Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

Chris just got back from vacation. It just so happened that he was way during one of the most remarkable periods in American presidential political history. There’s a lot to unpack with our guest this week. Heather McGhee is a New York Times bestselling author of “The Sum of Us” and the board chair at Color of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice group. She joins WITHpod to discuss t...

We’ve seen a wave of campaigns in school districts and municipalities across the country to ban literary works over the past few years.  One instance of this is the subject of MSNBC Films’ "To Be Destroyed," the latest installment of "The Turning Point" documentary series from Executive Producer Trevor Noah. The feature documentary explores a South Dakota community's fight against book banning aft...

There’s a lot of unprecedented things going on nowadays. And with everything going on, it can be tempting to distort the moment we’re in and to view things as totally new and completely abrupt. Our guest this week has written about the source of historical continuity, particularly in the 1990s, that has brought us to our current moment. John Ganz is the author of “When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Co...

Why does it seem so hard to build big things nowadays? Our guest this week points out that no one project embodies that cynicism quite like Boston’s Big Dig. Boston’s Central Artery/Tunnel Project, commonly known as the Big Dig, was the most complex and technically challenging highway project in American history. Ian Coss is host and creator of “The Big Dig” podcast, produced by GBH, which unpacks...

The Democratic Party coalition is a complicated one to say the least. A growing number of Democrats have called on President Joe Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential election in recent weeks. Those encouraging him to step aside have cited concerns about his fitness for office and ability to win reelection. Jamelle Bouie is a New York Times opinion columnist and is a co-host of the Unclear...

Another year, another pretty wild Supreme Court term. SCOTUS recently ended its term with a number of big decisions including ruling that former president Donald Trump is immune from prosecution for his “official acts” in office. And it also overturned the Chevron doctrine, reversing a 40-year-old precedent that afforded federal agencies a degree of discretion in interpreting ambiguous laws. As al...

Could the future of libraries as we’ve known them be completely different? Our guests this week say so. Megapublishers are suing the Internet Archive, perhaps best known for its Wayback Machine, to redefine e-books as legally different from paper books. A difference in how they are classified would mean sweeping changes for the way libraries operate. Brewster Kahle is a digital librarian at the In...

Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project, is a collection of policy proposals from The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. The group’s 920-page “Mandate for Leadership” is an extremely granular playbook that includes sweeping policy changes aimed at reshaping and dismantling American government. It’s pretty alarming. With so much at stake, we thought it would be...

Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett is one of the most interesting figures in Congress. You may have been introduced to her in recent weeks following a House committee during which Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene insulted her appearance. The verbal spat between the two took the internet by storm and became a viral moment. But that exchange, and her clapback, is only one part of her story as a...

We’re sharing another episode in our WITHpod 2024: The Stakes series, in which we choose specific areas of policy and talk to an expert about Trump and Biden’s records on the topic. We couldn’t think of a better person than our guest this week to help unpack the two candidates’ stances on antitrust. Timothy Wu is the Julius Silver professor of law, science and technology at Columbia University. He...

One of the most pressing challenges for candidates and campaigns today is how to win in a world where disinformation is so pervasive. Why is the information environment in this election year so hard to parse? Our guest this week has written about the keys to winning campaigns for more than a decade. Sasha Issenberg is a journalist and author of numerous books including his latest, “The Lie Detecti...

Its been four years since the murder of George Floyd at the hands Minneapolis police officers and the unrest that was unleashed in the wake of his death. And now we’re in a moment where another global protest movement is flourishing in denouncement of the Israeli war in Gaza. This week, we’re taking a look at the historical lineage and efficacy of protests, as well as ways we might rethink mobiliz...

We’re back with another episode of our WITHpod 2024: The Stakes series, in which we choose specific areas of policy and talk to an expert about Trump and Biden’s records on the topic. This week, we’re discussing what’s at stake for an area of top salience: climate and energy. There’s a lot to unpack. David Roberts is the founder of the Volts podcast, newsletter and community. He joins WITHpod to d...

This week, we’re sharing a recording of an event hosted at the Center for Brooklyn History where Chris interviewed author Ari Berman. Berman is the national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones and has written numerous books including his latest, “Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It,” which is the subject of this conversation. They disc...

We’re sharing another episode in our WITHpod 2024: The Stakes series, in which we choose specific areas of policy and talk to an expert about Trump and Biden’s records on the topic. This week, we’re discussing the seismic changes to reproductive rights over the past few years and both candidates’ stances. Jessica Valenti is an author and the founder of abortioneveryday.com. She joins WITHpod to di...

If you’ve been following the news at all, you’re aware that former president Donald Trump is on trial in a New York criminal court and is facing 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. And there’s a lot to unpack. Our guest this week has been in the courthouse for this criminal trial and has been closely following the ins and outs of the case. Lisa Rubin is the MSNBC legal correspondent a...

It’s been a wild last year or so in tech. We’ve seen a marked rise in the development of artificial intelligence, large language models and prolific growth of augmented reality systems. At the same time, it can feel like we’re moving backwards as concerns continue to rise about user privacy and the methods by which personal data is collected and monetized. Our guest this week points out that prote...

We’re thrilled to share the second episode in our WITHpod 2024: The Stakes series, in which we choose specific areas of policy and talk to an expert about Trump and Biden’s records on the topic. This week, we discuss the candidates’ stances and records on one of the most important and contested topics: tax policy. Kimberly Clausing is the Eric M. Zolt Chair in Tax Law and Policy at the UCLA School...

We’re excited to share the first conversation in our WITHpod 2024: The Stakes series. For the first time since 1892, we have an election in which both candidates have presidential records, which provides a unique opportunity to cut through messaging and rhetoric and culture war flotsam and actually take a hard look at what each man has actually done as president. On The Stakes, WITHPod will choose...

Our guest this week was thrown in jail and fired from his job after social media posts he made about Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7th. Meir Baruchin, 62, is an Israeli history and civics teacher who was held in solitary confinement for four days after posts he made denouncing the war in Gaza. There was an adjudicated process in which he was later found to be wrongly fired from his job in the...

There’s so much discourse about polling and it seems like there’s a poll for nearly every political issue. At the same time, polls often don’t successfully help us to predict the future, including election outcomes. What contributes to the mismatch between what we expect of them and what they actually deliver? Nate Cohn is the chief political analyst at the New York Times where he created the Time...

Why have attacks on gender become so pervasive, especially within right-wing movements? Our guest this week points out that “the question of gender is fundamentally linked with the future of our democratic world.” Judith Butler is a philosopher, gender theorist and cultural critic. They are also a distinguished professor in the graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley. Butler is...

If you’ve been following the news, you’ve seen that this week the House passed a bill designed to force the sale of TikTok from its Chinese parent company. If you’re confused about the ins and outs of this issue, we did an extensive exploration of it with NBC News technology correspondent Jacob Ward last year. So, we thought it would be good to re-share this TikTok 101. This conversation was origi...

Our guest this week recently traveled down to the border to confront the so-called “Army of God” as part of a larger project of providing alternative ideologies to Christian nationalism. Doug Pagitt is a pastor, author and the executive director of Vote Common Good, an organization aimed at influencing evangelical Christians. His group has been on a nationwide tour focused on directly engaging eva...

It can feel like the news industry is in a moment of crisis. Over 500 journalists were laid off from news outlets in January 2024 alone, according to a report from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. These layoffs are part of a broader trend of seismic changes within the media industry over the past few decades. As disinformation concerns continue to rise and we prepare for another con...