A Gentlemen’s Disagreement

We started this week's episode with a discussion of the Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples' Day debate (0:30-20:10). We then spent the majority of the episode trying to examine the enormously complicated, difficult, and tragic situation currently unfolding in Israel and Palestine (20:18-1:10:40). We concluded with a brief conversation about the historic ouster of Speaker McCarthy (1:10:45-1:13:27).

Ricky wanted to zoom out a little bit for this episode and engage in a discussion on how we currently think about capitalism and how capitalism does--or does not--meet the current moment in our economics and in our politics. 

We are joined this week by current Boston Globe and former Wall Street Journal writer and reporter Carine Hajjar to discuss the many angles of the current immigration crisis (4:18-33:04). Carine has been writing about this mounting crisis for years now from Texas, New York City, and now Boston, and she provides us with some excellent knowledge and perspective to ground this tremendously tricky topic.

A big news week, so we return to our model of covering six of the major topics in (about) an hour. We start domestically by discussing the UAW Strike (7:38-21:35), the road to another presidential impeachment (21:36-31:31), and President Trump's recent comments on abortion (31:32-39-24). We then move abroad to break down the implications of the Russia-North Korea meeting (39:28-50:00) and the U.S.-Iran prisoner swap (50:01-59:09), and we conclude by looking at the terrible natural disasters in Morocco and Libya (59:10-1:05:25).

We are back after a brief hiatus to talk about what the phrase "equal justice under the law" means in our society today. We examine this idea by looking at the impeachment of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the four indictments of President Trump, and the legal saga of Hunter Biden.

A milestone episode for us, and we spend it diving into the first Republican primary debate. We discussed President Trump's physical absence yet looming presence, the winners and losers of the night, and what the entire debate says about the current state of the Republican Party (11:51-1:01:51). We then spend a little time reflecting on our first one hundred episodes (1:01:57-1:09:57).

We are joined this week by Mother Jones reporter and senior editor Kiera Butler to discuss some of the current major issues in education and politics (4:03-46:58). Kiera talks about her two trips to Moms4Liberty's National Conference and what she learned about the parental rights movement at those conferences. She also explores the politicization of reading instruction, the debates on how to make schools safer, school choice, and a potential future Secretary of Education. 

 

We were joined once again this week by Pepperdine Law professor and constitutional law expert Barry McDonald to break down some of the major cases from the Supreme Court's term (12:08-1:03:03). We dive into the legal reasoning behind the affirmative action, voting rights, independent state legislature, free speech, and student loan forgiveness cases, and then Professor McDonald shares some of his overall thoughts on the current state of the Court and offers some potential reforms of it. Great episode for lawyers, law students, and anyone with an interest in the legal world.

We touch on the touchy subject of how old is too old, following the recent health episodes of two prominent and long-serving senators, Mitch McConnell and Diane Fienstein (6:58-33:14). We switch gears to another story that's made headline news recently out of North Carolina State House of Representatives. A pro-reproductive rights Democrat shocked her party and crossed the aisle, delivering Republicans super-majorities in both the State House and Senate. She cast a decisive vote, overriding the Governor's veto of a bill limiting access to abortion. We debate the savoriness of her actions and pose the question: Do voters go to the polls to elect people or the ideas those people represent? 

We've got an international version of "six in sixty" this week, as we discuss the takeaways from last week's NATO summit (5:15-17:02), the fallout from the Russian coup (17:02-24:14), the Biden Administration's decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine (24:24-35:57), Israel's military operations in the West Bank (36:03-46:34), the migrant boat that sank off the coast of Greece (46:39-56:41), and the conflicts ravaging Sudan (56:42-1:07:33).