Richard Nixon

Emma hosts Dan Canon, civil rights lawyer and professor at the University of Louisville, to discuss his recent book Pleading Out: How Plea Bargaining Creates a Permanent Criminal Class. Emma begins by running through the arrest of an Iranian citizen for planning an extrajudicial assassination attempt against John Bolton, extrajudicial assassination expert, and Rudy Giuliani assures the public that […]
Sam and Emma host Jefferson Morley, editor of the JFKFacts blog, to discuss his recent book Scorpions’ Dance: The President, the Spymaster, and Watergate. Sam and Emma begin by assessing the fundamentally bipartisan-and-nothing-else gun control bill, and cover the arrest of Idaho White Supremacists planning a riot at a pride event, Sarah Palin’s advancement in the Alaskan senate race, and […]
Sam and Emma host Angie Maxwell, associate professor of political science at the University of Arkansas, to discuss her recent book The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics, on how the Southern Strategy that completely restructured the electoral college behind the GOP’s turn against social progress has found long-term success in […]
Sam hosts Adam Hilton, assistant professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College, to discuss his recent book True Blues: The Contentious Transformation of the Democratic Party, on how the party apparatus of the Democratic Party went from a three-majority monster in the midst of the 20th Century to a hollow shell of an organization. Professor Hilton begins by […]
Sam sits down with Marcia Chatelain, professor of history and African American studies at Georgetown University, to discuss her recent book Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, on McDonald’s, fast food franchises, and their ties to the success and failures of Black capitalism. Professor Chatelain discusses how McDonald’s came to occupy a state-like role in Black communities […]
Sam hosts Paul Sabin, professor of history at Yale University and director of the Yale Environmental Humanities Program, to discuss his recent book Public Citizens: The Attack On Big Government and the Remaking of American Liberalism, on how the US went from eras defined by government action under FDR through LBJ, to Reagan and Clinton coming together across the […]
Steve Mnuchin reflects on lying to Americans about pushing for a large tax break for the wealthy. Stephanie Kelton (@StephanieKelton), a Professor of economics and public policy at Stoney Brooke University, explains the Bretton Woods system. Why leaving behind the Gold Standard creates policy flexibility. Why did Nixon take America out of the Gold Standard? […]
How Republicans will dismantle healthcare. Journalist Branko Marcetic, explains the creation of a mass National Security State under the Obama Administration. Killing American citizens without due process. Eric Holder’s letter to Rand Paul and can an American Citizen be killed on American soil? The wars Trump inherits across the globe. Obama’s failed record on secrecy […]
Historian Rick Perlstein author of The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan, explains “wacky packages” and the cultural politics of the 1970s, the rights absurd plagiarism charges, the role of terrorism in left politics in the 1970s, Nixon and the beginning of elite impunity, what was good about the 1970s, the 1970s […]
Filmmaker Eugene Jarecki, discussed his new documentary on the war on drugs The House I Live In.  Jarecki, explained the origins of his commitment to social justice, how the business of the drug war works, why politicians from both major parties have internalized