The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer

Both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have reported that Elon Musk, currently trying to mend a feud with his quondam political ally Donald Trump, is a heavy user of mind alternating substances ranging from Ketamine to LSD to mushrooms to cocaine. While this story has been treated as one about the foibles of one increasingly erratic powerful man, it has wider implications. The financial journalist Jacob Silverman, author of an upcoming book about Musk, notes that there is a wider drug culture in Silicon Valley, rooted in the supposed performative enhancing power of drugs as well as an ideological commitment to elitism, accelerationism and technological transcendence. I took up these matters in a recent column and Jacob helps flesh out this story.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Michael Ledeen, who died on May 17 at age 83, was a prominent figure on the American right since the 1970s. He is most famous, or notorious, as one of the instigators of the Iran/Contra scandal, helping to connect the Reagan administration with an Iranian arms dealer. Beyond that, he was active not just as a writer but also as an activists who often promoted disinformation, most notably the lie about the “weapons of mass destruction” the was used to sell George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq.On this episode of The Time of Monsters, I talked about Ledeen's controversial life with Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest and author of a fine study of neoconservatism, They Knew They Were Right.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The late David Horowitz, who died in April at age 86, was often dismissed as a fringe figure not just by liberals and leftists but even many on the right. Horowitz would often complain that his books — crude polemics with titles such as BLITZ: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win (2020) and The Enemy Within: How a Totalitarian Movement Is Destroying America (2021) — were ignored by respectable conservative publications such as National Review and Commentary. Horowitz got one thing right: that both his friends and foes underestimated him. In truth, as David Klion notes in an obituary for The Nation, Horowitz for all his shrillness and absurdity, had an enormous influence on right-wing politics and deserves to be seen as a precursor to Trumpism. Among other claims to infamy, Horowitz was the mentor of Trump's anti-immigration advisor Stephen Miller.I talked to David about Horowitz's long shadow and tumultuous journey from being a red-diaper baby to a New Left radical to an right-wing polemicist who tried to revive the very McCarthism that damaged his parent's life. Horowitz left a terrible legacy but was also a figure whose impact can't be ignored.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On his latest trip to the Middle East, Donald Trump is making big news. He's indicating a receptiveness to making a deal with Iran trading normalization for nuclear non-proliferation. He ended the bombing campaign against Yemen and is also pushing for normalization with Syria. Further, the White House has sidestepped Israel in order to have direct talks with Hamas. These moves have angered some hawks in the GOP as well as the Israeli government. But will Trump's attempt to shift America's policy in the Middle East pay off, especially given his record of erratic attention to details and sudden shifts in direction?  To assess the situation I spoke with Trita Parsi of The Quincy Institute, who recently wrote about these matters for The American Conservative.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Jacob Silverman on why it's hard to regulate the high tech ponzi economics.Over the last few years, crypto-currency has emerged as a political powerhouse, thanks to tens of billions in campaign donations. As Jacob Silverman reports in a recent feature in The Nation, “crypto, despite being a relative flop commercially, has infiltrated American politics.” This is most bluntly obvious in Donald Trump, who has become a crypto king in corrupt schemes that have enriched him and his family in billions of dollars. But almost as corrupt are the members of congress, of both parties, reluctant to regulate crypto. I talked to Jacob about the dangers crypto poses to the American economy and to American democracy. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Silicon Valley has moved to the right in the last few years, with Elon Musk being the public face of a larger trend of tech lords aligning themselves with Trumpism. We now have a window into just how reactionary Silicon Valley has become thanks to reporting about private group chats where the tech elite gather to complain about wokeness and celebrate Donald Trump's plutocrat-friendly policies.My Nation colleague Chris Lehmann wrote about these group chats in a recent column. He joins the podcast to explain exactly why these wealthy leaders are becoming open supporters of autocracy.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Donald Trump's tariff war is usually framed in terms of how it would impact consumers and America's relationship with other countries, but it is also part of a larger project to remake taxation policy. Trump is very explicit that he wants tariffs to replace personal and corporate taxes with tariffs as the main source of revenue. As such, tariffs are a sales tax, of a particularly regressive sort. I talk to Marshall Steinbaum, an economist at the University of Utah, about how tariff's fit in with Trump's larger social vision of a plutocratic society, something that can also be seen in how the White House is cracking down on student debt holders. We take up this and other economic matters, bringing a class analysis to the business news. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Even as he imposes authoritarianism on the United States, Donald Trump has given a new lease on life to the center left in many other countries. Canada is holding an election at the end of April under the shadow of the American presidents threat to turn it into the 51st state. Until Trump's inauguration, the Conservative Party of Canada had a commanding lead. But voters are changing their minds fast and it now looks like the Liberal Party under new leader Mark Carney will win the election.To talk about the quick revolution in Canadian politics I spoke to Luke Savage, a widely published journalist and substracker. We take up not just Canada's likely rejection of Trumpism but also the question of whether Carney's technocratic centrism really offers an alternative. If there is to be a new Canadian nationalism, will it have more substance than Carney offers?Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

By helping the Republicans pass a spending bill that made no compromises with the Democrats and extend Donald Trump's power over the government, Chuck Schumer has made himself widely unpopular in his own party. Anger at Schumer is so intense that he had to cancel parts of his tour to promote his new book Antisemitism in America: A Warning. David Klion, Nation columnist and frequent guest on the podcast, reviewed this volume for The Baffler. He joins to podcast to discuss both the book and the making of Chuck Schumer.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This week Washington was abuzz with a security scandal over a group chat planning the bombing of Yemen accidentally included magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. Lost amid the finger pointing about operational security was the fact that the bombing of Yemen is illegal, immoral, and ineffective.To take up the actual scandal of the war, I spoke with Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy. We also discuss the actual contents of the group chat which real important fissures within Trump's foreign policy team between neo-conservatives who favor fighting as many wars as possible and unilateralists who insist there has to be a prioritizing of conflicts. This fissure opens the path to a much different foreign policy, one that the left can play a role in shaping.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas turned out to be short lived: Israel has now decisively broken the ceasefire and launched an even more intense onslaught into Gaza. Coupled with this renewed attack, Israel (sometimes in conjunction with the united States) is also carrying on military campaigns against Yemen, Lebanon and Syria, with rumors floating of a new attack on Iran. I discuss this rapid resumption of regional strife with Yousef Munayyer of the Arab Center Washington, D.C.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

For nearly seven decades, Noam Chomsky has been the most important critic of American foreign policy. Daniel Besser, co-host of the Nation podcast, American Prestige, recently reviewed for the magazine a new book authored by Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson, The Myth of American Idealism. In his review, Daniel both extolled Chomsky's monumental achievement and raised questions about the weakness of antiwar movements in challenging the terrible policies that Chomsky has so diligently analyzed.Daniel and I talked about Chomsky's legacy as well as the way the establishment has been able to success thwart popular resistance.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

During his first term in office, Donald Trump often talked about his radical America First agenda but in practice his foreign policy was that of a conventional Republican hawk. Just five weeks into his second term, there has been a marked shift. As Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, recently noted in The Guardian, Trump 2.0 is marked by a turn towards a foreign policy that is much more focused on the Western hemisphere and away from Europe and more geared towards tariffs as a weapon of economic warfare. In other words, Trump has now found advisors who are willing to implement the core strategy of America First in a real way. This shift has frightened many American allies, particularly the NATO countries and Mexico. Yet mixed with Trump's advocacy of a new manifest destiny have been welcome indications his administration will be more open to negotiating with Russia, Iran and perhaps even China.To make sense Trump's conflicting foreign policy messages and actions, I was happy to talk to Stephen Wertheim, who shares my belief that we need to distinguish between Trump's rhetoric and his actions. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Running for president last year, Donald Trump disowned Project 2025, the laundry list of radical demands gathered together by right-wing think tanks. Trump claimed Project 2025 had no influence on him and was only being raised by Democrats as a political attack. But now Trump is in power, he's enacting an agenda of dismantling the welfare state that is following Project 2025 in close detail, as my Nation colleague Chris Lehmann documented in a recent column.Chris and I talk about Trump's mobilization of Christian nationalist ideologues in the service of a making the state subservient to big business. We also take up the remarkable supine Democratic Party response, and also possible sources of resistance in the courts, the federal government and, most crucially, from outraged public opinion mobilized into protest.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, David Klion and Matt Duss on a popular right-wing fabulist.Has former president Barack Obama secretly been running the American elite — including the media and wide parts of the government — for nearly 20 years? Has he been doing so on behalf of a subversive agenda to empower Iran and undermine American exceptionalism? That's the argument made by David Samuels in a much-read piece in The Tablet. On this episode, I dissect Samuels arguments with two friends of the podcast, David Klion and Matt Duss. We not only look at the problems with Samuel's reactionary fable, but also take up why it is so popular on the right and even draws on conspiratorial ideas that have a wider purchase among centrists and conservative liberals.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Matthew Yglesias, a very influential journalist and proprietor of the Slow Boring substack, has emerged as a divisive figure within the Democratic party. To admirers, he's a compelling advocate of popularism, the view the Democratic party needing to moderate its message to win over undecided voters. To critics, he's a glib attention seeker who has achieved prominence by coming up with clever ways to justify the status quo. For this episode of the podcast, I talked to David Klion, frequent guest of the show and Nation contributor, about Yglesias, the centrist view of the 2024 election, the role of progressives and leftists in the Democratic party coalition, and the class formation of technocratic pundits, among other connected matters. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

For this week's podcast, I'm posting a talk I gave at Carleton University earlier this month on how the crisis of democracy is related to the crisis of journalism. In the talk, I argue that we are living in an age where the salient political divide is not so much left/right as system/antisytem. Liberals have tried to fight antisystem politicians like Donald Trump by doubling down on factchecking.But as I argue, this strategy is deeply flawed since voters who respond to antisystem arguments are also skeptical of institutions that claim to check facts. The talk tries to lay out a strategy for engaging with antisystem anger in a more productive way.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The one good thing about defeat is you can learn some lessons. But what if the lessons you learn are the wrong ones. In the wake of Donald Trump winning the presidential election, pundits and Democratic strategists have already been drawing lessons.Unfortunately, as Branko Marcetic documents in a recent piece in Jacobin, many of these lessons are in fact myths, designed to exculpate those responsible for the electoral disaster while scapegoating groups that have much less power. On this episode of The Time of Monsters, I was very happy to talk to Branko about both election myths and the mythmakers who spin them.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Donald Trump and JD Vance have a surprising closing message in the 2024 election: they are the antiwar candidate. About the rising conflict in the Middle East, Trump has said, “I wanna see it all stop, I wanna see the Middle East get back to peace.” On a podcast, Vance criticized the Biden “Even though they say they want to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties, they pursued the pathway that maximizes those casualties. They say that they're pro-Israel. They've pursued the pathway that has prolonged the war as long as possible, which is bad for Israel.”This message is of course deeply cynical since Trump is planning on staffing his administration with hawks, as he did in his first term. But it might have appeal to undecided voters, who polls show are strongly antiwar.To discuss why Democrats have ceded the peace vote to the GOP, I talked to Matt Duss, vice president of the Center for International Policy and frequent guest of the show. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Jeet Heer is joined by David Klion to discuss 'The Apprentice' — a movie about Roy Cohn's mentoring of a future president.---Donald Trump is such a clearly defined figure — a walking, talking political cartoon — that it's hard to imagine when he was someone different. Ali Abbasi's new film, The Apprentice, gives us a Trump we're not used to seeing, a young man who was unsure of himself and found his path thanks to the mentoring of Roy Cohn, the notoriously crooked lawyer and political fixer. David Klion, frequent guest of the podcast, reviewed the movie for The Nation. While David liked the movie more than I did, we both agreed it is well worth watching, with superb performances and a vivid evocation of the New York of the 1970s and 1980s. In our talk, we discuss what the movie says about Trump's origins and also the Trump fatigue that has hurt the film at the box-office.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

As the presidential election comes down to the wire, it's hard to ignore evidence of Donald Trump is increasingly erratic behavior: his slurring of words, his freezing up during questions, his repeated cancellations of interviews, and the bizarre incident at a town hall in Pennsylvania, where Trump unexpectedly spent more than half an hour bobbing and tottering on stage to a selection of his favorite tunes. My Nation colleague Chris Lehmann wrote about this event. He joins me to talk about Trump's cognitive slide and also the failure of elite institutions that are still enabling Trump, including the mainstream media and the Republican Party. We also take up the state of the race in general.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

More than forty years in the making, Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis is the most divisive movie of our time. Some critics have hailed it as a major work while others dismiss it as a stinker. The film tells the story of Cesar Catilina (played by Adam Driver), a visionary architect who fights for his utopian urban plans against the entrenched forces of the status quo. Whether you like the movie or not, the uncontestable fact is it is rich in ideas and offers much to talk about.To talk about the movie I spoke with The Nation's architectural critic Kate Wagner. We discuss the movie's relationship to early 20th century modernism as well as earlier movies such as Metropolis and the fiction of Ayn Rand. A major topic of conversation is the film's reactionary gender politics.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Israeli incursion into Lebanon has rapidly shifted from a bombing campaign into a ground invasion, one that the Pentagon now says might last for some time. This current escalation of the Middle Eastern conflict, which has also seen Iran and Israel trade blows, reflects the wider failure of Joe Biden's bear-hug foreign policy. To discuss the conflict and also the prospect for change under a Kamala Harris presidency, I talked to Matt Duss, a seasoned foreign policy analyst at the Center for International Policy.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Joe Biden's foreign policy team was hoping for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas before his term was over, perhaps as early as the end of September. This always seemed wishful thinking but now is almost impossible as Israel not only continues to fight in Gaza but has expanded its conflict with Palestinian forces in neighboring Lebanon. The expanding conflict once again raises the question of Biden's bear-hug strategy, which the administration argues would help foster peace and restraint. This failure of this policy is likely to haunt who ever wins the White House in November.To survey the dire scene and discuss the possibility of American involvement in yet another large Middle Easter war, I talked to Trita Parsi, executive vice-president of the Quincy Institute.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Kamala Harris and many other Democrats often warn that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. This is true enough, but it raises the question of how a ridiculous reality-TV star got in a position to be so dangerous. The excellent new podcast Master Plan shows that democracy has been under siege in the United States for decades due to a concerted effort to let corporations dominate the commanding heights of power. I talk to David Sirota, who along with the team at The Lever, created the podcast. We take up the crucial role of Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, whose influential 1971 memo created out a blueprint for big business to roll back democracy.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

After the convention and on the cusp of a debate, the presidential election is a near dead heat. The polls show Kamala Harris has a slight edge, but it is well within the margin of error. This is a massive improvement over the performance of Joe Biden, who was on a path to a major defeat but it is by no means a guarantee of victory. To take up the state of the race, I talk to analyst Joshua A. Cohen, who writes for The Nation and runs the Ettingermentum newsletter.We take up both what Harris has been doing right (which explains her quick rise in the polls) but also weaknesses in the Democratic Party's messaging (which explain why the Democratic National Convention didn't produce a significant bump). We then look towards the debate as a chance for Harris to more clearly define herself against Donald Trump and increase the size of her lead to win big.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On June 28, I delivered a speech at the central branch of the Regina Public Library on the history of American support for Israel. The speech almost didn't happen. The library briefly cancelled it because they claimed the group promoting it was encouraging discrimination against Jews. Fortunately, a city councillor intervened to sponsor the talk. For this podcast, I give the gist of my talk. The podcast will be going on a summer break and return in a few weeks. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Joe Biden's performance on the first presidential debate, held on Thursday in Atlanta, has been widely criticized. Much of the criticism has focused on Biden's style: his horse voice, frequent halting digressions and verbal flubs. But the substance of Biden's comments, as Moira Donegan pointed out in her Guardian column, was equally troubling. In this podcast, Moira and I dissect Biden's weak and incoherent arguments with a particular emphasis on his lifelong reluctance to strongly support reproductive freedom. We also take up Biden's policies towards Israel/Palestine as well as Donald Trump's lies and authoritarianism. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Joe Biden has often been described as among the most pro-Israel politicians in America, a characterization which has a large element of truth but misses some important nuances. As David Klion argues in a deeply researched essay for The Nation, Biden's support for Israel has long been accompanied by rhetorical gestures indicating opposition to aspects of Israel's policies, particularly the building of settlements. How do we make sense of this disjunction between action and rhetoric? Is Biden simply trying to placate his liberal base with cheap words? Or is his fundamental thinking on the topic incoherence to his worldview. David joins the podcast to talk about Biden's Israel policy, which leads into a wide-ranging discussion of the internal contradictions of Cold War liberalism and Biden's larger policy thinking.In addition to David's piece, we talk about topics that address this by Jonathan Guyer in The American Prospect and Noah Landar in Mother Jones.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Donald Trump does not like sharks. During his memorable encounter with Stormy Daniels, he fixated on a documentary about the predator that was playing on the hotel television and muttered, “I hope all the sharks die.” The former president returned to this topic at a recent campaign rally where he went on bizarre and lengthy digression asking what would be worse, being electrocuted or being eaten by a shark? Trump said he thought a shark attack would worse.It's easy to dismiss Trump's rantings as mere gibberish but my Nation colleague has written incisively on how this rhetoric should be understood not as logic but as an emotional and religious appeal. Chris joined me to talk about Trump's appeal to his MAGA base. We also take up how Trump is increasingly aligned with Christian nationalism (a topic Chris wrote about here) and how the mainstream media doesn't offer enough cultural context to make clear just how dangerous Trump's rhetoric is.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The summer season has started with a fizzle for Hollywood, as expected hits like The Fall Guy, and Furioso have far underperformed their expectations. This isn't a matter of a few films. Over the last few years, Hollywood is discovering that audiences are no longer reliably willing to buy tickets for the action adventure franchises that are the mainstay of the film industry. In particular, the once-dominant superhero genre is now fizzling. Adding to the troubles of Tinsel Town is the fact that streaming services, long touted as the future revenue model for the industry, are being squeezed by falling profits and rising interest rates.Historian Daniel Bessner wrote a lengthy survey of Hollywood's woes for the May issue of Harper's Magazine. His account gives particular focus to political economy: the way government regulations and unions once made Hollywood a hospitable home for culture workers and how this has been undermined by the rise of private equity and monopolies. Daniel joins the podcast to talk about the movie industry and its discontents.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Marty Peretz has led a large life, one he recounts with aplomb in his autobiography The Controversialist. As long time publisher and editor-in-chief of The New Republic, from 1974 to 2011, he transformed the venerable liberal magazine into an organ of neoliberalism, with a politics that emphasized deregulation of the economy, scaling back the welfare state, militant Zionism, and an aggressive foreign policy (leading the magazine to support the disastrous Iraq War in 2003). Coupled with the magazine, Peretz used his second wife's vast fortune to create an political network that extended to many nodes of elite power: Harvard, Wall Street and even the White House (Vice President Al Gore was Peretz's protégé).I wrote about Peretz's life and also the largescale damage done by his politics in a recent review of his memoir. Frequent guest of the show David Klion, who wrote about the memoir for The Baffler, joined the The Time of Monsters for a spirited discussion of a memorable life. Also relevant to this discussion is David's review of Liberties, a magazine founded by Peretz's longtime crony Leon Wieseltier.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Tom Durkin and Joe Ferguson on FISA renewal.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Yousef Munayyer on a president at war with his base.According to a recent CNN poll, 81 percent of voters age 18 to 35 disapprove of President Joe Biden support of Israel's war in Gaza. This number should be a concern to Biden, because for his reelection bid to succeed he absolutely needs young voters to be as enthusiastically supportive of him as they were in 2020. The issue of Israel/Palestine is dragging Biden's support down even as he needs to rally his base. But Biden is doubling down on his policy of offering a virtual carte blanche to Benjamin Netanyahu. This conflict between Biden's policy and the opinions of a supermajority of young people is now spilling into actual physical violence, as universities such as Columbia and UCLA send in cops to arrest pro-Palestine protesters.To talk about the growing political divide and what it portends for the both the Middle East and the United States, I talked to Palestinian American writer Yousef Munayyer.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Joe Howley on how Israel's war in Gaza is coming to the home front.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Writing in The Nation, David Klion recently reviewed Alexander Ward's new book on Biden's foreign policy, which offers a redemption arc whereby an administration wounded by the botched exit from Afghanistan made good by its handling of the Ukraine invasion.But as Klion notes, the two year frame of the book is too narrow. In conversation on this podcast, David and I contextualize Biden's foreign policy, which is deeply unpopular and flawed, in the larger history of hawkish liberalism. We look at the attempt to revive a style of military Keynesianism and at Biden's deep investment in Zionism, as well as the contradictions on issues of human rights that are hampering Biden's presidency.During the discussion, I alluded to this excellent Mother Jones article by Noah Lanard on Biden and Israel. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Daniel Bessner on Larry David.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In the last few weeks, Hollywood has given us Drive-Away Dolls (directed by Ethan Coen, who also co-wrote it in collaboration with Tricia Cooke) and Live Lies Bleeding (directed by Rose Glass who co-wrote it with Weronika Tofilska). Although very different in tone, the two movies have some striking commonalities, both are set in the late 20th century and take familiar genres (the buddy road comedy, the erotic thriller) while featuring lesbian lead characters.To talk about this trend, I spoke to Moira Donegan, a frequent guest of the podcast, who sees the movies as evidence of “the lesbian plot” becoming Hollywood fare. She locates both films as exercises in nostalgia in a period when actual lesbian culture is rapidly changing.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Donald Trump recently hosted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, praising the would be autocrat to the skies as “fantastic” and “a boss.” Of course Trump's love of autocrats is nothing new. Jacob Heilbrunn has written a valuable new book, America Last: The Right's Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators, that places Trump's love of dictators in a larger historical context. I wrote about the book in this column, where I summarize his arguments and take issue with a few of his claims.I was happy to talk to Jacob both about his findings and also places where we disagree.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Steven D. Levitt, best known for co-writing the bestselling 2005 book Freakonomics, is retiring from the University of Chicago with a bang. On the Capitalism and Freedom podcast, Levitt gave a farewell interview where he detailed many internecine feuds in the discipline and examples of toxic abuse, with particular focus on his long-time colleague and nemesis James Heckman. The economist Marshall Steinbaum, a University of Chicago graduate who now teaches at the University of Utah, returns to the Time of Monsters to elucidate not just the Levitt/Heckman spat but also the question of why economics is a notoriously toxic discipline, how economics has changed over the decades rendering both Levitt and Heckman anachronistic, and the recent backlash against anti-racist politics in the discipline. To supplement the article, listeners can read: Noah Scheiber's 2007 article on the intellectual origins of Freakonomics, Marshall Steinbaum's  2020 post about racism in the University of Chicago economic department, and a recent Bloomberg story on racism and sexism in economics.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, David Klion and Jeet Heer on Dune: Part Two, the science fiction epic with real world echoes.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The mathematician Chandler Davis, who died in 2002 at age 96, was one of the notable victims of the second Red Scare. In 1960, Davis was sentenced to six months in prison for refusing to answer questions about his membership in the Communist Party. Davis's lawyers defended him with the innovative legal argument that the First Amendment barred such questioning. While Davis lost in the courts, his legal battles were still an important effort in a larger battle to extend the parameters on political speech. Davis's story is told in a new book, The Prosecution of Professor Chandler Davis by Steve Batterson. Siobhan Robert's obituary for Davis ran in The Nation.On this episode of The Time of Monsters, I talked to journalist Doug Bell, who knew Chandler Davis, about this book and Davis's larger place in history. We take up the history of anti-communism and how it has limited free speech, the legal philosophy of Alexander Meiklejohn, and the reactionary Supreme Court's use of the First Amendment to expand corporate power.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, a discussion with Adam Johnson on the Democrats' failed border policy.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Moira Donegan on Joe Biden's need to embrace pro-choice politics.