Brian Lehrer: A Daily Politics Podcast

After a shooter injured several people on a NYC subway car, we discuss the weapon, and how it wound up in the hands of a violent individual.  On Today's Show:Ann Givens, public safety editor for WNYC/Gothamist, and Paul Barrett, deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights and the author of Glock: The Rise of America's Gun (Broadway Books, 2013), talk about the gun used by the subway shooter, and how systems failed the alleged shooter and New Yorkers.

On today's show: NY Governor Kathy Hochul addresses the subway shooting, the arrest and resignation of Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin on bribery and campaign fraud charges, as well as the state budget and news from the state capitol.

With vaccines and treatments, is it time to start 'living with COVID'? On Today's Show:Leana Wen, MD, emergency physician, professor at George Washington University, contributing columnist for The Washington Post, and CNN medical analyst, suggests people should take the availability of vaccines and treatments into account when calculating their risks and not go back to masks mandates as long as hospitals are not strained.

On Today's Show:Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and the author of Lessons From The Edge: A Memoir (Mariner Books, 2022), shares her view on the situation in Ukraine.

How should the globe's neoliberal geopolitics adapt to Putin's aggression in Eastern Europe? On Today's Show:Under the shadow of Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine, Anne Applebaum, staff writer for The Atlantic, senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the Agora Institute, and the author of many books including Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism (Doubleday, 2020), shares her prescription for how the world should nurture democracy before it's too late.

Violence at the airport or over mask mandates, rudeness, crime and reckless driving are all on the rise. How have the pandemic's upheavals made our behavior, stranger? On Today's Show:Olga Khazan, staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World (Hachette Go, 2020), explores the theories as to why people are behaving so badly.

It's been a decade since Trayvon Martin was shot and killed. We asked Black listeners to reflect on growing up with visceral images of brutality against Black people. On Today's Show:Building on her New Yorker essay, Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation, poet, educator, memoirist and scholar, examines the challenges of young Black Americans in her new book, The Trayvon Generation (Grand Central Publishing, 2022).

What parallels are there between Russia's invasion of Ukraine and some of the United States' military activities over the past decades? On Today's Show:Gideon Rose, distinguished fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, the former editor of Foreign Affairs and author of How Wars End (Simon & Schuster, 2010), explains why he thinks there are similarities between Russia's invasion in Ukraine and much of U.S. foreign policy and wars over the past few decades.

In a historic vote, New York City's warehouse Amazon workers become the first in the nation to unionize. What does it mean for workers, and the broader labor movement? On Today's Show:Jane McAlevey, organizer, senior policy fellow at the University of California at Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, The Nation's strike correspondent and the author of A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing & the Fight for Democracy (Ecco, 2020), and Gwynne Hogan, reporter for WNYC and Gothamist, discuss the vote and what comes next.

On the first day of Ramadan, we look at the word "inshallah," which literally means 'G-d willing,' but can be used to denote a wide range of sentiments. On Today's Show:Abdullah Shihipar, writer and public-health researcher based at Brown University, joins to discuss how the phrase "inshallah" — literally "G-d willing" — can take on many different meanings for Muslims. Plus, listeners call in to share their hopes for the month of Ramadan and the year ahead.