Start Making Sense Clips

A comic novel about Ethel and Julius Rosenberg?  Who’d have thought that was possible?   Now Francine Prose has written one:  it’s called “The Vixen,” and it’s terrific.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Amy Wilentz comments on Haiti after the assassination of its unloved president – and the necessity of following grassroots progressive civil society groups in finding a path forward towards free and fair elections. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights is known today as the heartland of Chicano culture.  Historian George Sanchez explains how its multicultural, interracial past made it a bastion of progressive democracy.  His new book is Boyle Heights.   Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

There’s a new book about the sixties--about the heroism, and the disasters, of the movements of that decade: “By the Light of Burning Dreams: The Second American Revolution.”  The authors are the brother and sister team David Talbot and Margaret Talbot--David is the founder of Salon.com , and Margaret writes for the New Yorker. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out:...

It's a great idea: creating a new Federal Writers Project, hiring a thousand out of work writers and journalists to document American lives during the pandemic year.  It’s in a bill proposed in the House by L.A. Representative Ted Lieu and the idea comes from David Kipen, former director of literature for the National Endowment for the Arts. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands...

Most of us think of Jimmy Carter as a failure as president, the Democrat who opened the door to Reagan, and the only president whose work AFTER leaving office was better than his work IN office. Kai Bird says that’s wrong – Carter had more accomplishments, and was more complicated, than people realized.  Kai’s new book is called “The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.” Advertising...

Amy Wilentz comments on the end of Bibi Netanyahu, after 12 years as Prime Minister, and a new governing coalition that includes for the first time in Israeli history and an Israeli Palestinian Islamist party as part of the government.  Amy, who was Jerusalem bureau chief for The New Yorker, talks about what this might mean for Palestinians inside Israel, and on the West Bank and in Gaza. Advertis...

Katha Pollitt talks about a new book of advice for men – Jordan Peterson’s international best-selling books of “Rules for Life” start with “stand up straight, with your shoulders back.”  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It’s probably the most radical show that’s ever been on TV: “Exterminate all the brutes,” the 4-part, 4-hour documentary about colonialism and genocide, by Raoul Peck, playing now on HBO Max.  Historian Robin D.G. Kelley comments.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The big TV event of the month--maybe of the year—is “The Underground Railroad,” a ten-part series on Amazon Prime Video, directed by Barry Jenkins and based on the Colson Whitehead novel.  It’s being called “the most ambitious take on American slavery since ‘Roots’” --that was on TV almost 40 years ago. Eric Foner comments; he wrote the book on the hidden history of the underground railroad: it’s...

Adam Shatz talks about Edward Said, the leading voice of Palestinians in the US before he died in 2010.  Said was also The Nation’s classical music critic, and Adam Shatz, now an editor for the London Review of Books, was The Nation’s literary editor--his work included editing Edward Said’s pieces for the magazine. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redc...

Literature, art, and the idea of ‘freedom’ during the cold war – from George Orwell to James Baldwin to “The Famly of Man”: Louis Menand  has been thinking about that--His new book is ‘The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War.’  Menand teaches at Harvard and writes for The New Yorker. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Bill Gates, the second richest man in the world, has spent the last 20 years giving away his money – through $50 billion foundation.  But who exactly has he been giving that money to?  Tim Schwab has some answers–-his three reports in The Nation on the Gates Foundation just won this year’s Izzy Award, named after I.F. Stone and awarded by the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College “fo...

We’re still thinking about how Dr. Seuss Enterprises took six of his books out of print because they contained racist drawings.  Right-wing media were pushing this story nonstop; according to a recent poll, more Republicans said they’d heard “a lot” about the move to withdraw some Dr. Seuss books than said the same about Biden’s huge Covid-19 relief bill.  Katha Pollitt comments.  Advertising Inqu...

Earth Day 2021 is the world’s largest civic event--three days of climate action by millions of people around the world, including Joe Biden hosting a global climate summit on April 22: and pledging to take bold action to slash greenhouse gas emissions in the US in the next ten years. Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation’s environmental correspondent, says that for starters we need to start using the term “...

Hunter Biden was the target of a massive Republican attack campaign for more than a year leading up to the election; at the same time, the gossip pages seized on his disastrous private life.  They made the most of his decades of alcohol addiction and drug abuse, and his subsequent affair with the widow of his brother. Now he’s written a book – it’s called “Beautiful Things: A Memoir.” Amy Wilentz...

Joe Biden and Congress should end our forever wars--and they can--by starting with three key steps: Karen Greenberg explains.  She is director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School and author, most recently, of Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Should Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer retire? he’s 82, and apparently healthy and competent--but his retirement would give Biden a chance to nominate a younger person –he’s promised a Black woman - while the Democrats control the Senate.  Joan Walsh comments.   Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Now that Trump is gone, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson has become the leading Republican voice of conspiracy theories and the leading defender of the attack on the capitol on Jan. 6.  But will he run for reelection next year?  John Nichols explains.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

A new official report in Los Angeles, commissioned by the city council, says the police in LA violated the law by attacking and arresting Black Lives MAtter marchers  in last summer’s protests. Civil rights attorney Carol Sobel explains--she's one of the people representing BLM in a lawsuit against the city.   Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redci...

Michelle Obama’s memoir is out now in paperback - It’s called “Becoming,” and it has sold more than 14 million copies worldwide in hardcover, and was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, NPR, and a dozen other places.  But the book avoids politics—which seems strange for the person the New York Times called "the most outspoken first lady in modern history."  Amy W...

Amy Wilentz reports on the huge protests in Port-au-Prince last Sunday, the biggest in decades, and asks why the Biden Administration is following Trump policies in Haiti.  Amy is author of the award-winning report from Haiti, "Farewell Fred Voodoo." Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Historian Eric Foner talks about Will Smith’s 6-part series on Netflix on the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, which established birthright citizenship and guaranteed equal protection to all “persons”—the series, with a stellar cast, is called “Amend.” Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Biden and the Democrats need to change things enough to win new supporters --and now that impeachment is finished, his $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill takes the center of the political stage, including the $15 minimum wage.  Alan Minsky comment on that, and on the longer term problem of restoring American manufacturing-he’s Executive Director of Progressive Democrats of America.  Advertising In...

We take a step back from this week’s politics and look forward to 2022 and future elections.  The Democrats’ victories in Georgia were a decade in the making; can we do it again in another Republican state?  Steve Phillips says “Texas is next.” Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy