A Gentlemen's Disagreement

We had planned to debate whether the U.S. should or shouldn't get involved in the Israeli-Iranian conflict. Well, President Trump did, so the debate turned into whether it was the right move and how it might play out both internationally and domestically.

Two of our great friends, Perry Laberis and Ray Mooney, join us to discuss what the breakdown in the Trump-Musk relationship means for the future of both men, the future of this administration, and the future of politics in the U.S. We also hit on some other items in the news towards the end of the conversation.

The constant barrage of news coming from this administration has been weighing heavily on Ricky. Is it at bad as it seems? Can Brendan offer any hope or simply commiserate? 

Director of the Global Linkages Lab and Brown University professor Dr. Şebnem Kalemli-Özcan makes the case for why tariffs are not the solution to U.S. trade deficits or U.S. job losses and explains why America First might soon mean America Alone.

In recent years, there has been a lot of talk about AI. And a lot of talk about climate change. But where and how do these two forces life-changing forces collide? Dr. Joseph B. Keller of the Brookings Institution helps us answer these questions and tells us what policy makers should be thinking about as both forces continue to advance.

Matthew Knych joins us to reflect on the wild, whirlwind, and incredibly consequential first 100 days of the second Trump Administration.

Jesuit priest and Boston College Professor of History Oliver Rafferty takes us beneath the surface of the simple narratives surrounding Pope Francis's life and legacy to examine the pope he really was, the church he ran, and the one that he leaves us.

Benjamin Kramer and Gustavo Nascimento, two of the Executive Producers behind "The Apprentice," a movie about Donald Trump's rise to prominence as a real estate businessman in New York City that earned multiple Oscar nominations, take us behind the scenes of the fascinating process to make this outstanding and provocative film.

Going to a game used to be affordable for an average family. It's not anymore. We are joined by Groundwork Collaborative's Emily DiVito and Elizabeth Pancotti to discuss why that is and what policy makers could do to fix it.

Five months after the election, two months into the Trump Administration, what does The Resistance 2.0 look like? What do the various approaches of the leaders of the Democratic Party tell us about where the Party is now and where it is headed?

We begin by discussing the detention and possible deportation of Mahmoud Khalil before looking at the retreat of the stock market, in general, and of Tesla, in particular.

We discuss our biggest takeaways from the start of the second Trump administration including DOGE, tariffs, and Ukraine. Then we recap our first book club where we read "Poverty, by America" by Matthew Desmond.

Sam Klug, professor of U.S. history at Loyola University Maryland, joins us to discuss his new book, The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization. We talk about the global decolonization movement of the mid-20th century, the ties between that global movement and domestic issues of race and class in the U.S., and how all of those issues continue to reverberate today.

Our fifth annual Presidents Day Mount Rushmore-style draft, joined, once again, by our friends Dan Gonzalez and Devon Hull, and this year we are drafting the most influential works of literature in U.S. history. A fun episode for any lover of U.S. history and/or literature!

David A. Graham of The Atlantic joins us to discuss President Trump's cabinet nominees, their confirmation process, his appointees, and what his personnel strategy helps to show us about the overall direction of his nascent second administration.

Suriya Jayanti of the Atlantic Council and TIME joins us to talk about this period of energy transition and the necessity of nuclear power to that transition. 

He's baaaaack. We react to the return of President Trump, a man at the apex of his power.

Charles Sykes of MSNBC, The Atlantic, and The Bulwark joins us to discuss President Biden's legacy as his four years as president and fifty years in politics comes to a close this week. We discuss that legacy within the context of the life and legacy of President Carter, who is, perhaps, a presidential analogue of Biden's.

Robert A. Levy, former chairman of the board of the Cato Institute, joins us to discuss antitrust laws. Do these laws help or hurt competition? When, if ever, should the government step in to protect and promote competition in the marketplace? We delve into these questions and many more in our conversation with Bob.

Our annual look back at the stories that dominated our discourse this year.

From a pair of killings in New York City to the actions of Israel and Russia internationally, how we view these incidents often seems to be tied to how we view the concept of self-defense. Is there an innate right to self-defense? If not, who can claim self-defense and against whom? Is the right of self-defense tied to the means? If so, how far does it extend? What does it permit? Can self-defense only be invoked as a reaction to something/someone else? Can it be preemptive? We try to tease out our own thoughts on these questions in this conversation.

We're back to hit a series of topics that have been in the news over the past couple of weeks both in the U.S.--the murder of the UnitedHealth CEO, President Biden's pardon of his son Hunter, the rise of Bitcoin--and abroad--the overthrow of the Syrian government, the declaration of martial law by the South Korean government, and the collapse of the French government.

Republicans have won the Presidency, the Senate, and the House. Conservative justices dominate the Supreme Court. What was the cost of those victories? Where does the current environment leave people who don't align with this vision for the country? We ruminate on those questions and more in this episode.

With the election behind us, we turn our attention to the Supreme Court, which is sure to have a say in what happens over the next four years. Kevin J, McMahon, Trinity College professor and author of a trilogy of books examining the relationship between democracy and the Court, joins us to put this Court in historical context, analyze what the current composition of the Court says about the state of our democracy, and debate some potential Court reforms.

In the wake of another U.S. presidential election dominated by discussion of the electoral college, we are joined by Patrick Rosenstiel, senior consultant to the National Popular Vote campaign, who makes the case that the switching from the current electoral college system to a national popular vote would be the single biggest improvement we could make to our democracy--and that this election proves that we are ready for it.

We try to make sense of the election results, including what it says about our country now and what it means for our country moving forward, before we are joined by our good friend Ray Mooney to provide the Trump-voter perspective.

We wanted to fit in one more episode before the election looking at the state of the economy. Alana spent time on the ground of the swing states and told us what the vibes were like heading into election day. 

We were joined by Brigham & Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Dr. John Fromson to discuss the potential and pitfalls of the legalization of psychedelics. We debated legalization through ballot initiatives versus legislatively, the hopes versus dangers medically, freedom versus safety, and much more.

We dive into each of the five questions on the Massachusetts ballot, explaining what a "yes" or "no" vote means and exploring the pros and cons of each measure. We also look at ballot questions nationally to identify trends we are seeing across the country and discuss how these questions might impact races up the ballot in the upcoming elections.

Steve Kornacki joined us this week for a deep dive into the upcoming U.S. elections. Steve broke down the battleground states for the presidency, the races that will decide the Senate and the House, and the overall demographic and issues-based trends that will ultimately impact the results in November.

We are joined this week by the Libertarian Party's candidate for President, Chase Oliver (4:02-40:38), and Vice President, Mike ter Maat (40:46-1:29:42), for wide-ranging conversations about third-parties, policies an Oliver-ter Maat administration would pursue, what success in November would look like, and much, much more.

We are joined this week by lobbyist Austin Jackson to try to examine the present and future of college athletics in the time of NIL, the transfer portal, and shifting conferences. We analyze the roles that Congress, the NLRB, and the courts will play in defining the future of college sports.

We stayed up past Ricky's bedtime to discuss our immediate reactions to and takeaways from the debate between former President Trump and Vice-President Harris.

We are joined by Dr. Rachael Navarre to discuss the findings from her most recent book, including why populism, extremism, and conspiracy theories have taken hold in so many democracies across the world over the past decade.    

We welcome Jacquetta Van Zandt back to the program to get her thoughts on the last two months of Democratic politics. We discuss the abandonment of President Biden, examine how Vice President Harris has captured the imagination of the party, debate whether the country is ready for a Black/Indian/woman president, and offer some advice for the Harris campaign moving forward. Whether you're just tuning in or having been following every detail, you'll enjoy this conversation.

We are joined this week by Simpson College Professor of History Nick Proctor to examine the many parallels between 1968 and 2024. The events of 1968 culminated in the infamous Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Will the events of 2024 produce a similar Democratic Convention in Chicago this week?

While we are still in the honeymoon phase of the Harris candidacy, we take a look at what candidate Harris stands for policy-wise and how policy under a Harris administration might differ from both the Trump and Biden administrations.

We begin this week by talking about the opening week of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, particular stories that have caught our eyes, and the general feeling of togetherness that rooting for Team USA brings and then juxtapose that positivity with the direction our political discourse has taken since the new presidential race has begun in earnest.

We recap one of the wildest weeks in modern U.S. political history, starting with the assassination attempt on President Trump, the ensuing RNC and President Trump's selection of J.D. Vance as his running mate, and ending with President Biden's decision to drop out of the race and to endorse Vice-President Harris as his successor.

We welcome back Suffolk University Law School Professor Renee Landers to analyze the major cases and trends from the Supreme Court's just-concluded term. We discussed the Trump cases, the administrative law cases, including the overturning of the Chevron Doctrine, the abortion cases, and the gun cases.

We begin with an extended reaction to the presidential debate before analyzing what foreign policy might look like under a second term of either President Biden or President Trump.

We begin this week by discussing the life and legacy of Willie Mays, and then we dive more fully into what the significance of the Negro Leagues was then and is now and discuss how baseball, in particular, and sports in general, often serve as a microcosm for the country. We wrap up by highlighting two Negro League greats.

We are joined this week by Dr. Po-Shen Loh, professor of mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University, social entrepreneur, and innovator, to discuss some of the challenges and opportunities the rise of AI will pose to work, education, and democracy. Throughout our conversation, we analyze how humans can--and must--remain supreme in an AI world.

We are joined this week by Brian Concannon, the Founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. We discussed the history of Haiti, the role of the U.S. and France in that history, and how that history has led to the current situation in Haiti. We also talked about what U.S. policy towards Haiti should look like moving forward and how Haiti has been a world leader in the past and can be once again in the future.

We are joined this week by Dr. Michael Beckley, professor of political science at Tufts University and Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, for a discussion on U.S. policy towards China. Dr. Beckley discusses the challenges China currently faces, why those challenges should concern the U.S., and what the U.S. needs to do both economically and militarily to counter China.

We're back this week with the latest installment in our monthly series of episodes analyzing how individual issues might affect the 2024 election. In this episode, we discuss the feelings people have around crime in the U.S., how those feelings combine with the messaging about crime by the two major parties to give one of those parties a significant advantage, what Presidents Trump and Biden did during their terms in office around crime and guns, and what a second term of either president might look like in dealing with these issues. 

We are joined this week by TIME editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs to discuss the challenges and opportunities journalism faces today, how TIME is navigating that landscape, and what his vision is for covering the most controversial stories of the day, including and especially the 2024 election here in the U.S. 

We discuss and debate every aspect of the campus protests that have proliferated across the country over the past few weeks, including who the protesters are, what they are protesting, what the goals of the protests are, and how these protests compare to historical protest movements.

The third installment in our monthly series of episodes analyzing how individual issues might affect the 2024 election returns as we take a look at what taxing, spending, the budget, and the national debt would look like with Congress and the Presidency under control of either of the two major parties.

Ricky reflects on being a father, and then we welcome on Dr. Eugene Beresin, a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the Executive Director of the Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds to talk about mental health and the rise of loneliness in our society. We discuss why people seem to be increasingly lonely and what we can as family members, friends, mentors, and as a society to make things better. 

We are joined this week by Larry Sharpe, the Director of National Organizing for American Values 2024, a Super PAC supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to talk about the importance of ballot access, generally, and the importance of getting RFK on the ballot, in particular. Larry, himself a former gubernatorial candidate in New York, makes a fascinating and compelling case for not only why people should want RFK to win but also how RFK could actually win the presidency.