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Life and Death in the Red States: KAI WRIGHT reports from Kansas on the human toll of Republican refusal to expand Medicaid for millions of sick Americans. Kai is Features Editor of The Nation magazine and reported from Brownback’s Kansas.

Plus: The history of The Nation – the magazine, America’s oldest weekly, now celebrating its 150th anniversary.  Susan Sontag in 1982 said a person who read only the Reader’s Digest would have been “better informed about the realities of communism” than someone who read only The Nation.  Was she right?  D. D. GUTTENPLAN explains. His new book is The Nation: A Biography.
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Also: Vladimir Nabokov and American politics. The author of Lolita spent 20 years in the US in the forties and fifties, and drove through the West every summer. ROBERT ROPER analyzes Nabokov’s strange political profile: refugee from both Stalin and Hitler, enemy of racism and defender of free speech—but also a supporter of the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon.
Roper’s new book is Nabokov in America: On the Road to Lolita.

LISTEN online HERE   iTunes podcast HERE
Today the LA City Council voted for a new city minimum wage of $15 an hour. But organized labor had asked for an exception for union workers, who could be paid less. What was behind this terrible proposal? HAROLD MEYERSON will comment; he writes for the Washington Post, the American Prospect, and the LA Times op-ed page.

Also: Banned in Abu Dhabi: ANDREW ROSS advocated rights for workers there, who are building a new Guggenheim museum and an NYU campus. He teaches at NYU, and will tell the story of how the United Arab Emirates barred him from entry.

Plus “Ready—and excited—for Hillary”: KATHA POLLITT, explains why: it’s because “Clinton is running as a feminist–and that matters for all women.”
Katha is a poet, essayist and columnist for The Nation; her most recent book is PRO: Reclaiming Abortion Rights.

LISTEN online HERE   iTunes podcast HERE
Why Cuba Matters: TOM HAYDEN on the end of America’s 50-year campaign against the Cuban revolution. We’ll recall the tumultuous history of Cuba in American life, from the Bay of Pigs and the Missile Crisis to the decades of the embargo. We’ll also talk about the prospects for democracy in Cuba–and the fears of capitalist restoration. Tom’s new book is Listen, Yankee! Why Cuba Matters.
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Also: Only one senator voted against the Patriot Act after 9/11; yesterday, 76 Senators voted to repeal the NSA’s collection of cell phone data on all Americans, and President Obama signed the bill. Thank you EDWARD SNOWDEN, for revealing what the NSA was doing. We’ll have comment from LIZA GOITEIN—she’s co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

LISTEN online HERE   iTunes podcast HERE
The ACLU in California has released a free smart-phone app that allows people to send cellphone videos of police encounters to the ACLU, automatically—and the ACLU will preserve the video footage, even if the cops seize the phone and delete the video or destroy the phone. The app, “Mobile Justice CA,” works for both iPhones and Android users. It’s available at Apple’s App Store and at Google Play.  HECTOR VILLAGRA of the ACLU-SoCal will explain.

Plus: It’s official: Bernie Sanders will be debating Hillary Clinton as they compete for the Democratic presidential nomination. JOHN NICHOLS will comment on the significance of the announcement by the DNC—he’s Washington editor of The Nation, and blogs at TheNation.com.  And ALAN MINSKY will introduce clips of Bernie speaking recently in Hollywood — Alan is Program Director at KPFK.