The Brian Lehrer Show

Listeners try their hand at a quiz based on places in the news. Photo: Colorful Pins Locating Destinations on World Map, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License , Credit: freebie.photography Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jodi Kantor , New York Times investigative reporter, co-author of She Said (Penguin, 2019) and author of How to Start: Discovering Your Life's Work (Hachette, 2026), expands on her Columbia University commencement address where she tried to answer the question, “How, in this environment, is anyone supposed to find and start their life’s work?” Photo: Cover art for 'How to Start: Discovering Your L...

As part of a series on "spring cleaning," Kaitlyn Wells , senior writer at Wirecutter, offers advice on how to organize and digitize life's most important documents. Photo: Stock image by Tsuji /E+ via Getty Creative Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mara Liasson , NPR national political correspondent, talks about the latest national political news, including what's happening in foreign policy as President Trump travels to China and a deal to end the Iran war is still not happening. Plus, she discusses the redistricting wars and what a recent NPR/PBS/Marist poll found about the president's approval ratings. Photo: A Democratic candidate for Co...

As state lawmakers continue to hammer out the details in this year's budget, Jon Campbell , Albany reporter for WNYC and Gothamist, reports that it looks like the state will loosen the emissions goals in the landmark 2019 climate law, and explains why Gov. Hochul is dedicated to this, and why environmentalists are furious. Photo: Factory smoke via rawpixel. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company...

Listeners try their hand at a quiz based on numbers in the news. Image: Stock illustration, ( GrafikLab via Getty Creative) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As part of the yearlong series "Wild NYC,"  Marielle Anzelone , urban botanist and ecologist and the founder of NYC Wildflower Week, and Christian Cooper , science and comics writer, host of the National Geographic TV series Extraordinary Birder, NYC Bird Alliance board member, and the author of Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World (Random House, 2023), talk a...

As part of a series on "spring cleaning," Kaitlyn Wells , senior staff writer for The Wirecutter, offers advice on how to purge your old clothes, including where to send them when they're out of your closet. Image: Stock photo; ( smirart via Getty Creative ) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jimmy Vielkind , New York State Issues reporter for WNYC, digs into the details of the new, though still not final, $268 billion dollar New York State budget. Photo: The New York State Senate. (Credit: The New York State Senate ) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As the Trump administration is in the process of revamping Penn Station, Tom Wright , CEO and president of the Regional Plan Association (RPA), talks about a new report that offers the RPA's ideas for how to increase capacity and make the transit hub work for commuters. Photo: A clock at Penn Station. (Credit: Boaventuravinicius via Wikimedia Commons CC BY 4.0 ) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz co...

Civil rights scholar Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw , co-founder and executive director of the African American Policy Forum, founder and executive director of the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies at Columbia Law School, distinguished professor and Promise Institute chair for human rights at UCLA Law School and Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher professor at Columbia Law School, and a...

Jessica Grose , opinion writer at The New York Times , discusses the still-mostly-unequal division of household labor. Photo: Two women wash dishes in a kitchen in Australia in 1944. (Credit: Jim Fitzpatrick via National Library of Australia/ Wikimedia Commons ) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertisi...

Three of our favorite segments from the week, in case you missed them. Demise of Spirit Airlines  (First) | Is a Rent Freeze Coming?  (Starts at 38:21) | Avoiding Phishing Scams  (Starts at 57:35) If you don't subscribe to the Brian Lehrer Show on iTunes, you can do that here .   Photo: The self-service check-in kiosks of Spirit Airlines stand idle with a message to customers after the company cea...

Janai Nelson , president-director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, talks about the implications of the Supreme Court's decision in Callais V. Louisiana, which they say gutted the Voting Rights Act. Plus, her reaction to the news that the Virginia Supreme Court overturned the voter-approved redistricting ballot measure that would have been a boon to Democrats. Photo: United States Supreme C...

David Brand , housing reporter for WNYC and Gothamist, talks about the Rent Guidelines Board's preliminary vote on rent regulations for about one million regulated apartments, and other housing news. Photo:  The Queensbridge public housing development in the neighborhood of Long Island City in Queens, New York, (NewYork 1956 at the English-language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons)...

Ian Shapiro , professor of political science and global affairs at Yale University, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of After the Fall: From the End of History to the Crisis of Democracy, How Politicians Broke Our World (Basic Books, 2026), traces the breakdown in democratic ins...

Author Alva Gotby's book They Call it Love: The Politics of Emotional Life (Verso Books, 2023), coined the term emotional reproduction to describe the unseen and unappreciated labor involved in maintaining relationships that tends to fall on women in heterosexual pairings. For this Mother's Day, listeners call in to share how this concept appears in their lives and appreciate the emotional reprodu...

Dean Seal , corporate news reporter for The Wall Street Journal , talks about how the Iran war and higher fuel prices were a major factor in the demise of Spirit Airlines, and how the budget carrier shutting down may mean higher fares across the board. Photo: Author John Mckenna, CC BY 2.0. Public Domain Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collec...

Alvin Bragg , Manhattan district attorney, talks about recent work his office has done vacating wrongful convictions, a statistical decline in crime and more. Photo: Alvin L. Bragg, Jr., the District Attorney of New York County photographed on Central Park West and 74th Street (CmdrDan, CC BY-SA 4.0 ), via Wikimedia Commons Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for informat...

Suzanne Goldberg , professor of law at Columbia Law School and co-founder of the school's Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, talks about the Trump administration's investigation of Smith College over its policy of admitting transgender students, plus the administration's lawsuit against The New York Times on behalf of a white man who is alleging the paper discriminated in their hiring practices....

Listeners call in to talk about the latest or best book they've listened to, plus discuss the types of books they prefer to listen to over read. Photo: Stock image (Credit: mi-vector via Getty Creative) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Andy Kim , U.S. Senator (D NJ), talks about his work in the Senate and the issues in New Jersey, including the war with Iran and partisan redistricting in the Garden State and around the country. Photo: US Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ). December 2024, Office of Senator Andy Kim U.S. Senate Photographic Studio, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz...

NYC Health and Hospitals announced plans to shut down a storied program at Bellevue Hospital that treats torture survivors, citing tenuous federal funding and the possibility of ICE raids at the hospital. Allen Keller , M.D., associate professor of medicine and population health at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and founder of Bellevue's Program for Survivors of Torture, and Ibrahim, former patie...

The U.S. fertility rate dropped to another record low in 2025, according to provisional CDC data, marking a 23% drop since 2007. Jill Filipovic , attorney and author of several books, including OK Boomer, Let's Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind (Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2020),  and Karen Guzzo , director of the Carolina Population Center and a sociology professor at the University of Nor...

Wes Jackson , president of BRIC, unveils the lineup for the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! festival in Prospect Park, where the theme this year is "radical joy."  Photo: A Celebrate Brooklyn! performance at the Lena Horne Bandshell in July 2022. (Credit: BailieSchaefer via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection...