It was called the Gilded Age. In the late 19th and early 20th century, there was extreme wealth and everybody else (remind you of another time?). Wall Street bankers back then were getting robbed, someone had to protect them. In

When she came onto the civil rights stage, the men assumed she’d sing, not speak. But Fannie Lou Hamer was a force. As author Kate Clifford Larson tells the amazing story in her new book Walk With Me, she stood

Let’s face it: the current Supreme Court is hostile to democracy. Even if Congress passes the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the voter suppression right wing will take it to this Supreme Court which will decide voting rights. Does that

You may not have heard of Rich Trumka who passed away suddenly August 5th. From working in the mines of Pennsylvania he served as president of the AFL-CIO from 2009 to 2021. Our guest today is once and future president

Everyone knows the tax code is there to serve the richest Americans. But when it was created, the tax code was actually intended to tax only the richest. The Progressive era was a way out of the last Gilded Age

Remember Nixon’s “law and order?” It was a clever way to get whites to buy into racist repression. On this show author historian Alfred McCoy (who revealed government heroin distribution to GIs in Vietnam) says the continuing “war on drugs”

When VP Kamala Harris went to Central America, Honduras was not on the list of stops. She has reason to not want to appear with their right wing president. He is supported by the powerful global extractive industries, but there’s

It’s a rich country full of poor people. With his teaching pencil as a symbol, from the countryside Pedro Castillo is the winner of the very tight but certified free and fair June 6th presidential election. The candidate of the

Michael Winship writes: “Despite Joe Biden and Kamala Harris being in the White House, we remain in existential peril.” A big step toward tyranny is Senator Joe Manchin who announced he will not support an end to the filibuster which

Women in the military know they are more likely to be attacked by men of their own company than by an enemy. It’s been a long tradition that reports of sexual abuse are crushed. Commanders protecting their own reputation takes

When Roe v Wade was decided in 1973, many thought the matter was settled. Nearly 50 years later, the new Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that could overturn that landmark decision. On this show abortion law historian professor

Thanks to January 6th, the word sedition is in our consciousness again.  Trump is more likely guilty of treason than of mere sedition according to the former director of the CIA and our guest, history teacher and essayist William Pruden

The message of his calm kneeling and centuries of racist violence is: you could be next, black person. Chauvin knew only 1% of police killing black people are even prosecuted. There have been others caught on film in broad daylight

Americans talk about the surge at the border, but the real point is everyone has a right to stay home. Today’s guest Avi Chomsky says that under Biden, Trump’s cement wall is instead outsourced to a militarized high-tech barrier. Do

Even if it never makes it on TV, progressive action does make a difference. There’s a place for all activists, forcing hidden problems and opportunities to the fore. Our guest Dinah Yessne has a new book called Politically Defined. There’s

Pounding on windows, yelling Stop the Count; the tactics of physical intimidation (led by the president’s men) succeeded in crushing democracy in the US election of 2000. On part one, our guest historian Robert Toplin tells the story where fear

So much we have to learn from January 6th. On the first part of today’s show History Professor Robert Schneider calls it a “Populist Transgression,” without a legitimate grievance. Other uprisings and disruptions are purposeful. He likens Trump to Mao:

The greedy hyper-wealthy cheer on their Republican advocates as they fight to crush democracy. But a lot of American millionaires are also patriots and recognize that more democracy is needed to build the common good. On this show, Morris Pearl,

They are often pictured as competitive opponents, but Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were “The Sword and the Shield” leading the same revolution with the shared goal of human dignity. On this show, Dr Peniel Joseph talks about his

The Trumpian mob attack on the Capitol shocked America. We thought “this is not who we are.” But maybe it actually is, more than we’d thought. If we dare to look at our history, it was not such an exception.

On part one: By strict legal standards, Donald Trump is obviously guilty. But the impeachment trial is a political not a legal proceeding, the Republican majority senate is the jury. And according to Marjorie Cohn, former president of the National

When one thinks of people in poverty, what judgements come up? Did you know that the vast majority are working often two or three jobs? When you go to a bank or a mortgage, do they ask you how much

The Electoral College was born in a hasty compromise in the 18th century. Could it finally be about to change and enable more democracy? Though you probably haven’t heard of it, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is moving steadily

Sure, the south was defeated militarily, but their attitudes remained, as we saw in the January 6th insurrection. What we saw is not a fringe, in fact it has deep roots. Disunity is traditional in American history. People in the

From its birth in one block in New York City to more than a thousand town squares, the conversation began ten years ago. It was the first social media driven movement and as Heather McKee Hurwitz writes in her new

Why do we keep investing our national treasure in policies which make us much less secure? Part of the reason is what our guest calls the “fire-hose of content” from the 24/7 news cycle. Our foreign policy affects us all

With his gleeful displays of cruelty, is it possible that Donald Trump performed the service of waking us all up to cruelty commonly in national and corporate policy?  In his new book, Cruelty or Humanity: Challenges, Opportunities, and Responsibilities Australian

Ousting Trump is not enough. Getting back to the normalcy of tremendous economic injustice is not enough. With unprecedented wealth owned by a very few, close to 50% of Americans are at the edge of real poverty. Guest is Reverend

The word treason has been thrown around a lot lately. By Trump against his detractors and also leveled at Trump for seeking to stage a coup against America. On this show one of the nations leading authorities on the law

It was a momentous election. In blue states and red, voters overwhelmingly passed measures legalizing cannabis and, in Oregon, decriminalizing all drugs. So many people have been hurt, families have been separated, and the drug war has failed miserably to