Start Making Sense Clips

After gangs took over most of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s acting prime minister, Ariel Henry, agreed to step aside. Longtime Haiti observer Amy Wilentz analyzes the forces at work shaping the country’s next steps.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

You might think Republicans would take a breather after banning abortion in the states they control; but no: they’ve set their sights on a new target: no-fault divorce. Katha Pollitt explains.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Black family under slavery and after -- down to Barack and Michelle and Sasha and Malia. Historian Brenda Stevenson explains; her new history of the enslaved black family is “What Sorrows Labour in My Parent’s Breast.”Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Climate change is raising sea levels, and soon low-lying coastal areas will be under water. But the most severe threat, the brunt of the suffering, is coming first to low-lying islands around the world -- even though they are least responsible for global warming. Christina Gerhardt comments – her remarkable new book is “Sea Change: An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean.”Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

What does it mean to be a politically committed writer? Adam Shatz talks about that—it’s the focus of his new book, “Writers and Missionaries: Essays on the Radical imagination.” He’s The Nation’s former literary editor and US editor of the LRB.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Ron DeSantis is campaigning for president promising to “stop woke history” – stop teaching about slavery and its legacy of institutional racism. Adam Hochschild found the history curriculum DeSantis wants—the Hillsdale College “1776 Curriculum.” He reports on what’s in it—and what’s not.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

11,500 members of the Writers Union are on strike--against the film, TV and streaming companies--with picket lines up in L.A. and New York. Both sides have prepared for a months-long conflict; award-winning TV writer Josh Gondelman explains the issues.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Joe Biden announced that the theme of his reelection campaign will be that the Democrats are the party of “freedom.” But the Republicans claim THEY are the defenders of freedom. Who is right? Eric Foner has the answer -- he's the author of "The Story of American Freedom."Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

How a neighborhood in Port-au-Prince fought back against the gangs: Amy Wilentz comments on the news from Haiti.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Abortion rights will be a key issue for Democrats in the 2024 election, especially after Republican judges have tried to ban medication abortions. John Nichols comments.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Afghan girls who escaped from the Taliban: the story of a boarding school that evacuated its students from Kabul during the chaotic withdrawal of the Americans, and moved -- to Kigali, Rwanda. SOLA, the School of Leadership Afghanistan is the place where Afghan girls study to become members of the generation that will one day lead a peaceful and united Afghanistan. The founder, Shabana Basij-Rasikh, explains.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

34 felonies - will that change the 2024 election, or has everyone already made up their minds about Trump? Chris Lehman comments.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

For a century, thousands of young baseball players have lived with low wages, overcrowded housing, and all-night rides in uncomfortable buses in order to play in baseball’s minor leagues, hoping to eventually make it to the majors. Now their lives are changing—because they organized a union. Kelly Candaele and Peter Dreier report.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The largest anti-war demonstrations in American history were protests in the fall of 1969--with more than two million people in the streets demanding “End the War in Vietnam.” But did those demonstrations help end the war? Historian Chris Appy comments on the new documentary, “The Movement and the ‘Madman,’” on PBS American Experience March 28.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Do masks work -- to help stop the spread of covid? A New York Times columnist recently said that they don’t, and cited an authoritative review of research as his source. But it turns he was wrong about that study. Gregg Gonsalves explains.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Sunday is Oscar night in America--and, as usual, we have a lot of complaints about the nominations. So does John Powers - he’s Critic at Large on the NPR show Fresh Air with Terry Gross. We talk about this year’s films we didn’t like – and some we thought were wonderful.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The worst thing that happened to Black History during Black History Month was not Ron DeSantis banning critical concepts and approaches - it was the College Board revising its new African American Studies curriculum to meet all of his demands. But now scholars in Black History, Black Studies and related fields are fighting back--Kimberlé Crenshaw will explain. She founded the African American Policy Forum .Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Covid remains the number 3 cause of death in the US, after heart disease and cancer, with almost 3,000 deaths every week. But Biden and the Democrats are ending the federal covid emergency. Is that really a good idea? Gregg Gonsalves comments—he’s The Nation’s public health correspondent and he teaches epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Royal Family and “The Crown”– you know, Queen Elizabeth and Charles and Diana, and the Netflix series about them. Gary Younge explains why he loathes the monarchy in Britain, but loved “The Crown” on Nexflix.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Ireland since the fifties: how a country dominated by a corrupt Catholic church came to legalize gay marriage and abortion -- by referendum. Fintan O'Toole's much-honored ‘personal history’ of Ireland, titled “We Don’t Know Ourselves,” is out now in paperback.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

We’re still thinking about Victor Navasky, who died on Jan. 23. He was editor or publisher of The Nation for 27 years, starting in 1978, and author of several books, including one about his life in magazines, titled “A Matter of Opinion.” We’ll listen to our conversation about that book, recorded in 2006.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

What if government provided a basic income to all residents?  Something like $1000 a month? How much could that change inequality and poverty? Sasha Abramsky reports on the experiment in Los Angeles with Universal Basic Income.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Walmart is the biggest employer in America, and the Walton family, the children of Walmart founder Sam Walton, is the richest family in the world. The company has raised wages and become more socially conscious-but it provides a case study of the limits of socially conscious capitalism. Rick Wartzman will explain – his new book on Walmart and its workers is titled “Still Broke.”Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Who’d want to see a movie about Harvey Weinstein? But the film “She Said,” about the two New York Times reporters who broke the Harvey Weinstein story, is not about Harvey; it’s about the system that protected him. And it’s really good. Katha Pollitt comments.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Andrew Bacevich talks about our “very long war,” going back at least to the sixties, and about the relative insignificance of Donald Trump. His new book is "On Shedding an Obsolete Past: Bidding Farewell to the American Century.”Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

“Bad Mexicans” – that’s what the revolutionaries of 1910 were called as they fought on both sides of the US-Mexico border against the robber barons and their political allies. UCLA historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez tells that story, and talks about her book on race, empire, and revolution in the borderlands.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Our Christmas music special: Bob Dylan fans have been puzzled and troubled by his Christmas album, “Christmas in the Heart”, ever since he released it in 2009. To help figure out what Dylan was doing, we turned to Sean Wilentz--he’s the official historian at the official website BobDylan.com, and he also teaches American history at Princeton. (Originally broadcast in 2009)Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The largest strike in the nation entered its fifth week: 36,000 grad student employees of the University of California, including teaching assistants who are not grading final exams. The union agreed to mediation—which seems unlikely to succeed. Nelson Lichtenstein has our update.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The largest strike in the country this year, and the largest in the history of higher education, entered its fourth week at the University of California. Historian Nelson Lichtenstein explains what's happening with grad student Teaching Assistants, Research Assistants, Tutors and Postdocs.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Should Supreme Court base its decision on what it can discern about the original intent of the framers? That’s what the “originalists” say – and they dominate today’s court. Erwin Chemerinsky comments; he’s dean of the law school at UC Berkeley and the author most recently of “Worse Than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism.”Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The fight against pollution in LA’s port communities, where 300,000 people, mostly Latino, live next door to oil refineries, chemical facilities, and one of the largest oilfields in the nation. For decades they’ve been fighting for basic rights and a cleaner environment. Eliza Moreno has that story.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In Los Angeles the terrible sheriff has lost his re-election campaign. Gustavo Arellano, the LA Times columnist, comments, and reports on how the billionaire developer running for mayor campaigned for the Latino vote.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

A story about Black landownership, starting in Piney Woods, North Carolina, one of the oldest examples of uninterrupted land ownership by Black people, going back to before the Civil War. Cameron Oglesby has that report.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Mike Davis, author and activist, radical hero and family man, died on Tuesday, Oct. 25. After talking about his life and work, we play part of an interview with him on this podcast from November, 2016, one week after Trump was elected.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Trump years are not the only time American democracy has been threatened – the World War One years, when Democrat Woodrow Wilson was president, were another. That’s what Adam Hochschild argues –his new book is “American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis.”Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Greil Marcus talks about Bob Dylan, from “Blowin in the wind” in 1962 to“Murder Most Foul” in 2020. His new book is called “Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in 7 Songs.”Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Dahlia Lithwick talks about some of the heroes of the Trump years: the women lawyers who fought him on the big issues—the Muslim ban, neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, and voting rights. Her new book is “Lady Justice.”Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Ken Burns has a new documentary on PBS: “The US and the Holocaust.” it’s the most politically engaged and relevant work of his career. Historian David Nasaw comments.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

20 years before the January 6 attack on the capitol, a Republican mob attacked a central hub of government operations claiming the vote count in the presidential election that year was fraudulent, and trying to reverse the results. That was the “Brooks Brothers Riot” in Miami, a Republican effort long before Trump. Chris Lehmann reviews that history; he’s DC Bureau chief for The Nation.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

A new episode of “The Children’s Hour”: stories about Ivanka, Jared, Don Junior and Little Eric. This week: Jared writes a book! He called it “Breaking History.” We have comment from our Chief Jared Correspondent, Amy WilentzAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

We’re still thinking about Barbara Ehrenreich, who died last week. She was one of our best. We’ll listen to an interview with Ehrenreich from 2002, about “Nickel and Dimed,” her unforgettable book about trying to live on low-wage work which had just been published. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Patrick Leahy of Vermont has been a senator for almost 50 years. He describes how, on January 6, when senators took refuge from the mob attacking the capitol, they prepared to complete the work of counting the electoral votes in their underground bunker--until he insisted they should wait until they could return to the Senate chamber. His new book is ”The Road Taken.”Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Dirty work—and the people who do it: the low-income workers who do our most ethically troubled jobs. What does that have to do with the rest of us? Eyal Press explains—his book “Dirty Work” is out now in paperback.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Organization of American States released a statement admitting, finally, that the international community was responsible for the crisis ravaging Haiti today. But what is to be done now? Amy Wilentz comments.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Orange County, California: Ronald Reagan called it “the place all good Republicans go to die.” But there’s another history of Orange County--a history of white supremacy and right wing power, and of people’s battles to resist—especially immigrants. LA Times columnist Gustavo Arellano will explain--he’s one of the authors of the new book “A People’s Guide to Orange County.”Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Historian Eric Foner talks about about voting rights and voter suppression, about who gets to be a citizen, the rights of undocumented immigrants, and about the roots of mass incarceration -- --they all relate to the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, part of the country’s attempt to redefine citizenship after the end of slavery. His book, “The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution,” is out now in paperback.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The synergy between politics and popular culture has never been clearer or stronger than in the Age of Reagan – J. Hoberman will explain, he’s the author of a wonderful book called “Make My Day: Film Culture in the Age of Reagan.” Hoberman was a legendary film critic for the Village Voice for 30 years - now he writes for the New York Review, the New York Times, and The Nation. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Ivana Trump, the mother of Ivanka, Don Junior and Little Eric, died last week – Amy Wilentz comments on her memoir, “Raising Trump” (first broadcast in 2017).Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It’s not too late to act to slow climate change--that’s what Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua say. Their new project invites newcomers to join the climate movement, and guides people from despair to possibilities. Find them at www.NotTooLateClimate.com/; on Facebook at @NotTooLateClimate and on Twitter at @NotTooLate_hope.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The people who say “America is a Christian Nation” had some big victories at the Supreme Court last week, on school prayer, and on taxpayer funding of religious schools. Sarah Posner comments on the endgame of the Christian Nationalists; she’s the author of Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy