Podcast / The Time of Monsters / Feb 4, 2024

The Abortion Battle Needs a Fighting President

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Moira Donegan on Joe Biden’s need to embrace pro-choice politics.

The Nation Podcasts
The Nation Podcasts

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 Problem with “CEO Said a Thing” Journalism w/ Karl Bode | Tech Won’t Save Us
byThe Nation Magazine

Paris Marx is joined by Karl Bode to discuss how tech journalists coupled with corporate interests are irresponsibly boosting the profile of tech CEOs, further damaging public trust in institutional journalism and highlighting the need for publicly funded media organizations.

Karl Bode is a freelance reporter and writes The Fine Print newsletter.

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Protesters hold a huge banner reading "We Are Taking Abortion Pills Forever" in front of the Supreme Court.

Demonstrators protest in front of the Supreme Court as the justices hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

Abortion will be one of the top issues in the 2024 presidential race and will also be crucial for control of the Senate and House of Representatives. The good news for Democrats is that the public is four-square pro-choice. The battle over abortion has energized Democratic voters and helped the party consistently outperform for the last two years. The bad news for Democrats is that Joe Biden is, at best, a reluctant warrior on the issue.

Writing in The Guardian, Moira Donegan looked at Biden’s history on reproductive freedom and his continued preference for a nonconfrontational approach to the issue.

I spoke to Moira about this and we had a wide-ranging conversation on how the politics of abortion have changed and about the dangers of having a party leader who doesn’t voice the passion of the base. A columnist for the Guardian, Moira is a frequent guest of the podcast. As always, she brings a fierce clarity to the topic on hand.

The Nation Podcasts
The Nation Podcasts

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.

Palestine and the Iran War w/ Yousef Munayyer | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
byThe Nation Magazine

As negotiations proceed in ending the Iran War, the question of the relationship between the US

and Israel becomes more salient. I spoke with Middle East expert Yousef Munayyer on the

agenda of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose interest in a securing his country’s

hegemony in the region is now in conflict with efforts to end the war.

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Jeet Heer

Jeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The GuardianThe New Republic, and The Boston Globe.

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