on his lifelong reluctance to strongly support repro...
Jul 01, 2024•48 min
Joe Biden has often been described as among the most pro-Israel politicians in America, a characterization which has a large element of truth but misses some important nuances. As David Klion argues in a deeply researched essay for The Nation , Biden’s support for Israel has long been accompanied by rhetorical gestures indicating opposition to aspects of Israel’s policies, particularly the building of settlements. How do we make sense of this disjunction between action and rhetoric? Is Biden sim...
Jun 23, 2024•56 min
Donald Trump does not like sharks. During his memorable encounter with Stormy Daniels, he fixated on a documentary about the predator that was playing on the hotel television and muttered , “I hope all the sharks die.” The former president returned to this topic at a recent campaign rally where he went on bizarre and lengthy digression asking what would be worse, being electrocuted or being eaten by a shark? Trump said he thought a shark attack would worse. It's easy to dismiss Trump’s rantings ...
Jun 16, 2024•30 min
The summer season has started with a fizzle for Hollywood, as expected hits like The Fall Guy , and Furioso have far underperformed their expectations. This isn’t a matter of a few films. Over the last few years, Hollywood is discovering that audiences are no longer reliably willing to buy tickets for the action adventure franchises that are the mainstay of the film industry. In particular, the once-dominant superhero genre is now fizzling. Adding to the troubles of Tinsel Town is the fact that ...
Jun 08, 2024•30 min
Marty Peretz has led a large life, one he recounts with aplomb in his autobiography The Controversialist. As long time publisher and editor-in-chief of The New Republic , from 1974 to 2011, he transformed the venerable liberal magazine into an organ of neoliberalism, with a politics that emphasized deregulation of the economy, scaling back the welfare state, militant Zionism, and an aggressive foreign policy (leading the magazine to support the disastrous Iraq War in 2003). Coupled with the maga...
May 26, 2024•1 hr 13 min
On this episode of The Time of Monsters , Tom Durkin and Joe Ferguson on FISA renewal. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
May 19, 2024•48 min
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Yousef Munayyer on a president at war with his base. According to a recent CNN poll , 81 percent of voters age 18 to 35 disapprove of President Joe Biden support of Israel’s war in Gaza. This number should be a concern to Biden, because for his reelection bid to succeed he absolutely needs young voters to be as enthusiastically supportive of him as they were in 2020. The issue of Israel/Palestine is dragging Biden’s support down even as he needs to rally ...
May 05, 2024•38 min
On this episode of The Time of Monsters , Joe Howley on how Israel’s war in Gaza is coming to the home front. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Apr 28, 2024•41 min
Writing in The Nation , David Klion recently reviewed Alexander Ward’s new book on Biden’s foreign policy, which offers a redemption arc whereby an administration wounded by the botched exit from Afghanistan made good by its handling of the Ukraine invasion. But as Klion notes, the two year frame of the book is too narrow. In conversation on this podcast, David and I contextualize Biden’s foreign policy, which is deeply unpopular and flawed, in the larger history of hawkish liberalism. We look a...
Apr 21, 2024•1 hr
On this episode of The Time of Monsters , Daniel Bessner on Larry David. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Apr 14, 2024•45 min
In the last few weeks, Hollywood has given us Drive-Away Dolls (directed by Ethan Coen, who also co-wrote it in collaboration with Tricia Cooke) and Live Lies Bleeding (directed by Rose Glass who co-wrote it with Weronika Tofilska). Although very different in tone, the two movies have some striking commonalities, both are set in the late 20th century and take familiar genres (the buddy road comedy, the erotic thriller) while featuring lesbian lead characters. To talk about this trend, I spoke to...
Apr 09, 2024•47 min
Donald Trump recently hosted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, praising the would be autocrat to the skies as “fantastic” and “a boss.” Of course Trump’s love of autocrats is nothing new. Jacob Heilbrunn has written a valuable new book, America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators , that places Trump’s love of dictators in a larger historical context. I wrote about the book in this column , where I summarize his arguments and take issue with a few of his claims. I w...
Mar 24, 2024•40 min
Steven D. Levitt, best known for co-writing the bestselling 2005 book Freakonomics , is retiring from the University of Chicago with a bang. On the Capitalism and Freedom podcast, Levitt gave a farewell interview where he detailed many internecine feuds in the discipline and examples of toxic abuse, with particular focus on his long-time colleague and nemesis James Heckman . The economist Marshall Steinbaum, a University of Chicago graduate who now teaches at the University of Utah, returns to t...
Mar 18, 2024•33 min
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, David Klion and Jeet Heer on Dune: Part Two , the science fiction epic with real world echoes. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Mar 10, 2024•52 min
The mathematician Chandler Davis, who died in 2002 at age 96, was one of the notable victims of the second Red Scare. In 1960, Davis was sentenced to six months in prison for refusing to answer questions about his membership in the Communist Party. Davis’s lawyers defended him with the innovative legal argument that the First Amendment barred such questioning. While Davis lost in the courts, his legal battles were still an important effort in a larger battle to extend the parameters on political...
Feb 18, 2024•36 min
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, a discussion with Adam Johnson on the Democrats' failed border policy. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Feb 11, 2024•27 min
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Moira Donegan on Joe Biden’s need to embrace pro-choice politics. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Feb 03, 2024•36 min
Gaza, under siege and bombardment from Israel, remains ground zero for violence in the Middle East, sending shock waves through the region. The Gaza onslaught is provoking a series of escalating wars with the United States and Israel on one side against Iran and its allies and proxies on the other. Fighting of various degrees of intensity has broken out in Yemen, the Red Sea, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria as well as the borders of Israel, among other places. This week, I speak with Trita Parsi, vice ...
Jan 21, 2024•29 min
On this episode of The Time of Monsters , I talked to Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian-American analyst who heads the Palestine/Israel Program at the Arab Center in Washington, DC. He offered an informed perspective on the ideological origins of the bear hug strategy and how it has manifestly failed in its stated goal of trying to restrain Israel from excessive violence. We also discuss the way Biden’s strategy is bad for American national interest and hurts Biden’s re-election chances. We also ta...
Dec 10, 2023•33 min
This week, I talked with Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy, about the recent death of Henry Kissinger and how the violence in Israel/Palestine could realistic give way to diplomatic solutions. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Dec 02, 2023•42 min
For this week's episode of The Time of Monsters, I’m doing a joint podcast with the crew from Know York Enemy (Sam Adler-Bell and Matt Sitman) talking about the legacy of the Kennedy family. Our talk is based on our shared love for Garry Wills’ The Kennedy Imprisonment , a revelatory book about not just the Kennedy family but the nature of 'great man politics.' Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy...
Nov 26, 2023•1 hr 44 min
On Wednesday, Alex Sammon reported in Slate that “one of the biggest, bitterest, and most expensive political battles of the 2024 election cycle has emerged: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC], one of the most powerful, best-funded influence operations in Washington, is planning to go all out to knock the famed “Squad”—the small group of highly visible and popular progressive legislators of color, most of them women—out of office.” AIPAC is planning on spending more than $100 m...
Nov 19, 2023•28 min
The news from the Middle East remains bleak, with the Israeli response to the Hamas massacre leading to more than 10,000 deaths, mainly of civilians. Most people regard the unfolding news with horror, but there is a subset of people who are not hiding the fact they are thrilled. A subset of evangelicals known as Pentecostals see the news as proof that the long awaited apocalypse, which will herald the creation of a new heaven and a new earth, is at hand. They are strongly pro-Israel because they...
Nov 12, 2023•32 min
Martin Scorsese’s masterful new movie, Killers of the Flower Moon strikes out to new territory for the famed director. It’s his first foray into the American West (although set a generation after the traditional western and overturning many of the conventions of the genre). The film also explores many of his familiar themes: toxic masculinity, domestic violence, gangs, criminal conspiracies, spirituality and the limits of the law. On this episode of The Time of Monsters, I am joined by David Kli...
Nov 05, 2023•58 min
Last month, the Canadian parliament embarrassed itself during an official visit by Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelensky when the entire legislative body gave a standing ovation to a veteran of the Waffen SS, the paramilitary wing of the Nazi movement. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau later apologized for incident. To understand what happened, it’s important to realize that Canada, like other Western nations, has a long history of sheltering Nazi war criminals. This was not a matter of neglig...
Oct 29, 2023•37 min
The Hamas massacres that started last Saturday and the ensuing retaliation by the Israel government deserve both a moral witness and policy analysis. On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Spencer Ackerman, Nation contributor who wrote about the events here, provides both. In a searing and informed conversation, he places front and center the human worth of all the innocent victims. He also places the event in the framework of the bipartisan Abraham Accords, supported by Donald Trump and Joe B...
Oct 15, 2023•34 min
A government shutdown has been temporarily avoided, but congress remains a mess. Kevin McCarthy has been ousted from his position as House Speaker. The hand-shake deal he made over Ukraine funding is now in doubt and the prospect of another shutdown drama looms, bringing with it the real danger of a prolonged government closure. Chris Lehmann, D.C. Bureau Chief for The Nation joins the program to look at the deep history of the GOP’s persistent proclivity for empowering extremists in congress. S...
Oct 07, 2023•24 min
The United Auto Workers union has launched an innovative strike against all three major automakers, a major disruption that is upturning American politics, as both major parties are divided on it. On the Republican side, Donald Trump is disingenuously posing as a populist by going to the picket line. But rivals like Nikki Haley and Tim Scott show that the GOP commitment to union-bashing is still strong. On the Democratic side, Joe Biden has a strong record as a president supporting labor but he ...
Sep 30, 2023•25 min
Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique (1963) and one of the founders of the National Organization for Women (NOW), was a hero of feminism, but a complicated and difficult hero. Her book and activism were pivotal for igniting second-wave feminism in the 1960s. But as head of NOW, her leadership was irascible and nettlesome, marred especially by her homophobic hostility towards lesbian activism. In a recent review for The New Yorker looking at books about NOW and Friedan, Moira Donegan la...
Sep 17, 2023•56 min
On this episode of the Time of Monsters podcast, Laura Marsh discusses Noami Klein's new book, Doppleganger, about Noami Wolf. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Sep 10, 2023•47 min
