Category: 3-SometimeCommentary

Posted on

Honestly with Bari Weiss - Would America Be Safer Without the Second Amendment?

Few lines in the Constitution have provoked as much passion—or confusion—as this one:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

What did the Founding Fathers mean by “well regulated”? What did they mean by “Militia”? And, do any of those definitions hold in 21st-century America?

Guns are one of the most divisive symbols in the country. At the same time, the idea of surrendering weapons and trusting the state feels dangerous, and to many, guns are not symbols of violence, but symbols of freedom.

Still, the question remains: freedom at what cost? With mass shootings now a fixture of American life, with countless families being wrecked by gun violence—what exactly are we protecting?

This debate is about what the Second Amendment really means, what its limits should be, what the root causes of our gun violence are. And how, if at all, we can address them.

We think about this subject a lot: Would America be safer without the Second Amendment?

To debate this topic we brought together Dana Loesch and Alan Dershowitz recently in Chicago—a city that has had more than its fair share of gun violence.

Alan argued yes, that America would be safer without the Second Amendment. Alan is a lawyer, a law professor for 50 years at Harvard, and the author of too many books to mention. He has litigated and won hundreds of cases in multiple countries, including his pro bono defense of dissidents such as Natan Sharansky, Václav Havel, and Julian Assange. And he is a fierce advocate for tighter gun control in the United States.

Dana Loesch argued no, that America would not be safer without the Second Amendment. Dana is one of the country’s top nationally syndicated talk radio hosts with The Dana Show, a television commentator, preeminent Second Amendment advocate, and author of several books, including the best-selling Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America. She is also a former spokesperson for the National Rifle Association.

It’s a critical debate you won’t want to miss.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Posted on

The Ezra Klein Show - Best Of: The ‘Quiet Catastrophe’ Brewing in Our Social Lives

The holidays are an unusually social time, filled with parties and family get-togethers. But for most of the year, we feel isolated and unsatisfied with our social lives. Our society isn’t structured to support connection year-round. So it’s an apt time to re-air this episode — a conversation with the writer Sheila Liming about rediscovering the lost art of hanging out.

Liming is an associate professor of professional writing at Champlain College and the author of “Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time.” In the book, Liming investigates the troubling fact that we’ve grown much less likely to simply spend time together outside our partnerships, workplaces and family units. What would it look like to reconfigure our world to make social connection easier for all of us?

I spoke to Liming in April 2023. But I find that this conversation provides a clearer sense of what’s gone wrong in our social lives — and how to make “hanging out” with others more fulfilling.

Note: We're still gathering questions for an upcoming "Ask Me Anything" episode we'd like to record. If you have any questions for Ezra, please email ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com using the subject line "AMA."

Mentioned:

“You’d Be Happier Living Closer to Friends. Why Don’t You?” by Anne Helen Petersen

“The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake” by David Brooks

Full Surrogacy Now by Sophie Lewis

Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag

Letters from Tove by Tove Jansson

Book Recommendations:

Black Paper by Teju Cole

On the Inconvenience of Other People by Lauren Berlant

The Hare by Melanie Finn

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, with Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Posted on

Pod Save America - How Many Republicans Will Follow MTG?

After a public fallout with the President, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene unexpectedly announces that she'll resign from congress on January 5. Could her decision spark a wave of resignations from her Republican colleagues? Jon, Lovett, and Tommy discuss why so many GOP representatives are unhappy with the status quo, a federal judge's decision to toss out the Justice Department's indictments against James Comey and Letitia James, the administration's threats against Sen. Mark Kelly, and a new Page Six-worthy media/sex scandal involving Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy. Then, Rep. Summer Lee stops by the studio to talk to Jon about Greene's resignation and the Oversight Committee's field hearing on ICE immigration raids in LA.

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.


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Posted on

Chapo Trap House - 989 – Butt Crappened feat. Sarah Squirm (11/24/25)

SARAH SQUIRM: LIVE + IN THE FLESH, debuts on HBO and HBO Max December 12th. We command you to tune in! Sarah Squirm joins us once again to speculate on Zohran’s meeting with Trump: is Trump starstruck? In love? Depressed? We also talk about the president’s plan to bring back the Rush Hour movies, the secrets of the White House swimming pool, a reverse Jussie Smollett situation in Ocean City, and shitting yourself. A lot of stories about shitting yourself. Follow Sarah on Twitter/X: https://x.com/SarahSquirm And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahsquirm/?hl=en
Posted on

The Gist - Mike Vuolo & Bob Garfield: “Life Is a Flat Pizza Bagel”

Mike Vuolo and Bob Garfield of Lexicon Valley join to talk 23 skidoo, Massapequa, and why life, in fact, is a flat bagel. They trace the 6/7 meme from Skrilla's drill track "Doot Doot" through LaMelo Ball highlights and a middle-schooler named Maverick, and explain how a throwaway number became the meme stock of language. The conversation winds through rival "word of the year" contenders, then lands on the legal and French graveyard roots of "gist" and its Nigerian evolution into a verb meaning "to gossip." Plus, a Spiel on Trump's death-penalty bluster, Democratic senators telling troops "don't give up the ship," and why wild-man escalation keeps letting Trump win the exchange.

Produced by Corey Wara

Email us at ⁠⁠⁠⁠thegist@mikepesca.com⁠⁠⁠⁠

To advertise on the show, contact ⁠⁠⁠⁠ad-sales@libsyn.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ or visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://advertising.libsyn.com/TheGist⁠⁠⁠⁠

Subscribe to The Gist: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://subscribe.mikepesca.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠

Subscribe to The Gist Youtube Page: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4_bh0wHgk2YfpKf4rg40_g⁠⁠⁠⁠

Subscribe to The Gist Instagram Page: ⁠⁠⁠⁠GIST INSTAGRAM⁠⁠⁠⁠

Follow The Gist List at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Pesca⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Profundities | Mike Pesca | Substack⁠⁠⁠⁠

Posted on

The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: The Cracks in Trump’s Power Are Showing

Unrest has broken out in MAGA, and Mike Johnson looks like he’s losing control of the House—which means that Trump could be losing control of the party. And the fear of Trump is morphing into loathing because Republicans are not winning. Meanwhile, DOGE has ended in another total Elon failure: Not only was no money saved, the program’s biggest success was cutting assistance to the world’s most vulnerable people. Trump has only been ‘fixing’ the government to work for his grift. Plus, Mamdani showed real political skill in meeting Trump, but the left needs to cool it with its take that Trump is a populist. As MTG pointed out, he definitely is not.

Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller.
show notes

Posted on

1A - ‘If You Can Keep It’: The Cracks In The GOP

The Democratic party has been plagued by infighting over everything from its aging leadership to the war in Gaza. We talked about those divisions on the program earlier this month.

Now, we’re turning our attention to the cracks in the GOP, which over the last few weeks, have only grown wider.

Shortly after President Donald Trump won the 2024 election, the Republican party appeared to be in lockstep. Nearly a year later, a lot has changed.

Internal divisions within the GOP include backlash over antisemitism and the release of the Epstein files. President Trump finally signed the order to release said files last week.

In this installment of our weekly politics series, “If You Can Keep It,” we discuss what these divisions in the Republican party mean for the midterm elections and for its future.

Find more of our programs online. Listen to 1A sponsor-free by signing up for 1A+ at plus.npr.org/the1a.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy