Author: Peach Fish Productions

Birgitta Jónsdóttir has an unusual background for a politician: she’s a poet and a free speech activist. Since 2013, she’s been a member of the Icelandic parliament representing the anti-establishment Pirate Party. Jónsdóttir talks to Mike about what it’s like to work within a fledgling political party and why she’s disappointed with what Wikileaks has become.

In the Spiel, how not to respond to a terrorist attack. 

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Was Dr. Seuss racist? Or did his books just not age well? And what is the appropriate response to a canonical work that seems to be littered with racially charged depictions? Philip Nel takes on all these questions and poses some more of his own in his latest book, Was the Cat in the Hat Black?

In the Spiel, what if the office of the presidency were leveraged for the sake of constant distraction? We are finding out. 

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Can you be scared to death? Can your hair go white from fear? This sounds like a job for “Is That Bullshit?” with Maria Konnikova, our favorite BS detector. Konnikova writes for the New Yorker and is the author of The Confidence Game. 

In the Spiel, the never-ending baseball game and a bothersome T-Mobile ad. 

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Democratic New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker has rolled out the kind of marijuana legalization bill progressives love to fawn over and libertarians love to ridicule. The plan would pressure states to legalize marijuana by withholding federal money. Booker cedes that the bill’s passage doesn’t seem imminent, but he likens marijuana legalization to gay marriage, another proposal that saw a rapid surge in popular support: “I’m believing in—I’m claiming a sea change coming in the future.”

In the Spiel, what is justice for Bowe Bergdahl?

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Talking about sex makes some people squirm. For everyone else there’s Guys We Fucked, a podcast hosted by Corinne Fisher and Krystyna Hutchinson that started off as a series of interviews with their old partners. Now it’s more of a coffee klatsch between two raunchy feminists.Their new book is F*cked: Being Sexually Explorative and Self-Confident in a World That’s Screwed.

And in the Spiel, Bannon, Bulgarian mutiny, and beluga whales.

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Jacob Weisberg says the Clinton campaign’s links to the Steele dossier matters, but not as much as the veracity of the oppo research itself. Weisberg is host of Trumpcast and editor in chief of the Slate Group.

In the Spiel, the death of Fats Domino.

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Shareholder returns aren’t the only barometer of CEO success anymore, or else Jeff Bezos would be on top. In recent years, sustainability and diversity have gained importance—and in those areas, European CEOs are lapping their American competitors. Adi Ignatius, editor in chief of the Harvard Business Review, joins us to discuss the metrics for CEO success and how businesses struggle to diversify. The Harvard Business Review just published its rankings of the best-performing CEOs in the world of 2017.

And a discursive Spiel about President Trump’s chances of passing tax reform.

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Kathleen Horan writes obituaries for the living. Her Audible original series, Mortal City, is an anthology of lesser-known New York characters: Douglas the sanitation worker, Serge the barman, Rocky the ambulance commandant. “I just kept feeling like there were people that I was missing,” says Horan. She prefers to talk to people who live and work on the city’s margins: “They just can’t help but show you higher up on the thigh of their story.”

In the Spiel, the latest page in the very long scrapbook on President Trump’s communication catastrophes.

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Marc Maron says he “didn’t know anything about anything” when he began working in radio. But producer Brendan McDonald can tell you the moment he knew Maron could be a radio star. It was during a morning show on the ill-fated Air America network, and then-host Maron was ranting about overcooked lentils. “The phones lit up,” said McDonald. The two went on to create WTF With Marc Maron, the podcast now known for intense interviews with comedians, many of whom Maron quarreled with in the past. Maron’s latest book, Waiting for the Punch, is a collection of interview excerpts.

In the Spiel, a few things Mike doesn’t understand about other people. 

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Some national flags are created to unify nations, but others are simply based on myths. The Danes believe God threw theirs from heaven, and the Catalonians tell the story of a severed arm dragged across a shield. Vexilloligist and author Tim Marshall joins us to explain these myths and the complex politics of national flags. Marshall’s new book is A Flag Worth Dying For.

In the Spiel, a right-wing provocateur provokes often, but not well. 

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