Why Now? A Political Junkie Podcast

The situation comedy Leave it to Beaver, which ran from 1957 to 1963, was one of many half-hour comedies that idealized the American post-war suburbs, always portraying them as uniformly white and a refuge where children got into “scrapes”—but not real trouble. From left: Hugh Beaumont (Ward), Tony Dow (Wally), Barbara Billingsley (June), Jerry Mathers (Theodore AKA "Beaver")

It’s the summer of 1978, three years after the end of an American war in Vietnam that Joan Baez and other musicians had lifted their voices to oppose. On this day, Baez is giving a live, outdoor concert in Norway. Bantering with an audience of young Norwegians, she smiles to a happy, shirtless youth and segues into her next number: “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”Canadi

If you have ever attended one of former President Donald Trump’s rallies, seen one on TV, or even just watched Fox News regularly, you may have seen people wearing tee shirts that have “Gays for Trump” written on the front. Did you think they were planted by the campaign? Or that any gay, lesbian, or transgender person who supported the current Republican Party was deluded? O

Content warning: this podcast discusses sexual assault and other forms of violence.We begin this episode with Pramila Patten, the United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict. She is discussing an international investigation of October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists stormed over Israel’s border and triggered the current and devastating war in Gaza. The mos

That was a small portion of the State of the Union speech that President Joe Biden gave on the evening of February 7, 2023. By the time many of you listen to this episode, Biden will have delivered his 2024 message to Congress, one that is widely expected to lay out his agenda for a second term and provide a compelling argument for the voters to give him a Democratic House and Sena

The first cases of Covid-19 were diagnosed in late December 2019, near a lab in Wuhan, China that may or may not have been responsible for accidentally releasing the virus into the wild.The disaster that took shape around the world in the following weeks was like watching someone fall from a skyscraper in slow motion. The first case of Covid-19 in the United States was diagnosed on

If you are my age, you remember exactly where you were when defense attorney Johnny Cochrane delivered his closing statement in The People v. O.J. Simpson, a 1994 murder trial that captured the nation’s imagination. Simpson, a former star National Football League running back, actor, and celebrity was on trial for the gruesome murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her f

In the introduction to this episode, we begin with some false and partially false claims. Listeners should know that aborting a viable, healthy fetus in the third trimester is a vanishingly rare event, and that this has never been either best medical practice, nor has abortion been guaranteed under federal law in the United States after 24 weeks. And despite a talking point that ha

On June 10, 2020, grassroots calls to defund the New York City Police Department, initiated in Minneapolis, Minnesota, following the police murder of George Floyd, grew louder. That morning, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez explained why to Good Morning America co-host George Stephanopoulos. The NYPD’s $6 billion budget dwarfed the funds set aside for all other city functio

You just heard an anthem sung by members of the Merze Tate Explorers, a non-profit, grassroots organization founded in 2008 for girls in the sixth through twelfth grade. Like other youth groups embedded in communities of color, the organization introduces girls to mentors, exposes them to career and college opportunities and, most importantly, funds travel and study abroad that wea