Author: Slate Podcasts

No one knows what’s going on in Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s head – and while that’s a worrisome idea during the best of times, it’s an especially grim one during a war of his own creation. Putin is increasingly isolated, away from his inner circle and the oligarchs who once had some influence with him. 

Guest: Ben Judah is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the author of This Is London and Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love With Vladimir Putin.

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Texas’s Republican governor and attorney general are pursuing a new crackdown on trans kids and their families. Their directive compelling Child Protective Services to treat gender-affirming care as child abuse is raising alarms among trans rights advocates, who say the order, if enforced, will prove dangerous for a vulnerable population.

Why did Republican leaders pick this moment to trumpet an anti-trans effort? How does it fit into a wider culture war—or perhaps a larger effort to drive trans people from public life?

Guest: Katelyn Burns, columnist at MSNBC and co-host of the podcast Cancel Me, Daddy.

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President Biden has nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to fill Justice Breyer’s seat on the Supreme Court. If confirmed, she would be the first Black woman to hold a seat on the court. What does her backstory say about her as a jurist? 

Guest: Mark Joseph Stern, senior writer for Slate. 

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Russia went all in last week, sending troops across the border with Ukraine and raining shells on the country. Experts are saying Putin’s brash invasion of his neighbor is shifting the world order in significant ways. In the face of this aggression, how should NATO respond? Can history serve as a guide?

Guest: Fred Kaplan, Slate’s War Stories correspondent.

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Peter Thiel spent the better part of two decades molding the tech industry in his image. Now, he's leaving Facebook behind and turning his attention to politics. Is Thiel the next kingmaker for the populist right?

Max Chafkin, writer for Bloomberg and is the author of The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power

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For seven years, Ukraine has served as a virtual testing ground for a generation of cyber weaponry capable of taking down power grids, networks, and supply chains. With an invasion of Ukraine underway, will these weapons come into play?

Guest: Andy Greenberg, senior writer at WIRED and the author of the book Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers 

Host: Lizzie O'Leary

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Earlier this month in Northern California, a militia-backed anti-government group won a recall vote that will effectively give it control over a county’s local government. The recall ousted a Republican politician from his supervisor seat and was preceded by two years of threats and contentious county meetings stemming from pandemic precautions. Could this style of government takeover become a blueprint for other far-right groups nationwide?

Guest: Doni Chamberlain is a former newspaper reporter and the founder of A News Cafe, a website covering Shasta County in Northern California..

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President Vladimir Putin has begun sending Russian soldiers into Ukraine after spending months massing troops on the country’s borders. Why is Putin risking so much to take the Donbas region? And does this latest incursion signal a failure of the west’s foreign policy approach to Russia? 

Guest: Josh Keating, global security reporter at Grid.

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Last week, the Remington Arms Company reached a $73 million dollar settlement with the families of nine victims killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre—the largest payout by a gun manufacturer in a mass shooting case. 

Federal law protects manufacturers from a broad swath of liability in civilian shootings, so the families’ legal team took an interesting tack: they sued under Connecticut’s consumer protection laws and exposed the reckless way Remington marketed their weapons. 

Guest: @NicoleHockley is co-founder and CEO of Sandy Hook Promise Foundation.

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