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When amateur mad scientists can leverage AI to engineer future pandemics, we need to be prepared to counter the threat. Rob Reid is here to tell us how.Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1390What We Discuss with Rob Reid:How a terrifying thought experiment reframes bio risk. Rob argues the scariest scenario isn't a Soviet-style industrial complex but the mere passage of time, since an exponential technology turns what a handful of elite specialists can do today into routine undergraduate coursework tomorrow.Why a $100 million USAID program called DEEP VZN struck Rob as a suicide pact. The plan was to hunt 15,000 undiscovered viruses, sort them for which posed the gravest threat, then publish the findings openly. Rob and MIT's Kevin Esvelt pushed until it was quietly defanged and later killed.What makes smart, well-meaning people defend this work. Rob points to an insider culture where open-science absolutism, confidence that we'd out-invent any bad actor, and vaccine promises that collapse under scrutiny combine into a stew that lets good people talk themselves into terrible ideas.Why Rob keeps returning to aviation as the model. America had 40 to 50 hijackings a year until basic airport screening arrived in 1972, and the next year there were zero. You can't make a threat impossible, but a high enough bar forces conspiracies big enough for law enforcement to catch.Fortunately, the countermeasures are cheap and already understood. Wastewater sequencing at major airports, stockpiled gear for frontline workers, and germicidal UV light in schools and hospitals would cost a sliver of the defense budget. Denial and despair both produce nothing.And much more...And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course!Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom!Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: BetterHelp: 10% off first month: betterhelp.com/jordanHims Weightloss: Get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you: hims.com/harbingerSimpliSafe Home Security: 50% off + 1st month free: simplisafe.com/jordanXero: Find out more: xero.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Candace Owens faces a federal defamation lawsuit after a private Utah man says her Charlie Kirk coverage sent millions of viewers toward him and upended his life. Austin Petersen examines what separates skepticism from an implied factual accusation—and why a question mark may not settle the legal issue. Judge Andrew Napolitano joins to debate due process, overseas boat strikes, presidential war powers, spending and American nationhood. Andrew Follett then grades Trump's libertarian record on EPA rules, land use, USAID, the federal workforce and nuclear regulation. Follow The Wake Up America Show with Austin Petersen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify so tomorrow's episode is waiting for you. Watch the full video.

Most nonprofits are one lost funder away from a crisis. Christina Sass, President and CEO of the International Youth Foundation, joins the Charity Charge Show to talk about how her 36-year-old organization absorbed steep USAID funding cuts without losing its core programs, and what she learned building Andela, a venture-backed tech talent company, before moving into nonprofit leadership.In this episode:Why diversified funding matters more than the size of your mission What a "small but mighty" endowment actually buys a nonprofit in a crisisHow IYF pitches corporate partners on solving a hiring problem, not a charity askBuilding an internal AI chatbot to scale labor market data instead of headcountMeasuring nonprofit impact through employment outcomes, not certificatesLessons from Christina's father's career and what it taught her about opportunity ---------------------------About Charity ChargeCharity Charge is a financial technology company serving the nonprofit sector. From the Charity Charge Nonprofit Credit Card to bookkeeping, gift card disbursements, and state compliance, we help mission-driven organizations streamline operations and stay financially strong. Learn more at charitycharge.com.

In a world of unbridled self-interest or where self-interest becomes the basis for reason, where integrity is abandoned, where there exists a striking absence of and/or contempt for moral analysis, virtue and empathy and where cynicism becomes inevitable, power compromises the law and evil no longer needs to be justified. These realities, for example, help explain a projected 14+ million deaths by 2030 via US AID funding cuts, the US quitting the WHO and the Paris accord, cutting Medicaid funding by ~$1 trillion, reducing projected ACA enrollment by nearly 50%, disappearing AHRQ, crippling the CDC and dismantling the EPA. As Prof Neiman argues, “In all the words written in an attempt to understand the present crisis, what's striking is the scarcity of moral analysis.” “Trump and his ilk could never have come to power without one belief: Moral concepts are for suckers who don't know they're being conned.” Professor Susan Neiman bios are at: https://www.susan-neiman.com/ and at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Neiman.Info on “Call It Evil” is at: https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324131045. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thehealthcarepolicypodcast.com

Giáo sư Trần Nam Bình, một học giả hàng đầu trong lĩnh vực thuế, chính sách công và kinh tế phát triển, với hơn 40 năm nghiên cứu, giảng dạy và tư vấn cho các tổ chức quốc tế như World Bank, UNDP, USAID và Bộ Tài chính Việt Nam.

In this episode, Dr. Miranda Melcher continues her conversation with Skylar Thompson, Deputy Director, and Jennifer Connet, Legal Advisor, at Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRA). They discuss how HRA documents human rights violations inside Iran, preserves evidence, and protects victims, witnesses, and sources in a high-risk environment.The conversation explores HRA's extensive network inside Iran, including its relationships with people across the country and inside prisons. Skylar explains how information is verified and corroborated, then analysed to identify patterns, responsible institutions and individuals, and broader systems of repression. She also discusses the security considerations involved in deciding what can safely be published.Finally, Skylar and Jennifer share advice for people interested in human rights work: remain curious, humble and open to learning, build relationships with people you respect, and recognise that careers often develop in unexpected ways.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comJake is a journalist and a dear old friend, starting in our early days as interns together at TNR. He's the former longtime editor of Slate and the co-founder of the podcast company Pushkin Industries. He's also the chairman of The Committee to Protect Journalists and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books. His new book is called Profiles in Cowardice: A Study of Collaboration in the Trump Era.A polished transcript is here, including money quotes. Below are timestamps for the main sections of the pod:* 04:09: Jake's background that made him especially attuned to corruption and totalitarianism* 18:45: Contrasting the craven Lindsey Graham with the principled Liz Cheney* 25:45: How Megyn Kelly — and others demonized by the left — came to support Trump* 35:15: Liberal lawyers like Brad Karp who needlessly bent the knee* 45:52: Debating the culpability of colleges targeted by Trump* 53:36: Jeff Bezos' 180 and his lifelong obsession with space travel* 58:43: The abomination of January 6th and McConnell caving over the impeachment* 102:28: Debating the culpability of John Roberts for Trump's success* 117:26: Reminiscing on our early days at TNR and the genius of Mike KinsleyFor two clips of the episode — on why McConnell balked at banning Trump, and how Megyn Kelly became a bully — head to our YouTube page.Other topics: growing up in Chicago with public servants for parents; his dad taking on the Daley machine; Jake's talent for takedowns back at TNR; South Park mocking Trump; Stop the Steal and Jan 6; Biden's clusterfuck campaign; the Cheneys backing Harris; Trump's retribution; the weakness of Schumer; McCain's nonconformity; Massie's cojones; the university deals with Trump; his talent as a bully; higher ed's dearth of viewpoint diversity; anti-semitism in the Ivy League; Musk and the big subsidies for SpaceX; decimating USAID and PEPFAR; Bezos funding the Melania doc; SCOTUS checking tariffs; the presidential immunity ruling; the post-presidencies of Bush and Obama; and the one magazine piece I would never write.Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Emily Eakin on the French postmodernists, Sean Illing on the relevance of Camus and Nietzsche, Michael Lewis on the bureaucrats who fought back against Trump, and Evan Barker on how the Democratic Party got hijacked by elite activists. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

GET HEIRLOOM SEEDS & NON GMO SURVIVAL FOOD HERE: https://heavensharvest.com/wam USE Code WAM to save 25% plus free shipping! USE Code WAM50 for 50% off on select items like the #10 cans & MRE packs! GET CHLORINE DIOXIDE SOLUTIONS HERE: https://frontierpharm.com?sca_ref=11953077.06TP4RWJ73 Use code WAM to save on your order! Pledge here! Just a dollar a month can help keep us alive! https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2652072&ty=h&u=2652072 EXCLUSIVE replays of hour plus long live shows are available here at $5 a month or more! BUY GOLD HERE: https://firstnationalbullion.com/schedule-consult/ Avoid CBDCs! DONATE HERE: https://gogetfunding.com/help-keep-wam-alive/# Help save WAM! Josh Sigurdson reports on the protests in Venezuela supporting Maria Corina Machado rather than Delcy Rodriguez following the arrest in January of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. While Maduro was clearly a scumbag and did horrific things to the people of Venezuela for more than a decade, replacing him with the CIA which does horrific things to people worldwide is not an actual solution to the problem. How did this work out in Iraq? In Libya? Millions died. And this is only the beginning of the conquest in Latin America. Machado was denied the Presidency by the CIA initially, so she gave her Nobel Peace Prize to President Trump who quickly changed his position on her. To be clear, the Nobel Peace Prize has previously been given to war architect Henry Kissinger and drone bomber Barack Obama. Delcy Rodriguez is also clearly a CIA plant as she supported the deal over Maduro and massive amounts of oil are stolen from the country to sidestep Russia and China at the behest of Israel who initially claimed Venezuela had Hezbollah fighters training their cartels on the Island of Margarita which was blatantly false. If we look back at who the previous hopeful was during the attempted coup some years ago in Venezuela, it was Juan Guaido. This man was heavily funded by USAID and worked with the CIA. Two wrongs don't make a right. Maduro was bad, yes. The CIA is also bad and one may say worse when considering the international picture and history of the CIA. This will continue to stem further Middle East level instability in Latin America as the United States looks to go after Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico and several other Latin American countries next. This isn't some theory. It is proclaimed by the State Department. Stay tuned for more from WAM! GET 10% OFF ON SHILAJIT FROM DR. KAUFMAN WHEN YOU USE CODE WAM10 HERE: https://medauthentica.com/discount/WAM10?redirect=/products/authentica-shilajit%3Fsca_ref=10867124.wrNV3jkYSaMg9 GET YOUR WAV WATCH HERE: https://buy.wavwatch.com/WAM Use Code WAM to save $100 and purchase amazing healing frequency technology! Get Your SUPER-SUPPLIMENTS HERE: https://vni.life/wam Use Code WAM15 & Save 15%! Life changing formulas you can't find anywhere else! Get local, healthy, pasture raised meat delivered to your door here: https://wildpastures.com/promos/save-20-for-life/bonus15?oid=6&affid=321 USE THE LINK & get 20% off for life and $15 off your first box! DITCH YOUR DOCTOR! https://www.livelongerformula.com/wam Get a natural health practitioner and work with Christian Yordanov! Mention WAM and get a FREE masterclass! You will ALSO get a FREE metabolic function assessment! GET YOUR APRICOT SEEDS at the life-saving Richardson Nutritional Center HERE: https://rncstore.com/r?id=bg8qc1 Use code JOSH to save money! PayPal: ancientwonderstelevision@gmail.com FIND OUR CoinTree page here: https://cointr.ee/joshsigurdson PURCHASE MERECHANDISE HERE: https://world-alternative-media.creator-spring.com/ JOIN US on SubscribeStar here: https://www.subscribestar.com/world-alternative-media For subscriber only content! BITCOIN ADDRESS: 18d1WEnYYhBRgZVbeyLr6UfiJhrQygcgNU World Alternative Media 2026

Winning government contracts starts with intelligence, not more data, and in this role-reversal episode host Eric Coffie sits in the guest seat while GovCon creator Chelsea interviews him about how he actually navigates the market. Eric breaks down how he got into federal contracting out of pure desperation after the 2008 real estate crash, how a fraudulent lawsuit wiped out roughly half a million dollars and buried him in $200K of debt, and how going back to government contracts pulled him out both times. If you are trying to figure out how to survive a turbulent GovCon market and turn today's chaos into your opening, this conversation gives you the mindset and the mechanics. In this episode you will learn: - Why layoffs, USAID shutdowns, and OTA shifts are a blank slate advantage for new contractors with no existing relationships to lose - How Eric turned two years of free, consistent content into 100% of his organic deal flow without running a single ad - Why the "game and maze" mindset keeps top contractors resilient through every administration and market season - How a contracting officer revealed that agencies are not required by law to classify opportunities under the correct NAICS codes, and why that means SAM.gov is missing opportunities you should see - How Eric built Mindy (Market Intelligence Delivered Daily) by aggregating 34 websites into one pipeline of agencies, decision makers, forecast opportunities, and pain points EPISODE CHAPTERS: 0:00 - Role reversal interview premise and guest intro 2:30 - Getting into government contracting through desperation and crashes 7:00 - Building content to change who wins prime contracts 12:00 - Fraudulent lawsuit, half a million lost, and the comeback 17:00 - Staying positive and grounded in a turbulent market 22:00 - Treating shutdowns and OTAs as a moving game 28:00 - Why new contractors have a blank slate advantage 34:00 - From software engineer to steel buildings to GovCon 40:00 - Why free public tools were too complex for most people 46:00 - Building Mindy and market intelligence delivered daily 52:00 - Why data without intelligence leaves contractors stuck 58:00 - Contracting officers and misclassified SAM.gov codes 64:00 - Content Reaper, LinkedIn tools, and upcoming events Mindy gives you the federal opportunities, agency signals, recompete intel, and pursuit briefs that tell you not just what contracts exist, but which ones to chase and how to win them. Sign up for free Daily Alerts and get opportunities delivered to your inbox before the day starts.

Radio host Ryan Wiggins joins Marc Cox and Kim St. Onge in-studio to analyze the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals redistricting decision and discuss ongoing congressional hearings regarding ActBlue. Wiggins details congressional testimony surrounding campaign contribution compliance, potential foreign donation tracking, and USAID campaign finance oversight. The hosts review Democratic National Committee campaign fundraising metrics, political weight loss trends involving Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, and local restaurant buffet anecdotes. LISTEN TO 97.1 FM TALK LIVE IN ST LOUIS OR STREAM WORLDWIDE AT 971TALK.COM Hashtags: #971FMTalk #StLouis #STLNews #RyanWiggins #ActBlue #Midterms2026

Join us as we learn from Professor Nils Bergeson. He's an adjunct professor in the public service and ethics department of the Marriott School of Business. He shares insights on his time working in the foreign services department and USAID in Uganda and abroad. From his experiences, he has gained a unique perspective on the importance of humility in working with teams and learning to turn towards Jesus Christ to help make life decisions.

In episode 88 of Going anti-Viral, Dr Elaine Abrams joins host Dr Michael Saag to discuss her career of research into vertical transmission of HIV and care for pregnant women, children, adolescents, and families. Dr Abrams is a Professor of Epidemiology and Pediatrics at Columbia University Medical Center and Senior Director of Research at ICAP at Columbia University in New York. An internationally recognized pediatrician, epidemiologist, and global health leader, she has more than 35 years of experience as a clinician, researcher, and public health practitioner in the prevention and treatment of HIV infection and associated infectious diseases. Dr Abrams and Dr Saag discuss the history and progress of preventing vertical HIV transmission and the impact of early studies like PACTG 076. They also discuss Dr Abrams's early work in Africa on HIV transmission and review the current understanding of breastfeeding and HIV transmission. They address the impact of the dismantling of USAID on global HIV prevention efforts and provide an outlook to the future for HIV elimination and global efforts.0:00 – Introduction 1:31 – First cases of vertical transmission of HIV and rates of transmission4:00 – Challenges faced during the early HIV epidemic in New York 9:16 – The landmark PACTG 076 study and its significance12:30 – Global expansion of HIV prevention efforts and treatment17: 03 – Engagement with HIV programs in Africa and lessons learned20:12 – Impact of program disruptions due to dismantling of USAID and future challenges24:47 – Current understanding of breastfeeding and HIV transmission28:44 – Future outlook for HIV elimination and global efforts__________________________________________________Produced by IAS-USA, Going anti–Viral is a podcast for clinicians involved in research and care in HIV, its complications, and other viral infections. This podcast is intended as a technical source of information for specialists in this field, but anyone listening will enjoy learning more about the state of modern medicine around viral infections.Going anti-Viral's host is Dr Michael Saag, a physician, prominent HIV researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and volunteer IAS–USA board member. In most episodes, Dr Saag interviews an expert in infectious diseases or emerging pandemics about their area of specialty and current developments in the field. Other episodes are drawn from the IAS–USA vast catalogue of panel discussions, Dialogues, and other audio from various meetings and conferences. Email podcast@iasusa.org to send feedback, show suggestions, or questions to be answered on a later episode.Follow Going anti-Viral on: Apple Podcasts YouTubeXFacebookInstagram...

What do you do when the career you thought was secure suddenly isn't?Leah C. Murphy sits down with Dr. Kristy Taylor, founder of WORxK Solutions, LLC, to talk about navigating layoffs, career transitions, and an increasingly challenging job market. Drawing from both her professional expertise and her own experience with job loss, Dr. Taylor shares practical ways to move forward without letting fear or desperation drive your next decision.From recognizing the value of your transferable skills to strengthening your career brand and embracing AI as a tool, this conversation is about approaching your next move with strategy, confidence, and intention. 

For the first time in decades, rap has disappeared from the top of the charts while country music is surging. Has rap simply exhausted itself—or is something bigger going on?Pigweed and Crowhill trace rap's evolution from the relatively harmless early days of hip-hop to gangster rap and increasingly explicit music, and compare its treatment of sex, crime, rebellion, and regret with rock and outlaw country. Why does Johnny Cash shoot a man in Reno and end up regretting his life, while gangster rap so often turns the outlaw himself into the hero?Then we enter Conspiracy Corner. Record companies, private prisons, USAID, the CIA, cultural manipulation, fake digital popularity—could powerful institutions have helped push rap culture in a particular direction? There are enough strange historical precedents to make the theory interesting. But there's a larger question underneath it all: Are cultural movements actually orchestrated from above, or do institutions merely amplify movements that are already happening?Plus, we review a suspiciously inconsistent six-pack of Baykeeper IPA and ponder the enormous cultural distance between “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” and Cardi B.

Glenn Wiggle and Mike Hoeflich open with Glenn's experiment in building a stable of Grok-powered bots to handle his nutrition, radio prep, inbox, and stock research, then turn to the growing push to regulate artificial intelligence. Glenn argues that anti-data-center campaigns are propaganda, walks through how cooling systems actually work, and reads at length from a David Sacks post accusing Anthropic and OpenAI of seeking regulatory capture rather than genuine safety. From there the hosts cover Canada's retaliatory tariffs and Mark Carney's political incentives, the crime statistics out of the Memphis task force and why they think Democrat mayors resist federal help, and Glenn's change of heart on Citizens United after watching corporate money reshape agencies like the FDA. They close on Mamdani's remarks days after the 9/11 anniversary, the lack of a Republican platform heading into the midterms, and this weekend's Buffalo Cigar Fest benefiting Wings of Hope.00:00:24 Glenn's AI bot lineup00:03:27 Data centers, water, and the power grid00:08:19 Who benefits from AI regulation00:14:43 Canada's tariffs and Carney's calculation00:17:12 USAID, the CIA, and regime change00:23:18 Memphis crime stats and resistant mayors00:26:52 David Sacks: pace your own frontier00:33:51 Rethinking Citizens United00:38:39 Mamdani after the 9/11 anniversary00:43:08 Midterms and the missing GOP platform

International development reporter Adva Saldinger joins host Katie Auth for the first episode of season 5 to discuss how the Trump administration is reshaping the world of development finance for energy and climate. Adva explains the rising prominence (and shifting mandate) of the US Development Finance Corporation (DFC) – and the questions being raised about its speed, credibility, and accountability. She and Katie also dig into how the World Bank is navigating pressure from the US, including a compromise over its climate strategy.About the Guest:Adva Saldinger is a Senior Reporter at Devex where she covers development finance and U.S. foreign aid policy. Adva authors the weekly Devex Invested newsletter that focuses on the role of business and finance in addressing global challenges. A journalist with nearly two decades of experience, she has worked at several newspapers in the U.S. and lived in both Ghana and South Africa."I think if you want a deal to get through, you need to pretty clearly be able to link it to a benefit to the US economy and be able to articulate that pretty well."- Adva Saldinger, Season 5 of High Energy PlanetCovered in This EpisodeA Reshuffled Landscape: Katie asks Adva how her beat has changed since the start of the second Trump administration, and Adva explains that with USAID gone, the Development Finance Corporation and the Millennium Challenge Corporation have become the central players in US development policy — though a clear, unified policy vision still hasn't emerged.DFC's Pivot to Fewer, Bigger Deals: Katie and Adva dig into why DFC, following a congressional reauthorization that more than tripled its investment cap to over $200 billion, is now chasing fewer, larger, more strategic deals in energy, infrastructure, and critical minerals.Congress, the Board, and the Cost of Speed: Katie and Adva unpack Congressional pushback on transparency and accountability, reports of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick blocking deals at the board level, and whether DFC's faster timelines means cutting corners on due diligence.The I Squared Capital Blueprint: Adva walks Katie through DFC's $1.5 billion natural gas deal in South and Southeast Asia, and what it reveals about what it now takes to get a deal approved: a clear, articulable benefit to the US economy.Treasury's World Bank Wish List: Katie and Adva talk through Secretary Bessent's asks of the World Bank and how World Bank President Ajay Banga has managed the pressure from the Bank's largest shareholder.The Climate Compromise, and What's Next: Adva and Katie discuss how the World Bank kept its Climate Action Plan but dropped its 45% climate target, and consider a possible future where DFC drives US strategy while the World Bank is responsible for the traditional development mission.ResourcesFollow Adva Saldinger's reporting at DevexRead more about DFC's congressional reauthorization: DFC gets a long-awaited glow-upRead about DFC's $1.5 billion energy platform with I Squared Capital, the largest project the agency has undertakenAdva mentioned an op-ed from four World Bank executive directors. Read it here: The World Bank is moving to climate action that counts, focusing on resultsFind more information at EnergyForGrowth.org.If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review, and share it with a colleague. 

A surprisingly uplifting conversation on aging, sickness, and death. Plus: why you get happier as you get older, hard-earned tips for handling tough diagnoses, and how to think about AI in your health care. Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, is a surgeon, author, and public health innovator. He holds the Fish Chair in Surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He is the Samuel O. Thier Professor of the Practice of Surgery at Harvard Medical School and Professor of the Practice at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.  Dr. Gawande was Assistant Administrator for Global Health at USAID from 2022-2025. He is a longtime writer for The New Yorker and has written four books: Complications, Better, The Checklist Manifesto, and Being Mortal. In this episode we talk about: Why the best doctors ask patients what matters before choosing treatment The simple question that reveals what makes life worth living Why patients who get less aggressive care sometimes live longer His father's answer to "what's worth living for" changed three times Why staying independent and staying safe often pull in different directions Research showing people get emotionally calmer, not sadder, as they age What happened when the U.S. shut down its global health aid programs Why he sees AI as a helpful second opinion, not a replacement, for doctors Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here Sign up for Dan's free newsletter here Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok Subscribe to our YouTube Channel Additional Resources:  Being Mortal, the book Being Mortal, the documentary This episode is sponsored by: Warby Parker: Buy one pair of glasses and get 20% off any additional pairs at WarbyParker.com/HAPPIER — and using our link helps support the show. #WarbyParker #ad BetterHelp: Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com/HAPPIER. Notion: Learn more about how Notion can support your business, at notion.com/happier To advertise on the show, contact sales@advertisecast.com or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

Listen to Zooming In at The UnPopulist in your favorite podcast app: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTubeBerny Belvedere: Renée DiResta, thanks for joining us on Zooming In, our flagship podcast here at The UnPopulist. You've been on before a couple of times. You've done podcasts with us, you've spoken at LibCon—in fact, during our first LibCon, LibCon 2024, your book generated intense interest. It seemed to be the book of the summer. You remember that?Renée DiResta: I do, thanks so much.Belvedere: It felt like at every other session, some panelist would say something like, “and to explore this further, I really recommend Renée DiResta's new book, which is just wonderful.” Right? I don't know why I did that in a nerd voice. Your endorsers are wonderful people.But Renée, welcome again. I want to dive right in. You have a new report out. It's put out by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It was written by you and two co-authors, Rachel Kleinfeld and Margot Treadwell. That's a powerful lineup. We've run Rachel's work in our pages before and it's top notch. The report is fantastic. It did not disappoint. For anyone interested in how the broader world of news and opinion discourse works today, it's immediately one of the most useful resources to pick up. And it's especially useful for practitioners, for people who work in the space, like we do.But to help with some scene setting, can you tell us about the report in broad brushstrokes? We'll then narrow in from there.DiResta: So I think about this as report part two. Last year, in September, almost one year to the day, we put out a provocation saying: “institutions need to change how they communicate in order to compete in the new media environment.” And we wrote a framing on why that was, on how social media was no longer this niche thing that those people over there did. If you wanted to reach the public, this is where people are—and you have to reach them where they are and in a manner that they find appealing. The way that you communicate is just different now.That attracted a lot of attention and it got us a ton of inbound, particularly from philanthropy, because we were also telling philanthropists you have to change how you think about outputs and outcomes that matter. For a lot of academics and others, participation in the public conversation is, if not discouraged, it's not really encouraged. It doesn't move the needle for your tenure committee, that sort of thing. How could philanthropists shift the thinking on why communicating to the public actually was critical? We got a ton of inbound on it and the question we got most often was: “How?”This report is the how. The basic premise is that most Americans now get their information and form their opinions through creators, podcasts, Substacks, group chats. Most traditional institutions have only minimal engagement or presence in those spaces. So that ecosystem runs on a very different model of legitimacy. People are following people, not institutions. They're following people that they find appealing or relatable. Somebody coming to you from their kitchen. Credentials and institutional polish actually can read as almost a sort of distance now.Those are the elites saying that stuff from over there, whereas this person is just talking to me in their kitchen. They're real.We write about how fact-based institutions have often thought about this shift to social as a repackaging job. “All right, how do I take my massive PDF”—and, by the way, this report is a massive PDF—“how do I take that and put out a couple screenshots on social media or generate a reel?” They see it more as engaging when you have something to release, when you have just put something out. So it's very self-serving. They're not using social media as a communicator in an ongoing conversation where they're having a back and forth with their audience. They're using it as a broadcast tool and they're reformulating the thing that they wanted to broadcast into a format that nominally works but is missing that dialogue.So our guide argues that it's a strategy problem—and that CEOs and boards have to own this. They have to think about it, not as the thing that happens after you've done your work, but as an active part of your ongoing relationship to the public. We framed the report as a series of questions to guide that thinking. We did a bunch of case studies, really spanning the communication ecosystem we have. How Jon Haidt turned some of his work into a movement. We have how Turning Point became a juggernaut. We have some of the Mamdani campaign stuff. Not endorsing any position there—but saying, “here's some interesting stuff that you can learn from how this group strategically chose to engage the public through these means.”Belvedere: I thought the guide did a really great job of bringing in real world examples. You also brought up David French and the reception he received. His case is a fascinating one because of what it represents and what it says about the subcommunity that he had that parting of the ways with, and the way they gate-kept him from continued access to it.But I want to pick up on something that you mentioned in passing just now in your broad overview. There's a line in the report that really struck me as I was reading it. As you put it, credentials and institutional polish—the CV virtues—now read as distance and disconnect rather than authority, which is what it used to read as. Do you think that's a permanent rewiring of how trust just works now?DiResta: It's an interesting question. Trust and authoritativeness are distinct. You trust your neighbor without necessarily thinking they're an authority. You just find them a trustworthy person. You would give them your keys. They can feed your dog, that sort of thing. And it doesn't matter what they do or what their professional credentials are. What matters is just that you have a relationship. You feel that this person is somebody who would support you if you need it, that they're going to level with you. They're going to tell you the truth, even if you might not want to hear it.That's the idea of trust as something that is deeper than expertise. Sure, it goes hand in hand with it at times. We would like it to be tightly coupled. We want people to trust experts, but the idea of relatability instead is: “Why would this person who seems just like me lie to me? Why would they deceive me? What do they get out of it?” Whereas people sincerely believe that elite institutions are working to serve their own agenda, and that is often seen as being at odds with the average, everyday person. You see this in politics when people ask, “Why is this politician talking about this thing, performing this action, when I just care about putting food on the table for my family?” You see that gap in what lands and resonates with people versus what people in elite or institutional positions want to talk about.Sometimes this is a disconnect that gets lamented in liberal spaces, particularly as, “well, if only they listened, they would understand that my policy proposal for this thing does help them 10 degrees and five years later.” But in the immediate here and now, it's that question of: Do I trust the person who's speaking to me? Do they seem just like me?I had this experience when I was a new mom. I was one of the first in my friend group to have kids. I didn't know what to do. I was living across the country from my family and didn't have much support. So I turned to the internet, right? Who are the people who are going to help me understand what I'm supposed to do with this baby? How do I make him sleep? How do I make him eat? How do I not screw this up? I think it's a very personal experience that a lot of people have where that sense that reading a PDF on an institutional website is not the same thing as somebody sitting there with you taking the time. There's a phrase that I think it was Jeff Jarvis who once said to me in conversation: “the media talks to the public and the influencers talk with them.”I think that's the best framing I've heard for that. Content creators understand how to talk with their audiences, where even people who may have better information, more expertise, authoritative content, are not necessarily communicating that in a way that feels real and connects to a sense that this person is telling me the truth.Belvedere: I'm wondering what's the right read on this broad question of trust that we're all grappling with. Take, for example, the aftershocks from a specific high profile instance of trust collapse—something like Covid. I think Covid's a really instructive episode in many different ways. There's been a lot of revisionism about it. What was different about Covid compared to other past trying moments in society is that Covid became politicized in a particular way by an extremely potent right-wing discourse-shaping machine. That's not going to stop being in place.“A lot of institutions are taught to stay on message at all times—if you hand your message to somebody else, you lose control of it. But you can't tell them what to say. They're going to say what they want to say. They might get it wrong. But counterintuitively, I think that actually generates more dialogue, more attention, and provides you with a way to accomplish something you might not be good at yourself. Your CEO might not actually be the best face to talk about this thing—the 20 year old you hired, who is much more comfortable with this, is actually the person who should be out there engaging, putting out the message, or working with a creator or creator lab and essentially briefing them.” — Renée DiRestaSo my overriding fear is that Covid is not an outlier. And that anything in society like Covid that requires elite management, whether it's the dissemination of information, policies that help curb some of the worst effects of not abiding by certain standards, all of that is going to run up against an information machine architecturally designed to demagogue that issue, to create a trust collapse, to point out any little mistakes and amplify them as though they're an example of the elites just completely botching everything. Is there any hope that that wanes?DiResta: That's a very interesting question—let me give you a couple of answers.Two things were true about Covid. I was writing about this in The Atlantic during the pandemic: the institutional communicators really dropped the ball—in my opinion, but I think that's been quite backed up at this point. I remember writing that it would be nice to see the CDC's website look more like Wikipedia, where you can see the change log, the public can understand in this fast moving situation—you can go back and read the edit history, you can see who made the change, you can understand how consensus forms in a scientific community. Because there's such a time lag, right? They are waiting until they are absolutely, 100% sure before they say something. In that time, the people are still looking for information, and they're going to get it from whoever is willing to give it to them. On social media, there's an incentive structure: if you're first, you get rewarded; if you're sensational, you get rewarded. If you're right? That doesn't really matter. Maybe you'll get a Community Note, maybe a fact check, but that's not really the point. The point is: Are you first, are you relatable, do you seem authentic, can your stuff go viral? It's a very different communication style and game.So the first thing that was true is that the institutions dropped the ball in comms during Covid communications. And I was writing about it as it happened, because my job was to study social media rumors and narratives around the vaccine. I was like: “Come on, guys! You gotta get in the game here! You're not going to content-moderate this out of existence—that's just not how it works. You're going to turn this into forbidden knowledge.” We did everything we possibly could to try to systematically change that. And the people who did respond were the first-person speakers who began to emerge: physicians. You saw doctors working shifts at Bellevue doing live updates about the morgue trucks—those were the people who managed to break through, because they had the credentials, but they were also able to say very directly to the public: this is the truth, this is what you need to know, Covid is real, even as the institutions weren't doing that.But the second thing that's true is that, as you note, the failures, flaws, and missteps get immediately weaponized. That turns into: “you can't trust those people, they didn't tell you the truth then, never forget what they did to us.” That rhetoric isn't really about finding truth, or understanding a novel pathogen, or whether a vaccine works—remember, this was the first time one had ever been rolled out in an emergency setting. It turns into: “here's why you can never trust those people, and you can only trust me.”That got reinforced through litigation. They lost all their court cases, but they still sued people who tried to deal with the falsehoods and misleading content, and any effort to label it or fact-check it got reframed as censorship. It was really wild to see what that machine juggernaut managed to do to reinforce that only it was going to tell its base the truth, and they couldn't trust anything on the outside. That's the kind of rhetoric you usually see from cults—“you can't trust anybody but me.” It's a very different style of communication, and I found it personally alarming to see it happen in the context of a pandemic, because it has serious downstream consequences.Belvedere: Yeah, and I mean, think about the way you just described that—an informational cult kind of environment, scaled up to half the country, or at least to a large share of people getting their news from less-than-ideal sources. I think it's going to continue to be a problem.DiResta: Let me follow up on that quickly. I spent about [six months] watching the vaccine rollout—February through August of 2021, as Operation Warp Speed rolled out. I watched what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other long-standing—just to be clear, long-standing—anti-vaccine activists did. These weren't people who simply didn't like the Covid shot; no, these were people who had been telling you vaccines cause autism, dating back to the 1990s. I watched them capitalize on this in the most incredible ways. They were absolutely transparent about it—they were like, “this is our chance to undermine confidence in the entire vaccine enterprise.” And that is exactly what they did. They didn't hide the ball—they were live-streaming taking about it. “This is our chance to tell the public that all of these things are poison.” And now we have kids dying of measles.That's the downstream effect of this: they managed to connect that distrust to other things. They didn't just create distrust around one incident or fact; they created the idea that nobody in the medical establishment has your best interests at heart. That's what they managed to achieve as a result of Covid.Belvedere: I want to stay on this, because I think we're all trying to figure out the right posture here. You bring up Joe Rogan and his effect on psychedelics policy: a lot of people know him through segments where he talks through his drug trips, or a guest's. Or, another example: online creators helping speed up the end of USAID. And there are other cases. But these are cases where influence and factual accuracy are completely decoupled. For organizations whose whole value proposition is getting reality right, being accurate—a lot of people in these spaces ask a question that is one neighborhood down but the same city: “Where's the liberal answer to Joe Rogan?” We've been asking that question since the post-mortem on 2024, and even before. A lot of our institutions feel saddled by the sense that in order to compete on reach, in this new marketplace of ideas, we can't really compete on accuracy's terms.Roger Ailes created Fox News in the '90s. It wasn't [presented] as a dominant player—it was a countervailing force: “the media is captured, so we're going to bring balance back.” “Fair and balanced”—that whole thing; a whole alternative institution positioned against the media itself. So [this side] has had an insurgent mindset from the start—Rush Limbaugh and others. I've brought this up a lot. Even the Ailes project, Fox News, it had institutional trappings, institutional clothing, but it really had this insurgent energy, whatever it said about itself early on. That posture was able to scale beautifully once podcasting, YouTube, and the internet more broadly made these tools available. It was disintermediation. People like Ben Shapiro with The Daily Wire, Charlie Kirk, really ran with the ball a lot better in these spaces, it seemed like. It never felt like liberals had their own Ailes moment, because it felt like they were fine with The New York Times and The Atlantic.Is the real gap here about talent, effort, and ability, or just needing to catch up after playing behind for so long? Or is it more that this is a different language, that [that side] can easily and naturally slot into, and for us it has to be more performative, a little contrived—like a theater kid having to learn how to act?DiResta: It's funny—there's so much in what you're saying there. First, when you can position yourself oppositionally—“we're the underdog, we're David, they're Goliath”—that's an archetype, a story everybody knows, that people immediately understand where you're positioning yourself. “They are all telling you the same thing”; “that is a monolith, that's the state propaganda machine manufacturing consent, we're the plucky little outlet trying to break through.” And then, of course, they maintain that outsider branding and status even as their audience becomes massive—quite a lot larger, in fact, than some of that so-called establishment media.You see this with a phrase that comes out of QAnon: “we are the media now.” What they're saying is: “we can break through, we can make stuff trend, we can make stuff go viral, we can take our (in the context of QAnon, I think it's fair to say) crackpot ideas and put them out there, get them seen, get them part of the discourse, and then people have to pay attention to us.” That's where “we are the media now” comes from. It was popularized by Elon, because he picked up that phrase and it is so much in the ether on X—I don't even know if he understands the provenance. But “we are the media now” becomes the idea that we're the opposition now, and all that legacy stuff—including Fox, mind you, which is legacy too—is old. You actually see the schisms now, especially since they're in power everywhere on the right: influencers going to war with Fox News.“I once had someone screenshot every social media post where I'd used a curse word and send it to my dean. And I was like: “I said all of that. That's 100% real.” This is the internet, after all. Would I use that language in a talk? Probably not. I'm from New York, so sometimes I do. But if you're constantly second-guessing, clarifying, checking yourself … and you do need to be correct, because in some cases your credentials are on the line when you're speaking about the thing you're actually presenting. But your delivery can afford to be a bit more flexible, a bit more relaxed.” — Renée DiRestaVenkatesh Rao wrote about this in “The Internet of Beefs”—one of the most astute assessments of how social media works, in my opinion. If you have conflict, that's fantastic: it benefits both parties, gets both parties attention, and there's no incentive to actually win the conflict, because the conflict itself is like a soap opera—it just keeps going. That's where you start to see right-wing influencers say, “Fox News is establishment, Bush-era media, and we'll tell you the truth—on social, on our platforms, on our streams, on our podcasts.” That's where you start to see that shift.There's also something Rachel and I wrote about in the first report: institutional and academic speakers are media-trained for a very different world, where you get a three- to five-minute segment. If you've never done TV before, they tell you roughly what you'll be asked, you prepare your talking points in advance because you have so little time, you deliver the soundbite, and the segment's over. That's completely different from what I experienced doing Rogan in 2019—a two-and-a-half-hour conversation with no prep. I'm going to be there and you either know your stuff or you don't. His audience either likes me or it doesn't. Half of them hated me!And that's fine—it is what it is. I showed up for a reason. There's a completely different vernacular, style, and approach when you're having a two-hour conversation with somebody, where you're going to listen to what they have to say, and you're responding back much more as a human than as a person who's there to digest for the public, in a three-minute hit, what you said in that report over there or what happened in the world and why you, the expert, with your credentials and your chyron should think about it. It's a completely different experience.So does it go back to the old way? I don't think it does—I haven't thought that for the better part of 10 years now. I started writing about the anti-vaccine movement in 2015, as a mom, saying: “I have got to say something about this.” What became MAHA is now a political movement that sits in power at HHS. What they understood was that empathy and relatability, the feeling that they are talking with you, matters so much more than a PDF or an academic paper that sits behind a paywall that nobody can read without an academic library license. That's not going back to normal. So the question that's motivated me and Rachel is: How do you teach people who do have the knowledge and the skill set to compete differently?Belvedere: On that note, on liberals' broad failure to penetrate a lot of these spaces, these subcommunities, these niche places where people gather … think about all the subcultures we have in the United States—there are plenty that liberals are just really poor at reaching, or at having any presence within at all.DiResta: I'm an independent. My complaint is about how liberals communicate versus how conservatives communicate. I spend a lot of time in both ecosystems, in person, and I try to engage with the media apparatus on the right too, partly because they make up conspiracy theories about me, so I feel like I have to. But there's a difference in how carefully you have to think through what you're about to say—what performance are you putting on in that moment? Conservatives use the word “based”—you're talking in a way that's almost intentionally provocative at times, and sometimes it goes way off the rails; sometimes it's not good at all. But there's a sense that when you're hearing from the liberal establishment, you're hearing qualifiers—everything is qualified.This is something I used to talk about when making content: on Instagram Reels, you've got three seconds to hook your audience. If you start with a qualifier about how what you're saying doesn't necessarily apply to all people, in all places, at all times, you're done—that took three seconds, that's it, we're done. So the question is: How do you get comfortable either owning an opinion unapologetically, or framing it in a way where you're just like, “yeah, whatever, somebody on the internet is always going to yell at me, I don't care, I'm going to say the thing anyway”? That's a limitation I just don't see in conservative spaces.Again, that means things can go way off the rails, and some of it is genuinely not good. But the flip side is that [liberal content] can sound stilted, practiced, polished. And the incentive structure is scary for the participant—for the academic who decides to try being more casual in their presentation. I once had someone screenshot every social media post where I'd used a curse word and send it to my dean. And I was like: “I said all of that. That's 100% real.” This is the internet, after all. Would I use that language in a talk? Probably not. I'm from New York, so sometimes I do. But if you're constantly second-guessing, clarifying, checking yourself … and you do need to be correct, because in some cases your credentials are on the line when you're speaking about the thing you're actually presenting. But your delivery can afford to be a bit more flexible, a bit more relaxed.What I've loved over the last few years since Covid is watching public health experts and epidemiologists start presenting as themselves: “here I am, I've got this expertise, and I'm also going to tell you about my kids, or this dress I bought, or this thing I did.” It makes them more relatable, more human—because they are, in fact, relatable and human. It's not an artifice. But they understand that doing this actually helps establish their credibility, more than just the credential. So if me saying a curse word on Twitter … normal people curse on Twitter.Belvedere: And not to be too cynical about it, but this is something intuitively understood by people on the wrong side of things. Trump will have a word randomly capitalized as a marker of his style, and without it, the message would feel too polished—even though, grammatically, it would be correct.One reaction people sometimes have to a discussion like this is: “all you're talking about is communication, this is social media stuff, it's more fluff than substance.” I think that couldn't be more wrong, because if we care about the issues we're writing about, if we want action taken on them …DiResta: Yes! It is a persuasive process.Belvedere: … if we want people to care about authoritarianism or corruption in government, raising the salience of those issues becomes really important. If we're collectively bad at it, if we don't have the “juice” that the other side does, our issues stay dormant, untouched, unlistened to, uncared about, while the other side's issues will be front and center, driving the conversation. You talk about issue salience needing to travel across networks before it becomes a thing. Could you unpack that? You've got multiple creators, adjacent communities … help us understand how that works.DiResta: So, often times, when you open your social media feed—whatever ranked platform you use, which is almost all of them—you're seeing what the platform has decided is important for you, and that's not the same as what's important to the person sitting next to you on the train. So you innately think a lot of people care about something, or are talking about something, when it turns out—take X as an example: you log in, there's a “trends” feature, and it'll surface a trend when there are maybe 200 posts about something. That's not a trend in any national sense; it's basically the platform tweaking a small number of people who'll respond to it. They see it and think, “there are 2,000 posts about this, I care a lot about that thing, I'm going to add my voice, retweet it, reshare it”—and if a sufficient number of people do that, it gets bigger, and eventually it shows up on something like a mass-movement leaderboard.I spent five years at the Stanford Internet Observatory taking a network-science approach to this. Let me give a specific example—we can stick with the pandemic, because I think it's quite important as a case study. I don't know how many people remember the Plandemic video. It featured Judy Mikovits, a woman with serious credential issues and at least one retracted paper, who'd had a series of dramatic career incidents that led to her being put into the autism-conference crankosphere. She was releasing a book and doing a lot of book promo, but she was never especially polished doing those direct engagements herself. The director, Mikki Willis, made the video—kept her on task, shot it very strategically. It's about 20 minutes long, and it argues that the pandemic is being used to keep people from “healing microbes on the beach,” and that's why they are locking down beaches, and so on—a very conspiratorial film.Now Mikovits had been saying these things on prior podcasts for a while, but it stayed confined; it got almost no reach outside the anti-vaccine networks, where that kind of content is normal and expected. What was different about Plandemic is that because of the polish, the packaging, the formatting, and Willis's own reach and network, it hopped out of the anti-vaccine ecosystem and started landing everywhere. We had a tool called CrowdTangle that let us pull where URLs were winding up and being shared, and the Plandemic link was showing up in the Corgi Club, the Beach Club, local school-board groups—everywhere. We could only see public data, so I'd imagine that's just the tip of the iceberg.The public really found it compelling. Reading the comments as part of that analysis, people were saying things like: “she seems so authoritative, she has this personal beef with Anthony Fauci, who I've also been hearing is untrustworthy; they are keeping us locked down in our houses, why is that happening?” It really landed and resonated. That's an actual moment where normally this speakers and those topics stay confined to a very specific niche part of the internet, with this video, they managed to absolutely blew out of the water. Here is how it works when you take something and you frame somebody in the right way, you make them seem relatable and resonant and you edit the content in a very compelling, exciting, and mysterious way. This is how you create a mass conversation about something. Ordinarily this person would have stayed confined to her niche, but in that particular moment, with that particular piece of content, they nailed it.Belvedere: I asked about that because on our side, we're trying to do some of the same work you're outlining. ISMA puts out LibCon and The UnPopulist—The UnPopulist is our flagship publication, LibCon is the conference series that we put out. The UnPopulist has buy-in from figures across the ideological spectrum; and the whole model of ISMA is to build a coalition—a realignment of liberal versus illiberal—and for us to be on that liberal side, spanning classical liberals, center-left, and center-right: people who are single-issue defectors, who have enough qualms with the authoritarianism we're seeing that they come over to our side. At our last LibCon, we had C-SPAN in the same room as a bunch of streamers broadcasting. It was an interesting mix, and that's the sort of work we're trying to do. As I said earlier, though, it's not necessarily the language that's easy for a lot of liberals to speak—it takes intentional partnerships, looking through different content forms, finding where a good ally or partner can be found.“These weren't people who simply didn't like the Covid shot; no, these were people who had been telling you vaccines cause autism, dating back to the 1990s. I watched them capitalize on this in the most incredible ways. They were absolutely transparent about it—they were like, ‘this is our chance to undermine confidence in the entire vaccine enterprise.' And that is exactly what they did. They didn't hide the ball—they were live-streaming taking about it. ‘This is our chance to tell the public that all of these things are poison.' And now we have kids dying of measles. That's the downstream effect of this: they managed to connect that distrust to other things. They didn't just create distrust around one incident or fact; they created the idea that nobody in the medical establishment has your best interests at heart. That's what they managed to achieve as a result of Covid.” — Renée DiRestaIt used to be that an organization could get away with just publishing a headline, an article image, and letting the feed auto-populate. Now every platform, the whole online space, requires more thoughtfulness, more intentionality, more strategic thinking. At the risk of asking for a One Neat Trick: is there one thing that, if a capacity developed overnight, would be a game changer for us on this path that we want to take—to be better communicators, to help the issues we care about get that amplification and resonance?DiResta: I think it is that co-creation and that incorporation of people who are innately good and talented at this. I was at LibCon this year with Whick and Soypill, two of the streamers who were there, because the first night of the conference happened to be the night Trump gave that speech about the election being rigged by China. As it happens, I have a lot of experience looking at Chinese influence operations around the 2020 election, so I'd been on Whick's stream before, and he asked if I wanted to come on. I said let's do it, and we broke it down live for the audience—here's what Trump's saying, here's a Georgetown professor who can help explain it—but done conversationally. It's funny, because you still carry that credential with you; you're still saying, “here's how I know this stuff.” And, of course, later on I'm going to write about this for Lawfare, I'm going to write about it on my Substack, I'm going to put it out as personal content. But in this moment the most impactful thing I think I can do is discuss it live with people who are watching it in a community, trying to make sense of it together. That's something streamers in particular are very good at—they bring people together to watch jointly.I don't know how many people have watched a Destiny stream, or, on the other side of the spectrum, a Hasan Piker stream, but it's the same appeal: people who are in a community, like-minded, enjoying that back-and-forth, not only listening to the streamer but participating in the community itself. It reminds me of being in New York in my 20s, gathering at someone's house to watch TV together on a Sunday night—that feeling of experiencing something together, reacting to it together. When you watch a news broadcast by yourself, it's not like that. When you're watching a stream, there's as much back-and-forth and community-building happening among the audience as there is between the audience and the influencer or streamer. That creates a feeling of belonging and participation, and when you want to ask people to take political action, there's a feeling that we're all in this together, we all want to see this thing accomplished. You see this when you watch political streamers across the spectrum doing fundraisers and things like that—“how can we galvanize and generate momentum?”This isn't limited to partisan politics—you can do the same with issue-based advocacy as well.One of the reasons institutions [struggle here] is a fear of relinquishing control. A lot of institutions are taught to stay on message at all times—if you hand your message to somebody else, you lose control of it. But you can't tell them what to say. They're going to say what they want to say. They might get it wrong. But counterintuitively, I think that actually generates more dialogue, more attention, and provides you with a way to accomplish something you might not be good at yourself. Your CEO might not actually be the best face to talk about this thing—the 20 year old you hired, who is much more comfortable with this, is actually the person who should be out there engaging, putting out the message, or working with a creator or creator lab and essentially briefing them like you would brief media: “here's your embargoed copy of my report, I'd love it if you talked about it, no pressure, no requirements, this is just me providing you with information about something we've done that I think your audience might care about—and then wherever it goes, goes.”Belvedere: And as you note in the report, this is already the cultural air a lot of these younger staffers breathe—they have to code-switch to seem more “professional,” to be someone who …DiResta: … doesn't curse on Twitter.Belvedere: Exactly. But that also gives them the advantage of understanding the discourse, the environment, the information landscape, far more natively. So they can put a message that the CEO might want in a way that will have more effectiveness.I want to bring up two of the case studies I found fascinating—David French and Zohran Mamdani. David French was trying to bring a [pluralist], depoliticized message into a very hostile, ideologically policed, polarized evangelical base. Zohran Mamdani, now the mayor of New York, built his campaign almost entirely on vibes, aesthetics, joy—messaging, sure, but messaging that met people where they were and responded to what they actually needed. One of those approaches got crushed by the gatekeepers; the other was able to bypass them. It's not that one was effective and the other wasn't—David French ran up against a buzzsaw that no Christian thinker, however winsome or articulate, probably would have fared well against. Mamdani certainly was very skilled in how he approached his campaign and carried it out. In these two profiles, is there a lesson there about why one got crushed and the other persevered?DiResta: It's very interesting, and I've thought about this a lot. So, first, some of it is: How heavy a hold does the establishment party have on the space you're speaking into? Are you entering fresh ground? Mamdani, of course, ran against an egregiously terrible establishment candidate. I mean, it was one of those “is this really the best we've got to offer?”Mamdani's politics weren't mine, but I'm from New York—I lived there for 30 years, still have a house and family in Brooklyn—and I watched that race, and I just thought … every time I saw Mamdani content in my feed, and there was a lot of it, because I'm still plugged into New York, I was like, “this is so inspiring. This is a person where that love of the city comes through.” I remember he did a thing with a bodega cat. I had a bodega cat, and it was amazing! In a way, the politics and the policy was almost secondary to the feeling that you were watching something genuine.The candidate he was running against—well, there were two, of course, including Curtis Sliwa, who really nailed it on the “genuine” front. I mean, my God, that man gave interviews that left my jaw on the floor—where he's like, “here's how they're trying to pay me to drop out of the race, let's talk about that.” It's a very New York political moment.Belvedere: Zero filter.DiResta: Oh, no filter. I mean, Cuomo doesn't lack a filter either. I'm New York Italian too—you know that. Someone should send him to his dean!It was wild watching that race and seeing what landed with the public. There was such a sense of “God, we need something new! We just need something new”—and that landed, I think, in a way, more than anything else, regardless of your opinions on specific policies. It was the way in which he turned people who found him personally appealing into organizers—fans became organizers. That's really the story of the Mamdani campaign. With French, by contrast, top-down control still held much more strongly. I don't think many New Yorkers love the Democratic Party establishment enough to say, “we really need to listen to what they tell us”—if anything, an official endorsement had become a bit of a negative signal by that point. That's at least how I experienced New York politics.Mamdani was also an unknown quantity, French was much more of a known quantity, so he had this experience of gatekeepers who used character assassination to attack, not so much his ideas as his person—finding things he'd said or done previously and using them to attack him personally and make it costly to associate with him and his ideas by extension. Once an establishment is well-networked enough to mount that kind of opposition, it's much harder to win. French was moving into a hostile, contested, polarized space. Mamdani, by contrast, faced an establishment, in his case the more centrist wing of the Democratic Party, that simply didn't have the social media clout or networks to make its attacks land. It was a very different dynamic.That's why we put French in a section of the report about figuring out what kind of space you're actually trying to participate in. Are you putting forward a policy or a vision that's going to be actively and adversarially rebuffed by very entrenched, well-networked forces? Or are you moving into a much fresher space—a new issue, a new take, less contested ground—where you are potentially going to run a very different kind of strategy?Belvedere: I think that's a great point. Trump is a good example in the political space—the GOP establishment was set against him initially. They had money behind other candidates, Jeb Bush chief among them, and had a war chest that was insane backing Jeb Bush. And that was … nothing in the end. It didn't amount to anything. All the work French had done in the past, caring about the Bill of Rights, about a constitutionally constrained vision of limited government—the intellectual energy the Republican Party used to draw on more heavily—had given way to something else. David went a different direction than a lot of evangelicals did, and there are enough of them to effectively block him now.Whereas Mamdani, I think, was able to bypass a lot of that resistance because there was more overlap with what a standard Democratic candidate might have offered—a lot of the same campaign substance, just a different approach on some issues. There were enough people who weren't already set against him. That's unlike the evangelical space, where mentioning French's name is practically like saying “Voldemort.” Which is sad, because on a lot of issues, especially theological tenets, there's still broad alignment between them.This is something that your report presses people to internalize: the idea that who you're speaking to matters, and how you're speaking to them matters. That's a lesson a lot of liberals still need to work out. There's a lot of trial and error right now, a lot of figuring out how to be effective in this new information landscape. But the report is genuinely helpful. I imagine a lot of people will read it and think: “okay, everything I thought I knew about what it takes to project credibility has been turned on its head, and I need to account for that or risk being left behind.” That's what makes it such an important read.DiResta: Thank you. We really tried to make it as tangible as possible—which is why it's long. We went back and forth at the end about whether to release different versions for different audiences: a philanthropist version, a C-suite version, a version for op-ed writers. In the end we put it all out as one document—you can always Control-F to find what's most relevant to you, there's an index, and AI can digest it too.But, in all seriousness, though, there has to be a shift. You mentioned Trump. His energy came from the internet. He was so good at tapping into … because he was almost a meme candidate at first; people didn't quite believe he'd be a serious thing. This was right around the time … I bring up Gamergate not for its specifics, but because it was a moment when people started realizing the internet could actually affect the real world. The Arab Spring was another one of those moments—realizing that people's voices online could genuinely accomplish things.“When you have this sclerotic sense that nothing happens in the United States, that no one is listening to you, that no change happens, that nothing you want to see in the world will ever be realized, that's an intoxicating moment. ‘Damn, we are the media now'—that phrase is literally about empowerment, the sense that someone powerful is listening to you and making something happen. That's the complete opposite of the faceless institution where you leave a comment in a form and never hear back, where nothing ever changes, your taxes don't change, your cost of living doesn't change. That's what Mamdani tapped into as well: ‘we are actually going to change things, we are going to do things, the world is going to be different starting day one, and here's how it's going to happen.' Whatever you think of the man's politics, he nailed that sense of empowerment—'this is a movement, and you're part of it.'” — Renée DiRestaYou mentioned my book. I'll give a shameless plug here—but only because the paperback just came out and it has a new epilogue. If you bought the Kindle version, go refresh it, because the new epilogue gets into exactly this. What was the appeal of DOGE? It was that the government was going to be transformed—that's great, it's a huge incentive for people who cared about that. Even liberals were like, “Maybe it's time to shake some stuff up.” But what DOGE did for the public, particularly Trump's base and Elon's base, was this: they'd tweet out some grant they found ridiculous, often with no real idea what it actually did, and Elon would respond with something like “killed,” “nuked,” “through the wood chipper,” about USAID.Belvedere: And a lot of those actually got Community-Noted on themselves—people pointing out that he was egregiously misreading the grant. They got fact-checked by their own system.DiResta: They did—but it didn't actually matter, because what mattered to the people participating was: “I said a thing, somebody powerful listened to me, and then a change happened.” When you have this sclerotic sense that nothing happens in the United States, that no one is listening to you, that no change happens, that nothing you want to see in the world will ever be realized, that's an intoxicating moment. “Damn, we are the media now”—that phrase is literally about empowerment, the sense that someone powerful is listening to you and making something happen. That's the complete opposite of the faceless institution where you leave a comment in a form and never hear back, where nothing ever changes, your taxes don't change, your cost of living doesn't change.That's what Mamdani tapped into as well: “we are actually going to change things, we are going to do things, the world is going to be different starting day one, and here's how it's going to happen.” Whatever you think of the man's politics, he nailed that sense of empowerment—“this is a movement, and you're part of it.” That's the same thing Trump tapped into online back in 2015: “we're going to change things, this is your movement, and I'm going to accomplish this for you.” Which can go off in some weird ways, when you look at exclusionary populism and authoritarianism, which you guys at ISMA focus so much on.I want to mention one more thing. In San Francisco, we recalled the school board: a very local, niche race that ended up becoming a story of national attention, for the same reason—people saying, “we've got to change something, what can we do?” The groups that grew out of that were advancing a very liberal policy—this was not the far-left, not the far-right doing it: “we'd like eighth-grade algebra back, we'd like schools reopened.” This is late 2021. “It would be nice for my kid not to have three years of no school.”It was an unapologetically liberal politics that was powering that, and it was unapologetic in how it framed itself, how it spoke, how it used social media. And I thought, “Okay, now maybe liberals will see”—again, not Democrats, but liberals, people who believe in the core liberal values—“people will start to see that there's real power in direct, unapologetic appeals.” And it is my sincere hope that we start to see that in a movement that rises to push back against the excesses of MAHA and things like that.[In the new edition of my book], the new epilogue is really about how these dynamics play out once a group is actually in power—because a lot of people think of social media as a tool of insurgency, and once you're in power, that's supposedly the end of it. What's been interesting watching Trump and DOGE is that they've kept that cycle going: people still believe they're having an impact, shaping policy.We saw a version of this with Obama, who was a very digital candidate—he rose to power on a lot of popular digital support, did interviews with content creators, that kind of thing. There were creators in the White House—my friend Destin Sandlin, who runs Smarter Every Day, did an interview with Obama. There was a sense that the administration was beginning to engage with new media, but there was still a divide: the new media was media, engaging with the president on certain terms, at certain times, in certain venues. What you're seeing from this administration is they're literally the press corps, seated front and center. Some of them are even working as special government employees, which is wild—and there are some real ethical issues there. But there's still a sense that the online movement, that source of validation that propelled someone to a win, is actively in there, working with them on governance and policy.Is that a mirage, to some extent? Yes—there's a veneer of them wanting to do something anyway and using online narratives to justify it. And I'd argue that once an influencer becomes a special government employee, they're no longer independent—they're speaking as an agent of the government at that point. But setting that aside, you really do see the way those boundaries are shifting, and that sense of personal participation is what keeps this particular populist movement feeling valuable to its participants.Belvedere: I remember when Madison Cawthorn infamously hired only comms people rather than policy people, and a lot of people in conservative-adjacent spaces saw that as the start of a new era. The model is no longer Paul Ryan-ing your way through, nor is it about governing—Cawthorn was actively, explicitly building a kind of image-only candidacy, seeing how far that element alone could carry him. It didn't carry him very far; a few things tripped him up, like, hilariously, a visit to Hitler's home. But he was building toward being a comms-only operation as the only thing that matters now. When Trump did the whole Alligator Alcatraz stunt, that's the same understanding at work—it's an ongoing comms exercise, you have to keep the performative aspect going, because the campaign never really stops.We're out of time. Thank you so much, Renée.Thanks for checking out The UnPopulist! Subscribe to support our project.© The UnPopulist, 2026Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X.We welcome your reactions and replies. Please adhere to our comments policy. Get full access to The UnPopulist at www.theunpopulist.net/subscribe

