Category: Interviews

Mike talks to journalist and researcher Dr. Sarah Kendzior about the threat posed by the Trump presidency, media elites & ‘flyover country’ and lots more.

Dr. Kendzior is a columnist for Canada’s Globe and Mail, and her work has has appeared in multiple national outlets in the U.S. including Politico, Slate, The Atlantic, and the New York Times. She’s also the author of the best-selling essay collection, The View from Flyover Country.

Dr. Kendzior has a PhD in anthropology, with her academic work focusing on the authoritarian states of the former Soviet Union and how the internet affects political mobilization, self-expression, and trust.

She also maintains an always-fascinating Twitter account and was named one of “the 100 people you should be following on Twitter to make sense of global events” by Foreign Policy magazine.

Follow Dr. Kendzior
– Twitter | her website

Show Links
– Evan McMullan
– Rick Wilson

Mike talks with Dr. Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Dr. Drezner is the author of multiple books, including Theories of International Politics and Zombies, The System Worked: How The World Stopped Another Great Depression, and most recently, The Ideas Industry: How Pessimists, Partisans, and Plutocrats are Transforming the Marketplace of Ideas.

In this interview, Mike and Dr. Drezner discuss public intellectuals, thought leaders, TED Talks, self-promoting academics, why economists are more popular than political scientists, ‘Trump vs. The Blob’, North Korea, and lots more!

• Follow Dr. Drezner on Twitter
• Dr. Drezner’s Website

Dr. Drezner’s Recommended Reading
– Realpolitik: A History. Jon Bew
– The Death of Expertise. Tom Nichols
– The Age of Anger. Pankaj Mishra
– From the Ruins of Empire. Pankaj Mishra
– The Perils of Privilege. Phoebe Maltz Bovy

Mike talks with James Fallows, a legendary figure in American journalism. Mr. Fallows was chief speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, editor of US News & World Report, a program designer at Microsoft, and is currently a national correspondent for The Atlantic, a magazine he’s written for since the late 1970s. His work there has won great acclaim, including a National Magazine Award. In addition to his journalism, Mr. Fallows is the founding chairman of New America, a think tank committed to renewing American politics, prosperity, and purpose, and the author of numerous books on subjects as diverse as the news media, travel, America’s war in Iraq, and, most recently, two books on China: Postcards from Tomorrow and China Airborne.

• James Fallows’ Atlantic Columns
• Follow James Fallows on Twitter

Show Links
– Scrivener
– Tinderbox
– Scapple

First up is Mike’s interview with political scientist Larry Sabato. Professor Sabato is the director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, which includes Sabato’s Crystal Ball – the foremost election forecasting site in the United States. Professor Sabato is the author of many books, including A More Perfect Constitution, The Kennedy Half-Century and, most recently he was the lead editor on Trumped: The 2016 Election That Broke All The Rules. He regularly appears on national news outlets such as Fox, CNN, and MSNBC offering invaluable insight and analysis of polls and elections.

After the interview, Mike and Jay respond to listener mail.

Episode Links
– Follow Professor Sabato on Twitter: @LarrySabato
– Sabato’s Crystal Ball
– Decision Desk HQ
– CQ Almanac
– Almanac of American Politics
– Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections
– Daily Kos Elections
– Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire
– The Bellwether: Why Ohio Picks the President. Kyle Kondik

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Mike talks to Jeremy Haile, co-author of the Indivisible Guide – a practical guide to influencing Members of Congress, written by a team of former Congressional staffers. From 2008-2012, Jeremy served as a legislative aide to Rep. Lloyd Doggett along with Indivisible board members Ezra Levin and Sarah Dohl. Since then, Jeremy has worked in criminal justice reform advocacy at The Sentencing Project and as a public interest lawyer in San Francisco.

A longtime activist, Jeremy’s advocacy has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and NPR’s All Things Considered. His writing has appeared in such publications as The Marshall Project, The Nation, and The Hill. Jeremy has given talks to numerous audiences, including students at Harvard Law School and Princeton University.

Jeremy’s Recommended Reading (and Listening)
– The Unwinding. George Packer
– Evicted. Matthew Desmond
– The New Jim Crow. Michelle Alexander
– Pod Save America

After we went off air, Jeremy also mentioned OurStates, which “connects communities to actionable information and tools to reject the Trump / GOP agenda in every state and protect communities from harm.”

Mike talks to Republican pollster and political analyst Kristen Soltis Anderson. Ms. Anderson is co-founder of the research and analytics firm Echelon Insights, a contributor at ABC News, a Washington Examiner columnist, a regular guest on shows like Morning Joe, Fox News Sunday, and Real Time with Bill Maher, author of The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America (And How Republicans Can Keep Up), and the co-host of The Pollsters, a bipartisan weekly podcast.

Show Links
– The Pollsters Podcast
– The Weekly Substandard Podcast
– Huffington Post Pollster
– The Lost Majority, by Sean Trende
– Sean Trende’s RealClearPolitics articles

Follow Kristen
– Twitter
– Her Website

Mike talks to Professor Andrew McAfee, Co-Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Initiative on the Digital Economy and a Principal Research Scientist at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Professor McAfee’s work has appeared in numerous academic and popular publications, including the Harvard Business Review, The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. He is the author of a number of books, including The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (co-authored with Erik Brynjolfsson).

– Professor McAfee on Twitter

Mike talks to UC Berkeley economist Brad DeLong. Professor DeLong, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration, blogs at ‘Grasping Reality with All Tentacles‘ – one of the best economics blogs around.

Topics they discuss include economic inequality, economic growth, why this is the best time ever to be poor (in the United States, at least), grifters and suckers, alien sinister forces, McDonalds, restaurant gift cards, how the best con artists are those who can con themselves, and lots more.

– Brad DeLong on Twitter

Mike talks with political scientist Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, contributing writer for The Atlantic, columnist for National Journal, and the author of many books on U.S. Politics, including It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism, coauthored with the Brookings Institution’s Thomas Mann.

Dr. Ornstein’s Recommended Reading
Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer–and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class. Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson

American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper. Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson

The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics. John Judis.

Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism–From Goldwater to Trump and Beyond. E.J. Dionne

Mike talks with Steve Hilton, the founder of Crowdpac, which he created in 2014 in order to help reconnect regular people to politics by making it easier for everyone to learn about politicians, find and support candidates that match their beliefs, and even run for office. Prior to starting Crowdpac, Steve was a director of strategy for former UK Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. In addition to running Crowdpac, Steve teaches at Stanford University’s Institute of Design, is a commentator for Fox News, and is the author of More Human: Designing a World Where People Come First.