The Nation Podcasts

Paris Marx is joined by Matt Pearce to discuss how Google’s use of generative AI is sending far less traffic to all manner of websites, but especially news publications, and what that might mean for the future of journalism. Matt Pearce is Director of Policy at Rebuild Local News and a former reporter at the  Los Angeles Times . Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out...

How do we face how bad things are now, while also understanding the reasons for hope, and the opportunities for action? Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, will comment. Plus: Robert Reich says the origin of our troubles with Trump and MAGA go back to the sixties; he says it started with the sixties movements – which created “a giant political void that would eventually be f...

Michael Albertus, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, joins the program to talk about his book Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn’t, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies . The group explores notions of land from archaeological evidence thousands of years ago, the enclosure movement of the medieval era, the European mindset vs those of indigenous peoples in the era...

Writing in The New Republic, Greg Sargent called attention to Zohran Mamdani’s highly effective media strategy which has allowed him to reach many voters that have been drifting away from the Democratic Party, especially young people and immigrants. In punchy, short videos, Mamdani has offered an optimistic message that celebrates big city life and diversity while showing how government policies c...

Don’t forget to purchase our “Welcome to the Crusades” special series! Danny and Derek are monitoring the Liam Neeson-Pamela Anderson situation. Otherwise, in this week’s news: a new study says most countries are exploiting groundwater aquifers at an unsustainable rate (2:26); in Israel-Palestine, another Gaza ceasefire breaks down (4:56), Israel’s “humanitarian pause” has little effect on the sta...

Paris Marx is joined by Jacob Silverman to discuss Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire’s Islamophobic attack on Zohran Mamdani, what it tells us about the state of tech’s politics, and how Donald Trump is enriching himself through crypto scams. Jacob Silverman is a journalist and the author of the forthcoming book  Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley . Advertising Inquiries:...

Six million Democrats who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 did not vote in 2024. What’s wrong with them? Pollster and strategist Celinda Lake explains who they are, and what it would take to get them back to the polls in the 2026 midterms – and in 2028. Also: a suggestion for summer reading: M: Son of the Century is a 750-page historical novel about the rise of Mussolini, by Antonio Scurati. John Power...

Great Power Week continues here at American Prestige as historian Michael Brenes joins the show to talk about how prolonged competition with China threatens democracy, peace, and prosperity. They compare Biden and Trump’s respective approaches to China, whether the national security establishment is trying to manufacture an existential threat out of The People’s Republic, whether there is any nati...

Since 2015, Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the American foreign policy establishment for being too belligerent and unwilling to negotiate with adversaries. But in office, Trump has carried out a foreign policy that has all the vices he has criticized and been even more inclined to risk war or get into new wars. In a recent essay in The New York Times , Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow in...

Don’t forget to buy our “Welcome to the Crusades” miniseries! Danny and Derek also rail against the war pigs, but lack the heavy riffs. This week: the International Court of Justice rules that wealthy nations must take action on climate change or bear responsibility (1:20); clashes escalate on the Thai-Cambodian border (4:08); a ceasefire holds in Syria’s Suwayda province after clashes between Dru...

Paris Marx is joined by Dan McQuillan to discuss the political push by global governments towards rapid AI adoption at all costs, and how citizens can critically rethink not only our dependence on these technologies, but imagine a collective future that benefits everyone. Dan McQuillan is a lecturer at Goldsmiths College, University of London and the author of  Resisting AI . Advertising Inquiries...

A federal court in LA has stopped ICE from detaining people for deportation because they look Latino – that’s racial discrimination, and it’s unconstitutional, the court said. Mark Rosenbaum of Public Counsel will explain what’s next as he government appeals the case to the Ninth Circuit. Also: How does a movement build support when large parts of the country are opposed to its goals? How do you c...

Hugh Wilford, professor of history at California State University, Long Beach, is back on the program to conclude the discussion of his book The CIA: An Imperial History . In this episode they talk about figures like Edward Lansdale and James Angleton, “regime maintenance,” counterinsurgency, the agency’s use of publicity, the effect of the War on Terror on the CIA, and more.  Listen to Part 1 her...

