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Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea is its largest island: Sicily.
Given its size and location, Sicily has been the key for any empire, kingdom, or civilization that wanted to control the Mediterranean.
As a result, Sicily has been one of the most contested pieces of land in the history of the world. For over three thousand years, one army after another invaded and occupied the island before getting kicked out by the next one.
Learn more about Sicily and its long history of invasion and conquest on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
On this episode, the Signal chat leak saga continues to unfold, the ongoing reckoning from the left on COVID, NPR hearings, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court election which we should all be watching. Tune in!
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OA1143 - In the past month, Donald Trump has issued a series of truly fascist orders targeting some of the country’s best-known law firms for crimes ranging from hiring people Trump doesn’t like personally to doing some favors for special counsel Jack Smith to flagrantly hiring non-white non-men. What is actually in these orders, and how bad is it that one of leading litigation firms in the country gave in to Trump’s demands without a fight? And what will it mean for the already-overloaded immigration court system when they start going after immigration lawyers as they have also promised? Former NYC Biglaw associate (and current NYC public defender) Liz Skeen joins to help us to understand this uniquely un-American moment in American legal history.
(UPDATE: This episode was recorded shortly before news broke about the Trump administration taking action against major US law firms Wilmer Hale and Skadden Arps.)
In Enlightenment Biopolitics (U Chicago Press, 2024), historian William Max Nelson pursues the ambitious task of tracing the context in which biopolitical thought emerged and circulated. He locates that context in the Enlightenment when emancipatory ideals sat alongside the horrors of colonialism, slavery, and race-based discrimination. In fact, these did not just coexist, Nelson argues; they were actually mutually constitutive of Enlightenment ideals.
In this book, Nelson focuses on Enlightenment-era visions of eugenics (including proposals to establish programs of selective breeding), forms of penal slavery, and spurious biological arguments about the supposed inferiority of particular groups. The Enlightenment, he shows, was rife with efforts to shape, harness, and “organize” the minds and especially the bodies of subjects and citizens. In his reading of the birth of biopolitics and its transformations, Nelson examines the shocking conceptual and practical connections between inclusion and exclusion, equality and inequality, rights and race, and the supposed “improvement of the human species” and practices of dehumanization.
William Max Nelson is associate professor of history at the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Time of Enlightenment: Constructing the Future in France, 1750 to Year One and a coeditor of The French Revolution in Global Perspective.
Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.
The Trump administration spends a lot of time trumpeting all the ways it’s cracking down on immigrants in the United States. From the very public raids in sanctuary cities that defined the first few weeks of Trump’s second term, to sending Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem down to El Salvador this week to pose in front of alleged gang members at a massive prison, the White House wants people to believe it’s nabbing all the bad guys. But arrest data shows that we may be seeing a shift in who the administration is targeting for deportation. Ted Hesson, immigration reporter for Reuters, explains what’s happening on the ground.
And in headlines: The Health and Human Services Department said it wants to lay off 10,000 full-time employees, Attorney General Pam Bondi suggests the Justice Department won’t pursue criminal investigations over Signal-gate, and President Trump withdrew his nomination of Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik to be the next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
Donald Trump and his goons continue to spin the group chat screw-up as totally routine—even as evidence mounts that the story is breaking through to average Americans and causing serious concern. Jon and Dan discuss the Republican reaction, why the White House won't admit to making a mistake, and how Democrats can take advantage of the situation. Plus, Trump deepens consumer misery with new tariffs on cars, the Associated Press fights for its right to cover the presidency, and JD and Usha Vance stage their own invasion of Greenland. Then, Jon sits down with Canadian actor and entrepreneur Jasmine Mooney, who was detained by ICE for 12 days without explanation, to talk about what it's really like to get caught up in America's cruel new enforcement system.
For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.
“The Best Idea Yet”: The untold origin stories of the products you’re obsessed with — From the McDonald’s Happy Meal to Birkenstock’s sandal to Nintendo’s Susper Mario Brothers to Sriracha. New 45-minute episodes drop weekly.
