The Brian Lehrer Show

Chi Ossé, NYC Councilmember from Bed-Stuy and housing justice advocate, discusses the fight against deed theft targeting Black homeowners. He recounts how schemes work, why seniors and neighborhoods are targeted, and urgent calls for eviction pauses, legal enforcement, and lawyer funding. Short-term protections and long-term reforms are debated.

Jason Zengerle, New Yorker staff writer and author of Hated by All the Right People, traces Tucker Carlson's rise and ideological shift. He maps how market forces, audience demand, and platform changes pushed Carlson right. He explores Carlson's nationalist ideas, the Nick Fuentes interview and the mainstreaming of extreme voices. He also examines Carlson's influence on young conservatives and his role in broader conservative radicalism.

Listeners share what they are watching, reading and listening to during a cold snap. Conversations highlight spikes in library downloads and HBO adaptations, renewed interest in Infinite Jest and Schitt's Creek, and Oscar- and Grammy-driven viewing. Callers describe outdoor work, bat rehabbing, language practice, and fandom for a new Star Trek series.

Adam Serwer, staff writer at The Atlantic and author on politics, race, and civil liberties, argues that masked ICE agents erode accountability. He discusses how anonymity enables abuse and impersonation, why doxing is not a valid defense, and how masked deployments affect communities, democratic norms, and racialized state power.

With the Westminster Dog Show underway at MSG, listeners share what their dogs deserve a medal for and Elias Weiss Friedman, aka @TheDogist on Instagram, author of This Dog Will Change Your Life (Ballantine, 2025) and host of the YouTube talk show "Dogs with Elias Weiss Friedman", shares what makes the dogs he photographs special. 

Elizabeth Yeampierre, attorney and executive director of UPROSE, talks about Sunset Park Solar, a grassroots project seeking to bring green power to Sunset Park residents.

Eugene Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize–winning American journalist, former columnist and associate editor of The Washington Post, political analyst and author of Freedom Lost, Freedom Won: A Personal History of America (Simon & Schuster, 2026), shares his own family's story as it intersects with America's ongoing struggle with structural racism -- what's been accomplished and what still needs to be done. 

Elora Mukherjee, professor at Columbia Law School and director of Columbia Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, talks about the many children detained by US immigration authorities and argues for alternatives to detention for families.→ Liam Ramos Was Just One of Hundreds of Children at This Detention Center. Release Them All. 

Sigal Samuel, senior reporter for Vox’s Future Perfect, talks about why many people in America are able to ignore politics and what our duty as citizens should be under an authoritarian government. 

Andrew Weissmann, professor of practice at NYU School of Law, co-host of the podcast Main Justice and and the co-author of The Trump Indictments: The Historic Charging Documents with Commentary (W. W. Norton & Company, 2024), offers legal analysis of the news of the day, including the DOJ's release of the rest of the Epstein files, the DOJ's civil rights investigation into the Pretti killing and more.