Start Making Sense

Should Trump have been charged with incitement of insurrection, or at least violence? What’s the line between free speech and incitement? If Trump sincerely believed he’d won the election, can he still be prosecuted for conspiracy? Erwin Chemerinsky explains – he’s dean of the law school at UC Berkeley.Also: What’s bad about Barbie the doll, and what’s good about “Barbie” the movie—Katha Pollitt comments.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Supreme Court has a serious ethics problem—actually, ethics problems. The justices have been dogged by allegations of corruption. They’ve been peppered with questions about how they make money. And then, of course, there’s the long career of Clarence Thomas, who, along with his wife Ginni Thomas, appears so brazenly corrupt that his scandalous behavior has made the very idea of Supreme Court ethics seen like a complete joke. I have long argued that Supreme Court ethics reform is as critical to fixing the Supreme Court as any of the more structural changes that reformers want to make—like increasing the number of justices or decreasing the length of time those justices serve.On this episode of Contempt of Court, we’re going to talk about what can be done to stop these people from wallowing in the slop of their own graft. First up, we talk to New York Times Magazine writer and Yale Law professor, Emily Bazelon about what corruption looks like when it comes in the form of a Supreme Court justice. Then, we ta

Disney has released a new documentary which myself and many others have criticized for regurgitating a mythical version of history that extolls Stan Lee as sole creator of the Marvel universe. To talk more about the documentary, I’m joined by Elana Levin, who has written widely on comics and hosts the Graphic Policy podcast– an excellent forum that takes up the intersection of politics and popular culture.On this episode of The Time of Monsters, beyond rebutting the documentary, Elana and I talk about the true history of Marvel, with particular emphasis on the contribution of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, the artists who were also (at a minimum) co-writers of the stories credited to Lee. In the discussion, Elana recommends some excellent resources for more information including Abraham Josephine Riesman’s biography of Lee and Kate Willaert's fascinating tumblr page, Kirby Without Words.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This month, Donald Trump will be facing four indictments in four different jurisdictions at the same time, each for multiple felonies. Yet, Republicans still want him as their candidate. On this episode of the Start Making Sense podcast, Joan Walsh comments on the former President's latest legal developments, and the latest poll numbers.Also on this episode: Barbie is one of the most feminist blockbuster films ever made, and it grossed $774 million worldwide in its first ten days. In the same period, Oppenheimer made $400 million worldwide. John Powers joins the podcast to discuss this summer’s two big Hollywood hits. 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

Beyond raw court expansion, or the (probably unconstitutional) big stick of forced term-limits, there are a number of other ways one might go about balancing the Supreme Court.On this episode of Contempt of Court, Elie Mystal speaks with legal experts Dan Epps and Steve Vladeck about potential ways we might find that balance.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It’s no secret that the rich have an outsized role in Ivy League colleges, both as students and alumni. But a new study, by a group of Harvard-based economists, documents in detail just how much elite private education in the Untied States favor the ultra-wealthy. As the New York Times reports, “At Ivy League schools, one in six students has parents in the top 1 percent.” The rich enjoy disproportionate access to these schools due to a mixture of legacy admission, sports admissions for specialized sport programs (like fencing), and weight given to personal essays as well as letters of recommendation.In a very real sense, elite private universities are a major pillar of plutocracy, allowing a narrow caste to hold on to social and political dominance that goes hand in hand with their economic wealth.Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy Project has written an excellent summary of the report. For this episode of The Time of Monsters, I talked with Matt about the problem of inequality in higher education. We take u

The growth of the Black Lives Matter movement through the 2010s catalyzed a resurgence of Black activism in professional sports that had its climax in 2020 with the athletes' boycott following the shooting of Jacob Blake. Just a few years later, this energy seems to have dissipated. What happened, and how can we comprehend these recent events in the longer arc of Black activism in sports? Sports journalist and author Howard Bryant joins the Edge of Sports for a look at the build-up to 2020 and how many athletes' politics were co-opted in the aftermath.Later in the show, we have Choice Words about the social cost of smartphone sports gambling becoming the economic lifeblood of sports.And in our segment, Ask a Sports Scholar, we speak with Hofstra University Professor Brenda Elsey, whose research focuses on the development of women’s soccer internationally, as the FIFA Women’s World Cup tournament approaches.Howard Bryant is the author of ten books, including the forthcoming Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robi

The Teamsters reached a historic agreement for UPS workers this week, protecting and rewarding more than 340,000 UPS Teamsters nationwide. We had been headed for the biggest strike in decades, scheduled to start next week, but now we have what looks like one of the biggest labor victories in decades. The Nation’s John Nichols is on the Start Making Sense podcast to report.Also on this episode: Hollywood actors and writers have been on strike–the Writers Guild of America since May, and the Screen Actors Guild since July 14. The studios are showing no signs of settling. WGA member and Nation writer Ben Schwartz joins the show. He argues that the studios and streamers are likely to fracture before the unions do.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The court ended its most recent term completely off the chain. Having already killed reproductive rights, it accomplished another longstanding conservative goal: banning affirmative action in college admissions. That's not even the half of it.And yet, a lot of the mainstream media coverage suggested that the Court turned *moderate* and worked hard to achieve a mainstream consensus.Why does the media keep feeding us this bullshit? Let’s talk about it.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

There’s an old joke that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor even an empire. The right-wing student group Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), founded in William F. Buckley’s house in 1960, is similarly misnamed. It’s not young; the current head, Scott Walker, is 55. It’s definition of American is very narrowly partisan and reactionary in ways that most Americans would reject. And as for freedom, it has a long history of aligning with administrators and government authorities to suppress its political foes– something I wrote about in a recent column. Most recently, YAF launched a vexatious lawsuit designed to cripple Dissent magazine and its affiliated podcast, Know Your Enemy.To talk about YAF, I spoke with historian Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, author of the forthcoming book Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America. In that book, Lauren documents how groups like YAF groomed the ideological extremists who have taken the GOP into authoritarianism. In our talk

The central place of sports in American life lends immense influence to athletes to shift the culture of the country—and for more than 150 years, Black athletes have done just that. Few scholars are as attuned to the intricacies of this history as renowned sociologist Dr. Harry Edwards. From his role in shaping the events of the 1968 Olympics to the politics of Colin Kaepernick, Edwards is just as much a participant in this history as a student and teacher of it. Now 80 years old, Dr. Harry Edwards joins Edge of Sports as he embarks on his "Last Lectures," a final project to close his long career as a public intellectual.Dr. Harry Edwards is a renowned sociologist whose work examines the relationship between race, sports, and politics. He is the author of The Revolt of the Black Athlete.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Remember how the state of Florida banned the African-American studies curriculum proposed by the College Board on the grounds that it might cause guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress in students? Now, teachers, scholars, and activists have been fighting back. Historian Robin D.G. Kelley explains.Also: last week the actors joined screenwriters on the picket lines outside film and TV studios in LA and New York - the writers have been out for 75 days. The issues: compensation in the age of streaming, and protection against AI. Josh Gondelman comments—he’s a member of both SAG and the WGA.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Term limits are by far the most popular form of Supreme Court reform. According to a recent poll from the Associated Press, two-thirds of Americans favor term limits for Supreme Court justices.On this episode of Contempt of Court, Elie Mystal is joined by Leah Litman and Aaron Belkin, to discuss what's wrong with everybody's favorite reform option.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Cornel West is running for president as the Green Party candidate. On this episode of Start Making Sense, editor in chief, D.D. Guttenplan, explains why he ought to run in the Democratic primaries, instead.Also: The Supreme Court, in the term that just ended, was not completely terrible. It surprised us all by doing some good things, especially with regard to voting rights. David Cole, the National Legal Director of the ACLU, is on the podcast to analyze what happened and why.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

From 1979 to 1991, the Los Angeles Lakers would become a dominant force in the world of professional basketball and in American culture more broadly. Led by coach Pat Riley and star players Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the “Showtime” era of the Lakers is still, in many ways, the standard by which other sports dynasties are measured today. On the court, in the locker room, and beyond, the legendary Lakers franchise was both a reflection and a driver of a culture, a sport, and a country undergoing seismic changes, and the HBO dramatized series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty tells the story of the the larger-than-life personalities and politics that defined the Showtime era.This week on Edge of Sports, host Dave Zirin speaks with actor Solomon Hughes about Winning Time, which is debuting its second season on August 6, and about stepping into the role of playing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar himself. Later in this episode, Zirin shares some choice words on the Oakland A’s and Major League B

Although only formed in 2021, Moms For Liberty, a group agitating for reactionary policies in schools, is already a major player in national politics. Republican presidential hopefuls like Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump are eager to speak at the group's convention. Moms for Liberty is also receiving generous profiles in major media outlets like the New York Times.As my Nation colleague, Chris Lehmann notes in a recent column, such profiles tend to whitewash Moms for Liberty, falsely portraying it as a grassroots organization and ignoring its bigoted agenda and ties to the institutional right. On this episode of The Time of Monsters, we talk about the true nature of Moms for Liberty as well as the way anti-trans agitation is remaking politics. In the discussion, we reference this earlier conversation I had with the historian Rick Perlstein about the deep roots of right-wing agitation over education.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

When most people talk about expanding the Supreme Court, they're talking about adding a few justices. Two or four to the bench. But I am not most people. I do not think we should add a few justices to get into an endless tit for tat. With Mitch McConnell and his federal Society forces, I think we should add 20 justices.On this episode of Contempt of Court, we explain why.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The year 1968 was a time of rebellion across the US and the wider world. Tremendous demonstrations and rebellions shook American cities in opposition to the Vietnam War, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and the arrest of Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party. Amidst this tumult, two athletes, John Carlos, and Tommie Smith, captured the spirit of the times by raising their fists at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics after placing first and third in the 200-meter dash. 45 years later, Dr. John Carlos is still with us—but many of his contemporaries have passed on. Dr. John Carlos joins Edge of Sports for a look back on the lives of Jimmy Hines, Ralph Boston, Herb Douglas, Harry Belafonte, Tina Turner, and Jim Brown.Elsewhere in this episode of Edge of Sports, Dr. Maria Veri, co-author of Gridiron Gourmet: Gender and Food at the Football Tailgate, joins to discuss the gender politics of tailgating culture. Dave Zirin also dives into the recently leaked details of a Professional Golfers'

Two nationwide strikes may be in the works right now. The Teamsters have been negotiating with UPS for a new contract, and the Auto Workers have been preparing to strike at least one of the Detroit auto makers. These have the potential to provide swing-state voters with a political education in the lead-up to the 2024 election. The Nation's Strikes Correspondent, Jane McAlevey joins the podcast to discuss.Also on this episode of Start Making Sense: After affirmative action, what should progressives do to help people of color and other working class students get into college, and pay for it? The Nation’s National Affairs correspondent, John Nichols comments on the politics and economics of higher education.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Supreme Court ended its term last week with a spate of extremely right-wing decisions that included severely restricting affirmative action in elite universities and colleges, clawing back on anti-discrimination protection for LGBTQ citizens under an argument for expressive free speech, and squashing the Biden administrations plan to give relief to student debtors. These ruling come after earlier decisions curtailing labor rights and the end of a constitutional right to abortion. Taken together, the court has emerged as the powerful reactionary force in American society, one that is working overtime to roll back a century of expanding rights for workers, people of color, women, and LGBT citizens.To survey the reactionary agenda of the court and the extremist social vision undergirding that agenda, I talked to Moira Donegan. She’s a frequent guest of the podcast and a columnist for the Guardian. She brings her characteristic incisiveness to analyzing the courts and warning of the dangers ahead.Advertising