Best Matt Sammon Podcasts (2025)

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The Political Consequences of Gaza w/ Yousef Munayyer 38:40

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6d ago38:40

38:40

The fragile ceasefire negotiated between Israel and Hamas hasn’t ended the violence, but it has for now lessened it. But even if the ceasefire holds, the need for a political solution to Palestinian dispossession remains. To discuss the issue of accountability, I spoke to Yousef Munayyer, who is the head of the Palestine/Israel Program and Senior F…

1
Revolutionary Violence and One Battle After Another w/ David Klion 50:21

11d ago50:21

50:21

Few movies have ever been as timely as Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film One Battle After Another, which traces the battle between revolutionary resistance groups trying to protect immigrants and an authoritarian government run by racists. There are scenes from the movie that feel like they are being played out right now on the streets of Chicago,…

1
The Deep Politics of the Government Shutdown w/ Chris Lehmann 37:02

18d ago37:02

37:02

Donald Trump has plunged the nation into another government shutdown. I spoke with my Nation colleague Chris Lehmann about the larger political stakes. We take up Trump’s shifting rhetoric, which has started with false and racist claims about undocumented immigrants receiving benefits and now seems to be about gloating over austerity. We also take …

1
Who Are the Shooters? w/ Ken Klippenstein 41:59

26d ago41:59

41:59

The United States continues to be roiled by political violence, with the recent shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas coming hot on the heels of the assassination of Charlie Kirk and a school shooting in Colorado committed by a neo-Nazi. Some of the best reporting on these events has been done by Ken Klippenstein for his Substack. I spoke with Ken …

1
What Bari Weiss Is Really Up To w/ David Klion 42:12

1M ago42:12

42:12

Bari Weiss, founder and editor of The Free Press, has often been profiled in the media, but usually in a superficial way that focuses on her personality and disputes with fellow journalists. She is currently on the cusp of great power, reportedly working on a deal to sell The Free Press and take a senior position at CBS. David Klion, Nation columni…

1
The Failures of the Foreign Policy Elite w/ Matt Duss 40:13

1M ago40:13

40:13

Matt Duss, vice-president of the Center for International Policy, wrote an excellent review for The Nation of Bob Woodward’s book War, which is a celebration of Joe Biden as a foreign policy sage. Duss is rightly skeptical of the book. We discuss Biden’s actual record on Ukraine and especially Gaza. Matt’s essay on this topic for Foreign Policy is …

1
Dark Money Invades Social Media w/ Taylor Lorenz 41:11

2M ago41:11

41:11

On August 27, journalist Taylor Lorenz reported for Wired on a dark-money project funded by anonymous Democratic Party donors to shape social media. Her article documented that, "In a private group chat in June, dozens of Democratic political influencers discussed whether to take advantage of an enticing opportunity. They were being offered $8,000 …

1
Preparing for the Next War on Iran w/ Trita Parsi 39:08

2M ago39:08

39:08

The Iran-Israel conflict in June was terrifying but brief: it lasted 12 days. But that war is not over. Trita Parsi, vice president and cofounder of the Quincy Institute, has been warning that both the United States and Israel are planning for another round, with their European allies providing the groundwork. I spoke to Parsi about the likelihood …

1
The Great Canadian Betrayal w/ Luke Savage 43:29

2M ago43:29

43:29

In April, the Liberal Party of Canada, under the leadership of Mark Carney, won an election that heartened opponents of the right-wing. Carney had run on the promise of fighting Donald Trump’s threats to annex Canada and also to bolster the Canadian state to deal with issues like affordable housing. But in office, Carney has been delivering somethi…

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Working in the New Scam Economy w/ Alex Sammon 42:10

3M ago42:10

42:10

Almost everyone who is on line or even has a cell phone has encountered a familiar and perplexing nuisance: an email or text with a job offer to make lots of money while working from home. These messages seem like obvious scams but how do they work? Alexander Sammon, a feature writer for Slate, conducted a personal experiment to find out by taking …

1
Zohran Mamdani’s Social Media Triumph w/ Greg Sargent 37:23

3M ago37:23

37:23

Writing in The New Republic, Greg Sargent called attention to Zohran Mamdani’s highly effective media strategy which has allowed him to reach many voters that have been drifting away from the Democratic Party, especially young people and immigrants. In punchy, short videos, Mamdani has offered an optimistic message that celebrates big city life and…

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Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Betrayal w/ Stephen Wertheim 42:37

3M ago42:37

42:37

Since 2015, Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the American foreign policy establishment for being too belligerent and unwilling to negotiate with adversaries. But in office, Trump has carried out a foreign policy that has all the vices he has criticized and been even more inclined to risk war or get into new wars. In a recent essay in The New …

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How the Tech Billionaires Bought Radical Journalists w/ Eoin Higgins 46:28

3M ago46:28

46:28

Tech lords such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are among the richest humans who have ever lived and have an enormous sway over the American political system but even that isn’t enough for them. They also want a compliant media, one that echoes their ideas, doesn’t investigate their business practices, and goes after their enemy. This is the subject o…

1
The Roots of Trump’s Foreign Policy Instability w/ Justin Logan 41:36

3M ago41:36

41:36

Donald Trump’s foreign policy has been as unstable as the man himself, shifting quickly from pushes for restraint to escalating wars in the Middle East. This volatility is a function not just of Trump’s personality but the contradictions and competing factions that are gathered under the term America First, as well as the continued power of the for…

1
How Jeff Bezos Betrayed the Legacy of The Washington Post w/ Pamela Alma Weymouth 37:29

4M ago37:29

37:29

Writing in The Nation, Pamela Alma Weymouth drew a contrast between Kay Graham, her late grandmother who was publisher of The Washington Post when it fought Richard Nixon’s administration on The Pentagon Papers and Watergate, with the current owner of the newspaper, Jeff Bezos. Unlike Graham, Bezos has been all too willing to bend the knee to a cor…

1
The Never Trump Crowd Still Loves Mid-East Wars 53:47

4M ago53:47

53:47

Over the last decade, centrist Democrats have diligent courted Never Trump Republicans, hoping that this cohort could help create a new consensus politics to oppose the MAGA coalition. From the start, this strategy seemed flawed: after all, this faction is very small and also carries a lot of baggage. In particular, neo-conservatives such as Willia…

1
Elon Musk and Silicon Valley Drug Culture 42:42

4M ago42:42

42:42

Both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have reported that Elon Musk, currently trying to mend a feud with his quondam political ally Donald Trump, is a heavy user of mind alternating substances ranging from Ketamine to LSD to mushrooms to cocaine. While this story has been treated as one about the foibles of one increasingly erratic po…

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Michael Ledeen and Trumpian Fascism 45:44

5M ago45:44

45:44

Michael Ledeen, who died on May 17 at age 83, was a prominent figure on the American right since the 1970s. He is most famous, or notorious, as one of the instigators of the Iran/Contra scandal, helping to connect the Reagan administration with an Iranian arms dealer. Beyond that, he was active not just as a writer but also as an activists who ofte…

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Taking David Horowitz Seriously 52:22

5M ago52:22

52:22

The late David Horowitz, who died in April at age 86, was often dismissed as a fringe figure not just by liberals and leftists but even many on the right. Horowitz would often complain that his books — crude polemics with titles such as BLITZ: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win (2020) and The Enemy Within: How a Totalitarian Movement Is Destroying A…

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The Perils and Promise of Trump’s Middle East Gamble 42:54

5M ago42:54

42:54

On his latest trip to the Middle East, Donald Trump is making big news. He’s indicating a receptiveness to making a deal with Iran trading normalization for nuclear non-proliferation. He ended the bombing campaign against Yemen and is also pushing for normalization with Syria. Further, the White House has sidestepped Israel in order to have direct …

1
How Crypto Corruption Took Over Washington 48:24

6M ago48:24

48:24

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Jacob Silverman on why it’s hard to regulate the high tech ponzi economics. Over the last few years, crypto-currency has emerged as a political powerhouse, thanks to tens of billions in campaign donations. As Jacob Silverman reports in a recent feature in The Nation, “crypto, despite being a relative flop co…

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The Secret Clubhouse for Reactionary Plutocrat 41:57

6M ago41:57

41:57

Silicon Valley has moved to the right in the last few years, with Elon Musk being the public face of a larger trend of tech lords aligning themselves with Trumpism. We now have a window into just how reactionary Silicon Valley has become thanks to reporting about private group chats where the tech elite gather to complain about wokeness and celebra…

1
Trump’s Trade War is Also a Class War w/ Marshall Steinbaum 43:44

6M ago43:44

43:44

Donald Trump’s tariff war is usually framed in terms of how it would impact consumers and America’s relationship with other countries, but it is also part of a larger project to remake taxation policy. Trump is very explicit that he wants tariffs to replace personal and corporate taxes with tariffs as the main source of revenue. As such, tariffs ar…

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Trump Upturns Canadian Politics w/ Luke Savage 50:36

6M ago50:36

50:36

Even as he imposes authoritarianism on the United States, Donald Trump has given a new lease on life to the center left in many other countries. Canada is holding an election at the end of April under the shadow of the American presidents threat to turn it into the 51st state. Until Trump’s inauguration, the Conservative Party of Canada had a comma…

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The Making of Chuck Schumer w/ David Klion 56:15

7M ago56:15

56:15

By helping the Republicans pass a spending bill that made no compromises with the Democrats and extend Donald Trump’s power over the government, Chuck Schumer has made himself widely unpopular in his own party. Anger at Schumer is so intense that he had to cancel parts of his tour to promote his new book Antisemitism in America: A Warning. David Kl…

