Start Making Sense Clips

How will the war in Ukraine end? The Russians have failed to install a puppet government there, but the Ukrainians are not going to recover the territory Russia seized in 2014 - so some kind of negotiated settlement is necessary - and better sooner than later, for the Ukrainians, for the US, and for the world. Anatol Lieven comments; he wrote the book “Ukraine and Russia.” Advertising Inquiries: h...

Republicans have opened another front in the culture war with the slogan “parental rights”--not just banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory, whatever that is; now they are campaigning to ban comprehensive sex education. Joan Walsh explains. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

We’re still thinking about the recall in San Francisco of Chesa Boudin, the progressive prosecutor--pundits everywhere are saying that means Democrats need to abandon their commitment to reforming the police and the criminal justice system. Peter Dreier doesn’t agree – he explains why. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Southern Baptists have been at the center of the Trump movement, But now the denomination has been rocked to its core by a massive sex abuse scandal. Could the sex scandal change the Southern Baptists? Sarah Posner will comment - her book ' Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind has just been published in paperback wit...

“Bad Mexicans” – that’s what the revolutionaries of 1910 were called as they fought on both sides of the US-Mexico border against the robber barons and their political allies. UCLA historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez tells that story – it’s the subject of her new book with that title. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Haiti is back on the front page–at least in the New York Times, our national newspaper of record–and it’s not because of what’s happening there right now. The Times has published the results of a deep investigation into the history of Haiti’s forced payments to France, starting more than 200 years ago–an immense amount of money, which France said it deserved as compensation for Haiti’s revolution...

“An amazon of the avant-garde”: the ballet dancer and choreographer who started out in revolutionary Russia, worked in wartime Kiev, and then came to Hollywood in the thirties: Bronislava Nijinska, the long-neglected sister of the legendary dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. She had an amazing life. Lynn Garafola will explain; her new book is La Nijinska, Choreographer of the Modern . Advertising Inquiries:...

Chesa Boudin, the elected district attorney of San Francisco, on progressive prosecutors and their opponents: progressive prosecutors have been pushing for criminal justice reform for a while now, seeking to end mass incarceration and deal with police misconduct, starting with the election of Larry Krasner in Philadelphia in 2017, then Chesa in 2019 and George Gascon in Los Angeles in 2020. Of cou...

Republicans have made the teaching of American history a key battleground in their culture war against Democrats in the upcoming elections— especially the history of the American revolution--1776 and all that. Historian Eric Foner comments. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Abortion – and its opponents. Do opponents of abortion really believe abortion providers are “baby-killers”? There’s some new research about that that found opponents help family members and friends get abortions--Katha Pollitt explains. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Margo Jefferson talks about her new memoir, “Constructing a Nervous System.” Her earlier memoir, “Negroland,” won the National Book Critics Circle Award -- and before that she won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism for her work as book and arts critic for the New York Times . She also has written for The Nation. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.c...

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson won’t be seated on the Supreme Court until late June, but we’re still thinking about the significance of her confirmation as America’s first Black female supreme court justice and of that horrible confirmation hearing she endured. Michele Goodwin comments--she’s Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine, and a contributor to The Nation. Adver...

What if voting was a duty, not just a right? An obligation, something like jury duty? E.J. Dionne and Miles Rapoport explain; their new book is “100% Democracy: The Case for Universal Voting.” Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Monday April 4 is the Day Of Action to Abolish Student Debt, when thousands of young people will gather in Washington D.C.  to say "Pick Up the Pen, Joe" -- and abolish student debt via executive action. Astra Taylor will explain; she’s co-founder of the Debt Collective.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The dangers (and the benefits) of antidepressants: P.E. Moskowitz talks about the science, and about personal experiences. Their report, “Breaking Off My Chemical Romance,” is featured in the magazine’s special issue on drugs. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The changing politics of comic books, from WWII to today: critic J. Hoberman explains how comics served as wartime propaganda in the 1940s, how they were condemned as causing juvenile delinquency in the 1950s, how new kinds of superheroes emerged and then conquered Hollywood, and made billions for the studios--at a time when America was definitely NOT a superhero in the world. Advertising Inquirie...

What the Democrats have done wrong--and what they’ve done right; not just last week, but in the last century. Historian Michael Kazin explains; his new book is “What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party.” Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Our constitution is not good. It urgently needs to be re-imagined if we want justice and equality for all.” That’s what Elie Mystal, The Nation’s justice correspondent, says in his new book, “Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution.” Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

One of our heroes died on Monday: Paul Farmer, who brought high-quality health care to some of the poorest people in the world – starting in Haiti. Amy Wilentz was a friend of his – she talks about his work and his life. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hunter S. Thompson, the man who invented “Gonzo journalism,” wrote the classic book about Nixon, “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, ‘72.” Peter Richardson explains how he did it - his new book is “Savage Journey: Hunter S. Thompson.” Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This week Haiti should be inaugurating a new president. They’ve done that every five years on Feb. 7—except for gliches, coups and postponements—ever since Baby Doc Duvalier fled the island 37 years ago. But not this year. Amy Wilentz explains why Haiti can’t get the new beginning in needs—and how it might. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.co...

“The Right to Sex” – That’s the provocative title of the new feminist best-seller by Amia Srinivasan. Who has a right to sex? And who doesn’t? Katha Pollitt comments. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

More than 1,700 congressmen owned Black slaves, according to the Washingon Post. Even after the abolition of slavery in 1865, hundreds of men who HAD owned slaves were senators and members of the House of Representatives. The last Senator who had owned slaves served in 1922. Eric Foner will comment on the political power of slavery in the American past. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com...

American universities in the ’60s: Was that a golden age destroyed by student radicals who were protesting the war in Vietnam and racism in America? For some answers we turn to historian Ellen Schrecker —her new book is The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s . Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

New discoveries about America’s atom spies: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in June, 1953. We know that Julius did not give ‘the secret of the a-bomb’ to the Russians--that was the work of a couple of other people. And the FBI knew it at the time. So: why did the FBI go after the Rosenbergs, instead of the person they knew was the real spy? His name was Ted Hall--a brilliant young physici...