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The great GORE VIDAL: before he died in 2012, Vidal asked JAY PARINI to write his biography. The book is out now: Empire of Self—Jay says he wanted to “look at the angel and the monster alike.”
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Also: JOHN POWERS reports on Canada’s popular new prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who has already welcomed Syrian refugees—and defended the Alberta tar sands. John writes about politics and film for Vogue and Vogue.Com, and is editor-at-large on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, where he has an audience of four million listeners.

Plus: the best of the year 2015: TAVIS SMILEY on Martin Luther King’s last year: it was “hell.”  That was 1967, the year his speech criticising the Vietnam war was denounced not only by the mainstream media—the NY Times called it “disastrous and self-defeating”—but also by most of black America as well. Tavis’s book is DEATH OF A KING:The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Year.  (Originally broadcast 2/4/15)

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The most valuable activist, the biggest ideological comeback, the best newspaper front page, and more: JOHN NICHOLS presents The Nation’s Progressive Honor Roll for 2015–the season’s most unusual “best” list.

Also: guns in America: what is to be done? AMY WILENTZ comments—starting with her friend who keeps his guns under his bed.

Plus: The great GORE VIDAL: before he died in 2012, Vidal asked JAY PARINI to write his biography. The book is out now: Empire of Self—Jay says he wanted to “look at the angel and the monster alike.”

Listen online HERE
American Muslims, according to ISIS, are “hypocrites” who occupy “the grey zone” between their Caliphate and their enemies, “the Crusaders”: LAILA LALAMI explains–she wrote the novel The Moor’s Account, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Literature.

Also: TOM LUTZ reports on his trip to Minsk, in Belarus, just before the city’s greatest writer, Svetlana Alexievich, won the Nobel Prize for Literature for her oral history of Chernobyl.
Tom is editor-in-chief of the LA Review of Books.  (One more thing: He did NOT go from Minsk to Pinsk.)

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On this week’s podcast, Barbara Ehrenreich talks about the alarming rise in the death rate of middle-aged white working class men, who are committing suicide and dying of drug overdoses and alcoholism.

Also: Rebecca Solnit explains the amazing Paris climate agreement, along with the not-so-amazing parts—and talks about the tasks facing the environmental movement now.

And John Powers reports on Canada’s popular new prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who has already welcomed Syrian refugees—and defended the Alberta tar sands.
Podcast home page HERE

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On this week’s podcast, Laila Lalami says ISIS wants to eliminate what they call “the grey zone” between their Caliphate and “the Crusaders,” even though that’s where most of the world’s Muslims live.

Also: Joan Walsh talks about the real reason we don’t have gun control: far-right fantasies about Obama coming to take your guns.

And we remember Chernobyl, thanks to the greatest writer about that disaster, Svetlana Alexievich—she was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature this week. Amy Wilentz and Tom Lutz comment.

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Voting Rights Are Threatened Again Before the Supreme Court: ARI BERMAN reports on yesterday’s argument, where the same conservatives who gutted the Voting Rights Act are now challenging “one person, one vote.”  Ari’s new book, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times.

 Also: The New York Times coverage of Bernie Sanders has been condescending—remember the page one story, “Bernie won’t kiss your baby”? AMY WILENTZ reviews the record — she’s a longtime contributing editor at The Nation, and she teaches Literary Journalism at UC Irvine.

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On this week’s episode of “Start Making Sense,” progressive news without the boring parts, Naomi Klein reports from the streets of Paris that the French government has enlisted the Shock Doctrine to block street protests at the Paris Climate Summit.

Also: Katha Pollitt says the refugee crisis has shown the worst, and the best, of Europe; now, she says, we have a chance to do the right thing.

Plus: Historian Eric Foner argues that Princeton students are right that Woodrow Wilson was a racist, and that the university should remove his name from campus buildings.

And Joan Walsh reports on Republican anti-abortion politics after the killings at Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs.

LISTEN online HERE
We open with breaking news at 4pm about the shootings in San Bernardino that left 14 dead and 17 injured: we start with a news update from ERNESTO ARCE, KPFK’s news director, on the scene in San Bernardino, and then go to President Obama’s statement about the shootings.

GREIL MARCUS talks about writing the “Real Life Rock Top Ten” column for thirty years – the column features brief items not only on songs but on all kinds of stuff that delighted or puzzled one of our greatest cultural critics that week. Now Yale University Press has published the first thirty years of the columns in a monumental 600 page book, Real Life Rock: The Complete Top Ten Columns, 1986-2014.
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And JOHN NICHOLS comments on today’s news about the mass shooting and on gun violence in America, and in American politics, today.
John of course is National Affairs correspondent for The Nation — read him at TheNation.com.

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When Bernie Sanders talked about democratic socialism in his major speech at Georgetown University last week, he used FDR to explain what socialism could do for the country today. But Eric Foner says there’s a much deeper and richer history of socialism in America, and Sanders should call on that when making his pitch to the American people.

Also: Republicans want to block refugees from Syria and Iraq: The Nation’s Julianne Hing has an update on their efforts and what happens next.

Plus: Football has America’s biggest TV audience, especially on Thanksgiving weekend: but Dave Zirin, sports editor of The Nation, asks why anyone even plays football anymore, given what we know about head injuries.

And Ari Berman discusses the latest in the long history of the battle for voting rights—his new book is Give Us the Ballot.