A Gentlemen’s Disagreement

An episode for political junkies, as we are joined by NBC News political correspondent Steve Kornacki to preview the midterm elections. Steve talks about the larger trends he is seeing, analyzes a number of the Senate races, and even makes a couple of predictions.

We talked about three crises this week that may seem disparate on the surface but that we actually feel have several themes connecting them. We start by analyzing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's move to transport migrants from Texas to Martha's Vineyard (4:23-24:39). We then break down the water crisis that has devasted Jackson, Mississippi over the past weeks and months (24:47-43:24) before finishing up by discussing the latest natural disaster to befall Puerto Rico (43:32-54:09).

The world lost two seminal figures in the past two weeks, and so we spent some time discussing the life and legacy of each. We began by discussing Queen Elizabeth II (4:59-28:52) before considering Mikhail Gorbachev (29:00-50:23). We conclude by remembering the heroes and victims of September 11th (50:31-57:55).

In this week's episode, we talk about President Biden's decision to issue his long-debated executive order to cancel portions of federal student loans (3:33-39:29) before discussing next week's Massachusetts' primaries (39:37-58:19).

In this week's episode, we run through a bunch of topics that have been in the news recently in ten minute segments. We talk about the U.S. killing of Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri (4:56-13:46), Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan (13:55-24:01), the arrest and incarceration of Brittney Griner (24:10-33:32), the FBI's search of former president Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence (33:41-44:29), Democrats boosting far-right MAGA candidates in Republican primaries (44:38-52:52), and Kansas voters rejecting a proposed state constitutional amendment to roll back abortion rights (53:00-1:03:04).

We are joined this week by the Executive Director of People for Liberty, Dan Fishman. Dan tells us about his personal journey to libertarianism, his experience as the Executive Director of the Libertarian Party during Jo Jorgenson's presidential campaign, and his current role as a leader of the liberty movement. We discuss the principles of the liberty movement and what role third parties can play in our current two-party system. 

Coming off of a heat wave that swept across the northern hemisphere, we decided it would be a good time to talk about climate change. We discussed how the conversation around climate change has evolved over the past two decades, even if action has not followed. We debated whose job it is to take steps to address climate change, considered why it hasn't happened, and analyzed the latest hope for action: the "Inflation Reduction Act."

We are joined this week by Jamie Kirchick to talk about his latest book, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. We also reflect on his first book, The End of Europe, which he wrote in 2017, and much of which he predicted in it, unfortunately, has come to pass in the past five years. We also talk about the state of the media today compared to the past and how media affects a democracy. 

In part 2 of our SCOTUS-centric episode, we discuss the legitimacy of the Court given everything that has happened this term and over the past decade (2:15-31:10) before breaking down some of the other opinions the Court released this term (31:20-52:30).

We're back this week with a mega episode focused solely on SCOTUS's decision in Dobbs to overturn Roe. We begin by giving our own thoughts on the issue (5:20-50:11) before being joined by two law-school trained friends Mikaela Louie (50:13-1:30:53) and Jessica Vandervort (1:32:14-2:06:18).