Jennica Pounds, AKA Data Republican, built an open-source platform that gave Americans searchable access to billions of dollars in federal grant spending. The discovery was explosive: while Americans struggle to make a living, their government is wasting billions of dollars on fraud and overseas NGOs. But the exposure angered her targets, who stand to lose multimillion dollar money trains. After her research went viral, Pounds says she was doxxed and harassed – and now the media is attempting to divert attention from her research and focus the story on her instead. “Why are the world's most generous people financially abused by their own government?” she asks in her upcoming book UNELECTED, which traces $200 billion sent to Ukraine, $50 billion a year to USAID, and $9 billion for refugee resettlement back to what she calls the NGO-Administrative Complex. Jennica joins Dr. Drew to walk through where that money actually lands, the federal departments and NGOs that move it, and why she says it's linked to a “centuries-old ideology called supranationalism.” Jennica is deaf and appears with the assistance of her interpreter, Terrill Corletto. Also on today's show: Larry Elder, talk radio host, former presidential candidate, and author of As Goes California: My Mission to Rescue the Golden State, joins Dr. Drew to discuss California's governor's race. Jennica Pounds is a software engineer and data analyst known online as DataRepublican. A former Big Tech engineer, she rose to prominence in 2025 after her spending research went viral. Follow at https://x.com/DataRepublican Larry Elder is a talk radio host, attorney, and a former presidential candidate. He is the author of several books including As Goes California: My Mission to Rescue the Golden State and Save the Nation. Follow at https://x.com/larryelder 「 SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS 」 • BIOPRO - BioPro+® is a natural formula of growth factors and peptides that support how you look, feel & perform. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/biopro⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • FATTY15 – The future of essential fatty acids is here! Strengthen your cells against age-related breakdown with Fatty15. Get 15% off a 90-day Starter Kit Subscription at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/fatty15⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get 15% off your first order at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/paleovalley⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twc.health/drew⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 「 ABOUT THE SHOW 」 This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Executive Producers • Kaleb Nation - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://kalebnation.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • Susan Pinsky - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/firstladyoflove⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Content Producer • Emily Barsh - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/emilytvproducer⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

* Questioning 9/11 - 25 Years Later: This week Fred Williams and Doug McBurney recall the events of 9/11/2001 and ask questions about negligence, incompetence and/or outright responsibility for the attacks by the US government.   * Credible Evidence: While many dismiss the reports of the 9/11 Commission, FEMA, and the NIST, we hold the evidence that people on both sides claim, (including credible reports from contrarian Engineers) up against Rob Stadler, PhD's six criteria for high confidence science.   * A Question of Trust: Combine a well placed suspicion of ambitious politicians alongside evidence that the American government effectively sponsored big lies about evolution, the big bang and atheism, and apparently bankrolled ugly, talentless modern "art" during the cold war, and may have given rap music its run via USAID funding, and one can understand why many common sense, Christian Americans are distrustful of the government.   * In The Beginning: Order your 9th edition of Walt Brown's amazing, enlightening, biblically sound book explaining why Earth (and the solar system) look the way they do!   * Sun Puzzles: Check out another one of Ellen McHenry's intriguing and enlightening books: Sun Puzzles - on all the curious facts about the Sun that point to an electric, (and not a nuclear) sun.   * Jesus Light & Design: Get the first in our series of Real Science Radio Teaching Books, all about how light and design point to Jesus Christ as the Creator and Savior of the world.   * Not So: Pick up a copy or two of RSR's 2nd in our series of Real Science Radio Teaching Books: "The List of Not So Old Things.," with all the "not so old things" Bob Enyart compiled over the years!

