Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

You’ve probably encountered phishing emails or computer viruses. Or maybe one or more of your accounts has been hacked or compromised. How and why do hackers hack and what are they generally seeking? Our guest this week points out that understanding the answers to those questions is essential for making sense of the psychological, economic, political and social effects of cybercrime. Scott Shapiro...

It’s been 28 years since the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people and injured hundreds more. At 9:02 a.m. on April 19th, 1995, a bomb built by Timothy McVeigh, an American domestic terrorist, exploded in front of the Alfred P. Murray Federal Building. It remains one of the deadliest acts of domestic terrorism in U.S. history. The motivations for the attack, its deleterious effects, and the...

Life expectancy in the U.S. has been on the decline, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While the COVID-19 pandemic killed more than 1 million people in America, 2014-2015 was actually an inflection point for mortality rates. What went wrong and what’s behind the downward trend? Our guests this week point out that drug overdoses, suicides and alcoholism have fueled an inc...

Not too long ago, Brandon Johnson was virtually unknown to many Chicagoans. Now, he’s the 57th mayor of America’s third-largest city. His path to power, fueled by a markedly progressive campaign, was pretty unusual. Before taking the helm of Chicago, he was a school teacher, union organizer and county commissioner. Johnson, who lives on the West Side, has experienced his share of some of the city’...

What exactly is inside that historic 37-count federal indictment against Donald Trump? MSNBC host Ali Velshi reads every word of the DOJ’s allegations against the former president, including a transcript of a conversation Trump allegedly had about a classified military document and texts between his employees. If you have questions, you can leave us a voicemail at 917-342-2934 and maybe we’ll play...

We’ve experienced so much personal, social and economic disruption over the past few years. The pandemic reworked how we view some of the most fundamental and predictable aspects of our lives. How will we emerge from all of the trauma and upheaval? Our guest this week points out that part of our recovery will require us embracing the unexpected and a more high-risk world. Felix Salmon is the chief...

Every day in the United States, 10,000 people turn 65, according to the UN Population Division. We are about to have the largest older population ever. At the same time, nearly 4 million babies are born every year, leaving many Americans juggling caring for young children and aging parents. Caregiving is often cast as nonproductive labor, despite the incredible mental, emotional and physical toll...

The Supreme Court has long had incredible authority to make decisions that affect millions of Americans. But in recent years, it has increasingly used its power to make stealth emergency decisions without public hearings or explanations. The cases that we often hear about on the high court’s so-called merits docket only represent about one percent of what the court decides. Since the mid-2010s, 99...

We're republishing this episode, which was originally released in June of 2022. There are more guns than cars in the United States. And studies show that gun sales go up following mass shootings. Ryan Busse 30 years as a leader at one of America’s most popular gun companies. Busse is a former firearms executive at Kimber America and is author of “Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radic...

You’ve probably encountered an advertisement for sports betting in one form or another. In the past few years, there’s been a marked rise in the number of online sports betting ads from companies like DraftKings and FanDuel. Gambling companies now spend billions of dollars a year on advertising. At the same time, there’s growing concern over the effect betting is having on our experience with spor...

TikTok is one of the fastest growing social media platforms in the world, and now has over a billion users worldwide. But its future in the United States remains in limbo. The Biden administration, citing national security concerns, has demanded that the Chinese-owned company be sold, or face a federal ban. Montana lawmakers have already passed legislation banning the platform on personal devices,...

Content warning: This episode contains occasional explicit sexual references and depictions of graphic events that some may find disturbing. Madame Restell is a figure you’ve likely never heard of. Our guest this week points out that Restell, an abortionist who became one of the most influential and wealthiest women in NYC during the 19th century, has been “deliberately written out of history.” Bu...

You might be feeling that artificial intelligence is starting to seem a bit like magic. Our guest this week points out that AI, once the subject of science fiction, has seen the biggest rise of any consumer technology in history and has outpaced the uptake of TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. As we see AI becoming more of an everyday tool, students are even using chatbots like ChatGPT to write paper...

If you’ve been following international news, you’ve noticed the marked rise of protests and conflict in Israel. An unprecedentedly right-wing governing coalition has been elected with Netanyahu at the helm. Hundreds of thousands of people have been taking to the streets in Tel Aviv to protest the right’s moves to get rid of independence and the self-determination of Israeli Jews. Joining us to bre...

State legislatures have significantly advanced a record number of attacks aimed at restricting LGBTQ+ rights this year. Our guest this week points out that “the number one priority, without any ambiguity” of Republicans has been attacking trans people. Nearly half of the country could see health care bans for trans adolescents by May. This tidal wave of anti-trans legislation, which restricts gend...

Silicon Valley Bank’s recent failure marked the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history and the largest since the 2008 financial crisis. The run on the bank sent shockwaves through the financial world. Nearly 94% of its total deposits were uninsured, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data as of year-end 2022. The series of events leading to its demise have been described by some as t...

There’s been a marked rise over the last decade of nationalist and authoritarian politics. Global freedom declined for a 17th consecutive year in 2022, according to a Freedom House annual report. The rise of MAGAism in the U.S., neo-fascism in Italy and hard-right politics in Israel are just a few examples of why democracy around globe continues to hang on a knife’s edge. Our guest this week has e...

The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act would’ve addressed racial profiling and use of deadly force, among other things. But the bill, which was crafted in 2020, still hasn’t passed and it’s unclear if it ever will. Progress has often been stymied by conflicting ideas, on all sides of the political spectrum, about the role of police in maintaining law and order. So, what can be done to fix so man...

Even if the worst of the pandemic is over, some of the changes it foisted on our lives seem like they're here to stay. In cities around the nation, office space in dense downtown areas is well below full utilization, as workers spend more days working from home. Same goes for public transit weekday ridership. What happens to American cities if they're no longer the place to which people commute ea...

Since Chris was on vacation last week and given the wave of recent anti-trans legislation, we’re revisiting and providing an update on our episode with Dr. Izzy Lowell, who runs Queer Med, a private clinic that specializes in providing accessible health care to trans patients ranging from kids to adults.

 From the original description: What is gender-affirming health care? Around the country, the...

Starting in 2016, U.S. diplomats and spies began reporting a wide range of mysterious and debilitating medical symptoms, first in Cuba and then around the world. Doctors who initially treated patients couldn’t come up with a diagnosis and some just called it “The Thing.” Patients said they felt like they were hit by an invisible, directed pressure while stationed on government property, or sometim...

“I went because they didn’t want me there,” says Minnijean Brown-Trickey, our guest this week. It’s been more than 60 years since she made history. At 16-years-old, she and eight other black students found an angry mob and the national guard blocking their entry to Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. Backed by 1,200 soldiers, they eventually made it inside for their first full day of clas...

You’ve probably encountered an e-bike in some form or another. Maybe you’ve ridden one. Perhaps one has buzzed passed you on the street, in a bike lane, or on the sidewalk. We’ve seen your requests and we’re glad to finally dedicate an entire conversation to this topic. What’s fueling the e-bike revolution? Is it just a short-lived fad? E-bikes are selling more quickly than cars, according to the...

You’ve probably heard about what Florida governor Ron DeSantis is up to. One of the most controversial things he’s done is sign the Individual Freedom Act, also known as the “Stop W.O.K.E Act,” short for Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees. The law, among many things, prohibits teaching certain concepts related to race. Although there’s currently an injunction against the law, its implementation...

Last year's Super Bowl featured a who's who of celebrities hawking cryptocurrency and crypto platforms like FTX. In retrospect that looks like the boom before the bust. This year, crypto prices have tumbled and one of the most valued exchanges, FTX, collapsed in a cloud of alleged fraud and federal indictments. So is it all a scam? A pyramid scheme? Will crypto endure? Our guest this week thinks i...