Start Making Sense

On a special edition of American Prestige, Mohammad Alsaafin, journalist at AJ+, returns to the program to discuss recent events concerning Palestine. He and Derek talk about journalists killed by Israel in Gaza, including Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif; the broad dehumanization of Palestinian journalists by many mainstream outlets; the planned military occupation and potential ethnic cleansing of the Strip; the use of starvation as a weapon; why certain countries are re-recognizing a Palestinian state at this moment; and much more.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In WWII, Denmark rescued a larger proportion of their Jewish population than any other country – 95%. How they did it suggests how we can resist Trump’s attacks on undocumented residents. Sarah Sophie Flicker explains – she’s an organizer who’s a co-founder of the Women’s March on Washington.Also: Donald Trump is demanding that UCLA pay a $1 billion fine for antisemitism on campus – in addition to the $584 million in cuts to medical and scientific research already imposed by his administration. But one Billion? Why not one Trillon? David Myers will comment – He’s a distinguished professor at UCLA who teaches Jewish history.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In lieu of a typical Tuesday episode this week, we are happy to present the first episode of our new miniseries with Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, ⁠⁠Of This World.⁠Subscribe now⁠ at the annual tier for access to this series and other AP series going forward.First, Danny Bessner speaks with Daniel about what inspired this series. In the episode itself (6:25), Daniel speaks with Carlo Invernizzi Accetti about his recent book (published in Italian) Twenty Years of Rage: From No-Globals to Trumpism. Topics include the crisis in democracy and liberalism, grievance politics, Peter Sloterdijk's concept of the modern loser, the materialist causes of modern anger, attempted remedies like populism and technocracy, and why anger can be useful.(Recorded in December 2024)Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Almost everyone who is on line or even has a cell phone has encountered a familiar andperplexing nuisance: an email or text with a job offer to make lots of money while working fromhome. These messages seem like obvious scams but how do they work? Alexander Sammon, afeature writer for Slate, conducted a personal experiment to find out by taking one of the jobshe was offered. The result is a hilarious article detailing not just what it’s like to be ripped offbut also illuminating the new grift economy that flourishes in the internet age as Donald Trumppursues his agenda of deregulation and the promotion of crypto currency. I had enormous funboth reading Alex’s article (which I can’t recommend highly enough) and talking to him abouthis strange experiences.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Don't forget to ⁠purchase our "Welcome to the Crusades" miniseries⁠!The AP team will wear formal Tevas to the new White House ballroom. Otherwise, in this week’s news: Danny and Derek reflect on the 80th anniversary of the US dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima (1:46); in Israel-Palestine, Netanyahu announces his “full occupation” plan (8:24) as the US expands the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (13:58); the Lebanese government moves to disarm Hezbollah (16:48); the US looks to host an Armenia-Azerbaijan peace summit (20:51); Trump punishes India for purchasing Russian oil (24:20); Thailand and Cambodia agree to the deployment of ceasefire monitors (27:49); in Sudan, the RSF carries out a new atrocity (29:50) and the military accuses the United Arab Emirates of hiring mercenaries (32:37); a new report details sexual violence in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia (35:06); in Russia-Ukraine, Steve Witkoff visits Moscow ahead of a Putin-Trump meeting (37:28) as the US nevertheless plans to impose tariffs o

Paris Marx is joined by Matt Pearce to discuss how Google’s use of generative AI is sending far less traffic to all manner of websites, but especially news publications, and what that might mean for the future of journalism.Matt Pearce is Director of Policy at Rebuild Local News and a former reporter at the Los Angeles Times.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

How do we face how bad things are now, while also understanding the reasons for hope, and the opportunities for action? Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, will comment.Plus: Robert Reich says the origin of our troubles with Trump and MAGA go back to the sixties; he says it started with the sixties movements – which created “a giant political void that would eventually be filled by Donald Trump’s angry, bigoted cultural populism.” His new memoir is “Coming Up Short.”Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Michael Albertus, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, joins the program to talk about his book Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn’t, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies. The group explores notions of land from archaeological evidence thousands of years ago, the enclosure movement of the medieval era, the European mindset vs those of indigenous peoples in the era of colonization, South Africa land redistribution, gender in Canadian homesteading, how changing notions of land play into larger histories of race, the postwar of concept of “land to the tiller,” and much more.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Writing in The New Republic, Greg Sargent called attention to Zohran Mamdani’s highlyeffective media strategy which has allowed him to reach many voters that have been driftingaway from the Democratic Party, especially young people and immigrants. In punchy, shortvideos, Mamdani has offered an optimistic message that celebrates big city life and diversitywhile showing how government policies can help make life better.I talked to Greg about the lessons of the Mamdani campaign. We also talk about strategies forinvestigating the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, a subject he wrote about here.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Don’t forget to purchase our “Welcome to the Crusades” special series!Danny and Derek are monitoring the Liam Neeson-Pamela Anderson situation. Otherwise, in this week’s news: a new study says most countries are exploiting groundwater aquifers at an unsustainable rate (2:26); in Israel-Palestine, another Gaza ceasefire breaks down (4:56), Israel’s “humanitarian pause” has little effect on the starvation in Gaza (7:22), the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is under scrutiny (10:13), West Bank violence is once again on the rise (12:23), and several European leaders float the idea of recognizing a Palestinian state (14:11); Trump threatens to bomb Iran again (17:45); POTUS relaxes sanctions on Myanmar while considering a mineral deal (20:12), plus that country’s military junta lifts the state of emergency (23:55); Thailand and Cambodia agree to a ceasefire for the moment (25:32); the Trump administration cancels interactions with Taiwan (28:32); the Sudan “quartet” meeting is cancelled after a dispute between Egypt

Paris Marx is joined by Jacob Silverman to discuss Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire’s Islamophobic attack on Zohran Mamdani, what it tells us about the state of tech’s politics, and how Donald Trump is enriching himself through crypto scams.Jacob Silverman is a journalist and the author of the forthcoming book Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Six million Democrats who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 did not vote in 2024. What’s wrong with them? Pollster and strategist Celinda Lake explains who they are, and what it would take to get them back to the polls in the 2026 midterms – and in 2028.Also: a suggestion for summer reading: M: Son of the Century is a 750-page historical novel about the rise of Mussolini, by Antonio Scurati. John Powers, critic-at-large for NPR’s Fresh Air, says the book suggests some parallels between 1920s Italy and Trump’s America. The book is out now in paperback.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Great Power Week continues here at American Prestige as historian Michael Brenes joins the show to talk about how prolonged competition with China threatens democracy, peace, and prosperity. They compare Biden and Trump’s respective approaches to China, whether the national security establishment is trying to manufacture an existential threat out of The People’s Republic, whether there is any national interest in a new Cold War, the degradation in American leaders, why rivalry is bad economically, erodes American society’s social fabric, and leads to violence, and alternatives to the great power framework.     Read his book on the matter (co-authored with AP regular Van Jackson), The Rivalry Peril: How Great-Power Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy.Don’t miss the companion episode with Stacie Goddard from Sunday, “The Era of Great Power Competition.” Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Since 2015, Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the American foreign policy establishmentfor being too belligerent and unwilling to negotiate with adversaries. But in office, Trump hascarried out a foreign policy that has all the vices he has criticized and been even more inclinedto risk war or get into new wars. In a recent essay in The New York Times, Stephen Wertheim,a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment forInternational Peace, has written an incisive critique of Donald Trump’s foreign policyincoherence emphasizing how the president’s ad hoc response to problems and his excessivefaith in his own deal making ability prevents any systematic change from the status quo.Stephen and I have a wide-ranging discussion on the over-stretched American empire and whyTrump is just making things worse.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Don’t forget to buy our “Welcome to the Crusades” miniseries!Danny and Derek also rail against the war pigs, but lack the heavy riffs. This week: the International Court of Justice rules that wealthy nations must take action on climate change or bear responsibility (1:20); clashes escalate on the Thai-Cambodian border (4:08); a ceasefire holds in Syria’s Suwayda province after clashes between Druze and Bedouin groups (9:06); in Israel-Palestine, Gaza’s starvation reaches catastrophic levels (13:19) as ceasefire talks barely limp along (16:23); Iran is reengaging with the International Atomic Energy Agency (20:49); the Democratic Republic of the Congo and M23 militant group sign a declaration of intent (23:05); in Ukraine, a new round of peace talks achieves little (25:24) while Zelensky responds to protests over corruption (28:27); Venezuela, the US, and El Salvador carry out a prisoner exchange amid accusations of torture (31:38); the Japan House of Councillors holds an election while PM Ishiba looks likely

Paris Marx is joined by Dan McQuillan to discuss the political push by global governments towards rapid AI adoption at all costs, and how citizens can critically rethink not only our dependence on these technologies, but imagine a collective future that benefits everyone.Dan McQuillan is a lecturer at Goldsmiths College, University of London and the author of Resisting AI.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

A federal court in LA has stopped ICE from detaining people for deportation because they look Latino – that’s racial discrimination, and it’s unconstitutional, the court said. Mark Rosenbaum of Public Counsel will explain what’s next as he government appeals the case to the Ninth Circuit.Also: How does a movement build support when large parts of the country are opposed to its goals? How do you connect with people who disagree with you? For some answers we’ll turn to long-time organizer Michael Ansara -- his new book is “The Hard Work of Hope.”Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hugh Wilford, professor of history at California State University, Long Beach, is back on the program to conclude the discussion of his book The CIA: An Imperial History. In this episode they talk about figures like Edward Lansdale and James Angleton, “regime maintenance,” counterinsurgency, the agency’s use of publicity, the effect of the War on Terror on the CIA, and more. Listen to Part 1 here⁠!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Tech lords such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are among the richest humans who have everlived and have an enormous sway over the American political system but even that isn’t enoughfor them. They also want a compliant media, one that echoes their ideas, doesn’t investigatetheir business practices, and goes after their enemy. This is the subject of a new book by EoinHiggins: Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left. Italked to Eoin about two of the major figures in this story, Peter Thiel, a plutocrat who is eagerto abandon the human species and Matt Taibbi, a onetime anti-establishment voice who nowhas become a standard reactionary.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Derek is in the shop for maintenance, so Danny presents the news with the Quincy Institute’s Alex Jordan. This week: Israel bombs the Syrian Defense Ministry in Damascus (0:39) as Netanyahu’s corruption trial carries on (7:05), plus US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee condemns settlers killing a US citizen (10:24), and the Hague Group coalition meets in Bogota to decide how to hold Israel accountable for its crimes (16:02); the saga of Trump’s flip-flopping on Ukraine military aid continues (20:29); Trump announces more tariffs while affected countries struggle to make a deal with the US (28:30); the US Navy is constructing facilities to repair and maintain Philippine military vessels (33:35); the UN releases a report detailing how militant violence in Haiti has killed 5,000 people in the last 9 months (37:48); and the French army has withdrawn its last troops from Senegal (42:48). Be sure to watch and listen to Alex and Courtney Rawlings on the Quincy Institute’s Always at War podcast. Advertising Inquirie