Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

You might be feeling that artificial intelligence is starting to seem a bit like magic. Our guest this week points out that AI, once the subject of science fiction, has seen the biggest rise of any consumer technology in history and has outpaced the uptake of TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. As we see AI becoming more of an everyday tool, students are even using chatbots like ChatGPT to write paper...

If you’ve been following international news, you’ve noticed the marked rise of protests and conflict in Israel. An unprecedentedly right-wing governing coalition has been elected with Netanyahu at the helm. Hundreds of thousands of people have been taking to the streets in Tel Aviv to protest the right’s moves to get rid of independence and the self-determination of Israeli Jews. Joining us to bre...

State legislatures have significantly advanced a record number of attacks aimed at restricting LGBTQ+ rights this year. Our guest this week points out that “the number one priority, without any ambiguity” of Republicans has been attacking trans people. Nearly half of the country could see health care bans for trans adolescents by May. This tidal wave of anti-trans legislation, which restricts gend...

Silicon Valley Bank’s recent failure marked the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history and the largest since the 2008 financial crisis. The run on the bank sent shockwaves through the financial world. Nearly 94% of its total deposits were uninsured, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data as of year-end 2022. The series of events leading to its demise have been described by some as t...

There’s been a marked rise over the last decade of nationalist and authoritarian politics. Global freedom declined for a 17th consecutive year in 2022, according to a Freedom House annual report. The rise of MAGAism in the U.S., neo-fascism in Italy and hard-right politics in Israel are just a few examples of why democracy around globe continues to hang on a knife’s edge. Our guest this week has e...

The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act would’ve addressed racial profiling and use of deadly force, among other things. But the bill, which was crafted in 2020, still hasn’t passed and it’s unclear if it ever will. Progress has often been stymied by conflicting ideas, on all sides of the political spectrum, about the role of police in maintaining law and order. So, what can be done to fix so man...

Even if the worst of the pandemic is over, some of the changes it foisted on our lives seem like they're here to stay. In cities around the nation, office space in dense downtown areas is well below full utilization, as workers spend more days working from home. Same goes for public transit weekday ridership. What happens to American cities if they're no longer the place to which people commute ea...

Since Chris was on vacation last week and given the wave of recent anti-trans legislation, we’re revisiting and providing an update on our episode with Dr. Izzy Lowell, who runs Queer Med, a private clinic that specializes in providing accessible health care to trans patients ranging from kids to adults.

 From the original description: What is gender-affirming health care? Around the country, the...

Starting in 2016, U.S. diplomats and spies began reporting a wide range of mysterious and debilitating medical symptoms, first in Cuba and then around the world. Doctors who initially treated patients couldn’t come up with a diagnosis and some just called it “The Thing.” Patients said they felt like they were hit by an invisible, directed pressure while stationed on government property, or sometim...

“I went because they didn’t want me there,” says Minnijean Brown-Trickey, our guest this week. It’s been more than 60 years since she made history. At 16-years-old, she and eight other black students found an angry mob and the national guard blocking their entry to Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. Backed by 1,200 soldiers, they eventually made it inside for their first full day of clas...

You’ve probably encountered an e-bike in some form or another. Maybe you’ve ridden one. Perhaps one has buzzed passed you on the street, in a bike lane, or on the sidewalk. We’ve seen your requests and we’re glad to finally dedicate an entire conversation to this topic. What’s fueling the e-bike revolution? Is it just a short-lived fad? E-bikes are selling more quickly than cars, according to the...

You’ve probably heard about what Florida governor Ron DeSantis is up to. One of the most controversial things he’s done is sign the Individual Freedom Act, also known as the “Stop W.O.K.E Act,” short for Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees. The law, among many things, prohibits teaching certain concepts related to race. Although there’s currently an injunction against the law, its implementation...

Last year's Super Bowl featured a who's who of celebrities hawking cryptocurrency and crypto platforms like FTX. In retrospect that looks like the boom before the bust. This year, crypto prices have tumbled and one of the most valued exchanges, FTX, collapsed in a cloud of alleged fraud and federal indictments. So is it all a scam? A pyramid scheme? Will crypto endure? Our guest this week thinks i...

Hi #WITHpod listeners! We have a special bonus episode for you. In the “National Day of Racial Healing: An MSNBC Town Hall,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, Joy Reid and Trymaine Lee talk with activists, journalists, artists and experts to explore the harm racism has caused in our society, and to consider how we might heal from it. The program initially aired on MSNBC and was streamed on Peacock the day afte...

The history of lotteries spans over four millennia. The modern version of them arose out of a need for a form of more state funding that wouldn’t raise taxes. Jackpots have reached record levels in the past few years. And "Americans now spend more on lottery tickets every year than on cigarettes, coffee or smartphones," writes historian and author Jonathan Cohen. Cohen is author of “For a Dollar a...

Join as you help us celebrate our 250th #WITHpod! In our recent Mailbag episode, we asked you all to send over clips sharing why you listen to WITHpod, where you listen and or what’s your favorite ep. We loved hearing all of your submissions. Here’s a compilation that we put together for our special milestone. Thank you and cheers! Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this sho...

The language that is used to talk about immigrants in America is something that really bothers Chris. A common and unproductive trope that’s heard in media is “a flood of immigrants to the border.” At the same time, there is a growing dependance at the foundational level on the labor of immigrants in the U.S. As natural disasters are happening with increasing frequency and intensity, communities a...

“My argument is because [right wing authoritarianism] is the central struggle of the day, we need the most effective, principled and impactful progressive organizations that are seeking to challenge that,” says Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party. Mitchell is also an activist and co-founder of Blackbird, an organization that has provided infrastructure support for the...

The pandemic hasn’t raged within China the way it has in the rest of the world over the past few years. However, that’s beginning to change. Following a wave of protests, Chinese leadership officially rolled back some of the country’s most stringent Covid restrictions. The end of “zero Covid” policies, combined with an already strained medical system, along with low vaccination and immunity levels...

We're thrilled to publish our second live WITHpod mailbag, which was originally hosted on Twitter Spaces earlier this month. Join as Chris and producer Doni Holloway go through your questions, discuss feedback you’ve sent and share pod updates. You’re also in for a special treat as Brendan O’Melia, who has been with WITHpod since it started, joins the conversation! Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Ap...

Gender norms, particularly related to child care, have shifted dramatically over the past few decades. Journalist Tim Lee, whose wife is a doctor and often has to work nights, weekends and unpredictable hours, made the decision to “lean out” of his career to focus more on child care. As their family grew, it became increasingly clear that Lee couldn’t spend off hours doing the in-depth research an...

It’s been 174 years since Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote “The Communist Manifesto.” How is it still relevant today and what makes it such a vital guide to understanding present-day struggles? That’s the subject of China Mieville’s latest work, “A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto.” Miéville, a self-proclaimed Marxist and socialist, is a New York Times-bestselling author of fictio...

Coming out of Thanksgiving week, we thought it was a good time to reshare our first WITHpod episode all about fitness. Fitness guru, writer and self-described “Swole Woman” Casey Johnston has written, “a lot of health content is focused on blowing smoke up you’re a-- about jade eggs and vitamins and toxin-dispersing cellulite-curing silver-thread leggings.” But why? What makes lifting and working...

As the war intensifies in Ukraine, we thought it was time to revisit what’s going on there. Although the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson was recently liberated, the battle for freedom continues in other regions. Harry Rowe, known as Macer Gifford, is a British volunteer soldier fighting in Ukraine. Gifford assumed the pseudonym Macer Gifford after needing a new identify while fighting in Syria...

What in the heck is going on at Twitter since Elon Musk took over? From growing concerns about disinformation on the social network, to changes to how once coveted blue check marks are granted, there’s a lot to unpack. We couldn’t think of a better person to help make sense of it all than Kara Swisher, who has interviewed Musk numerous times and has covered tech for decades. Swisher is also host o...