Brian Lehrer: A Daily Politics Podcast

Nurses are leaving the profession in droves, driven by extremely difficult pandemic-related working conditions. We invited nurses to call in and talk about the state of their profession. On today's show, Pat Kane, executive  director of the New York State Nurses Association, discusses some of the reasons why nurses are quitting and what can be done to retain, and recruit, more.

In the current phase of the COVID pandemic, marked by the omicron variant and still-rampant misinformation, we wanted to take stock of where we are, and what the science tells us. On today's show, following World AIDS Day Wafaa El-Sadr, Columbia University professor of epidemiology and medicine and director Columbia World Projects and International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs, draws connections between work tracing and treating HIV and research on coronavirus, including the omicron variant which was discovered in part because of robust sequencing systems in southern Africa.

Today, lawyers argued before the Supreme Court in a case that casts uncertainty on the right to have an abortion. If you missed the arguments, we've picked out some important exchanges. 

The acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse shines a light on how 'self defense' defenses work in cases like his, compared to the case of Chrystul Kizer, who faces homicide charges for killing her adult sex abuser when she was 17 years old. On today's show, Kami Chavis, director of the criminal justice program at Wake Forest Law, and Jessica Contrera, reporter for The Washington Post, talk about why some claims of self-defense work better than others in court and in the media.

A lot of questions are swirling about a newly detected COVID-19 variant, dubbed, 'omicron.' What do we know about it at this early stage, and what policies can address it? On today's show, Apoorva Mandavilli, reporter for The New York Times, focusing on science and global health, explains the latest news and what's known so far about the omicron variant.

On today's Black Friday show, listeners who work in retail call in to talk about what this holiday shopping season looks like from their perspective.

This Thanksgiving, we wanted to bust some of the myths surrounding the holiday's origin, and the lessons we can learn from the real story. On today's show, Kenneth C. Davis, author of Don't Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned talks about the myths and realities of the 1621 first Thanksgiving.

Gas prices are running fairly high these days. Can the Biden administration address it while still keeping an eye on its climate priorities? On today's show, Timothy Gardner, climate and energy correspondent at Reuters, breaks down why the price of oil is so high and what, if anything, the Biden administration can do to fix it while also meeting climate goals.

If two people search broad terms like "patriot" or "vaccine" in YouTube, they might get very different results. On today's show, Kai Wright, host of the WNYC's The United States of Anxiety, and Kousha Navidar, senior digital producer for WNYC's The United States of Anxiety, offer an experiment to get past the filter bubbles that define what information gets to us.

What does Friday's "not guilty" verdict in the case of Kyle Rittenhouse, mean for the justice system, Black Lives Matter, and white supremacist violence? On today's show, Carol Anderson, professor of African American Studies at Emory University and the author of The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021), discusses the verdict and what comes next.