#1831 Midterm Madness: Defending the Vote, the Count, the Results, and the Certification
Air Date: 10-30-2026
Today we look at the midterm machinery. The administration's attempts to mess with the election continually lose in court, but the tampering attempts will keep coming: whose ballots get thrown out, which winners get certified, who ultimately gets seated. Voting too big to rig, early and in overwhelming numbers, is only the beginning, followed by people being ready to show up and protect the count.
Read moreMonthly-ish Mix #13 Off the Hook: How the Powerful Duck the Blame and Where They Still Have to Answer
Air Date: 10-27-2026
The Monthly-ish Mix™ is here to get you caught up on the news from September and October without being overwhelming! Organized around a single idea: when something goes wrong, follow where the blame lands. Republicans staged a hearing over Anthony Fauci's diary while a food-borne parasite sickened more than 1,500 people after the Trump administration gutted the systems that track outbreaks. Housing costs get pinned on rent control, and the paperwork of being poor eats hours the wealthy pay someone else to spend. Meanwhile Boulder, Colorado is taking Exxon to court over what the company knew about climate change fifty years ago. The mix closes with the people organizing to protect the midterms and with what Occupy Wall Street left behind.
Covering: September–October 2026
Read more#1830 Power Play: The Women's Sports Boom Is About Power, Not Ratings
Air Date: 10-23-2026
Today we look at the women's sports boom as a power story and explain how women's sports were held back on purpose, from England banning women's soccer for fifty years to colleges spending next to nothing on their women's teams, primarily because the men feared the competition.
Read more#1176 The Gun Debate Is Less of a Debate Than We Think (Throwback)
Publish Date: 10-22-2026
Original Air Date: 4-6-2018
Today we look back to the spring of 2018, when a conservative listener called in looking for common ground on guns and we answered her point by point: the research on defensive gun use, who gets to be the good guy with a gun, what the Second Amendment was written to do, and the policies most Americans, gun owners included, already support. After the shooting at Silver Rail Elementary in Bend, Oregon, every one of those questions is back.
Read more#1829 Poverty Is Hard on Purpose in America and We All Pay the Time Tax
Air Date: 10-17-2026
Today we look at how being poor in America is made harder on purpose. The hours of paperwork it takes to keep food assistance or Medicaid are there to shrink the programs quietly by attrition and make failure feel like a personal problem. The same design runs through a healthcare system that profits when care is denied and the patient doesn't have the time to fight back. The alternative is the kind of program you'd design if you thought everyone living in a wealthy society was worthy of a dignified life.
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