PODCAST · society
The Lonely Liberal Podcast
by Nick Zenkin
Hosted by Nick Zenkin, a podcast about the stress of American politics. Come hang out, and let’s vent together.
Episodes
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How Corporations Warped the Truth, with Amy Westervelt
Investigative climate journalist Amy Westervelt, host of Drilled, joins The Lonely Liberal to talk about her new book Brought to You By: How Corporations Warped the Truth, Conned the Public, and Broke Democracy, and the century-long corporate propaganda machine behind today’s disinformation. Amy...
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Ilhan Omar Raided, Shane Gillis Bombs on SNL, Ken Paxton’s Dubai Party
Homeland Security agents raid Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home and seize her passport in a push to strip her citizenship, and Nick and Rick ask whether this happens to any other member of Congress. Plus: Shane Gillis’s SNL monologue, and whether it was offensive or just bad stand-up; Ken Paxton’s New…
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The Pentagon May Livestream an Execution, Trump Buys Russian Diesel, and Ossoff Goes Off
Back from a week off, we start with a wedding, a blazer put on trial, and why a man who's never set foot on the US mainland gets a federal holiday. Then a rough week: Trump says the US won’t strike Iran until after the midterms, cuts a diesel deal with Putin while Ukraine’s allies sit in peace...
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How to Win a Swing District Without Faking It, with Matt Little
Conventional wisdom says a swing district demands a candidate who runs to the center. Matt Little did the opposite, and won his primary in the most evenly divided district in Minnesota running unapologetically to the left. Nick sits down with him to figure out how. They get into the story that…
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Trump Bans CNN, Netanyahu Name-Drops Hasan Piker, and Fetterman Keeps the Iran War Going
Trump bans CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, launches a 24-hour Trump TV stream his own company then tries to trademark, and runs taxpayer-funded ads of himself set to the song "Love Me." We get into the chilling effect, ProPublica's reporting on Susan Collins and a defense…
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Loving the NFL When You Know It's Broken, with Christopher Harris
Chris Harris is one of the most popular voices in fantasy football — but he's also five novels deep into a whole other life as a writer, and his newest, Pound Foolish, is a murder mystery set inside an NFL team. Nick sits down with him for a relaxed, wide-ranging hang that turns out to be about...
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Massie Moves to Impeach Hegseth, Congress Flees Town, and Kash Patel Defends Bestiality
Good news, for once. The Supreme Court killed Trump's mail-in voting order 7-2, ending a fight we've been tracking on this show since July. Kavanaugh sided with the majority. Alito and Thomas dissented. And the thing worth pausing on: this is the third court ruling in a row rejecting it, which...
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What the Flock? The Cameras Reading Every License Plate in America
There's a good chance there's a camera on your street logging every car that passes, including yours. It's probably made by Flock Safety, a company most people have never heard of that's now worth $8.4 billion and makes roughly four out of every five license plate readers in the country. Nick...
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Trump's "Cheat Like Hell" Pledge, RFK Erases Two Measles Deaths, and Fetterman Defects
Nick is back from France with a grievance about trains, and the news did not wait for him. At the first-ever Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Trump had the crowd raise their right hands and pledge to him — including a pledge to "cheat like hell" and vote whether or not they're registered....
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How Trump Sold Fake Populism, with Charles Derber
Everyone calls Trump a populist. Sociologist Charles Derber thinks that's exactly the con. Nick sits down with Derber — professor at Boston College and author of Fighting Oligarchy: How Positive Populism Can Reclaim America — for a conversation that lays out something most people never hear said...
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Trump Takes Venezuela's Oil, Renames Lake Ontario, and Dems Condemn Hasan Piker
Nick went to the Ed Markey rally in Boston — front row, with Bernie, Warren, and Ayanna Pressley. What Bernie Sanders still sounds like at 85, why the crowd was two-thirds seniors and one-third teenagers with almost nobody in between, and the question Hannah asked on the drive home that neither…
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Angie Nixon Wins Florida, Ossoff Gets Under Trump's Skin, and Vice Signaling
Angie Nixon beat Alex Vindman in Florida's Senate primary while being outraised sixteen to one. Abdul was eight to one. Then ten. Then twelve. The number keeps climbing and the outspent candidate keeps winning — which starts to put to bed the idea, popular with Democratic consultants, that you…
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Why Everything Feels Rigged, with Dean Baker
Everyone says the economy is broken — but economist Dean Baker thinks almost everyone, left and right, is misdiagnosing why. In one of our wonkiest and most fun conversations yet, Nick sits down with the co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of Rigged to take the...
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Peggy Flanagan Crushes in Minnesota, Hong Loses by 0.4, and AOC Says Woke 1 Was Crazy
Peggy Flanagan won Minnesota's Senate primary by nineteen points while being outspent four to one, and almost nobody covered it. Francesca Hong lost Wisconsin by four tenths of a point to a man who had dropped out of the race a month earlier. Same week, same movement, opposite results — so we get...
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Who Is Hasan Piker, and Why Does Everyone Have to Denounce Him?
Who is Hasan Piker? It's the question Nick keeps getting — and this week it became the question every progressive candidate in America has to answer. Piker is a Twitch streamer with three million followers who ranked fifth on the platform in 2026, and who spent this midterm cycle campaigning with...
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Abdul El-Sayed Wins, Todd Blanche Buries Epstein, and Mitch McConnell Has Vanished
Abdul El-Sayed won the Michigan Senate primary by a single point, beating roughly $60 million in outside money — most of it from AIPAC — in the most expensive Democratic primary in history. Nick cracked open a Moët mini at eleven in the morning. Donovan McKinney unseated an incumbent in…
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Chris Rabb on How a Handful of Progressives Can Bend the Whole Party
Chris Rabb just did something that wasn't supposed to be possible: he beat the Philadelphia Democratic machine — a sitting mayor, a former state party chair, the whole institutional apparatus — by 15 points, in a race with no incumbent, on his way to Congress. He's spent a decade in the...
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Ukraine Strikes Iran, Trump Raises $800 Million, and Schumer Begs Fetterman to Stay
Ukraine struck an Iranian ship in the Caspian Sea this week, and two wars that have defined the last five years started to look like one. So we asked the question we've always answered no to: is this World War III? Then the US paused bombing Iran — not for diplomacy, but because it ran out of...
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Ed Markey, Seth Moulton, and the Socialist Running Against Them Both
Ed Markey has been in Congress for nearly 50 years, running on the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and a higher minimum wage. Joe Tache — the Party for Socialism and Liberation's candidate in this year's Massachusetts Senate race — argues that 50 years is long enough to judge whether that...
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Trump Defunds Blue States, Rubio Hunts Communists, and Trump Bombs at the WHCD
The Energy Department admitted in court this week that it canceled 284 clean energy grants — $7.5 billion worth — based solely on whether the state voted for Kamala Harris. Not cost. Not performance. Just the election result. Meanwhile, Marco Rubio's State Department released a 100-page report...
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Doing Journalism in a Fake News World, with Stephen Lacey
Nick sits down with Stephen Lacey — co-founder and executive editor of Latitude Media, host of Open Circuit, and former Editor-in-Chief of Greentech Media — for a conversation about what it actually takes to make trustworthy media in a "fake news" world. They get into why Stephen thinks the…
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Iran Drags On, Vance Talks to Rogan, and Jackson Takes Maine
Month five of the Iran war and there's still no end in sight. Two U.S. service members were killed in Jordan on Friday with a third missing, the first American deaths from Iranian fire since March, and the U.S. struck back within hours. It came days after Senate Democrats blocked the $1.15…
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Abdul El-Sayed on Electability, AIPAC, and Medicare for All
Nick sits down in person with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan, at a campaign stop in Warren. They get into the misconception that he's "just a socialist," why distrust in public health traces back to a healthcare system stuck behind a paywall, and his case for...
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So What's Next for Maine With Platner Out?
Graham Platner is out — and nobody knows what happens next in the most important Senate race of the midterms. Last time, I called him the right candidate but the wrong person. This week, that prediction cashed out. So what now? I break down how the campaign actually ended (hint: it was Schumer's...
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America 250, SCOTUS's Blockbuster Week, and AI Teddy Roosevelt
Nick and Rick break down America's 250th anniversary week — and the chaos that came with it. They open on the America 250 meltdown: the DC Independence Day Parade was canceled Friday night due to a 115-degree heat dome; Philadelphia's parade was canceled the day before; the Great American State...
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The Tariffs Were Illegal. You're Not Getting a Refund.
In February, the Supreme Court ruled Trump's tariffs illegal — all $166 billion of them. The refunds are flowing right now, with interest. But they're going to Walmart, Target, and the importers, not to you — even though the Fed's own research shows American consumers paid nearly all of it, about...
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Trump's Iran MoU, the Venezuela Earthquakes, and Reflecting Pool Drama
Nick and Rick break down 10 days of chaos in American politics. They open on Trump's Iran deal: at Versailles during the G7 summit, Trump signed a 14-point memorandum of understanding with Iran's foreign minister — Strait of Hormuz reopens, sanctions lifted, $42 billion in frozen Iranian assets...
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What To Do With Graham Platner
Maine should be the easiest Democratic Senate pickup of 2026. Susan Collins is uniquely vulnerable, Trump has never won the state, and it’s a midterm with an unpopular Republican president. So why is it a nightmare? Nick endorsed Graham Platner early — an anti-PAC, Bernie-backed, working class...
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The Iran Deal, Explained
The Iran deal text is finally out — all 14 points. Nick reads every one of them, ranked from least to most egregious, so you can hear exactly what was traded away and what wasn't. Iran gets immediate oil exports, $24 billion in frozen assets with no restrictions on use, and a $300 billion...
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Trump's UFC Birthday, Elon Hits $1 Trillion, and Vance's Secret Situation Room Epstein Meetings
Nick and Rick break down a chaotic week in American politics — recorded as the UFC fight unfolds on the White House South Lawn. They open on Trump's 80th birthday UFC spectacle: seven mixed martial arts matches with 4,000 spectators, including 1,000 servicemembers required to attend in uniform on...
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Can Republicans Survive Trump's Purge?
Trump just did something FDR tried and failed to do: he purged his own party. Three sitting members of Congress — Sen. John Cornyn, Sen. Bill Cassidy, and Rep. Thomas Massie — crossed him, and all three are gone. So why does a president polling at 38% have this much power? Nick breaks down the…
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Trump vs. Netanyahu, the NYT Tries to Sink Platner, and DOGE's Plot to Mark Millions Dead
Nick and Rick break down a chaotic week in American politics. They open on the Trump-Israel rupture: Trump cursed out Netanyahu in a Monday phone call — "You're f***ing crazy. You'd be in prison if it weren't for me. Everybody hates you. Everybody hates Israel because of this" — and then…
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So... Is MAGA Actually Fascism?
Is Trump a fascist? Nick's guest says: wrong question. Dr. Eric Grube is a historian at Boston College who specializes in fascism, nationalism, and the far-right movements of interwar Europe — and he's back on the show six months after his last appearance to update his verdict. His answer has...
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Trump Threatens to Blow Up Oman, Paxton Wins Texas, and UFC at the White House
Trump threatened to "blow up" Oman over the Strait of Hormuz while a tentative Iran deal sits unsigned. Ken Paxton crushed John Cornyn in Texas — the first GOP senator ever primaried out — and immediately started attacking his Democratic opponent's testosterone levels. Federal courts blocked two...
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Why the Democratic Party Can't Get Out of Its Own Way
Last week the Democratic Party released its official autopsy of the 2024 election. 192 pages. No mention of Gaza. No mention of Biden's age. No mention of the debate. Not once. Nick breaks down what the document actually reveals — not about 2024, but about a Democratic establishment that preaches...
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Trump's $1.8B Slush Fund, Massie Ousted, Tulsi Resigns, and the DNC's 2024 Autopsy Disaster
Nick and Rick break down a chaotic week in American politics. They open on Trump's revenge tour: Trump-endorsed Ed Gallrein ousted Thomas Massie in the most expensive House primary in history ($32 million spent), Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth campaigned in-district against Massie in apparent...
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Trump's $1.8 Billion Slush Fund, Explained
Trump sued his own government for $10 billion, was about to lose in court, and settled with himself — walking away with a $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded fund he controls, a board he can fire, zero court oversight, and his personal IRS audit liability quietly erased on the side. Nick breaks down...
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Trump in China, Cassidy Ousted in Louisiana, and Trump Says He Doesn't Think About Americans
Nick and Rick break down a chaotic week in American politics. They open on Trump's two-day state visit to Beijing, where Xi warned that mishandling Taiwan would put the relationship in "great jeopardy" and Trump returned with a vague Iran commitment and a Boeing order — plus Pete Hegseth visibly...
