The Assignment with Audie Cornish
Every Thursday on The Assignment, host Audie Cornish explores the animating forces of this extraordinary American political moment. It’s not about the horse race, it’s about the larger cultural ideas driving the conversation: the role of online influencers on the electorate, the intersection of pop culture and politics, and discussions with primary voices and thinkers who are shaping the political conversation.
Episodes
September 12, 2024 • 38 mins
Colleges and universities are still dealing with the political fallout of last spring’s campus protests and encampments. It’s a political fight that’s led to the ouster of high-profile university presidents and generated national debate and even Congressional hearings. Audie talks with Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, about how campus protests over Gaza offer a lens on wider arguments about academic freedom. And we h...
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September 5, 2024 • 35 mins
Audie talks with actor and producer LeVar Burton about the political events that shaped his life and informed the way he guided younger generations, especially as they grappled with the political and cultural events of their own time.
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August 29, 2024 • 32 mins
Kamala Harris has “Freedom.” Donald Trump has “God Bless the USA” (and a lot of cease-and-desist letters). What makes for a good campaign song? And why do we respond so viscerally to the ones that work? Audie talks with DJ Cassidy, who DJ'd the DNC Roll Call. And Dana Gorzelany-Mostak, who studies the use of music in political campaigns.
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August 21, 2024 • 43 mins
We've watched Democratic leaders hand the reins to the next generation at their surprisingly lit convention in Chicago this week. Audie sits down in with CNN’s Van Jones and Evan McMorris-Santoro of the nonprofit news site NOTUS (News of the United States) to talk about who’s taking the stage and changing the party.
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August 15, 2024 • 31 mins
Audie talks with journalist Kara Swisher about the rise of Silicon Valley’s big donors and how Trump won some of them over. Plus, how Kamala Harris’ California roots have worked to her advantage with tech donors.
Kara is the author of “Burn Book: A Tech Love Story.”
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August 8, 2024 • 39 mins
CNN’s Elle Reeve did her best-known reporting during the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, when she followed neo-Nazis over a weekend of violent protests. Seven years later, her new book looks at how that movement — born in online communities of mostly white men — gave rise to extremist thinking that is now threaded through today’s political discourse.
Audie talks with Reeve about reporting on Nazis, the mai...
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August 1, 2024 • 36 mins
How will Donald Trump and Republicans talk about Kamala Harris without walking into a buzzsaw of accusations and potential backlash over attacks on her race and gender? This week Audie talks with two people with some answers: Kevin Madden is a CNN Political Commentator and was a senior advisor to Mitt Romney on his presidential campaigns, and Doug Heye was the head of communications for the RNC and for the House Majority Leader.
Le...
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July 25, 2024 • 33 mins
Every presidential campaign eventually finds ways to take advantage of the cultural moment. Vice President Harris’s current moment in the viral sun happened as soon as she became the frontrunner of the Democratic ticket. How and why did it happen? Audie talks with two observers: researcher Nina Jankowicz, who studied online gendered abuse and disinformation against women in political life. And Deja Foxx, who worked on Harris's 201...
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July 22, 2024 • 44 mins
After three weeks of battling an intense debate from within his own party, President Joe Biden made a surprise announcement on Sunday, ending his re-election campaign. Shortly after, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. Audie talks with Phil Mattingly, CNN’s Chief Domestic Correspondent. He takes us inside Biden’s historic decision and tells us what to expect from here.
CNN: Inside Biden’s unprecedent...
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July 18, 2024 • 23 mins
Former President Donald Trump thrilled the Republican National Convention by entering the arena with a bandage on his right ear, evidence of the assassination attempt from two days prior. With fervor running high, Trump announced that his running mate would be bestselling author and Senator JD Vance from Ohio. Meredith McGraw covers the Trump campaign for POLITICO and she’s here to explain how this choice impacts the presidential r...
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July 15, 2024 • 25 mins
America was shaken on Saturday as former president Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. It’s an event of historical significance that’s already re-shaping the presidential race. Kristen Holmes is here to explain how. She’s the CNN correspondent assigned to the Trump campaign, and Kristen and Audie met up on Monday at the CNN-POLITICO Grill on day one of the Republican National Conv...
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July 11, 2024 • 31 mins
Reality television has turned into a sprawling industry of pimple-poppers, amazing racers, the broken hearted, docusoaps, and sooo many housewives – people willing to share the good and bad of their lives with an audience that by design is meant to judge them for it. It also gave us a president. Audie talks with Pulitzer Prize winning New Yorker writer Emily Nussbaum about how and why reality shows have become must-see TV. Her new ...
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July 8, 2024 • 33 mins
Michigan and Wisconsin are Midwestern swing states with the power to make or break the election. They’re crucial bricks in the Democrats’ “Blue Wall” strategy, a wall that’s starting to crack. On this third installment of “All Over the Map,” John King and his team visit Milwaukee, site of next week’s Republican convention and home to a Black liberal base increasingly disaffected with a President and party they feel abandoned by. In...
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July 4, 2024 • 35 mins
This Independence Day, as we gather around the grill and watch fireworks with our friends and families, we wanted to revisit a conversation Audie had with Baratunde Thurston, writer at Puck News and host of the PBS show America Outdoors.
What does it mean to love this country despite its divisions? How can we come together and hold space for the complexity of the American story? And what would those conversations sound like if we...
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July 1, 2024 • 33 mins
During the 2020 election, there was perhaps no bigger upset than Joe Biden carrying Georgia. This was the first time a Democrat had won the reliably red state in three decades — in years past, Democrats didn’t even think to campaign in the state. So, how do Georgia voters feel about their newfound swing state status? And will this change the way they vote in November? On this second installment of our series “All Over the Map,” Joh...
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June 27, 2024 • 31 mins
Between Russia's war with Ukraine and Israel's war with Hamas, it feels like we're seeing the limits of diplomacy. Can we still depend on global alliances and good old-fashioned negotiations to solve the problems of today, or are we better off trying a different approach? Audie speaks with Julianne Smith, United States Permanent Representative to NATO, about the state of U. S. diplomacy and what it looks like when diplomacy works a...
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June 24, 2024 • 36 mins
More than 158,000 Republicans cast Pennsylvania primary votes for Nikki Haley nearly two months after she quit the race for president. That’s enough votes to swing a state critical to victory in November – and Haley had similar showings in other battlegrounds. So, how do these critical swing voters choose between Joe Biden and Donald Trump – two candidates they do not like? In the first installment of a three-part series, CNN Chief...
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June 20, 2024 • 27 mins
What does it mean for a news story to matter? To have impact on YOU, the audience? Does it have to be about a person who has been wronged? An institution caught in a cover up? Do you need to feel like it could affect your life personally? Audie wrestled these questions while serving as judge for this year’s Livingston Awards, which recognize impactful journalism by reporters under the age of 35. She calls up this year’s winners: Al...
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June 17, 2024 • 27 mins
What can we learn about the future of our elections from political prediction markets? Audie calls up Thomas Gurca, Director of Iowa Electronic Markets (IEM), an online futures market that includes political betting. He explains what makes prediction markets different from traditional gambling and how IEM continues to predict presidential elections with better accuracy than the polls.
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June 13, 2024 • 35 mins
Filmmaker and journalist dream hampton’s new documentary, “It Was All a Dream,” chronicles the “the golden age of Hip-Hop" in the early 1990’s. She talks with Audie about the film, which is made up of footage she shot in the 90’s that’s been in storage for 30 years: hanging out with Biggie Smalls in the studio, Lil’ Kim in the neighborhood, and interviews with a before-he-was famous Snoop Dog. Through her writing at publications li...
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