Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast
Every week Chris Hayes asks the big questions that keep him up at night. How do we make sense of this unprecedented moment in world history? Why is this (all) happening? This podcast starts to answer these questions. Writers, experts, and thinkers who are also trying to get to the bottom of them join Chris to break it all down and help him get a better night’s rest. “Why is this Happening?” is presented by MSNBC and NBCNews Think.
Episodes
April 23, 2024 • 55 mins
It’s been a wild last year or so in tech. We’ve seen a marked rise in the development of artificial intelligence, large language models and prolific growth of augmented reality systems. At the same time, it can feel like we’re moving backwards as concerns continue to rise about user privacy and the methods by which personal data is collected and monetized. Our guest this week points out that protecting privacy requires tech compani...
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April 16, 2024 • 39 mins
We’re thrilled to share the second episode in our WITHpod 2024: The Stakes series, in which we choose specific areas of policy and talk to an expert about Trump and Biden’s records on the topic. This week, we discuss the candidates’ stances and records on one of the most important and contested topics: tax policy. Kimberly Clausing is the Eric M. Zolt Chair in Tax Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law. Before that, she was the d...
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April 9, 2024 • 65 mins
We’re excited to share the first conversation in our WITHpod 2024: The Stakes series. For the first time since 1892, we have an election in which both candidates have presidential records, which provides a unique opportunity to cut through messaging and rhetoric and culture war flotsam and actually take a hard look at what each man has actually done as president. On The Stakes, WITHPod will choose specific areas of policy -- immigr...
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April 2, 2024 • 51 mins
Our guest this week was thrown in jail and fired from his job after social media posts he made about Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7th. Meir Baruchin, 62, is an Israeli history and civics teacher who was held in solitary confinement for four days after posts he made denouncing the war in Gaza. There was an adjudicated process in which he was later found to be wrongly fired from his job in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikv...
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March 26, 2024 • 52 mins
There’s so much discourse about polling and it seems like there’s a poll for nearly every political issue. At the same time, polls often don’t successfully help us to predict the future, including election outcomes. What contributes to the mismatch between what we expect of them and what they actually deliver? Nate Cohn is the chief political analyst at the New York Times where he created the Times/Siena poll. Cohn points out that,...
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March 19, 2024 • 51 mins
Why have attacks on gender become so pervasive, especially within right-wing movements? Our guest this week points out that “the question of gender is fundamentally linked with the future of our democratic world.” Judith Butler is a philosopher, gender theorist and cultural critic. They are also a distinguished professor in the graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley. Butler is the author of numerous books, incl...
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March 15, 2024 • 60 mins
If you’ve been following the news, you’ve seen that this week the House passed a bill designed to force the sale of TikTok from its Chinese parent company. If you’re confused about the ins and outs of this issue, we did an extensive exploration of it with NBC News technology correspondent Jacob Ward last year. So, we thought it would be good to re-share this TikTok 101. This conversation was originally recorded in April 2023.
F...
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March 12, 2024 • 58 mins
Our guest this week recently traveled down to the border to confront the so-called “Army of God” as part of a larger project of providing alternative ideologies to Christian nationalism. Doug Pagitt is a pastor, author and the executive director of Vote Common Good, an organization aimed at influencing evangelical Christians. His group has been on a nationwide tour focused on directly engaging evangelicals in key swing states with ...
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March 5, 2024 • 49 mins
It can feel like the news industry is in a moment of crisis. Over 500 journalists were laid off from news outlets in January 2024 alone, according to a report from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. These layoffs are part of a broader trend of seismic changes within the media industry over the past few decades. As disinformation concerns continue to rise and we prepare for another consequential election, why are newsro...
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February 27, 2024 • 56 mins
Nuclear power contributes to nearly 20 percent of the electricity generated in America, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Enormous growth has occurred since the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, which allocated more money towards climate, and green energy subsidies than any piece of legislation in American history. But a lot of work still remains. Jigar Shah is director of the Department of Energy Loan Progr...
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February 20, 2024 • 44 mins
The Department of Justice, created in 1870, was initially formed in part to enforce Reconstruction era laws aimed at ensuring voting rights for formerly enslaved people. Yet, nearly 150 years later, voting access is still under attack. Eric Holder made history as the first black U.S. Attorney General, serving in the Obama administration. Holder now serves as the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which foc...
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February 13, 2024 • 60 mins
2020 was undoubtedly one of the most consequential years in history. The ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with other cascading crises, can still be felt in almost every facet of our lives. Our guest this week points out that in order to heal, we must take time to reckon with what we lived through. Eric Klinenberg is a sociologist, the Helen Gould Shepard Professor of Social Science at NYU and the author of “2020: One ...
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January 30, 2024 • 56 mins
Just a few weeks ago, Chris and his family visited the Big Island of Hawaii. While there, he was completely enthralled with learning more about how the first inhabitants got to such a remote place and surrounding areas. For more than a thousand years, Polynesians have called some of the most distant islands in the Pacific Ocean home. Where did they come from, how did they get there and how did a group of people conquer the largest ...
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January 23, 2024 • 57 mins
From unlocking our phones, to scanning our faces to board flights, facial recognition technology has become a ubiquitous part of modern life. And while its implementation can make life easier, what are the ramifications of companies capturing and selling our biometric data? And do we really own our faces? Our guest this week points that unregulated, this technological superpower can lead to dystopian, sci-fi novel-like applications...
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January 16, 2024 • 52 mins
Armed conflict, increases in public debt and the climate crisis are just a few factors that will accelerate humanitarian crises globally in 2024, according to the International Rescue Committee. Meanwhile, there’s a number of practical issues that have been raised by the high pace of migrants presenting at borders and applying for asylum around the world. Our guest this week points out the importance of creating “legal routes to ho...
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January 9, 2024 • 56 mins
We just experienced the hottest year on record in 2023. But amid so much doom and gloom, last year was also one of the best years ever for clean energy technology development and deployment. And while we’ve seen incredible strides towards a net zero emissions future, further innovation and policy action is still needed in order to bring to market more low-emissions technologies. Robinson Meyer is the founding executive editor of He...
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January 2, 2024 • 63 mins
Happy New Year! As our team returns from break, we're re-sharing another part of our "Future of" miniseries that originally aired in March 2022. From the original description: Time is running out to reverse the damage done by climate change, according to a report released by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in February 2022. Preventing further destruction will be the biggest undertaking in the history of hu...
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December 26, 2023 • 59 mins
Happy holidays! As our team takes some time away for a break, we're re-sharing another part of our "Future of" miniseries that originally aired in March 2022. From the original description: BFF connections have transformed rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic. FaceTime calls, Zoom happy hours, voice memos, group chats and virtual game nights, in many cases, have reworked our in-person interactions of the past. What does the future ...
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December 19, 2023 • 51 mins
Happy holidays! As our team takes some time away for a break, we're re-sharing part of our "Future of" miniseries that originally aired in March 2022. From the original description: The ways we consume media have changed tremendously over the last decade. Shows with live audiences, perhaps more than any other type of program, had to pivot virtually almost overnight when the pandemic started. That certainly was the case with “Late ...
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