#1809 Democrats Seek a Blue Wave, Progressives Push Democratic Socialism, GOP Revive the Red Scare.
Air Date: 7-18-2026
Today we examine recent primary elections and how the political smear of crying 'socialism' has been dusted off and aimed at a new generation of candidates. What's changed is that the people being smeared are actually winning elections, and the more the establishment called them dangerous, the stronger their numbers got.
Read more#1801 Counterfeit Populism: Trump, the 2026 Primaries, and the Era That's Ending
Air Date: 6–17-2026
Today we trace a pattern that repeated across half a dozen states this primary season: working-class candidates running on the cost of living beat the opponents party leadership hand-picked and funded. It looks like ordinary election news, but it's more pieces of a larger shift already underway; away from a politics of left against right and toward a new era of the elite vs working people.
Read more#1791 Jim Crow 2.0 — SCOTUS Kills the Voting Rights Act and Unleashes the Gerrymandering War
Air Date: 5–12-2026
Today we examine the redistricting scramble unleashed by the Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act. We'll hear how Southern states moved within days to crack majority-Black districts, how Tennessee banned public input to rush through new maps, and why every governor's race, state legislative seat, and secretary of state contest in 2026 is now a redistricting fight.
Read more#1774 Monthly-ish Mix: Who's in Charge?—The Scramble for Control of Nations, Bodies, and Minds
Air Date: 3-3-26
The Monthly-ish Mix™ is here to get you caught up on recent news without being overwhelming! This month we examine the multi-front struggle for control: military force and economic coercion seizing resources abroad, institutions weaponized to constrain bodies at home, platforms and propaganda capturing minds, and the democratic resistance proving that organized people can still win.
Read more#1769 Politics Beyond the Ballot Box: Elections and the Movements that Power Them
Air Date: 2-1-2026
Today we examine what's actually working against the Trump regime and the role of this year's elections. Unsurprisingly, his own voter fraud investigation just proved him a liar, Democrats are overperforming expectations in House special elections, and Zohran Mamdani's campaign based on having fun in community needs to be a model for every movement against authoritarianism.
Our Top Takes this week are about 55 minutes, with the remainder of the show diving deeper into policing immigration, power and organizing, voting rights, and candidacy.
Read more#1749 Democracy: In Theory, In Practice, and Under Threat
Air Date: 11-4-2025
Elections are always coming up, some sooner than others, so we thought we would take a look at the state of our democracy and what we must do to maintain it in the face of the greatest direct assault on our institutions we've seen in our 250 year history.
Read more#1550 Red States, Where Democracy Goes to Die and Terrible Legislation is Born (Throwback)
Original Air Date: 3–21-2023
Today, we take a look at how GOP-controlled states are subverting democracy with a form of "competitive autocracy" and some of the horrifying legislation these states then pass after they are no longer subject to the opinions of the general public.
Read more#1656 How Far He Will Go: Election lies, intimidation, interference, insurrection
Air Date: 9-17-2024
It's not just the threat of the electoral college handing the presidency to the loser of the popular vote, nor the specter of a repeat of a January 6th-like event hanging over the election - there's also copious lies and disinformation including a new and improved nazi-to-Republican-talking-point-pipeline, and fresh new intimidation and voter suppression tactic experiments underway in the laboratories of democracy.
Read more#1654 Demographics of Democracy: Decoding cohorts of voters that will decide the election
Air Date: 9-10-2024
It's said that we live in a melting pot here in the United States. Perhaps it's more of a salad bar, who knows? In any case, there are a lot of people coming from a lot of different backgrounds, cultures, histories, and geographies all about to vote in a few weeks. Today, we try to understand, at least roughly, how people's backgrounds influence their vote.
Read more#1653 Money-N-Politics: SuperPACS, Crypto, Billionaires, and Public Funding of Elections
Air Date: 9-6-2024
We're living in the world that dark money in politics and Citizen's United built. But since that Supreme Court ruling in 2010, we've invented cryptocurrency that promises to be a brand new source of opacity and financial power built on smoke and mirrors.
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