Who Is?

By iHeartRadio + NowThisNews Politics

Who Is? episodes

October 13, 2020Who Is Leonard Leo?
What do John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh have in common? They made it onto the Supreme Court of the United States in part as a result of the activity of Leonard Leo, the de facto head of the conservative legal movement. Leo, who until recently led the Federalist Society, is a masterful conductor of a network of nonprofits and advocacy groups that have largely succeeded in transforming the third branch of American government, the Judicial. If Amy Coney Barrett, a Leo favorite, is confirmed by the Senate, the conservative transformation of the courts may be the most significant and lasting accomplishment of the Trump Administration.
Caroline Fredrickson, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice and distinguished visitor at Georgetown Law
Robert O’Harrow Jr., an investigative reporter at the Washington Post
Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice at the American Civil Liberties Union

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
56 min
October 06, 2020Who Is Andrew Wheeler?
Andrew Wheeler, the current Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is the most important member of the Trump Administration that you’ve never heard of. Extremely effective, Wheeler has systematically rolled back landmark federal regulation designed to address the climate crisis, and meticulously dismantled longstanding rules that protect our air, water, and environment. On this episode of "Who Is?," Sean Morrow dives deep into Wheeler’s roots in West Virginia, a state which makes plain the complicated realities of environmental regulation, and which presents a challenge only a strong federal bureaucracy can meet: charting a path toward a carbon neutral future that includes those who have already intimately experienced the consequences of heavy industry.
Coral Davenport, a reporter who covers energy and environmental policy, with a focus on climate change, at the New York Times
Gina McCarthy, President and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund. McCarthy previously served as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, from 2013-2017
Ken Ward Jr., a reporter who covers West Virginia for ProPublica. Ward is a co-founder of Mountain State Spotlight, a new nonprofit news organization that focuses on West Virginia

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
45 min
September 29, 2020Who Is QAnon?
It’s one thing to believe that a powerful elite exerts an outsize influence on American democracy. But it’s another thing to believe that this elite is involved in an organized conspiracy of Satanic worship and pedophilia, and further, that the only person who can save the children--and America--is President Donald J. Trump. This is the general thesis of QAnon, a bizarre and baseless ideology that has been embraced by as many as several million Americans, who organize primarily on social media. Although QAnon isn’t real, the rapid spread of extremist belief at the far right fringe--and the domestic security threat this represents--is real, and indicates that a small but not insignificant subset of Americans no longer inhabits the same reality as the rest of us. That’s a problem for democracy, and the democratic institutions on which society depends. On this episode of Who Is?, join Sean Morrow for a trip down the rabbit hole.
Amarnath Amarasingam, a professor at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, where he studies radicalization, terrorism, diaspora politics, post-war reconstruction, and the sociology of religion
Nancy Rosenblum, the Harvard University Senator Joseph Clark professor of ethics in politics and government emerita. Her most recent book is “A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy”
Brandy Zadrozny, a reporter at NBC News, where she covers disinformation, extremism, and the internet

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
50 min
September 22, 2020Who Is Vladimir Putin?
Russian President Vladimir Putin is one of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet. And yet, much of his story remains a mystery. Born in St. Petersburg, when it was still known as Leningrad, Putin’s childhood unfolded on the streets of a city recovering from a devastating, years-long siege during World War II. Today, Putin is the longest-serving Russian leader since Stalin, and could be in charge until 2036. On this episode of Who Is?, Sean Morrow dives deep into Putin’s past, and talks to some of the Russians who are fighting back against Putinism, and for freedom and democracy in Russia.
Catherine Belton previously served as the Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times. She’s currently a special correspondent at Reuters, and is the author of “Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West”
Masha Gessen, a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of many books, including “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin,” and most recently, “Surviving Autocracy”
Michael McFaul, who has taught at Stanford since 1995. McFaul served for five years in the Obama Administration, which included several years as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation. His most recent book is “From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia”
Nadya Tolokonnikova, a founder of feminist collective Pussy Riot

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1 hr
September 15, 2020Who Is Voter Suppression?
In the United States, political power is allocated when Americans go to the polls and vote for the candidates whom they believe will best represent their interests in government. For that reason, access to the ballot has been restricted--and contested--since the early days of democracy, with each expansion of the electorate met by measures to suppress the vote. Democracy, it seems, has always been for some, but not others. On this episode of “Who Is?,” join Sean Morrow for a conversation on voter suppression in the aftermath of Shelby County v. Holder, a 2013 Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act and upended how Americans vote. Featuring three women who fight for voting rights nationwide: Stacey Abrams, Lydia Camarillo, and Natalie Landreth.
Stacey Abrams, 2018 Democratic candidate for Governor of Georgia and former Minority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives. She’s the founder of Fair Fight and Fair Count, and her new book is, “Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America”
Lydia Camarillo, president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project and William C. Velasquez Institute
Natalie Landreth, a senior staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
44 min
September 08, 2020Who Is Black Lives Matter?
On February 26, 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. On July 13, 2013, Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges in the case of Martin’s death. In response to Zimmerman’s acquittal, Alicia Garza, an Oakland-based organizer, wrote a post on Facebook which contained the phrase “Black Lives Matter.” A friend, Patrisse Cullors, hashtagged it: #blacklivesmatter. Eight years later, following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, tens of millions of Americans poured into the streets, in outrage and grief, to demand that this never happen again. Nationwide protests in support of racial justice continue, and, tragically, so do police shootings of Black Americans: from Kenosha, Wisconsin, to Los Angeles, California. On this episode of “Who Is?,” a look at how Black Lives Matter has grown into a movement.
Keisha N. Blain, a professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, and president of the African American Intellectual History Society. She is the author of “Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom”
Miski Noor, a writer and organizer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Noor is a co-founder of Black Visions Collective
Vince Warren, director of the Center for Constitutional Rights

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
52 min
September 01, 2020Who Is Jeff Bezos?
In 1993, Jeff Bezos noticed that use of something called “the web” was up 2300 percent. So, he moved to Seattle and started a company: Amazon. Nearly thirty years later, Bezos, the wealthiest human being on the planet, is on track to become humanity’s first trillionaire, and Amazon has grown into one of the largest and most valuable companies in the world. An exquisite, revenue-generating machine, from e-commerce to Amazon Web Services, or, AWS, Amazon is both marketplace and infrastructure for the contemporary economy. But Amazon’s dominance and Bezos’s immense wealth come at a cost: to workers, to small businesses, and to the health of competitive markets. On this episode of “Who Is?,” the story behind the package--and your Amazon Prime membership.
Vanessa, an Amazon worker and organizer with DCH1 Amazonians United
Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self Reliance
Kshama Sawant, a Seattle City Councilwoman who has represented Seattle’s District 3 since 2014
Andreas Weigend, a data scientist who previously served as Amazon’s chief scientist. He is the author of the book “Data for the People”

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
54 min
August 25, 2020Who Is Big Meat?
On the first season of “Who Is?,” Sean Morrow explored Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and the military industrial complex. But what about the meat industrial complex? Whether it’s beef, chicken, or pork, most of the meat that winds up on your dinner plate is the ultimate result of an industrial food system controlled by a handful of powerful multinational meatpacking corporations: JBS, Smithfield, Cargill, Tyson, and National Beef. Big Meat. And for the most part, the story of Big Meat--and the system of industrial meat production that it controls--is a story untold, despite the enormous impact that these companies and this system has on everything from our diets, to the health and economic stability of rural communities in the United States, to the global climate crisis. On this episode of “Who Is?,” Sean Morrow takes a trip inside the refrigerator--and beyond--for the story of how Big Meat came to be, and what we can do about it.
Leah Douglas, an associate editor and staff writer at the Food and Environment Reporting Network
Sherri Dugger, executive director of the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project
Joe Maxwell, former Lieutenant Governor of Missouri and co-founder and president of Family Farm Action Alliance
Shefali Sharma, director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy’s European office

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
50 min
August 18, 2020Who Is Mark Zuckerberg?
There are more than 7 billion people on the planet, and as of this year, nearly 3 billion of them use Facebook or one of the platforms it owns: Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. As a result, the company is massively profitable, which has made Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and CEO, one of the most wealthy and powerful human beings in the world. At the helm of this behemoth, Zuckerberg wields a power that, according to legendary investigative journalist Julia Angwin, is unlike any other in history. On this episode of “Who is?,” Sean Morrow confronts Facebook, and the man in charge of the platform on which much of human digital communication occurs, and on which most of the world’s digital community resides.
Julia Angwin, a renowned investigative journalist who has written about tech for the Wall Street Journal, ProPublica, and is now editor in chief of The Markup, which she founded
Sarah Frier, who writes about social media for Bloomberg in San Francisco. She’s the author of “No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram,” which was published in April of this year

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
49 min
August 11, 2020Who Is George Soros?
In some ways, George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who turns 90 this week, is the sum of the worst horrors and greatest triumphs of the twentieth century. A survivor of World War II who narrowly escaped Nazi concentration camps, Soros would escape totalitarianism twice, making his way to London on the eve of the Soviet occupation of his hometown, Budapest, Hungary. Soros went on to become one of the financial titans of global capitalism, a ruthless hedge fund manager whose aggressive currency speculation infamously broke the Bank of England. As he amassed an immense fortune, Soros would spend $32B on his Open Society Foundation, an organization through which he seeks to nourish liberal democracy worldwide. It’s that very work in support of democracy which has led Soros to become the reviled target of both Western antidemocratic conservatism and Eastern antiliberalism. On this episode of Who Is?, Sean Morrow explores the story of one of the most loved--and loathed--people on the planet.
Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford and senior fellow at Stanford University, who has been writing about the transition to democracy in Eastern Europe for 40 years
Hannes Grassegger, an investigative reporter based in Bern, Switzerland, who focuses on digital power and information warfare
Kati Marton, a Hungarian born writer, journalist, and activist. Marton is currently working on her tenth book, a biography of Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel
Emily Tamkin, U.S. editor and Washington correspondent at The New Statesman, a political and cultural magazine based in the United Kingdom. Tamkin's new book, “The Influence of Soros: Politics, Power, and the Struggle for an Open Society,” is available now

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
48 min

About Who Is?

From the publisher's feed

“Who Is?,” an original podcast from NowThis, explores the biographies of influential people in the United States and beyond. Now in a third season, “Who Is?” presents deep…