Start Making Sense

On this episode of the American Prestige, podcast, hosts Danny and Derek welcome back Samuel Huneke, assistant professor of history at George Mason University, to talk about his new book, A Queer Theory of the State.The group discusses the various notions of queer theory and the state, how queer politics and activism can engage in state power, the neoliberal contingent of the queer community, where thinkers from Michel Foucault to Judith Sklar fit into this, and Huneke’s vision of what a queer state might look like.Be sure to check out Sam’s past AP appearances in Queer Theory and the Queer Germany series.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Moira Donegan on Joe Biden’s need to embrace pro-choice politics.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this news episode of American Prestige, Danny and Derek return with headlines from around the globe. This week: the ICJ decision on Israel (0:29), Israeli accusations of UNRWA (5:08), ceasefire talks (10:35), and Biden sanctions settlers (15:56); a U.S. outpost in Jordan is bombed by a drone (18:54); secret Sudan peace talks in Bahrain (23:52); several countries quit the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) (25:37); in Ukraine, Zelensky fires a top commander (27:23); the Biden admin is reimposing sanctions on Venezuela (33:34); international intervention is in doubt in Haiti (37:13); and the U.S. had record arms sales last year (40:24).Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of the Tech Won't Save Us podcast, Paris Marx is joined by Victor Pickard to discuss the continued layoffs in news media, and how they are symptomatic of a deeper, structural crisis in journalism.Victor Pickard is Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at University of Pennsylvania. He’s also the author of Democracy Without Journalism?: Confronting the Misinformation Society.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Nation’s annual Progressive Honor Roll features movement leaders who provide hope for 2024. John Nichols tells their stories.Also: California moved one step closer to universal healthcare on January 1, when it expanded coverage to all low-income residents, regardless of immigration status. Sasha Abramsky reports.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of the American Prestige podcast, Danny and Derek sit down with Adam Ganser and Michael Swaim of the 1Upsmanship podcast to discuss the confluence of history, U.S. foreign policy, and capitalism in video games. The group broaches topics like the implicit politics of first-person shooters, the capitalist logic in games based on survival and growth, the portrayal of governments in different series, and how far developers can go to portray the reality of war in a game.Check out more of Adam and Michael's work at their Small Beans podcast network.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of American Prestige, Danny and Derek chat with Aslı Bâli, professor of law at Yale Law School. Aslı, whose research focuses largely on human rights law and the law of the international security order, helps us break down the legal definition of genocide, the substance of the ICJ ruling and what was ordered, and the court’s ability to enforce it.The conversation continues for subscribers, covering the American legal community’s reaction, how this decision compares with the ICJ’s 2022 ruling on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, what Gaza’s “occupied” status means regarding Israel’s prerogatives in this situation, and more.[https://www.americanprestigepod.com/]Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this week's news episode of American Prestige: Israel-Hamas ceasefire talks amble along (0:30), Netanyahu snubs Qatar (5:11), militants kill 21 IDF soldiers in a single attack (10:25), and more from Israel-Palestine; in Yemen, the U.S. prepares for a “sustained military campaign” (15:40) while a new report details the effect of sanctions on humanitarian relief (16:50); talk of (another) U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq (19:24); Pakistan and Iran agree to stand down (22:22); India’s Modi opens a controversial new temple (24:39); Cameroon begins implementing a malaria vaccine program (26:09); Somalia-Ethiopia tensions continue to simmer (27:24); Ukraine all but confirms it shot down a Russian plane carrying Ukrainian POWs (29:23); Turkey ratifies Sweden's NATO accession (31:01); and protests erupt in Argentina against Milei’s shock therapy policies (33:50).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 Eric Silver to discuss Spotify’s big plan to dominate podcasting, why it’s now pulling back from those efforts, and the difference between highly produced and more independent podcasts. Eric Silver is a podcast producer and head of development at Multitude.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of Start Making Sense, John Nichols has our analysis on the New Hampshire primary--Biden's big win, and Trump's furious victory speech.Also: Adam Shatz talks about Franz Fanon, whose books Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks made him a huge figure on the left, not just in the '60s when they were published, but in the era of Black Lives Matter when “his shadow looms larger than ever.” Now he's the subject of Adam's new book, The Rebel's Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon. Adam is the US editor of the London Review of Books, and former Literary Editor of The Nation.