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The U.S. Is Not a Free Market
Ten years ago, Nick got laughed out of a grad school seminar for arguing that the U.S. isn’t a fair example of capitalism — by the same logic his classmates used to exempt the USSR from representing socialism. He’s been waiting for the right case study ever since. This week he found it: Elon…
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Virginia Map Overturned, Tennessee Carves Up Memphis, and the 22-Foot Gold Trump Statue
Nick breaks down a chaotic week in American politics. Opening on Iran: three US Navy destroyers came under missile, drone, and small-boat attack in the Strait of Hormuz, the US struck Iranian soil for the first time since the ceasefire, the UAE was hit by Iranian missiles, and Saudi Arabia pulled...
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Who's Buying the 2026 Midterms? The Top 5 PACs Flooding Congress with Cash
The 2026 midterms are supposed to be a referendum on Trump. But while everyone's watching that fight, corporations and billionaires are quietly buying the outcome. Nick counts down the Top 5 PACs already flooding Congress with cash — from the GOP's traditional money machine all the way up to...
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Correspondents' Dinner Shooting, Iran Strikes a US Warship, and SCOTUS Guts the Voting Rights Act
Nick is back from Spain and joined by Rick to catch up on two weeks of political chaos. They open on the White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting: Pirro's confirmation that Cole Allen's bullet hit a Secret Service agent, and Trump's bizarre pivot to pushing his $400 million ballroom within…
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Why Vote If the Democrats Keep Letting Us Down?
A lot of people on the left are quietly asking the same question right now: if the Democrats keep letting us down, why bother? Nick brings his sibling Li on to work through it honestly — the Stein votes, the Gaza frustration, the feeling that even a Democratic win wouldn't have fixed anything.
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Nuclear Scientists Are Going Missing and Nobody Knows Why
Over the last two years, at least 10 people with access to America's nuclear and aerospace secrets have died or disappeared. The FBI is now investigating. Congress has opened a formal inquiry. Trump was briefed and called it "pretty serious stuff." So what do we actually know? Nick walks through...
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Hormuz Shuts Again, Trump Posts Himself as Jesus, and RFK's Dead Raccoon
Week 8 of the Iran war, and the wheels are coming off. Iran re-closes the Strait of Hormuz just 24 hours after reopening it, gunboats fire on Indian tankers, and gas hits $4.12/gallon — while Russ Vought tells Congress he has no idea what any of this is costing taxpayers. The House war powers...
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Iran Stalemate, Orbán Falls, and Swalwell Implodes
Rick's out sick, so Nick is flying solo with a quick-hit roundup of the biggest stories of the week. Six weeks into the Iran war, Trump threatened to bomb power plants on Easter Sunday, Vance flew to Islamabad for peace talks and came home empty-handed, Israel killed 300+ in Lebanon in a single...
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Did America Just Lose the Iran War?
Trump threatened to destroy an entire civilization. Iran held firm. Two hours before his own deadline, Trump blinked — and called it a victory. This week, Nick breaks down what actually happened with the Iran ceasefire: what's in the deal, how it compares to what Iran was offering the day before...
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Bondi Fired, U.S. Jets Shot Down, Trump’s Easter Ultimatum
Trump had one of the most chaotic weeks of his presidency — and that's saying something. He gave his first primetime address on the Iran war 33 days in, claiming total air dominance over a country that then shot down two of our jets within 48 hours. He fired his Attorney General for not being...
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How the U.S. Is Strangling Cuba
Cuba's power grid has collapsed. Hospitals are postponing surgeries. The government is telling people to cook with wood. And the United States is the reason. In this episode, Nick breaks down how Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign has effectively blockaded Cuba — cutting off its oil supply,...
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No Kings Protests, Iran Escalates, and TSA
The Iran war hits one month — and the numbers don't add up. Trump says the U.S. is "way ahead of schedule," but his own intelligence community says only a third of Iran's missiles have been destroyed. Fifteen Americans are dead, 300+ wounded, oil is at $112 a barrel, and the Strait of Hormuz is...
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Lonely Liberal Podcast have?
The Lonely Liberal Podcast currently has 100 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Lonely Liberal Podcast about?
Hosted by Nick Zenkin, a podcast about the stress of American politics. Come hang out, and let’s vent together.
How often does The Lonely Liberal Podcast release new episodes?
The Lonely Liberal Podcast has 100 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to The Lonely Liberal Podcast?
You can listen to The Lonely Liberal Podcast on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Lonely Liberal Podcast?
The Lonely Liberal Podcast is created and hosted by Nick Zenkin.
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