Time for a fun one, America's favorite fighting Frenchman. You may have seen streets, parks, and subway stations that include the name Lafayette, but may not know much about the man other than the show-stopping performance of Daveed Diggs, who played Lafayette in Hamilton. The actual Marquis de Lafayette was born in France to immense wealth and privilege, allowing him to mingle in the most elite circles of the time. He shipped off to the US colonies to find his fortune and endeared himself to Ge...
Oct 05, 2021•56 min
Note: Some listeners may find the sensitive content discussed in this episode disturbing. Who is complicit in some of society’s dirtiest work? If you grill a steak, someone somewhere had to butcher the cow under brutal working conditions. Our twenty year war on terror has been fought much the same way, with a relatively small group of our fellow Americans doing difficult, morally fraught work that allows huge majorities of Americans to live in blissful ignorance. In “Dirty Work: Essential Jobs a...
Sep 28, 2021•50 min
In “The Ten Year War: Obamacare and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage,” journalist Jonathan Cohn writes about the battle over healthcare and takes readers into the impetus for, history of, and current state of the Affordable Care Act. He joins to discuss what’s missing, inflection points, the role of bipartisanship, and what the ACA means for Americans trying to navigate an increasingly complex system.
Sep 21, 2021•56 min
In President Biden's vision of a greener future, half of all new cars sold in 2030 will be electric. As fossil fuel usage continues to take a toll on the environment, the need for cleaner transportation is more important now than ever. Bloomberg Auto & Tech reporter Dana Hull has spent more than a decade covering EVs. The California-based journalist remembers when skeptics believed that Tesla wouldn’t survive. Now, other major automakers are trying to play catch up. She joins to talk about progr...
Sep 14, 2021•49 min
Civil rights attorney and author Alexandra Brodsky has spent her entire career focusing closely on ways institutions can best address sexual harms. Her work is the subject of “Sexual Justice: Supporting Victims, Ensuring Due Process, and Resisting the Conservative Backlash,” a book published in August 2021. She joins to talk about the importance of treating both victims and the accused fairly, the Biden administration’s response to Title IX, and what’s ahead as institutions seek to address sexua...
Sep 07, 2021•56 min
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Spencer Ackerman joins to discuss catalysts for the War on Terror, inflection points, recent developments in Kabul, and the role of U.S. hegemony in continued global combat. Ackerman also talks about his new book, “Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump,” which tells the story of how the weaponized bigotry that fueled the war on terror after 9/11 created the conditions for Trumpism and increased threats to American democracy.
Aug 31, 2021•53 min
Grammy award-winning musician Ani DiFranco joins for an enlightening conversation about her creative process, how she’s pivoted during the pandemic, and what’s enabled her to keep making music after so many years.
Aug 24, 2021•52 min
Note: This conversation was recorded on July 27th, 2021, before the latest news in Kabul. Recognized around the globe for her research on corruption, Sarah Chayes has seen her fair share of corruption at play. She also had frontline experience in Afghanistan during the events leading up to the country’s collapse. The anti-corruption activist witnessed incidents that ultimately contributed to the United States’ recent withdrawal. Chayes’ career has led her from reporting in Paris for NPR and cove...
Aug 17, 2021•54 min
Aug 10, 2021•1 hr 2 min
Producer Tiffany Champion is back with a post-quarantine vibe check on the WITHpod inbox! In this backstage glimpse of the podcast, hear how Chris Hayes prepares for interviews, which recent episode got the biggest response from listeners, and find out about the exciting changes happening on the show!
Aug 03, 2021•46 min
Why is the housing market so hot right now? From the pandemic-induced influx of people working remotely to our collective obsession with cruising Zillow (it’s not just us, right?), Bloomberg Opinion columnist Justin Fox discusses why some parts of the country are seeing housing prices sky rocket.
