Lever Time

Today, we’re sharing an episode of the podcast Deconstructed from our friends over at The Intercept, an award-winning investigative news organization.  Centrist and right-wing economists continue to advocate for laying off workers and engineering a recession to address inflation. But why not set price controls instead? This week on Deconstructed, host Ryan Grim is joined by James K. Galbraith, a p...

On this week’s episode of Lever Time, David Sirota is joined by law professor Stephen Vladeck, author of the new book, The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic.  The Supreme Court has received a lot of attention in the last several years for its extreme rulings on matters such as abortion rights, environmental regulations, and affirmat...

Today, we’re sharing an episode of the podcast Deconstructed from our friends over at The Intercept, an award-winning investigative news organization.  In this episode, Daniel Boguslaw, a politics reporter for The Intercept, interviews Senator Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) former political advisor Scott Sears. Boguslaw tells the story of Manchin’s rise in West Virginia politics, his strategic alliance w...

On this week’s episode of Lever Time, David Sirota and Andrew Perez are joined by ProPublica’s Justin Elliott, who recently co-authored an exposédetailing how Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito failed to disclose luxury gifts provided by billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer.  This story follows ProPublica’s reporting from earlier this year about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who als...

Today, we’re sharing an episode of the podcast Deconstructed with Ryan Grim, D.C. bureau chief of The Intercept, an award-winning investigative news organization.   In this episode, Grim,  speaks with communications consultant Anat Shenker-Osorio, host of the podcast Words to Win, and whose company ASO Communications works with progressive think tanks like the Voting Rights Lab. Grim and Shenker-O...

As the Writers Guild of America strike enters its eighth week, David Sirota sits down with writer, director, musician, and activist Boots Riley to discuss the ongoing labor struggle, as well as his radical new TV show.  In all of Boots’ work runs a deep commitment to social justice and organized labor. In 2018, Boots released the celebrated film Sorry to Bother You, an absurdist dark comedy about...

David sits down with prominent investigative journalist Leslie Kean, who earlier this month published a blockbuster report about a potential secret government UFO effort. According to Kean and her co-author, a former U.S. intelligence official-turned-whistleblower recently gave Congress classified information about covert programs that he says possess intact and partially intact aircraft of non-hu...

The country may have narrowly avoided a debt default catastrophe by passing a debt ceiling deal on June 3, but that doesn’t mean we should allow the fiasco to fall into the memory hole. David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, joins host David Sirota to dissect the event, discuss the political misuse of the debt limit, and explore what was traded away in this crisis.  While the Bide...

David Sirota sits down with U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) for a wide-ranging interview. They discuss the proposed debt ceiling deal and whether Democrats could have done more to stop Republicans from holding the U.S. economy hostage.  They also discuss Murphy’s key legislative focus: social media’s harmful effects on Americans, particularly children, and what can be done to stop it. Accordin...

On this week’s episode of Lever Time: David Sirota sits down with writer and executive producer Frank Rich to discuss the series finale of HBO’s Succession.  As the award-winning series comes to an end this Sunday, David and Frank take a look at Succession’s role in popular culture over the last five years, particularly its satire of the media industrial-complex and the American political system....

On this week’s episode of Lever Time: After corporate pundits spent the last year gaslighting the American public into believing that rising corporate profits were definitely not driving inflation, now economists and financial institutions are arriving at consensus that rising corporate profits are in fact driving inflation. David Sirota sits down with Lindsay Owens, the Executive Director of the...

On this week’s episode of Lever Time: David Sirota is joined by Josh Olson and Dave Anthony, hosts of The Audit podcast, to discuss the dangerous influence of the conservative media network Prager University (also known as PragerU).  PragerU has become one of the most successful peddlers of right-wing propaganda, as their professionally produced short-form videos often go viral on YouTube and Face...

David Sirota sits down with Dr. Max Tegmark, president of the Future of Life Institute and one of the world’s leading experts in artificial intelligence, to dive into the growing debate around AI. In this deep-dive conversation, Dr. Tegmark breaks down recent breakthroughs in generative AI technology like ChatGPT and explains how it could replace most forms of human labor — for better or worse. Th...

On this week’s episode of Lever Time: David Sirota speaks with Philadelphia Inquirer journalists Barbara Laker and David Gambacorta about their recent blockbuster investigation, which details how chemicals found in the AstroTurf at Veterans Stadium may be linked to the deaths of six Philadelphia Phillies baseball players. The three discuss how hazardous per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS),...

In this week’s episode of Lever Time, David Sirota and Andrew Perez talk with ProPublica reporter Justin Elliott, who helped break open the explosive story about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failing to disclose luxury gifts and business deals with billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow. The three discuss how Propublica uncovered these groundbreaking details, the ethical questions eme...

On this week’s episode of Lever Time: David Sirota talks with author and political activist Marianne Williamson. They discuss her repeat candidacy for the Democratic party’s nomination in the 2024 presidential election, the political media industrial complex, universal healthcare, economic reform, science denialism, and facing down neo fascists. If you'd like access to Lever Time Premium, which in...

On this week’s special episode of Lever Time, progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) sits down for an extended interview with David Sirota.  The two discuss the breaking news of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas accepting luxury trips from a billionaire Republican donor, which AOC says is grounds for impeachment (00:00), as well as the Biden administration’s "extremely risky and ve...

This week, David Sirota speaks with Naomi Oreskes about the mythology of “market fundamentalism” that exists deep within the American psyche. A Harvard Professor of history, Oreskes explains how the total belief in the wisdom of the free-markets (in opposition to the ‘evil’ big government), went from being on the fringes of public debate to a dogmatic ideology that is unique to the United States....

This week, David Sirota delves into the bank panic of 2023 with Saule Omarova, a Cornell Law School professor whose nomination to be one of the government's top bank regulators was blocked due to her opposition to deregulation. She was right about everything, as it turns out. Also, Matt Stoller joins David to explore alternative methods for securing deposits and advocate for policy-makers to rethi...

This week’s episode of Lever Time explores the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and its impact on the U.S. financial system.  Lever reporter Julia Rock joins David Sirota to discuss banking CEOs’ lobbying efforts to roll back key regulations in the lead-up to the implosion, and Cornell University Law Professor Robert C. Hockett provides expert insight on whether uninsured deposits should be protect...

David Sirota is joined by progressive icon Nina Turner to talk about Ohio politics and why Democrats like Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg completely fumbled the political response to the train derailment in East Palestine. A former Ohio State Senator, Nina has a keen sense of why Trump’s messaging appeals so much more to working-class residents and why Democrats must avoid the “neo-liberal cult of se...

David Sirota talks with U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Penn.) about the fear, anger, and mistrust felt by many of his constituents in the aftermath of the Norfolk Southern train derailment disaster. The freshman congressman talks about the latest efforts to hold these giant railroad companies accountable, the runaway deregulation that has put communities at risk, and his hopes for bipartisan movement...

This mini-episode is part of our Inside The Story series, where we highlight some of The Lever’s original reporting and speak with the journalists who wrote the story. Frank Cappello speaks with Andrew Perez who details their new story published by The Lever: “For years, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) led the fight to protect one of the most controversial provisions in the entire tax code — a loophole cr...

On this week’s episode of Lever Time: Producer Frank sits down with journalists Julia Rock, Rebecca Burns, and Matthew Cunningham-Cook for an in-depth conversation about The Lever’s groundbreaking reporting on the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The group explores how an environmental disaster like this can occur, including examining the influence of the railroad and chemical lobbies, as...

On this week’s episode of Lever Time: David Sirota is joined by investigative journalist Jefferson Morley, one of the foremost experts on the assassination of president John F. Kennedy. David and Jeff discuss the trove of classified documents pertaining to the assassination that were recently released by the Biden administration, what we learned from the materials, and the potential reasons why th...