CivilDiscourse101

Live from election night 2026. As West Coast polls close, Joe and Jesse track a night of Democratic flips: Annie Andrews takes Lindsey Graham’s old South Carolina seat, Roy Cooper wins North Carolina, James Talarico wins in Texas and Amy Acton beats Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio. Plus Susan Collins’ nail-biter in Maine, war profits for Big Oil, and where California landed on the billionaire tax, voter ID and immunology research. So sit back, relax, and get ready to have a civil conversation.

Our final episode before Election Day. Obama says Trump has the White House looking like a Cheesecake Factory, and we dig into the Ramaswamy attack ad that split Ohio Republicans. We hear from a two-time Trump voter who changed her mind at a rally and ask how we welcome people back. Then: DOJ pressure on California ballots, and the Prairieland protest sentences of up to 70 years for people who never fired a shot. So sit back, relax, and get ready to have a civil conversation.

With the midterms days away and Trump’s approval in the low 30s, is a blue wave coming or another blue puddle? Joe and Jesse dig into the FCC chair’s warning about “fake polls” and what it means when one private citizen can throttle a war zone’s satellite internet. Then, for California voters, a plain-English run through the props: the billionaire tax and its two kill switches, voter ID, housing bonds, CEQA and more. So sit back, relax, and get ready to have a civil conversation.

A protester in a 'Release the Epstein Files' shirt is punched at Trump's Youngstown rally while the president mocks her from the stage. Joe and Jesse ask what kind of strength America wants to project, from a livestreamed firing-squad execution to a judge finding the White House press ban likely broke the law. Plus Ukraine's strikes on Russian data centers, Musk's $276M midterm push, and Abdul El-Sayed on single-payer. Three weeks out: register to vote. So sit back, relax, and get ready to have a civil conversation.

Part two. Four weeks from the midterms, Joe and Jesse ask who's watching the vote: the U.S. turned away international OSCE observers for the first time since 2002, Latino support for Trump is sliding, and Republicans are openly worried about losing power. Then a detour into modern fatherhood and being the breadwinner, before Joe puts on his immunologist hat for a Siberian plague scare and Pennsylvania's 900-case measles outbreak. So sit back, relax, and get ready to have a civil conversation.

Part one of a two-part week.

Trump tells a Nebraska rally to "let them take out Los Angeles" and the crowd cheers. Joe and Jesse unpack why a commander in chief's words matter even when they're played for applause, then turn to Pete Hegseth's Pentagon: the first U.S. military execution since 1961, a new Office of Religious Affairs, and an honest debate over justice, vengeance and who gets to take a life. Plus: what a $90 Medicare rebate buys four weeks before Election Day. So sit back, relax, and get ready to have a civil conversation

Two weeks of news, one very large number. Joe and Jesserace through the Iran war and where we currently stand, Jack Smith has been dragged back in front of the Senate for yet another hearing (and the Hawks-versus-Hawkeyes gotcha that wasn't), Trump's rebrand of AI as "super intelligence," and a Greenland deal that changed less than advertised. Then Jesse gets into a mini deep dive: how the US went from about $20 trillion in debt in 2017 to $40 trillion today. So sit back, relax, and get ready to have a civil conversation.

This week, Thousand Oaks City Council District 2 candidate Kyle Rohrbach joins Joe and Jesse for a full conversation about the city's future - the contested Downtown Project, why homeownership feels out of reach, the transit system, wildfire evacuation planning, and what he's looking to deliver in the next four years if elected. So sit back, relax, and get ready to have a civil conversation.

Twenty-five years after 9/11, New York finallyreleases 170,000 pages showing officials knew about toxic Ground Zero air and stayed quiet. We dig into the GOP's first-ever midterm convention — Trump's $5,000 promise and a pledge to “cheat like hell” — a Supreme Court loss for Trump on mail ballots, Mitch McConnell's return to the Senate, gas prices spiking after a Saudi pipeline attack, plus rapid-fire hits on the border wall, the EPA, Alligator Alcatraz, and the Kennedy Center. So sit back, relax, and get ready to have a civil conversation.

The Trump administration makes its third bid to the Supreme Court to restrict mail-in voting — even as ballots are already going out. Meanwhile, DOJ and DHS are quietly building the first-ever federal citizen voter list, missing their own deadline in the process. Then: an armed man rushes Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton at a county fair, the latest in a troubling pattern of political violence. Plus — vesper bats have an immune system unlike any other mammal on Earth, and it might explain more than you'd think. So sit back, relax, and get ready to have a civil conversation.