Start Making Sense

On this episode of American Prestige, Danny and Derek speak with Colette Shade, who just released her debut collection of essays Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything (Essays on the Future That Never Was). They discuss the fine line between ordinary nostalgia and lamenting the decline in material conditions, the advent of the internet and how it shaped a generation, how the millenials who grew up with the promise of the 90s compare with Gen Z and Alpha, the reality of globalization, how 9/11 magnified some of the more unfortunate trends of the 90s, the '08 recession, and more. Go to Colette's website for more of her work and more information on her upcoming live appearances!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, David Klion and Matt Duss on a popular right-wing fabulist.Has former president Barack Obama secretly been running the American elite — including the media and wide parts of the government — for nearly 20 years? Has he been doing so on behalf of a subversive agenda to empower Iran and undermine American exceptionalism? That’s the argument made by David Samuels in a much-read piece in The Tablet. On this episode, I dissect Samuels arguments with two friends of the podcast, David Klion and Matt Duss. We not only look at the problems with Samuels’s reactionary fable, but also take up why it is so popular on the right and even draws on conspiratorial ideas that have a wider purchase among centrists and conservative liberals.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The endlessly elusive Bob Dylan seems an unlikely candidate for a Hollywood biopic. John Powers, Critic-at-Large on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” talks about how the new movie “A Complete Unknown” captures a defining moment in his career -- and in American culture .Also: Our holiday reading guide: Dozens of books about Trump were published at the end of his first term, some selling millions of copies. Now that he’s coming back, it’s time to look at what some of those books had to say about him. Host Jon Wiener presents his list, including the one with the best title: “A Very Stable Genius.” Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Bob Dylan fans have been puzzled and troubled by his Christmas album ever since he released it in 2009. To help figure out what Dylan was doing, we turn to Sean Wilentz. He’s the official historian at BobDylan.com, and he also teaches history at Princeton.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of American Prestige, our last news roundup before the holidays —but stay tuned for other fun AP programming! This week: in Palestine-Israel, yet more Gaza ceasefire talks (1:33) and two new reports on Israeli conduct in the Strip (6:54); in Syria, reports of reprisal attacks (12:18), the US fails to broker a Turkey-SDF ceasefire (16:23), and Israel occupies the country's south (20:40); Russia appears to have moved military assets from Ukraine to Libya (23:32); the RSF carries out more attacks in Sudan's Al-Fashir (27:13); South Korea's Yoon is impeached again (28:21); in Russia-Ukraine, a prominent Russian general is assassinated (30:46), Russian forces close in on Pokrovsk (32:47), and Zelenskyy is in Brussels to talk peacekeepers (34:52); and a New Cold War update featuring the US and China extending a research agreement (37:19), a US naval vessel docking in Cambodia (38:26), and the Trump FP team targeting China (40:59).If you want to keep following AP over the break, you can a

Hotel and restaurant workers in Los Angeles won a $30 minimum wage last week, Disneyland workers are getting $233 million in back pay, and Wisconsin public employees regained collective bargaining rights. Harold Meyerson reports on some victories in the class struggle in America.Also: a special feature: novelist Rachel Kushner reports on the world of Nostalgia Drag Racing, where people make machines – with their hands. One of them is her teenage son.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of American Prestige, Danny speaks with Andrew deWaard, assistant professor of media and popular culture at UC San Diego, about his book Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours Culture. The two discuss how the falling rate of profit shapes the modern media landscape, the increased drive toward consolidation in entertainment companies, the big movers like private equity firms, hedge funds, asset managers, and venture capitalists, artists' limited ability to defend themselves, the rise of IP, and more. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this week's American Prestige news roundup: 2024 is officially the hottest year on record (0:57), particularly because the Arctic is no longer a carbon sink, but rather a net carbon emitter (2:40); regarding the situation in Syria, an update on the political transition (5:16), renewed fighting between the SDF and Turkish proxies (10:56), and Israel makes a land grab for an extended "buffer zone" (15:01); in Israel-Palestine, Hamas makes a major ceasefire concession (18:22); rebels in Myanmar seize the Bangladesh border (21:29) while other factions call for a ceasefire (22:51); President Yoon of South Korea survives his first impeachment vote and chaos ensues (24:30); Ethiopia and Somalia strike a deal to settle their recent tensions (30:14); in Russia-Ukraine, Trump's demand for a ceasefire panics Zelenskyy (33:22); Romania's constitutional court annuls the first round of its presidential election (37:14); an armed group commits a massacre in Haiti (40:25); and the Biden administration

On this episode of Tech Won’t Save Us, Paris Marx is joined by Amanda Mull to discuss the data-informed decisions that are changing the way we all experience air travel, mostly for the worse. Amanda Mull is a senior reporter and Buying Power columnist at Bloomberg Businessweek.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Kamala Harris lost not because Democratic voters switched to Trump, Steve Phillips shows, but because of a massive failure of the Democrats to turn out their base. Also: In a new episode of “The Children’s Hour,” Amy Wilentz reports on “Lives of the In-Laws” – Ivanka’s and Tiffany’s – and comments also on the rise of Eric’s wife Lara, and about the latest schemes of Ivanka’s husband Jared Kushner.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of American Prestige, Danny and Derek speak with Jeff Stein, White House economics reporter for The Washington Post, about his series on US sanctions for the Post, "The Money War". They talk about the function of economic sanctions for the US and how that's changed over time, broader cases like Iran to targeted ones like Russian businessman Viktor Vekselberg, how sanctions can "disconnect" war from the public, the humanitarian impact, and more.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Matthew Yglesias, a very influential journalist and proprietor of the Slow Boring substack, has emerged as a divisive figure within the Democratic party. To admirers, he’s a compelling advocate of popularism, the view the Democratic party needing to moderate its message to win over undecided voters. To critics, he’s a glib attention seeker who has achieved prominence by coming up with clever ways to justify the status quo. For this episode of the podcast, I talked to David Klion, frequent guest of the show and Nation contributor, about Yglesias, the centrist view of the 2024 election, the role of progressives and leftists in the Democratic party coalition, and the class formation of technocratic pundits, among other connected matters. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of Tech Won't Save Us, host Paris Marx is joined by Cam Wilson to discuss Australia’s plan to ban under-16s from social media, the interests driving it, and whether it’s the right approach to tackle the harms of those platforms. Cam Wilson is associate editor at Crikey.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

“Our worst enemy right now is not Trump himself, but fatalism about our ability to stop him.” That’s what David Cole says – he recently stepped down as National Legal Director of the ACLU, after 8 years and hundreds of lawsuits against the first Trump administration.Also: Project 2025,the Heritage Foundation’s famous 900 page book, is partly “"too dumb to accomplish anything at all”--that’s what Rick Perlstein says. The rest, he says, can be read as a useful catalog of how we should focus our resistance.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of American Prestige, hosts Derek Davison and Daniel Bessner are joined by Ben Fong of Arizona State University for a two-part discussion of his book Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge. In this episode, the group covers everything from coffee to opiates to antidepressants, how they interact with capitalist society, the CIA, commodity fetishism, licit vs. illicit as distinct from legal vs. illegal, and more.Check out more of Ben's work at his Substack on labor and logistics, On the Seams.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

For this week's edition of The Time of Monsters podcast, we're posting a talk that host Jeet Heer gave at Carleton University earlier this November on how the crisis of democracy is related to the crisis of journalism. In the talk, I argue that we are living in an age where the salient political divide is not so much left/right as system/antisytem. Liberals have tried to fight antisystem politicians like Donald Trump by doubling down on factchecking.But as I argue, this strategy is deeply flawed since voters who respond to antisystem arguments are also skeptical of institutions that claim to check facts. The talk tries to lay out a strategy for engaging with antisystem anger in a more productive way.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of Tech Won't Save Us, Paris Marx is joined by MV Ramana to discuss the tech industry’s push to have nuclear energy power its data centers and why the reality of nuclear power isn’t as great as its promoters often make it seem.MV Ramana is a Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Nuclear Is Not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Matt Gaetz dropping out as Attorney General nominee was a major setback for Trump, which exposes his vulnerabilities and weaknesses. Harold Meyerson reports on the divide in the Senate, and then between the MAGA movement and Republicans on Wall Street and in the corporations.Also on this episode of Start Making Sense: Trump’s plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants is terrible, but the idea of expelling people considered undesirable is not unprecedented in the American past. Eric Foner reviews that history, from the Native American “Trail of Tears” to the pre-Civil War proposals to free the slaves and send them to Africa.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of American Prestige, Anton Jäger, historian of political thought, returns to the program to speak with Danny about "the big picture" in the wake of the US election. They discuss the crisis of liberalism, the state of the left, where capital is in its own historical cycle, how the reactions to this election compare with that of 2016, hyperpolitics, empire, the view from Europe, and more.Read Anton's latest piece in New Left Review, "Hyperpolitics in America".Further reading:Adam Tooze, "The Democrats' Defeat", The London Review of BooksAlso listen to our episode with Anton on hyperpolitics from last year.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Jeet Heer is joined by Branko Marcetic to discuss media narratives that misrepresent what happened.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy