Former West Virginia senator Joseph Manchin III was a gadfly in the ear of his own Democratic party for many years, and a sometime Republican ally. Manchin’s new memoir, Dead Center: In Defense of Common Sense, is packed with stories about his relationships with the likes of President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden. In this interview with NPR’s Michel Martin, Manchin explains why this country needs an “American independent party."
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President Trump has declared that peace in the Middle East is "beyond very close" as he presented a new plan alongside the Israeli prime minister, with both men saying Hamas must agree to it or Israel will finish its offensive in Gaza. The Palestinian group is studying the 20 point proposal. Afghanistan is hit by an internet blackout, as the Taliban enforces what it sees as a "morality" crackdown. A federal budget stand-off is threatening to shut down the US government for the first time in almost 7 years. A trade deal that's been the cornerstone of US-Africa economic relations for 25 years expires later today. UN investigators say they've found clear evidence that the Burmese army has replaced the Rohingya villages and homes it destroyed inside Myanmar with military infrastructure. Ukraine and Russia increasingly turn to convicts, as they struggle to recruit more soliders for the war in Ukraine. A convoy including Ecuador's president Daniel Noboa is attacked by protestors angry over a cut in fuel subsidies. Plus, the so-called Bitcoin Queen, accused of stealing more than five billion dollars worth of the cryptocurrency from investors, pleads guilty to charges in London.
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Ryan sits down with Marco Palladino, CTO of Kong, to talk about the rise of AI agents and their impact on API consumption, the MCP protocol as a new standard for agents, the importance of observability and security in AI systems, and the importance for businesses and entrepreneurs to leverage opportunities in the agentic AI space now.
Episode notes:
Kong is an all-in-one API platform for AI and agentic workflows.
Amanda Holmes reads Wallace Stevens’s “A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.
This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.
For those who haven’t heard the announcement I posted, songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the first part of a two-episode look at the song “Dazed and Confused” by Led Zeppelin, although this episode doesn’t get as far as Led Zeppelin’s formation, and is mostly about the intertwining session careers of John Paul Jones and (especially) Jimmy Page. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.
It’s Chapo—in person! Will, Felix, and Brendan James of Blowback (formerly Chapo Trap House) gather at Will’s apartment to talk about Eric Adams dropping out of the NYC mayoral race. They then read a profile of Adam Jentleson and his new PAC, Searchlight, and its novel plan to win elections by pulling Democrats to the right. Also this episode: Pete Hegseth’s mysterious all-hands meeting, Trump finally releasing the files, and Peter Thiel’s obsession with the antichrist.
And be sure to vote for American Prestige at the Signal Awards: https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting?utm_campaign=signal4_finalists_finalistnotification_092325&utm_medium=email&utm_source=cio#/2025/shows/genre/news-politics
And check out the new Blowback season! https://blowback.show/
We think of the surrender of Robert E. Lee as the end of the Civil War, but the end really wasn’t clear at the time. The Galveston News reported Lee’s surrender as a positive development for the Confederacy and encouraged Texans to fight on. How did Lincoln’s peace take hold? How did a divided nation come together? Michael Vorenberg’s new book is Lincoln’s Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War.