Tech lords such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are among the richest humans who have ever lived and have an enormous sway over the American political system but even that isn’t enough for them. They also want a compliant media, one that echoes their ideas, doesn’t investigate their business practices, and goes after their enemy. This is the subject of a new book by Eoin Higgins: Owned: How Tech Bill...

Derek is in the shop for maintenance, so Danny presents the news with the Quincy Institute’s Alex Jordan. This week: Israel bombs the Syrian Defense Ministry in Damascus (0:39) as Netanyahu’s corruption trial carries on (7:05), plus US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee condemns settlers killing a US citizen (10:24), and the Hague Group coalition meets in Bogota to decide how to hold Israel accoun...

Paris Marx is joined by Nathan Grayson to discuss the latest round of Microsoft layoffs and how the company’s ambition to remake the video game industry around its streaming service has had significant consequences. Nathan Grayson is a co-founder of Aftermath and author of  Stream Big: The Triumphs and Turmoils of Twitch and the Stars Behind the Screen . Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.co...

There’s trouble in Trump world: Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is launching a Third Party to challenge Trump’s Republicans in the midterms and maybe in 2028. Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party, explains why Musk will fail. Also: Trump’s executive order abolishing birthright citizenship – guaranteed by the 14 th Amendment – has been blocked for a second time, thi...

Pull yourselves up by your bootstraps, rise ‘n grind, and find your calling as we welcome historian Erik Baker to the program to talk about his book Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America . The group explores the Protestant work ethic and Jeffersonian yeoman farmer, influential figures like Henry Ford and Frederick Winslow Taylor, the seeds of entrepreneurialism in...

Donald Trump’s foreign policy has been as unstable as the man himself, shifting quickly from pushes for restraint to escalating wars in the Middle East. This volatility is a function not just of Trump’s personality but the contradictions and competing factions that are gathered under the term America First, as well as the continued power of the foreign policy establishment that Trump has claimed h...

Remember that today is the last day to order our limited edition “Robo Washington Crossing the Delaware” poster! Paid subscribers get a 50% discount! AP’s retirement account is entirely tied to copper, so we’re not sure how long we have to do this. In this week’s news: Yemen’s Houthi/Ansar Allah fighters have resumed attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea, sinking two (1:47); in Israel-Palesti...

Paris Marx is joined by Laleh Khalili to discuss how the United States uses its control of key technologies to shift global power dynamics, and how that specifically plays out in the Middle East. Laleh Khalili is Professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter and author of the forthcoming book  Extractive Capitalism . Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: ht...

Trump’s ICE is attacking undocumented people in LA County because there are a lot of them -- maybe a million, out of a total of 3.3 million Latinos, and also because LA is one of the most Democratic counties in the country. And LA has a big and militant alliance of immigrants rights groups that are fighting Trump. Harold Meyerson will explain the deportation battle in Southern California at this p...

⁠Get your limited edition "Robo Washington" poster now⁠⁠ ! Economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)  ⁠ Mark Weisbrot ⁠  joins the show to talk about economic sanctions and how they affect people’s lives. They discuss the effect of sanctions on migration flows, how the PR about them targeting governments and not civilians is false, how the internationa...

Writing in  The Nation , Pamela Alma Weymouth  drew a contrast  between Kay Graham, her late grandmother who was publisher of  The Washington Post  when it fought Richard Nixon’s administration on The Pentagon Papers and Watergate, with the current owner of the newspaper, Jeff Bezos. Unlike Graham, Bezos has been all too willing to bend the knee to a corrupt president. I talked to Pamela about Bez...

Our news roundups are sometimes big, but never beautiful. This week: the PKK to begin its disarmament in Turkey (1:17); Iran suspends its cooperation with the IAEA (4:30), but remains open to negotiations with the US (6:53); the debate continues on how far the war set back Iran’s nuclear program (9:18); in Gaza, a new ceasefire push (12:24) while journalists investigate the massacres at “humanitar...