Left Anchor

This time we are discussing Wake Up Dead Man, the latest Knives Out picture, and its themes of faith, humility, forgiveness, and right-wing assholes in the pulpit. We hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday break!...

The dumbest people in politics are always going on about how we need more "debate" between various factions. But Stanford political scientist James Fishkin has a much more sophisticated argument that actual...

Today we've got Rutgers labor historian Eric Blanc back on to discuss his recent article on the sewer socialists of Milwaukee. Back in the early 20th century, Wisconsin was the epicenter of the most successful socialist...

Today we have Dr. Lucian Staiano-Daniels on to talk about his book The War People: A Social History of Common Soldiers during the Era of the Thirty Years War. It is something of an obscure conflict these days, but he...

Today we have economics professor Marshall Steinbaum on to talk about the potential fall of Larry Summers due to his association with Jeffrey Epstein, and what it reveals about the culture of the economics profession...

Zohran Mamdani won in New York City, and so did Democrats in New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and even Mississippi. What happened and why? We dig in. Check out Ryan's articles on Zohran and Chuck Schumer, as well as...

Today we are discussing the home stretch of the New York City mayoral race, Andrew Cuomo's decent into outright gutter racism and Islamophobia, the ongoing ICE raids across the country, Trump's escalating war on...

Is it possible to reform America's blighted hellscape of car-dependent suburban sprawl, big box stores, strip malls, and stroads into something more healthy and human? Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon (of the podcast The...

Today Ryan has Sarah Taber, a small farmer and proprietor of the Farm to Taber YouTube channel, on to talk about just what is going on with American farming--the collapse in soybean exports, what farmers thought they...

Now that the dust has started to settled around the whole Charlie Kirk thing, we've brought on Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, associate professor of philosophy at Georgetown, to discuss his Boston Review piece about Ezra Klein's...

Today we have Danish MP Pelle Dragsted on to talk about his book Nordic Socialism: The Path Toward a Democratic Economy. We discuss what is distinctive about the Nordic socialist tradition, how much of it is left after...

Today we have Phil Christman on to talk about his book Why Christians Should Be Leftists. Is there a model of Christianity aside from right-wing fundamentalism--something more in like with the teachings of this fellow...

Today we have Dr. Jonathan Howard, who writes at Science Based Medicine, on to discuss his new book Everyone Else Is Lying to You: How the medical establishment weaponized doubt to spread COVID, normalize quackery, and...

Today we have writer and friend of the pod Osita Nwanevu on to talk about his new book The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding. He goes back to political brass tacks--what democracy...

Ryan recently visited Greenland to report on their public sector, which turns out to be extremely large and critical to the local economy. How and why did this develop? Then we discuss some recent gerrymandering news...

Today we're interviewing Katie Brennan, who just won the primary for the New Jersey state Assembly in Hudson County. She explains how the state Democratic machine de facto abolished democracy with a rigged ballot...

Today we've got Layla Al-Sheik on to discuss recent events in Gaza, where an onrushing famine has suddenly become widely acknowledged, even among parts of the Israeli far right. Is it because reality finally broke...

Alexi is still on vacation, so this time we are replaying a recent American Prospect Weekly Roundup show, in which Evan Urquhart of Assigned Media helps Ryan dig into the Supreme Court's latest transphobic decision and...

Today we've got David Dayen on to discuss the One Big Beautiful Bill Act: massive tax cuts for the rich, massive cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, evisceration of Joe Biden's climate program, and huge subsidies for oil and...

Back in 2011 Peter Frase wrote an article for Jacobin called " Four Futures," later turned into a book, speculating about how politics and the economy might evolve in the future as automation progresses. The four...

Today we’ve got New York City politics expert Michael Caley on to discuss how Zohran Mamdani managed to assemble a coalition that bested Andrew Cuomo—where did he rack up big margins and why, how did Cuomo’s campaign...

Today we have Dr. Matthew McManus on to discuss his book The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism. It turns out that there is an extensive tradition of socialism emerging out of classical liberal theory in the 19th...

Today we've got Derek Davison of the Foreign Exchanges newsletter and American Prestige podcast on to talk about Israel's sweeping attack on Iran. What is happening and why, how much has each side suffered, and is there...

Back in 1943 the Polish economist Michał Kalecki published one of the all-time great essays about political economy, “ The Political Aspects of Full Employment.” We dig into his argument and how it holds up applied to...

Today we are talking Elon Musk’s alleged retreat from DOGE, the ungodly horrors he has unleashed in that time, and why someone would commit such evil. Then we move on to Trump’s loss in tariff court, his prospects at...