Sam and Emma host David Pepper, former chair of the Ohio Democratic Party, to discuss his recent book Laboratories of Autocracy: A Wake-Up Call From Behind the Lines, on how the GOP has been chiseling away at democracy from its base, with the Karl Roves and Thomas Hofellers reinventing the gerrymandering wheel in 2010. Pepper begins by looking […]

Sam hosts historian Sarah Milov to discuss her latest book, The Cigarette: A Political History. Milov and Sam walk through tobacco’s role in American culture and the government’s role in developing the cigarette market. From WWI to FDR’s New Deal and the Marshall plan, tobacco (and cigarettes) played a principal role in American politics, economic growth, and […]

Mark Leibovich the Chief National Correspondent of the New York Times Magazine, author of This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America’s Gilded Capital, explains the subculture of the Washington village establishment, the shocking explosion of money in America’s political system, the problem with the Washington correspondence Dinner, how Chris Dodd became Hollywood’s top […]