The Nation Podcasts

How do we face how bad things are now, while also understanding the reasons for hope, and the opportunities for action? Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, will comment.

Plus: Robert Reich says the origin of our troubles with Trump and MAGA go back to the sixties; he says it started with the sixties movements – which created “a giant political void that would eventually be filled by Donald Trump’s angry, bigot...

Michael Albertus, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, joins the program to talk about his book Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn’t, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies. The group explores notions of land from archaeological evidence thousands of years ago, the enclosure movement of the medieval era, the European mindset vs those of indigenous peoples in the era of colonization, South Africa land r...

Writing in The New Republic, Greg Sargent called attention to Zohran Mamdani’s highly

effective media strategy which has allowed him to reach many voters that have been drifting

away from the Democratic Party, especially young people and immigrants. In punchy, short

videos, Mamdani has offered an optimistic message that celebrates big city life and diversity

while showing how government policies can help make life better.

I talked to Gr...

Don’t forget to purchase our “Welcome to the Crusades” special series!

Danny and Derek are monitoring the Liam Neeson-Pamela Anderson situation. Otherwise, in this week’s news: a new study says most countries are exploiting groundwater aquifers at an unsustainable rate (2:26); in Israel-Palestine, another Gaza ceasefire breaks down (4:56), Israel’s “humanitarian pause” has little effect on the sta...

Paris Marx is joined by Jacob Silverman to discuss Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire’s Islamophobic attack on Zohran Mamdani, what it tells us about the state of tech’s politics, and how Donald Trump is enriching himself through crypto scams.

Jacob Silverman is a journalist and the author of the forthcoming book Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley.

Six million Democrats who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 did not vote in 2024. What’s wrong with them? Pollster and strategist Celinda Lake explains who they are, and what it would take to get them back to the polls in the 2026 midterms – and in 2028.

Also: a suggestion for summer reading: M: Son of the Century is a 750-page historical novel about the rise of Mussolini, by Antonio Scurati. John Powers, critic-at-large for NPR’s Fresh A...

Great Power Week continues here at American Prestige as historian Michael Brenes joins the show to talk about how prolonged competition with China threatens democracy, peace, and prosperity. They compare Biden and Trump’s respective approaches to China, whether the national security establishment is trying to manufacture an existential threat out of The People’s Republic, whether there is any national interest in...

Since 2015, Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the American foreign policy establishment

for being too belligerent and unwilling to negotiate with adversaries. But in office, Trump has

carried out a foreign policy that has all the vices he has criticized and been even more inclined

to risk war or get into new wars. In a recent essay in The New York Times, Stephen Wertheim,

a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the C...

Don’t forget to buy our “Welcome to the Crusades” miniseries!

Danny and Derek also rail against the war pigs, but lack the heavy riffs. This week: the International Court of Justice rules that wealthy nations must take action on climate change or bear responsibility (1:20); clashes escalate on the Thai-Cambodian border (4:08); a ceasefire holds in Syria’s Suwayda province after clashes between Dru...

Paris Marx is joined by Dan McQuillan to discuss the political push by global governments towards rapid AI adoption at all costs, and how citizens can critically rethink not only our dependence on these technologies, but imagine a collective future that benefits everyone.

Dan McQuillan is a lecturer at Goldsmiths College, University of London and the author of Resisting AI.

A federal court in LA has stopped ICE from detaining people for deportation because they look Latino – that’s racial discrimination, and it’s unconstitutional, the court said. Mark Rosenbaum of Public Counsel will explain what’s next as he government appeals the case to the Ninth Circuit.

Also: How does a movement build support when large parts of the country are opposed to its goals? How do you connect with people who disagree with...

Hugh Wilford, professor of history at California State University, Long Beach, is back on the program to conclude the discussion of his book The CIA: An Imperial History. In this episode they talk about figures like Edward Lansdale and James Angleton, “regime maintenance,” counterinsurgency, the agency’s use of publicity, the effect of the War on Terror on the CIA, and more. 

Listen to Part 1 here⁠

Tech lords such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are among the richest humans who have ever

lived and have an enormous sway over the American political system but even that isn’t enough

for them. They also want a compliant media, one that echoes their ideas, doesn’t investigate

their business practices, and goes after their enemy. This is the subject of a new book by Eoin

Higgins: Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudes...

Derek is in the shop for maintenance, so Danny presents the news with the Quincy Institute’s Alex Jordan. This week: Israel bombs the Syrian Defense Ministry in Damascus (0:39) as Netanyahu’s corruption trial carries on (7:05), plus US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee condemns settlers killing a US citizen (10:24), and the Hague Group coalition meets in Bogota to decide how to hold Israel accountable for its crimes (16:02); the s...

Paris Marx is joined by Nathan Grayson to discuss the latest round of Microsoft layoffs and how the company’s ambition to remake the video game industry around its streaming service has had significant consequences.

Nathan Grayson is a co-founder of Aftermath and author of Stream Big: The Triumphs and Turmoils of Twitch and the Stars Behind the Screen.

There’s trouble in Trump world: Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is launching a Third Party to challenge Trump’s Republicans in the midterms and maybe in 2028. Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party, explains why Musk will fail.

Also: Trump’s executive order abolishing birthright citizenship – guaranteed by the 14^th Amendment – has been blocked for a second time, this time because of a class ...

Pull yourselves up by your bootstraps, rise ‘n grind, and find your calling as we welcome historian Erik Baker to the program to talk about his book Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America. The group explores the Protestant work ethic and Jeffersonian yeoman farmer, influential figures like Henry Ford and Frederick Winslow Taylor, the seeds of entrepreneurialism in Harvard Business...

Donald Trump’s foreign policy has been as unstable as the man himself, shifting quickly from

pushes for restraint to escalating wars in the Middle East. This volatility is a function not just of

Trump’s personality but the contradictions and competing factions that are gathered under the

term America First, as well as the continued power of the foreign policy establishment that

Trump has claimed he defeated but which maintains a strong...

Remember that today is the last day to order our limited edition “Robo Washington Crossing the Delaware” poster! Paid subscribers get a 50% discount!

AP’s retirement account is entirely tied to copper, so we’re not sure how long we have to do this. In this week’s news: Yemen’s Houthi/Ansar Allah fighters have resumed attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea, sinking two (1:47); in I...