Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

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 out seem so complicated? We’re constantly bombarded with get-fit-quick marketing perpetuated by “bros” who got fit over...

Non Fungible Tokens, known as NFTs, are the hottest craze in the cryptocurrency world. But what are they? With a multibillion-dollar market cap, why do people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in some cases, millions for digitally stored avatars, pictures, art, GIFs, tokens (and the list goes on)? Kevin Roose covers NFTs, crypto, AI and social media as a columnist for The New York Times. I...

Statistics plays a role in virtually every facet of our lives. And throughout the pandemic, we’ve heard more stats than ever before, whether through headlines about Covid infection rates or vaccine effectiveness. But how are these figures calculated? How do we know when data is manipulated for nefarious reasons, and when it represents some true thing out there in the world? Lucky for us, Harvard P...

Hank Green has been on the leading edge of online content creation for more than a decade. He and his brother John created VidCon, the world’s largest video conference and have steadily built a wildly popular online community. You may know Hank as the host of science Crash Course videos, for his Vlogbrothers series, or his numerous other YouTube channels. We couldn’t think of a better person to he...

Lawrence Bartley was just 17-years-old when he was charged and sentenced to 27 years to life following a movie theater shoot-out. Gunfire erupted after the group that he was with exchanged insults with another crew of moviegoers. According to the prosecutor, Lawrence’s bullet was the one that hit and killed an innocent 15-year-old boy. Filled with remorse and guilt, Lawrence used his time in priso...

Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney has more than 100 credits as a producer, director and writer. Throughout his storied career, he’s been the driving force behind titles like “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” and “Dirty Money,” a Netflix docuseries about corruption. Most recently, he ventured outside of the visual realm to direct Meltdown, a new series on Audible, about how we ended up with...

Representative Ilhan Omar was just eight years old when her life turned upside down. After an armed compound attack, her family fled Mogadishu, and ultimately ended up in a refugee camp in Kenya. It was there that she experienced the reality that hundreds of millions of refugees worldwide endure. After an intense vetting and interview process, her family was eventually granted asylum in the U.S. a...

The Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965 lifted a century of restrictions against Asian immigration to the United States. And while not necessarily appreciated at the time, it inaugurated a sea change in American society, setting the nation on the course towards multicultural democracy. Asian Americans now represent the fastest growing demographic group in the country, and yet the category itself f...

TV weathermen often show up as among the most trusted members of the media and almost no one on earth is as good at it or as well-known as Al Roker. Born to a working-class family in Queens, Roker found his way into TV and then meteorology and has become one of the more prominent voices in the country on the totalizing effects of climate change. In addition to being on the Today Show, he’s also th...

39-year-old India Walton found herself thrust into the national spotlight when she defeated four-term incumbent Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown in the June primary. It was an unusual win: Walton had never held elected office, and Brown isn’t letting go of his seat without a fight. Following the stunning upset, the current mayor launched a write-in campaign, and many of the state Democratic establishment...

Life has been anything but easy for 20-year-old Dasani Coates. Named after the bottled water that signaled Brooklyn’s gentrification, her story has been featured in five front pages of the New York Times. Together with her siblings, Dasani has had to persevere in an environment riddled with stark inequality, hunger, violence, drug addiction and homelessness. She’s not alone. There’s nearly 1.38 mi...

Since 2017, a high-tech form of colonization has been rapidly growing in Xinjiang, China. As many as 1.5 million Muslim Uyghurs have vanished into high-security camps and factories. The Chinese regime describes these sites as “vocational education and training centers” that are utilized to counter terrorism. But what actually goes on inside of these internment camps? That’s the subject of Darren B...

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 c...

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...

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 increasingl...

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 woul...

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...

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...

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. Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads. You'll also get exclusive bonus content from this and other shows. Hosted by Simple...

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...

Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads. You'll also get exclusive bonus content from this and other shows. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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! Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without...

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. Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads....

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...

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 asymmetr...