The Harper’s Podcast

With over 45,000 agents in its ranks, US Customs and Border Protection is the largest law enforcement agency in the country. Yet, as Melissa del Bosque notes in “Checkpoint Nation,” CBP’s jurisdiction extends farther than even congressional leaders realize, and relatively little is known by the broader public about how the agency operates. Last month, del Bosque, an investigative journalist and Lannan reporting fellow at the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute, joined Rachel Poser, a senior editor at Harper’s Magazine, to discuss her article and the issues surrounding border enforcement. Live in conversation in Austin, Texas, at an event co-presented with The Texas Observer, del Bosque and Poser explore how, and why, the CBP has expanded over time, the use and abuse of checkpoints, and the legal strategies currently being employed by groups such as the ACLU in order to push back against CBP’s power. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit harpersmagazine.substack.com

In one of the most closely watched races of this midterm election cycle, Ted Cruz narrowly defeated Beto O’Rourke to gain reelection to the Senate for a second term. Unpopular among Democrats and Republicans alike, Cruz has been a target of national derision since his election on a Tea Party platform in 2012. In “The Tragedy of Ted Cruz,” published in the November issue of Harper’s Magazine, Ana Marie Cox goes in search of the Texas senator, hoping, perhaps in vain, to find some common ground with the man for whom she has an unlikely “soft spot.” Cox joins web editor Violet Lucca to discuss her article, Cruz’s self-made caricature, what she thinks drives the senator, and whether some of the mockery of Cruz and his family goes too far. This episode also deals with the aftermath of the midterm elections: Cox and Lucca discuss their hopes for the future of progressive politics post-Beto, both in Texas and across the country, the roles the media and politicians like Cruz have played in amplifying white nationalist voices, and whether there are any Republicans left to temper Trump’s impulses.Read Ana’s story here: https://harpers.org/archive/2018/11/the-tragedy-of-ted-cruz/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit harpersmagazine.substack.com

Western Pennsylvania is a haunted-house mecca, boasting 40 haunts (as their owners like to call them) within 40 miles. With readymade Rust Belt ruins, low rents, and the horror legacy of George Romero, director of Night of the Living Dead, Martin, and Creepshow, the area offers DIY scares as well as expansive Hollywood attractions. This episode is an audio tour of some of these haunts and the owners who have an undying love for them.Read Rachel Wilkinson’s full story here: https://harpers.org/blog/2018/10/the-haunting-of-western-pennsylvania This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit harpersmagazine.substack.com

By 2040, 70 percent of Americans will live in 15 states. The Republican Party, led by a president elected by a minority of voters, is advancing a set of policies that fewer and fewer Americans support, and with four sitting Supreme Court justices appointed by either President Trump or President George W. Bush, who also lost the popular vote, the impact of this imbalance of power is likely to be felt for decades to come. With political divisions seemingly becoming ever more intractable, are fears that the United States is on the brink of a second civil war really so far-fetched? In his November cover story “Rebirth of a Nation,” Jonathan Taplin proposes that, in order to protect and advance the interests of the majority, progressives must fight to counter federal power, in favor of a new emphasis on states’ rights.In this episode, Taplin joins web editor Violet Lucca to discuss why decentralization is the way forward, how states like California are leading the way, and why he is not optimistic about the so-called blue wave in the upcoming midterm elections. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit harpersmagazine.substack.com

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee—and Brett Kavanaugh’s irate response—was an excruciating bit of political theater, complete with righteous speeches from both sides of the aisle. (It also proved to be not much more than spectacle, as Kavanaugh was sworn in as an Associate Justice earlier this week.) Nevertheless, this event illustrated of how we are socialized to perform and understand gender, race, and class. In this week’s episode, new books columnist Lidjia Haas joins Web Editor Violet Lucca to discuss a handful of recent publications that deal with these issues: Lacy M. Johnson’s The Reckonings, Rebecca Traister’s Good and Mad, and Kristen M. Ghoddsee’s Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism. In the second segment, Rachel Kushner, the author of The Mars Room and Telex From Cuba joins Lucca to discuss an essay she wrote which was included in the October Readings section, pulled from her memories of the late Nineties New York art world. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit harpersmagazine.substack.com

The advent of radical centrism; journalists’ fantasy that they are part of the professional elite; the shuttering of local newspapers; the impending extinction of the book editor; your Comp Lit degree from Brown: All are symptoms and causes of the dissolution of American society. In June, the day after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s upset victory in the Bronx led many (but perhaps too few) to rethink the future of the Democratic Party, and the evening after we’d learned that Trump would be filling his second seat on the Supreme Court, Thomas Frank delves into his freakishly prescient book, Rendezvous with Oblivion: Reports from a Sinking Society. “The con-game is our national pastime,” he says. “And so we come to Donald Trump.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit harpersmagazine.substack.com

Natalie Holly reads Jenn Alandy Trahan’s short story from the September issue “They Told Us Not to Say This.” Then, Trahan joins Web Editor Violet Lucca for a discussion of her work. Trahan is a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, where she was a 2016–18 Wallace Stegner Fellow in Fiction. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit harpersmagazine.substack.com

Hailed as a major victory for conservatives seeking to reduce collective-bargaining rights, the recent Supreme Court ruling in the case of Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council 31 has further emphasized the precarious position occupied by American unions. Formerly ranked in the top tier of nations for collective-bargaining rights by the International Trade Union Confederation, the United States is currently in the fourth of five tiers, alongside Argentina and Peru. As mainstream political support for labor causes has dried up and hard-won protections gotten rolled back, traditional methods of labor activism have been constrained, leaving workers all the more vulnerable to exploitation. In his September cover story “Labor’s Last Stand,” Garret Keizer explores how the labor movement, from union representatives, to grassroots activists, is fighting to secure “a place at the table” for American workers.In this episode, author and Harper’s contributing editor Keizer joined Web Editor Violet Lucca to discuss the challenges and opportunities faced by today’s workforce (unionized or not), and the future of the American labor movement. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit harpersmagazine.substack.com

There are 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, and, by one estimate, one in ten of them has been the victim of some sort of fraud—deceived by scammers who promise to expedite their visas, free them from detention, or help with their asylum claims for a fee. The true scale of these schemes, collectively known as notario fraud, is impossible to know because victims are reluctant to come forward for fear of being deported. And the Trump Administration’s “zero tolerance” policy is now creating the perfect conditions for scammers to thrive. In “The Deportation Racket,” Micah Hauser investigates a husband-and-wife team of con artists who pretended to be lawyers and scammed hundreds of undocumented immigrants in detention centers across the South. In this episode, Hauser, a former fellow at Columbia Journalism School’s Global Migration Project, talks with Harper’s editor Rachel Poser about how the pair operated, and what needs to be done to protect immigrants from fraudsters. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit harpersmagazine.substack.com

When both war and the military-industrial complex hum unchallenged in the background of American life, it turns out that a fighter pilot, in the right circumstances, has the ability to launch a nuclear attack. Barack Obama’s commitment to “modernize” the US nuclear arsenal over the next twenty-five years at a cost of at least $1.2 trillion failed to generate public outrage; now that Donald Trump is president, the call to reevaluate Cold War procedures has become freshly urgent.In his August issue story “How to Start a Nuclear War,” Harper’s Washington Editor Andrew Cockburn reveals just how few controls stand between the president and a nuclear launch. Cockburn joins Web Editor Violet Lucca to discuss why we’re still so close to nuclear war—and what it would take to step back from the brink. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit harpersmagazine.substack.com