We’ve Got Issues

We’ve Got Issues

Loading Downloads
230Episodes
Politics

Focusing on issues, not tweets, Raw Story and AlterNet’s Joshua Holland and Liz Preza talk politics with academics, newsmakers and progressive journalists.

Episodes

July 30, 2020

Imani Gandy on the madness of the ‘cancel culture’ debate during a fascist crackdown on dissent

This week, Donald Trump floated the idea of postponing the election. Liz Preza and Joshua Holland kick off the show with some thoughts about his mental health and the politics of distraction. 
 
Then we're joined by Imani Gandy, Rewire.news's senior editor for law and policy, to talk about the future of the Court, pundits' double-standard when it comes to "overly ambitious" women like Kamala Harris and the moral panic over "cancel culture."
Play Now
Share | Download(Loading)
July 23, 2020

Historian Julian Zelizer draws a straight line from Newt Gingrich to the Tea Parties and Donald Trump

Elizabeth Preza and Joshua Holland kick off this week's show looking at how a perfect storm of factors unique to 2020 is cursing us with the worst political punditry in memory.

 

Then we're joined by Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer to discuss his new book, Burning Down The House: Newt Gingrich, The Fall of a Speaker, and The Rise of The New Republican Party. Zelizer details how the career of firebrand former Speaker Newt Gingrich helped usher in the hyperpolarized environment in which a clearly unqualified crackpot like Donald Trump could take over one of America's two major parties. 

 

Play Now
Share | Download(Loading)
July 16, 2020

White House arguments for reopening schools fall apart as the pandemic rages

This week, Liz Preza and Joshua Holland kick off the show by marveling at the substantive and political madness of the crackpots in the Trump regime attacking their own top infectious disease expert.
 
Then we're joined by Matt Robison to talk about his AlterNet piece, "Here’s why re-opening schools before next spring will be a disaster." Matt took a hard look at the arguments for re-opening schools and found that they all fall apart on close inspection.
Play Now
Share | Download(Loading)
July 9, 2020

David Neiwert: Expect scattered extremist attacks if Trump loses

This week, Liz Preza and Joshua Holland talk about Trump's Supreme Court appointees standing for the rule of law, and experience some déjà vu over another mind-bogglingly ridiculous debate over re-opening schools in the midst of a raging pandemic. 
 
Then we're joined by David Neiwert, a Daily Kos contributor and veteran journalist covering the fringe right. David gives us a first-person view of the recently disbanded Seattle occupation known as CHOP, and talks about the Boogaloo Bois and other wingnut militias, and their potential for violence in November. 
Play Now
Share | Download(Loading)
June 25, 2020

What Does Defunding the Police Really Look Like?

This week, Joshua Holland points out that according to one oft-cited Covid-19 model, we could save 33,000 American lives over the next 14 weeks -- the same number of combat deaths the US suffered over three years of war in Korea -- if we all wore masks when we went outside. But we won't all take that simple, cheap measure to contain the pandemic because masks have become the dumbest front in the culture wars. 
 
Then we're joined by civil rights lawyer Tahir Duckett, who is writing a book on decarceration and abolishing the police, to sort out what "defunding" and "abolition" mean, and what a society would look like if we thought outside the box about how to address social problems rather than just calling the cops on everything. 
Play Now
Share | Download(Loading)
June 18, 2020

Parker Molloy: The conservative media’s primary function is to keep older white people scared and angry

This week, Liz Preza and Joshua Holland struggle to wrap their heads around the Supreme Court handing down not one but two good decisions rebuking Donald Trump. 
 
Then we're joined by Media Matters' Senior Editor Parker Molloy to discuss Tucker Carlson's lurch into naked white supremacy, the rise of Trump's new favorite broadcaster--the One America News Network--and the right's cult of victimhood. 

 

Play Now
Share | Download(Loading)
June 11, 2020

‘Antifa Handbook’ author: Trump’s antifa conspiracy theories makes the entire left a target

This week, Joshua Holland discusses Trump's latest deflections strategy: Making the Confederacy Great Again. 

Then Rutger's historian Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, joins us to separate fact from fiction about anti-fascist activism and the right's latest bogeyman. 
Play Now
Share | Download(Loading)
June 4, 2020

Rick Perlstein: It isn’t 1968 and Donald Trump is no Richard Nixon

This week, Liz Preza and Joshua Holland talk about the fact that we've been reduced to counting on the generals to stave off Donald Trump's authoritarianism. 
 
Then we're joined by author and historian Rick Perlstein, arguably the premier chronicler of the right seizing power in the United States. The Nixonland author's phone has been ringing off the hook since Trump leaned into a Nixonian law and order theme for his floundering campaign, but Perlstein sees more differences than similarities between the two men and the eras in which they've governed. 
Play Now
Share | Download(Loading)
May 28, 2020

Pandemics Have Reshaped Human Societies — What Might Our Post-Covid Reality Look Like?

This week, Liz Preza and Joshua Holland talk about the police slaying of George Floyd, Kayleigh McEnany's impressive hypocrisy and Trump's latest authoritarian tantrum. 
 
Then we're joined by Brian Merchant, Senior Editor at OneZero, who read 16 books about how pandemics have given rise to states and cities, and says that we face a dangerous future but also one that offer real possibilities for creating more equitable societies. His piece is titled, "We Already Have a Blueprint for What Comes Next."
Play Now
Share | Download(Loading)
May 21, 2020

What Does 30 Percent Unemployment Look Like? We May Soon Find Out

This week Liz Preza and Joshua Holland talk about Trump's war on Inspectors General, a QAnon wackjob running for the United States Senate and red states cooking the books on their Coronavirus numbers even as they reopen over the warnings of public health experts. 
 
Then, as the official unemployment rate nears 20 percent, we're joined by Nicholas Rush Smith, a political scientist at the City University of New York, to talk about the looming unemployment crisis. Smith has studied the impact of high levels of long-term unemployment in South Africa, and he sees some warning signs that the rest of the world must heed. 
Play Now
Share | Download(Loading)

Load more

Copyright 2019. All rights reserved.
Podcast Powered By Podbean