Jul 27, 2021•52 min
From her experience as a single mom trying to figure out how to pay her bills, to her time as a nurse working tirelessly for her patients, to her dedication as an activist marching for accountability in the streets of Ferguson, Congresswoman Bush can tell you exactly why her district voted for her in 2020. She knows she didn’t take the road well-travelled on her path to Congress, and her defeat of 10-term incumbent Lacy Clay was one of the biggest upsets of the election, but it’s her relatabilit...
Jul 20, 2021•46 min
What happens when the bombing stops? The unfortunate reality of American news coverage of Israel and Palestine is that it centers almost entirely on times of extreme violence, broadcasting dramatic images of explosions and destruction. But as soon as some sort of ceasefire is reached, any future coverage of the area instead turns to the state of Israeli politics. The result is not only an asymmetry between our knowledge of Israeli and Palestinian politics, but also an ignorance around what life ...
Jul 13, 2021•54 min
Dan Taberski is an expert at pulling on threads. His tireless curiosity and impeccable reporting resulted in a run of acclaimed investigative podcasts, including "Missing Richard Simmons", "Running From COPS", and "Surviving Y2K". He's back with an Apple original podcast "The Line", which uses the case of Eddie Gallagher, a former Navy SEAL charged with war crimes, as a lens to understand the blurred moral boundaries soldiers are asked to operate within when sent to battle. You can listen to "Th...
Jul 06, 2021•41 min
Alright, tell it to us straight - what's the deal with UFOs? In recent years, there's been a steady drip of reporting about UFOs that has penetrated mainstream culture, moving beyond The X-Files and straight into the Pentagon. A series of reports not only confirmed the existence of a government program dedicated to understanding UFOs, but also showed eye-grabbing footage of military encounters. So what do we know about them? And what exactly is the government up to? Gideon Lewis-Kraus set out to...
Jun 29, 2021•50 min
You might think that nothing good happens on the Internet anymore. It's just an algorithmically driven continuous feed of rage, disinformation, and subterfuge. Natalie Wynn, known for her YouTube channel ContraPoints , proves that good things are still happening on the Internet. Part philosopher, part performance artist, and wholly genre-defying, Wynn crafts gorgeous and ethereal video essays on everything from TERFS and J.K Rowling to the rise of incels. There’s no one on the Internet quite lik...
Jun 22, 2021•49 min
Here in the United States, things are closer to normal than they have been in a long time. Businesses have reopened, gatherings have started to resume, and COVID cases and deaths continue to fall to levels that we have not seen since the very beginning of the pandemic. But even three months ago, it was not clear that this would be the point we are at. So how did the government ramp up its vaccine campaign to get us to a closer normal? This week former White House senior advisor to the COVID resp...
Jun 15, 2021•48 min
How does the human body take in and use energy? It is a simple question, but one that we still do not have a definitive answer to. This week Associate Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology, Herman Pontzer, joins to shed light on these evolutionary mysteries. How did our bodies get to be the way they are? How do we take in and expend energy? And how do we keep ourselves happy and healthy in the modern world we have built?
Jun 08, 2021•47 min
What we call history isn't a fixed thing; it's a narrative, contested and fought over, changing over time. Right now, the United States is in the midst of a massive historical battle over its own narrative, specifically the legacy of slavery and race in America. The backlash to that fight is spilling into public policy as Republican state legislatures push to regulate the way students are taught about the founding of our country. In Clint Smith's new book "How The Word is Passed", Smith studies ...
Jun 01, 2021•52 min
What is gender-affirming health care? Around the country, there’s a Republican campaign to legislate and regulate the lives of trans youth. The most destructive of these efforts would bar trans youth in certain states from accessing gender-affirming treatment. Dr. Izzy Lowell runs Queer Med, a private clinic that specializes in providing accessible health care to trans patients ranging from kids to adults. Her practice covers 10 states across the South – and half of those have anti-trans health ...
May 25, 2021•49 min
What causes violent crime rates to rise? It probably won’t surprise you to learn that 2020 was the deadliest year in American history but what you may not know is that 2020 also saw a staggering rise in homicides and violent crime. It’s impossible to separate the two – the indefinite closure of crucial community spaces and abrupt economic upheaval were felt nationwide but hit hardest in areas most vulnerable to increased interpersonal violence. To understand what happened last year, it’s worth l...
May 18, 2021•54 min
We largely hear about China in the news through the lens of what the Chinese government is doing, but it is a country with billions of people and a history thousands of years old. For as large and influential as it is, Americans do not consume Chinese cultural exports in the same way that China does in the reverse. Chinese made movies are not screened in most theaters across the United States. We do not watch Chinese sitcoms dubbed. While China and other countries regularly consume American cult...
May 11, 2021•49 min
Back in 2019, a panel of health experts declared that of every country in the whole world, the United States was the most prepared for handling a pandemic. So what went wrong? Acclaimed author Michael Lewis is unparalleled in unearthing the most compelling characters to tell an unexpected story – it’s no wonder he’s had multiple books turned into movies ( The Blind Side , Moneyball , The Big Short) . Now, Lewis has done it again with his latest book, “ The Premonition ”, following the people who...
May 04, 2021•45 min
How does bitcoin work? Where did it come from, why does it exist, and will it ever be used for everyday purchases? Far from some passing fad, bitcoin has been around for more than a decade now and shows no signs of going anywhere. We figured it was long overdue to understand the most well-known cryptocurrency and the problem it is trying to solve. Lucky for us, Bloomberg editor Joe Weisenthal came prepared.
Apr 27, 2021•54 min
Racial hierarchy in America is deeply embedded in big structural institutions. From housing to criminal justice to education, there’s decades of scholarly work and research dissecting the lasting legacies of policies that disproportionately disenfranchise people of color. Now, tax law scholar Dorothy A. Brown has a mind-blowing new book about race and tax, uncovering the ways the tax code is constructed to build white wealth while impoverishing black Americans. In a conversation that is engaging...
Apr 20, 2021•53 min
Wikipedia is not like a lot of our current internet. It’s not like sites like Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube that mines its users’ attention and tries to capture it through push notifications and algorithms in order to maximize profits. Wikipedia is a vestige of an earlier de-commodified, open sourced internet. It’s an amazing well of knowledge built from decentralized human collaboration that anyone with an internet connection can freely access. It is an incredible institution where users can re...
Apr 13, 2021•49 min0
What happens in your body after you get a vaccine? The arrival of the COVID-19 vaccines feels like the first positive mile marker in the pandemic but folks have a lot of questions – How were they developed? How do they work? Is there anything we should worry about? Dr. Peter Hotez has been a leading voice over the last year, lending his expertise in global health and vaccine development during some of the most crucial moments of the pandemic. Now, he’s here to address our biggest questions about...
Apr 06, 2021•57 min
Over the past few years a broader conversation around speech has intensified in the United States. It is a conversation about speech, taboo, social justice, power and hierarchy, penalty about what things people can or can't say, should or shouldn't say in what environments, and what censure should attach to that kind of speech. It’s an incredibly thorny conversation to have, filled with exhaustively overused terms like “cancel culture”, but it is not an unimportant one. This week scholar and lin...
Mar 30, 2021•1 hr 4 min0
Amazon puts just about everything you might need one click away and over the last year, people have been turning to the tech giant more than ever. But all that frictionless efficiency comes at huge social costs. In his new book “Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America”, ProPublica Reporter Alec MacGillis investigates Amazon’s impact on the deepening economic divide in towns and cities across the country. Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America by Alec MacGillis Listen t...
Mar 23, 2021•57 min
What happens when you raise the minimum wage? The almost decade long push for a federal 15$ minimum wage made new noise in the last few weeks when Democrats tried to include it in the American Relief Act. Although this new push failed, the policy remains incredibly popular even though there are even some Democrats who are opposed. So, what are the real world consequences of a raised minimum wage, and what are its impacts on the market and labor? This week professor of economics at the University...
Mar 16, 2021•54 min
