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Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.

The Michigan Democratic senate primary provided a test of the power of AIPAC and big money. John Nichols has our analysis.Also: a rehearsal for the election protection groups: the California sherriff who seized 650,000 ballots from November’s referendum, claiming he needed to recount them. Zach Roth of Democracy Docket will explain how the Chad Bianco case provides a test of one key Republican strategy for holding on to the House after the midterms.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Canada has tech bros too, like Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke who has a new idea to link voting rights to how much income tax you paid. Rachel Gilmore joins Paris Marx to discuss how Canadian tech companies like Shopify are pushing terrible right-wing policy ideas while influencing Mark Carney’s agenda.Rachel Gilmore is an award-winning independent journalist and creator of the Bubble Pop newsletter.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Derek welcomes back to the show his very own co-host, Danny Bessner, to talk about his new book, Imperialist Realism: Politics and Culture at the End of the American Century, and how we see imperialist realism in American foreign policy and popular culture. They talk about the concept’s inspiration from the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, the end of mass politics, the decline of grand ideology in U.S. foreign policy, the core features of imperialist realism, the Protestant missionary roots of American foreign policy, imperialist realism in pop culture, and a democratic socialist alternative to current U.S. foreign policy.Order your copy of the book now. Read the new piece from Danny’s Imperialist Realism Substack, “Empire of Grunge.”Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Something weird is happening on the far right. MAGA influencers are calling out the pork industry. RFK Jr. is taking credit for militant animal rescue actions. And the animal welfare movement is taking notice. Astra Taylor joins us again to talk about a forthcoming article she and Aaron co-authored on the shifting political terrain around animal rights. The core question: Could this be the new MAHA (Make America Healthy Again)? A few years ago, it was impossible to imagine that crunchy moms who hate Monsanto would become a key part of Trump’s electoral coalition. But here we are, in part because Democrats created a vacuum on health issues that the right stepped into. We think something similar could be happening today with animal rights—which, if the left doesn’t wake up, could be very bad for all of us.Fighting Fascism Podcast is produced by Nik Damants in collaboration with The Nation.Intro song and music by Horse Radish.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Republicans are plummeting in the polls in the lead-up to the midterm thanks to the unpopularity of the Iran War and the attendant inflation. As my Nation colleague Chris Lehmann has noted, in an attempt to shore up their fracturing base, the GOP has decided to label all Democrats as communist, a weird rhetorical move now being made by Donald Trump and his supporters. I talk to Chris about this strange and dangerous development. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

AP headquarters is seriously considering upgrading the video content to IMAX. In this week’s news: the U.S. and Iran resume strikes after a brief pause (3:25); Gaza talks are close to an agreement on Hamas disarmament and an Israeli withdrawal (10:59); Saudi-Ansar Allah/Houthi attacks escalate (13:37); the U.S. and Saudi Arabia strike Iraqi militia sites (17:10); a drone strike hits two gas ships at Egypt’s Damietta port (21:01); Ukraine attacks an Iranian ship in the Caspian Sea (22:58); the Sudanese army seizes the Omdurman–El Obeid highway (25:46); China expands its satellite and asteroid-defense programs (29:21); wildfires force mass evacuations across Spain and France (32:45); Keiko Fujimori takes office as president of Peru (35:53); and U.S. pressure drives Venezuela and Chad to quit the International Criminal Court (37:35).Note: After recording, a Hamas disarmament deal was announced.Be sure to order your copy of Danny’s new book, Imperialist Realism: Politics and Culture at the End of the American Century. Be sure to watch a replay of last night’s livestream with journalist Jasper Nathaniel about his latest trip to the West Bank.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

As the power of big tech continues to grow, it's more important than ever to understand how these companies use infrastructure and intellectual monopolies to shape more than just the digital world. Cecilia Rikap joins Paris Marx to discuss how these networks of corporate power operate, including how they are systematically used to influence global politics, the economy, and how society views the world.Cecilia Rikap is an Associate Professor at University College London’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose and the author of The Rulers: Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Danny and Derek speak with historian Brad Simpson about the history and evolving meaning of self-determination in international politics and law. They talk about the Wilson-Lenin debate, the Atlantic Charter, the Nazi appropriation of ethno-nationalist self-determination, the decolonization movements of the mid-20th century, the failure of the new international economic order, and the idea's continuing relevance to places like Palestine and Greenland.Get Brad’s book The First Right: Self-Determination and the Transformation of International Order, 1941–2000.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

An impressive alliance of groups have been preparing for months to counter Trump’s threats to Democrats in the midterms. Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward and a member of The Senate Democrats’ Election Protection Tast Force, explains why “we are going to have free and fair elections” in November. Also: Elon Musk calls Christopher Nolan’s film “The Odyssey” “part of a left-wing plan” to “destroy Western Civilization.” John Powers has a differnet view – he’s critic-at-large on NPR’s “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In recent weeks, we’ve seen our skies engulfed in dystopian haze. We’ve had lethal heat waves ruin our Fourth of July cookouts. States have announced emergency water rationing due to record-breaking droughts. Tens of thousands of Europeans have been killed by extreme heat so far this summer; hundreds of thousands are being evacuated by apocalyptic wildfires. And we know it’s just the beginning—this is, after all, not just the hottest summer of our lives, but the coolest summer for the rest of our lives.This didn’t just happen. Climate change is overwhelmingly the result of pollution and deception from specific Big Oil companies that were predicting decades ago that their fossil fuels would cause, in their own words, “globally catastrophic” climate harms that would create “more violent weather” and cause “suffering and death due to thermal extremes.” Even as they used this knowledge to protect their own infrastructure, they orchestrated fraudulent campaigns of climate denial to lock us into the disasters we are currently experiencing.But we’re not powerless in the face of these nightmares. We can take on Big Oil, and the fossil-fueled authoritarianism that these corporations have done so much to engender. And there are few people with more experience in these fights than Jamie Henn, director of Fossil Free Media. He joined us for a great conversation about making polluters pay, the ways clean energy developments have totally transformed the climate fight, and how to balance hope and fear in the midsts of climate chaos.Fighting Fascism Podcast is produced by Nik Damants in collaboration with The Nation.Intro song and music by Horse Radish.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy