Prison State

It’s Hump Day! Sam speaks with Alec Karakatsanis, founder of the Civil Rights Corps and author of Alec’s Copaganda Newsletter on SubStack, to discuss his recent writings on police body cameras. First, Sam runs through updates on the US Presidential race, dropping inflation, Ilhan Omar’s primary W...
It’s an EmMajority Report Thursday! She speaks with Max Felker-Kantor, associate professor of history at Ball State University, to discuss his recent book DARE to Say No: Policing and the War on Drugs in Schools. Then, she speaks with journalist Erin Reed, author of the Erin In The Morning newsle...
It’s Casual Friday! Sam and Emma speak with political commentator Olayemi Olurin to round up the week in news. First, Sam and Emma run through updates on the totally natural passing of Alexei Navalny, Israel’s raiding of Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, Israel’s new West Bank settlement program, c...
It’s Hump Day! Sam and Emma speak with independent journalist Erin Reed, author of the Erin In The Morning newsletter on SubStack, to discuss the state of anti-trans legislation moving its way around the country in 2024. Then, they speak with Margie Mason & Robin McDowell, investigative repor...
It’s an EmMajority Report Thursday! She speaks with Orisanmi Burton, assistant professor of anthropology at American University, to discuss his recent book Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt. Then, she’s joined by David Vine to discuss his project en...
Sam and Emma host Meg O’Connor, senior reporter with The Appeal, to discuss her recent piece ”POLICE KILLED HIS SON. PROSECUTORS CHARGED THE TEEN’S FRIENDS WITH HIS MURDER.”. Then, they’re joined by Kathy Hempstead, senior policy advisor at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, to discuss the impen...
It’s Casual Friday! Emma speaks with Alex Pareene, Contributing Editor at the New Republic and proprietor of the AP newsletter on Substack, to round up the week in news. Then Emma is joined by political commentator Olayemi Olurin!
Emma hosts Jarrod Shanahan, assistant professor of criminal justice at Governors State University, and Zhandarka Kurti, assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at Loyola University, Chicago, to discuss their recent book States of Incarceration: Rebellion, Reform, and America’s Pun...
Sam and Emma host Jefferson Cowie, Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, to discuss his recent book Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power. First, Sam and Emma run through updates on the GOP acting as the House majority, Ronna McDaniels winning the election for R...
Sam and Emma host Graham Rayman, criminal justice reporter for The New York Daily News, and Reuven Blau, senior reporter for The City to discuss their recent book Rikers: An Oral History. First, Sam and Emma run through updates on this weekend’s mass shooting at Monterey Park, a former New York F...
Sam and Emma host Daniel Medwed, Professor of Law and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University, to discuss his recent book Barred: Why the Innocent Can’t Get Out of Prison. First, Sam and Emma run through updates on Russian escalation, JD Vance’s relationship to a big opioid pill mill physicia...
Sam and Emma host writer Shon Faye to discuss her recent book The Transgender Issue: Trans Justice Is Justice For All. Then, Sam and Emma are joined by Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District to discuss President Biden’s recent student loan debt forgiveness plan, as we...
Sam and Emma host freelance journalist Chris Pomorski to discuss his recent piece in The New Republic ”When Innocence Isn’t Enough.” Then they are joined by Amjad Iraqi, editor at 972 Magazine, to discuss the recent violence in the Gaza Strip. Emma and Sam begin by covering updates on the DOJ sea...
Emma hosts Dorothy Roberts, professor of Law, Sociology, and Civil Rights at the University of Pennsylvania, to discuss her recent book Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families–and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World. Emma first covers yesterday’s simultaneous mass shoot...
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! Emma and Sam first dive into the Uvalde Police’s ever-changing story, the White Hous...
Emma hosts Treva B. Lindsey, professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the Ohio State University, to discuss her recent book America, Goddam: Violence, Black Women, and the Struggle for Justice. First, Emma dives into the right pitching the same nonsense solutions to gun violence, ad...
Emma hosts Brian Hochman, associate professor at Georgetown University, to discuss his recent book The Listeners: A History of Wiretapping in the United States. Then, Emma is joined by journalist Talia Lavin to discuss her recent piece in Rolling Stone ”The Buffalo Shooter Isn’t a ‘Lone Wolf.’ He...
Emma hosts Alexandra Brodsky, civil rights attorney at Public Justice, to discuss her recent book Sexual Justice: Supporting Victims, Ensuring Due Process, and Resisting the Conservative Backlash, and how the culture around sexual assault and harassment has shifted drastically over the last decad...
Sam and Emma host public sector immigration lawyer Daniel Melo to discuss his recent book Borderlines: The Edges of U.S. Capitalism, Immigration, and Democracy, which contextualizes immigration policy within the history of the US, and exploring what we can do to push back against the unfair desig...
Emma hosts Dave Zirin, sports editor at The Nation, to discuss his recent book The Kaepernick Effect: Taking A Knee, Changing the World. Emma starts off by weighing in on former Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney’s excoriating testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, where she...
The MR Crew are off for Rosh Hashanah today (happy New Year for all who celebrate!), but Sam doesn’t leave you hanging-he sits down with Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the University of California, Berkeley Law School, to discuss his recent book Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Po...
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...
Sam and Emma host Nick Estes, host of The Red Nation Podcast, to discuss his recent book Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence To Native Liberation, on the relationship between policing and surveillance, and Native communities in the US, both inside and out of reservations. Nick, Emma, and ...
Sam and Emma host Rosa Brooks, law professor at Georgetown University, to discuss her recent book Tangled Up In Blue: Policing in the American City, and her experiences as a part-time volunteer reserve police officer in Washington, D.C. Professor Brooks discusses how she came to the topic; follow...
Sam and Emma host Heather Parton, columnist at Salon.com and proprietor of “Digby’s Hullabaloo,” and talk with attorney Steven Donziger about the criminal conspiracy that Chevron has been enacting against him. Heather, Sam, and Emma delve deep into the chokehold Donald Trump has over Republican f...
Sam and Emma host author and activist Victoria Law to discuss her new book, “Prisons Make Us Safer”: And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration, on how our perception of incarceration has been wrong from the start. Sam, Emma and Victoria explore our carceral state and how racism and social contr...
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...
Sam and Emma host Texas State history professor Sarah R. Coleman to discuss her new book The Walls Within: The Politics of Immigration in Modern America on how immigration law has evolved in the last 50 years in America. And progressive activist Nabilah Islam joins us in the Fun Half to discuss w...
Sam and the MR crew break down the top stories of the past week including protests in Kenosha and Portland as well as the RNC as we hurdle into the homestretch of the 2020 presidential election.
Sam hosts Garrett Felber, professor of history at the University of Mississippi, to discuss his new book, Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State. Sam and Felber discuss the organizing tactics used by black nationalists from within the car...
Michael Brooks hosts Alexandria Neason, staff writer at the Columbia Journalism Review, to discuss her piece “Officials Say…” and her reporting on the relationship between the media and police.
Michael Brooks hosts Wosny Lambre (@BigWos) of the Athletic and Count the Dings network to discuss the protests underway across America.
Sam breaks down the latest round of protests and Trump’s efforts to rally the silent majority. Sam reviews Trump’s call state governors in the show’s free half, where the president demanded they “dominate” protestors and jail those who organized the protests. He also investigates Trump’s bible ph...
Peter Edelman (@peterbedelman), Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law and Public Policy and the faculty director of the Center on Poverty and Inequality at Georgetown University Law Center, joins us to discuss his book, Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America.
On today’s show: Trump wants to abolish immigration judges. Kris Kobach, a possible pick for Trump’s “immigration Czar,” advocates for “processing towns” where asylum seekers are concentrated into “camps.”
Alexandra Natapoff (@ANatapoff), Law professor at U.C. Irvine, criminal law scholar, and author, joins us to discuss her book, “Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal.” What is a misdemeanor, and how is it different from a fe...
Benjamin Dixon (@BenjaminPDixon ), co-founder of the North Star and Virgil Texas (@virgiltexas ), of Chapo Trap House, join us.
Bernard E. Harcourt (@BernardHarcourt), the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of  Law and Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, joins us to discuss his new book, ‘The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens.’
Deven Nunes out on the Intelligence Committee and replaced by someone who might be worse and more on Fox’s sexual harassment culture.