The Nation Podcasts

On this episode of American Prestige , William Hartung — senior research fellow focusing on the arms industry and US military budget at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft — joins the program to discuss reports that the Trump administration is planning “sweeping budget cuts” for the Pentagon. We talk about these “cuts” being more accurately termed “reinvestments” into other areas, the...

Danny and Derek are back with the news, but without much of a choice. This week's American Prestige News Roundup: the US and Russia meet in Riyadh to discuss future bilateral discussions to end the war in Ukraine (0:38); Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump feud in public comments (3:38); The Daily Telegraph reports on a US mineral rights deal that Zelenskyy rejected (8:22)...

Paris Marx is joined by Makena Kelly to discuss how Elon Musk’s DOGE is reshaping the US government and the consequences that has for government employees and the wider public.  Makena Kelly is a senior writer at WIRED and writes the weekly Politics Lab newsletter. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The first big election of 2025 will be in Wisconsin, which elects a new Supreme Court Justice on April 1. Elon Musk is spending hundreds of millions in that race. That’s both a threat, and an opportunity for Democrats. On this episode of Start Making Sense , John Nichols will comment. Also: How did we end up with Trump back in the White House? We got here in part because Republicans built a moveme...

On this episode of American Prestige , Danny and Derek are joined by Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, and Aslı Bâli, professor of law at Yale Law School and nonresident fellow at Quincy, to talk about the Institute’s Better Order Project, a collaboration between over 130 people from more than 40 countries creating proposals for a stable, multipolar world. They talk ab...

On this week's news roundup from American Prestige : Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin agree to start bilateral peace talks for the war in Ukraine (1:05), with anticipated fallout for the latter nation (6:17); Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth makes some frank comments on Europe, Ukraine, and NATO (8:06); an update on the situation in Israel-Palestine, including Hamas threatening to delay the ne...

Paris Marx is joined by Eoin Higgins to discuss how tech billionaires changed the media ecosystem and made it profitable for influential voices to shift to the political right.  Eoin Higgins is a journalist and the author of  Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left . Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com...

Trump has lost a series of major legal battles in the last week, where courts have ruled that key executive orders of his are unconstitutional. But what happens if Trump defies the courts? David Cole comments—he recently stepped down as national legal director of the ACLU to return to teaching law at Georgetown University. Also: “One of the most important lawsuits in the history of the United Stat...

On this episode of American Prestige , Peter Beinart speaks with Danny and Derek about his book Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning , American Jews’ conception of and relationship with Israel, and how things have changed since the start of the genocide in Gaza. They explore why Peter centers being Jewish at this moment, what he’s seen happen in the Jewish community since Octobe...

On this week's news roundup from American Prestige : Donald Trump proposes the US take over the Gaza Strip (0:32), prompting mixed responses at home (9:16) as well as abroad (15:18); the US vows to return to a "maximum pressure" Iran policy (17:08); in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the M23 ceasefire fizzles out (20:04); Trump threatens to cut off funding to South Africa o...

On this episode of Tech Won't Save Us , we're joined by Liz Pelly to discuss how Spotify changes how we listen to music and the broader impacts it has on the wider music industry. Liz Pelly is a music journalist and the author of  Mood Machine . Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Understanding our power: “If you’re always consumed by the next outrage, you can’t look closely at the last one.” (Ezra Klein) Last week, Trump tried to stop payment of all federal grants and assistance. But people rose up in protest, and within a day Trump rescinded the entire effort. How did we do it? What does that tell us about him--and about our power? Rebecca Solnit comments – her new blog i...

On this episode of American Prestige , Derek speaks with Marie-Rose Tshite, a peacebuilding advocate and Ph. D. student in Political Science with a concentration in Feminist Comparative and International Politics at the University of Cincinnati, about M23 and the situation in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). They explore the group’s origins, its ties with the Rwandan government, other ext...

Running for president last year, Donald Trump disowned Project 2025, the laundry list of radical demands gathered together by right-wing think tanks. Trump claimed Project 2025 had no influence on him and was only being raised by Democrats as a political attack. But now Trump is in power, he’s enacting an agenda of dismantling the welfare state that is following Project 2025 in close detail, as my...

This week: in Israel-Palestine, detainees were exchanged on Thursday (0:31), the IDF continues its operation in the West Bank (6:05), an update on the humanitarian situation in Gaza (7:40), and Trump proposes the idea of ethnically cleansing the Strip (10:34); in Lebanon, the IDF ignores its withdrawal deadline (15:02); in Syria, the political transition continues (17:00), the IDF remains in the c...

On this episode of Tech Won't Save Us , Paris Marx is joined by Chris Gilliard to discuss David Golumbia's final book  Cyberlibertarianism  and how right-wing politics shaped how we think about the internet. Chris Gilliard is co-director of the Critical Internet Studies Institute and author of the forthcoming book Luxury Surveillance, coming in 2026. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircl...

Our attention is limited. That makes it valuable, Chis Hayes says– not just to us, but to those who’d like to exploit it. Chris’s new book is  The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource;  before he became host of “All in with Chris Hayes” on MSNBC, he was The Nation’s Washington Correspondent. Also: Your Minnesota Moment: officials in sanctuary cities and count...

On this episode of American Prestige , Lydia Walker, historian at Ohio State University, is back with Danny and Derek to conclude the conversation about her book States-in-Waiting: A Counternarrative of Global Decolonization . This time, the group explores post-colonial states following colonial borders, how business interests shaped things in states like Namibia, progressive capitalism, how the C...

On this week's American Prestige news roundup: in Gaza, the ceasefire takes effect (0:37), allowing a surge of humanitarian aid (3:51), the latter being partly facilitated by Hamas’s police force back in power (5:50). Meanwhile, an agreement on the second phase of the ceasefire remains to be seen (7:56); the IDF launches a new operation in the West Bank (14:38); negotiations between the govern...

On this episode of Tech Won't Save Us , Paris Marx is joined by Gaby Del Valle to discuss the inauguration of Donald Trump and what the tech oligarchy hopes to get from their relationship with him. Gaby Del Valle is a policy reporter at The Verge and is working on a book on ecofascism that will be released by Bloomsbury in 2027. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt...

How Trump ‘won’: In 2024, 244 million Americans were eligible to vote. 31.5% voted for Trump, 30.6 % voted for Harris, 38% did not vote. Trump won the same share of the eligible voters as he did four years ago (32%), But Harris’s share of eligible voters fell by 3.5 points compared to Biden. Why did 7 million Democratic voters stay home? Harold Meyerson has our analysis—he’s editor-at-large of The...

On this episode of American Prestige , we speak with Lydia Walker, historian at Ohio State University, about her book States-in-Waiting: A Counternarrative of Global Decolonization . The group discusses narratives of decolonization that Lydia wanted to challenge before exploring the “transnational advocacy network” and non-state actors she features in the book like Naga nationalist leader Angami Z...

On this week's news roundup from American Prestige : the terms and concerns of the Gaza ceasefire (0:30); Lebanon elects new PM Nawaf Salam (8:02); worries arise over foreign fighters in Syria’s new administration (12:21); in Sudan, the military takes Wad Madani, leading to reprisal killings (14:40); Somalia and Ethiopia agree to restore full relations (18:59); the TikTok saga continues (21:28...

On this episode of Tech Won't Save Us , Paris Marx is joined by Jathan Sadowski to discuss the relationship between technology and capitalism, and what lessons can be taken from the Luddites to properly assess and understand these systems. Jathan Sadowski is is the author of  The Mechanic and the Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism . He’s also the co-host of This Machine...

As we prepare for Trump to take office next week, we're getting ready to challenge him and his people in the upcoming elections later this year. But before that, we have an important election in the next few weeks: the Democratic National Committee will elect a new chair on February 1 to prepare for the battles and the campaigns to come. For our analysis we turn to John Nichols. Also: Trump pr...