A Gentlemen’s Disagreement

Episode 77 - Looking back on January

Ricky is back from India, and we have a lot to talk about. We begin by discussing George Santos (9:40-21:50) and then move into the drama surrounding the election of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House (21:50-34:35). We next talk about the latest in recurring tragedies including gun violence, police brutality, and antisemitism (34:40-51:55) before wrapping up by considering the U.S. reaching its debt ceiling (51:55-59:50) and the U.S. decision to send tanks to Ukraine (59:50-1:08:00).

 

Episode 76 - The changing of the guard with Jacquetta Van Zandt

We are joined this week by Jacquetta Van Zandt (5:50-55:11) to discuss all things Massachusetts politics. Jacquetta is a veteran of many campaigns at the local, state, and federal levels, and currently comments on Massachusetts politics on both her own podcast and on television. We reflect on the past eight years in Massachusetts under the outgoing Baker administration, preview the next four years under the incoming Healey administration, and analyze Mayor Wu's first year as the mayor of Boston, among other topics.

Episode 75 - A mile wide and a mile deep: analyzing the economy with Matthew Knych

We kick off 2023 by trying to get a handle on the current state of the economy and trying to figure out where it might head this year. We are joined for that discussion by Matthew Knych (3:44-1:00:53) who provides his knowledge of and experience in the business and housing spaces to our analysis. 

Episode 74 - The Top Stories of 2022

In our final episode of the year, we each give our top five stories that defined 2022.

Episode 73 - Unions & the labor movement with Rand Wilson

We are joined this week by Rand Wilson, who has spent forty years working in the labor movement. We discuss how unions and the labor movement have evolved during his time in them and what recent developments in those areas mean. We also discuss how the long fall and recent rise in working class power has affected political dynamics in the United States over the past forty years. Finally, we look ahead to see how the domestic labor movement can intersect with global issues like climate change and immigration to affect positive change in each of these areas.

Episode 72 - Six in Sixty: Warnock, Sinema, Primaries, Marriage, Griner, Trump

With so many subjects worth discussing this week, we went back to our six topics in sixty minutes format where we hit each topic in a (roughly) ten minute segment. Those topics were Senator Warnock's victory in the Georgia runoff election (5:30-15:48), Senator Sinema's change in party affiliation (15:53-23:32), the proposed shakeup in the Democratic Presidential Primary calendar (23:37-35:01), Congress passing the historic Respect for Marriage Bill (35:06-45:52), Brittney Griner's return from captivity (45:57-55:10), and President Trump's latest controversy (55:15-1:01:41). 

Episode 71 - Protests of and in Qatar, Iran, & China

We begin this week by talking about the World Cup: our favorite storylines of the tournament and the multiple controversies that have surrounded it (5:36-42:26). We then discuss the protests that have roiled Iran (42:33-1:10:25) and China (1:10:34-1:24:50) over the past few weeks and months.

 

Episode 70 - The rises of antisemitism & political violence with Jeffrey Robbins

We are joined this week by lawyer and Boston Herald columnist Jeffrey Robbins to talk about the dual rises in antisemitism and political violence that we have seen in the United States over the past few years. We begin our conversation with Jeff by talking about the causes and effects of the increasing antisemitism that we've seen (5:06-36:05), then transition into discussing the rise of political violence (36:05-47:30), before briefly getting Jeff's reaction to the midterm elections (47:30-57:30).

Episode 69 - A Red...Wedding?

We're back to analyze the midterms, where the projected red wave failed to materialize. But is it too early to bury Trumpism? We talk overall takeaways (4:36-22:05), individual winners & losers (22:14-59:46), and then engage in some Massachusetts-centric discussion (59:54:1:11:08).

Episode 68 - SCOTUS term overview with Professor Barry McDonald

We are joined this week by Caruso School of Law (Pepperdine) professor and constitutional law expert Barry McDonald to analyze the Supreme Court's fall docket. The Court is poised to hear a series of major cases this term, and Professor McDonald takes us through five of them: a free speech case (303 Creative LLC v. Elenis), a social media case (Gonzalez v. Google/Twitter v. Taamneh), an affirmative action case (Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard), a voting rights case (Moore v. Harper), and the independent state legislature case (Merrill v. Milligan).