The Mother Jones Podcast

By Mother Jones

What's The Mother Jones Podcast about?

Each episode will go deep on a big story you’ll definitely want to hear more about. We’ll share with you our best investigations (think private prisons, electoral skullduggery, Dark Money, and Trump's Russia connections), and informative interviews with our reporters and newsmakers. We're hoping to make your week more informed with the stories that really matter, told by us, the folks you trust for smart, fearless, reporting.

4.6

984 ratings

Download our free app to listen on your phone

LAST EPISODE

Derek Chauvin Is Guilty. Th...

04.21.2021

Late Tuesday afternoon, the jury in the trial of Derek Chauvin delivered its verdict: guilty on all three counts in the killing of George Floyd. The 12 jurors—six of whom are white, four Black, and two multiracial—heard three weeks of ...

The Mother Jones Podcast episodes:

04.21.2021 Derek Chauvin Is Guilty. The Fight for Real Justice Is Far From Over. Late Tuesday afternoon, the jury in the trial of Derek Chauvin delivered its verdict: guilty on all three counts in the killing of George Floyd. The 12 jurors—six of whom are white, four Black, and two multiracial—heard three weeks of ...
04.14.2021 How America's Super-Rich Tax Evaders Are Hurting Everyone Money. You’re probably thinking a lot about it these days. From a global pandemic that’s tanked the global economy, to President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure bill, to workers once again trying (and failing) to unionize at Amazon, who gets ...
04.07.2021 The Hidden Influence of Lady Bird Johnson Lady Bird Johnson always fit the mold of a certain old-fashioned, stereotypical presidential wife: self-effacing, devoted to her generally unfaithful domineering husband, not particularly chic, and, being a traditional first lady one who needed a public cause, and found hers ...
03.31.2021 Hope and Fear: The Dangerous New COVID Phase, Explained Earlier this week, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky went off-script during a news conference to issue an emotional warning: a fourth coronavirus surge could be on its way. She described a “recurring feeling I have of impending doom,” saying that ...
03.26.2021 Stop the COVID Shaming! For many people who contract the coronavirus, shame is an underreported side-effect. Its symptoms are intense bewilderment about the cause of infection, reluctance to engage with healthcare systems, and discomfort disclosing the diagnosis to friends and family. The internal dynamic ...
03.25.2021 A Post-Trump Guide to Stopping the Lies and Healing Our Politics Cass Sunstein is a public intellectual and provocateur—and he has been pondering a timely issue: public lying. A longtime Harvard law professor and an expert on behavioral economics, Sunstein has written a slew of books, including volumes on cost-benefit analysis, ...
03.24.2021 What Happened in Jackson, Mississippi, Was a Catastrophe—and a Warning Sign Boiling water to drink and bathe. Collecting rainwater to flush toilets. Using bottled water distributed by the National Guard to take care of basic hygiene. For four weeks, tens of thousands of people in Jackson, Mississippi, did not have access ...
03.17.2021 All Hail Pop Queen Selena, Who Showed Us How to Belong Anything for Selena is more than a podcast about the iconic 1990s superstar Selena Quintanilla. It’s a nine-part series about belonging itself. Journalist Maria Garcia documents her own journey as she discovers what it means to love and mourn Selena, ...
03.10.2021 Stacey Abrams Is Hellbent on Stopping the GOP's "Jim Crow 2.0" Stacey Abrams has a name for the series of bills that just passed the Georgia state legislature: “Jim Crow in a suit and tie.” Abrams joins the Mother Jones Podcast to explain why your right to vote is once again ...
03.05.2021 Roxane Gay Says Cancel Culture Does Not Exist Roxane Gay is one of the most prolific and versatile writers of our generation. She’s written a best-selling collection of essays (Bad Feminist), a blockbuster memoir (Hunger), Black Panther comics, and countless essays of cultural criticism. That’s not to mention ...
03.03.2021 The Vaccine Rollout Is Racist. We Can Do Something About That. A new coronavirus vaccine from Johnson & Johnson has been approved. A new coronavirus variant in New York City has been identified—and is spreading. New data shows structural and racial disparities in who is receiving the vaccine, and who is ...
02.24.2021 Biden Can't Make Trump's Immigration Cruelty Vanish Overnight Overflowing ICE detention centers. Families separated at the border. A multi-billion-dollar border wall. Over the course of his four-year presidency, Donald Trump used executive power to wage war on the United States’ immigration system–leaving millions of immigrants and asylum seekers ...
02.17.2021 What the Hell Is “Truth and Reconciliation”, Anyway? House impeachment manager Jamie Raskin delivered a speech during Trump’s impeachment trial last week in which he made a direct appeal to reality: “Democracy needs a ground to stand upon,” he said. “And that ground is the truth." There’s a ...
02.10.2021 Impeachment Trial Day One: The Damning Case Against Donald Trump Tears on the Senate floor. Shocking footage of the insurrection. A bumbling and widely panned performance by Donald Trump’s legal team. The former president’s second impeachment has now moved to trial, and House Democrats came prepared. A little over one ...
02.03.2021 Biden Confronts Our Climate Crisis Head On Stopping climate change is back on the White House agenda. President Biden came into with the most ambitious climate change plans of any administration to date. He not only promised to reverse the Trump administration's regressive climate policies, including regulatory ...
01.27.2021 Dr. Seema Yasmin Grew Up Believing Conspiracies. Now She Fights Them. Trump is gone. But assessing the wreckage wrought by his lies has only just begun. Emerging, battered, from a year advising the former president, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, and Dr. Deborah Birx, the former coronavirus ...
01.20.2021 The Post-Trump Era Is Here: Inside Joe Biden's Historic Inauguration Today, Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States. Two weeks after an armed mob stormed the Capitol, the new president painted a picture of hope and collective effort in his inaugural address. His message sharply ...
01.14.2021 Twice Impeached: Trump’s Name Will Live Forever in Shame and Infamy Today, President Donald Trump became the first president in US history to be impeached twice. A majority of the US House of Representatives—including 10 Republican members—voted to impeach Trump following last week’s violent attack by right-wing extremists on the US ...
01.13.2021 Trump's Terror Tactics and America's History of Racist Violence The January 6 attack on the US Capitol by a mob of extremist Trump supporters was shocking and scary—but not surprising. Incendiary rhetoric and racist dog whistles have been centerpieces of President Trump’s politics since he first ran for office. ...
01.08.2021 I Watched the Capitol Siege Begin. I Was Threatened For Being a Reporter. On Wednesday, a mob of Trump supporters surged towards the US Capitol as the Senate was debating certification of Joe Biden’s election win. “No one gets out alive, not today!” a man brandishing a Trump flag shouted, according to MoJo ...
01.06.2021 BREAKING: Goodbye, Mitch. Democrats Win the Senate. NOTE: This episode was recorded just before violence erupted on Capitol Hill when pro-Trump extremists, inflamed by the president, rampaged inside Congress. Goodbye, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Hello, razor-thin Democratic control of the US Senate, and the chance for ...
01.06.2021 Trump Won't Stop Lying, Extorting, and Cheating, Even If It Kills the GOP Wow. What a start to the year. For those of you hoping high-stakes political drama might be confined to the 2020 presidential election, think again. In the year's opening week alone, we've heard a raging president, caught on tape, bullying ...
12.30.2020 2020 Needs Its Own History Book. Here’s Our First Draft. A disease, global in reach but intimate in its cruelty. A nation plunged into economic ruin. A president raging and incompetent. Society's unforgiving disparities revealed like never before. What a year to be putting out a weekly news podcast. On ...
12.23.2020 “He Won’t Get Played:” Biden’s Biographer on Lessons from the Obama White House Joe Biden’s biographer joins the Mother Jones Podcast to tell us about the man behind the public figure. Over his decades in public life, we’ve heard about the tragedies our president elect has experienced: the trauma of the car accident ...
12.16.2020 Prayer and Politics: On the Campaign Trail in Georgia with Raphael Warnock On this week's Mother Jones Podcast, we take you along for the ride as Democrats barnstorm Georgia in the last few weeks before the pivotal runoff elections. Our reporter Becca Andrews is pulling up to drive-in church services and political ...
12.09.2020 Georgia’s Runoff Races Are Usually Disasters for Dems. This Time Is Different. You might be breathing a deep sigh of relief that the 2020 elections are finally over. But spare a thought for our friends in Georgia. Voters there are still being bombarded with political ads, national attention, and oodles of fresh ...
12.02.2020 Will Biden Finally Fix America's Crippling Student Debt Crisis? Young people turned out in record numbers for the 2020 presidential election, and they overwhelmingly backed Joe Biden. Now, the hashtag #CancelStudentDebt has been trending on Twitter, as intense pressure mounts on the President-elect to finally tackle the $1.7 trillion ...
11.25.2020 The Safest Ways to Celebrate Thanksgiving, According to Science How are your Thanksgiving plans different this year? You may have heeded the urgent advice to put travel plans on ice, but you’re still trying your best to feel the holiday spirit, somehow? As the latest coronavirus surge continues unabated, ...
11.18.2020 Surge Shock: Top Coronavirus Experts Share Fixes for Our Broken System The United States is confronting its worst surge in coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic. Governors are rushing new lockdowns into place as hospitals nationwide burst at the seams. The death toll is, yet again, setting daily records. ...
11.11.2020 Biden Won. Now He Needs to Save the Planet. After a drawn-out vote count, Joe Biden has clinched the presidency. Now he needs to save the planet. As Biden’s supporters celebrate, many are hoping beyond hope for a quick reversal of President Trump’s most harmful policies come January 20, ...
11.07.2020 Live Podcast Special: How Biden Banished Trump It’s over! After a nail-biting count that dragged for days in key swing states, Joe Biden will become the 46th president of the United States, with a record-breaking vote count of at least 75 million votes, so far. The Mother ...
11.04.2020 No Clear Outcome. No Clear Rejection of Trump. Now We Wait. Exhausted from staying up much too late, we are all trying to figure out what happened now that the final day of voting is over in one of the most important elections of our lives. The presidential results are still ...
10.30.2020 Staying Sane During America's Coming Constitutional Firestorm We are days out from what could be the most high-stakes election of our lifetimes. If Trump loses, will he go quietly? Which parts of the constitution will he trample on the way out? If Trump wins, how much more ...
10.28.2020 Live Special: How to Survive Election Night (and Beyond) On today’s show: Everything you need to know about this infuriating, scary, hopeful, dumb, and exciting final sprint to the polls. Simply surviving this next week is going to be a feat of endurance—and then there’s election night itself. But ...
10.21.2020 How Biden Can Pull Off the Once-Unthinkable: Win Arizona With less than two weeks to go before the election, the Mother Jones Podcast takes you to the major 2020 battleground state of Arizona. Turning it blue would be a real game changer for former Vice President Joe Biden's attempt ...
10.14.2020 Trump, Guns, and 2020: One Hunting Family Tackles America's Biggest Debates This week’s presidential debate may be canceled, but debates are still roiling around kitchen tables, on social media, and in family iMessage groups. It’s 2020 and opportunities for a fight are everywhere: Maybe you’re having a hard time convincing your ...
10.07.2020 Trump’s Biggest Florida Influencer: A Cuban YouTuber with a Pet Monkey Could one Cuban American Youtuber swing the presidential election? Four years ago, social media and the stars who populate its platforms already exerted an outsized influence on the election. In 2020, influencers are wielding even greater power. With a handful ...
09.30.2020 Trump's Trashy Debate Performance Proved Biden's Point: This Choice Is Stark The first presidential debate of the 2020 election was a night of sound and fury, signifying Trumpian nihilism. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was visibly trying to stay calm and focus on the camera and speak as directly as possible ...
09.23.2020 After RBG: Our Fight for Democracy Just Got More Desperate Trailblazing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died last week at 87. President Trump now has the opportunity to remake the court for a generation by replacing R.B.G. with a staunch conservative. On today's show: What happens next? Mother Jones's ...
09.16.2020 CNN's Brian Stelter: Inside the Toxic Trump-Fox Feedback Loop It is impossible to tell the story of President Trump's rise to power without understanding his relationship with Fox News. Together they form one of modern America's most defining duos, argues CNN's chief media correspondent Brian Stelter, who documents their ...
09.09.2020 Young. Black. Gay. Heading to Congress. Meet the Ascendant Mondaire Jones. Mondaire Jones is on the brink of making history. He is in line to become one of the first Black gay men to serve in the US Congress after winning the Democratic primary for New York’s 17th congressional district in ...
09.02.2020 QAnon Is Infecting Congress. How the Wild Conspiracy Theory Went Mainstream. As recently as March, "QAnon" was still a mostly fringe phenomenon. The conspiracy theory, which posits that a vast Democrat-led pedophile racket operates at the heart of the U.S. government, was well known among President Donald Trump's hardcore MAGA base, ...
08.26.2020 Progressive Prosecutors Are Frontline Fighters in the New Culture War One reason that the nomination of Kamala Harris is so fascinating is that it comes at a time when we’re completely rethinking criminal justice in the United States. And Kamala Harris was a prosecutor. From her time as San Francisco ...
08.19.2020 The Biggest Night of Kamala Harris's Life Wednesday night will mark the biggest accomplishment in the already-dazzling career of Senator Kamala Harris, when she takes to the (virtual) stage at the 2020 Democratic National Convention to accept her party’s nomination for vice president. The culmination of many ...
08.14.2020 "We Know How to Lead." Rep. Barbara Lee on Kamala Harris and the Unifying Power of Black Women Representative Barbara Lee is a big fan of fellow Californian Senator Kamala Harris. Last year, she was the first high-profile politician to endorse Kamala Harris' bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. After Joe Biden clinched the top spot in the ...
08.12.2020 I'm a New Dad Freaking Out About Pandemic Day Care. So I Called the Expert. With schools and parents around the country facing tough decisions about safety and education, one author and academic has become something of a hero to parents everywhere for her sane, data-driven approach to surviving parenting during a pandemic. Emily Oster, ...
08.05.2020 An Unhinged President Declares War on Protesters. (No, Not Trump.) An embattled president. A mass movement. A military used against citizens. We’ve been here before. In Mayday 1971, thousands of anti-Vietnam War protesters descended on Washington DC to try to shut down the federal government. By 10:30am, more than 5000 ...
07.29.2020 Samantha Bee: What Using the C-Word Taught Me About Trump-Era Comedy Samantha Bee doesn’t think comedy will take Trump down. She calls her craft “impotent beyond belief” in the face of the daily presidential wrecking ball. But then, the creator and star of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee thinks preaching to ...
07.22.2020 Debbie Harry on Blondie, Bowie, and Bees Debbie Harry is an icon, punk rock star, and self-proclaimed spokesperson for bees. As the frontwoman of Blondie, she came up through the avant-garde art scene in 1970s New York, trading artistic inspiration with Andy Warhol, Basquiat, and Patti Smith. ...
07.15.2020 John Leguizamo on Trump, Dirty Jokes, and Whitewashing Latinx History Actor, activist, author and educator John Leguizamo loves that his comedy makes people feel angry. In his 2018 one-man Broadway show, Latin History for Morons, the 55-year-old star splices jokes with history about the genocide of Native American people, his ...

Older episodes