On the latest LGM pod, Scott and I sit down with longtime friend of the blog Elias Isquith to talk through the eight best picture nominees. We start with Trial of the Chicago Seven, end with the Father, and hit all the others in between. It’s a can’t miss pod, if only for the gowns alone! Recording and production of this one were both a bit rushed, so I apologize for the rough edges…

On the latest LGM podcast I spoke with Joshua Douglas of the UK College of Law about election and voter suppression issues. We open with a recap of the 2020 Democratic primary, which has set the terms for thinking about voter suppression in Kentucky and elsewhere over the past year. We then discuss why the Kentucky state legislature has bucked the national trend in GOP controlled states by improving voter access since the 2020 election, and finish with some observations about the changing rhetoric of voter suppression and the effectiveness of the corporate campaign against the Georgia election law. Towards the end there’s a terrific Rand Paul anecdote that you will be sad to have missed…

George William Joy‘s depiction of the interior of a late 19th Century omnibus

On the latest LGM podcast, I had the chance to sit down with friend-of-the-blog Greg Erhardt and talk about some of his recent work on the impact that ride-sharing apps have had on traffic patterns. Greg’s work was recently featured in the New York Times, and in this podcast we dive deep into why ride-sharing apps have tended to contribute to congestion, rather than offer a remedy. Greg’s other work on the subject is also interesting and worth a look, as is the video below:

I don’t often share links to my other podcast, but this interview with Larissa Caton, who has worked on Operation Warp Speed since June, is interesting and I think relevant to this crowd. It’s a deep dive into how parts of the defense enterprise retooled themselves to fight COVID.

This afternoon I spoke with Colin Snider about the resignation of three Brazilian senior military chiefs. The conversation touched on the institutional aspects of cabinet transitions in Brazil, the loss of faith of much of the government in Bolsonaro’s approach to COVID, and the history of military intervention in Brazilian politics. At several points I try to make clumsy analogies to the Trump administration, and we conclude with a worst case scenario about what the next election might look like.

For my latest podcast, I was happy to talk to Lorena Oropeza of the University of California-Davis about her book The King of Adobe: Reies López Tijerina, Lost Prophet of the Chicano Movement. This is a fascinating book about a bizarre figure. Tijerina was an evangelical preacher and in a many ways a genuinely horrifying human being who also became the leader of the Hispano New Mexico land grant movement, the first American 60s leader to take theories of violence and put them into action, and, briefly, one of the most important civil rights leaders in the nation who played a huge role in the Poor People’s Campaign. There are no easy answers for a guy like this, a legitimate charismatic leader for justice who also was a virulent anti-Semite and sexual abuser of his daughter. American history is complicated my friends and this book and podcast will teach you a lot about those complexities. Check it out!

Lemieux, Farley, and got together for a good long chat about a number of issues, including the ARA and just how groundbreaking it is, Biden’s Amazon union video, and our favorite topic, the Eeyoreism of LGM commenters about the COVID vaccines.

I was very happy to speak to Adam Sowards, historian of the public lands at the University of Idaho, about the state of public lands in 2021. We talked about Bears Ears, the importance of Deb Haaland’s nomination and soon-to-be confirmation at the Department of Interior, the mostly depressing issues around fire and climate change, and many other issues. Check it out!

For my latest interview with recent authors, I talk to Jeff Sanders, a historian at Washington State University, about his new book Razing Kids: Youth, Environment, and the Postwar American West. We cover a variety of issues from postwar urban planning to nuclear toxicity to what happens when the CCC is recreated in the Great […]

Check out my latest interview with authors of recent books. I spoke with Christy Thornton of Johns Hopkins University, author of the brand new book Revolution in Development: Mexico and the Governance of the Global Economy. She basically asks what happens if we look at the big global financial institutions of the 20th century from […]