

The Brian Lehrer Show
WNYC
Brian Lehrer leads the conversation about what matters most now in local and national politics, our own communities and our lives.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Mar 5, 2025 • 21min
President Trump's Speech to Congress
Susan Glasser, a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she writes a column on life in Washington and co-anchors a weekly roundtable discussion on "The Political Scene" podcast, and co-author with Peter Baker of The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021 (Doubleday, 2022), offers analysis, and fact-checking, of President Trump's speech to Congress.

Mar 5, 2025 • 15min
On the Democratic Response
Kadia Goba, congressional reporter for Semafor, provides her analysis of the official Democratic response to Pres. Trump's speech, from Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin, as well as how Democrats in the chamber for the president's speech responded.

Mar 5, 2025 • 9min
10 Question Quiz: True or False
Every day during this pledge drive, listeners can try their hands at a quiz. Today: true or false?

Mar 4, 2025 • 8min
The Points Guy's Travel Advice: When Travel Goes Sideways
Throughout this pledge drive, Brian Kelly, founder of the travel site The Points Guy and the author of How to Win at Travel (Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, 2025), shares advice on how to optimize your travel plans. Today, he shares advice on how to deal when things go wrong on your trip.

Mar 4, 2025 • 15min
Trump's EPA Takes Aim at Climate Regulation
The Environmental Protection Agency has signaled that it will reverse the agency's 2009 declaration that greenhouse gases endanger human health. Naveena Sadasivam, senior staff writer at Grist, explains what the so-called "endangerment finding" has contributed in the fight to mitigate climate change and why Trump's administration is targeting the declaration.

Mar 4, 2025 • 17min
100 Years of 100 Things: The ERA
As our centennial series continues, Julie Suk, a law professor at Fordham University and the author of We the Women: The Unstoppable Mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment (Skyhorse Publishing, 2020), reviews the history of the Equal Rights Amendment, from its introduction by Alice Paul in 1923 through its current disputed status, following passage by a 38th state and President Biden's declaration that it's the "law of the land."

Mar 4, 2025 • 9min
10 Question Quiz: Where Am I?
Every day during this pledge drive, listeners can try their hands at a quiz. Today's topic is local geography.

Mar 4, 2025 • 20min
Public Health Under RFK Jr.
Jessica Malaty Rivera, infectious disease epidemiologist, science communicator and PhD student at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, talks about the government's response to the ongoing measles outbreaks, why an FDA vaccine advisory committee meeting on planning next year's flu shot was cancelled and what it could mean for next year's flu season.

Mar 3, 2025 • 8min
The Points Guy's Travel Advice: Booking Tips
Throughout this pledge drive, Brian Kelly, founder of the travel site The Points Guy and the author of How to Win at Travel (Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, 2025), shares advice on how to optimize your travel plans. Today, he explains his tips for booking travel, including the best site to search for flights and how to maximize credit card points.

Mar 3, 2025 • 17min
And the Oscars Go To...
Dana Stevens, film critic at Slate.com, co-host of the Slate Culture Gabfest podcast and the author of Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century (Atria Books, 2022), recaps the highs and lows of Sunday's Academy Awards presentation.


