This episode surveys the state of the hate movement in America, focusing on how hate groups are spreading their message and winning converts.

Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.

These days, a presidential tweet can dictate the news cycle for days on end. But is it driving us to distraction? 

Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.

This episode was originally broadcast in May 2016. Back in 1971, a 22-year-old journalist named Robert Rosenthal got a call from his boss at The New York Times. He told him to go to Room 1111 of the Hilton Hotel, bring enough clothes for at least a month and not tell anyone. 

Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.

Social distancing, hand-washing and self-isolation are supposed to keep us safe from the coronavirus. But if you’re locked up in an immigrant detention center, it’s impossible to follow those rules. 

Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.

Protesters around the country are pushing to loosen stay-at-home orders, even though health experts say that could lead to a spike in coronavirus cases. Meanwhile, some Amazon workers say not enough is being done to protect them.

Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.

PFAS contamination continues to threaten Michigan's environment, as well as the health of its citizens. Over the past month, action at the state level has been taken to fight this problem. In this week's "Issues of the Environment," Rebecca Esselman, executive director of the Huron River Watershed Council, discusses progress and challenges with WEMU's David Fair.

Since President Donald Trump took office, 58 environmental protection policies have been rolled back or rescinded. 37 more are in the process of being taken off the books. In this week's "Issues of the Environment," WEMU's David Fair checks in with 12th District Michigan Congresswoman Debbie Dingell about efforts to thwart federal policies that threaten environmental health and sustainability.

Water shutoffs has been a major issue in Detroit, and the next round is expected to come in April. Low-income residents are being dramatically impacted by the inability to meet the rising cost of water. Is access to water a right? Or, is it a privilege? In this month's "1st Friday Focus on the Environment," WEMU's David Fair and Lisa Wozniak of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters explore the answers to those questions. Monica Lewis-Patrick is co-founder, president, and CEO of "We the People of Detroit." She'll explain the organization's efforts to win water justice in the city and around the state and country.

Maintaining water service and safety remains an essential service during Governor Whitmer's "Stay Home, Stay Safe" executive order. In this week's "Issues of the Environment," WEMU's David Fair talks with the manager of Ann Arbor's water treatment services, Brian Steglitz, about managing the system to filter out virus and chemical contamination.

Many aspects of daily life have been dramatically changed due to COVID-19, and public transportation is certainly no exception. Although services like the Ann Arbor Area Transportion Authority (AAATA) promote a cleaner environment, they still have financial obligations and public health matters to consider. In this week's "Issues of the Environment," AAATA CEO Matt Carpenter explains how his organization and other forms of public transit in Michigan are adapting to the pandemic in a conversation with WEMU's David Fair.

The Centers for Disease Control continues to recommend wearing gloves and masks while in public. More and more people are following recommended guidelines. However, getting rid of those personal protective equipment (PPE) items is often being done improperly. In this week's "Issues of the Environment," WEMU's David Fair talks with Washtenaw County Public Works manager Theo Eggermont about proper disposal to protect public health and the environment.

Food production has been seriously disrupted to the coronavirus pandemic. It has forced producers, including dairy farmers, to dispose of more of their supplies, which has led to more food waste. Joe Diglio, president/CEO of the Michigan Milk Producers Association, has a conversation with WEMU's David Fair about how the problems are being addressed in this week's "Issues of the Environment."

About 14% of Michigan's population is African American. Roughly 40% of COVID-19 fatalties are in the African American community. It is an alarming statistic. Lt. Governor Garlin Gilchrist heads the state's Coronavirus Task Force on Racial Disparities. He joined WEMU's David Fair and Michigan League of Conservation Voters executive director Lisa Wozniak to discuss what is being done to address the immediate crisis. He also highlights the longer term issues that will need to be addressed and what the role of the task force will be to that end.

This month marks the fiftieth anniversary of Apollo 11, the NASA mission that first put men on the moon. In the decades since Apollo 11, the American space program has atrophied. No manned American space mission has left low Earth orbit since 1972. But recent developments in the space programs of other nations, along with new interest in space from private industry, have instigated a new interest in an American space program. The Trump Administration has announced plans to build an American military presence in space, as well as its intentions to send another manned mission to the moon. Rivka Galchen joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss what’s next in outer space.

It’s hard to recall a newly elected freshman representative to Congress who has made a bigger impact than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Her primary victory for New York’s Fourteenth District seat—as a young woman of color beating out a long-established white male incumbent—was big news, and Ocasio-Cortez has been generating headlines almost daily ever since. Practically the day she took her seat in Congress, Ocasio-Cortez became the hero of the left wing of the Democrats and a favored villain of Fox News and the right. She battled Nancy Pelosi to make the Green New Deal a priority, and has been involved with a movement to launch primary challenges against centrist or right-leaning Democrats. Like Bernie Sanders, she embraces the label of democratic socialism and supports free college education for all Americans. She has called for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She joined David Remnick in the New Yorker Radio Hour studio on July 5th, just after her trip to the border to examine migrant-detention facilities. Remnick and Ocasio-Cortez spoke about why she courted controversy by referring to some facilities as “concentration camps”; why she thinks the Department of Homeland Security is irredeemable; and whether Joe Biden is qualified to be President, given his comments about colleagues who supported forms of segregation. “Issues of race and gender are not extra-credit points in being a good Democrat,” she says. “They are a core part of the ... competencies that a President needs. . . . Where are you on understanding the people that live in this country?”

Since 1969, when an estimated six hundred million people around the world watched two astronauts walk on the surface of the moon, a significant number of people have doubted that it ever took place. A major line of conspiracy theory insists that the footage was faked (and directed by Stanley Kubrick, some have said) in an elaborate hoax engineered by NASA. In 1976, a book called “We Never Went to the Moon” was self-published by a man named Bill Kaysing, a former technical writer at Rocketdyne who claimed to have seen secret government documents. It attracted little notice, but Kaysing continued to make media appearances and fuel doubters into this century. Andrew Marantz, who has written on conspiracy theories for The New Yorker, notes that the moon landing always had skeptics, but the Internet and social media gave them platforms to advance even their most far-fetched views. Marantz sees links between the moon hoax and political conspiracy theories like QAnon. While skepticism toward government claims may be justified, conspiracy theories that dispute the most basic accounts of truth erode the functioning of a democracy, Marantz thinks; they lead to a totalitarian state where, in the words of Hannah Arendt, “everything was possible and ... nothing was true.” 

In June, protests erupted in Hong Kong over a proposed bill that could have allowed the Chinese government to prosecute political dissidents living in Hong Kong. This past Sunday, police in the city fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters, and a group of masked men attacked protesters and civilians at a Hong Kong train station. The protests are only the latest expression of increasing tension between Hong Kong, which has been a special administrative region since 1997, and the People’s Republic of China. Jiayang Fan joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss that rancorous relationship, and whether Beijing might order a military crackdown.

On Sunday, the Indian government of Narendra Modi revoked the semi-autonomous status of Kashmir, the Muslim-majority region on the border between India and Pakistan, and brought it under control of the Indian government. Imran Khan, Pakistan’s Prime Minister, condemned the move as another policy decision designed to promote Hindu supremacy in India. Outrage among Muslims in the region may also affect the ongoing peace talks between the United States and the Taliban in Afghanistan, where the capital, Kabul, was the target of a terrorist attack on Wednesday. Dexter Filkins joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the situation in Kashmir and its ramifications around the world.

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s first starring role was in the 2002 movie “Secretary,” a distriburbing romantic comedy about a troubled woman in a sadomasochistic relationship with her boss. Since then, Gyllenhaal has continued to push the boundaries of how sex is depicted onscreen as an executive producer and star of “The Deuce,” HBO’s drama about the beginnings of the porn industry. In a conversation with The New Yorker’s Lauren Collins, Gyllenhaal talks about her character, Candy, who leaves street prostitution to perform in porn and eventually makes her way into directing. Since the show premièred, the #MeToo movement has shed light on how women are asked to compromise themselves, not only in sex work but in entertainment and almost every other walk of life. “Many women have been asked to compromise themselves, and have done it,” Gyllenhaal tells Collins, admitting that she has moments of thinking, “Oh, my God. How did I laugh at that joke or stay in that meeting or put that shirt on?” Gyllenhaal also talks about adapting a novel by Elena Ferrante, who gave her the film rights—on condition that Gyllenhaal direct the adaptation herself. 

The third and final season of “The Deuce” begins in September, 2019. 

One of the big stories of the 2016 presidential election was the rupture within the Republican Party. "Never Trump" traditionalists lost their fight to prevent the nomination of Donald Trump, but a small faction still strenuously objects to his scorched-earth style and many of his policies. Earlier this month, Catholic University hosted a debate between two prominent conservatives representing two distinct visions. On one side, the constitutional lawyer and National Review staff writer David French, a voice for traditional Republicanism who sees Trump as a threat to democracy. On the other side, Sohrab Ahmari, the op-ed editor of the New York Post and who fervently supports the president and describes politics as "war and enmity." Benjamin Wallace-Wells joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss what their opposing positions mean for the future of the Republican Party.

This past Saturday, a series of air strikes in Saudi Arabia damaged more than a dozen oil installations, including one of the most critical oil-production facilities in the world. The attack threw global fuel markets into disarray. Houthi rebels in Yemen claimed that they launched the strikes, but they have long been armed by Iran, fuelling conjecture that the attacks were carried out by Tehran. Robin Wright joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss how Iran views U.S. policies in the Gulf and how the Trump Administration has unwittingly strengthened the regime’s hard-liners.

This week, evidence emerged that Trump tried to enlist the help of a foreign power to discredit his political opponents—in this case, Democratic Presidential hopeful Joe Biden. Further disclosures revealed that the President may have been aided in his efforts by his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, Vice-President Mike Pence, and Attorney General William Barr. On Tuesday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced the start of a formal impeachment inquiry against President Trump, saying that he had betrayed his oath of office, the nation’s security, and the integrity of U.S. elections. Jeffrey Toobin, Jane Mayer, and David Rohde—three New Yorker writers who have reported extensively about the Administration—join Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the case against Trump, and how his inner circle may have helped jeopardize his Presidency.

Last Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan informed President Trump of his intention to launch a military offensive in northeastern Syria, in an effort to eradicate the Kurdish militias there. Trump agreed to draw down American troops to clear the way for the Turkish army. Though Erdoğan regards those militias as terrorist groups, the Kurds have been close American allies in the battle against ISIS. Trump’s decision was met with harsh criticism by high-ranking Republicans, U.S. military officials, and others. Dexter Filkins joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss how the incursion into Syria is affecting one of the most volatile regions in the world, and what it could mean for Trump’s Presidency.

The months of protests in Hong Kong may be the biggest political crisis facing Chinese leadership since the Tiananmen Square massacre a generation ago. What began as objections to a proposed extradition law has morphed into a broad-based protest movement. “There was just this rising panic that Hong Kong was becoming just like another mainland city, utterly under the thumb of the Party,” says Jiayang Fan, who recently returned from Hong Kong. In Beijing, Evan Osnos spoke to officials during their celebration of the Chinese Communist Party’s seventieth year in power. He found that the leadership is feeling more secure than it did in 1989, when tanks mowed down student protesters. “I think the more likely scenario,” Osnos tells David Remnick, “is that China will keep up the pressure and gradually use its sheer weight and persistence to try to grind down the resistance of protestors.” 

On September 23rd, Representative Abigail Spanberger joined six other House Democrats—all from swing districts and all veterans of the military, defense, and intelligence communities—in drafting an op-ed in the Washington Post declaring President Trump a threat to the nation. The op-ed signalled a shift in the position of the moderate members of the House Democratic caucus. The day after the Post op-ed ran, the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, announced a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump. Spanberger joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss divisions within the Party, how Democratic candidates can win in 2020, and the Trump debacles in Ukraine and northern Syria.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has made a "wealth tax" one of the centerpieces of her presidential campaign. The plan was developed with the help of the economists Emmanuael Saez and Gabriel Zucman, part of a new generation of economists whose work focuses on the failures of free markets and advocate what many see as radical social change. John Cassidy joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss how this cohort is affecting policy among the Democratic candidates, and whether the economy might help Donald Trump's 2020 re-election bid.

This week, the House of Representatives voted to move forward with public hearings into whether President Trump abused his office for political gain. House Republicans unanimously voted against the proceedings, and describe the impeachment process as a conspiracy to unlawfully unseat the President. Trump has called the process an attempted coup. Susan B. Glasser joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss what to expect from the Intelligence Committee’s televised hearings.

Lena Waithe is the screenwriter and creator of the Showtime series “The Chi,” about the South Side of Chicago, but she tells Jelani Cobb, “Getting your own TV show is like getting beaten to death by your own dream.” Her first script for a feature film is “Queen & Slim,” directed by Melina Matsoukas. It’s about a man and woman who are on a not-great first date, during which they unintentionally kill a police officer at a traffic stop that escalates. “I just wanted to write something about us. But unfortunately, if I’m writing about us, how can I ignore the fact that we’re being hunted?” The film arrives in the aftermath two notorious police killings of black people—Botham Jean in Dallas and Atatiana Jefferson in Fort Worth—only the latest in a long line of similar tragedies. “I do not want that kind of publicity for my film,” Waithe says. “I am like every other black person. . . . Every time these stories hit our phones, a piece of us dies, because we know that we could be next.”

This week, ten of the seventeen candidates still running for the Democratic nomination met on a debate stage in Atlanta. The setting was significant: for decades, Georgia has been seen as a Republican stronghold, but last year the Democrat Stacey Abrams very nearly won the election for governor. Democrats hope that the state will go blue in 2020. Key to any Democratic strategy in Georgia, and in other states, will be mobilizing black voters, ninety-three per cent of whom went for Abrams in 2018. Jelani Cobb joins Eric Lach to discuss the candidates’ messages on race, and how voter suppression efforts may play a role in the 2020 election.

Since 2016, Andrew Marantz has been reporting on how the extremist right has harnessed the Internet and social media to gain a startling prominence in American politics. One day, he was contacted by a woman named Samantha, who was in the leadership of the white-nationalist group Identity Evropa. (She asked to be identified only by her first name.) “When I joined, I really thought that it was just going to be a pro-white community, where we could talk to each other about being who we are, and gain confidence, and build a community,” Samantha told him. “I went in because I was insecure and it made me feel good about myself.” Samantha says she wasn’t a racist, but soon after joining the group she found herself rubbing shoulders with the neo-Nazi organizer Richard Spencer, at a party that culminated in a furious chant of “seig heil.” Marantz and the Radio Hour producer Rhiannon Corby dove into Samantha’s story to understand how and why a “normal” person abandoned her values, her friends, and her family for an ideology of racial segregation and eugenics—and then came out again. They found her to be a cautionary tale for a time when facts and truth are under daily attack. “I thought I knew it all,” she told them. “I think it's extremely naive and foolish to think that you are impervious to it. No one is impervious to this.”

Samantha appears in Andrew Marantz’s new book, “Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation.” 

The New Yorker’s Eric Lach is in Iowa for the month leading up to the Democratic caucuses. Next week’s debate, in Des Moines, was likely going to focus on health care and other domestic issues core to the Democratic platform, but the agenda may instead be dominated by a discussion of the Trump Administration’s killing of the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani and the United States’ fraught history of war in the Middle East. Polls show that Joe Biden is trusted on foreign-policy issues, but Lach suggests that Bernie Sanders’s history of opposing wars—and his quick and confident articulation of his position on Iran—may sway voters seeking a clear message. Nearly a year into the campaign, votes will finally be cast, and in Iowa the deciding factor may involve personal contact more than ideological positions. Iowa voters tend to say, “ ‘I’ve shaken this person’s hand, and I’ve shaken this person’s hand, and I’m going to make my decision after I’ve shaken this other person’s hand.’ That counts for a lot, I think,” Lach says.

This week, Democratic Presidential candidates met for their final debate before the Iowa caucuses, a few weeks after Trump ordered the targeted killing of the Iranian military commander Qassam Suleimani. They talked about how America’s role in the world is threatened by the President’s erratic—and, in the case of Ukraine, likely criminal—approach to foreign policy. But many voters remain skeptical that Trump can be beaten. Susan B. Glasser joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the radical uncertainties of the 2020 race.

Last week, the Senate opened the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. With Republicans standing immovably by the President, the trial is expected to result in Trump’s acquittal. The Framers of the Constitution issued dire warnings about the spectre of “factionalism” and how it could endanger American democracy. Jelani Cobb joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the origins of partisanship in American politics and how it’s playing out in arguments about whether the President should be removed from office.

In the nineteen-thirties, authoritarian regimes were on the rise around the world—as they are again today—and democratic governments that came into existence after the First World War were toppling. “American democracy, too, staggered,” Jill Lepore wrote in The New Yorker, “weakened by corruption, monopoly, apathy, inequality, political violence, hucksterism, racial injustice, unemployment, even starvation.” Lepore talks with David Remnick about how Americans rallied to save democracy, and how we might apply those lessons in a new era with similar problems. 

This week, the former film producer Harvey Weinstein was convicted on two counts of sexual assault in a New York court. Weinstein, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than ninety women, has become an emblem of misogyny in Hollywood, and of the systems that protect wealthy and powerful men from the consequences of criminal misconduct. Rebecca Solnit joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss whether the Weinstein verdict is a turning point in the #MeToo movement, and what it takes to expose the lies of those in power in business and politics.

Just over a week ago, Bernie Sanders seemed to be the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. Then came some prominent withdrawals from the race, and, on Super Tuesday, the resurgence of Joe Biden’s campaign. (Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii remains in the race, but has no chance of winning the nomination.) But the narrowing of the field only highlights the gulf between the Party’s moderate center and its energized Left.  David Remnick talks with Amy Davidson Sorkin, a political columnist for The New Yorker, about the possibility of a contested Convention. Then Remnick interviews Michael Kazin, an historian and the co-editor of Dissent magazine. Kazin points out that Sanders is struggling against a headwind: even voters sympathetic to democratic socialism may vote for a pragmatist if they think Biden is more likely to beat the incumbent President in November. But Sanders seems unlikely to moderate his message. “There is a problem,” Kazin tells David Remnick. “A divided party—a party that’s divided at the Convention—never has won in American politics.” 

For most of us, the speed and intensity of the coronavirus pandemic has come as a shock. But not for Lawrence Wright. A staff writer and the author of nonfiction books about Scientology and Al Qaeda, Wright recently wrote a novel—yet to be published—called “The End of October,” about the spread of a novel virus that eerily resembles the outbreak of COVID-19. Wright looked to illnesses of the past to try to understand their enduring consequences, and he mapped those ripple effects onto our contemporary circumstances. “The End of October” is a work of fiction and firmly in the thriller genre, but what he imagined in it turns out to be eerily close to what we are experiencing now. “I read the paper and I feel like I’m reading another chapter of my own book,” he tells David Remnick.  

Lawrence Wright’s “The End of October” is due out in April. 

The earliest epidemics date back to Neolithic times, and, in the millennia since, viral outbreaks have repeatedly shaped the course of human history, influencing behavior and creating and destroying cultural norms. In the weeks since COVID-19 became a worldwide emergency, people are showing resilience, humor, and creative ways of communicating as governments and businesses struggle to respond. Robin Wright joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss differing responses to infectious diseases across time and cultures, and the global political ramifications of COVID-19.

This month, in an effort to combat the coronavirus pandemic, arts organizations around the country shut their doors. Theatre productions were cancelled, film premières postponed, gallery openings scuttled. Artists and other creative professionals, many of whom are freelance workers with no health benefits and little access to unemployment insurance, suddenly found themselves with no income. The dire economic circumstances have caused some to search for new creative outlets online, but others face an uncertain future. Emily Witt and Alexandra Schwartz join Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the effect of the coronavirus on arts and artists—and their audiences.

Since the coronavirus became a public-health emergency in the United States, coverage of the 2020 Presidential election has been scarce. With little media attention and public events an impossibility, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have taken their campaigns online. Meanwhile, state election officials across the country are struggling to find the best time and means to hold their primaries. Eric Lach joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss electoral reforms, such as voting by mail, and how the Democratic Party is trying to exploit President Trump’s bungling response to the pandemic.

Bill McKibben and Elizabeth Kolbert join David Remnick to talk about the twin crises of our time: the coronavirus pandemic and the climate emergency. What can one teach us about the other? During the COVID-19 national emergency, the Trump Administration has loosened auto-emissions standards, and has proposed easing the controls on mercury released by power plants, among other actions. With protesters no longer able to gather, construction on the controversial Keystone Pipeline has resumed. Still, McKibben and Kolbert believe that the pandemic could remind the public to take scientific fact more seriously, and possibly might change our values for the better. “When we get out of detention,” McKibben says, “I hope that it will be a reminder to us of how much social distancing we’ve been doing already these last few decades,” by focussing on technology and the virtual world. In the pleasure of human contact, he hopes, “we might begin to replace some of the consumption that drives every environmental challenge we face."

Around the world, COVID-19 is fundamentally altering politics. In China, the Communist Party is lauding its handling of the crisis and spreading disinformation about the virus in the U.S. And, as attacks on Chinese-Americans increase, the Biden and Trump campaigns accuse each other of being overly cozy with Beijing. Evan Osnos joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss how the coronavirus is affecting the course of the 2020 Presidential election.

Three months ago, Kai Wright, the host of WNYC’s the United States of Anxiety, joined David Remnick for a special episode about the effects of mass incarceration and the movement to end it. Now, as the coronavirus pandemic puts inmates in acute and disproportionate danger, that effort may be gaining new traction. Wright and Remnick reconvene to examine the COVID-19 crisis in prison and its political effects. David Remnick also speaks with Phil Murphy, the governor of New Jersey, who has signed an executive order to release certain at-risk inmates from states prisons—the sort of measure that would once have been deeply unpopular and risky. “I haven’t really spent any time on the politics,” Governor Murphy says. “In all the steps we’ve taken, we’re trying to make the call as best we can, based on the facts, based on the data, based on the science.” And Kai Wright interviews Udi Ofer, the head of the A.C.L.U.’s Justice Division, who notes that “the communities that the C.D.C. has told us are most vulnerable to COVID-19 are exactly the communities that are housed in our nation’s jails and prisons,” including a disproportionately older population among inmates. Given the lack of social distancing and, in many cases, substandard hygienic conditions, Ofer says that reducing the inmate population “literally is a life-and-death situation.”

Though some economies have begun reopening, many people around the world are battening down for an indefinite period of extreme social distancing. Loneliness can be a destructive force. The toll of isolation on people’s health has been well documented, but isolation can also be a potent political tool, one often wielded by autocrats and despots. Masha Gessen joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss how the pandemic is reshaping politics, for better and for worse.

Ask This Old House landscape contractor Roger Cook shows the proper way to prune a branch without damaging the tree

'Covenant is a legal establishment of a relationship. We broke it with God, but He is always faithful to His part, even when we are not to ours.'