Why Are We Like This?

In Manatee County, teachers have their marching orders. Educators and administrators are clearing books from not just school libraries but class libraries. We talked with Judd Legum ( @JuddLegum ) from Popular Information about his reporting on the pressure teachers are feeling from our censorious government and education department, and the reaction they have gotten for raising red flags. You can...

Our humble podcast achieves the rare Eskamani Trifecta as we welcome back Ida Eskamani to help us preview what promises to be Florida's most unhinged legislative session in living memory, with GOP supermajorities in both houses and a governor focused on earning national conservative bona fides. We discuss the threats to groups like renters, LGBTQ Floridians, Black communities, and undocumente...

We’re back for a new season and year, and the Gods have smiled on us with a series of increasingly ridiculous Florida-adjacent stories. We touched on former-Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s Florida winter that landed him in a hospital while his supporters in Brasilia stormed the capital. We also caught up on kitchen table issues — literally — talking about the GOP’s new fixation on gas stoves....

The United States is the largest art market in the world, and with its unique combination of rich people and light oversight, Florida is a natural nexus for art-related fraud. This week, Tess Davis, Executive Director of the Antiquities Coalition, guides us through this new and foreign world of art, antiquities, and the fraudsters who bring their chaotic energy to Art Basel Miami each year. ...

Billy Corben, director of hit documentaries like Cocaine Cowboys, The U, and most recently HULU’s God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down A Dynasty, joins us to talk about Miami’s undisputed status as the capital of crypto scams and million-dollar ape jpegs.  Come for the crypto convo where we dissect Art Basel’s role in supporting the wheezing, dying collection of scams that we conside...

A bit of a palette cleanser from politics and midterm elections this week. It’s Thanksgiving week, and we’ve pulled a story from the annals of Florida’s violent recent past that centers on one family’s tragic holiday, a salacious story that may have retreated from public memory but one that we hope to use as a backdoor to talk about the state of mental healthcare in Florida. But first, we kick off...

(Ok, you'll probably notice that we recorded this shortly after the midterm elections, as various races that are now settled were still up in the air. But we turned out to be right so stick a sock in it.) With the midterm elections a week in the rearview and a bit of perspective, we talked with Kartik Krishnaiyer ( @kkfla ) of the Florida Squeeze ( @Flasqueeze ) about the disastrous failures of th...

Following yet another crushing defeat for Florida Democrats, we caught up with Danny Rivero ( @TooMuchMe ), a Miami journalist at NPR affiliate WLRN to figure out exactly why our politics are like this. One issue that Democrats ceded ground on was immigration, where conservative narratives dominated, centering around crime, demonization, and midnight flights to Martha’s Vineyard. Danny talked with...

We talked with Ida V. Eskamani ( @ida_v_e ) about Florida's place in the war on LGBTQ+ rights, and the moving target that is straight-cisgendered hate for nonbinary people. Schools and scholastic sports are the new battlegrounds, and it all comes to a head with the passage of the "Don't Say Gay" bill in 2022.

There’s machine politics, and there’s micro-machine politics. In Florida’s state capital, you can find both right across the street from each other.  Ryan Ray, Aide to Tallahassee city commissioner Jeremy Matlow, stopped by to discuss his boss’s efforts to address rampant corruption that has seen high-profile prosecutions and indictments. We got into the push to take Tallahassee back fro...

“I want you to make his life a living hell. Seriously.”  The quote is from a 2019 email the chief executive of Florida Power & Light, Eric Silagy, about Florida State Senator Jose Javier Rodriguez, who had been a thorn in the side of the utility monopoly. Rodriguez was pushing policy reforms that would allow Florida consumers to more easily access solar power outside the confines of FPL’...

With our guest Jordan Zakarin from More Perfect Union, we dive into the enigma that is Florida’s Governor and his myriad scandals, missteps and misadventures. You can follow Jordan @jordanzakarin and subscribe to Progress Report here . You can follow WAWLT on Twitter  @WAWLTShow . This episode features music by David Rosen,  @ByDavidRosen . The post CONVERSATION: The Ron DeSantis R...

Following last week’s conversation and exploration of education, we talked with Jennifer Berkshire, a journalist and podcaster who covers education policy and politics. Along with her co-host Jack Schneider, she co-authored “ A Wolf At The Schoolhouse Door ” in 2020. Her podcast — Have You Heard — has helped many a parent like me navigate the recent acrimony and decline of public...

This is the story of a multi-million dollar heist of taxpayer funds into private hands that has played out for more than a decade and shows no sign of slowing down. As the school calendar flips throughout Florida, we look at how Charter Schools and “school choice” have successfully played into the American (and Floridian) dual ethoses of “freedom” and “choice, creating a system where there’s no fr...

Before its bloody and violent present, Florida had a bloody and violent past of colonial brutality, racially motivated terrorism, and politically motivated bombings (oh, the bombings!). We spent an hour talking with Matt Christman from Chapo Trap House about how Florida became what it is today, and, as a conservative political project, what it portends for the U.S. at-large. You can follow Matt on...

As a coda for this new show, we take a 10k foot view of why Florida is the way it is, the forces conspiring to implement creeping authoritarianism in recent years, the anti-democratic sentiment guiding right-wing “culture”, its status as a laboratory for the American conservative project, and how bulwarks like Miami-Dade, Broward and Central Florida are barely holding on. And the whole conspiracy...

The true crime podcast where Florida is an active crime scene. Politics, culture, history, crooked cops, scumbag politicians, zombies and more. Join hosts Thomas Kennedy, Gerald Doherty and David Quiñones as we get to the bottom of America’s id and answer the question, “Why Are We Like This?” Subscribe today and visit www.wawlt.com for more. The post Why Are We Like This – Coming September first a...