The Truth of the Matter

Shuttered live music venues across the United States are facing an unprecedented threat to their existence. Recognizing the crucial space live music occupies in American life, industry veterans Amber Mundinger and Tamara Deike spent the last year documenting America’s empty iconic venues, coast to coast via their organization “Bring Music Home.” Mundinger and Deike join the podcast to talk about their newly published unique and truly incredible coffee table book (it weighs 9 pounds!) with brilliant images of places like Washington’s 9:30 Club, New Orleans’ Tipitinas, Austin’s Stubb’s, and L.A.’s Troubadour. A docuseries and podcast are to follow. And as Mundinger and Deike discuss, live music is a bipartisan concern!

Stephen Morrison, Director of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, rejoined the podcast to discuss the state of the pandemic, vaccine distribution and hesitancy, and achieving herd immunity in the U.S. 

U.S. active-duty military personnel and reservists have participated in a growing number of domestic terrorist plots and attacks, according to new data from CSIS. The percentage of all domestic terrorist incidents linked to active-duty and reserve personnel rose in 2020 to 6.4 percent, up from 1.5 percent in 2019 and none in 2018. Similarly, a growing number of current and former law enforcement officers have been involved in domestic terrorism in recent years. But domestic terrorism is a double-edged sword. In 2020, extremists from all sides of the ideological spectrum increasingly targeted the military, law enforcement, and other government actors—putting U.S. security agencies in the crosshairs of domestic terrorists. In this episode, CSIS’s Dr. Seth Jones, Senior Vice President and Director, International Security Program, joins the podcast to discuss the findings of his new report, “The Military, Police, and the Rise of Terrorism in the United States.”

Caitlin Welsh, Director of the CSIS Global Food Security Program, rejoined the podcast to discuss how Covid-19 has increased food insecurity in the U.S. and abroad. She also shared her insights into how the Biden administration can take action to strengthen food security, emphasizing that in the U.S., it’s not an issue of food supply, but of economics.To learn more, check out Caitlin’s episode of CSIS’s newest video series Data Unpacked.

Democratic data scientist David Shor joins the podcast to talk about what’s working and what isn’t with the Democratic Party’s approach to voters in gearing up for the 2022 midterm elections. 

Journalist and best-selling author Alec MacGillis joins the podcast to talk about his fascinating new book, “Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America,” a story of regional inequality and economic concentration in America told through the lens of Amazon. MacGillis offers keen insight into what the growing imbalance of wealth in the United States has done to our people and to our politics, about dystopian cities, and about the winners in the one-click economy.

In this crossover episode with the CSIS podcast Coronavirus Crisis Update, Dr. Peter Hotez joined Steve Morrison and Andrew to discuss the anti-vaccine movement, the vaccine-resistant, the turmoil in Texas over lifting the mask mandate in wake of severe weather emergency, and much more. 

CSIS' Director of the Aerospace Security Project, Todd Harrison, joins the podcast to discuss his new study “Defense Against the Dark Arts in Space: Protecting Space Systems from Counterspace Weapons.” The proliferation of missiles, lasers, jammers, and other anti-satellite weapons has been widely documented, but little has been said about ways to defend against these threats—Harrison says what his team wanted to do with this report is look at the other side of the equation. “Yes, we see all these threats to space systems, but what do you do about it?”

Charlie Sykes, Founder and Editor-at-large of The Bulwark and host of The Bulwark podcast joins the show to discuss the campaign to minimalize the events of January 6, tribalism in the Republican Party, and the prospects for bipartisanship in our fractured politics.

Star Washington Post reporter Josh Dawsey joins the podcast to discuss former President Trump’s upcoming speech at CPAC, his efforts to remain the leader of the GOP, the 2022 midterm elections, and the Biden administration’s early days.