Everybody Assumes

When you're 16 years old and have over 50,000 people reading your reporting and analysis of politics on a daily basis, how you do you decide what to publish? What is the response to a president saying the media is the "ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE"? How do you stay objective and bi-partisan in this political climate? And all while you're in high school...

In this episode, I discuss these topics and many more with the fascinating Gabe Fleisher. At the age of 8, he started the daily newsletter Wake Up to Politics, which concisely summarizes the news of the day, and what the president, Congress, and the Supreme Court, are doing that day. It has grown immensely to over 50,000 subscribers, including high profile journalists from the likes of CNN and MSNBC, along with a large twitter following of 23,000.

Link to the blog: https://www.wakeuptopolitics.com

Show notes:

Jake Tapper's video about Republicans and anti-Semitism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7LRXPnGkPY

Jill Lepore's article on the state of Journalism: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/28/does-journalism-have-a-future

Favorite Podcast: "The Axe Files"

Most insightful follows on social media: Maggie Haberman and Jake Tapper

Best book: "What it Takes"-by Richard Ben Cramer

It is a privilege for me to meet someone as interested in politics as I am; it's a rare find to meet another teen even more fascinated than me by politics, and who knows way more about government. So it was a real honor to have a conversation with Anna Salvatore, a junior in high school and creator of the High School SCOTUS blog, which has had tens of thousands of visitors, including influential promoters such as the "New York Times's" Supreme Court correspondent Adam Liptak. She has been interviewed by NPR and by Ben Wittes, of Brookings and founder of the Lawfare blog (and where I first heard of her on the Lawfare podcast).

In this episode, Anna and I discuss how her blog High School SCOTUS took off, what the process has taught her, looking at the Court's new decisions and what they can tell us about its direction, and the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing's broader effects.

High School SCOTUS: https://highschoolscotus.wordpress.com

Favorite:

Podcast--"First Mondays"

Person to follow on Social Media--Adam Liptak/Robert Barnes, both SCOTUS reporters

Book--John Updike's stories/George Orwell's "Can Socialists be Happy"

When you post on social media, what do you hope to happen? A lot of likes, some comments and shares, maybe for it to even go viral.

That is something you and ISIS, Taylor Swift, and Russian trolls have in common; we each want to use social media for our advantage. How is that changing war? The we wage it? How about ourselves?

With scholar and strategist P.W. Singer, we delve into these issues and reach some fascinating and scary conclusions about the current state of conflict on the internet, and what each and every one of us ought to do about it. Singer is a Senior Fellow at the think tank New America, expert in the "21st century warfare," and author of several popular books including, Wired For War, Ghost Fleet, and most recently, LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media: https://www.amazon.com/LikeWar-Weaponization-P-W-Singer/dp/1328695743

With the midterms a few weeks behind us, and results still coming in, what could be more interesting? Is the Blue Wave actually going to work out in the end, after the recounts in Florida and Georgia?

In this episode of Everybody Assumes, Johns Hopkins Professor Nathan Connolly and I explore the more subtle ideas especially around Race underlie our current politics, how our assumptions about contentious issues came to be, and thinking about how narratives of history are created by those in power.

Currently, Prof. Connolly is the Herbert Baxter Adams Associate Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, and author of the forthcoming books "Four Daughters: An America Story" and "Black Capitalism: The 'Negro Problem' and the American Economy"; he also co-hosts the weekly podcast, Backstory.

Prof. Connolly co-authored a syllabus for a hypothetical class explaining the Trump era; I would highly recommend: https://www.publicbooks.org/trump-syllabus-2-0/?utm_content=buffer46380&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

The Middle East: could you mention something more complicated, contentious, and uncertain? And now with Trump...

In this edition of the podcast, I speak to Daniel C. Kurtzer, who from 1997 to 2001 was the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, and then from 2001 to 2005 the Ambassador to Israel. We talk about Jamal Khashoggi's killing and Saudi Arabia more broadly, continue into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the complexity of narratives surrounding it, and the overall importance of studying history. To conclude, we talk about being Jewish and a high level ambassador, a part that I really enjoyed.

Amb. Kurtzer spent almost three decades in the Foreign Service (being a diplomat in the State Department, but at not appointed by the President and as a career), working in back channel negotiations between Syria and Israel, and as a planner and speech writer for Secretaries of States.

In 2007, he was commissioner of the Israel Baseball League, an ultimately unsuccessful professional baseball league in Israel. Currently, Amb. Kurtzer is the S. Daniel Abraham Professor in Middle East Policy Studies at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

These are three books recommended if you are interested in learning more:

The Peace Puzzle -Amb. Daniel Kurtzer--Co-Author

The Peace to End All Peace -A History of the modern Middle East- by David Fromkin

The Politics of Diplomacy -A Former Secretary of State's Memoir- by James Baker

A conflict between countries, terrorists, criminals, and teenagers is playing out right below our eyes, and it's targeting important yet overlooked parts of our society--election systems, power grids, even the undersea cables that connect the world's internet.

What exactly is going on with this conflict? How are companies like Facebook or Google supposed to deal with battles on their platforms?

With David Sanger, a New York Times National Security correspondent, CNN contributor, and part of three reporting teams that won the Pulitzer prize, we address these issues and the dilemmas that follow. For much more on the topic, check out David Sanger's recent and fascinating book, The Perfect Weapon:

https://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Weapon-Sabotage-Fear-Cyber/dp/0451497899

"We should make policy from a position of empathy, that's not feelings over facts, that's compassionate politics"-Matt Post

Want to hear what is behind the gun violence prevention movement, led by Parkland High School Shooting survivors; what these youth leaders' strategies are for the future, their vision? Then take a listen.

This week we hear from March For Our Lives speaker Matt Post, who explains what he has learned from experience on Montgomery County, MD's Board of Education, as the student representative, and as a national gun violence prevention advocate, touring the country with its leaders Emma Gonzalez, David Hogg, and many others. Mostly, we hear a fascinating and clear articulation of next generation politics, something valuable in our social media age.

I hope you learn from this podcast, and please comment if you like it, love it, or hate it.

America is in a time of deep change, and not everyone is so happy about it; just mention "Trump" in any conversation. What should I expect when I can vote for the first time in the 2020 election(I'm 17)? What is really being left behind by Trump at Helsinki with Putin? Are our two political parties we have now forever?

We work through these issues with Dr. Eliot Cohen, now a Vice Dean at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, also an avowed NeverTrump conservative(he wrote the original letter in 2016), and from 2007 to 2009 a counselor to the Secretary of State.

This is the article mentioned about highly educated Trump supporters: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/trumps-closeted-sympathizers/564743/

I hope you enjoy!

The embassy of the United States in Israel is being moved today, but what is behind that; what is actually going on? In Gaza, Saudi Arabia, or on social media?

This week, I talk to David Makovsky, who is now at the Washington Institute in DC, and worked as a journalist for the Jerusalem Post covering Yitzhak Rabin and the Oslo accords, and was also a peace negotiator for the Obama administration in 2013 through 2014.

Take a listen and find out...I hope you enjoy!

(Please leave your comments and ratings, even if I wouldn't like them)

In this interesting, dynamic, and personal conversation, Will Jawando discusses his early life, time on the front page of the Washington Post as a college student, identity politics, and his work for Obama. He was an Obama administration official who served in the Education Department, and is currently a candidate for County Council in Montgomery County, MD.

A link to a New York Times data visualization of the study mentioned:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-class-white-and-black-men.html