The Back Room with Andy Ostroy

Jess Michaels is a 3x Founder, TEDx speaker, Advocate, and 1991 Jeffrey Epstein survivor who has lived with PTSD for 30+ years. She is the founder and CEO of 3Joannes Inc and the #withyoutoo Social Safety App, which guides users to "know what to do when someone says #metoo".

Jess's story is both harrowing and inspiring, which she shares in riveting detail.

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Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jonathan Capehart is a co-host of the morning edition of The Weekend on MSNBC. From 2020 until 2025 he was anchor of The Saturday Show and The Sunday Show on MSNBC. He is also an analyst on The PBS News Hour. He is a former Associate Editor at the Washington Post, where he was an opinion writer for nearly two decades.He was also deputy editorial page editor of the New York Daily News and served on its editorial board. His editorial campaign in 1999 to save the Apollo Theater earned the board the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing. His new memoir, “Yet Here I Am: Lessons from A Black Man’s Search for Home,”, is a NY Times bestseller.

Jonathan discusses his terrific new book about his life and career, and shares why after nearly two decades he left The Washington Post this Summer.

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Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud

Tara Setmayer and Michelle Kinney are co-founders of the bipartisan superpac The Seneca Project, Tara’s a former GOP Communications Director on Capitol Hill and most recently served as a Senior Advisor for The Lincoln Project. She’s a political writer and commentator who’s appeared on MSNBC and other news outlets, The View, and Real Time with Bill Maher. Her writing has been featured on CNN.com, Bloomberg, Cosmopolitan, The Daily Beast, and NBC.com. In November 2020 she left the Republican Party after Donald Trump refused to concede the election to Joe Biden.

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Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud

Nicole Foy is ProPublica’s Ancil Payne Fellow, reporting on immigration and labor. Before joining ProPublica, she was an enterprise and investigative reporter across the West, focusing on immigrants, Latino communities, farmworkers and inequality. She previously worked for CalMatters, the Austin American-Statesman, the Idaho Statesman, the Idaho Press and the Orange County Register.

Nicole and I discuss Trump's draconian immigration policies and whether or not there's some light at the end of the tunnel.

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Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud

Mikie Sherrill has represented New Jersey’s 11th Congressional district since 2019 and serves on the House Armed Services Committee. After graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1994, she spent almost 10 years on active duty in the Navy as a Sea King Helicopter pilot, leading missions throughout Europe and the Middle East, and as a Russian policy officer aiding in the implementation of our nuclear treaty obligations. She’s a former federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey and is now running for governor.

The Congresswoman and I discus her campaign for governor, and her thoughts on Trump’s exploitation of the military and his weaponizing of the Justice Department

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Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud

Gretchen Carlson is an internationally recognized advocate for women’s rights, whose bold actions against Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes helped pave the way for the global #MeToo movement. A former CBS News and Fox News journalist, author, TED talk alum, and champion for workplace equality, she was named one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World”. Gretchen is the co-founder of the non-profit Lift Our Voices which works to end silencing mechanisms in the workplace that keep toxic issues secret. She is also a frequent contributor to CNN and MSNBC, a Fast Company contributor and the author of the New York Times bestsellers “Be Fierce” and “Getting Real.” Her story of harassment and retaliation at Fox News has garnered international attention, including the Showtime mini-series “The Loudest Voice” and movie “Bombshell.”

Gretchen shares her terrific insights into a range of subjects including Trump 2.0, the Epstein scandal, #MeToo, and more.

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Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud @ Radio Free Rhiniecliff

Matt Wolf is a filmmaker whose award-winning documentaries have played widely in festivals and have been distributed internationally in theaters and on television. His latest is the two-part film Pee-wee as Himself, about the artist and performer Paul Reubens, and which can be seen on HBO Max. Matt’s features include Wild Combination, Teenage, Recorder and Spaceship Earth. He produced the Emmy-nominated film TheS troll about the history of New York’s Meatpacking District from the perspective of transgender sex workers. The film won numerous awards, including a Special Jury Prize at Sundance and a Peabody. He's made a number of short films about artists and queer history, including Bayard & Me, It’s Me, Hilary, I Remember, The Face of AIDS, and Another Hayride. In addition to filmmaking, Matt is also a writer. His artist book Input compiles hundreds of images from an enormous television archive, and, he publishes on Substack.

Matt shares a riveting behind-the-scenes look into the making of his new documentary and the challenges of working with Paul Reubens.

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Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud

Leah Litman is a professor of law at the University of Michigan and a former Supreme Court clerk. In addition to co-hosting Strict Scrutiny, she writes frequently about the Court for media outlets including The Washington Post, Slate, and The Atlantic, among others, and has appeared as a commentator on NPR and MSNBC, in addition to other venues. She has received the Ruth Bader Ginsburg award for her “scholarly excellence” from the American Constitution Society and published in top law reviews. Her new book is LAWLESS: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes.

Leah brings her terrific insights and legal expertise back into The Back Room to discuss the Epstein scandal, the escalating weaponizing of the Department of Justice, Texas redistricting, Emil Bove, the Supreme Court and more.

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Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud

Susan B. Glasser is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she writes a weekly column on life in Washington. She’s served as the top editor of several Washington publications, including Politico, where she founded the award-winning Politico Magazine, and Foreign Policy, which won three National Magazine Awards, among other honors, during her tenure as editor in chief. Before that, she worked for a decade at the Washington Post, where she was the editor of Outlook and national news. She also oversaw coverage of the impeachment of Bill Clinton, served as a reporter covering the intersection of money and politics, spent four years as the Post’s Moscow co-bureau chief, and covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She edited Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, early in her career. Her books include “Kremlin Rising,” “The Man Who Ran Washington,” and, most recently, “The Divider,” a best-selling history of Donald Trump in the White House, which she co-wrote with her husband, Peter Baker.

Susan's back in The Back Room discussing the Israel/Hamas war, Trump and Netanyahu, and the mounting Epstein scandal.

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Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud

Miles Taylor is a national security expert who works in Washington, DC as editor of the recently launched newsletter TREASON on Substack and as spokesperson for www.EndPresidentialRevenge.org. Taylor previously served as chief of staff at the US Department of Homeland Security, where he published a bombshell “Anonymous” essay in The New York Times, blowing the whistle on presidential misconduct. He later published the #1 national bestseller A Warning, revealed himself to be the author, and launched a campaign of ex-officials to oppose Donald Trump’s reelection. He’s worked as an advisor in the George W. Bush administration, on Capitol Hill, as a CNN contributor, and is the cofounder of a DC-based charter school and multiple democracy-reform groups. Taylor is also the author of The New York Times best-selling book Blowback and the host of the iHeartRadio podcast “The Whistleblowers.”

Miles became the target of Trump in an April executive order. He joins me for a frank discussion of what these past few months have been like for him and his family, how he's fighting against it, and the overall importance of whistleblowing in holding politicians and government officials accountable.

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Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud