Why Now? A Political Junkie Podcast

Feb 26 2025 70 ep. 41 mins 7
Why Now? A Political Junkie Podcast artwork

Where contemporary history and politics meet the challenge of today.

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Episode 69: No More Girl Bosses

Feb 26 2025 39 mins  
Image credit: Cookie Studio/ShutterstockOn October 12, 2020, Amy Coney Barrett, a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, was sworn in for her testimony before the Republican-majority Senate Judiciary Committee. If you were a Democrat and a feminist, it was a galling moment for so many reasons. First, the United States was on the brink of an election,

Episode 68: Arise, Ye Workers From Your Slumbers

Feb 11 2025 37 mins  
In 1938, philosophy professor Edward I. Fenlon testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee that that professors and students at Brooklyn College were "deluged" daily with communist propaganda. Photo credit: Harris & Ewing/United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division (Wikimedia Commons)For years now, those of us who are paying attention have he

Episode 67: The Great American Crack-Up

Jan 28 2025 41 mins  
Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who transformed the use of television to drive partisanship, speaks to reporters in Washington, D.C. after a 1995 appearance on ABC’s “This Week.” Photo credit: Mark Reinstein/ShutterstockBack in 2016, like about a million other fans, I was listening obsessively to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway show, “Hamilton: The Musical.�

Episode 66: You Can't Cheat an Honest Man

Jan 03 2025 39 mins  
Gift Shop in Trump Tower, New York City, September, 2022. Photo credit: Suiren2022/Wikimedia CommonsIn the 1939 movie, “You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man,” W.C. Fields played a role familiar to Depression-era audiences: the grifter. Rotund, alcoholic—but nevertheless, quick witted—Fields’s character, Larsen E. Whipsnade (Get it? Larceny?) is the owner of a virtually bankrup

Episode 65: Baby Trump

Dec 17 2024 35 mins  
A Trump baby balloon at the third Womens March, Los Angeles, January 19, 2019. Photo credit: betto rodrigues/ShutterstockNear the end of Donald J. Trump’s first year in office, the New York Times ran a story about his typical day. It began at around 5:30 am with a frenzy of television watching and channel switching. After a few hours of this, Maggie Haberman, Glenn Thrush, and Pe

Episode 64: How We Fight

Dec 02 2024 32 mins  
Competing reproductive rights protesters outside the Supreme Court on March 26, 2024. Photo credit: Philip Yabut/ShutterstockOn October 28, 2023, the morning of her baby shower, 18-year-old Nevaeh Crain was nauseous, running a fever, and in pain. Soon, the Texas teenager began to bleed and she started to vomit. Nevaeh’s mother, Candice Fails, took her to the hospital, where Nevae

Episode 63: To The Constitution, With Love

Nov 18 2024 40 mins  
As a freshman representative from Texas, Barbara Jordan sat on the House Judiciary Committee hearing the Watergate case in 1974. Photo credit: United States House of Representatives/Wikipedia CommonsIn the summer of 1974, I was glued to the television for most of the day. For the first time in my life, my parents didn’t insist that I shut it off, go outside—do something useful.

Episode 62: We Shall Not Be Moved

Oct 30 2024 40 mins  
Georgia Congressman John Lewis at the Lincoln Memorial at the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, August 24, 2013. Photo credit: Joseph Sohm/ShutterstockThere is no question that Donald Trump, a former President who is on the ballot next Tuesday, November 5, is not only a man in love with violence, but one who also understands violence as a way to get what he wants. On May

Episode 61: How the GOP Killed Dissent

Oct 21 2024 40 mins  
Republican Nelson Rockefeller (left) with Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House on June 10, 1968. Photo credit: Yoichi Okomoto/Lyndon Baines Johnson Library/Wikimedia CommonsAna Navarro is probably best known for her work on the popular daytime talk show, The View. But she also has serious chops as a Republican political strategist. She served on Florida Governo

Episode 60: When We Lose, We Win

Oct 06 2024 41 mins  
On July 20, 1925 the Washington Times published three front page stories about Tennessee v. Scopes—along with Prohibition, crime, and a woman who was arrested for drinking and driving, the Scopes Trial raised sensational questions about modern American life.In 2016, white evangelical Christians showed up at the polls in force for Donald J. Trump, part of a diverse movement that d