The Nation Podcasts

On this episode of American Prestige, Danny and Derek are back at “it” (the news). This week: in Gaza, a Rafah invasion update and Biden’s “red line” (0:29), more questions about Israel’s postwar plans (6:16), an update on the humanitarian situation and the American “aid pier” (11:10), and the Biden administration’s refusal to punish Israeli rights violations (15:05); Egypt-Israel tensions are escalating as Gaza continues to deteriorate (19:56); in Myanmar, a report on the forced conscription of the nation’s embattled Rohingya minority (22:49); in Sudan, the RSF has surrounded the city of El-Fasher, trapping about 2.5 million displaced civilians (25:36); the US withdrawal from Niger grinds on as the former sends a negotiating team to iron out the details (28:08); Vladimir Putin replaces defense minister Sergei Shoigu (30:34); in Ukraine, a new Russian offensive (33:34) and a visit from Antony Blinken (35:57); prime minister Robert Fico of Slovakia was shot five times in an attempted assassination (36:54); the State Department removes Cuba from a counterterrorism list only to keep it on a terrorism supporter list (38:23); a New Cold War update featuring Biden’s new tariffs on Chinese imports (40:29) and Putin visits Xi Jinping (42:23).Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of Tech Won't Save Us, Paris Marx is joined by Paolo Gerbaudo to discuss how Chinese electric car maker BYD operates, its growing international success against Tesla, and whether it will be able to move into the North American market.Paolo Gerbaudo is the author of The Digital Party and The Great Recoil. He’s a senior research fellow at the Department of Political History, Theories and Geography of Complutense University in Madrid.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The most important event in the history of Israel and Palestine was not the 1948 founding of Israel and the Nakba, or Israel’s 1967 occupation of Palestinian territories. It was the outlawing of immigration of Jews (and others) to the US from Russia, Poland, and Eastern and Southern Europe. That was the purpose of the immigration restriction act passed by Congress in May, 1924, 100 years ago this month. Without that, the Jews of Europe would never have moved to Palestine, Harold Meyerson argues.Also: The New Yorker’s award-winning climate writer Elizabeth Kolbert talks about her fascinating new book, “H is for Hope: Climate Change from A to Z.’”Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of American Prestige, Danny welcomes back Jonathan Hunt, assistant professor at the U.S. Naval War College and a fellow of the Nuclear Security Program at Yale University, to talk about his book The Nuclear Club, which follows the efforts of a select few world powers to maintain exclusive access to nuclear weapons. This second part of the discussion picks up in the mid-1950s after Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech, non-proliferation movement leaders like Irish foreign minister Frank Aiken, the flexible response policy and other changes to America’s nuclear posture under the Kennedy Administration, the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, proliferation optimists vs pessimists, and more through the late 1960s.Note: The views expressed here are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent the views, policies, or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense or its components, to include the Department of the Navy or the U.S. Naval War College.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this special episode of American Prestige: In light of the untimely death of engineer/producer/musician Steve Albini, we wanted to share an interview Danny did with him for an upcoming (non-American Prestige) podcast on grunge music. This was recorded in August 2020.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of American Prestige, Danny and Derek welcome to the podcast Khalid Medani—associate professor of political science, director of the Institute of Islamic Studies, and chair of the African Studies Program at McGill University—for a deep dive into the conflict that has engulfed Sudan since last Spring. They delve into its roots going back to the 1989 coup, break down the makeup of the primary combatants (the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces), how these groups are able to continue recruiting and maintain support networks, the conflict’s catastrophic humanitarian crisis and regional effects, foreign mercenaries and whether it has become a proxy war, efforts of local civil leaders to quell the fighting, and what things might look like moving forward.As Khalid noted, two places to which he recommends you donate are the Sudanese Doctors Union or the Sudan Solidarity Collective.Some of Khalid’s recent work:“The Struggle for Sudan” from Middle East Report’s Spring 2024 issue is a primer on Sudan.Middle East Research and Information Project’s Spring 2024 issue has multiple contributors, including Khalid, writing about the conflict.His book Black Markets and Militants: Informal Networks in the Middle East and Africa, which is free via Open Access.“Opinion: The brutal conflict in Sudan is not a civil war. It’s a war on civilians” from The Globe and Mail.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this week's episode of Tech Won't Save Us, Paris Marx is joined by Ed Niedermeyer to discuss Tesla's stagnation as an electric vehicle manufacturer and what that could mean for its future as competitors cut into their market share. Ed Niedermeyer is the author of Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors, and is the co-host of the Autonocast, a podcast on the future of transportation.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Lots of pro-Palestine encampments on college campuses have been attacked by local police, but UCLA was different: a pro-Israel mob attacked the encampment on April 30. The attack continued for three hours before police stepped in, and they didn’t arrest any of the attackers. The next night, the police themselves attacked and shut down the encampment. UCLA Professor and Chair in Jewish History, David Myers has our report.Also on this episode: There’s no doubt that Israeli women and girls were raped during the Hamas attack on Oct. 7; but there is little evidence to support Israel’s charge that rape was a “premeditated, systematic” strategy by Hamas—offered as a justification for Israel's destruction of Gaza and killing of 35,000 civilians. At the same time, evidence is growing of sexual abuse of Palestinian women held in detention by Israel. Azadeh Moaveni reports on the findings of her reporting for the London Review of Books.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of American Prestige, we welcome back to the pod, Alex Thurston, associate professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Cincinnati and non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute, to discuss the situations in Niger and Chad now that the two nations have respectively kicked out most US troops.We discuss the State Department’s underwhelming treatment of some African heads of state, how this dynamic differs when working with a military junta, what specifically precipitated the US withdrawals from Niger and Chad, AFRICOM’s security-focused framing, how Russia’s role in the region factors into things, and more.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Yousef Munayyer on a president at war with his base.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy