Beyond Politics

We did our regular check in with Chris Hill, the host of Motley Fool Money, the #1 stock investing radio show in America, and one of the biggest financial podcasts out there.  We look at Microsoft's giant acquisition, what are the big trends to look for in earnings season, and how are live sports doing (hint: amazing). 

Fred Wellman is the former Executive Director of The Lincoln Project, a West Point and Army veteran, and a former Republican.  He's spent years fighting what Donald Trump stands for.  But the insurrection on January 6th, 2020 marked a turning point. He saw something new: a clear parallel to the roots of the fascist movement in Germany in the  1930s growing here in America.  So Fred’s decided to take everything he learned at the Lincoln Project and do something about it. He’s founded  The Beer Hall Project, a new super PAC with a goal of battling Donald Trump and his supporters who are trying to rewrite the history of what really happened on January 6. He joins us to talk about how to win this fight against a Trump movement that is trying to overthrow American democracy.

The Supreme Court followed up its recent ruling on state district maps with a shot across the bow of state Republicans today, blasting their ludicrously gerrymandered Congressional map and sending it back to the drawing board. This is a big deal not just because of how it could affect the count in Congress, but also because it provides a blueprint for how Democrats can fight back against the assault on free elections by using a little focus and tactical smarts.  There's a backstory to how we got here, and there's no one better to tell it than one of its architects: former Ohio Democratic Party Chair David Pepper, author of Laboratories of Autocracy about what Republicans are doing at the state level.  We pulled him onto an emergency podcast to explain what happened, why it's so significant, and most important, what lessons Democrats elsewhere can learn.

Today we talk with former Sunday editor at the Chicago Sun-Times and former metro editor at the Chicago Tribune Mark Jacob about a crisis in media like nothing we have ever seen before. Criticizing the media is nothing new.  But today, the fracturing of the media landscape, the rise of social media, the battle for attention and eyeballs online, and the willingness to brazenly disregard the truth on the part of some politicians has left the media reeling, and unable to help its readers, viewers, and listeners understand what is real and what is invented. The blizzard of lying is coming disproportionately from the Republican Party, and the mainstream media is giving those lies "more credence, more time, and more legitimacy." It's a demoralizing and dangerous situation in a democracy that requires that people have real facts and good faith analysis. The good news: Mark has some ideas about how to fix things.  The not-so-good news? None of them are easy. 

In the aftermath of the insurrection of January 6th 2021, it appeared for a moment that Donald Trump's effort to cast the 2020 election as illegitimate and to overturn the results of that election had come to an end. While 140 Republican members of Congress did vote to overturn the results – literally in the midst of the damage around them in the capitol – Republican leaders ultimately expressed acceptance of the election and a rejection of the insurrection. It seemed like there was a chance that this was an issue that Americans might generally come together on. But in the year since, the opposite has happened. Americans attitudes about that day and everything that led up to it shifted almost immediately, and fell into familiar partisan patterns, yet shocking in the face of the violence that day and the revelations about it since then. And in the past two weeks leading up to the anniversary of the insurrection, a number of polls have returned with alarming results about how Americans view the last election and the violence at the Capitol. One of the best of these polls comes from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The associate director of that poll is Jesse Rhodes. He’s a Professor of Political Science, author of three books and numerous scholarly articles, and he’s here to tell us all about his findings.

In the wake of the January 6 insurrection, a Harvard professor decided, in a matter of days, to teach a course that unfolded in real time and dug deep into what happened on January 6th, the roots of the insurrection, and the still-developing understanding of the events of that day. So what did he and his students learn, and what can we say about the future now that we are a year out?  We wanted to bring the kind of insight that you get in a Harvard course to everybody, so we brought that professor onto the show today. Alexander Keyssar is the Matthew W. Stirling Jr. Professor of History and Social Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and author of “Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?”

Matt joins veteran radio host Howard Monroe to talk about why the insurrection was, yes, an insurrection, where public opinion has gone, and why we are in more peril now than we were a year ago.

As we enter 2022, the biggest question on everyone’s minds – the biggest question in the world – is what will happen with Covid, especially as we deal with the Omicron wave which is continuing to lead to record numbers of cases. So we wanted to check in with one of our favorite guests, Donald G. McNeil Jr. Throughout the pandemic, for millions of readers and podcast listeners in the US and around the world, Donald has been one of the most trusted, thoughtful, and clear explainers on the science of the coronavirus and public health measures to control it. He was the lead reporter on the Covid-19 pandemic for the New York Times in 2020 and since leaving the Times, he’s continued to write and explain the science of Covid to the public. He recently wrote an article titled “Oh, Great. Now I’ve Got Covid.” Donald joins us to explain what happened, why he went with the British approach to quarantining instead of the CDC approach (and what Dr. Anthony Fauci told him about it), and what seems most likely to happen with Covid in 2022 (and why that might be better than you think). 

The most fun show of the year where our panel hands out end of year awards: MVP for Dems and for Republicans, most important news story,  surprising polling finding, under-reported news story of the year, and more. Our panel is Republican political columnist Alicia Preston, former Democratic Congressman Paul Hodes, and host and former Congressional staffer Matt Robison. Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

We call the show Beyond Politics for a reason, and today, we once again step way beyond politics for a fun conversation with astronomer John Gianforte about all of the fascinating news in space and astronomy.  What are we going to see with our new $10 billion telescope? Can we stop killer asteroids with a spaceship, like something out of a movie?  And what can we learn from the brief few days where scientists thought we might have finally gotten a message from extra terrestrial intelligence, and in our own galactic back yard?  Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash