10:00 AM Pacific Time: Monday - Thursday
Letters & Politics seeks to explore the history behind today’s major global and national news stories. Hosted by Mitch Jeserich.
Today we spend the hour talking about Washington politics and the Trump presidency. Guest: John Nichols is the national affairs writer for The Nation magazine. He is also a contributing writer for The Progressive magazine and In These Times, an associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin, and a co-founder of … Continued
Today the Trump Administration announced the end of the Obama-era program that protects from deportation undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. To address this issue we are in conversation with guest: Cathi Tactaquin, Executive Director and a co-founder of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. Then we talk to Professor Ronald L. Feinman about … Continued
Host Mitch Jeserich speaks with Louis S. Warren about his book Gods Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America, which describes the pan-Indian religious movement that swept across the west and the great plain as a form of resistance and reconciliation to colonialism. This book is critical to understanding how the Ghost … Continued
As long as there has been fascism there has been anti-fascists, argues our guest Mark Bray. He joins us for a conversation on ANTIFA: from Mussolini’s Italy to Germany’s Weimar Republic to Berkeley, California today. Guest: Mark Bray, historian of human rights, terrorism, and political radicalism in modern Europe. He lectures at Dartmouth College and … Continued
Leading politicians in Nazi Germany saw the American Revolution as a great advancement for the Aryan race and were influenced by US race, immigration and eugenics laws in coming up with their own laws. Today we are in conversation about this history with Yale Law professor James Whitman. Guest James Q. Whitman, Ford Foundation Professor … Continued
` This year marks the 200th birthday of American writer and conservationist Henry David Thoreau. Mitch Jeserich speaks to Laura Dassow Walls, author of Henry David Thoreau: A Life, about Thoreau’s work on Civil Disobedience and his seemingly contradicting support of John Brown’s violent raid on Harper’s Ferry, and witnessing the oncoming Industrial Age. Guest: … Continued
Today we cover the latest happenings on the impact of Hurricane Harvey Floodings with Mark Bebawi, host of KPFTs The Monitor. San Francisco Bay Area Far Right protests turned into largely leftist ones as organizers from the right mostly canceled their events. Joe Arpaio, former sheriff’s pardon by President Trump despite concerns expressed by several … Continued
Today we are in conversation with Nancy MacLean about economist James McGill Buchanan who won the Novel Price in Economics in 1986 and helped laid groundwork of conservative thought that would lead all the way up to the so called Freedom Caucus in Congress. Nancy MacLean is a professor of history at Duke University and author of … Continued
Today we have a conversation on the legal history of free speech including that of hate speech with guest Thomas Healy, professor of law at Seton Hall University. He specializes on issues around freedom of speech. He is the author of the book The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind – and Changed … Continued
Today we talk to Nazif Shahrani about the history and the current situation in Afghanistan. Nazif Shahrani is professor of Anthropology and of Central Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the School of Global & International Studies at Indiana University. Then we continue our series of conversations on the political dynamic in Venezuela with guest George Ciccariello-Maher, he … Continued