1
The Real Scandal is Bombing Yemen, Not the Group Chat w/ Matt Duss 30:52

7M ago30:52

30:52

This week Washington was abuzz with a security scandal over a group chat planning the bombing of Yemen accidentally included magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. Lost amid the finger pointing about operational security was the fact that the bombing of Yemen is illegal, immoral, and ineffective. To take up the actual scandal of the war,…

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Trump’s New Middle Eastern Wars w/ Yousef Munayyer 44:46

7M ago44:46

44:46

The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas turned out to be short lived: Israel has now decisively broken the ceasefire and launched an even more intense onslaught into Gaza. Coupled with this renewed attack, Israel (sometimes in conjunction with the united States) is also carrying on military campaigns against Yemen, Lebanon and Syria, with rumors flo…

1
Noam Chomsky and the Fight Against Empire w/ Daniel Bessner 42:20

8M ago42:20

42:20

For nearly seven decades, Noam Chomsky has been the most important critic of American foreign policy. Daniel Besser, co-host of the Nation podcast, American Prestige, recently reviewed for the magazine a new book authored by Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson, The Myth of American Idealism. In his review, Daniel both extolled Chomsky’s monumental achie…

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Trump Upturns American Foreign Policy w/ Stephen Wertheim 29:16

8M ago29:16

29:16

During his first term in office, Donald Trump often talked about his radical America First agenda but in practice his foreign policy was that of a conventional Republican hawk. Just five weeks into his second term, there has been a marked shift. As Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, recently noted i…

1
Project 2025 For Real w/ Chris Lehmann 36:43

9M ago36:43

36:43

Running for president last year, Donald Trump disowned Project 2025, the laundry list of radical demands gathered together by right-wing think tanks. Trump claimed Project 2025 had no influence on him and was only being raised by Democrats as a political attack. But now Trump is in power, he’s enacting an agenda of dismantling the welfare state tha…

1
The Paranoid Style of David Samuels 45:30

10M ago45:30

45:30

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, David Klion and Matt Duss on a popular right-wing fabulist. Has former president Barack Obama secretly been running the American elite — including the media and wide parts of the government — for nearly 20 years? Has he been doing so on behalf of a subversive agenda to empower Iran and undermine American exc…

1
Matthew Yglesias and the Problems of Popularism 1:06:05

11M ago1:06:05

1:06:05

Matthew Yglesias, a very influential journalist and proprietor of the Slow Boring substack, has emerged as a divisive figure within the Democratic party. To admirers, he’s a compelling advocate of popularism, the view the Democratic party needing to moderate its message to win over undecided voters. To critics, he’s a glib attention seeker who has …

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Factchecking Won’t Save Democracy 38:26

11M ago38:26

38:26

For this week’s podcast, I’m posting a talk I gave at Carleton University earlier this month on how the crisis of democracy is related to the crisis of journalism. In the talk, I argue that we are living in an age where the salient political divide is not so much left/right as system/antisytem. Liberals have tried to fight antisystem politicians li…

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Don’t Believe the Election Myths 42:54

11M ago42:54

42:54

The one good thing about defeat is you can learn some lessons. But what if the lessons you learn are the wrong ones. In the wake of Donald Trump winning the presidential election, pundits and Democratic strategists have already been drawing lessons. Unfortunately, as Branko Marcetic documents in a recent piece in Jacobin, many of these lessons are …

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The Dangers of Trump’s Cynical Anti-War Message w/ Matt Duss 31:39

12M ago31:39

31:39

Donald Trump and JD Vance have a surprising closing message in the 2024 election: they are the antiwar candidate. About the rising conflict in the Middle East, Trump has said, “I wanna see it all stop, I wanna see the Middle East get back to peace.” On a podcast, Vance criticized the Biden “Even though they say they want to minimize Palestinian civ…

1
The Making of Donald Trump w/ David Klion 42:19

12M ago42:19

42:19

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Jeet Heer is joined by David Klion to discuss 'The Apprentice' — a movie about Roy Cohn’s mentoring of a future president. --- Donald Trump is such a clearly defined figure — a walking, talking political cartoon — that it’s hard to imagine when he was someone different. Ali Abbasi’s new film, The Apprentice,…

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Trump’s Bobbing and Dancing Disaster 35:49

1y ago35:49

35:49

As the presidential election comes down to the wire, it’s hard to ignore evidence of Donald Trump is increasingly erratic behavior: his slurring of words, his freezing up during questions, his repeated cancellations of interviews, and the bizarre incident at a town hall in Pennsylvania, where Trump unexpectedly spent more than half an hour bobbing …

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Francis Ford Coppola’s Contentious Utopia w/ Kate Wagner 51:46

1y ago51:46

51:46

More than forty years in the making, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is the most divisive movie of our time. Some critics have hailed it as a major work while others dismiss it as a stinker. The film tells the story of Cesar Catilina (played by Adam Driver), a visionary architect who fights for his utopian urban plans against the entrenched forc…

1
Expanding Wars With a Lame Duck President w/ Matt Duss 26:45

1y ago26:45

26:45

The Israeli incursion into Lebanon has rapidly shifted from a bombing campaign into a ground invasion, one that the Pentagon now says might last for some time. This current escalation of the Middle Eastern conflict, which has also seen Iran and Israel trade blows, reflects the wider failure of Joe Biden’s bear-hug foreign policy. To discuss the con…

1
Israel’s Expanding War Against Lebanon w/ Trita Parsi 25:36

1y ago25:36

25:36

Joe Biden’s foreign policy team was hoping for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas before his term was over, perhaps as early as the end of September. This always seemed wishful thinking but now is almost impossible as Israel not only continues to fight in Gaza but has expanded its conflict with Palestinian forces in neighboring Lebanon. The expa…

1
The Plutocratic Threat to Democracy w/ David Sirota 39:52

1y ago39:52

39:52

Kamala Harris and many other Democrats often warn that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. This is true enough, but it raises the question of how a ridiculous reality-TV star got in a position to be so dangerous. The excellent new podcast Master Plan shows that democracy has been under siege in the United States for decades due to a concerted ef…

1
How Kamala Harris Can Use the Debate to Win Big 36:20

1y ago36:20

36:20

After the convention and on the cusp of a debate, the presidential election is a near dead heat. The polls show Kamala Harris has a slight edge, but it is well within the margin of error. This is a massive improvement over the performance of Joe Biden, who was on a path to a major defeat but it is by no means a guarantee of victory. To take up the …

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Why Biden Continues Supporting Israel’s Onslaught in Gaza 25:14

1+ y ago25:14

25:14

On June 28, I delivered a speech at the central branch of the Regina Public Library on the history of American support for Israel. The speech almost didn’t happen. The library briefly cancelled it because they claimed the group promoting it was encouraging discrimination against Jews. Fortunately, a city councillor intervened to sponsor the talk. F…

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The Real Problem With Joe Biden’s Bad Debate 47:50

1+ y ago47:50

47:50

Joe Biden’s performance on the first presidential debate, held on Thursday in Atlanta, has been widely criticized. Much of the criticism has focused on Biden’s style: his horse voice, frequent halting digressions and verbal flubs. But the substance of Biden’s comments, as Moira Donegan pointed out in her Guardian column, was equally troubling. In t…

1
Joe Biden’s Muddled Middle East Policy 56:12

1+ y ago56:12

56:12

Joe Biden has often been described as among the most pro-Israel politicians in America, a characterization which has a large element of truth but misses some important nuances. As David Klion argues in a deeply researched essay for The Nation, Biden’s support for Israel has long been accompanied by rhetorical gestures indicating opposition to aspec…

1
Trump Versus the Sharks with Chris Lehmann 30:05

1+ y ago30:05

30:05

Donald Trump does not like sharks. During his memorable encounter with Stormy Daniels, he fixated on a documentary about the predator that was playing on the hotel television and muttered, “I hope all the sharks die.” The former president returned to this topic at a recent campaign rally where he went on bizarre and lengthy digression asking what w…

1
Hollywood’s Blockbuster Crisis 29:42

1+ y ago29:42

29:42

The summer season has started with a fizzle for Hollywood, as expected hits like The Fall Guy, and Furioso have far underperformed their expectations. This isn’t a matter of a few films. Over the last few years, Hollywood is discovering that audiences are no longer reliably willing to buy tickets for the action adventure franchises that are the mai…

1
Marty Peretz And The Neoliberal Reckoning 1:12:36

1+ y ago1:12:36

1:12:36

Marty Peretz has led a large life, one he recounts with aplomb in his autobiography The Controversialist. As long time publisher and editor-in-chief of The New Republic, from 1974 to 2011, he transformed the venerable liberal magazine into an organ of neoliberalism, with a politics that emphasized deregulation of the economy, scaling back the welfa…

1
The New Threat to Civil Liberties After Gaza 48:25

1+ y ago48:25

48:25

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Tom Durkin and Joe Ferguson on FISA renewal. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacyBy The Nation Company LLC

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Biden Versus the Pro-Palestinian Protesters 38:02

1+ y ago38:02

38:02

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Yousef Munayyer on a president at war with his base. According to a recent CNN poll, 81 percent of voters age 18 to 35 disapprove of President Joe Biden support of Israel’s war in Gaza. This number should be a concern to Biden, because for his reelection bid to succeed he absolutely needs young voters to be …