Left Anchor

This time we've got Jeff Spross filling in as guest host to chat with Chris Arnade, author of Dignity, a Studs Terkel-style ethnography of American poverty. We talk about what inspired him to leave Wall Street and start writing about poverty, the varied characteristics of broke Americans, and the real problem with the top 20 percent (hint: it's not their incomes, but their politics). The interview went long, so we'll be breaking it into two episodes. Stay tuned for part II tomorrow! Note: Ryan makes an error in discussing the top 20 percent. The bottom half of this group did not experience an absolute income decline from 1980-2014, but rather growth slower than the national average.

Subscribe here to hear the full episode, and you can find Tomorrow without Fear here.

This time we've got David Sessions on to talk about the extraordinarily weak tea contained in Adam Gopnik's new book A Thousand Small Sanities. Are liberals responsible for all the good things that have happened in the last 300 years, or is penny-ante moderation the appropriate response to all problems? Tune in to find out! (Read David's review of Gopnik here.)

Max Alvarez joins us again to talk about his experience navigating the treacherous waters of higher education this time. We discuss how he came to end up in graduate school, how the logic of markets has penetrated the university, and the political function thereof. Find some of his writing on this here, here, or here.

For once we've got a timely episode! Today we're talking with Carl Beijer, whose People's Policy Project paper on the international financing of climate change policy came out today. Tackling this problem is going to require an eye-watering quantity of international subsidies, and it's worth thinking about how that might happen.

Here we discuss a section of Jeane Kirkpatrick's famous essay on why America should support right-wing dictatorships. Subscribe now to hear the full episode!

This time we've got historian Greg Grandin on to talk about his new book The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America, about the history of the American frontier, how it has functioned politically over the years, and how Trump is drawing on that legacy today. (Also listen for an interlude about whether it was appropriate for Bernie Sanders to oppose Reagan's death squad policy in Central America.)

In this excerpt we talk about some strengths and blind spots in Warren's foreign policy ideas. Subscribe here to hear the full episode!

We bring on Astra Taylor to talk about her twinned book and documentary on democracy (What Is Democracy and Democracy May Not Exist, But We'll Miss It When It's Gone). We discuss the theory and practice of self-government, how she developed her film and book, and what lessons she learned in the process.

Subscribe now to hear the full bonus episode (as well as all previous ones)!