Gaslit Nation

Dictators want us to think that the future is hopeless, that their cult of personality will last forever. Gaslit Nation exists to remind us that another world is possible. The experts we've brought on the show over the years have shown us how. In this special episode, we're starting 2024 right, with a chorus of voices guiding us to envision the world we want to live in.  To start us off, Andrea is...

On a hot afternoon in the middle of summer in New York City, people gathered together at Caveat on the Lower East Side for a special live taping of Gaslit Nation with the RISK! Storytelling Podcast. This is Part II of Andrea's discussion with comedian Kevin Allison, host and producer of RISK!, and a founding member of the groundbreaking comedy group The State.  The packed audience shared their ins...

Author Peter Kurth takes the Gaslit Nation Self Care Q&A!  In the second part of this special interview, Andrea interviews Peter Kurth, author of American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson , which helped inspire Andrea's latest screenplay based on Thompson and her urgent lessons for us today. Gaslit Nation has always been a show that combines the power of art with fighting fascism, and this...

Dorothy Thompson was the leading journalist of the 1930s and 1940s, considered as influential as Eleanor Roosevelt. After becoming the first foreign correspondent to be expelled from Germany by Hitler, Thompson advised President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, testified to Congress, and destroyed the public career of American aviator and Nazi medal-recipient Charles Lindbergh with the power o...

In a year of hellfire, there were some signs of hope, including Ukraine moving closer to joining the European Union. Countless Ukrainians gave their lives for this, beginning with around 100 pro-democracy protesters killed by the riot police of Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian Trump brought to power by longtime Kremlin operative Paul Manafort.  Even Viktor Orban, the wannabe strongman of Hungary,...

While this news broke after we recorded this week's episode, Gaslit Nation would like to congratulate the Colorado Supreme Court for being on the right side of history! With Trump disqualified from being on the ballot in Colorado, it's now up to the Supreme Court, which Trump packed, to take up the case. However things go, it's nice to finally see some justice for Trump's massive treason, though s...

Sixteen year old Kalief Browder spent 700 days in solitary confinement over a backpack he didn't steal, and traitor to his country, former FBI agent Charles McGonigal, only got four years in prison for being on the payroll of the Russian mafia. That and Putin's end-of-the-year speech to Russians, promising to destroy and occupy all of Ukraine, are discussed in this week's bonus episode.  Joining u...

The Reagan Revolution and "greed is good" remain in full swing, ushering in a level of wealth inequality that surpasses the Gilded Age.  "Progressives, especially, must recognize that pres erving constitutional freedoms depends on winning the fight for economic liberties. Treating them as separate goals will ultimately mean losing out on both," writes Caroline Fredrickson, the former president of...

This experiment brings to mind more recent ones in Russia, where there were deliberate efforts to breed both aggressive and docile rats. One Gaslit Nation listener wondered if Russian botfarms are deliberately "engineering" (inciting) aggressive Americans and also docile ones in their disinformation warfare to further divide us. The theory suggests that docile and distracted Americans would be les...

The Supreme Court is at it again! This current season of the American Hunger Games, also known as a Supreme Court session, could be as disastrous for the American people and great for the far-right donor class since Citizens United. Here to help us make sense of the firehose of corruption coming out of the nation's highest court is Jesse Eisinge r, a senior editor and investigative reporter for Pr...

Putin lost a longtime friend and confidant, the only American statesman he respected and admired. Why might these two have hit if off? War criminal Henry Kissinger, like Putin, was responsible for millions of deaths and backing some of the most brutal regimes in the world. The foreign policy establishment here in the U.S. and in Europe have blood on their hands for normalizing Kissinger, like Puti...

Trump and McConnell, turbo-charged by the war chest of the Federalist Society, packed the Supreme Court, and put in place far-right idealogues across 28-percent of our federal courts,  reshaping our judiciary for decades to come . In a short time, Trump's Mullahs on the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, killed Affirmative Action, and made gay marriage easier to challenge . (We'll report more o...

