Start Making Sense Clips

On the first anniversary of the insurrection of January 6, John Nichols argues that, to defend democracy, we need the Senate to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act—which requires changing the filibuster rules in the Senate. Also: proposals to expel members of congress who aided or abetted the insurrectionists. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privac...

Joan Didion died December 23 – she was 87. She wrote personal essays about California in the sixties and seventies, especially “Slouching Toward Bethlehem” and “The White Album,” and then about politics and history, especially her reports in “Salvador” and “Miami.” We spoke in October, 2003, at KPFK in Los Angeles, when her book about her family's California,  Where I was From  had just been p...

Tom Lutz is a writer who visits unusual places. he took United flight 155 from Honolulu to Kwajalein, one of the Marshall islands in the Pacific that’s a major US military base. It’s completely paved over, and the only greenery there is the golf course. The runway is one foot above sea level. The island will be under water by about 2035. Tom also describes life in some other places—his new book is...

Eric Foner and Henry Louis Gates talk about W.E.B. DuBois, the Black historian and activist of the first part of the 20 th century, and his book Black Reconstruction 1860-1880 —published originally in 1935, and out now in a new edition from the Library of America, edited by Foner and Gates. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Mutual aid and racial justice during the year of covid: Kristina Wong will explain how, in the darkest days of the pandemic, she started the Auntie Sewing Squad to make masks for the most vulnerable communities--and how she became, in her words, a sweatshop overlord. Her new co-edited book is The Auntie Sewing Squad Guide to Mask Making, Radical Care, and Racial Justice. Advertising Inquiries: htt...

Being Black in America, and being Black in France: Gary Younge talks about Josephine Baker, the Black American dancer who went to Paris in the twenties and later renounced her American citizenship. She’s being interred at the Pantheon, alongside Voltaire and Rousseau, this week. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Racism in America for decades led to strict housing segregation. But historians are now showing that that wasn’t simply the result of white people refusing to live near Blacks--segregated housing was the result of a carefully organized, long-term effort to establish a legal basis for systematic racial discrimination. And the groups that succeeded were not the KKK or White Power groups. It was real...

Father Greg Boyle is the founder of Homebody Industries, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and reentry program on the planet. He’s got a new book out now, it’s about “the power of extravagant tenderness” and it’s called “The Whole Language.” Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Rebecca Solnit talks about politics and pleasure, about knowing your enemies, and about joy as an act of resistance to authoritarianism--on the right, and on the left. Her new book is “Orwell’s Roses.” Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

John Coltrane was the tenor player who started out with Miles Davis in the fifties and then in the mid-sixties set out to pursue music as a quest for spiritual enlightenment. His most popular work was “A Love Supreme.” Now, a live performance from 1965 has been discovered and released – and Coltrane people are calling it “nothing short of a revelation.” We’ll talk about Coltrane’s place in Black c...

Colin Kaepernick’s silent protest, taking a knee, became the symbol of resistance to racial injustice in America. Dave Zirin talks about how that political movement has swept through college and high school sports. His new book is  “The Kaepernick Effect.” Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Richard Wright was America’s most famous Black writer in the 1940s and 50s – with his novel ‘Native Son’ and his character Bigger Thomas. But his place on the throne was shakier than he imagined. Adam Shatz talks Black American writing, and Black America, at mid-century. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The co-founder of Black Lives Matter LA, Melina Abdullah, talks about the LAPD, and how they showed up, in force, at her house twice in the week since she filed a lawsuit over a similar incident last year we call it ‘swatting,’ and we also call it retaliation. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Nation and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project are launching a new podcast: “Going for Broke,” personal stories about how the pandemic made it a lot harder for working class people to pay the rent, or find a new job. Host Ray Suarez provides a preview—he’s best known for his work on NPR and PBS. The podcast launches on Oct. 18, here . Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Pri...

The murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955 is probably the most famous lynching in American history. Now, there’s a novel about it that's wild and funny. The author is Percival Everett – it’s called “The Trees.” And it’s really good. How is it possible to write a comic novel about a lynching? John Powers will explain—he’s critic at large on NPR’s Fresh Air. Advertising Inquiries: https:/...

The low-income workers who do our most ethically troubled jobs: Eyal Press will explain--his new book is “Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America.” Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

10 years ago this week, a small group of young radicals declared “We are the 99 per cent” and set up camp in Zuccotti Park in Manhattan’s financial district.  Instead of a few people protesting for a few days, the movement exploded; hundreds of thousands of people joined Occupy camps in more than 600 U.S. towns and cities.  CUNY professors Ruth Milkman and Stephanie Luce comment--they’ve written f...

There’s a new comedy/drama on TV about college teachers and campus politics—“The Chair,” on Netflix, starring Sandra Oh as the first Asian American woman chair of an English department.  Amy Wilentz comments – she’s a professor in the English Department at UC Irvine, which has some surprising connections to the show.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://r...

We’re still thinking about Tulsa, about the massacre of Black people there in 1921, probably the deadliest instance of racial violence in the country’s history.  It was covered up for a hundred years – how was that possible?  Historian Eric Foner comments. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The story of a Black writer who moved to Paris in the fifties and discovered French racism – aimed at Algerians. Adam Shatz explains-- he was Literary Editor of The Nation, and has now written the introduction to the new edition of a novel called “The Stone Face,” by William Gardner Smith, originally published in 1963 and now republished by New York Review Books.  Advertising Inquiries: https://re...

Black politics and history, from the 1870s to the 1930s to today: Eric Foner talks bout how our understanding of Black politics and history, starting with Reconstruction, has changed--and about the historian-activists who challenged the prevailing racist historians back in the 1930s, starting with W.E.B. DuBois and James S. Allen—his book “Reconstruction: the Battle for Democracy” has just been re...

There’s a documentary out now about Dick Gregory, the Black stand-up comedian and political activist of the sixties and after.  it’s called “The One and Only Dick Gregory,” and it’s on Showtime.  John Powers comments—he’s critic at large on NPR’s Fresh Air. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The life, and death, of Ethel Rosenberg, the accused “atom spy”: who was she before she was framed by the FBI, before she called their bluff, and went to her execution?  Anne Sebba has written a really good book about that—it’s called “Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy.” Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The great comics artist Art Spiegelman, who won a Pulitzer Prize for ‘Maus,” has a new book out: “Street Cop,” illustrations for a story by Robert Coover, published by Isolarii.com .  He talks about working on that during the pandemic, and about his most controversial drawings – some of which only The Nation would publish  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: http...

The story of a music festival in a park in Harlem in 1969: the documentary about it, “Summer of Soul,” is a powerful and moving contributions to the history of the sixties.  And the story it tells was completely unknown; the footage sat in a basement for nearly 50 years, and no one cared.  John Powers, critic at large on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” comments.   Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/b...