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Gaza, under siege and bombardment from Israel, remains ground zero for violence in the Middle East, sending shock waves through the region. The Gaza onslaught is provoking a series of escalating wars with the United States and Israel on one side against Iran and its allies and proxies on the other. Fighting of various degrees of intensity has broken out in Yemen, the Red Sea, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria as well as the borders of Israel, among other places.This week, I speak with Trita Parsi, vice president and co-founder of The Quincy Institute, about the cascading violence in the region. We also take up the Biden administration's decision to double down on its push for a Saudi/Israeli alliance, a program that could itself deepen the violence. As an alternative, we consider the possibility of other great powers taking over the job of negotiating a settlement to the regions problems. Trita has written on these issues in many venues, including The Nation.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, I talked to Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian-American analyst who heads the Palestine/Israel Program at the Arab Center in Washington, DC. He offered an informed perspective on the ideological origins of the bear hug strategy and how it has manifestly failed in its stated goal of trying to restrain Israel from excessive violence. We also discuss the way Biden's strategy is bad for American national interest and hurts Biden's re-election chances. We also take up the repression of free speech as a result of the conflict.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This week, I talked with Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy, about the recent death of Henry Kissinger and how the violence in Israel/Palestine could realistic give way to diplomatic solutions.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

For this week's episode of The Time of Monsters, I'm doing a joint podcast with the crew from Know York Enemy (Sam Adler-Bell and Matt Sitman) talking about the legacy of the Kennedy family. Our talk is based on our shared love for Garry Wills' The Kennedy Imprisonment, a revelatory book about not just the Kennedy family but the nature of 'great man politics.'Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On Wednesday, Alex Sammon reported in Slate that “one of the biggest, bitterest, and most expensive political battles of the 2024 election cycle has emerged: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC], one of the most powerful, best-funded influence operations in Washington, is planning to go all out to knock the famed “Squad”—the small group of highly visible and popular progressive legislators of color, most of them women—out of office.”AIPAC is planning on spending more than $100 million to push the Democratic party to the right. Given AIPAC's successful track record, this is a genuine threat. For this episode of the podcast, Alex and I sat down to talk about this development, the way the current Israel-Palestine conflict is sending political shockwaves in America, and the Democratic party's selective defense of incumbents. We also discuss the fact that Israel's war is increasingly unpopular and facing mass opposition— a fact that could undermine AIPAC's agenda.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The news from the Middle East remains bleak, with the Israeli response to the Hamas massacre leading to more than 10,000 deaths, mainly of civilians. Most people regard the unfolding news with horror, but there is a subset of people who are not hiding the fact they are thrilled. A subset of evangelicals known as Pentecostals see the news as proof that the long awaited apocalypse, which will herald the creation of a new heaven and a new earth, is at hand. They are strongly pro-Israel because they believe that the return of the Jews to the holy land, to be followed by their mass conversion to Christianity, is a necessary fulfillment of God's plan.My Nation colleague, Chris Lehmann wrote about this influential religious faction in a recent column. On this episode of the podcast, Chris and I discuss Pentecostal beliefs about the Middle East, the Cold War, Trumpism, the prosperity gospel and the Americanization of the faith.We also talk about alternative Christian traditions that don't hunker after Armageddon but work for peace. An earlier conversation I had with Sarah Posner took up the history of the religious right and is a good companion for this podcast.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Martin Scorsese's masterful new movie, Killers of the Flower Moon strikes out to new territory for the famed director. It's his first foray into the American West (although set a generation after the traditional western and overturning many of the conventions of the genre).The film also explores many of his familiar themes: toxic masculinity, domestic violence, gangs, criminal conspiracies, spirituality and the limits of the law. On this episode of The Time of Monsters, I am joined by David Klion to talk about this fascinating movie. David wrote about the movie for The New Republic and my review appeared here. In the course of the discussion, I mentioned a novel about the Osage murders recommended by Lily Gladstone. The novel is Charles Red Corn's A Pipe for February.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy