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I’m honored to talk with JAMES STEELE, of the investigative reporting team, Barlett & Steele. He and DON BARLETT worked together for over 50 years, won journalism’s highest awards, wrote nine books. Don Barlett died this past fall. Their 1991 Philadelphia Inquirer series America: What Went Wrong? showed how Wall Street and Washington were squeezing the middle class and fueling income inequality and led to a best-selling book. That was 1991 B.C. Before Clinton. They have been on that beat ever since. We did an episode in 2012 on their Betrayal of the American Dream. Jim and I talk about their partnership, about how we got here, and what it feels like to have your warnings ignored. Learn more: barlettandsteele.com 

Ever the real estate guy, Trump unleashes a demo crew on the government, says US should develop Gaza’s beachfront. Elon Musk invades federal agencies, accesses all our data, brags about throwing our global humanitarian aid in a wood chipper. Criminal, cruel, and unconstitutional. Here’s my 2020 conversation with JEAN GUERRERO, about her book, HATEMONGER: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda. Chief architect of Trump’s Muslim travel ban and his family separation policy, Miller has even more power this time around as White House Deputy Chief of Staff. Learn more at jeanguerrero.com

A week into Trump 2.0, the cruelty and overreach are on full display, and the media and the Democrats are not up to the challenge. I turn to longtime Republican strategist, STEVE SCHMIDT, who abandoned the GOP in 2018 and co-founded the Lincoln Project. He’s now perhaps the most articulate, full-throated and damning critic of his former party and the inadequate opposition. You can learn more at steveschmidt.substack.com or The Warning with Steve Schmidt on YouTube.

TERRENCE McNALLY is my guest this week. In February 2014, I took a hiatus from this show after 17 years. I thought it might be the end of the line, and before signing off, turned to journalist and best-selling author, SARA DAVIDSON, to interview me.  I returned to these conversations In 2017 after Trump’s election. So here we are – 11 years after that hiatus and this conversation, 8 years after my return, and a few days after Trump’s second inauguration. How did things look to me then as I reflected both backward and forward?

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STEVE WASSERMAN has spent half a century in the world of books, newspapers, and ideas, as an opinion editor at the LA Times, editor of the LA Times Book Review; and as an editor at several major publishers. We’ll talk about that lifetime of work, how publishing and the press have changed, and about his first book, a memoir, TELL ME SOMETHING. TELL ME ANYTHING. EVEN IF IT’S A LIE – with cameos from Susan Sontag, Orson Welles, Jackie Kennedy, Robert Scheer, Gore Vidal. He’s now the publisher at Heyday Books, a fifty-year old independent publisher in Berkeley. Learn more at heydaybooks.com 

With Trump acting as if he were already president – and madly so – a number of the wealthy and powerful are stepping over each other to obey in advance. A clear step on the path toward authoritarianism cited by both Tim Snyder in On Tyranny and Daniel Ziblatt & Stephen Levitsky in How Democracies Die – here’s my conversation with Naomi Klein, recorded in July 2017, 6 months into Trump’s first term, about her book, NO IS NOT ENOUGH: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need. What were we thinking? How would we respond? How does our response look 8 years later?

Happy New Year! Let’s work together locally & personally in 2025 as citizens and neighbors to overcome the political and media failures that brought us to this place. Here’s my conversation with SAM DALEY-HARRIS, founder of the anti-poverty lobby Results, about RECLAIMING OUR DEMOCRACY: Every Citizen’s Guide to Transformational Advocacy (2024 edition), out in paperback mid-January. Learn more at reclaimingourdemocracy.com. I recommend pairing this with my recent episode with MARSHALL GANZ on his book, PEOPLE, POWER, CHANGE.

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What was it like for a girl to grow up in Virginia in the days of legal segregation and civil rights battles? What was it like to go to college in the days of the women’s and anti-war movements? The first female president of Harvard (2007-18), DREW GILPIN FAUST, and I are contemporaries, and we look back together at our young years in the South and our paths through the Sixties and beyond, as we talk about her memoir, NECESSARY TROUBLE: Growing Up at Midcentury. You can learn more at drewfaust.com 

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I was saddened to learn of the recent passing of Donald Barlett. Here’s my 2012 conversation with him & Jim Steele, about their book, Betrayal of the American Dream – one of my favorites. Had the Democratic party heeded their warnings about rising inequality & the destruction of the Middle Class, Trump would never have been President. To say nothing of the positive impact on the lives of the millions whose feelings of being left behind fueled the rise of MAGA and the Right. Even more prescient – Betrayal was an update of 1992’s #1 best-seller, America: What Went Wrong. 

MARSHALL GANZ worked on organizing campaigns with Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964 and Cesar Chavez and UFW for 16 years, helped devise the grass-roots organizing model for Obama’s 2008 campaign, and teaches organizing and public narrative at Harvard. We talk about his life’s work and his new book PEOPLE, POWER, CHANGE: Organizing for Democratic Renewal. You can learn more at marshallganz.com, hks.harvard.edu, or leadingchangenetwork.org 

Transcript – Ganz 11.19.2024