Air Date: 3–11-2026

Today is episode 1776, in the year of our nation's 250th birthday, and we thought the occasion called for something big. So, we're tracing the full arc — from the constitutional compromises that made this country possible to the authoritarian vanity project that those compromises eventually also made possible. We're talking about the history, the structures, and the insecure current-but-temporary president who thinks a $400 million ballroom and a coin with his face on both sides will make him a pharaoh.

Direct Download

Air Date: 2-19-2026

Today we trace the pipeline from masculine grievance to fascism. We'll hear how ICE agents' own family members describe them as low-IQ bullies chasing signing bonuses, why a former white nationalist explains that the alternative to unpacking discomfort is becoming overtly racist, how incel culture evolved from lonely forums into a MAGA recruitment tool, and what researchers found about why men socialized to equate violence with manhood end up joining state-sanctioned death squads.

Direct Download

Air Date: 2-15-2026

Today we explore the gap between free speech rhetoric and the reality of arrested reporters. We'll hear how a decade of cancel culture panic over college students gave way to actual government suppression of journalists, why the DOJ is perverting a law designed to fight the Ku Klux Klan to prosecute Black journalists, how the administration that promised to "bring back free speech" is maintaining lists of forbidden words, and what history teaches about humor as a weapon against authoritarianism.

Direct Download

Original Air Date: 8-25-2017

Air Date: 1-25-2026

Today we examine education as the battleground for democracy itself. We'll hear how authoritarians erase history to maintain power, why liberal arts colleges don't exist in authoritarian societies, how the administration is punishing universities for their political views, and what the detention of student protesters reveals about the cost of dissent in Trump's America.

Direct Download

Air Date: 1-21-2026

Today, we look at ICE's reign of terror as a paramilitary occupation force and the communities pushing back. We'll hear about Renee Good, an unarmed woman shot dead by federal agents, and Keith Porter, killed by an off-duty agent on New Year's Eve, in addition to historical parallels from the Civil Rights-era Selma, Alabama, and the Boston Massacre. The signs of hope here are that the oppressed won those fights and the oppressors were forced to retreat - there's every reason to believe that the same pattern can repeat today.

Direct Download

Air Date: 12-26-2025

Authoritarian governments are always very focused on making it look like they have everything on absolute lock down. Everyone in lockstep, everything proceeding according to plan. But they do this for propaganda purposes, not because it has anything to do with reality. In fact, the opposite is always true. All of which is to say that conservatives are not in chaos because Trump is particularly chaotic, though he is. They're in chaos because that is the natural result of attempting to enforce monolithic thinking and ideological conformity.

Direct Download

Original Air Date: 6–22-2020

Today we take a look at the history of racist policing which flows seamlessly into our present racist policing which itself flows into Trump's authoritarian glee at the opportunity to consolidate violent, racist power in response to protests against violent, racist power.

Direct Download

Air Date: 10-28-2025

As we were looking for episode topics, I came across an article making the case that racism is a real problem in the country and that there were lots of recent examples that proved the point. And I was like, "Racism? In the US?! In Trump's Republican Party?? That doesn't sound like the country I've heard of." (sarcasm) But then we looked into it and it turns out racism is everywhere and also quite bad. (true)

Direct Download

Air Date: 10-25-2025

Trump's attacks on free speech, particularly with the use of the Federal Communications Commission, goes far beyond the Jimmy Kimmel story. We're in the middle of an all-out assault on  freedom of speech, a free and unbiased press, and freedom of association.

Direct Download