* Questioning 9/11 - 25 Years Later: This week Fred Williams and Doug McBurney recall the events of 9/11/2001 and ask questions about negligence, incompetence and/or outright responsibility for the attacks by the US government.   * Credible Evidence: While many dismiss the reports of the 9/11 Commission, FEMA, and the NIST, we hold the evidence that people on both sides claim, (including credible reports from contrarian Engineers) up against Rob Stadler, PhD's six criteria for high confidence science.   * A Question of Trust: Combine a well placed suspicion of ambitious politicians alongside evidence that the American government effectively sponsored big lies about evolution, the big bang and atheism, and apparently bankrolled ugly, talentless modern "art" during the cold war, and may have given rap music its run via USAID funding, and one can understand why many common sense, Christian Americans are distrustful of the government.   * In The Beginning: Order your 9th edition of Walt Brown's amazing, enlightening, biblically sound book explaining why Earth (and the solar system) look the way they do!   * Sun Puzzles: Check out another one of Ellen McHenry's intriguing and enlightening books: Sun Puzzles - on all the curious facts about the Sun that point to an electric, (and not a nuclear) sun.   * Jesus Light & Design: Get the first in our series of Real Science Radio Teaching Books, all about how light and design point to Jesus Christ as the Creator and Savior of the world.   * Not So: Pick up a copy or two of RSR's 2nd in our series of Real Science Radio Teaching Books: "The List of Not So Old Things.," with all the "not so old things" Bob Enyart compiled over the years!

September 8, 2026Germany's far right AfD party won 43.8% of the vote in the small state of Saxony0Anhalt, formerly part of the Soviet dominated East Germany, Right wing leaders across Europe celebrated the outcome, Elon Musk, a supporter of AfD, was the largest donor to any political committee in the 2024 presidential eletion, Musk has plowed money into the Texas Senate election, pitting Ken Paxton against James Talrico, Musk is attempting to buy elections for the Republicans, Musk used DOGE to strip agencies like USAID, but appears not to have made signficant savings, Musk's antics have confirmed the sense that billionaires are a threat to democracy, There is pushback, but it is unclear whther populr pressure can withstnd the extrqaordinary amount of money thta Musk and other billionaires are pouring into the midterms, DOGE's access to detailed information on US citizens is poised to corrupt the midterm elections. Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-Get full, free access to Letters from an American here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribeYou can also find me:Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/heathercoxrichardson/?hl=enFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@heathercoxrichardson Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

The sudden collapse of USAID in 2025 sent shockwaves through Uganda's HIV response and the people hardest hit are those the system was already failing.When Elon Musk bragged on social media that USAID had been put through the woodchipper,” the consequences for millions of people living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa were immediate - and potentially irreversible.That is the warning from researchers and community advocates speaking on the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) Between the Lines podcast. With an estimated loss in funding of over US$300 million. While a new US$2.3 billion five-year health cooperation agreement was signed in December 2025, the abrupt reductions have severely impacted health services.In the new podcast episode released today, Chris Stevenson, International Editor at the Independent, Megan Schmidt-Sane, Research Fellow at IDS, and Kyomya Macklean, Executive Director of the Alliance of Women Advocating for Change (AWAC) in Uganda examine what the Impacts have been on community-based HIV services and vulnerable communities. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

FULL SHOW - Wednesday 9.6.2026 - The Charlie James Show full NOTE: the titles SHOULD NOT EXCEED 75 characters (and definitely not go past the end of the line) and be no bigger than 12 font size unbolded Wednesday, September 9th, 2026 - The Charlie James Show HOUR 1 1st - James discusses midterm elections, high gas prices, and local SC politics. 2nd - Charlie James discusses write-in options and local SC Senate race dynamics. 3rd - Charlie James talks candidate strategies, religion, and voter dynamics. 4th - Charlie James discusses economic growth, job reports, and GOP strategy. HOUR 2 5th - Charlie James discusses Native history, road conditions, and church life. 6th - Charlie James discusses campaign funding, Senate races, and Elaine Chao. 7th - Charlie James and callers discuss worship preferences and political ethics. 8th - Charlie James criticizes Ohio candidate Amy Acton over past incidents. HOUR 3 9th - Charlie James discusses biology, sports policies, and SC primary politics 10th - Charlie James discusses the SC Senate race, campaign tactics, and debates. 11th - Charlie James discusses AI risks, technology concerns, and online trends. 12th - Callers discuss AI autonomous systems and South Carolina Senate politics. HOUR 4 13th- Charlie James talks missing kids, campaign post boxes, and USAID fraud. 14th- Charlie James talks AI threats, GOP strategy, and modern political tropes. 15th- Charlie James covers political hypocrisy, Elaine Chao, and Ken Paxton. 16th- Charlie James discusses upcoming anniversaries and personal reflections. 6819 Wed, 09 Sep 2026 23:30:00 +0000 m1utmjdEuGmSgjxzM4Ee3ITnkDZRGX9x news The Charlie James Show Podcast news FULL SHOW - Wednesday 9.6.2026 - The Charlie James Show The Charlie James Show originates from News/Talk 989 WORD, The Upstate's #1 Talk Station, weekdays 3-7pm. Charlie tackles the topics that matter to the Carolina's. He interviews the movers and shakers while letting listeners sound off on the news of the day. 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. News https://player.amperwavepodcasting.com?

In this segment of The Charlie James Show, host Charlie James highlights law enforcement efforts that successfully recovered nearly 80 missing children in Ohio, contrasting the achievement with a lack of mainstream media coverage. He then takes a call from Christina in Travelers Rest, who raises questions about campaign fundraising practices involving shared P.O. boxes and the status of government fraud uncovered by Elon Musk's DOGE initiative. James notes that while much of the USAID fraud was halted, broader fraudulent practices across various federal programs continue to operate.

"It is not just that God has a heart for justice," says Sharon Cohn Wu (International Justice Mission), "it is that it is inextricably his character and cannot be otherwise, and that it is so perfectly married with mercy and grace that we somehow survive." Sharon Cohn Wu has served for more than twenty years with IJM, where she is now Regional President of North America. A lawyer (JD, Harvard Law), she has spent her career calling for "loud justice"—that is, visible, swift, community-wide accountability—using the criminal justice system and political will to help IJM achieve its mission to increase freedom and safety for the most vulnerable. She's a key voice in pursuing IJM's stated goal: protection for 300 million people across 46 jurisdictions by 2030, and freedom for more than a million. With Mark Labberton, she reflects on her calling as a lawyer to stand between vulnerable people and those who would crush them; why we need systems to seek and secure justice for the most vulnerable to violence; the economics of vulnerability and the predators who exploit it; how public accountability changes expectations and what society will tolerate; and what decades of looking at the worst of human behavior have done to Cohn Wu's emotional, moral, and spiritual life. Episode Highlights "Hope is as contagious as despair." "In the early days, let's say I might have accidentally over-indexed on rage from time to time." "It is not just that God has a heart for justice, it is that it is inextricably his character and cannot be otherwise, and that it is so perfectly married with mercy and grace that we somehow survive." "There's nothing inevitable about this type of violence." "We need consistent and loud justice. Loud meaning the whole community knows that someone was held accountable for this crime against this small child." About Sharon Cohn Wu Sharon Cohn Wu is International Justice Mission's Regional President of North America, where she has served for over two decades. She began in casework, went on to lead all of IJM's field programs, and pioneered its Justice System Strengthening projects. She built anti-trafficking operations across South and Southeast Asia, including IJM's first USAID police training grant in Cambodia, and most recently advised the organization on violence against women and children. She studied at the University of Virginia and Harvard Law School and practiced at Arnold & Porter. Helpful Links and Resources International Justice Mission: https://www.ijm.org Ending violence against women and children: https://www.ijm.org/our-work/violence-women-children IJM's research library and external program evaluations: https://www.ijm.org/studies Good News About Injustice, by Gary Haugen: https://www.ivpress.com/good-news-about-injustice The Locust Effect, by Gary Haugen and Victor Boutros: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-locust-effect-9780190229269 The Prophets, by Abraham Joshua Heschel: https://harpercollins.com.au/products/9780063335363 Become an IJM prayer partner: https://www.ijm.org/get-involved/pray Show Notes Sharon Cohn Wu's vocational background: law as a family trade among lawyers, judges, rabbis, and teachers Experience: DOJ Criminal Division; corporate law Gary Haugen's Good News About Injustice Early years at IJM: gratitude for every single person freed from slavery, prostitution, and dire circumstances Shifting from case volume to public justice system performance: police, prosecutors, courts, social services "Hope is as contagious as despair," sustained by survivors, staff, and externally audited reductions in violence Violence against women and children as a distinct crime: economic exposure, family dissolution, and a justice system survivors avoid Justice made loud and public, with visible, swift accountability as social and moral deterrent, leading to cultural change IJM's 2030 goal of 300 million protected across 46 jurisdictions and over a million freed—with half a billion as the horizon Reality over strategy: a night walk to a Guatemalan police station, Ghanaian survivors warning families about Lake Volta recruitment Rage mitigated by conviction that God cares more, praying for the fear of the Lord, and Heschel's The Prophets on injustice as offense against God #InternationalJusticeMission #IJM #HumanTrafficking #ModernSlavery #JusticeSystems #ViolenceAgainstWomen #FaithAndJustice #Conversing #CommentMagazine #FullerSeminary Production Credits Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

The abrupt defunding of USAID in 2025 caused global shockwaves. The cuts thrust recipient countries who were dependent on foreign aid for medical care into health crises. One area that has been particularly hard hit is Malawi, a country in southeastern Africa where doctors and community organizers are struggling to fill the gaps in essential services left in the wake of the USAID cuts. The loss of local outreach clinics and lack of fuel for ambulances has caused severe delays—and sometimes tragic outcomes—in providing care to mothers and children. A year out from the cuts, we look at how Malawi is rethinking its relationship to foreign aid as it considers how to continue providing vital health services.  In the first of a series supported by the nonprofit Pulitzer Center and in collaboration with Science Magazine, we provide an on-the-ground look at the impact of USAID defunding on health services in key spots across the globe.   Guests:   Catherine Offord – journalist, Science Magazine. Her article, “An Uncertain Path,” appeared in the July 16 issue of the magazine   Voices heard in the show:   Fanizo Simenti – community health worker at Katenje Health Post, Kasungu district   Emily Mvula – former recipient of services provided by USAID MOMENTUM   Donald Makwakwa – executive director, Family Planning Association of Malawi   Issah Omar Nicks – nursing officer overseeing the maternity ward at the Makiyoni Health Center, Salima District   Aran Nkhata – medical clinician in charge of Makiyoni Health Center, Salima District   Flywell Elenesto – cold chain technician for Salima District, Malawi   Sungeni Thole – nurse midwife technician at Makiyoni Health Center, Salima District   Anthony Masamba – MP and chair of The Parliamentary Committee on Health   Show theme by Jun Miyake. Episode image by Thoko Chikondi.  You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!  Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Independent investigative journalism, broadcasting, trouble-making and muckraking with Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com

The abrupt defunding of USAID in 2025 caused global shockwaves. The cuts thrust recipient countries who were dependent on foreign aid for medical care into health crises. One area that has been particularly hard hit is Malawi, a country in southeastern Africa where doctors and community organizers are struggling to fill the gaps in essential services left in the wake of the USAID cuts. The loss of local outreach clinics and lack of fuel for ambulances has caused severe delays—and sometimes tragic outcomes—in providing care to mothers and children. A year out from the cuts, we look at how Malawi is rethinking its relationship to foreign aid as it considers how to continue providing vital health services.  In the first of a series supported by the nonprofit Pulitzer Center and in collaboration with Science Magazine, we provide an on-the-ground look at the impact of USAID defunding on health services in key spots across the globe.   Guests:   Catherine Offord – journalist, Science Magazine. Her article, “An Uncertain Path,” appeared in the July 16 issue of the magazine   Voices heard in the show:   Fanizo Simenti – community health worker at Katenje Health Post, Kasungu district   Emily Mvula – former recipient of services provided by USAID MOMENTUM   Issah Omar Nicks – nursing officer overseeing the maternity ward at the Makiyoni Health Center, Salima District   Aran Nkhata – medical clinician in charge of Makiyoni Health Center, Salima District   Flywell Elenesto – cold chain technician for Salima District, Malawi   Sungeni Thole – nurse midwife technician at Makiyoni Health Center, Salima District   Anthony Masamba – MP and chair of The Parliamentary Committee on Health   Show theme by Jun Miyake. Episode image by Thoko Chikondi.  You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!  Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of John Solomon Reports, we shine a light on the alarming misuse of American generosity on a global scale. Host John Solomon reveals how funds intended for humanitarian aid have been diverted by the United Nations to support terrorist activities and fraudulent nonprofits. Solomon questions the extent of this abuse and outlines potential reforms to rectify the situation.Joining the discussion is US Ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, who presents a bold reform plan for the UN, drawing parallels to President Trump's successful NATO overhaul. The conversation delves into the need for accountability and transformation within the UN, especially in light of its current leadership and the challenges it faces.Listeners will hear from key figures including Congressman James Comer, USAID investigator John Schofield, and Middle East Forum's Greg Roman, who has tracked substantial funding misallocated to groups aligned with terrorism. Additionally, investigative journalist Liz Collins shares insights into the troubling fraud cases in Minnesota, tying together the threads of this critical issue.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

But should they exist?Let me start by saying that I get it. A few years ago, I read a fascinating piece about how professional basketball had lost its cool factor. The current stars of the NBA, like Jayson Tatum and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, just don't have it. They aren't charismatic in the same ways Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan or Dr. J were. They aren't eccentric, or captivating, or culture-defining. “No aura,” as the kids say. Spend a few minutes watching Elon Musk work a room or Mark Zuckerberg testify before Congress, and it's hard not to get a similar feeling. These guys do not exude aura. They don't present as classy or high-minded or suave, which — frankly — is how we prefer our rich people. They are awkward and make bad jokes and laugh in uncomfortable ways. It at least feels like it was different before. The elites we grew up reading about operated in a classy manner, offered timeless wisdom or expressed humility when reflecting on their station in life. Andrew Carnegie was known for reciting poetry from memory, holding dinners where he'd debate Shakespeare and the merits of socialism, and waking his entire household with a bagpiper every morning. He's credited with saying, “As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.” J.P. Morgan was famous for locking bankers in his library during the panic of 1907 and not letting them leave until they solved the crisis. He once said, “A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.” Elon Musk wielded a chainsaw while bragging about cuts to USAID, and once entered Twitter HQ during a hostile takeover while carrying a sink. He tweeted: “Entering Twitter HQ — let that sink in! ”These people are not the same.Ad-free podcasts are here!Get 20% off your first year of ad-free episodes, exclusive interviews, and deep dives with Tangle's podcast membership!Suspension of the Rules.Isaac, Ari, and Kmele had a lot to talk about this week. From Kmele “having a moment” on CNN to mail-in voting changes to CBS's coverage of Abdul El-Sayed — plus a good guy of the week from the Pacific Northwest and a brief check-in on the Iran war — this week's Suspension of the Rules is jam-packed. Watch it here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast written by: Isaac Saul and audio engineered and edited by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Audrey Moorehead, and Carina Pacheco. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As Pacific Islands Forum leaders gathered in Palau, one of the last nations recognizing Taiwan, five members skipped sending their top leaders. Meanwhile, a June survey found New Zealanders now rate the United States a greater threat than China, to which our guest said warmth toward Washington had “fallen off a cliff.”Hosts Ray Powell and Jim Carouso are joined by David Capie, Director of the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, who explains why views of both great powers have shifted. Warmth toward China had eroded for years because of its actions toward the South China Sea, Hong Kong, and the Uyghurs, as well as its expanding Pacific presence since the 2022 Solomon Islands agreement. Then a PLA Navy task group circumnavigated Australia and conducted live-fire drills in the Tasman Sea, diverting commercial flights. Strategy documents are read by “foreign policy nerds,” Capie notes, but when flights carrying “grandma home to the Gold Coast” get rerouted, the public notices. What flipped the ranking was 18 months of U.S. policy, such as tariff whiplash, Greenland and Canada rhetoric, and USAID's closure leaving perceptions of America “in the freezer” while Beijing now pitches itself as the responsible, predictable partner.He maps New Zealand's foreign policy reset ahead of November's election: leaning into Australia and Five Eyes partners, deeper security cooperation with Japan, new partnerships across Southeast Asia and a recalibrated India relationship. On the Cook Islands, Capie traces how Wellington's relations with Rarotonga had soured over a China partnership agreed without adequate consultation, the aid pause that followed, and the new Declaration on Defence and Security, but then unpacks the surprise U.S.–New Zealand port project at Penrhyn and its link to seabed minerals.On the missing PIF leaders, his verdict is “a little from column A and a little from column B”. Chinese pressure is real, but so are local dynamics like the Solomon Islands no-confidence vote that pulled Prime Minister Wale back home. He warns against “always seeing strategic machinations where often there are local dynamics at play.”Australia's Ocean of Peace Alliance with Fiji prompts hard questions about militarization and whether Canberra and Wellington praise PIF centrality while building a parallel architecture. That tension showed after China's July 2026 submarine-launched ballistic missile test into the Pacific, its first ever into international open waters. Leaders spoke frankly, but no collective PIF statement emerged. Keeping China out of the Pacific Islands, Capie says, would be “a fool's errand” – the real concern is its expanding security footprint. His challenge to Wellington, Canberra, and Washington: lift your game and treat transnational crime and climate change as priorities in their own right.Plus: pavlova, flat whites, and why David won't perform a haka.Follow David Capie on X, @davidcapieFollow us on X, @IndoPacPodcast, LinkedIn or FacebookSponsored by BowerGroupAsia, a strategic advisory firm that specializes in the Indo-Pacific

According to reports, 33 ministers have been killed in Iran and hundreds detained or imprisoned. The church is emerging faithful while persecuted in Iran. Meanwhile, funds that were cut from USAID are now being offered to Christian organizations to help 2,500 hospitals and clinics in 12 countries, and other humanitarian needs will be managed with their oversight. Why? We look at the history of USAID, the fraud, and why Christians engaged in practical service are trusted.

On his first day of his second term President Donald Trump signed an executive order that brought the USAID to a screeching halt. Elon Musk later bragged that his DOGE effort fed USAID "to the woodchipper." Musk today insists not one person has died from the ending of USAID but the evidence tells a different story. We hear from a whistle blower about the end of USAID and its impact.

In this new episode of the Policy Pod, MPP students Marc Naro and Yacine Ouahioune host John Simon, former U.S. Ambassador to the African Union and now CEO of Total Impact Capital, an impact investment firm mobilising private capital to address global development challenges.Ambassador Simon previously held senior roles at the White House, USAID and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), working at the intersection of diplomacy, development finance and investment.Drawing on his experience across government and finance, the conversation explores his journey from U.S. diplomacy to impact investing and the role of private capital in advancing sustainable development.Recorded at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.

Kerry Lutz, Debt, Taxes, Trust, and Technology: From the $40 Trillion Question to Colorado Rail and the AI Future The $40 Trillion Debt and the Dollar's Staying Power The episode opens with economist and Financial Survival Network founder Kerry Lutz discussing the roughly $40 trillion national debt and why a number that large can become psychologically easy to dismiss. Lutz argues that the dollar-based system can continue functioning as long as global markets retain confidence in U.S. currency, liquidity, and the ability to retrieve invested capital. He says the lack of a trusted replacement currency is a major reason the system continues, while increased central-bank gold buying may signal gradual erosion of confidence. He also describes the long-term decline in the dollar's purchasing power and argues that inflation disproportionately burdens middle-class people who own fewer appreciating assets. The hosts press him on when debt and inflation could reach a breaking point, and he offers a rough six-year possibility while emphasizing that such predictions are highly uncertain. Inflation, Government Spending, and Possible Alternatives Lutz rejects political promises of “affordability” as largely superficial and argues that persistent inflation is fundamentally monetary rather than simply the result of temporary shortages. He contrasts short-lived price spikes caused by market disruptions with broad inflation tied to money and government policy. His proposed solution is major reductions in government spending and taxation, while acknowledging that abruptly restructuring debt and public spending could produce a severe economic contraction. The discussion then considers whether China, the European Union, Russia, or another monetary system could eventually replace the U.S. dollar as the dominant reserve currency. Lutz argues that no credible alternative currently exists but says history shows that reserve currencies eventually change, and he cites the end of the gold link and the removal of silver from U.S. coinage as important turning points. Colorado's Proposed Front Range Commuter Rail After Lutz leaves, Chuck and Julie turn to a proposed commuter-rail project running along Colorado's Front Range from Fort Collins toward Pueblo. They strongly oppose the proposed sales tax, criticize the estimated cost and projected ridership, and use RTD as an example of what they see as unsuccessful mass-transit policy. They argue that small tax increases accumulate into a larger burden and connect the rail proposal to Lutz's earlier warning about government spending. The hosts and Jacob also discuss personal experiences using buses between Boulder and Denver, the absence of a sunset provision as they understand it, and their expectation that a large construction project could continue consuming money even if the final transportation service proves unpopular. Their comments are highly opinionated and repeatedly urge listeners to vote against the proposal. Russiagate, Comey, and Institutional Distrust The conversation then shifts to renewed attention on investigations surrounding James Comey and the Russia-related controversies of Donald Trump's first presidency. Julie discusses a federal grand-jury subpoena involving a man the transcript identifies as Daniel Richmond and lays out allegations concerning leaks, Comey memos, The New York Times, congressional testimony, and the origins of a special-counsel investigation. The hosts characterize these events as evidence of a “deep state” effort against Trump and express approval that the Trump administration is continuing to pursue the matter. They also discuss the FBI, Secret Service, Antifa, NGO funding, DOGE, USAID, Open Society, and the Southern Poverty Law Center as part of a broader argument that political and bureaucratic institutions remain deeply politicized. These assertions are presented as the speakers' views and allegations rather than independently established facts. Jury Nullification, COVID, and the Breakdown of Trust Julie raises reports of activists receiving jury-nullification training and explains the concept as jurors refusing to convict even when the legal evidence supports conviction. She expresses mixed feelings, seeing jury independence as a possible check on abusive prosecutors while worrying that partisan nullification could undermine the rule of law. Chuck connects the issue to judges who resist higher-court rulings, and both hosts argue that public confidence in government deteriorated dramatically during COVID. They criticize Dr. Fauci and question the independence of medical recommendations influenced by pharmaceutical companies, describing a culture in which patients increasingly feel compelled to research professional advice themselves. The broader theme is that distrust has moved, in their view, from a general suspicion of large government to specific accusations that institutions, judges, prosecutors, and public-health authorities have acted against citizens' interests. AI, Data Centers, Energy, and the Future of Professional Work The final portion examines AI data centers, their energy and water demands, and their growing political importance. Chuck argues that the United States must develop the energy infrastructure necessary to compete in AI or risk surrendering technological leadership to China, while warning against tax-abatement deals that leave local communities carrying costs. Julie discusses claims that some data-center cooling systems recirculate water and therefore may use less new water than critics suggest. The hosts also discuss how AI is changing law, journalism, and newsroom production, with Chuck planning additional training to apply AI to legal and publishing work. A final legal exchange with Jacob covers federal judicial structure and why a higher court cannot simply remove a lower-court judge, before the show closes with speculation about space-based computing, nuclear energy, and a joking reference to Skynet from The Terminator. SEO Keywords / Key Phrases national debt crisis, U.S. dollar reserve currency, inflation and purchasing power, Colorado commuter rail tax, Front Range transportation, government spending and taxes, federal grand jury investigation, jury nullification, AI data centers, artificial intelligence energy demand

To begin is to digress: Where's Kash Patel? Who is MIA? The USAID to hip-hop pipeline. Discussing hating to discuss HasanGate. Private equity's doing prank investment schemes now: grab a slice, break a sweat, lease a coffin. Beware the MAGA deconversion slop con-artistry. The Candace-Bet-Wilson Summit, saved from last week for Tim's return and expertise in Unstable Girlies / Shame-a-Thot studies. BREAKING REDSCARESCROUNGEUP. The reports of Darline "Other Lindsey" Graham's existence have been greatly exaggerated + Josh learns about some kewl South Carolina monarchy laws. DSA wants to outlaw pranks?? Someone's taught an important lesson about questioning the realism of labia-based humor-jokes. The Jeffries-Kushner alliance: same as it ever was. Tariffs refunds for who now? More 51st state woes for Presinald. Alternative theories as to whether or not that one lady pressed a button on her tum tum to make the sleepiest lil president be like Uma Thurman getting the adrenaline shot in that one movie. Preston HAARP is the brother of the Human Printer/Presidential Hospice Throatgiver and he's a real deal Sandinista and the media has been a bunch of assholes to him, The Grayzone being one exception. Reminders given, silverlinings scraped for.Recorded on Saturday, August 29th, 2569 B.E. around 11.00AM Korea Standard Time. Commiserate on Discord: discord.gg/aDf4Yv9PrYNever Forget: standwithdanielhale.orgGenral RecommendationsJosh's Recommendations: 1) Start prepping 2) The Patient Tim's Recommendation: The AudacityFurther Reading, Viewing, ListeningShow notes + Full list of links, sources, etcEternal thanks to Rm Brown ("King of the Soundboard")More From Timothy Robert BuechnerPodcast: Q&T ARE / violentpeople.co Tweets: @ROHDUTCHLocationless Locationsheatdeathpod.comEvery show-related link is corralled and available here.Twitter: @heatdeathpodPlease send all Letters of Derision, Indifference, Inquiry, Mild Elation, et cetera to: heatdeathoftheuniversepodcast@gmail.comSend us Fan MailSupport the showSupport: patreon / buzzsprout

[This is one of the finalists in the 2026 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I'll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you've read them all, I'll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked] A couple of decades ago in Kabul, a fellow aid worker on his third beer came up with a vivid simile for what American money was doing to the Afghan organizations implementing USAID projects. "It's like gluing a rabbit mouth-first to a fire hose. You blast its guts right out of its ass…but as long as the water keeps running, it looks like you've taught the rabbit to dance." Oxford politics professor Masooda Bano uses less lurid language, but Breakdown in Pakistan addresses the same basic phenomenon: how Western aid donors and INGOs unintentionally eviscerate so many of the local institutions they try to "capacity-build." The problem goes beyond the obvious mismatch of huge funds with small-scale organizations. Even low-to-moderate external funding can leave an organization hollowed out, bereft of local participants and the power it once had to motivate change on the ground. Anyone who cares about the global effectiveness of rich-country altruism needs to grasp the dynamic Bano analyzes. From the Western perspective, many of us want to put charitable money into a mechanism that delivers certain measurable outcomes (lives saved, morbidity reduced, income increased above poverty levels, etc.) as efficiently and reliably as possible. So we do our well-intentioned best to shape local institutions into a delivery vehicle for our projects. Readers of James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State will recall how mid-eighteenth-century German "scientific foresters" treated forests similarly, as a mechanism to reliably yield the highest volume of lumber. They planted spruce in vast uniform grids, ordered for easy counting and harvesting, while stripping out other non-timber species. The resulting monoculture plantations seemed ideal for both commercial exploitation and experimentation; it's much easier to control variables when you've removed as much natural variability as possible. Within a few decades, the downsides became evident. The first generation of trees grew strong, sucking up the accumulated benefits of the previous forest's soil ecology; later generations were stunted, as the lack of biodiversity left the soils nutrient-poor. Plantations packed with trees of the same species and same height were far more vulnerable to pathogens, pests, and extreme weather. Large-scale forest die-offs, Waldsterben, eventually forced foresters to drastically modify their approach. That metaphor fits Bano's story even better than my friend's gutted rabbit. Over the last four decades, we've been systematically replacing diverse old-growth institutions with more legible NGO plantations worldwide. While we've been enjoying our increased ability to control outcomes and test hypotheses, the rot has been spreading, the impoverished ecology stunting more and more of the forest. And now the wind through those uniform, hollowed-out aisles has built into a storm. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/breakdown-in-pakistan

CannCon and Chris Paul kick off Friday with what CannCon dubs Schrodinger's case, as a federal judge blocks the President's mail in ballot executive order yet again, roughly a week before the first ballots go out, in a ruling everyone expects to be appealed within days. They walk through the dizzying timeline of injunctions and reversals stretching back to April. From there they cover a USAID report finding more than a hundred UNRWA employees took part in the October 7th attacks, plus new sanctions avenues opening up against domestic extremist networks. The back half wanders into a genuinely interesting history detour on the Lusitania and what Woodrow Wilson knew, before closing with a Jessica Tarlov clip that has to be heard to be believed and a fresh Trump post it leads directly into. Plenty of banter and a good Friday send off.

Yesterday, we heard from former USAID administrator Dr. Atul Gawande about the lives lost because of the gutting of the United States Agency for International Development. On today's show, we focus on people in Nepal and their experiences before and after the cuts to foreign assistance. In Nepal, USAID helped fund organizations whose efforts centered on fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS. And some of those organizations employed transgender aid workers, who are living in a country where existing outside the gender binary is generally forbidden. But after the cuts to USAID, many of these trans women have resorted to sex work – putting themselves at risk for the same disease they worked so hard to stop. To learn more about their stories, we spoke with Kristen Gelineau, a global investigative reporter for the Associated Press who visited Nepal in the spring.And in headlines, hundreds of people have been killed in flash floods that swept through the Nepal-China border, President Donald Trump announced Lake Ontario will now be known as Lake America, and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt gets ready to leave the White House.Show Notes: Check out Kristen's work – tinyurl.com/ybc78uka Call Congress – 202-224-3121 Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/y4y2e9jy What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/ For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com

On Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg, Dani speaks with Alice C. Hill, the David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, for Part 6 of Food Tank's series exploring the far-reaching impacts of dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development. They discuss how USAID's closure is impacting climate risk, the decisions we need to make now to keep communities safe in the future, and staying optimistic by pushing forward work that matters. Plus, FEWS NET stops reporting on three "hunger hotspot" countries, land restoration efforts around the world continue to grow, new research reveals it may be getting easier to hold fossil fuel companies accountable, U.S. farmers struggle to access resources, and the African Sahel region is seeing more water than it has in decades.  While you're listening, subscribe, rate, and review the show; it would mean the world to us to have your feedback. You can listen to "Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg" wherever you consume your podcasts.

In this episode of Beyond the Headlines, Mercy Corps CEO Tjada McKenna joins host Nada AlTaher in conversation about the challenges facing humanitarian assistance across the Middle East and beyond. The impact of the Strait of Hormuz blockade has trickled down into the aid sector. Rising fuel costs, shortages of essential goods and delays in the delivery of materials such as fertilisers have all taken a toll on vulnerable communities that rely on operational supply chains. Humanitarian organisations are forced to adapt to the growing needs on the ground in places such as Gaza and Sudan, where mass displacement and conflict have brought life to a standstill, and in Syria, where rebuilding after 14 years of civil war remains complicated. Meanwhile, funding is dwindling. The Trump administration's decision to shut down USAID projects last year has had tangible consequences in countries in the Middle East, where aid and economic empowerment programmes once provided a vital lifeline for millions. Now, many donors are choosing to invest in emergency life-saving efforts instead of in longer-term development projects. Ms McKenna discusses the importance of helping people to be more resilient to crises instead of simply responding to disasters after they happen.

It's been more than a year since Elon Musk and the DOGE boys fed the United States Agency for International Development – or USAID, into a QUOTE “woodchipper.” And since then, according to reporting from NPR and other outlets, the dismantling of USAID has resulted in the deaths of more than 700,000 people. That's because USAID worked globally to fight the spread of HIV/AIDS, end childhood malnutrition, battle infectious diseases and help women have healthy pregnancies and healthy babies. Dr. Atul Gawande was a USAID administrator under the Biden Administration, leading the Bureau of Global Health. Now he's warning what the gutting of the agency means for the world, and for America.And in headlines, Meta agrees to pay up to $18 billion and add stronger child-safety measures to its platforms as part of a landmark legal settlement, Bill Gates warns about the dangers of artificial intelligence, and U.S. Sen. Darline Grahamwins the Republican nomination to replace her late brother on South Carolina's general election ballot.Show Notes: Check out Atul's piece – tinyurl.com/3yfz8pjn Call Congress – 202-224-3121 Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/y4y2e9jy What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/ For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com

Jon Herold calls it a boring Monday news cycle but still digs into Trump's newly announced 50 percent tariffs on Canadian autos, parts, and steel starting in 2027, reading through the Truth Social post accusing Canada of running up a 60 billion dollar trade deficit. He plays clips from Treasury Secretary Bessent's rollout of "Operation Economic Outcast," a sweeping sanctions campaign aimed at cutting Iran off from the global economy, and a JD Vance clip on socialism that Jon thinks echoes past comments a little too closely. Other topics include a massive 13.7 billion dollar AI chip deal for Rumble Group, a viral Spencer Pratt rant about "mommy sleuth" TikTok conspiracy culture around Charlie Kirk's death, and a look at USAID fraud reporting. Sponsor reads, chat banter, and some personal football coaching stories round out a slower Monday show.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Takiyah (T.D.) Harper-Shipman joins us to discuss her new book Unruly Fertility: Race, Development, and Decolonial Reproductive Politics (Stanford University Press, 2026). The discussion traces how modern states—from North Carolina to Senegal—have historically sutured Black women's fertility to the shifting demands of capitalist accumulation, deploying reproductive health policies not as benevolent care but as instruments of crisis management and labor control. Harper-Shipman unpacks the colonial origins of "womanhood" itself as a racialized labor category constructed during European enclosures, one that has always excluded Black women from its aspirational promises of citizenship, consumption, and reproductive autonomy. Drawing on Federici, Mies, Spillers, and Angela Davis, she argues that Black women enter the modern political economy as producers of workers—never citizens—and that contemporary feminist movements risk replicating white womanhood's assumptions when they abandon class analysis or ignore the chains of production behind their demands. The conversation also examines the recent closure of USAID, an institution Takiyah describes as fundamentally about the preservation of white life and the extension of U.S. empire. Rather than mourn its end, she urges us to seize this rupture and continue dismantling the colonial infrastructure of reproductive governance it represented. The conversation closes with a powerful critique of the epistemic violence embedded in global family planning campaigns—how metrics like "unmet need" were designed to serve supplier interests, not Black women's desires, and how Black women's embodied knowledge about contraceptive side effects is systematically dismissed as myth while dangerous technologies banned in the Global North are actively promoted across Africa. Throughout, we explore the Americanization of Black political identity from World War II through 9/11 to Obama's presidency, tracing how Black people have been conscripted into U.S. imperial projects through strategic moments of violence and national belonging. This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation; additional questions will be addressed in an August follow-up. T.D. Harper-Shipman is an Associate Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Davidson College in North Carolina. She teaches courses and publishes on political economy and its intersection with race and gender in Africa. She has published in p Antipode, Oxford Academic, Third World Quarterly, and International Studies Review, among other places. She is an academic editor at Third World Quarterly and forum editor with the Miami Institute of Social Sciences. Her first book, Rethinking Ownership of Development in Africa was published with Routledge Press in 2019. She has also published in public-facing forums including Africa is a Country and the Global African Worker.   Reckoning with Empire: Defiant Scholarship with Takiyah Harper-Shipman La femme fait la maison: The Accumulation of Surplus Value through Family Planning in Burkina Faso To support our work and gain access to our discord and study groups please contribute to our patreon!

Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent for The New York Times. The New York City native is the author of "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America." She is also the co-author, with Jonathan Swan, of a new book, "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump," which lays out the first year of President Trump's second presidency.  Haberman joined NY1's Errol Louis to discuss her new book. She explained how she and Swan began the project in 2023 as a "last act" Trump story but instead witnessed a dramatic shift that they came to see as a form of domestic "regime change, " marked by court-style politics, expanded executive power and the erosion of independence at the Department of Justice. Haberman also described an administration divided into fiefdoms controlled by powerful figures, including Stephen Miller, Elon Musk through DOGE and USAID and others.

On this episode Phil & the crew are joined by Allum Bokhari to discuss Trump threatening Oman & says he will bomb them How ending USAID has changed everything Alex Jones sounding the alarm as viewership is down everywhere & for everyone Tim addressing the Jubilee "rage quit" Hosts:  Tim @Timcast (everywhere) | https://www.shoutout.fans/timpool Phil @PhilThatRemains (X) | https://allthatremains.komi.io/ Tate @realTateBrown (everywhere) |  @TimcastTateBrown  (YT) Producer: Carter @carterbanks (X) |  @trashhouserecords  (YT) Guest:  Allum Bokhari @AllumBokhari (X) Trump Threatens To BOMB Oman To HELL As Iran War DRAGS ON Threatening GOP Midterms | Timcast IRL

The US military has been conducting deadly strikes on boats it says are carrying drugs off the coast of Latin America. Now, the US Defense Department says it's expanding that maritime campaign to land. Also, the death of Jason Arday, a Black professor at the University of Cambridge, has sparked a debate in Britain over the media scrutiny he faced in the weeks leading up to his death. And, a new survey shows that some young people across Africa think USAID cuts could be a positive moment of change for the continent. Plus, Afghanistan could see its first woman in space. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

As part of their mandate to stop 'waste, fraud and abuse' in federal government spending, DOGE, the department of Government Efficiency, made large cuts to the amount of money the US spent on foreign aid. The task force, headed by Elon Musk, effectively dismantled the US's largest foreign aid agency, USAID - cancelling many of its programmes and absorbing the remainder into the State Department. This has caused controversy in some circles, with researchers estimating that the cuts could result in the loss of 14 million lives by 2030. Musk strenuously denies this, stating that cuts made by DOGE has resulted in 'zero' deaths. But who is right, and what are the problems with these sorts of estimates? We speak to Dr Hannah Ritchie to find out more. If you see numbers that you want us to look into contact moreorless@bbc.co.ukPresenter/Producer: Lizzy McNeill Series Producer: Tom Colls Editor: Richard Vadon Production Coordinator: Brenda Brown Sound Mix: Neil Churchill