Best Rachel Maddow Presents Podcasts (2024)

1
Inside Donald Trump’s Mass-Deportation Plans 28:43

12m ago28:43

28:43

Immigration has been the cornerstone of Donald Trump’s political career, and in his second successful Presidential campaign he promised to execute the largest deportation in history. Stephen Miller, Trump’s key advisor on hard-line immigration policy, said that the incoming Administration would “unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to impleme…

1
Pick 3: Justin Chang’s Downer Movies for the Holiday Season 9:21

4d ago9:21

9:21

If “Wicked, Part I” and “Gladiator II” are not getting you into the theatre this weekend, Justin Chang, The New Yorker’s film critic, offers three other films coming out this holiday season which are “among the most thrilling that I've seen this year.” He recommends “Nickel Boys,” based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead and di…

1
A Lakota Playwright’s Take on Thanksgiving; Plus, Ayelet Waldman on Quilting to Stay Sane 24:45

7d ago24:45

24:45

“The Thanksgiving Play” is a play about the making of a play. Four performers struggle to devise a Thanksgiving performance that’s respectful of Native peoples, historically accurate (while not too grim for white audiences), and also inclusive to the actors themselves. A train wreck ensues. “First it’s fun. . . . You get to have a good time in the …

1
Sarah McBride Wasn’t Looking for a Fight on Trans Rights 40:35

1h ago40:35

40:35

Sarah McBride just became the first transgender person elected to the United States Congress. A Democrat, she worked for the Human Rights Campaign before serving in the Delaware State Senate. McBride will be sworn in in January, but opponents of trans rights in Congress have already mobilized against her: Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina…

1
Ketanji Brown Jackson on Ethics, Trust, and Keeping It Collegial at the Supreme Court 25:05

14d ago25:05

25:05

Since the founding of the nation, just 116 people have served as Supreme Court Justices; the 116th is Ketanji Brown Jackson, appointed by President Biden in 2022. Jackson joined a Court with six conservative Justices setting a new era of jurisprudence. She took her seat just days after the Dobbs decision, when Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinio…

1
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington 18:10

18d ago18:10

18:10

Danielle Deadwyler, who first grabbed the spotlight for her performance as Emmett Till’s mother in the film “Till,” stars in a new film called “The Piano Lesson”—one of August Wilson’s Century Cycle plays about Black life in Pittsburgh. Denzel Washington has committed to adapting and producing all ten of Wilson’s Century Cycle plays; “The Piano Les…

1
The Authors of “How Democracies Die” on the New Democratic Minority 31:58

1d ago31:58

31:58

American voters have elected a President with broadly, overtly authoritarian aims. It’s hardly the first time that the democratic process has brought an anti-democratic leader to power. The political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, who both teach at Harvard, assert that we shouldn’t be shocked by the Presidential result. “It's not up…

1
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth 21:55

2d ago21:55

21:55

Sam Gold has directed five Shakespeare tragedies, but his latest, “Romeo + Juliet,” is something different—a loud, clubby production designed to attract audiences the age of its protagonists. “It’s as if the teens from ‘Euphoria’ decided that they had to do Shakespeare,” Vinson Cunningham said, “and this is what they came up with.” The production s…

51
Donald Trump’s Reëlection, and America’s Future 49:08

11d ago49:08

49:08

In the end, Donald Trump’s rhetoric of another stolen election, and his opponents’ warnings that he would once again attempt to subvert a loss, were moot. Trump, a convicted felon and sexual abuser, won not only the Electoral College, but the popular vote—the first time for a Republican President since 2004. Democrats lost almost every swing state,…

1
Rachel Maddow on the Fascist Threat in America, Then and Now 22:08

1M ago22:08

22:08

It made news when the retired general John Kelly, Donald Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, said that the former President fit the definition of a fascist. The MSNBC host Rachel Maddow could hardly be blamed if she said, I told you so. Maddow’s podcast “Ultra” and her book “Prequel” detail the history of Nazi and far-right movements in America…

1
Liz Cheney on Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Jeff Bezos 28:10

13d ago28:10

28:10

In recent weeks and months, dozens of prominent security and military officials and Republican politicians have come out against Donald Trump, declaring him a security threat, unfit for office, and, in some cases, a fascist. Way out in front of this movement was Liz Cheney. Up until 2021, she was the third-ranking Republican in Congress, but after …

1
How Alpha Kappa Alpha Shaped Kamala Harris; Plus, Bill T. Jones 35:30

1M ago35:30

35:30

One aspect of the Vice-President’s background that’s relatively overlooked, and yet critical to understanding her, is her membership in the sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha. “In one of the bylaws,” the writer Jazmine Hughes tells David Remnick, “it says that the mission of the organization, among many, is to uplift the social status of the Negro.” Far fr…

1
Charlamagne tha God Has Some Advice for Kamala Harris and the Democrats 36:03

1M ago36:03

36:03

In these final days of the Presidential campaign, Vice-President Kamala Harris has been getting in front of voters as much as she can. Given the polls showing shaky support among Black men, one man she absolutely had to talk to was Lenard McKelvey, much better known as Charlamagne tha God. As a co-host of the syndicated “Breakfast Club” morning rad…

1601
The Stakes for Abortion Rights, from the Head of Planned Parenthood 21:27

2M ago21:27

21:27

If Vice-President Kamala Harris wins in November, it will likely be on the strength of the pro-choice vote, which has been turning out strongly in recent elections. Her statements and choices on the campaign trail couldn’t stand in starker relief against those of Donald Trump and his running mate, J. D. Vance, who recently called for defunding Plan…

1
With “The Warriors,” Lin-Manuel Miranda Takes on Another New York Story 28:56

2M ago28:56

28:56

Since the blockbuster success of his musical “Hamilton,” Lin-Manuel Miranda has been busy: acting, directing, and composing for Disney projects, including the upcoming movie “Mufasa: The Lion King.” But his new project is more personal, and a throwback in the best sense. Working with the playwright Eisa Davis, he has reimagined a movie from his chi…

1
Bon Iver on “SABLE,” His First New Record in Five Years 46:23

2M ago46:23

46:23

Bon Iver is the alias of Justin Vernon, who holds an unusual place in music as both a singer-songwriter in an acoustic idiom and a collaborator with the biggest stars in pop, including Taylor Swift, Charli XCX, and Kanye West. Bon Iver’s new three-song EP, titled “SABLE,” is his first record of his own songs in more than five years. Vernon rarely g…

1901
The Astonishing Rise—and Uncertain Odds—of Kamala Harris’s Presidential Campaign 26:58

2M ago26:58

26:58

Since July 21st, when Joe Biden endorsed her in the Presidential race, all eyes have been on Vice-President Kamala Harris. The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos has been reporting on Harris for months, speaking with dozens of people close to her from her childhood to her days as a California prosecutor, right up to this lightning-round campaign for the Presi…

2001
Brian Jordan Alvarez on “English Teacher” 18:45

2M ago18:45

18:45

Between book bans, the movement for parental rights, the fight over cellphones, and budgets being slashed, life in a public school is stressful—and a fertile ground for comedy. Brian Jordan Alvarez created and stars in “English Teacher,” débuting this season on FX. Alvarez has been an actor for many years, with a role on the reboot of “Will & Grace…

2101
Newt Gingrich on What Trump Could Accomplish in a Second Term 31:29

2M ago31:29

31:29

Long before Donald Trump got serious about politics, Newt Gingrich saw himself as the revolutionary in Washington, introducing a combative style of party politics that helped his party become a dominating force in Congress. Setting the template for Trump, Gingrich described Democrats not as an opposing team with whom to make alliances but as an ali…

2201
Could the War in Gaza Cost Kamala Harris the Election? 18:53

2M ago18:53

18:53

In Michigan, many voters—particularly Arab American and Muslim voters—remain deeply upset by the Biden Administration’s support for the Israeli military, in the face of the enormous death toll in Gaza. In her Presidential campaign, Kamala Harris has not articulated any major shift in policy. Earlier in the year, during the primary elections, activi…

1
Young Donald Trump, Roy Cohn, and the Dark Arts of Power 31:41

2M ago31:41

31:41

Actors and comedians have usually played Donald Trump as larger than life, almost as a cartoon. In the new film “The Apprentice,” Sebastian Stan doesn’t play for laughs. He stars as a very young Trump falling under the sway of Roy Cohn (played by Jeremy Strong)— the notorious, amoral lawyer and fixer. “Cohn took Donald Trump under his wing when Don…

2351
Timothy Snyder on Why Ukraine Can Still Win the War 21:10

2M ago21:10

21:10

Since the war in Ukraine began, the historian Timothy Snyder has made several trips to Ukraine, and it was there that he wrote parts of his newest book, “On Freedom.” The author of “Bloodlands” and “On Tyranny,” Snyder spoke in Ukrainian with soldiers, farmers, journalists, and politicians, including President Volodymyr Zelensky. He talks with Davi…

1
Can Trump Voters Still Change Their Minds? 29:04

3M ago29:04

29:04

The political strategist Sarah Longwell has dedicated the last seven years to understanding why so many Republicans find Donald Trump irresistible, and how they might be persuaded to vote for someone else. Longwell is a lifelong Republican who became a leader of the Never Trump wing of the G.O.P., and her communications firm, Longwell Partners, has…

2551
Lake Street Dive Performs in the Studio 27:05

3M ago27:05

27:05

Lake Street Dive recorded their first album with money that their bassist won in a songwriting contest. They built a following the old-fashioned way, touring small venues for years and building a loyal following of fans—including David Remnick—who thought of them as an under-the-radar secret. Almost twenty years later, the band finds themselves ons…

2601
Josh Shapiro on How Kamala Harris Can Win Pennsylvania 23:24

3M ago23:24

23:24

In 2024, all eyes are on Pennsylvania: its nineteen electoral votes make it the largest swing state, and it’s considered a critical battleground for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris to win the White House. For many years, Pennsylvania trended slightly blue, but the state has become deeply purple—with a divided state House and a series of razor-…

1
A Legend on Broadway, Patti LuPone Makes Her Début in the Marvel Cinematic Universe 26:05

3M ago26:05

26:05

Patti LuPone has been a mainstay on Broadway for half a century. She’s appeared in some 30 Broadway productions and has won three Tony Awards for her roles in “Evita,” “Gypsy,” and “Company.” And somehow, LuPone’s career seems to be picking up steam in its sixth decade. Now LuPone is returning to Broadway in “The Roommate,” a play she’s starring in…

1
Preparing For Trump’s Next “Big Lie,” with the Election Lawyer Marc Elias 24:15

3M ago24:15

24:15

Of the sixty-five lawsuits that Donald Trump’s team filed in the 2020 election, Democrats won sixty-four—with the attorney Marc Elias spearheading the majority. Elias was so successful that Steve Bannon speaks of him with admiration. Now Marc Elias is working for Vice-President Kamala Harris’s campaign, and, despite his past victories, Elias says t…

2901
Ian Frazier’s Tour of “Paradise Bronx” 24:31

3M ago24:31

24:31

“I like to look at places that people aren’t seeing,” says Ian Frazier, the author of “Great Plains” and “Travels in Siberia,” and the new “Paradise Bronx: The Life and Times of New York’s Greatest Borough.” “Not only do people not know about” the Bronx, “but what they know about it is wrong.” The book, which was excerpted recently in The New Yorke…

1
The Writer Danzy Senna on Kamala Harris and the Complexity of Biracial Identity in America 25:57

3M ago25:57

25:57

In fiction and nonfiction, the author Danzy Senna focusses on the experience of being biracial in a nation long obsessed with color lines. Now that Kamala Harris is the Democratic candidate for President, some of Senna’s concerns have come to the fore in political life. Donald Trump attacked Harris as a kind of race manipulator, implying that she h…

3051
A Pulitzer Prize Winning Take on Finance 19:36

3M ago19:36

19:36

In honor of what is for many people the final days of summer, the New Yorker Radio Hour team presents a conversation that may inspire your end-of-summer reading list: David Remnick talks to Hernan Diaz about his book, Trust, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2023. The novel’s plot focuses on the daughter of eccentric aristocrats after she marries a Wal…

3151
From In the Dark: What Happened That Day in Haditha? 43:30

3M ago43:30

43:30

This program is drawn from a new season of the award-winning investigative podcast In the Dark. On a November day in 2005, in the city of Haditha, Iraq, something terrible happened. “Depending on whose story you believed, the killings were a war crime, a murder,” the lead reporter Madeleine Baran says. “Or they were a legitimate combat action and t…

3251
For Republicans, the End of Abortion Rights Was a Dangerous Victory 19:13

4M ago19:13

19:13

At the Republican National Convention in July, a platform plank in place for decades that called for a national abortion ban was removed—right at the moment that such a ban has actually become legally possible, after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from hard-line pro-life positions, saying that abortio…

3301
Why Are More Latino Voters Supporting Trump? 31:30

4M ago31:30

31:30

Despite a surge of enthusiasm for Vice-President Kamala Harris’s campaign, the 2024 race remains extremely competitive. And one factor very much in Donald Trump’s favor is an increased share of support from Latino voters. Anti-immigrant messaging from Trump and the Republican Party has not turned off Latino voters; he won a higher percentage of Lat…

3401
R.F.K., Jr., and the Central Park Bear, with Clare Malone 13:07

4M ago13:07

13:07

The New Yorker staff writer Clare Malone’s Profile, What Does Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Actually Want? sheds light on Kennedy’s position in this Presidential race—and it also solves a ten-year-old mystery about a dead bear cub found in Central Park. On Sunday, Kennedy tried to get ahead of the publication of Malone’s story by relating the bizarre sch…

3501
Nancy Pelosi, the Power Broker 37:22

4M ago37:22

37:22

Nancy Pelosi, who represents California’s Eleventh Congressional District, led the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives for so long, and so effectively, that one forgets she was also the first woman to hold the job. Her stewardship of consequential legislation—including the Affordable Care Act and the Inflation Reduction Act—during her …

3551
Israel’s Other Intractable Conflict (Part 2) 24:08

4M ago24:08

24:08

Israel has occupied the West Bank of the Jordan River since 1967, after the third Arab-Israeli war, and ever since Israelis have settled on more and more of this contested land. Violence by armed settlers against their Palestinian neighbors has increased dramatically in recent years, as a far-right government came to dominate Israeli politics. Unle…

1
Episode 8: Mystery Man 1:11:46

4M ago1:11:46

1:11:46

With the backing of an eccentric billionaire and powerful voices on the American far-right, a high-stakes effort to make Sen. Joseph McCarthy president surfaces at the Republican convention, as the years-long manhunt for American fascist Francis Yockey finally reaches its strange and dramatic end. Francis Yockey and Joe McCarthy become martyr figur…

3651
Israel’s Other Intractable Conflict (Part 1) 26:35

4M ago26:35

26:35

Israel has occupied the West Bank of the Jordan River since 1967, after the third Arab-Israeli war, and ever since Israelis have settled on more and more of this contested land. Violence by armed settlers against their Palestinian neighbors has increased dramatically in recent years, as a far-right government came to dominate Israeli politics. Unle…

1
Kamala Harris, Race, and the Presidency; Plus, Louisa Thomas on the Paris Olympics 23:22

4M ago23:22

23:22

One of the big questions about Vice-President Harris’s candidacy is undoubtedly race. She would not be the first Black President. “I think that most times when people bring Kamala Harris and Barack Obama into the same conversation, they are kind of mistaken—it’s just this kind of wish-casting,” Vinson Cunningham says. But “what they do have in comm…

451
Episode 7: Mobilized 50:32

4M ago50:32

50:32

With Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy facing the most serious challenge of his political life -- a looming censure vote in the U.S. Senate -- McCarthy's most fervent supporters raise up an army to fight in his defense. The effort, which draws together mainstream Republicans and McCarthy's most radical followers on the ultra right, will involve threa…

1
What Kamala Harris Needs to Win the Presidency, from a Veteran of Hillary Clinton’s Campaign 32:22

4M ago32:22

32:22

Kamala Harris will face barriers as a woman running for the Presidency. “Women constantly have to credential themselves,” Jennifer Palmieri, a veteran of Democratic politics who served in the Clinton Administration, says. She was also the director of communications for the Obama White House, and then for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential campaign…

1
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio on “Catalina,” the Tale of an Undocumented Student at Harvard 17:38

5M ago17:38

17:38

Catalina Ituralde is the protagonist of the novel that bears her name, “Catalina.” In the summer before her senior year of college, she’s working as an intern at a prestigious literary magazine, and come fall she’ll be back at Harvard to plot her future. But, contrary to a life of comfort that this scenario suggests, Catalina’s situation is complic…

1
Episode 6: Under Pressure 52:55

5M ago52:55

52:55

As Sen. Joseph McCarthy's activities -- and his troubling connections to those on the ultra right -- are exposed in the press, Democratic Sen. Lester Hunt launches a final effort to take McCarthy on and rein in his abuses. In response, McCarthy and his allies launch a coordinated blackmail campaign against Hunt, using his own family, that will ulti…

1
The Presidential Race Is in Uncharted Territory, but It’s Clear Who’s Winning 33:33

5M ago33:33

33:33

The movement to persuade President Biden—long after the primaries—to drop out of the Presidential race is unprecedented. So is the candidacy of a convicted felon. But this election season went from startling to shocking with the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and the death of a bystander. Despite the unknowns, the contours of the race are be…

1
Jane Mayer, David Grann, and Patrick Radden Keefe on the Importance of a Good Villain. 22:14

5M ago22:14

22:14

During the 2023 New Yorker Festival, three legendary staff writers got together to discuss the craft of investigative journalism: digging for information like detectives, and then presenting it in a way to rival the best thrillers. For each of these writers, the “bad guy” —whose actions usually set the story in motion – needs to be presented in thr…

1
Episode 5: Coming Home 52:41

5M ago52:41

52:41

The U.S. government’s search for American fascist Francis Yockey picks up steam as Yockey secretly returns home to America and joins forces with the growing pro-Nazi American ultra right. With investigators continually one step behind, Yockey suddenly turns up alongside one of the country's most powerful political figures who is ascending toward th…

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