Next week, Alex Wagner takes over the MSNBC slot once held by Rachel Maddow, who now broadcasts only on Monday evenings. (Wagner will handle the other four nights of the week.) Let’s mark the occasion by dusting off the story that Maddow once declared her favorite. It wasn’t a super-serious segment. It’s one of those […]
William Faulkner once famously wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” I’ve been thinking a lot about that quote, which comes from his 1951 novel Requiem for a Nun, in regards to today’s guest, George Dawes Green. George is the creator of the massively popular event series, radio show, and podcast The […]
Today’s guest is the rapper, podcaster, and author, Zuby. He’s a social media juggernaut who is known for a popular mix of personal empowerment and political provocation that led to a highly publicized (if temporary) suspension from Twitter in 2020 after he broke the British women’s deadlift record and claimed he was the new record […]
Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire, by Jonathan M. Katz, Macmillan, 432 pages, $29.99 The legend of Smedley Butler has sustained the American antiwar movement for nearly a century. A Marine commander who committed unspeakable atrocities in Washington’s “small wars” between the Spanish-American War and the […]
This week, the state of California officially rectified a case of racially motivated eminent domain abuse after nearly a century. In the early 1900s, a black family, Charles and Willa Bruce, moved to Manhattan Beach, California. In 1912, Mrs. Bruce bought up beachfront property which would be turned into a resort. At a time of […]
On this day 200 years ago, Johann Mendel was born. He would come to be known as Gregor (the religious name he received upon entering St. Thomas’s Abbey in Austria-Hungary as an Augustinian Friar) and later as the “father of modern genetics.” Mendel studied math, physics, and eventually botany in school. While conducting experiments breeding […]
“Great moments in unintended consequences”—when something that sounds like a great idea goes horribly wrong. Watch the whole series here. Part One: Housing Costs The year: 2021 The problem: Rent is expensive in St. Paul, Minnesota! The solution: Limit residential rent increases to 3 percent a year, even if there is a change in occupancy. […]