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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

I talk with  PAULA DANIELS, Co-Founder, Chair of the Board of the Center for Good Food Purchasing, and recently announced initial director of the Los Angeles County Office of Food Equity, which aims to address the root causes of food-system problems in the region. We talk about what it takes to pull together elements of business, entrepreneurism, politics, government, science, and more to move the needle on a huge and complex system. The Center uses the power of procurement to create a food system that prioritizes the health and well-being of people, animals, and the environment. As its goals and standards are adopted by a growing national network of major food purchasers such as school districts, the program exerts growing leverage on the larger food system in America. You can learn more at GoodFoodPurchasing.org 

In 2024, Republicans won the popular vote for only the second time since 1980. After the worst four years of his life, Trump, running against the best administration for labor in years, won bigger numbers than 2020 among working class voters – including Blacks & Latinos. Hartmann’s new book, THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN DREAM: The Demise of the Middle Class – and How to Rescue Our Future, supplies the backstory to that damaging development. Biden finally dumped neo-liberalsim but voters didn’t know.

As we have for the last few elections, ROB JOHNSON – Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and host of podcast ECONOMICS & BEYOND – and I offer our post-mortems. Biden’s late withdrawal meant the Dems skipped primaries, debates, and a convention that would have tested candidates and messages. 2024 was another “change” election and they didn’t get the memo. Bad time to be an incumbent. Trump’s message: If you’re angry, vote for me. Turns out a lot of voters were angry. 

LAUREN WINDSOR calls herself an “advocacy journalist”. Her biggest scoops usually come when she goes undercover among right-wing pols and donors to secretly record things they don’t want us to hear. Her accidental truth-tellers include Sam Alito, Rudy Giuliani, Roger Stone, John Eastman, and Ted Cruz. Executive producer of The Undercurrent and executive director of American Family Voices, we talk about her new documentary, GONZO FOR DEMOCRACY. You can learn more at laurenwindsor.com

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