FROM THE INSIDE OUT by BETH ARNOLD

It taught the powerful how to come back stronger

I was glad when Nixon resigned.

We all were.

The Watergate hearings began during my second summer working for Senator John L. McClellan, and like much of the country, I watched a president finally cornered by the truth.

It mattered. It was satisfying. It felt like proof that even the most powerful man in America could be brought down by evidence, testimony, and law.

But that was before Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld showed us how much a government could get away with—war, torture, deception, catastrophic arrogance—and still walk away.

And it was before Trump showed us what happens when shame disappears altogether.

This audio essay traces the road from Nixon’s resignation to Bush-era impunity to Trump’s lawless presidency—and the terrible question underneath it all:

What happens when the powerful know they are not accountable — and the rest of us stop demanding that they should be?

Read the original essay, including images and more, on Substack:

WATERGATE DIDN'T STOP THE LAWLESS PRESIDENCY

Send us Fan Mail

Thank you for listening—and for giving this your time.

If this piece resonated with you, I hope you’ll consider subscribing to my Substack. Free subscriptions help grow this community, and paid support makes it possible for me to continue this work.

This is my first  interview for From the Inside Out, and I could not have asked for a better guest than artist and scholar Jo-Ann Morgan.

Jo-Ann is the artist behind the powerful works featured in my recent piece on art as activism — pieces that confront grief, violence, history, and political rupture not with slogans, but with the deeper language of image, symbol, memory, and witness.

In our conversation, we talk about how she came to this work, what it feels like to create art out of tragedy, whether some pieces were harder than others, and what she is working on now. We also talk about the complicated, necessary relationship between art and politics — especially in a moment when looking away is its own kind of choice.

When art refuses to look away, it can help the rest of us see.

I’m grateful to Jo-Ann for joining me for this first video conversation, and for sharing not only her work, but the thought, feeling, and courage behind it.

Read the original essay and watch the interview, including images and more, on Substack:

When Art Refuses to Look Away

Send us Fan Mail

Thank you for listening—and for giving this your time.

If this piece resonated with you, I hope you’ll consider subscribing to my Substack. Free subscriptions help grow this community, and paid support makes it possible for me to continue this work.

Pour yourself a glass of bourbon and come together

What if Democrats are losing people not because voters don’t care—but because too many no longer believe the party is listening?

In this audio version of “Kumbaya, Democrats,” I talk about a party establishment that still seems tone-deaf to the anger, fear, exhaustion, and moral urgency of this moment. Voters do not want to be managed by consultants, scolded by insiders, or handed another set of slogans. They want leaders who understand what they are living through—and who know how to fight for them.

And right now, Trump has handed Democrats an opening. His war with Iran, rising energy costs, surging inflation, higher gas prices, the loss of health care and food aid, and the plain spectacle of his corruption have made one thing brutally clear: the American people are hurting. And despite Trump’s pathological lies, many of them understand—finally—who is making their lives harder.

But that does not mean Democrats automatically win. Senator Bill Cassidy’s race is part of the warning. So is the larger Democratic habit of mistaking institutional loyalty for strategy, and party discipline for real solidarity. This piece is about what Democrats are getting wrong, why the old playbook is failing, and why unity cannot mean asking people to fall in line behind the same tired politics.

And that is where Kumbaya comes in—with its honorable beginnings in the Gullah community, its spiritual force, and its long resonance in the Civil Rights movement. Come by here was never empty sentiment. It was a plea, a summons, and an act of faith in the face of suffering.

That is the kind of unity Democrats need now: not manufactured agreement, but moral solidarity. Not consultant language, but human connection. Not a party telling people what to feel, but leaders willing to come to where people are hurting — and stand with them before it is too late.

**This audio recording differs slightly from the written piece because the news has changed since I recorded it, sharpening the urgency of the argument I make here.

Read the original essay, including images and more, on Substack:

KUMBAYAH, DEMOCRATS

Send us Fan Mail

Thank you for listening—and for giving this your time.

If this piece resonated with you, I hope you’ll consider subscribing to my Substack. Free subscriptions help grow this community, and paid support makes it possible for me to continue this work.

What happens when surveillance no longer records reality…but rewrites it?

What happens when the camera can no longer be trusted?

In this audio companion to WHEN THE EVIDENCE LIES, I’m talking about a British thriller called The Capture — and the frightening world it points us toward: one where AI swallows reality, deepfakes destroy evidence, and surveillance systems track, sort, and predict our lives.

This isn’t science fiction anymore. It’s the world we’re already living in, where video can lie, algorithms can accuse, and powerful systems can make the truth almost impossible to prove.

Pull up a chair and listen.

Read the original essay, including images and more, on Substack:

WHEN THE EVIDENCE LIES

Send us Fan Mail

Thank you for listening—and for giving this your time.

If this piece resonated with you, I hope you’ll consider subscribing to my Substack. Free subscriptions help grow this community, and paid support makes it possible for me to continue this work.

In this audio version of “MAKING RACISM OFFICIAL AGAIN,” I read aloud my argument that the Trump administration’s assault on voting rights, civil rights organizations, DEI, and equal protection is not random. It is part of a larger project: rebuilding racism into the infrastructure of American life.

From the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act to the indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center, from Trump’s long history of racial grievance to the GOP’s renewed war on multiracial democracy, this piece asks what we are willing to see clearly—and what we are willing to fight.

I’m in.

Are you?

Read the original essay, including images and more, on Substack: 

ANTIRACISM VS. RACISM

Send us Fan Mail

Thank you for listening—and for giving this your time.

If this piece resonated with you, I hope you’ll consider subscribing to my Substack. Free subscriptions help grow this community, and paid support makes it possible for me to continue this work.

This piece began with the strange, chaotic scene at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner—but it became something larger: a look at what happens when journalism itself becomes the target.

A free press is not an abstraction. It is how we know what is happening. It is how power is held to account. It is how citizens remain citizens instead of hostages to propaganda.

In this audio version, I read “Spend Money, Speak Out, Stand Up: A Crisis in Journalism”—about facts, fear, Trump’s war on the press, the journalists still doing the work, and what the rest of us must do now.

Because the time is now.

This piece is about journalism, but it’s also about citizenship. A free press does not survive on principle alone. It survives because people insist on it, defend it, and help sustain the people and institutions still doing the work of facts, truth, and accountability.

Read the original essay, including images and more, on Substack: SPEND MONEY, SPEAK OUT, STAND UP

Send us Fan Mail

Thank you for listening—and for giving this your time.

If this piece resonated with you, I hope you’ll consider subscribing to my Substack. Free subscriptions help grow this community, and paid support makes it possible for me to continue this work.

What can art do when the world is breaking? In this audio reading of ART AS ACTIVISM: “The Mourning After,” I explore Jo-Ann Morgan’s unforgettable quilt exhibition and the power of art to make us see what we would rather avoid. It’s an essay on grief, witness, and why empathy matters now more than ever.

I urge you to also check out my written piece to see more of these incredible and moving works of fabric art here: Art as Activism

Send us Fan Mail

Thank you for listening—and for giving this your time.

If this piece resonated with you, I hope you’ll consider subscribing to my Substack. Free subscriptions help grow this community, and paid support makes it possible for me to continue this work.

The worm has turned.

After years of corruption, Viktor Orbán has been defeated—and the shockwaves are already moving far beyond Hungary. The illusion of inevitability is cracking.

In this piece, I trace that shift—from Orbán to Trump, from the history of fascism in America to what we’re living through now—and what happens when people finally say: enough.

Read the original essay, including images and more, on Substack: THE WORM TURNED

Send us Fan Mail

Thank you for listening—and for giving this your time.

If this piece resonated with you, I hope you’ll consider subscribing to my Substack. Free subscriptions help grow this community, and paid support makes it possible for me to continue this work.

The line that held—and the one that didn’t

I was raised to believe that character mattered—that there was a line you didn’t cross, no matter the cost.

In this audio version of The Collaborationists, I think about the men who once understood that—and the ones who no longer do.

From Nuremberg to Watergate to where we are now, this is about the quiet decisions of character that define a country…and the people who fail to make them.

Read the original essay, including images and more, on Substack: The Collaborationists.

Send us Fan Mail

Thank you for listening—and for giving this your time.

If this piece resonated with you, I hope you’ll consider subscribing to my Substack. Free subscriptions help grow this community, and paid support makes it possible for me to continue this work.