As a special THANK YOU to our Patreon community that keeps the showing going through these tough times, Andrea shares her "hot sauce" for making art. The core spice is this: Don't be afraid to be interesting. Sometimes there might be a temptation to self-censor, to play it safe, to adhere to external pressures real or imagined. Instead, go within and create based on what's true for you. That's wha...

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum is back on Gaslit Nation in Part II of a discussion that spans what comes after Putin, why it seems like Russia is behind so much destabilization around the world, and why the Holodomor, Stalin's 1933 genocide famine in Ukraine, matters today. Applebaum is the author of  Gulag , Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism , and Red...

This important interview features Lisa Molomot and Jeff Bemiss, the filmmakers behind the extraordinary must-watch  Peabody Award-winning film Missing in Brooks County about the immigration crisis in America deliberately engineered for maximum cruelty by both Republican and Democratic leaders over the years, creating the world's deadliest border crossing. It does not have to be this way. In this d...

Welcome to the George Santos Tribute Episode, lasting as long as his tenure in Congress. The Russian-linked Ponzi Scheme is on his way out. He lavishly spent campaign cash on his honeymoon in Las Vegas, spa treatments, luxury shopping sprees, Botox (he's 35!), and the naughty fun time site OnlyFans. We have questions, mostly: Did his Russian-linked backers get their money's worth by having major A...

Authoritarian voters cosplay Rambo on the U.S. Southern border, literally hunting refugees and denying them basic human rights. Our interview this week features Lisa Molomot and Jeff Bemiss, the filmmakers behind the extraordinary must-watch  Peabody Award-winning film Missing in Brooks County about the immigration crisis in America deliberately engineered for maximum cruelty by both Republican an...

This Election 2023 Super Special opens with a discussion on building unions, because the big takeaway is grassroots power is the most reliable power we have left. In a time of historic income inequality, which furthers the flames of fascism, we need to extend the Big Blue Wave energy into the growing rebirth of unions. Political and economic justice go hand-in-hand. For our Patreon community, ther...

Congratulations to everyone who pitched in to help get out the vote! This night belongs to you and all those who voted to protect abortion in Ohio, protect Virginians from a Republican majority, protect the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and much more on a great night for democracy. This week's bonus episode will look at the election results, what they mean for 2024, and what to know about Trump's sh...

This is an excerpt of this week's bonus show. To access the full show, receive all episodes ad free, submit questions to our regular Q&As, access our back catalogue of bonus shows, join the conversation with our community of listeners, support our independent journalism, and more, subscribe at Patreon.com/Gaslit  In this coming week's episode, expect a full deep dive into the latest devastation an...

In this special discussion, Andrea is joined by experts from the Kremlin File podcast: Russian mafia specialist Olga Lautman and Monique Camarra, an instructor at the Department of Communication at the University of Siena in Italy. Together, they explore the intricate links between Russia and terrorist groups, tracing a history that dates back to the Soviet Union. This dark night of the soul slumb...

Gaslit Nation Presents: The Bump in the Night by Jane Willis. Inspired by The Golden Arm. Produced by Eliza Smith. Starring Rachael Small and Darius Johnson. Happy Halloween! 

Despite his best efforts threatening the lives of Congressional colleagues and their families, Jim Jordan didn't get to become Speaker of the House. Instead, his longtime protege and a major architect behind the Big Lie, Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, is now third in line to the White House. Johnson answers to Jordan who answers to Trump. This essentially makes Trump third in line to the White Ho...

After a five month absence from Gaslit Nation due to a family situation, Sarah has decided to leave the show. You can read her regular writing over at her new Substack . We all wish her well and look forward to her next book.  In this continuation of Gaslit Nation's coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, Andrea shares her own hard learned lessons on how to hold space for a friend grieving over the cris...

This is an excerpt of this week's bonus show. To access this, all bonus shows, get episodes ad free, exclusive invites, submit questions to regular Q&As, and more, subscribe to the show at Patreon.com/Gaslit  In this special interview, Lala Wu, a co-founder of Sister District , which builds political power in the states to protect quality of life and democracy from far-right extremism, joins Gasli...