Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

There’s been a heated national debate over what to call some of the migrant detention centers along the southern border. Are these facilities deserving of the label "concentration camps"? Andrea Pitzer has a uniquely deep perspective on this, having written a global history of concentration camps titled “One Long Night”. This conversation details the lineage of concentration camps, from the late 1800s in Cuba to the death camps of WWII to their most modern iterations we are witnessing today. RELATED READING: One Long Night YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: China’s Secret Internment Camps Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads. You'll also get exclusive bonus content from this and other shows. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

After two years of a Donald Trump presidency, voters turned out in the 2018 midterms to deliver Democrats the House by a historic margin. That freshman class has its fair share of rabble-rousers who are using their platforms to shake up Congress from the left of the party.  But those members of Congress aren’t the ones who won Democrats the majority – for that, you have to look at the candidates who flipped district after district on election night. That includes Rep. Max Rose (D-NY 11th), an exceptionally fascinating guy who won a historically conservative district. Frontline members like Rep. Rose are the cornerstone upon which this Democratic majority is built, and will therefore be crucial to maintaining that majority in 2020. So how is his approach different – and how is it being received by his constituents? Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads. You'll also get exclusive bonus content from this and other shows. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Got impeachment on the mind? If you do, odds are there are two recent examples of the impeachment process you might be drawing from – Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. But what do you know about the first ever presidential impeachment? There is no better time to revisit the case of Andrew Johnson, the white supremacist President whose impeachment reveals a wild truth about the history of this country. Brenda Wineapple spent the last six years uncovering the details of an erratic and power hungry President thrust into power after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Hear her tell the story of how Johnson's dangerous actions during Reconstruction presented an extraordinary moral dilemma for the nation and its leaders. RELATED READING: The Impeachers by Brenda Wineapple “The First Presidential Impeachment” by Chris Hayes Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads. You'll also get exclusive bonus content from this and other shows. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Liberalism is the ordering principal of American government, and yet liberalism is embattled.  After the end of the Cold War, it was widely believed that liberal democracy would spread inexorably, but instead new challenges to liberalism have emerged. Across the world, authoritarian governments flourish and some countries have begun to backslide away from liberalism. Even here at home, liberalism’s critics on the left and right have found renewed strength. This week Adam Gopnik, author of the new book A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism, sits down to discuss the roots and tenets of liberalism and the serious challenges our liberal democracy now faces. Email us at WITHpod@gmail.com Tweet using #WITHpod Read more at nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening RELATED LINKS: A Thousand Small Sanities by Adam Gopnik On Liberty by John Stuart Mill On the Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill How the South Won the Civil War by Adam Gopnik Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads. You'll also get exclusive bonus content from this and other shows. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

“Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.” In July of 2013, Alicia Garza wrote these words in reaction to a jury’s acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. That post turned into a hashtag which became the rallying cry for one of the most recognizable social movements of this generation. While it can feel like the nation’s current racial discourse is trending downward, the last four or five years has seen an ostensible rapid expansion of social justice consciousness with public opinion polling showing racial attitudes moving in the right direction. Black Lives Matter was an enormous part of catalyzing these public opinion changes and reform movements. Alicia Garza is at the center of it all and joins us to shed light on the origins of #BlackLivesMatter and how it’s evolved in the years since. RELATED LINKS: Black Census Results https://blackcensus.org/ A Colony in a Nation https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780393254228 Dear Candidates: Here Is What Black People Want https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/opinion/black-census-alicia-garza.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share The Trump Scheme to Rig the Census with Dale Ho Ending Mass Incarceration with Larry Krasner  Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads. You'll also get exclusive bonus content from this and other shows. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We just celebrated our one year #WITHpod anniversary! What!? To mark the occasion, we put together a second mailbag episode with producer Tiffany Champion to answer your questions and reflect on the year. Find out who Chris said was his favorite guest, why he loves #WITHpod listeners so much, and what he hopes to do in our second year. Thanks for listening! EPISODES MENTIONED: School Segregation in 2018 with Nikole Hannah-Jones (July 31, 2018) The Rule of Law in the Era of Trump with Kate Shaw (May 22, 2018) The Uninhabitable Earth with David Wallace-Wells (March 5, 2019) Dying of Whiteness with Jonathan Metzl (March 26, 2019) Amazon's Wish List with Stacy Mitchell (January 22, 2019) Abolishing Prisons with Mariame Kaba (April 10, 2019) Our Real Estate Obsession with Giorgio Angelini (July 24, 2019) Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads. You'll also get exclusive bonus content from this and other shows. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

An era of paranoia, the pull of radical politics, the way in which an entire society can fall under the sway of a fever, and how that fever eventually breaks. These themes made up one of the darkest periods of modern American History: The era of McCarthyism and the Red Scare. This week historian and journalist David Maraniss discusses his new book “A Good American Family”, that excavates the story of his own leftist parents as they lived and raised a family during the Red Scare. Maraniss reconstructs his parents’ story by using memoir, archived materials, and corroborating accounts to piece together his family’s own experience. It is a story that gives insight into the experience of those targeted during the Red Scare and themes that we are still seeing and grappling with now. RELATED: A Good American Family by David Maraniss  Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads. You'll also get exclusive bonus content from this and other shows. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On the final day of Passover this year, a gunman walked into a synagogue outside of San Diego, killing one and injuring three more. Exactly six months earlier, a man entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, shouted anti-Semitic slurs and opened fire, killing 11 of those gathered. These acts of violence are part of a marked rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes unfolding across the nation in recent years. Historian Deborah Lipstadt examines these most recent manifestations of anti-Semitism and connects them to their earliest iterations centuries ago. RELATED: Antisemitism: Here and Now by Deborah Lipstadt Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads. You'll also get exclusive bonus content from this and other shows. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Should you be worried about the federal deficit? While campaigning, President Trump followed in the footsteps of his conservative predecessors by fear-mongering about the ballooning deficit but when he got to the White House that concern seemed to disappear when it came to his tax cuts for the rich and increased government spending. In fact, there’s a pattern to the Republicans’ selective concern about increasing the deficit, and it all depends on who holds the power. When you look at the behavior of people in politics, they don’t really care about the national debt as much as they like to talk about it. So what does their bad faith use of the deficit tell us about how important that number actually is? Stephanie Kelton is here to break it all down - the national deficit, the nature of money itself, federal spending, and why it’s time to stop comparing it to a household budget. Email us at WITHpod@gmail.com Tweet using #WITHpod Read more at nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads. You'll also get exclusive bonus content from this and other shows. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What is the most devastating impact Donald Trump has had on the highest office? His lies and rhetoric and bigotry have all had a poisonous effect on our national discourse. But when it comes to his destruction of norms, those are only the ones most visible to the public. What about the destruction of norms going on behind the scenes, disrupting the most critical work necessary for running the federal government? Michael Lewis, the prolific author of "The Big Short", "Moneyball", and many more, turned his attention to the engine rooms of government in the aftermath of President Trump's election. His latest book, "The Fifth Risk", chronicles not only the crippling of federal agencies under the Trump administration, but also the dedicated and tireless work of civil servants who show up every day, no matter what Hear more from Michael Lewis on his new podcast, Against the Rules with Michael Lewis RELATED: The Fifth Risk Medicare for All with Abdul El-Sayed Back to the Future of Transportation with Aaron Gordon Social Infrastructure Week with Eric Klinenberg Sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads. You'll also get exclusive bonus content from this and other shows. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.