Last week UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, opened the United Nation's annual climate summit, COP27 meeting this year in Egypt, with a dire warning: "We are in the fight of our lives, and we are losing, Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing, global temperatures keep rising, and our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible. We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.”At last year's conference in Scotland, countries recommitted to cutting greenhouse gas emissions to limit the rise in global temperature to 2 degrees Celsius. Despite these promises, the world is still not on track to meet that goal. Even in this year the earth’s rising temperatures have fueled extreme weather events. It’s poorer nations in the Global South that bear a disproportionate share of the burden. This year some of those nations have intensified demands for wealthier nations to pay climate reparations and establish a “loss and damages fund.”

President Joe Biden spoke on Friday and outlined U.S. commitments to cutting methane and carbon emissions, but he stopped short of committing any resources for global “loss and damages” due to the United States role as the world’s second largest producer of of greenhouse gasses.  

For more on this we spoke with Jean Su, Energy Justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity, the co-author of the report, “The Climate President’s Emergency Powers.” And she is Co-Chair of Climate Action Network International.

For full transcript, see above.

Veterans day is about honoring those who served.  Some folks are thinking about parents and grandparents who dedicated their life to service. Many reflect on the hardships veterans have endured, as well as their courage at home and abroad.

We asked listeners to tell us about the veterans they hold near and dear in their hearts.  

For full transcripts, see above. 

The new film Retrograde is an unflinching portrait of what happened in the nine months after President Biden announced he would withdraw troops from Afghanistan in August 2021. The film follows one Afghan general, Sami Sadat, to tell an emotional story of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Award-winning filmmaker Matt Heineman and his team of Green Berets were there to capture the final months of some 20 years of U.S. involvement in the conflict prior to the fall of Kabul.

When President Biden announced that the U.S. was pulling out, Heineman and his team shifted gears, and embedded with Afghan forces to see what would happen. We speak with Matt about the withdrawal from Kabul. 

The number of military veterans elected to Congress has been slowly but steadily increasing since 2015, after decades of historic lows since the 1970s. The 2022 midterm election cycle saw the largest field of veteran candidates in a decade: 196.

We hear about the unique assets that veterans can bring to elected office, with Leo Shane III, deputy editor of The Military Times.

For full transcript, see above.

Homelessness among veterans has decreased by 11 percent over the past 2 years.  This represents a decline of more than half since 2010.  But the problem persists in some particularly challenging communities.

Village for Vets is a non-profit organization working to address homelessness among veterans in Los Angeles, which has the largest population of unhoused veterans of any Metropolitan area.

We speak with Mary McGuire, Executive Director of Village for Vets, and Cari Bagdonas, a Coast Guard Veteran who has experienced housing insecurity.

For full transcripts, see above.

The new Netflix series “Blockbuster” premiered on November 3rd.

The show stars a diverse cast of characters, fighting to save the last Blockbuster store.

Cast member Tyler Alvarez joins us to discuss the new series, his connection to the character Carlos, and if not Blockbuster, what he hopes to save in this world.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Haaland v. Brackeen, which could strike down the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).

The ICWA was intended to prevent Native children from being separated from their tribes and families. It was enacted in 1978 in response to US Government practices that forcibly removed hundreds of thousands of Native children from their homes.

We speak with Rebecca Nagle, a freelance writer and member of the Cherokee Nation, about what this new challenge in the Supreme Court could mean for ICWA and the SCOTUS precedents it could overrule.

This year, a record number of women ran for governorships at 25 candidates, while the number of women running for Congress fell short of the record-setting 2020 and 2018 cohorts. But 45 of those races for Governor, House or Senate featured two or more women candidates running against each other. We’ve brought you special coverage of some of those races in our SHE-lection series: a partnership between The Takeaway and the Center for American Women and Politics. What do the 2022 midterm results tell us about the future of women in politics?

We're joined by Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

Find all episodes in the SHE-lection! series here.

All the votes have been cast in Midterms 2022, and many of the results are in. 

Florida Republicans are celebrating statewide victories in the elections for Governor and Senate. But outside of the Sunshine state, it’s hard to find evidence of a significant "red wave" that many Republicans had hoped for. For the most part, Republican candidates won in Republican districts, and Democrats carried Democratic districts. 

The statewide races didn’t bring many surprises: Republican JD Vance took Ohio. Democratic candidate for governor Stacey Abrams conceded to Republican governor Brian Kemp. Democrat John Fetterman secured Pennsylvania. And as of Wednesday morning, many of the toss up state-wide races like Wisconsin and Nevada were still up in the air. 

We get election takeaways from Joel Payne, Democratic strategist, and CBS News political contributor and Brendan Buck, a partner with the political communications firm, Seven Letter. Brendan was the press secretary for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and former House Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan.

Just a few years after graduating from college, Chloe Maxmin won a seat in Maine’s 88th legislative district. Two years later she was elected to Maine’s state Senate. She was the first Democrat to represent the 88th and the youngest woman elected to the state senate. 

We talk with Chloe about her strategy of deep canvassing and why she believes rural voters are the crucial to American democracy.