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of American Prestige, Patrice Lumumba, the first president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has become a mythic figure among the left, due in no small part to the CIA’s role in his ousting and assassination less than one year after the start of his premiership. Stuart Reid, editor at Foreign Affairs, joins Derek to discuss the full story of Lumumba’s downfall, as detailed in Reid’s recent book The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, I speak with Trita Parsi, vice president and co-founder of The Quincy Institute, about the cascading violence in the region. We also take up the Biden administration’s decision to double down on its push for a Saudi/Israeli alliance, a program that could itself deepen the violence. As an alternative, we consider the possibility of other great powers taking over the job of negotiating a settlement to the regions problems. Trita has written on these issues in many venues, including The Nation.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of American Prestige: Iran attacks targets in Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan (1:01); U.S. strikes on Ansar Allah (Houthi) targets fail to deter attacks on shipping (10:17); an Israel-Palestine update (12:55) including a Qatari medicine deal (15:26) and Netanyahu’s take on a Palestinian state (17:41); Taiwan’s presidential election (22:18); Kim of the DPRK (North Korea) lashes out at the South (25:16); tensions continue to escalate between Somalia and Ethiopia (27:06); a Ukraine War update featuring a drone strike on St. Petersburg (29:49); Guatemala’s Arévalo takes office after an apparent coup attempt (32:59); and Biden and Congress make progress on military aid for Ukraine, Israel, and border security (36:32).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 Timnit Gebru to discuss the past year in AI hype, how AI companies have shaped regulation, and tech’s relationship to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Timnit Gebru is the founder and executive director of the Distributed AI Research Institute.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

John Nichols reports on Monday’s Republican caucuses in Iowa, and explains why Iowa is the state with the biggest shift from blue to red between Obama in 2008 and Trump in 2020.Also: The new film "American Fiction," starring Jeffrey Wright, takes up the question, do Black writers have to "write Black"? The film is based on the novel "Erasure" by Percival Everett, which is considerably wilder and more uncompromising than the film. John Powers comments—he’s critic at Large on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of American Prestige, John Gray, emeritus professor of European thought at the London School of Economics, joins Danny for a lively chat about liberalism, the powers that be, and what the duo calls “the bads”. Centering John’s recent book The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism, this wide-ranging discussion tries to make sense of the post-Cold War world, assess the threats posed by political and environmental factors, and reckon with what John sees as the extreme default condition of human life.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded Monday, January 15, 2024:Akbar Shahid Ahmed, senior foreign affairs reporter at HuffPost, returns to the American Prestige podcast to discuss his recent pieces covering the post-Gaza plans of top White House official Brett McGurk and the imminent departure of the White House’s special Middle East envoy on humanitarian issues.Then, for American Prestige subscribers, the group gets into the NSC’s attempts to discredit Akbar’s reporting, the media backlash, how this compares to treatment of reporters under Trump, and more.Subscribe to American Prestige for the full interview!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of American Prestige, Danny and Derek come off the hottest year on record with the new year’s cold, hard facts. This week, South Africa brings a genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) (2:39) while Antony Blinken tours the region (8:48); Iraqi PM Mohammed Shia' Al Sudani is looking to request the withdrawal of U.S. forces (19:09); the Israel-Hizbollah border battles continue to escalate (22:23); the U.S. and U.K. launch strikes on Yemen (25:31); rebels in Myanmar take the border city of Laukkaing (28:49); Ethiopia looks to make a deal with the unrecognized state of Somaliland (33:56); Ukraine is running out of air defenses and shifting to a defensive posture (37:12); armed battles and chaos break out in Ecuador (40:23); 2023 was indeed the hottest year on record (43:55). Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of the Tech Won't Save Us podcast, Paris Marx is joined by Vincent Bevins to discuss the mass protests of the 2010s, the role that social and traditional media played in them, and why the horizontalism of those movements ultimately didn’t work.Vincent Bevins is a longtime foreign correspondent who has worked for the Washington Post, Financial Times, and LA Times. He’s the author of The Jakarta Method and If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Israel's war in Gaza has been going on now for three months, and the IDF said over the weekend they plan to keep the war going for another year. Amy Wilentz talks about Netanhayu’s use of the war to hold on to power.Also: the lies that protect profit, power and wealth in America: they are documented, and dealt with, in a wonderful new book co-authored by Joan Walsh. It's called Corporate Bullsh*t.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy