The Nation Podcasts

On this episode of American Prestige, Patrice Lumumba, the first president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has become a mythic figure among the left, due in no small part to the CIA’s role in his ousting and assassination less than one year after the start of his premiership. Stuart Reid, editor at Foreign Affairs, joins Derek to discuss the full story of Lumumba’s downfall, as detailed in Reid’s recent book The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, I speak with Trita Parsi, vice president and co-founder of The Quincy Institute, about the cascading violence in the region. We also take up the Biden administration’s decision to double down on its push for a Saudi/Israeli alliance, a program that could itself deepen the violence. As an alternative, we consider the possibility of other great powers taking over the job of negotiating a settlement to the regions problems. Trita has written on these issues in many venues, including The Nation.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of American Prestige: Iran attacks targets in Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan (1:01); U.S. strikes on Ansar Allah (Houthi) targets fail to deter attacks on shipping (10:17); an Israel-Palestine update (12:55) including a Qatari medicine deal (15:26) and Netanyahu’s take on a Palestinian state (17:41); Taiwan’s presidential election (22:18); Kim of the DPRK (North Korea) lashes out at the South (25:16); tensions continue to escalate between Somalia and Ethiopia (27:06); a Ukraine War update featuring a drone strike on St. Petersburg (29:49); Guatemala’s Arévalo takes office after an apparent coup attempt (32:59); and Biden and Congress make progress on military aid for Ukraine, Israel, and border security (36:32).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 Timnit Gebru to discuss the past year in AI hype, how AI companies have shaped regulation, and tech’s relationship to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Timnit Gebru is the founder and executive director of the Distributed AI Research Institute.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

John Nichols reports on Monday’s Republican caucuses in Iowa, and explains why Iowa is the state with the biggest shift from blue to red between Obama in 2008 and Trump in 2020.Also: The new film "American Fiction," starring Jeffrey Wright, takes up the question, do Black writers have to "write Black"? The film is based on the novel "Erasure" by Percival Everett, which is considerably wilder and more uncompromising than the film. John Powers comments—he’s critic at Large on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of American Prestige, John Gray, emeritus professor of European thought at the London School of Economics, joins Danny for a lively chat about liberalism, the powers that be, and what the duo calls “the bads”. Centering John’s recent book The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism, this wide-ranging discussion tries to make sense of the post-Cold War world, assess the threats posed by political and environmental factors, and reckon with what John sees as the extreme default condition of human life.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Recorded Monday, January 15, 2024:Akbar Shahid Ahmed, senior foreign affairs reporter at HuffPost, returns to the American Prestige podcast to discuss his recent pieces covering the post-Gaza plans of top White House official Brett McGurk and the imminent departure of the White House’s special Middle East envoy on humanitarian issues.Then, for American Prestige subscribers, the group gets into the NSC’s attempts to discredit Akbar’s reporting, the media backlash, how this compares to treatment of reporters under Trump, and more.Subscribe to American Prestige for the full interview!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of American Prestige, Danny and Derek come off the hottest year on record with the new year’s cold, hard facts. This week, South Africa brings a genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) (2:39) while Antony Blinken tours the region (8:48); Iraqi PM Mohammed Shia' Al Sudani is looking to request the withdrawal of U.S. forces (19:09); the Israel-Hizbollah border battles continue to escalate (22:23); the U.S. and U.K. launch strikes on Yemen (25:31); rebels in Myanmar take the border city of Laukkaing (28:49); Ethiopia looks to make a deal with the unrecognized state of Somaliland (33:56); Ukraine is running out of air defenses and shifting to a defensive posture (37:12); armed battles and chaos break out in Ecuador (40:23); 2023 was indeed the hottest year on record (43:55). Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this episode of the Tech Won't Save Us podcast, Paris Marx is joined by Vincent Bevins to discuss the mass protests of the 2010s, the role that social and traditional media played in them, and why the horizontalism of those movements ultimately didn’t work.Vincent Bevins is a longtime foreign correspondent who has worked for the Washington Post, Financial Times, and LA Times. He’s the author of The Jakarta Method and If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Israel's war in Gaza has been going on now for three months, and the IDF said over the weekend they plan to keep the war going for another year. Amy Wilentz talks about Netanhayu’s use of the war to hold on to power.Also: the lies that protect profit, power and wealth in America: they are documented, and dealt with, in a wonderful new book co-authored by Joan Walsh. It's called Corporate Bullsh*t.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy