Why Now? A Political Junkie Podcast

Oct 30 2024 63 ep. 42 mins 6
Why Now? A Political Junkie Podcast artwork

Where contemporary history and politics meet the challenge of today.

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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

Episode 59: Before Kamala, There Was Shyamala

Sep 19 2024 39 mins  
Delegates holding a pro-choice banner at the 1977 National Women’s Conference in Houston, Texas. Photo credit: National Archives/Wikimedia CommonsBefore Vice President Kamala Devi Harris, there was Hillary Clinton—also, Jeannette Rankin, Nellie Tayloe Ross, Geraldine Ferraro, Patsy Mink, Margaret Chase Smith, Nikki Haley, Carol Mosely Braun, and dozens of other women “firsts�

Episode 58: Picturing Asian America

Sep 04 2024 36 mins  
Photographer Corky Lee on 42nd Street. Photo credit: Jennifer Takaki/Wikimedia CommonsOn July 23, 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris reached the threshold of Democratic National Convention delegates that she needed to become the party’s de facto presidential nominee. In the two days since President Joe Biden had ceded the nomination, a diverse party had become re-energized around

Episode 57: Waiting For the Academy To Catch Up

Jul 17 2024 39 mins  
Cover art from Susan Stryker, When Monsters Speak: A Susan Stryker Reader. Photo credit: Loren Rex Cameron.In the early 1980s, Christine Jorgensen, a performer, celebrity, and the most famous transgender woman in the United States, appeared on Hour Magazine, a television talk show. The host, Gary Collins, asked Christine if she felt more socially accepted since 1952, when she was p

Episode 56: We Need A Grey New Deal

Jul 05 2024 40 mins  
Amazon is a top recruiter of retired workers who need extra income to survive. Photo credit: Tada Images/Shutterstock.comWe are all thinking about the aging process this week. Unless the standard bearers of our two major political parties change, as a nation we may be doomed to talk about aging—and who is too old to work-- for the next five months. If—heaven forfend—Republica

Bonus Episode: When Being Queer Was A Mental Illness

Jun 24 2024 30 mins  
The south and east facade of St. Elizabeths Hospital, Washington, D.C., where historian Regina Kunzel’s archive of writing by incarcerated queer patients originated. Photo credit: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division/Wikimedia CommonsIn the mid-twentieth century, United States homosexuality and gender crossing was punishable in the law, and was understood by psychi

Episode 55: The Ten-Dollar Founding Father

May 22 2024 38 mins  
Photo credit: Janusz Pienkowski/ShutterstockIt was May 12, 2009. A crowd had assembled at the White House for a program billed as “An Evening of Poetry & Music & The Spoken Word.” Barack Obama, the first Black President of the United States, and his wife Michelle, had been in residence for less than five months.I doubt that anyone remembers who else performed that night. But t

Episode 54: Typewriter Combat

May 13 2024 40 mins  
Hannah Arendt (left) and Mary McCarthy in the early 1970s: close friends, they were two of the very few women identified as “New York Intellectuals.” Photo credit: Unknown/Wikimedia CommonsPicture this: it’s 1936, the depths of the Great Depression in New York City, and you are a bright, Jewish, first-generation American man. You are a teenager, maybe even as young as fiftee