The Back Room with Andy Ostroy

Gretchen Carlson is an acclaimed journalist, NY Times bestselling author, speaker, and advocate for women’s rights in the workplace. She went public in 2016 with harassment claims against then Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, paving the way for the #MeToo movement. Gretchen spent over 30 years as a journalist and has hosted the Saturday edition of CBS’s The Early Show, Fox & Friends and The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson. She is co-founder of Lift Our Voices, a nonprofit organization fighting to eradicate forced arbitration clauses and non-disclosure agreements in workplace contracts that keep toxic workplace issues silent.

With just four days to go until the most critical, consequential election in American history, Gretchen's back in The Back Room giving her 11th hour thoughts on this nail-biter of a presidential race.

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Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud

Bandy X Lee, M.D. is a forensic and social psychiatrist and a world expert on violence who taught at Yale School of Medicine and Yale Law School for 17 years before joining the Harvard Program in Psychiatry and the Law. She became known to the public for leading a group of mental health professional colleagues in breaking the silence about the immediate past U.S. president’s dangerous psychology and publishing the New York Times bestseller, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. The volume proceeded from an ethics conference she organized at Yale School of Medicine, which led to her consulting with over 50 members of the U.S. Congress. She is currently president of the World Mental Health Coalition. She penned over 300 opinion editorials in outlets such as the Guardian, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Independent, and Politico. Her new book is THE MORE DANGEROUS CASE OF DONALD TRUMP: 40 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Warn Anew.

Dr. Lee pulls no punches as she continues to loudly sound the alarm bells about the grave dangers of another Trump presidency. Join us for this riveting and at times chilling conversation.

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Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud

Charlie Warzel is a journalist who helps audiences to make sense of our current digital moment, analyzing technology and media in a time of intense upheaval and cultural change. He's a Staff Writer at The Atlantic and the author of its newsletter Galaxy Brain, about technology, media, and big ideas. Previously he was a writer at large for The New York Times’ Opinion section.

Charlie and I discuss the worsening assault on truth, facts and reality in America in the AI and digital age.

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Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud

Tara Setmayer and Michelle Kinney are co-founders of the recently launched bi-partisan superPAC The Seneca Project, which is dedicated to mobilizing women voters in key swing states to ensure Democratic victory in November in order to safeguard women’s rights, healthcare access, the preservation of democracy, and the defeat of the extremist MAGA agenda.

Tara's a former GOP Communications Director on Capitol Hill and most recently served as a Senior Advisor for The Lincoln Project and host of the live show The Breakdown. She’s a contributor on MSNBC and other news outlets, has been a frequent guest host on ABC’s The View, Sirius XM’s The Michael Smerconish Program, and has several appearances on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. After 27 years as a Republican she left the party in November 2020 after Donald Trump refused to concede the election to Joe Biden. Michelle previously served as the Creative Director at The Lincoln Project. She's also a photojournalist, previously served as VP of WestSide Democrats in NYC, and was publicly elected to the New York County Democratic Committee. Prior to entering the political arena, she was a performing artist and producer.

There's just 10 days to go before the most critical, consequential election in history. Join us for this lively, insightful homestretch chat about the super-tight presidential race.

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Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud

Lee Yaron has been a journalist with Israeli newspaper Haaretz for nearly a decade. Her investigative reporting has resulted in the founding of state-level commissions and the changing of substantial bodies of Israeli policy and law. She is an elected member-representative of the Executive Committee of the Union of Israeli Journalists. She has also written and directed acclaimed theater productions notable for their use of found materials, including official governmental texts, to bring attention to marginalized communities both in Israel and throughout the Middle East. Born in Tel Aviv, Yaron splits her time between her native city and New York. Her new book is 10/7: 100 Human Stories.

Lee shares in riveting detail the impact of the horrific October 7, 2023 massacre on the diverse victims, the global community, and on her own life.

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Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud

Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He is the author of six books, including How Propaganda Works. He serves on the board of the Prison Policy Initiative and writes frequently about propaganda, free speech, mass incarceration, democracy, and authoritarianism for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and many other periodicals. His new book, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, is on sale next week.

Jason and I discuss his book and the existential threat to democracy of another Trump presidency

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Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is Professor of History at New York University. She writes about fascism, authoritarianism, and propaganda. She is the recipient of Guggenheim and other fellowships; an advisor to Protect Democracy; an MSNBC opinion columnist and television commentator; and publishes Lucid, a newsletter on threats to democracy. Her latest book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present looks at how illiberal leaders use propaganda, corruption, violence, and machismo - and how they can be defeated.

Ruth's back for another insightful conversation about Trump, Trumpism and the existential threat to democracy just two weeks from the most critical, consequential election in American history.

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Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud

Jon Michaels is a UCLA professor of law specializing in constitutional and national security law. His award-winning scholarship has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, University of Chicago Law Review, and Harvard Law Review, and he has written popular essays for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, and Guardian. A Yale Law graduate and Supreme Court clerk, Jon is a member of the American Law Institute and serves on the advisory board of UCLA’s Safeguarding Democracy Project. His latest book, co-written with David Noll, is VIGILANTE NATION: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens our Democracy.

Jon and I discuss his new book and the increasing use of vigilantism by the Republican Party and red states in targeting vulnerable groups in America to influence cultural, legal and political outcomes.

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Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud

Bill Adair is the founder of the Pulitzer Prize winning website PolitiFact and is the Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke University and the director of the Duke Reporters’ Lab. His awards include the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting (with the PolitiFact staff), the Manship Prize for New Media in Democratic Discourse, and the Everett Dirksen Award for Distinguished Coverage of Congress. His new book is BEYOND THE BIG LIE The Epidemic of Political Lying, Why Republicans Do It More, and How It Could Burn Down Our Democracy.

Join us for this compelling chat about the breakdown of truth, facts and reality in politics, and its existential threat to democracy.

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Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud

Joe Walsh is a former Republican Congressman from Illinois elected to Congress in the TEA Party wave of 2010. Following his service in Congress, Walsh became one of the most popular syndicated conservative talk radio hosts in the country. In August of 2019 he ran for president, waging a Republican primary challenge against Donald Trump. He is the author of the 2020 book F*CK SILENCE: Calling Trump Out for the Cultish, Moronic, Authoritarian Con Man he Is. Joe is currently Director of The Social Contract and host of “The Social Contract With Joe Walsh" podcast. He can also be seen regularly on CNN, MSNBC and News Nation and has been written up in major publications like the NYT, Washington Post, The Daily Beast, The Guardian, Raw Story and Newsweek.

Joe's back with his inimitable wit, wisdom and flowery F-bombs talkin' Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, the presidential campaign and his predictions for the upcoming election!

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Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud