Congressman Max Rose says he has no regrets. Elected in the 2018 blue wave, he flipped New York’s conservative-leaning 11th district, which includes all of Staten Island and a corner of Brooklyn. Now, two years later, he’s one of the frontline Democrats who lost their reelection left wondering what went wrong. In our continuing dissection of the 2020 election, we sat (back) down with Rep. Rose to get a candid perspective on what pundits are getting wrong and what, if anything, he’d do differentl...
Dec 22, 2020•52 min
What were the shifts in the 2020 election? Why was the polling so off? How did the coalitions change? As the dust settles, and we can dive into official numbers, a clearer picture is forming of what actually happened during this election cycle. David Shor is a political data scientist who works to help elect Democrats. This week, David joins to look at the data and help answer some of the outstanding questions about the 2020 election. As well as layout the trends that have led to this political ...
Dec 15, 2020•55 min
The local newspaper is dying. Across the country, newsrooms are either shuttering completely or struggling through massive staff layoffs. It's becoming increasingly clear that in the void left by trusted local reporting, misinformation is taking root. A sweeping investigation by the New York Times uncovered a conservative pay-for-play network that disguises itself as unbiased local coverage. The enterprise includes 1300 sites spanning all 50 states, and with familiar web layouts and innocuous ti...
Dec 08, 2020•48 min
What happened to the down-ballot Democrats? Going into election day, Democrats were expecting to pick up seats and expand their control of the House. Instead, they suffered consequential blows, still managing to hold the majority but ultimately losing seats. It was a shock that launched a bevy of post-mortems trying to figure out what went wrong. For Florida Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell it was impossible to sit back and listen as folks diagnosed from the sidelines what she had experience...
Dec 01, 2020•53 min
Has online activism and doomscrolling through twitter turned politics into just a hobby for people? At what point is it just a way to spend time rather than affect meaningful change? This week Tufts University professor, Eitan Hersh, joins to talk about what he diagnoses as “political hobbyism”, what real political engagement looks like, and argues how this self-gratifying online hobbyism can be detrimental to the real political activism needed to create change. Politics is for Power: How To Mov...
Nov 24, 2020•53 min
Are Republicans losing their grip on Texas? Election night saw Democrats largely unable to build on the gains made in 2018 when an insurgent Beto O’Rourke ran a grassroots senate campaign that gained national attention. But despite frustrations from Democrats that they didn’t perform as well as they hoped this November, there’s still cause for concern among Texas Republicans. The population in metro areas is growing rapidly and demographics are moving to the left. So just how strong is the Repub...
Nov 17, 2020•54 min
The U.S. just surpassed 10 million confirmed cases of coronavirus as infection rates spike across the country. If you look at the charts tracking the reported cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, it shows the country on a dangerous trajectory. How did we get to this point? Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci has spent time studying the sociology of pandemics and says her alarm bells were going off all the way back in January. She’s spent months writing with an almost unparalleled clarity about the many i...
Nov 10, 2020•1 hr 8 min
What is the deal with all those fundraising emails? The ones with increasingly dramatic subject lines and maybe a dash of emotional manipulation – they’re everywhere, but do they work? There’s a science to the fundraising email, a lot of data, research, and trial and error. It’s something Michael Whitney’s spent a lot of time thinking about, first in ‘03 on the Howard Dean campaign, and most recently on both the ‘16 and ‘20 Sanders campaigns where he worked as digital fundraising manager. Online...
Nov 03, 2020•50 min
Why is Donald Trump doing better with Latino voters in 2020 than he was in 2016? The central tension in even asking that question is – who exactly are Latino voters? As campaign veteran Chuck Rocha points out, beneath that label is a deeply diverse group. Still, Rocha found success in reaching Latino voters as senior advisor to the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign. So what did he do right that other campaigns are struggling to do? From outreach to messaging to the undeniable generational divide, Chu...
Oct 27, 2020•51 min
What does the world think of us right now? Former US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power says it isn’t surprising that our standing in the world has dropped, but rather just how precipitous those drops have been. This conversation, conducted as part of the Texas Tribune Festival, unpacks the sources of humiliation and isolation brought about by the Trump administration and what the stakes are for American democracy in the international context. RELATED LINKS: Education of an Idealist by Samantha...
Oct 20, 2020•34 min
We are just weeks away from an unprecedented election day. In order to vote safely during the pandemic, more people than ever are voting by mail or early in person, and early numbers point to a strong likelihood of record turnout. There are hundreds of lawsuits across the country centered on access to polling places, ballot drop boxes, and deadlines for ballots. And on top of all of that, we have a President whose rhetoric is directly aimed at undermining the legitimacy of the election if he doe...
Oct 13, 2020•1 hr
How do we stabilize an economic crisis? Years before we faced the Coronavirus pandemic and the economic crises of the 21st century, the theories of British born economist John Maynard Keynes helped lead the United States out of the Great Depression. His ideas revolutionized how we looked at scarcity and invented our understanding macroeconomics. This week Zach Carter sits down to discuss his new book about the life and influence of John Maynard Keynes and the importance of Keynesian economics in...
Oct 06, 2020•1 hr 1 min
Here by popular demand – all your QAnon questions answered with two of the best reporters on the beat. Is QAnon a cult, a religion, a conspiracy theory, a state of mind? Who or what is Q? How did it gain such prominence and capture the minds of so many? Is it harmless – or is it dangerous? NBC reporters Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins help us pull on the thread of a movement that exploded off the message boards and into the mainstream, with a fervent supporter likely headed to Congress. Follow B...
Sep 29, 2020•1 hr
Barbara Smith has been doing The Work for decades. Born into the era of Jim Crow, Smith joined the civil rights movement as a teenager in the 60s, volunteered at the Congress of Racial Equality in Cleveland right out of high school, canvassed for housing rights, became part of the women’s movement after graduating college, and then co-founded a black feminist group called the Combahee River Collective in the 70s. The group grappled with issues of race, class, sex, and homophobia, and is credited...
Sep 22, 2020•57 min
Did we learn the right lessons from the Iraq war? Before we can answer that, we must understand why we went into Iraq in the first place. Author and journalist Robert Draper’s new book “To Start a War” chronicles with incredibly painstaking research and reporting how the most consequential foreign policy disaster of our time came to be. Listen to him detail why 18 months after September 11th, we invaded a country that had nothing to do with the attacks, resulting in tens of thousands dead, trill...
Sep 15, 2020•58 min
What does it take to keep a restaurant alive in the time of coronavirus? In March, restaurants across the country closed their doors in order to combat the spread of Covid-19. Left behind is an industry that is largely made up of small business owners scrambling to figure out how they can stay afloat. This week, Tony Bezsylko, co-owner of the local Chicago restaurant Cellar Door Provisions, sits down to talk about his passion for baking, how he started his own restaurant, and how he and his part...
Sep 08, 2020•1 hr 2 min
How did America’s modern conservative movement come to power? Historian and author Rick Perlstein’s prolific work has traced the arc of modern electoral politics, and specifically has laid out how modern conservatism arose. This week, he sits down to talk about his newest book “Reaganland” and how the ideological shifts and circumstances that lead to the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan helped set the stage for the conservative embrace of Donald Trump today. Related: Reaganland: America’s Right Tu...
Sep 01, 2020•56 min
Whether it’s refrigerating your food or turning on the lights or connecting to the Internet, having access to power is what makes modern society possible. And yet, you likely have no choice in which company you get your power from. Whether the service is bad or they lobby against your own policy interests, it doesn’t matter – if you want power, you give them your money. It’s a sweet deal for those companies and, as Leah Stokes recounts in captivating detail, they’ll go to extreme lengths to ensu...
Aug 25, 2020•1 hr
Originally Aired April 2019 Did you know there are roughly one million people currently held in internment camps in China? One million people detained against their will, facing no criminal charges, cut off from the outside world. This is the story of the Uyghurs, a small insulated ethnic minority in Western China. The predominantly Muslim group has faced growing levels of Islamophobia and paranoia from the Chinese government. Right now, roughly ten percent of the Uyghur population has been ‘dis...
Aug 18, 2020•47 min
Does the United States have a caste system? In her research on the Jim Crow South, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Isabel Wilkerson found that the word ‘racism’ fell far short in capturing the depth and totality of oppression people existed under. In her powerful new book, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents”, Wilkerson uses caste as a lens to reexamine ourselves and the arbitrary brutality centered in the founding of America. Caste: The Origins of our Discontents by Isabel Wilke...
Aug 11, 2020•51 min
Did Donald Trump hijack the Republican party, or is he the party’s logical conclusion? Having spent decades as a political operative putting Republicans in office, Stuart Stevens argues it’s the latter. His new book “It Was All a Lie” sifts through the party’s decades-long march that led to the election of President Trump and reckons with what remains of the Republican political project. RELATED READING: It Was All a Lie by Stuart Stevens I Hope This Is Not Another Lie About the Republican Party...
Aug 04, 2020•45 min
How did wearing a mask become a polarizing issue? If you’re paying close attention, the arguments against masks might sound familiar: denying the science, cherry-picking data, cries of infringing on personal freedoms. It’s a page out of the Republican establishment’s playbook for weaponizing climate change denial. Back in 2018, Chris spoke with Vox writer David Roberts about the crisis of information cultivated by the current conservative movement and it's a conversation that seems, if possible,...
Jul 28, 2020•50 min
Who should we be building monuments to in America? Few figures have pushed for a truly fair and equal society in this country like Frederick Douglass. A man who saw the full promise of American democracy even years before the start of the Civil War. This week Chris sits down with professor and historian David Blight to talk about his Pulitzer winning book Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom . The two discuss the life of the freed slave, orator, and writer whose words would go on to push Ameri...
Jul 21, 2020•58 min
How do you unseat a 16-term member of Congress? Ask Luke Hayes who is fresh off his role as campaign manager for Jamaal Bowman, a middle school principal poised to defeat New York Congressman Eliot Engel. Now, Luke’s here to talk about the nuts and bolts of campaigning and it absolutely doesn’t come up at all that Luke is also Chris’s younger brother. Let’s say you want to run for office – what happens next? Luke starts on day one and walks us through what your campaign needs, what your day-to-d...
Jul 14, 2020•58 min
Dr. Carl Hart wants to challenge the way you think about drugs. As a neuroscientist studying the effects drugs have on the brain, a lot of Dr. Hart's research undercuts some of the most pervasive stories we’ve been told about drugs. How much of our reaction to illicit drug use is based in the pharmacological facts versus social coding and moral judgement? And how have those narratives played into the cultural representation of drugs, the war on drugs, and how the drug market is policed? Dr. Hart...
Jul 07, 2020•56 min
As protesters across the country continue to march in the wake of the death of George Floyd, a new scrutiny has been placed on our current policing system. Public sentiment has largely swung in favor of police reform, and many would recognize that the current system is in serious need of fixing, if not broken. So, what should be the role of police in society? Brandon del Pozo has a view from the inside, having started his career in the NYPD and spending 4 years as chief of police in Burlington, ...
Jun 30, 2020•1 hr 9 min
What are you prepared to dismantle? What are you prepared to build? As we witness this nationwide reckoning on racial disparities in America, these are the questions Sherrilyn Ifill, President of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, wants us to ask ourselves. In her work, she sees how the strength of each movement is built atop the ones that have come before. It’s slow and painstaking work, but to be a participant in this country means that you must figure out your role in making change. Sherrilyn Ifil...
Jun 23, 2020•55 min
If you want to understand the conversation around abolishing the police, you should start here. We can’t think of a better time for an encore presentation of this 2019 episode with Mariame Kaba on how to radically rethink our approach to public safety and what it would look like if we got rid of the criminal justice system as we know it. What if we just got rid of prisons? The United States is the epicenter of mass incarceration – but exactly what is it we hope to get out of putting people in pr...
Jun 16, 2020•59 min
If you listen to anyone about this time of rage and grief and action, make it Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Trymaine Lee. From his origins reporting on police and crime in Philadelphia to his nights covering Ferguson in 2014 to his Emmy Award-winning work on the lasting trauma of the violence in Chicago, Lee offers a raw and insightful perspective on this national moment. Subscribe to "Into America" wherever you get your podcasts...
Jun 09, 2020•55 min
Who thought the Electoral College was a good idea? In two of the last five presidential elections, the candidate who lost the popular vote still managed to win the White House. So why are we still electing the most powerful position this way and what are the alternatives? Jesse Wegman, author of the new book “Let the People Pick the President”, gives amazing insight into the slapdash construction of the Electoral College. Hear him make the case that the institution we ended up with is divisive a...
Jun 02, 2020•54 min
