THIS WEEK'S SHOW: October 15, 2026
Putting people first.
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October 6, 2016
"Once that weapon is out of the box, it can't be put back in."
Can a secret still be a secret if everybody knows about it? Top brass US intelligence officials, including former NSA director General Michael Hayden, seem to think so. “Stuxnet, no...
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September 29, 2016
"It’s almost a religious belief in the rapture, but a secular monetary version of it."
Working-class whites are now the reigning champs of pessimism in America. No other group of working-class Americans — Black, Hispanic, or Asian — holds a more despairing, more dire outlook on...
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September 8, 2016, 2016
What's really going on, between reality TV and "the reality-based community"?
Barack Obama has kept his distance from this campaign, but he did intervene last month to remind Americans that they’re not voting to give someone a recording contract: “This is...
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:56 — 28.1MB)
June 23, 2016, 2016
What can you say about a woman like Hillary Clinton?
When almost everyone you know is scared to death at the prospect of The Donald as The President, it can feel like we’re barely thinking about his opposite number. She’s become...
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April 21, 2016, 2016
We're seeing "a war on the global wanderings of the unverified self."
What makes a border in 2016? And how is it, on an earth supposedly flattened by free markets and liberal values, that the walls around us seem higher than ever before? From the big-data border of the EU to Donald...
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March 24, 2016, 2016
What do we have to learn from the lost world of Germany between the wars?
Pundits from Glenn Beck to Roger Cohen and Chris Hedges have one other discouraged democracy on their minds this election year. They’re thinking of the German government that rose as a fresh democracy in 1919 but failed — amid...
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:55 — 22.9MB)
March 17, 2016, 2016
How does a media establishment cover an anti-establishment revolt?
This spring and summer, millions of Americans will go to the polls and vote. For most of us, our political participation begins and ends at the ballot box. The rest is mediated:...
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March 3, 2016, 2016
Where does the 2016 electoral insurrection point the nation?
Act One of the freaked-out 2016 campaign for president may be drawing to a close, with Clinton and Trump continually atop polls. So what have we learned? Trump may be...
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February 25, 2016, 2016
How do you say "Black Lives Matter" on the 2016 ballot?
Is racial justice on the ballot in 2016? In the past year, Charleston, South Carolina, grieved twice. First, Walter Scott was shot in the back by a police officer, and...
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February 18, 2016, 2016
How is it that we love the Constitution, and hate the government it gave us?
The late justice Antonin Scalia boasted that his United States Constitution was definitively “dead.” But in a mixed-up political season, what if our founding document wants a new lease on...
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February 4, 2016, 2016
In the Democratic Party, the kids are all left. What does it mean for the future?
For the election watchers who were dissatisfied after the statistical stalemate in the Iowa caucuses, here’s a result worth wondering over: six to one! That’s the margin by which Iowa...
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January 28, 2016, 2016
Why does this year's election seem to be "a journey without a map"?
In 2016, the presidential election became electric. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have separately disrupted the fixed matchup of another Clinton and another Bush, and flat-footed, for now, the mainstream...
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:05 — 29.0MB)
December 3, 2015, 2015
Where's the latest backlash against immigration coming from?
It’s been a half century since John F. Kennedy declared this “a nation of immigrants,” since his successor Lyndon Johnson threw open the doors to a broad parade of people...
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November 12, 2015, 2015
At Mizzou and Yale, is it the second civil rights movement yet?
What does the second civil rights movement look like? Is a new struggle for equality, in feelings as well as rights, afoot on American campuses? It seemed possible this week when frustrated...
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:02 — 30.2MB)
November 5, 2015, 2015
Today's cities have scores. Is your town #winning?
Dan Koh, the new chief of staff to Boston’s mayor, wants city government to work like Brad Pitt’s team in Moneyball. The Oakland A’s broke through when they broke away from the old...