On Start Making Sense: The Nation’s editor on our tasks now, and the Berkeley economist on understanding our historic mistakes.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and guest former secretary of labor Robert Reich during the Monday, August 4, 2025 show.(Scott Kowalchyk / CBS via Getty Images))
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.
How do we face how bad things are now, while also understanding the reasons for hope, and the opportunities for action? Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, will comment.
Plus: Robert Reich says the origin of our troubles with Trump and MAGA go back to the sixties; he says it started with the sixties movements – which created “a giant political void that would eventually be filled by Donald Trump’s angry, bigoted cultural populism.” His new memoir is “Coming Up Short.”
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How do we face how bad things are now, while also understanding the reasons for hope, and the opportunities for action? Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, will comment.
Plus: Robert Reich says the origin of our troubles with Trump and MAGA go back to the 1960s; he says it started with that decade’s movements, which created “a giant political void that would eventually be filled by Donald Trump’s angry, bigoted cultural populism.” His new memoir is Coming Up Short.
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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.
As Trump’s support collapses, he has lashed out in two directions–sending an unprecendented number of ICE agents to Minneapolis, where one of them murdered Renee Good, and sending the military to Venezuela, where he says he has seized control of the oil industry. Harold Meyerson comments.
Also: Twenty Minutes Without Trump: There’s a new TV series about how capitalism came to Communist China, 30 episodes made for Chinese TV by the great Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai, running now on the Criterion Channel. John Powers, critic-at-large on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, explains.
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Jon WienerTwitterJon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.