Afghanistan

It’s an EmMajority Report Thursday! She speaks with Daniel J. Galvin, professor of political science at Northwestern University, to discuss his recent book Alt-Labor and the New Politics of Workers’ Rights. Then, she’s joined by Richard Beck, senior writer at n+1 Magazine, to discuss his recent p...
It’s an EmMajority Report Thursday! She speaks with Alex Kane, senior staff reporter at Jewish Currents, to discuss his recent piece entitled “A “McCarthyite Backlash” Against Pro-Palestine Speech.” Then, she speaks with Shah Meer Baloch, reporter covering Pakistan for The Guardian, to discuss hi...
It’s another EmMajority Report Thursday! She speaks with Noah Kulwin and Brendan James to discuss the most recent season of the Blowback podcast. Then, she’s joined by freelance writer Garrison Lovely to discuss his recent piece in The Nation entitled ”Confessions of a McKinsey Whistleblower.” Em...
Sam hosts Spencer Ackerman, columnist for The Nation and author of the Forever Wars newsletter on Ghost, to discuss his recent piece ”The Unlearned Lessons From the War in Iraq”.  Sam begins by running through updates on the IPCC’s report on catastrophic warming levels, a brand new Fox lawsuit, t...
Sam and Emma break down the biggest headlines of the last week, in Sam’s first news day back in studio! They begin by unpacking the fact that over half of Americans, per CDC estimates, have contracted COVID at least once now, discussing the intra-studio experiences with the virus and how vastly i...
Sam and Emma break down a big weekend in news, from the SCOTUS confirmation hearings of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, from labor to COVID and more! They begin by tackling the continued holdup on aid to Afghanistan (alongside other war-torn regions like Yemen) by the ...
It’s Casual Friday! Sam and Emma host Ben Burgis, columnist at Jacobin, host of Give Them An Argument and author of Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters, to round up the week in news. Then, Sam and Emma are joined by comedian Jena Friedman, host and...
Sam and Emma host writer and filmmaker Rupert Russell to discuss his recent book Price Wars: How the Commodities Markets Made Our Chaotic World, on how the profits in Wall Street come from placing bets on the products most central to our society’s functioning. First, Rupert situates his studies o...
It’s Casual Friday! Sam and Emma host Heather Digby Parton, contributing writer at Salon.com and proprietor of the blog Hullabaloo, to round up the week in news. Then, Sam and Emma are joined by Matthew Film Guy! Heather, Sam, and Emma dive into the Democratic party’s inability to not react to ev...
Sam and Emma are joined by Sen. Nina Turner, candidate for Congress in Ohio’s 11th District to give an update from the campaign trail. Then, they are joined by Ben Dixon of The Benjamin Dixon Show to round up the week in news. Lastly, comedian David Cross joins the MR Crew ahead of his new comedy...
Sam and Emma host Claudia Goldin, Professor of Economics at Harvard University, to discuss her recent book Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey Toward Equity, on the history of women’s entry into the workforce and how they transitioned from a choice between career or family, to an oppo...
It’s Casual Friday with a very special guest! Sam and Emma host Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota’s 5th District, whose recent book, This Is What America Looks Like: My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman, is out in paperback now! Representative Omar, Sam, and Emma take on a variety of issu...
Emma hosts Rafia Zakaria, weekly columnist at The Baffler, to discuss her recent book Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption, on how feminist thought has been by the ideology of whiteness, allowing a feminism to surface that reinforces capitalism and the exploitation of women of color. Parti...
Sam and Emma are on Shutdown Watch today. They tackle the week ahead in Congressional negotiations and gridlock, as we hurtle towards the potential scuttling of Biden’s agenda and looming financial crisis if no action is taken. They start the show by touching on the increasingly polarized divide ...
Sam and Emma host Craig Whitlock, investigative reporter at the Washington Post, to discuss his recent book The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War. Sam and Emma first touch upon the resounding victory for Gavin Newsom in the California recall election from last night, and discuss New...
Sam hosts Russ Feingold, President of the American Constitution Society and former United States Senator from Wisconsin, to discuss the legacy 9/11 has had on the American national security state, and what to expect going forward, to discuss the legacy 9/11 has had on the American national securi...
It’s Casual Friday! Sam and Emma host Heather Digby Parton, contributing writer at Salon.com, to wrap up the week in news, from the Texas abortion law’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and its civil-bounty policy, to the upcoming cut off of federal unemployment benefits. Heather, Sam, and Emma start o...
Emma hosts James Risen, Senior National Security Correspondent at the Intercept, to discuss his recent piece ”A War’s Epitaph: For Two Decades, Americans Were Told One Lie After Another About What They Were Doing In Afghanistan”, on how bad the “good war” has been since it began. James and Emma w...
Sam and Emma hosts Tim Higgins, Wall Street Journal reporter and CNBC contributor, to discuss his recent book Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century, on how Elon Musk sells the future, and how much of that vision can actually be guaranteed. They jump off from JB Straubel’s inven...
Sam’s back this week as him and Emma host infectious disease specialist  Dr. MarkAlain Dery, infectious disease physician and epidemiologist at Access Health Louisiana and host of the daily NoiseFilter Podcast, to discuss the fallout from Hurricane Ida making landfall in Louisiana, the evacuation...
It’s Casual Friday! Emma hosts Alex Pareene, contributing editor at The New Republic and author of The AP newsletter on Substack, to wrap up the events of the week. Emma starts off with some righteous indignation towards former Trump National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster saying to resident CNN ...
Emma hosts Dr. Nikki Usher, professor of journalism in the College of Media at the University of Illinois, to discuss her recent book, News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism, on the troubles of both the supply and demand sides of mainstream US media. D...
It’s Casual Friday! Emma is joined by Benjamin P. Dixon, host of The Benjamin Dixon Show, to wrap up a big week in news. Benjamin and Emma dive right into the really heavy events of the last week in Afghanistan and how Biden has at least proved his ability to hold strong under media pressure. Emm...
Sam and Emma host Spencer Ackerman, author of the Forever Wars newsletter on Substack, to discuss his recent book Reign Of Terror: How The 9/11 Era Destabilized America And Produced Trump. Sam, Emma, and Spencer jump off of a Charlie Kirk nativist clip to dive into the start of the war on terror ...
Sam and Emma tackle a major week in news, starting with the fall of Kabul to the Taliban and the Biden administration’s lackluster, finger-pointing response. They start by taking a bird’s eye view of the fall of Kabul by going back to the beginning, when Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) was the s...
It’s Casual Friday! Sam and Emma host Ben Burgis, columnist at Jacobin, host of Give Them An Argument With Ben Burgis, and author of Canceling Comedians While the World Burns: A Critique of the Contemporary Left, to cover the top stories of the week. Ben, Sam, and Emma start off with a discussion...
Sam and Emma are joined Derek Davison & Dan Bessner, co-hosts of the American Prestige Podcast. Derek and Dan start off by summarizing the first (almost) 200 days of the Biden Administration’s foreign policy in comparison with their original goals, looking into the continued establishment of ...
Sam hosts Heather “Digby” Parton to discuss the week’s top stories, including the infrastructure negotiations, SCOTUS decisions to gut voter rights, and more. Then, WGA East Executive Director Lowell Peterson joins to discuss the unionization efforts at MSNBC Digital. Digby and Sam start off the ...
Sam and Emma host Adam Weinstein, Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute, to explore the status of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and what the region might look like moving forwards. They look into why the Pentagon might want a quick withdrawal now that they are committed to withdrawing at ...
Sam hosts Heather Parton, columnist at Salon.com and proprietor of the überblog “Digby’s Hullabaloo,” and friend and known pacifist David Feldman. With the former, they chat about the U.S.’s relationship with both domestic and foreign violence, discussing the devastating tragedies of gun violence...
On today’s show: Sam hosts Stephen Wertheim (@stephenwertheim), deputy director of research and policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, to discuss Joe Biden’s foreign policy appointees and why the president-elect should resist the Washington establishment’s desire to restore th...
Trump copies Bush in Afghanistan and South Asia and why his new Afghan strategy will lead to more civilian killings.
Today, @RafiaZakaria joins Michael (in for Sam) to talk about the intersection of war reporting and gender. How war is viewed in culture, from Katy Perry videos to Tina Fey’s “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” as frivolous adventure. Rafia’s critique of the deployment of feminism-based messaging being used ...
Intercept co-founder, journalist and author of the new book The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government’s Secret Drone Warfare Program, Jeremy Schaill explains the leaks delivered to the Intercept that reveal the Obama Administration’s global assassination program. How the Obama Administrati...
Guardian columnist and author of the new book Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing Out of Catastrophe (buy it on Jet.comor Amazon) Antony Lowenstein explains what “disaster capitalism” means. Privatization and the European and American strategy to make life harder for refugees. How Western polic...
Journalist Guy Lawson, author of the forthcoming book, Arms and the Dudes: How Three Stoners from Miami Beach Became the Most Unlikely Gunrunners in History, explains how two stoners in Miami Beach who broke into the global arms industry. The stunning realities of the Bush Administration. Insurge...
Director, New Models of Policy Change, New America Senior Fellow Heather Hurlburt explains what led to the resignation of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, why Hagel stumbled as a leader of the Pentagon, the internal politics of the Obama White House, why Hagel will stay on even with Administration ...
The Koch funded  Americans For Prosperity mails out hundred of thousands of dishonest voter guides, local news bury’s the lead, Bill O’Reilly offended by Stephen Colbert mocking his global fighting force idea, O’Reilly says Colbert has nothing useful to say, American troops will stay in Afghanist...
Journalist Rafia Zakaria explains the brutal track record of the Taliban and ISIS in attacking women, the all female ISIS brigade that monitors women, medieval imagery, Islamic insurgencies, the Orientalist imagination and how to address global human rights systemically.
Richard Kahlenberg, Century Foundation Senior Fellow, on the right to unionize, Taft Hartley and why labor movements haven’t seen same progress as civil rights movement.  Texas fails to get DOJ support for voter ID laws and massacre in Afghanistan fails to provoke real question: why are we there?...
Blogger, professor and Middle East specialist, Juan Cole on the regime crackdown in Syria, expulsion of Hamas and Afghanistan reaction to Qur’an burning.  Plus, Wikileaks’ massive email dump.  In the better half, Mitt Romney shows again he’s not a regular Joe and bad news for Murdoch and the Sun....