Category: Interviews

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.

Mike talks to Lane Kenworthy, a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. His research focuses on social policy, including poverty, inequality, mobility, and economic growth in the United States and other rich countries.

Professor Kenworthy is the author of many academic articles and six books, including Social Democratic America and, most recently How Big Should Our Government Be?, co-authored with John Bakija, Peter Lindert, and Jeff Madrick.

Show Links
Professor Kenworthy’s Website
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Luxembourg Income Study

Mike talks to Jason Brennan, an Associate Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at Georgetown University. He’s the author of a number of books, including The Ethics of Voting, Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know, *Why Not Capitalism?, and, most recently Against Democracy. 

Professor Brennan’s Recommended Reading
Philosophy, Politics, and Economics: An Anthology. Jonathan Anomaly, Geoffrey Brennan, Michael C. Munger, and Geoffrey Sayre-McCord

Political Philosophy: An Introduction by Jason Brennan

Introduction to Political Philosophy YouTube video lecture series.

Madison’s Metronome: The Constitution, Majority Rule, and the Tempo of American Politics. Greg Weiner

Mike talks to Marc Levinson, an economist, historian, and journalist specializing in economic and business issues. He’s a former finance and economics editor for The Economist, and has written for publications including the Harvard Business Review, Foreign Affairs, and The Wall Street Journal. He’s the author of six books, including The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger and, most recently, An Extraordinary Time: The End of the Postwar Boom and the Return of the Ordinary Economy.

Mike talks with Professor Marion Nestle, one of most respected and sought-after academic commentators on food politics, health, and nutrition. She’s the Paulette Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University as well as a Professor of Sociology at NYU, and a Visiting Professor of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell. Professor Nestle has authored countless articles in academic journals and is the author of nine books, including Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health and, most recently, Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning)

They discuss how food policy is made, who it’s made for (Big Agriculture or the American people), and what she thinks of nutrition labels, USDA dietary guidelines, GMOs, and soda taxes, and more.

Recommended Links
Aside from following foodpolitics.com, Professor Nestle suggests that people interested in keeping up with matters related to nutrition and public health check out the Center for Science in the Public Interest