The Nation Podcasts

Danny and Derek welcome to the show Molly Lambert, creator of the JENNAWORLD podcast, to talk about the rise of the modern porn industry and its roots in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley. They discuss the medium’s origins in underground stag films and the porno chic era; the shift to home video and the corporate studio model; breakout stars like Ginger Lynn Allen and Jenna Jameson; porn as an outsider i...

It’s no surprise that liberal philanthropy — a longtime pillar of the Democratic establishment — has become one of the Trump administration’s latest targets. As David Callahan  writes in our December issue, liberal foundations “have often been depicted as the great puppet masters of the left, bankrolling and directing a who’s who of progressive groups intent on destroying the American way of life....

For this special season finale, recorded live during NYC Climate Week, host Shilpi Chhotray convenes a powerful storytelling event with three frontline media makers: Chantel Comardelle, Alexandra Norris, and B. Preston Lyles. This is more than a conversation about films or campaigns — it’s an intimate window into the lived realities of climate and environmental injustice. From Indigenous land loss...

Jo and Charlotte discuss secret gardens, indoor kids, and Peter Pan’s baby teeth before they’re joined by culture-shaping Annelise Ogaard, who introduces listeners to the lavish, creepy world of Gabrielle Wittkop’s fiction. Annelise Ogaard is a writer, translator, filmmaker, vibesmith, area woman, and friend of the pod. She has translated a variety of Japanese manga, including  Hauntress , (one of...

Paris Marx is joined by Ketan Joshi to discuss how hyperscale data centers are fueling the consumption of more oil and gas, what that means for climate targets, and the insidious relationship between the tech and fossil fuel industries. Ketan Joshi is a climate writer and data analyst based in Oslo working with climate and environmental groups. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands P...

Last Friday Marjorie Taylor Greene announced she was quitting after Trump excommunicated her from MAGA, while the same day Trump welcomed Zohran Mamdani to the White House with open arms and high praise. What’s going on with Trump? Harold Meyerson comments - he's editor at large of The American Prospect . Also: Alice Waters, the legendary founder of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, winner of the Nati...

In lieu of a typical Tuesday episode this week, we are releasing the first episode of our new miniseries Chinese Prestige . Annual subscribers already have access, while everyone else can get the 8 episodes for a whopping $5 for two weeks only. Enjoy! In this first episode of Chinese Prestige , Yidi, Danny, and Derek trace the origins of the Chinese Communist Party from the May Fourth Movement to...

Angelo Herndon was a Black coal miner turned Communist activist who was repeatedly “arrested, convicted of vagrancy, and incarcerated” for his efforts to educate and mobilize workers. In 1932, he helped organize an interracial protest against a county decision to cut off relief for the poor. But it wasn’t simply the protest that led to his chain-gang sentence — it was Herndon’s possession and dist...

The famed economist Larry Summers, not for the first time, finds himself the center of a scandal. He’s had to take a leave from Harvard, where he teaches, because of embarrassing emails he had with his late friend Jeffrey Epstein. I talked to economic journalist and Nation contributor Doug Henwood, a long-time Summers watcher, about the career of this controversial and influential figure. Summers...

Charlotte overcomes her resistance to novels about sexual abuse in order to read Kate Elizabeth Russell’s excellent My Dark Vanessa, after which Jo introduces listeners to the freewheeling criminality of Diane DiMassa’s Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian. The ferociously intelligent Torrey Peters then joins for a conversation about plant consciousness and our relationship with the organic world.  O...

Danny and Derek are praying for Kim Kardashian to pass the bar. In this week’s news: Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia visits the White House (1:56); the U.S. pushes a new Ukraine peace deal (8:58); Israel continues killing people in Gaza (12:30), Palestinians’ shelters are failing in heavy rain (13:57), the UN votes on Trump’s Gaza plan (15:22), and Palestinians seeking relief are put on flight...

Paris Marx is joined by Gil Duran to discuss how Peter Thiel’s bizarre obsession with the antichrist is really a desperate and embarrassing attempt to divert attention from his own misdeeds. Gil Duran writes The Nerd Reich and is working on his first book, The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Global Democracy. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out:...

After almost a year of Trump stonewalling about the Epstein files, Republicans in the House finally took a stand against him. More than a hundred Republican members were prepared to vote for releasing the files. Facing a dramatic defeat, on Sunday night Trump caved, and Tuesday the vote in the House was nearly unanimous. John Nichols has our analysis. Also: The Americans who fought in World War II...

Danny and Derek speak with political theorist and author Lea Ypi about her new book Indignity: A Life Reimagined , which explores how personal memory intersects with imperial collapse, nationalism, and the surveillance state. They discuss her grandmother’s journey from Ottoman Salonika to Albania amid the rise of competing political projects; archives and the stories they erase; the challenge for...

The scandal around Jeffrey Epstein, who trafficked and abused children and died in a prison cell in 2019, has never gone away. It continues to explode now that House Democrats have released thousands of emails from Epstein and his cronies. But while the political class and mainstream media are understandably focused on the sex scandal, another dimension of the scandal goes uncovered except by inde...

This week, Jo discovers the seminal elegance of Sylvia Wynter’s Black Metamorphosis: New Natives in a New World, while Charlotte considers how well she would fare if she traveled back in time to the era of Alexander the Great, as depicted in Mary Renault’s The Persian Boy. Then, the dazzling Lauren Michele Jackson joins to discuss the chaotic, thrilling, sexually vibrant, and deeply unwell narrato...

In this episode of A People’s Climate, host Shilpi Chhotray sits down with Elizabeth Yeampierre, veteran organizer and executive director of UPROSE, Brooklyn’s oldest Latino community-based organization, to explore how frontline communities are taking climate action into their own hands. In a capitalist world that prioritizes bigger, faster, and more, Elizabeth’s work takes a different path. Small...

Subscribe now to skip the ads and get all of our content! Danny and Derek are vigorously programmed to bring you the news headlines. This week: the Thai-Cambodia ceasefire breaks down as border fire and incidents escalate (0:30); in Gaza, Trump’s framework stalls while governments debate the shape and purpose of an international security force (4:27); Syria’s President Ahmed al-Shara visits the Wh...

Paris Marx is joined by Nathan Grayson to discuss how Saudi Arabia is buying its way into the sports, comedy, and video game industries in order to broaden its investment portfolio and launder its international reputation. Nathan Grayson is a cofounder of  Aftermath  and the author of  Stream Big: The Triumphs and Turmoils of Twitch and the Stars Behind the Screen . Advertising Inquiries: https://...

As mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani will be the first socialist in American history to hold significant power. It’s a huge opportunity, and a huge responsibility. Bhaskar Sunkara, president of The Nation and author of “The Socialist Manifesto,” will comment. Also: How a band of visionaries and a million dollars upended America – in the 1920s, which had some remarkable similarities to our own...

Derek is joined by Omar Zahzah, Assistant Professor of Arab Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies at San Francisco State University, to talk about his book Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital Settler Colonialism . They discuss the Sheikh Jarrah uprising and the digital front of the Palestinian struggle, the difference between “digital apartheid” and “digital settler colonia...

Perhaps no single object embodies our dystopian, oligarchical, ugly present more than the Cybertruck—the hulking spacecraft-cum-tank that Elon Musk has foisted on the world. The Cybertruck is unpleasant to look at, unsafe to drive, and, judging from its anemic sales, unwanted by most of the public. It has been described as an even bigger flop than the infamous Ford Edsel. But, as writer Maya Vinok...

Much has been written about how the Israel/Palestine conflict is dividing the left, but the same is true of the right. Tucker Carlson’s interview with the antisemitic critic of Israel Nick Fuentes has created an intense debate on the right about anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, currently playing itself out in turmoil at the Heritage Foundation. I spoke with the historian David Austin Walsh, whose b...

Reading Writers is BACK, and in partnership with Bookforum Magazine! In this first episode of Season 3, hosts Jo and Charlotte delve into the (separate) letter collections of Vincent Van Gogh and D.H. Lawrence before they’re joined by superstar novelist Rumaan Alam to reflect on magazine eras of yore via Tina Brown’s The Vanity Fair Diaries. Also mentioned: Cat Marnell’s How To Murder Your Life, J...

In this episode of A People’s Climate, host Shilpi Chhotray sits down with Vivien Sansour, founder of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, for a powerful conversation about resistance in the face of Israeli militarism, occupation, and ecological devastation. For two years, the world watched Israel’s genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing campaign across Palestine — including the annihilation of Pal...