The Long Game

Susan Glasser is a staff writer for The New Yorker, where she writes a weekly column on “Trump’s Washington,” and she is a global affairs analyst for CNN. She founded Politico Magazine and was editor of Politico during the 2016 election. She was editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine, and previous to that a senior editor at the Washington Post, following years of reporting in Russia, Washingto...

Jack Goldsmith is the author of "In Hoffa’s Shadow: A Stepfather, a Disappearance in Detroit, and My Search for the Truth.” It's the story of his step-father, Chuckie O'Brien, and the man he spent much of his life working for, Jimmy Hoffa. Goldsmith weaves his own personal story into a dramatic and compelling tale of how Robert F. Kennedy abused government power to go after Hoffa, and set bad prec...

Chris Hayes is the host of “All In With Chris Hayes,” a nightly hour-long show on MSNBC that airs at 8 p.m. He wrote “Twilight of the Elites” in 2011, and a second book “A Colony in a Nation” in 2017. "The most important social project we must undertake in the wake of the fail decade," he wrote in "Twilight of the Elites," "is reconstructing our institutions so that we once against feel comfortabl...

Stacey Abrams is a 45-year old politician who ran for governor of Georgia last year and lost, but in the process became a nationally known Democratic star. She’s at the top of the list of potential running mates for the 2020 Democratic presidential field. And she’s only seen her her profile rise since last fall by contending that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, defeated her through underhan...

Mako Fujimura is an artist and a philosopher. He’s been blowing my mind for 15 years, first with his painting and then with his writing.  "Culture is not a territory to be won; it is instead a resource we are called to steward,” he has said.  That statement is a rebuke to the last forty years of American life. Mako is a Christian, and so he is in particular rebuking American Christianity. He gives...

Brian Rosenwald is author of "Talk Radio’s America: How an industry took over a political party that took over the United States.” Rosenwald is co-editor of “Made by History” a daily “Washington Post” history section, and a historical consultant for the Slate podcast “Whistelstop.” And he is scholar in Residence at the Partnership for Effective Public Administration and Leadership at the Universit...

Laura Berlind founded and helps run a think tank that is focused on one state and one state only: Tennessee. She’s the executive director of the Sycamore Institute, which on the surface is something pedestrian: a place that does research.  But underneath the surface, Sycamore is trying to do something revolutionary in our time. We live in a moment when politics and political debate is often captiv...

Bryan Mealer is the author of four books: All Things Must Fight to Live — an account of his time in the Congo — Muck City — about a south Florida town with a legendary high school football team but a troubled past — The Kings of Big Spring — about his family’s history of surviving through oil booms and busts and leaning on Pentecostalism, and The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind , an account of a young...

This is a story about a group of 12 African-Americans who were arrested and charged with 120 felonies after they shifted control of a local school board in rural Georgia from a majority white board to majority black. This story happened months after Brian Kemp became Secretary of State in 2010, and Kemp kept the case open for six years, even after two mistrials and an acquittal. I have finished a...

“Our society has become a conspiracy against joy," writes New York Times columnist and author David Brooks. The thesis of his new book, "The Second Mountain," is that a meaningful life is lived not out of the ego-driven pursuits of the first mountain but out of the soul-driven pursuits of the second. I found it to be a rich feast on topics like vocation and calling. I found it to be sharply provoc...

In 2008, Amy Sullivan wrote a book called "The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats are Closing the God Gap." A decade later, Amy says the biggest thing blocking that gap from being closed is the Democratic party's handling of the abortion issue. Amy is a journalist, author, host of the " Impolite Company " podcast, and a friend. We talked about a lot in this episode, and I learned things I didn'...

This week the House of Representatives held its third vote in three years on a procedural motion that would have led to impeaching President Trump if they had passed. None of these votes have been all that serious, but last week’s did get more support than in previous years. 95 Democrats voterd for impeachment, up from 58 Democrats in favor in 2017, and 66 last year.  The temperature is clearly ri...

I talk with Carl Cameron, who was one of the first people hired at Fox News in 1995 and worked at the right-wing cable news channel for 22 years, about what he's doing now working for Front Page Live , a liberal news site. We talk about what it was like to work at Fox News, and how covering campaigns from the road gave Carl the independence from Roger Ailes and others that he wanted. Carl is unspa...

It was a distant echo, but now it’s becoming a drumbeat. The big tech companies — Google, Facebook, Amazon — are increasingly the subject of talk about government regulation. And one month ago, Congress held its first hearing about what antitrust enforcement might look like regarding the tech giants.  One of the people who testified that day was Sally Hubbard, of the Open Markets Institute, which...

Mo Elleithee, former Democratic National Campaign spokesman and current Director of the Institute of Politics and Public Service at Georgetown, joins me in the spin room in Miami to talk about the Democratic debate. And Brittany Shepherd of Yahoo News sits in with me to talk about her observations of the debate and how she approaches the use of social media to supplement traditional news coverage....

The Supreme Court today issued a decision on partisan gerrymandering, the practice of politicians drawing maps that give themselves an advantage over other parties by manipulating an increasingly sophisticated understanding of who votes how and where you live to guarantee the most seats in Congress and state legislatures.  You can read the ruling here . Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s o...

“Transformation requires people changing. And I don't think most people change when they're defensive,” Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove told me. Wilson-Hartgrove is a leader in progressive Christianity, but as a young man he was a conservative Republican in rural North Carolina. And he talks in this episode about how the debate over systemic racism is uncomfortable and intimidating for many white people...

Peter Wehner's new book " The Death of Politics " is a plea to everyday Americans not to give up on politics. "So many things that we love and treasure and care for can be swept away if you get your politics wrong. On the flip side, if you get your politics right, it can allow for the conditions of human flourishing and human dignity to be protected and prevailed," said Wehner in this interview. W...

A Supreme Court ruling is expected any day on one of the biggest drivers of our broken, polarized politics: gerrymandering. Thomas Wolf is counsel with the Democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice, out of New York University. Wolf talks us through the basics of gerrymandering and what the potential outcomes from the court might be. And he explains how a series of rulings by federal cour...

As Congress returns from its Memorial Day recess, Democrats face a choice: stay united on taking their time to consider whether to impeach President Trump, or begin a massive political fight internally and in the country by rushing ahead with such a move now. Paul Kane is the senior congressional correspondent for The Washington Post, and has covered Congress for 19 years. Pelosi has been trying t...

Michael Steel, spent years as a top aide to Republican leadership on Capitol Hill, namely House Speaker John Boehner, has worked on a number of presidential campaigns, and is now a managing partner at Hamilton Place Partners, a public affairs firm in Washington DC.  We talked about how the current uproar among House Democrats pushing for impeachment proceedings to begin mirrors some of the challen...

Peter Hamby is host of “Good Luck America,” a weekly political show on Snapchat that he said is watched by 2 million young people (the majority of Snapchat users are between 13 and 24 years old). And he writes a regular political column for Vanity Fair’s “The Hive,” which reaches a more establishment audience.  We talk about what he’s learned from three years of speaking with, and to, younger Mill...

Reid Epstein has covered Beto O'Rourke extensively, as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal the last few years, and now a newly minted member of the New York Times 2020 coverage team. Epstein talks about what it was that made O'Rourke a phenom to begin with, and how the playbook that got him thus far may be more difficult to execute in a crowded Democratic primary. Outro music: "Sisyphus" by And...

Jonah Goldberg is a longtime conservative pundit and author who is in the process of leaving his positions at National Review and the American Enterprise Institute to start a new conservative media enterprise, along with Stephen Hayes, who until last year was editor-in-chief at the conservative Weekly Standard magazine.   Jonah has been thinking quite a bit about some of the themes of this podcast...

Last episode, we talked with Joe Trippi, who played a key political role in the 2004 Howard Dean campaign, which was the first Internet-driven campaign. This week, we have Nicco Mele, who was part of the team helping to run Dean’s cutting edge digital operation.  Nicco has had an eclectic and distinguished career for someone who is only 42. He has been deputy publisher of the Los Angeles Times, an...