Why are elected Democrats punishing the very people who voted for them?

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This week's episode tackles the tendency to criticize Democrats when Republicans are the principal drivers of authoritarianism in the U.S.right now. Andrea Pitzer tries to answer the perennial question "What do you want Democrats to do, if they don't control any branch of government?" Her response boils down to giving examples of harmful actions from several Democrats voters had hoped would do more.

She considers Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer's recent appearance with Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has endorsed genocide against Palestinians and encouraged violence in the West Bank. She also considers recent actions taken by three governors: Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, and Jared Polis of Colorado. These Democratic governors have undercut their party and democracy alike—in one case by pardoning an unrepentant criminal election denier who betrayed her office, in others by inviting the state police to brutalize demonstrators or by ignoring the will of the people and the legislators of her own party.

0:00 – What Do Voters Want From Democrats Right Now?

1:18 – Democrats Acting Like an Opposition Party: Early Examples

5:35 – Chuck Schumer's Failure to Lead

7:18 – Schumer at the Israel Day Parade With Bezalel Smotrich

8:59 – Virginia Governor Spanberger's Veto Spree Against Her Own Party

12:53 – Colorado Governor Polis Frees Election Denier Tina Peters

15:33 – Delaney Hall: What's Happening Inside the Newark ICE Detention Facility

21:27 – Mayor Ras Baraka vs. Governor Sherrill: Who's Actually Fighting Back?

26:23 – Why Democratic Politicians Must Oppose Authoritarianism — Lessons From History

Four hundred years of propaganda is way too much. Here's how we can push back.

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This week, Andrea Pitzer traces the introduction of the idea of propaganda and its role in nearly everything bad that's being sold to the American people today. She begins with the pope's recent encyclical warning of the dangers of AI, and then steps back to another pope, one from the seventeenth century, who introduced the idea of propaganda to the world. In between, she looks at Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, who created wartime propaganda and then made a killing using the same tactics to sell cigarettes to women.

From misrepresentations to stunt marketing, the half-truths and open lies of propaganda are still very much with us. All these tactics boil down to treating human beings as things, cheating people, and dividing humanity. Andrea considers the useful tool that machine learning could have been if the billionaire class had been satisfied to develop it for use in the big-data, tech, and science worlds that reflect its actual usefulness. Instead, they've sought to maximize profits by selling humanity a lie about how it can be a companion, a therapist, and a creative genius. Andrea closes with how to recognize the dangers and build a world that's more resistant to propaganda.

0:00 – AI, Propaganda, and the World Being Built Without Your Consent

0:40 – Pope Leo's Encyclical: What the Catholic Church Gets Right About AI

1:57 – Edward Bernays: The Father of Propaganda and the World He Made

5:52 – Cigarettes, Coups, and Corporate Manipulation: Bernays' Real Legacy

8:04 – How Social Media Primed Us for a Concentration Camp Society

16:16 – AI Is the New Propaganda: Tech Billionaires and the Myth of Intelligence

23:08 – Father Coughlin to Trump: A Century of Demagogues and Groupthink

26:24 – How to Think Beyond Propaganda and Build the World You Actually Want

26:46 – The AI Resist List: Global Movements Pushing Back on Big Tech

28:36 – Say What You See: Anti-Propaganda as a Radical Act

Wild-eyed extremists running our government have resurrected hateful pseudoscience.

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This week, "Next Comes What" looks at the various ways that the administration has adopted discredited historical views on eugenics and turned them into policies that have already killed hundreds of thousands of people. From RFK Jr. undermining vaccine programs and environmental regulations here at home to DOGE cutting lifesaving USAID programs abroad, the US government is actively dismantling the nation's public health apparatus.

Andrea Pitzer talks about her reporting decades ago on the history of American eugenics and the legendary Buck v. Bell case that the US Supreme Court used to allow involuntary sterilization of people deemed defective. The episode has a cameo from someone Andrea met back then: Paul Lombardo, a leading US voice on bioethics and the history of eugenics. Lombardo frames the current administration's policy as not just influenced by our eugenic legacy but as actually adopting eugenics.

Andrea also addresses the ways that current obsessions with fertility, purity, and genetic superiority are reanimating discredited principles of eugenics. Though the federal government's footprint in public health is too massive a lift for local programs to replace through small-scale efforts, the episode closes with ideas on how to keep a record of what's happening, push back politically, and stem the effects of the current eugenic tide until this administration can be consigned to the dustbin of history.

0:11 — MAHA's American Eugenics: How Trump and RFK Jr. Are Reviving a Dark History
2:26 — The Origins of American Eugenics: From Francis Galton to Madison Grant
4:57 — RFK Jr. as HHS Secretary: Anti-Vax, Germ Theory Denial, and Public Health Sabotage
6:17 — Purity Culture and Pseudoscience: The Eugenic Logic Behind MAGA Health Policy
10:01 — Carrie Buck and Buck v. Bell: The Supreme Court Case That Enabled Mass Sterilization
12:27 — What a Leading Eugenics Scholar Says About the Trump Administration
14:40 — USAID Cuts and Global Eugenics: How Foreign Aid Destruction Fits the Pattern
16:50 — Pro-Natalism, Birth Rates, and the Billionaire Push to Control Who Reproduces
21:55 — Negative Eugenics in Immigration Detention: Disease, Neglect, and Population Control
28:59 — What You Can Do: Protecting Public Health in Your Community