Scott Detrow
Appearances
Consider This from NPR
Is the U.S. headed for autocracy?
M. Gessen knows what it feels like when a democracy starts to look like something else. They lived in Russia in the aughts in early 2010s, which was a period of time when Vladimir Putin steadily cracked down on activists, journalists, and opposition leaders. And one of the particularities of Russia, according to Gessen, is that before things became threatening, they often just seemed ridiculous.
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Is the U.S. headed for autocracy?
And then there's that proposal for the U.S. to, quote, own the Gaza Strip, permanently relocate the Palestinians who live there and redevelop it.
Consider This from NPR
Is the U.S. headed for autocracy?
Consider this. Trump's term has been marked by a string of policy proposals that would have been unthinkable in any other administration. Even if they don't go anywhere, they are reshaping the boundaries of our democracy. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow.
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Is the U.S. headed for autocracy?
It's Consider This from NPR. M. Gessen argues that there's a simple through line to the barrage of proposals in President Trump's first month.
Consider This from NPR
Is the U.S. headed for autocracy?
Gessen has thought and written a lot about autocracy, most recently as an opinion columnist on The New York Times. So I got them on the line to talk about how they make sense of the Trump administration so far.
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Is the U.S. headed for autocracy?
I want to do the radio host thing here of pushing back on the idea I've invited you onto this program to talk about, but I'm very curious about how you think about this. Because Americans voted to return Trump to power. And there's a lot of anecdotal and broader evidence that a lot of voters hear conversations like the one that we're having right now as white noise.
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Is the U.S. headed for autocracy?
This is alarmist worries from elites and magazines and national news outlets. And they either don't believe these warnings or they don't care. How have you thought about this since the election? And what do you think about that dynamic that seems to really be playing out?
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Is the U.S. headed for autocracy?
Guessing as trans and non-binary. But they say they failed to take Putin's words seriously at first.
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Is the U.S. headed for autocracy?
I think a theme across all of the close analysis of what has happened to countries that have slid into authoritarianism in the past is that a lot of the times the power is willingly given over.
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Is the U.S. headed for autocracy?
And when you look across the country right now, whether it's large corporate-owned media settling lawsuits or big corporations suddenly changing their policies and their political actions or nonprofits stripping words from their websites right now,
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Is the U.S. headed for autocracy?
What do you think is so different from the first time Trump has office to right now that statements he made the first time around kind of went in and out of a lot of these actors' ears? And this time they're stopping what they are doing. They are recalculating. They are making changes to be on the right side of Donald Trump policies.
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Is the U.S. headed for autocracy?
You know, in many different ways, though, all presidents push for and grab power, right? I'm thinking of one of the examples that we've seen in the last few weeks, Trump's takeover of the Kennedy Center board, appointing himself chair of the board. A lot of other examples to pick from, but I'm going with that one because the Kennedy Center put out a statement saying,
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Is the U.S. headed for autocracy?
This is a little bit of a paraphrase, but they said, presidents have always had the power to change our board. They just haven't exercised it. So if Trump had that power and chose to use that, again, isn't that the push and pull of democracy?
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Is the U.S. headed for autocracy?
Gessen left Russia in 2013. They're in the U.S. now, a columnist for The New York Times. In a recent op-ed, they argued that the phenomenon, outlandish ideas taken seriously, It feels a lot like what has happened in the first month of the Trump administration.
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Is the U.S. headed for autocracy?
Em Gessen is an opinion columnist at The New York Times and the author of The Future is History, How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. Thanks so much for talking to us.
Consider This from NPR
Is the U.S. headed for autocracy?
This episode was produced by Mia Venkat and Conor Donovan. It was edited by Courtney Dorning and Nadia Lancey. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.
Consider This from NPR
Is the U.S. headed for autocracy?
Like that press conference where President Trump argued that diversity policies were behind that plane crash at the Washington airport.
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Is the U.S. headed for autocracy?
Trump has also repeatedly raised the idea that the U.S. will make Canada its 51st state.
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Who loses when Trump cuts funding to universities?
You want to follow what's happening in Washington, D.C., but you don't want to be scrolling your phone all day. I'm Scott Detrow, and NPR has a podcast that can help. It's called Trump's Terms. Stories about big changes the 47th president is pursuing on his own terms. They're short, they're focused episodes that tell you calmly, factually, what is happening and what isn't.
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Who loses when Trump cuts funding to universities?
Listen to Trump's Terms from NPR.
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What does Elon Musk get out of remaking the government?
You want to follow what's happening in Washington, D.C., but you don't want to be scrolling your phone all day. I'm Scott Detrow, and NPR has a podcast that can help. It's called Trump's Terms. Stories about big changes the 47th president is pursuing on his own terms. They're short, they're focused episodes that tell you calmly, factually, what is happening and what isn't.
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What does Elon Musk get out of remaking the government?
Elon Musk and the Doge team.
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What does Elon Musk get out of remaking the government?
Listen to Trump's Terms from NPR.
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The Southeastern U.S. faces a future with more wildfires
If you mention wildfires, a lot of Americans will think of the western United States, areas like Southern California. But fire is becoming a bigger problem in the southeast as well.
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The Southeastern U.S. faces a future with more wildfires
A catastrophic hurricane, a dry spell, and a windy spring helped create the current wildfire risk in the mountains of North and South Carolina. But studies show that climate change could increase the intensity of wildfires in southern Appalachia, and a growing population could increase the danger to humans. And people like Jeremy Knighton stress that the region will need to be ready for that.
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The Southeastern U.S. faces a future with more wildfires
Consider this. Wildfires are growing more common in southern Appalachia. How will the region adapt to the future? Coming up, we will hear the answer to that from a landscape ecologist and fire expert. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow.
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The Southeastern U.S. faces a future with more wildfires
That's Zach O'Donnell. He's the coordinator for the Southern Blue Ridge Prescribed Burn Association, based in western North Carolina. And this week, the State Forest Service declared one of the fires burning there as the highest priority fire in the U.S.
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The Southeastern U.S. faces a future with more wildfires
It's Consider This from NPR. Wildfires are not new to the Carolinas, but the severity and frequency of those blazes, that is concerning to experts. For the past 25 years, Rob Scheller has studied fires. He is a professor of landscape ecology at North Carolina State University. I asked him what is the best way to describe what's going on right now in the southeast.
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The Southeastern U.S. faces a future with more wildfires
Is it fair to say then that the massive population growth that you've seen throughout so much of the Southeast is a big factor here? I mean, I think one example, Greenville, South Carolina, this is one of the communities near one of these fires, gained something like six new households every week between 2000 and 2020. This is just massive population growth in this region.
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The Southeastern U.S. faces a future with more wildfires
How does that affect all of this?
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The Southeastern U.S. faces a future with more wildfires
What is the best way to frame it from your perspective on the question? I'm sure you've gotten a lot of has climate change made made this risk worse?
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The Southeastern U.S. faces a future with more wildfires
So obviously, temperatures are going up. That's not changing anytime soon. No. More people are moving to the southeast. That doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon.
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The Southeastern U.S. faces a future with more wildfires
What to you are the biggest steps that can be taken to try and mitigate these risks?
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The Southeastern U.S. faces a future with more wildfires
O'Donnell would rather not be helping fight active fires. Usually, he's educating landowners about fire prevention and leading controlled burns to reduce the risk of bigger fires. And right now, risk is high. Six months ago, Hurricane Helene ravaged mountainous forested areas like in Asheville, North Carolina.
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The Southeastern U.S. faces a future with more wildfires
Yeah. That is Professor Rob Scheller of North Carolina State University. Thank you so much.
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The Southeastern U.S. faces a future with more wildfires
This episode was produced by Erica Ryan with audio engineering from Josephine Neonai and Tiffany Vera Castro. It was edited by Patrick Jaron Wadanana. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.
Consider This from NPR
The Southeastern U.S. faces a future with more wildfires
All those downed trees, combined with a dry spring and high winds, it creates dangerous wildfire conditions.
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The Southeastern U.S. faces a future with more wildfires
Jeremy Knighton is assistant fire chief in Asheville. He explained there are multiple wildfires burning across thousands of acres in a region which, again, six months ago saw those devastating floods.
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Former DOGE employee: work could 'cross extreme ethical and legal lines'
Following the news out of Washington, D.C. can be overwhelming. I'm Scott Detrow, and NPR has a podcast that can help. It's called Trump's Terms. Stories about big changes the 47th president is pursuing on his own terms. Each episode is short, usually around five minutes or so. We keep it calm and factual. We help you follow what matters, and we leave out what doesn't.
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Former DOGE employee: work could 'cross extreme ethical and legal lines'
Listen to Trump's Terms from NPR.
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The fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance as Trump sides with Russia
Lately, when President Trump talks about Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, he sounds a lot like Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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The fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance as Trump sides with Russia
Retired General Ben Hodges was commanding general of U.S. Army Europe from 2014 to 2017. He spoke on NPR's Here and Now.
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The fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance as Trump sides with Russia
As the once cold relations between the U.S. and Russia begin to thaw, the fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow. It's Consider This from NPR. For the past three years, the U.S. has been Ukraine's leading supporter in its war with Russia. But with a series of stunning moves, President Trump is now sounding more aligned with Russia than with Ukraine.
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The fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance as Trump sides with Russia
To break this down, we are joined by NPR's Greg Myrie in Washington and Joanna Kikis in Kiev. Hey to both of you. Hello. Hi, Scott. Greg, I want to start with you. Trump is publicly attacking Ukraine's president. Why? Why is he doing this?
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The fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance as Trump sides with Russia
That was Trump speaking at Mar-a-Lago this week, echoing a popular Kremlin talking point. The false assertion that Ukraine started the war with Russia, a war that saw Russian troops pour over Ukraine's border and Russian missiles and drones bombard Ukrainian cities for three years. Trump was referring to a meeting that happened earlier this week. Top U.S.
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The fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance as Trump sides with Russia
Joanna, how are people in Ukraine responding? Specifically, how is Zelensky responding?
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The fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance as Trump sides with Russia
So Trump is attacking Zelensky, echoing Kremlin talking points. Zelensky is responding. But Joanna, at the same time, Trump's envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, is in Kiev. How is he being received?
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The fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance as Trump sides with Russia
OK, so, Greg, what what is likely to happen with U.S. military support for Ukraine? It's billions and billions of dollars.
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The fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance as Trump sides with Russia
Question for both of you. Trump really seems to be in a hurry here to get ceasefire negotiations started. What are the various parties? We're talking Trump in America, Ukraine, and Russia. What do they want from these talks? Greg, let me start with you.
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The fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance as Trump sides with Russia
and Russian officials gathered in Saudi Arabia to discuss ending the war. Not included in the meeting? Anyone from Ukraine. These comments have shaken supporters of Ukraine and its allies, both here and abroad. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded to some of Trump's comments on the Senate floor this week.
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The fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance as Trump sides with Russia
That is NPR's Joanna Kakissis in Kiev, as well as NPR's Greg Myrie talking to us from Washington. Thanks to both of you.
Consider This from NPR
The fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance as Trump sides with Russia
Thanks, Scott. This episode was produced by Mark Rivers and Brianna Scott. It was edited by Jeanette Woods, Tara Neal, Patrick Jaron-Watanon, and Nadia Lancey. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.
Consider This from NPR
The fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance as Trump sides with Russia
Zelensky responded too. He spoke through an interpreter to a small group of reporters at the presidential palace in Kiev on Wednesday morning, saying that while he respected Trump as a leader, Trump was living in what Zelensky called a circle of Russian disinformation.
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When it comes to the economy, it's all about uncertainty
We have the experience of President Trump's first term where the tariffs did not affect prices. And it's a holistic approach that there will be tariffs, there will be cuts in regulation, there will be cheaper energy.
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AI and the Environment
You want to follow what's happening in Washington, D.C., but you don't want to be scrolling your phone all day. I'm Scott Detrow, and NPR has a podcast that can help. It's called Trump's Terms. Stories about big changes the 47th president is pursuing on his own terms. They're short, they're focused episodes that tell you calmly, factually, what is happening and what isn't.
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Reporting on how America reduced the number of opioid deaths
Well, walk us through some of the biggest theories. What are the thoughts as to why this is happening?
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Reporting on how America reduced the number of opioid deaths
Okay. So that is the dark side of this. Talk me through some of the more positive thinking here, some of the policy-related factors that could be going on.
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Reporting on how America reduced the number of opioid deaths
And you have now mentioned... Kind of the black hole of politics that just about every conversation veers its way into. So let's get into that because you are talking about this incredibly positive track record on an issue a lot of Americans are worried about and care about. And yet I closely covered the campaign.
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Reporting on how America reduced the number of opioid deaths
This is not an area where the Biden administration seemed to really tell a high profile good news story or get a lot of credit, seemingly, at least as a top level issue. Why do you think that was? What did you see when you when you saw this play out in the campaign?
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Reporting on how America reduced the number of opioid deaths
I want to ask about you and how you think about this, because you cover a lot of different topics. You've covered wars for us. You've covered the Olympics for us. You have this whole subgenre of Brian Mann pieces where you go for a hike and make people very jealous listening to you going on a hike on the radio. But you keep coming back to this topic.
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Reporting on how America reduced the number of opioid deaths
That's a really tough topic to think about and talk about. What's the draw for you?
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Reporting on how America reduced the number of opioid deaths
That's interesting. I was going to ask if that personal history made you a better reporter, but you're saying that being a reporter actually made you a more understanding family member.
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Reporting on how America reduced the number of opioid deaths
Is there a specific example that comes to mind that you could talk about?
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Reporting on how America reduced the number of opioid deaths
But you're continuing to cover it now and help other people understand it.
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Reporting on how America reduced the number of opioid deaths
Brian, thanks for helping us understand these trends and helping us understand how you approach the story.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. And today we have something a little different for you. It's the first episode of a new series we are calling Supreme Consequences, where we explore how recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court shape people's everyday lives. As soon as he returned to office, President Trump began to remake the federal government swiftly, aggressively, in his image.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
But early on, some of the administration's moves have been successfully challenged, at least initially. Already five justices ruled that the Trump administration must pay $2 billion to USAID contractors for work they've already completed.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
Elon Musk's role is. It's an open question on how the court will approach these matters. But in the meantime, Whaley says the immunity decision has emboldened Trump to push the envelope on what the executive branch can do. And in doing so, it's taken power from other branches of government.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
Whaley says the immunity ruling gives the president carte blanche to do what he wants while in office. And that ushers in a new type of American presidency.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
And to her, that felt strange. She says she had received glowing performance reviews. She felt her work was important. She was doing things like helping new mothers and infants with nutrition and food security in developing countries.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
Soon, nearly the entire staff had either been put on paid administrative leave or fired. And the majority of the department's programs ended.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
The loss, she says, is hard to calculate.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
The choice to unilaterally dissolve a federal agency, one established by Congress, was a shock to Washington. But the concept at the heart of it, that the president has broad authority to act unilaterally without consequence, that the executive branch should reflect his priorities, stems from one idea, the unitary executive theory.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
It is an idea at the heart of a recent landmark Supreme Court ruling, Trump versus the United States, the immunity decision. And it is an idea that we are going to explore on this episode of Supreme Consequences, a series about the real world impacts of the Supreme Court's rulings. One consequence for many federal workers, career stability.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
And her family's well-being.
Consider This from NPR
How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
In the past month, two federal judges have ordered federal agencies to reinstate thousands of federal employees, including those at USDA. decisions the Trump administration strongly disagrees with and is appealing. And that has led to a stressful state of limbo. For the time being, they have jobs, but only until the appeals process plays out.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
It's not clear to the employee we talk to or others whether this is permanent or just another few weeks. The legal back and forths center on questions about the limits of President Trump's power, power that the Trump administration is testing on a number of fronts.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
After the break, had the unitary executive theory made its way from an idea in the Reagan administration all the way up through the courts? We'll be right back. President Trump's drastic moves to reshape the U.S. government stem from a core idea that the executive branch should enjoy broad, sweeping power.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
It is a power that was expanded by the Supreme Court last summer through its ruling in Trump versus the United States, the immunity case.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
The decision came down to a key question that has big implications on topics far beyond the criminal case at the heart of it. When a president does something that is potentially illegal while executing his duties, who or what can regulate his actions? Who can hold him accountable? These questions have come up a lot in the first weeks of Trump's second term in different contexts.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
from dismantling agencies established by Congress to deporting migrants without due process. President Trump is asserting his power. And one idea that seems to be motivating his actions is the unitary executive theory. But where does this idea come from and how does it relate to the Supreme Court?
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
That's Amanda Holos-Bruski. She's a politics professor at Pomona College, where she teaches classes about the Supreme Court. The theory started to gain traction and developed in the Reagan administration among a group of young attorneys in the Justice Department who thought the presidency had recently been weakened.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
Trump has made it clear that one of the key goals of his second term is to shrink the size and scope of the federal workforce and eliminate programs he doesn't like.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
Charles Cooper was Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Reagan administration.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
So how did this idea that was discussed among young government lawyers make its way to the federal courts and eventually to the Supreme Court? Hollis Brewski points to one major factor, the Federalist Society. She wrote the book Ideas with Consequences, the Federalist Society and the Conservative Counter-Revolution.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
It documents the group's founding by a group of conservative law students in the 1980s.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
Hollis Bruschi spoke with many of the Federal Society's founders and explains how they were thinking about growing their influence.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
Tens of thousands of federal government employees have already been fired.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
Judges, a key part of shaping American law. Cooper, who worked in Reagan's Justice Department, has been active in the Federalist Society for years.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
And that success has continued over many Republican administrations, creating what some call a pipeline to the federal bench, especially to the Supreme Court.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
But Cooper says the Trump presidency took it to another level.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
With President Trump in the White House and Republicans in control of the Senate, the conditions in 2017 were ripe for the unitary executive theory to go mainstream.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
That's Mike Davis, a conservative legal activist who once worked as chief counsel for nominations for Senator Chuck Grassley, who chaired the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee. Davis oversaw the floor votes for hundreds of judicial nominees, nominees that reshaped the federal bench. That includes now Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. Justice Neil Gorsuch is a very close friend and a mentor.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
That is a federal employee who was fired in the early days of Trump's second term. She's with the United States Department of Agriculture, or USDA, and spoke to us on the condition of anonymity because she fears retribution in the workplace. For the past couple of months, she was doing a fellowship program that had her working at the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
Gorsuch, who was Trump's first Supreme Court pick, wasn't even on that initial list from the campaign of potential nominations, which is something Davis quickly worked to fix.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
Davis now runs the Article 3 Project, a conservative legal group that is trying to install what he calls constitutionalist judges on the federal bench. One issue he cares a lot about, a powerful chief executive.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
That argument was a key part of the court's ruling. But what about the other branches of government? Where do they fit in when a president could do whatever he or she wants to as a leader and not face consequences?
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
Coming up, a constitutional law professor walks us through why the immunity decision changed the structure of our government and why it matters. Okay, so to catch up, we have an influential group, the Federalist Society, whose members developed and advocated the idea of a powerful chief executive.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
And a big part of that judicial worldview is something called the unitary executive theory, the idea the president has way more power, way more influence over the executive branch than has previously been utilized. The group helped nominate judges onto the federal bench who, over decades of rulings, have made this theory more and more of a central accepted legal argument.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
The idea came into focus after President Trump's 2024 immunity case.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
That's Kim Whaley. She is a constitutional law professor. And earlier in her career, she worked for independent counsel Kenneth Starr as he investigated Bill Clinton's presidency. I asked Whaley if she sees a connection between the immunity decision and President Trump's actions. Actions like closing USAID and firing thousands of federal employees.
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How an obscure legal theory shaped the immunity decision and Trump's second term
Right now, there are a number of lawsuits challenging the legality of Trump's ability to fire federal employees, cases that may ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court. And Whaley has a prediction.
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Riding 'La Bestia' with migrants in Mexico
Kids are going to be kids wherever they are.
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Riding 'La Bestia' with migrants in Mexico
This is Eder Peralta, NPR's Mexico City correspondent. It was December, and he was in a train yard in northwest Mexico.
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Riding 'La Bestia' with migrants in Mexico
The migrants Eder and his photographer were following finally found the train they wanted, and they got it to stop. They climbed up to the top of the train, and Eder and his colleague joined them. They all spent a frigid night riding north at 50 miles an hour. In Mexico, this train is called the Bestia, the Beast. It's a treacherous and often deadly leg of the journey to the U.S. border.
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Riding 'La Bestia' with migrants in Mexico
Consider this. Despite the Trump administration's hard line on immigration, many migrants are still traveling north to the border. Today, we bring you a reporter's notebook riding along with Ader on La Bestia to understand why migrants still take this risk. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow. It's Consider This from NPR. Migrants have been riding La Bestia for decades.
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Riding 'La Bestia' with migrants in Mexico
The train can offer a way to travel north without paying smugglers. But the risks are great. Migrants have been kidnapped, assaulted and extorted by cartels. Accidents are common. Migrants have been killed in Maine by falling from the tops of the freight cars.
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Riding 'La Bestia' with migrants in Mexico
And now, with the Trump administration suspending asylum claims at the southern border, there are fewer avenues to entering the United States than there were even a few months ago. So the question Ada Peralta had when he set out to join migrants on La Bestia was simple. Why take the risk?
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Riding 'La Bestia' with migrants in Mexico
Even when the policy of the U.S. government right now is, we don't want you, we don't want to give you any of these resources, we want to arrest you or deport you for the country or both.
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Riding 'La Bestia' with migrants in Mexico
This was a moment of downtime between many periods of acute motion. Hundreds of migrants were waiting for freight trains, hoping to jump aboard and ride north toward the U.S. border.
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Riding 'La Bestia' with migrants in Mexico
Let me turn the why question to you, because obviously the immigration story is a major part of your beat. But you can and you have told that story a lot of different ways. Why to you was this story worth climbing on top of a two story freight train and riding it as it traveled 50 miles an hour?
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Riding 'La Bestia' with migrants in Mexico
Was he right? Did, on the other side of that, did you feel like you understood this in a different way?
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Riding 'La Bestia' with migrants in Mexico
Mm-hmm. And is there any cover whatsoever up there? I assume no. No cover.
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Riding 'La Bestia' with migrants in Mexico
What were you, like, thinking about on, like, hour six or seven or eight sitting on top of this train? The sun.
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Riding 'La Bestia' with migrants in Mexico
That's a good segue, Ader, that you, I think probably more than anybody on staff right now at NPR, have a particular knack of finding yourself In tricky situations in the middle of a story and often maximizing that and using that situation to tell a better story and to understand the topic that you're covering even more and help listeners understand that. You've been detained in South Sudan.
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Riding 'La Bestia' with migrants in Mexico
I remember hearing live on the radio when you were reporting on something as people were throwing rocks at the tin roof of the building you were in. It was in Kenya. In Kenya as you did a live radio hit. How do you generally think about the pros and cons, and at what point it's not worth it to keep going for you personally?
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Riding 'La Bestia' with migrants in Mexico
The trains moved so fast that jumping on directly would be impossible for most of the migrants.
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Riding 'La Bestia' with migrants in Mexico
I'm with you on that. I can do roller coasters, but Ferris wheels.
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Riding 'La Bestia' with migrants in Mexico
I clenched up hearing that part of the story as you described it.
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Riding 'La Bestia' with migrants in Mexico
I want to end this conversation the way you ended this story, because the fact is, for a lot of these people, maybe even a majority of these people, all of this long, long journey, which, like you said, the very end of is is riding across the desert, freezing cold on the top of a train. It's all for naught because you end the story by talking about a family who they make it across the border.
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Riding 'La Bestia' with migrants in Mexico
They turn themselves in and seek for asylum. And they're immediately kicked out of the United States. And yet, as you write in the story, they, the next day, start heading north again.
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Riding 'La Bestia' with migrants in Mexico
That's Eder Peralta, Mexico City correspondent for NPR. Eder, thanks for walking us through one of your stories and helping us understand how you think about all of this.
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Riding 'La Bestia' with migrants in Mexico
This episode was produced by Noah Caldwell and edited by Adam Rainey and Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.
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Bonus Episode: "Margery," the medieval memoirist
Hey there, Consider This listeners. We're not normally in your ears on Saturdays, but today we've got a special bonus episode for you. It's the first in our new series of short-form audio documentaries. It's got medieval monks, rapturous crying fits, ping pong, and a little bit of time travel. So stick around for Saturday, February 8th. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.
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Bonus Episode: "Margery," the medieval memoirist
It's Consider This from NPR. What if you could pick up the phone and call the past? Today's story does just that. It's brought to us by the Berlin-based producer Sara Zare Hushiori Ha. This is Marjorie.
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Bonus Episode: "Margery," the medieval memoirist
That was Berlin-based producer Sara Zare Hushari Ha with a piece called Marjorie, the first in our new series of short-form audio documentaries. It was written and produced by Sara and was edited by Yasmin Baumi. This episode was produced by Noah Caldwell. Our editor is Courtney Dorning, and our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. ¶¶
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Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?
Here is one view of what's been happening in the U.S. government over the past two weeks.
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Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?
And indeed, White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt said this week that all of Trump's moves are legal.
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Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?
Here she is talking about another Trump order, one aimed at ending birthright citizenship, the idea that everyone born in America is an American citizen. It's taken from language in the Constitution.
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Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?
That is Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon speaking on Tuesday. He ticked off the actions President Trump has taken so far during the start of his term. The inspector general's being fired. Trump fired the watchdogs who monitor federal agencies en masse on a Friday night, ignoring a law that requires him to give Congress 30 days notice and a reason.
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Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?
And that order is likely headed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court eventually, which has taken a very expansive view lately of presidential power. Republican Senator Jim Risch of Idaho summed up the state of affairs succinctly. For all of you who haven't noticed, this is a different day in Washington, D.C., Consider this. Trump is testing the limits of presidential power.
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Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?
Is it a political flex or a subversion of the Constitution? From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow.
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Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?
It's Consider This from NPR. Most presidents want as much power as they can get, and it's not unusual to see them claim authority that they don't in the end actually have. We saw it over the last term when former President Joe Biden tried to unilaterally forgive hundreds of billions of dollars in federal student loans.
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Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?
Or when Biden announced days before leaving office that the 28th Amendment on gender equality was now the law of the land, which is, of course, not how it works. So are the opening moves of the Trump presidency just a spicier version of the standard playbook or an imminent threat to constitutional government as we know it?
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Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?
We're going to get two different points of view on that now, one from Ronald Prusin, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Toronto, and also Kenneth Lewandy, a political scientist at the University of Michigan. He's also the author of the book, False Front, The Failed Promise of Presidential Power in a Polarized Age. Welcome to both of you. Thank you. Let's start with you, Ronald.
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Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?
Critics of Trump are sounding all kinds of alarms about the way that he's used executive power. Supporters, again, as we've heard, say this is just what presidents do. Actually, Kenneth, let me start with you. What do you think about that?
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Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?
That directive asked employees to report any colleagues trying to get around President Trump's order aimed at ending federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs. And then Merkley brought up the memo that ordered a broad pause on federal loans and grants.
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Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?
Kenneth, you said in an interview that the Trump administration, the White House, is almost like an eye of Sauron, and it can focus on some parts of the globe. But they're missing hobbits, you know, elsewhere and can only really focus in on one part at a time. It's a big federal government.
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Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?
There's a lot of hobbits and, you know, sure, elves and dwarves or whatever else, Middle Earth people you want to put there in this analogy. Do you think, again, a few weeks in, do you think that that idea holds up, that a president can really zone in on one or few areas at a time and can't put a massive immediate fingerprint across the federal government?
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Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?
Ronald, what do you see as the most important check and balance at this point?
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Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?
Kenneth, what about you? What's the most important check and balance right now?
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Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?
The memo was rescinded on Wednesday, though the White House says it still intends to cut federal funding. It's now tied up in court. Merkley described all of this in stark terms. That is a constitutional crisis. The Constitution, of course, has checks and balances built in. But the legislative branch is controlled by Republicans. Both the House and the Senate are under GOP control.
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Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?
That's Kenneth Lowandy, a political scientist at the University of Michigan and the author of False Front, The Failed Promise of Presidential Power in a Polarized Age, as well as Ronald Prusin, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Toronto. Thanks so much to both of you. Oh, you're welcome. Happy to be here. Thanks. This episode was produced by Mark Rivers and Connor Donovan.
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Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?
It was edited by Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.
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Is Trump testing limits or trying to eliminate them?
And Republican lawmakers look at Trump's moves differently. North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer told local radio station KFGO that he's a stickler for the separation of powers. But he told reporters Tuesday that Trump was just testing his own authority.
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On the road in Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle
When you're on the road as a reporter, you're bound to pick up some local vernacular.
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On the road in Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle
What was Alulisat like when you finally got there? What did it look like?
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On the road in Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle
That, of course, is all things considered co-host Juana Summers. Last month, she and a team went to Greenland for a reporting trip and encountered a ton of sila.
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On the road in Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle
Consider this. Greenland is a lot more than an object of Donald Trump's territorial ambitions. It is a place whose small population is facing big questions about climate change, economic development and identity. So today we are bringing you a reporter's notebook traveling through Greenland with Juana Summers and her team at a time of huge political uncertainty. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow.
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On the road in Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle
It's Consider This from NPR. Juana Summers and her team initially went to Greenland because of the bold claims President Donald Trump has made about taking it over. But it is a place with a lot more to cover than political jostling. So today for our weekly reporter's notebook segment, we are on the road in Greenland and we will start in that little town north of the Arctic Circle, Alulisat.
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On the road in Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle
Before we talk about the other topics, for people who didn't hear the piece, what is the general feeling, though, of people whose livelihood depends on this tourism industry, depends on snow, when north of the Arctic Circle in February, snow is a problem?
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On the road in Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle
One place they were trying to get to was a little town north of the Arctic Circle called Alulisat. But the Sela had other ideas. They had days of high winds and icy tarmacs.
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On the road in Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle
Speaking of outsiders, President Trump wants to acquire Greenland. This is something you as a reporter want to learn about. But you are also an American coming in from an American news outlet to talk to people about this. How are you received?
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On the road in Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle
I've been in situations like that where you're going into a community that has just been inundated by reporters. And I found myself that like I don't even get the syllables of reporter out before. I'm a – nope. Like I'm a – We'll stop. Yeah. Nope. Like – or they could just tell by the body language as you come up that you're – but then eventually you were able to make connections.
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On the road in Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle
You were able to get people to talk about this. Did you find a wide range? You talk about it's a diverse place, but also it's a place with 57,000 people total. What was the mix of opinions on this strange situation Greenland finds itself in?
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On the road in Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle
What do you like? I feel like when we're going on a reporting trip, we do a ton of research. We've done a ton of prep before we go figuring out what we want to talk about, who we want to talk to, but just also like the basics of the story because you don't want to walk in blind. And yet there are always really big surprises.
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On the road in Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle
Like what was most surprising to you about this trip and what was something that maybe you thought about? I didn't quite grasp this idea at all or I had it a little bit wrong when I was thinking about it from afar.
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On the road in Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle
Wanda Summers, thank you so much for talking to us.
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On the road in Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle
This episode was produced by Noah Caldwell and Matt Ozog. It was edited by Adam Rainey, Ashley Brown, and Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Gannigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.
Consider This from NPR
Bonus Episode: The Aphasia Choir
Hey there, Consider This listeners. We're back with another Saturday bonus episode for you. It's part of our new series of short-form audio documentaries. It's a story about speech and silence, about loneliness and joy, even small joys, like biting into a peach. So stick around. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow. It's Consider This from NPR.
Consider This from NPR
Bonus Episode: The Aphasia Choir
There are at least 2 million people in America who have thoughts and ideas that they can't put into words. People who have had strokes or traumatic brain injuries often live with aphasia, difficulty using language, both written and spoken. But music mostly originates in the undamaged hemisphere of the brain, so people with aphasia can often sing.
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Bonus Episode: The Aphasia Choir
That was Erica Heilman from the podcast Rumble Strip. She's also a reporter for Vermont Public, where a version of the story previously aired. That story was produced by Erica, and this episode was produced by Noah Caldwell and edited by Ashley Brown. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.
Consider This from NPR
Bonus Episode: The Aphasia Choir
This is the Aphasia Choir of Vermont, founded more than a decade ago by former speech-language pathologist Karen McPheeters Leary. And today, for our weekly segment of short-form audio documentaries, we are going to meet one of the members of the choir. This story is brought to us by Erica Heilman from the podcast Rumble Strip.
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The video game industry at a crossroads
Why is this the game that you flagged that you wanted to start this conversation talking about?
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The video game industry at a crossroads
It's been that long? Yeah. So there's been more than a decade of this most recent one being. Is that just because it's so ambitious or because it's ballooned or what's the clear answer?
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The video game industry at a crossroads
So you've got all of these people like that creating these really interesting games, but at the same time, you have a handful of massive companies spending, what, like hundreds of millions of dollars developing the big tent games?
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The video game industry at a crossroads
They just shut it down. If you bought it, you can't play it. They refunded it. This is all interactive online playing mostly now. It's not like you... To go back to that 16-bit era, you get the cartridge, you put it in, you've got the game forever.
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The video game industry at a crossroads
I think that all gets to AI in this industry. What's the best way to frame how developers are using AI right now? And I imagine it's two very different answers when you talk about those two sides of the industry.
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The video game industry at a crossroads
All right, so you're at this massive conference, tens of thousands of people. Two different similar questions. What are your favorite things about video games right now as somebody who plays them? And what are the most interesting storylines that you're paying attention to as somebody who reports on them?
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The political power of the pope
That's Pope Francis speaking last Easter from the St. Peter's balcony overlooking Vatican Square. He was delivering an Urbi et Orbi, his Easter blessing. The moment and the setting encapsulates the thousands of years of ritual and pageantry associated with the Catholic Church. The balcony of the ornate St.
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The political power of the pope
And those statements echoed those of his predecessors on other issues. Pope John Paul II, a son of Poland, worked to bring an end to communism.
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The political power of the pope
And his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, regularly worked to reduce global inequality. Human rights are more often presented as a common language and the ethic underpinning of international relations. Consider this. Much of the world has spent the past two weeks focused on Pope Francis' failing health.
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The political power of the pope
The reason why has as much to do with the Pope's geopolitical power as it does with his spiritual leadership. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow. It's Consider This from NPR. Unlike any other religious leader around the world, the leader of the world's one billion Catholics is also the leader of a sovereign nation. And Pope Francis has not been shy about using that political power.
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The political power of the pope
That's Timothy Burns. He's a professor of political science at Colgate University. And he stresses it's that combination of the pope's political and religious power that has made him a powerful force on the world stage for generations.
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The political power of the pope
I spoke to Burns this week about the power of the papacy and the power of Pope Francis in particular. Looking at Pope Francis's papacy, what are the through lines you draw through Pope of when he did decide to use this diplomatic power, this soapbox that he has.
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The political power of the pope
Peter's Basilica is the same spot where some 12 years ago, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was introduced to the world as Pope Francis I.
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The political power of the pope
So then when I first asked the question, you said you wanted to take them separately. Let's talk about specific diplomacy because there are also examples of Pope Francis acting in a diplomatic way, whether it was brokering deals between the United States and Cuba or other examples.
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The political power of the pope
But that setting also regularly showcases another aspect of the role Francis and his predecessors have played, world leader.
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The political power of the pope
How has Pope Francis' approach to global politics differed from the way that John Paul II approached this?
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The political power of the pope
Let me go back to Pope Francis one more time. We talked about a wide range of different approaches that he's taken to global politics, international relations. What to you of these last 12 years is the most significant thing that Pope Francis did in this field?
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The political power of the pope
That's another moment from Francis' March 2024 Easter blessing, as war raged between Ukraine and Russia, Hamas and Israel.
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The political power of the pope
That's political science professor Tim Burns. Thanks so much for talking to us. Well, thank you for having me. This episode was produced by Tyler Bartlam and edited by Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.
Consider This from NPR
The political power of the pope
Francis hasn't just focused on war, though. He has repeatedly tried to point the world's attention to two ongoing challenges.
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A pastor's sermons on social justice causes conflict among congregation
You want to follow what's happening in Washington, D.C., but you don't want to be scrolling your phone all day. I'm Scott Detrow, and NPR has a podcast that can help. It's called Trump's Terms. Stories about big changes the 47th president is pursuing on his own terms. They're short, they're focused episodes that tell you calmly, factually, what is happening and what isn't.
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A pastor's sermons on social justice causes conflict among congregation
Listen to Trump's Terms from NPR.
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What happens if the Education Department is abolished?
President Trump has given Linda McMahon, his pick to lead the Education Department, an unusual mandate.
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What happens if the Education Department is abolished?
The administration has given schools and universities until February 28th to eliminate diversity initiatives or risk losing federal money. And many newer department staffers have received termination letters while dozens of department staff were placed on administrative lead with little explanation. But it would take an act of Congress to fully eliminate the department. Consider this.
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What happens if the Education Department is abolished?
The Trump administration wants the Department of Education gone, but can they get rid of it? And if they do, how much money would actually be saved and which programs could be lost in the process? From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow. It's Consider This from NPR. Quote, the Department of Education is a big con job.
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What happens if the Education Department is abolished?
That is just one of the things President Trump has said about one of the most high profile departments in the federal government. Trump says he wants to save money and kill policies he doesn't like. Trump and Elon Musk's doge have already started cutting funding, so what does this mean for education in the United States? It's one of the questions we will put to two former education secretaries.
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What happens if the Education Department is abolished?
John King ran the department during Barack Obama's second term, and Margaret Spellings was education secretary in the George W. Bush administration. They both joined me now to talk about what all of this could mean. Welcome to the show.
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What happens if the Education Department is abolished?
Let me start here. I would love each of you to tell me what you think the most important role the Department of Education plays. Margaret, I'll start with you.
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What happens if the Education Department is abolished?
McMahon is the former CEO of WWE, then served as administrator of the Small Business Administration during President Trump's first term. During her confirmation hearing, she decried what she called a public education in decline.
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What happens if the Education Department is abolished?
You know, there's a lot we don't know yet. But the thing that the Trump people are talking about is they want to keep a lot of that critical funding, but perhaps get rid of the department itself or massively cut down the department or shift these funding programs to some other department. I'm curious, and John, I'll start with you.
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What happens if the Education Department is abolished?
How would that change thing if, again, the bulk of this money remains, but? the apparatus administering it is gone. How much does that worry you?
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What happens if the Education Department is abolished?
Margaret Spellings, Department of Education money, but no Department of Education. Is that a doable thing in your mind?
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What happens if the Education Department is abolished?
I want to talk about some of those things, and I really want to talk about just the broader state of education. But Margaret Spelling, quick question to you. For a long time, Republicans have criticized the reach, the size of the Department of Education. How different to you is this particular moment what the Trump administration is calling for from what we've seen for decades?
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What happens if the Education Department is abolished?
In fact, the Education Department does not specifically determine what gets taught in the classroom. What it does do is oversee programs that send billions of dollars to schools that serve low-income families and help educate kids with disabilities. This money has been one of the top concerns for lawmakers and educators as Trump talks about closing the department.
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What happens if the Education Department is abolished?
John King, I want to ask you about another big part of this. We're seeing these executive orders ordering schools to get rid of DEI. What are you most worried about when it comes to these ideological orders coming out of the Trump administration and how it affects education in local school districts?
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What happens if the Education Department is abolished?
Another thing I want to put to both of you, and John, I'll start with you. We just got those high-level data back showing that so many students across the country still struggling with basics like reading and math post-COVID. Is there an argument that the current system just isn't working?
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What happens if the Education Department is abolished?
Margaret Spelling, same question to you. Given how frustrated so many people are across the country with where things are right now, does this help or hurt?
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What happens if the Education Department is abolished?
It's two former education secretaries, Margaret Spellings and John King. Thank you so much to both of you for joining us.
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What happens if the Education Department is abolished?
McMahon tried to address this during her hearing in an exchange with Republican Senator Bill Cassidy.
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What happens if the Education Department is abolished?
This episode was produced by Jordan Marie Smith and Elena Burnett and was edited by Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. Thanks to our Consider This Plus listeners who support the work of NPR journalists and help keep public radio strong. Supporters also hear every episode without messages from sponsors. You can learn more at plus.npr.org. It's Consider This from NPR.
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What happens if the Education Department is abolished?
Unwinding the department in the name of efficiency has already begun. Elon Musk's Doge team eviscerated the department's research division and has been allowed access by a judge to internal department systems. The department cut $600 million in funding for teacher training on what the administration framed as inappropriate and unnecessary topics, including critical race theory.
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Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy
It's no secret that much, if not most, of the Republican Party is in lockstep with President Trump.
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Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy
Hegseth softened his stance a bit during his confirmation hearing, and Ernst ultimately voted to confirm Hegseth. Then there's Marco Rubio and Ukraine.
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Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy
That's Senator Marco Rubio in 2014, speaking on the Senate floor shortly after Russia invaded and annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.
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Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy
In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Days after the Russian tanks rolled across Ukraine's border, Senator Rubio defended the country on MSNBC. Fast forward three years. is now Secretary of State in the second Trump administration. And that steadfast support that Rubio had as a senator has taken a backseat to the administration's hardline approach to Ukraine.
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Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy
We have seen members of the president's party fall in line over and over on a wide range of issues since Trump returned to office some six weeks ago. Sometimes that has meant compromising on issues and beliefs that had defined them for years.
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Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy
As Senator, Marco Rubio supported America's role as a global leader. Now, as Secretary of State, he has embraced Donald Trump's America First policies. Policies that are having dire consequences for Ukraine and creating turbulence in the rest of the world. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow. It's Consider This from NPR.
Consider This from NPR
Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy
It has been a little more than a week since Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky met with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Vice President J.D. Vance was in the meeting, too, and so was Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The nation's top diplomat was sitting on an Oval Office couch...
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Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy
Mostly silent as Trump and Vance berated the Ukrainian leader and in the process made it clear just how much of the established global order they are ready to upend. An order that for most of his career, Rubio has defended and worked to help hold up. So what changed and what do those changes mean?
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Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy
To answer these questions, we're going to talk to professor of international politics at Tufts University's Fletcher School, Daniel Dresner. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Let's start by rewinding just a little bit. You wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times about Rubio's political evolution back in December before he took office.
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Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy
And you asked which Marco Rubio is going to show up for the job, the democracy-promoting optimist or a more inward-looking anti-global pessimist? A month in, do you feel like you have a verdict?
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Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy
That was Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, a doctor who had expressed concerns about vaccine resistance, voting for Trump's pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy has a long history of opposition to vaccines and chaired an anti-vaccine nonprofit called Children's Health Defense.
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Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy
You know, Marco Rubio is not the only Republican by far to change big positions and align them with what President Trump is promoting. But I think this particular issue of Ukraine, and you have that visual that rocketed around the internet of Rubio kind of slumped into the couch almost high, like, absorbing into the couch like the Homer Simpson meme.
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Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy
This particular issue of Ukraine, Rubio and so many other Republicans were so out there in terms of defending this country, standing up for this country, making sure the United States was continuing to fund this country. Then you see how he tweets about what happened in the Oval Office afterwards, saying President Trump was standing up for the United States.
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Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy
That particular issue, I feel like, is a hard one to square. How do you feel about it?
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Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy
There's this long line of various high-profile cabinet secretaries who... more traditional Republicans hope can be a moderating influence. I think the first Secretary of State under Trump, Rex Tillerson, is a good example of that. And he ended up being humiliated when he was fired and then mocked by President Trump and others in the administration.
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Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy
How much influence can you have over foreign policy when you're a Secretary of State who is not seemingly one of the key decision makers in the presidency?
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Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy
So what does that mean for policy?
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Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy
There's Iowa Senator and military veteran Joni Ernst, who has spent years advocating for women in the military and trying to raise awareness about sexual assault in the military.
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Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy
That's Daniel Dresner, professor of international politics at Tufts University. Thank you so much.
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Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy
This episode was produced by Erica Ryan and Brianna Scott with audio engineering by Ted Meebane. It was edited by Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.
Consider This from NPR
Marco Rubio pivots to America First diplomacy
Ernst was talking about Trump's pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth. Hegseth has been accused of sexual assault. His lawyer has called the claims false. and police never filed charges. And before he was nominated, Hegseth had argued against women in combat. He talked about it in a podcast hosted by Sean Ryan in November.
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Is there a Trump Doctrine for Foreign Policy?
Here's a question that's sometimes hard to answer. What is President Trump's foreign policy? Is it one that is governed by restraint? Maybe, if you go by his inaugural address.
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Is there a Trump Doctrine for Foreign Policy?
On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt said the plan would not involve U.S. taxpayer dollars, and she said the president had not committed to U.S. boots on the ground. But when pressed... He did not rule out American troops in Gaza last night. Are you doing that now?
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Is there a Trump Doctrine for Foreign Policy?
It's a plan that underscores what is undeniable about Trump's foreign policy. It is a break with the status quo. Levitt put it this way.
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Is there a Trump Doctrine for Foreign Policy?
Consider this. Trump has promised a new approach to American foreign policy. Is there a Trump doctrine? What is it? From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow.
Consider This from NPR
Is there a Trump Doctrine for Foreign Policy?
Or maybe it will be defined by expansion. He has threatened to take over Greenland, make Canada the 51st state. He has plans for Panama, too. As he mentioned, in, yes, that very same inaugural address.
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Is there a Trump Doctrine for Foreign Policy?
It's Consider This from NPR. A lot of labels have been applied to Trump's foreign policy approach. America first, isolationist, transactional, imperialist, protectionist. I'm a nationalist and a globalist, he told the Wall Street Journal during his first term. To help sort this all through, I am joined by Emma Ashford. She's a senior fellow with the Reimagining U.S.
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Is there a Trump Doctrine for Foreign Policy?
Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center, a foreign affairs think tank. Welcome.
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Is there a Trump Doctrine for Foreign Policy?
All right. So let's try to sort all of this out. And let's start with this. Trump has talked throughout his political career about the end of nation building. The Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently said the U.S. should not try to solve every problem in the world.
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Is there a Trump Doctrine for Foreign Policy?
And that point of view would seem like a really big break from the hawkish neoconservative foreign policy that has defined the Republican Party for decades. But then at the same time, you've got Trump saying he wants to take over the Gaza Strip. How do you make sense of that disparity?
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Is there a Trump Doctrine for Foreign Policy?
Do you see, like, how would you define in a couple of sentences what the Trump foreign policy approach is right now?
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Is there a Trump Doctrine for Foreign Policy?
Is transactional dealmaking a key through line then, like this extreme premise setting that might lead to something different?
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Is there a Trump Doctrine for Foreign Policy?
Maybe the answer to what defines Trump's foreign policy is rooted in his criticism of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which helped him win the Republican nomination way back in 2016.
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Is there a Trump Doctrine for Foreign Policy?
And that was very much the Biden foreign policy, democracy versus autocracy. That's how we frame just about everything. This is very different.
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Is there a Trump Doctrine for Foreign Policy?
Emma, one of the reasons we wanted to talk to you is because you are somebody who does favor a more restrained U.S. foreign policy. And as we talked about, this is something that Trump talked a lot about and campaigned on the first time around. But then when you look at the actions it took, there was an escalation of tension with Iran, an increase in military spending.
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He vetoed efforts to end U.S. involvement in Yemen. Other examples. Do you think this time could be different when you look at those end results and decisions?
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You know, as somebody who thinks that the US would be well served by a break with the foreign policy of the last administration, what are you as somebody who would like to see a shift like that most hopeful about when it comes to the changes that Trump is at least saying he's trying to make?
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Is there a Trump Doctrine for Foreign Policy?
That's Emma Ashford with the Stimson Center. Thank you so much.
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Is there a Trump Doctrine for Foreign Policy?
This episode was produced by Connor Donovan. It was edited by Courtney Dorning and Nadia Lancey. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. As we wrap up the week, a thank you to our Consider This Plus listeners who support the show. If that's not you, it could be. Supporters also hear every episode without sponsor messages. You can learn more at the link in our episode notes.
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Is there a Trump Doctrine for Foreign Policy?
It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.
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Is there a Trump Doctrine for Foreign Policy?
And that might convince you that Trump wants to avoid nation building in the Middle East until you listen to his press conference on Tuesday at which he said the U.S. will, quote, take over the Gaza Strip after relocating the Palestinians who live there.
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Are Kids With ADHD Being Treated Effectively?
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Following the news out of Washington, D.C. can be overwhelming. I'm Scott Detrow, and NPR has a podcast that can help. It's called Trump's Terms. Stories about big changes the 47th president is pursuing on his own terms. Each episode is short, usually around five minutes or so. We keep it calm and factual. We help you follow what matters, and we leave out what doesn't.
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Following the news out of Washington, D.C. can be overwhelming. I'm Scott Detrow, and NPR has a podcast that can help. It's called Trump's Terms. Stories about big changes the 47th president is pursuing on his own terms. Each episode is short, usually around five minutes or so. We keep it calm and factual. We help you follow what matters, and we leave out what doesn't.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Well, he started shooting the film in September 1939. It came out in October 1940. At this point in history, America is an isolationist country, as is Congress. Hitler was not our problem. The Jews of Europe were not our problem. If Hitler took England, we would just have to make a separate piece. And that would be the end of our problem. Chaplin believed otherwise, as did Franklin Roosevelt.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Hedda Hopper loathed Chaplin for reasons both political and sexual. Hedda Hopper was extremely conservative. Hedda Hopper was one of the founders of the right-wing motion picture group that fomented the House Un-American Activities Committee. And she had also been abandoned by an older Rue husband as a young woman who left her high and dry with a young son.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Her young son became William Hopper who played Paul Drake on the Perry Mason TV series. So this chaplain rang all these alarm bells in her head for reasons both political and sexual. And Hedda Hopper, this was a story Hedda Hopper had been waiting for her entire journalistic career.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
So she called another friend of hers who was a columnist for the New York Daily News based in Hollywood and they got interviews with Joan Barry and they they began Flooding the Prince with interviews with Joan Barry about how she'd been used Cast aside impregnated etc. Etc by Charlie Chaplin the feds got interested and he was prosecuted on the Mann Act
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
The Mann Act involved transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes and was originally passed decades before to stamp out prostitution. Well, the chaplain hired Jerry Giesler as his defender, his defense attorney, and the jury deliberated for an hour and found him not guilty. Well, that was the end of the Mann Act prosecution. And then came the paternity suit.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
And there were three blood tests administered by three different sets of doctors. Two of the blood tests proved the chaplain was not the father. The other blood test was ambivalent. So the evidence was certainly on his side. But blood tests were not dispositive in California courts for a number of years at this point. We're now talking 1943.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
And he was found guilty by the jury, not because of the evidence, but because of who he was and his past history and the fact that he had an affair with a 22-year-old girl, even though he was not the father of the child. So he took this rather amiss.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Grudgingly. He wanted to appeal. The courts turned down his appeals. So that was the end of it. So he not only had to pay child support for 18 years for a child that wasn't his, he had to pay the fee of the attorney who had gotten him convicted.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
She tells him that something needs to be done and that he's the one to do it. She had been a cheerleader for Nixon ever since he got elected to Congress and later the Senate. And his papers are full of letters from Hedda Hopper encouraging him, excoriating him to nagging him when he didn't answer her letters. She was categorized as high maintenance by any correspondent.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
As a matter of fact, Franklin Roosevelt was one of the few people in America that wanted the film made. Nobody in Hollywood wanted the film made. Because in the latter part of 1939, anti-fascist films were very, very few on the ground. But he was basically bound and determined. There's a letter in the book from Jack Warner to Chaplin.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
She was a real piece of work, as my grandmother would say. And she was basically trying to foment government action using Richard Nixon as the battering ram.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
He writes her a placating letter saying, yes, you're absolutely right, I couldn't agree with you more, and then he changes the subject. Because by this time, he's running for vice president on the ticket with Dwight Eisenhower, and he's got bigger fish to fry than Charlie Chaplin or Hedda Hopper. And evidently, he does absolutely nothing.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
There's nothing in Richard Nixon's papers to indicate he took any action, whatever, or was involved in the revocation of Chaplin's reentry permit.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
The reasons were vague. The document, a press conference that the attorney general gave a week after the revocation mentioned Chaplin's leering, sneering attitude towards the United States.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
mentioned his lack of citizenship uh things like that uh what was not stated and what chaplain did not know was that if he had turned around and come back and demanded a hearing uh to get back his re-entry permit they would have had to give it to him and he would they would have had to let him back into the country because he'd never been he'd never been convicted of a crime
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
He had never been convicted of a crime. And that was the way that they deported various people that they didn't want in America, like Mafiosi. They would get a Mafiosi convicted on income tax evasion and deport him to Italy because he'd been convicted of income tax evasion. They couldn't get him on anything more lethal than that, but that was enough to have him deported.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
They could have done the same thing with Chaplin, except he'd never been convicted of anything, including income tax evasion. And believe me, they had gone over his corporate income taxes, his personal income taxes with fine-tooth combs for a decade, and they couldn't find a dime that he'd underpaid. So they actually had no legal justification for excluding him from coming back to the country.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Because his one of his core beliefs was that nationalism was a lethal Disease and it led to things like Adolf Hitler and Nazism in World War two a friend of his named Max Eastman who knew him quite well over a 40-year period a Good writer who started out as a socialist and ended up writing for Weymouth Buckley's National Review Said that what people didn't understand about Charlie is
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
was that he was born in England and made his fortune in America. And if the reverse had been true, and he'd been born in America and made his fortune in England, he never would have become an English citizen either. He simply didn't believe in the kind of patriotism that is knee-jerk in most countries. He didn't partake of it. He considered himself, his phrase was, I'm a citizen of the world.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Jack Warner had just had a meeting with Roosevelt in the Oval Office.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
He got his back up. He was enraged. He was furious. And he didn't want to be a guest at the party if he was disinvited.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Oh, God, yes, yes. Would he have done this on his own? No, I don't think there's any scenario under which he would have left America on his own. He had a wife. He had four young children at this point with Una. They were all under the age of, I believe, eight. They were all, you know, going to school. He had an infrastructure. He had his own studio on La Brea Avenue.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
He was part owner of United Artists, a major releasing organization. And he was 63 years old. And he figured he probably had 10 more years. He was not about to leave. He lived in one house in California for his entire life. He'd been in one house for 30-odd years. He was not a guy who pulled up stakes quickly or easily or hopped around. So he was going to be a lifer in Southern California.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
The fact that that choice was taken away from him, Enraged him and it's never really been obvious how enraged he was Until you read the letters that I found in the chaplain archives that he wrote to friends like James Agee Where he does vent and he's clearly? Carrying around a load of anger verging on rage about what was done to him
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Exactly. And Roosevelt had heard the mutterings about Chaplin making an anti-Hitler satire. And he brought it up to Warner that he certainly hoped Chaplin was going to go ahead and make the film because he thought it would do a lot of good.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Totally false. None of his films were shown in the Soviet Union until the Gorbachev era because the Soviet Union wouldn't pay the money that Chaplin thought they should to rent the films. And he wasn't going to give them to him for free.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Extremely successful. Extremely successful. Limelight was a huge hit in Europe. Actually, it made more money than any other Chaplin film in terms of European grosses. But a lot of places in America never saw it because the American Legion would show up and picket it. and tell people going in that they were being un-American by going to see an un-American picture by an un-American artist.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
It's a love story, basically, about the theater. There's no political orientation to it whatsoever. But they were a... Lime Light was. A limelight was a completely apolitical picture. But they were still reacting to the great dictator. They were still reacting to modern times and the idea of modern times being anti-capitalist.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
I don't know if you remember modern times, but it opens with the factory workers flooding into the factory in the morning and the production line getting going and the assembly line moving faster and faster and everybody trying to keep up. And then we cut to the president of the corporation who's working a jigsaw puzzle at his desk. That's as close to a criticism of capitalism as it went.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
But that was Chaplin's worldview. He didn't see society at large as evil or as vampirish. He saw it as indifferent. He didn't think society at large had a limited interest in the life of the underclass. And it wasn't a character flaw. It wasn't based on money. It was just based on human nature.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
And Warner wrote a letter to Chaplin reporting his conversation with the president and said, if President Roosevelt believes it'll do a lot of good, so do I. I hope you go and make it, Charlie. He didn't offer to help. But he was passing along the story. He didn't really need to pass along the story. Chaplin was totally committed. But nobody wanted that film made.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
True. Absolutely true. And so he had them pulled from release in America.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Until 1964. Wow. So it was 12 years. Chaplin Films didn't play in America until 1964. And when they did, it was because he had written his memoir and it was coming out in about a year later. and they decided to see if the temperature had cooled. So they booked a season of Chaplin films in New York and it turned into the great event of 1964.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
It played for nine, 10 months, all the films in repertory. And as it turned out, the memoir was a huge bestseller as well. So his enemies had died or gone to earth or simply a new generation had taken over and decided that Whatever had happened in 1939 and 1942 and 1945 had no relevance in the 60s.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
The two films he made after he moved to Switzerland are grossly inferior to the films he'd made amongst all the tumult and controversy in Hollywood in the 30s, 40s, and even into limelight in 1952. Was Switzerland responsible or was age catching up with him? He wasn't that old. He was 63 when he got kicked out of the country.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
And he was 68 when he made a King of New York and 78 when he made Counts from Hong Kong. So that's getting up there. But good films have been made by directors in their 60s and 70s.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
So whether it was just a lessening of stimulus, a certain passivity in the environment that he found in Switzerland, all of his letters from this period, he talks about how restful it is and how serene it is and blah, blah, blah, blah. In one of Una's letters, she says quite the opposite, that he would get claustrophobic with all the snow.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
And he'd talk about going to Marrakesh just to get to see the sun again. So I think it was a double-edged sword. I think on one end, Switzerland gave him the serenity that he probably needed after 15 years of enduring character assassination. On the other hand, it put him out of touch with what was going on in the world around him and what was going on in America.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
The British Foreign Office didn't want the film made because Neville Chamberlain was the prime minister. And he was attempting to appease Hitler. Unsuccessfully, obviously. The American Congress was totally isolationist. And the industry also. The American film industry thought it was a dangerous film to make. But Chaplin basically ignored everybody.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
A workhouse was basically a state-run orphanage for children whose parents were either dead or rendered insane or institutionalized themselves or in jail. And they had no other adult supervision, so the state took them over. And Chaplin remembered it as a period not so much of thought. abuse as utter humiliation. He was there for about two years. His brother was also there for a while.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Sidney was older by two years. And Sidney was very, very close with Charlie and vice versa. Chaplin allowed very few people in intimately. He was not a man who glad-handed. He was not a man who had a lot of people close to him. He kept himself for himself. And I think that was a function of his childhood.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
when he early learned the hard way that whatever society says it's going to do or pretends it's going to do, essentially you're on your own, especially in Victorian England with an alcoholic father who dies at the age of 37 and a mother who's insane and infected by syphilis.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
So he was very quickly responsible for his own, after childhood, he was responsible for his own recognizance, his own meals, his own roof over his head. And sometimes he had a roof over his head, other times he didn't. There were times when he lived on the streets.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
He came back to get his honorary Oscar in 1972. Oh, okay. On his terms. His films were being reissued all over America, all over the world. He signed a deal for his film library. And his films were being reissued, and they gave him an honorary Oscar to make up for the fact that in 1952, basically the entire movie industry had turned the other cheek and ignored...
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
The fact that the most famous comedian in town had just been driven out of the country. When he got kicked out of the country, three people in Hollywood stood up publicly and said this was a terrible mistake. You know who they were?
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Sam Goldwyn, Cary Grant, and William Wyler. Everybody else shut up.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
He was overwhelmed. It was a 12-minute ovation. It was the longest ovation in the history of the Oscars. Old age is beginning to have its way with him when you look at it on YouTube. He's older, he's frail. He just kind of shakes his head and he can't believe it that after all these years, you know. The funny thing was his son, Sidney, wonderful man, gone now.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
But I had a long interview with Sidney, oh, 20 years ago probably. And he said the thing that you have to understand about my father was he didn't care about the Oscar. He didn't care about awards. Those meant nothing to him.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
He said my father's image of himself was as a workman, to show up every day and work on the script until it's as good as you can make it, to show up on the set every day until the scene is as good as you can make it. He said it wasn't about awards. It wasn't even about money. It was about being a good workman. putting in your time. He said that's why he hated to go on vacation.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
The Nazi representative in Los Angeles was a man named George Gisling. And his job essentially was to strong-arm anybody that wanted to make an anti-Nazi picture by writing a threatening letter or two or three.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
They had eight kids in the house and Una would get restless in the house and the kids would get restless in Charlotte. Let's go to Ireland, let's do this, let's do that. And he really didn't wanna go. He would, grudgingly, but he really wanted to stay and work on whatever his project was. He was a compulsive workman. That was his identity.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
But he came back because it was a business deal and he was making a lot of money. And they were going to give him an Academy Award. And ultimately, he was overwhelmed. He was overwhelmed by the response. He was overwhelmed by the love that the audience projected at him for those 12 and 15 minutes compared to the obloquy that he'd had to endure all those years at the end of his Hollywood period.
Fresh Air
The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
It's a very moving scene when you watch it on YouTube. Very moving. So it's a closing of a circle. It really was a perfect closing of a circle. He died five years later.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Some moviegoers are already referring to Gladiator 2 and Wicked as this year's Barbenheimer. I believe Glicked is the portmanteau of choice. We'll see if the comparison holds up. Both these lavish spectacles are set to be huge hits, but unlike Barbie and Oppenheimer, they're essentially known quantities, rooted in stories and characters that the audience knows well.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
And he wrote a threatening letter to the head of the Motion Picture Association, a man named Joe Breen, inquiring us to Chaplin's plans to make this film about, clearly, manifestly about Hitler. and Breen reported back that he'd asked Chaplin about it, and Chaplin said, well, there's no script, there's no story, there's no nothing.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Wicked was adapted from the long-running Broadway musical, which was itself inspired by Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel. But you should know going in that this two-hour and 40-minute movie is just part one, and there will be a year-long intermission before part two.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
The director John M. Chu, of In the Heights and Crazy Rich Asians, takes a glossy, maximalist approach to this origin story for the Wicked Witch of the West, the villain so memorably played by Margaret Hamilton in the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
In this telling, the witch's name is Elphaba, and as played by a quietly commanding Cynthia Erivo, she's brave, brilliant, and grievously misunderstood, mainly on account of her green skin. Much of the movie takes place at a school of sorcery, basically Hogwarts with munchkins, where Elphaba impresses the powerful headmistress, an imperious Michelle Yeoh.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
It's here that Elphaba becomes rivals with a smug queen bee named Galinda, the future good witch of the North. She's played with delightful comic brio by the pop superstar Ariana Grande. But in time, the two become genuine friends. In this scene, set to one of Stephen Schwartz's better musical numbers, Galinda decides to give Elphaba a makeover.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Wicked handles the boarding school comedy with a pleasingly light touch. There's also a hint of a romantic triangle involving a handsome prince, a very good Jonathan Bailey, who, like a lot of things here, foreshadows future Wizard of Oz developments. In time, we get Jeff Goldblum, nicely cast as the wizard himself, who turns out to be less wonderful than he appears.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
This sets the stage for Elphaba to harness her full magical strength and become Oz's public enemy number one. Wicked Part 1 does build to a doozy of a gravity-defying Emerald City climax, but much of the movie is too lumbering, too obvious, and frankly too digitally slick to cast a spell.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
I hate to say this about a movie that teaches us not to judge based on appearances, but I do wish Wicked looked better. Where Oz has winged monkeys, ancient Rome has deranged baboons. Early on in Gladiator 2, Lucius, a warrior played by Paul Meskel, must prove his mettle by defeating a very scary simian in the Colosseum Arena.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Sixteen years have passed since the events of the first Gladiator, and like that movie's slain hero, Maximus, indelibly played by Russell Crowe, Lucius is a prisoner, scarred by personal tragedy and bent on revenge. His hatred, though, isn't just aimed at one person. Lucius wants to burn the whole rotten empire to the ground.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
And if indeed Breen did call him about this, Chaplin was lying through his teeth, because three weeks later he started building sets to make the film. So he was going to go ahead and make the film Come Hell or High Water.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
The director Ridley Scott has reunited with some of his key collaborators from that first film, including the actor Connie Nielsen, making a regal return as Lucilla, daughter of Marcus Aurelius. Most of the cast, however, is new.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Pedro Pascal plays a formidable general, with whom Lucius has a score to settle, while Joseph Quinn and Fred Heshinger romp up a storm as a pair of twin-brother tyrants who are driving Rome to ruin. And Denzel Washington, unsurprisingly, gets the juiciest role as Macrinus, a sly and somewhat inscrutable slave owner who sends Lucius into the arena.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
It's fun to watch Washington go over the top, but his scene-stealing is typical of Gladiator 2 as a whole. It's a lot of flash to very little purpose. Meskel, best known for his sensitive, melancholy work in the series Normal People and films like Aftersun, gives an intensely physical performance, but his Lucius never lays claim to your sympathies as commandingly as Maximus did.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
And when the characters start talking laboriously about the downfall of Rome and the hope of a glorious rebirth, the movie rapidly loses steam. It's like watching an extended WWE SmackDown suddenly interrupted by a civics lesson. Still, the SmackDown itself is pretty satisfying.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
In Gladiator 2's wildest action sequence, the Coliseum Arena becomes a giant saltwater tank, complete with dueling warships and bloodthirsty sharks. It's an utterly outlandish spectacle, but Ridley Scott, who's now 86, doesn't sweat the logistics. The first Gladiator asked, are you not entertained? And in these moments, at least, we are.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
They were obsessed with the idea that Chaplin was Jewish. That's a very good question because at one point there was a book published in Germany by a Jewish consortium that included Chaplin in a roster of famous show business Jews. which was erroneous. He wasn't Jewish. But he never denied the erroneous charge because he felt it would give aid and comfort to anti-Semites.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
And besides that, he liked Jews. So he just went along with it. So most people went along with him because he hadn't bothered to deny it.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
The thing about Chaplin is that he was going to do what he thought was the right thing to do. He didn't listen to committees. He didn't listen to friends who told him you're making a mistake. He had a very... monotheistic view of his own career. The audience had always followed him wherever he led.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
They had followed him into feature motion pictures with The Kid and The Gold Rush when people said that they didn't think he could pull off a feature because the character wasn't strong enough. They had followed him into the 1930s when he insisted on making silent pictures after silent pictures were dead and buried.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
But he made two silent pictures, one City Lights, the other was Modern Times, both of which were huge critical and commercial successes. So he believed that the audience would follow him where he led because they always had before. So he didn't really have a lot of qualms about making The Great Dictator based on almost 30 years in show business and 25 years in the movie business.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
He was completely unconcerned with that. He thought the only way for... He didn't get into logistics. He believed that Hitler was a moral and religious and psychological and death threat to Western democracy. And nothing else mattered except that he to be defeated, logistics and military personnel and everything else be damned.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
So he was speaking from the point of view of a concerned citizen, not a military strategist.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
The FBI began basically taking down dictation of all of his speeches. They shadowed him. They began surveilling his house to see if any known communists showed up at his front door for a meeting. That was the proximate cause for a fair amount of the government surveillance over the next couple of years. And that was amplified when he got hit with a paternity suit in 1942.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
You name it. It depends on the period you're talking about. Basically, at one time or another, he was the target of the entire security apparatus of the United States of America. They would bug his phones at some times, then they would back off on bugging his phones, and they would set up perimeters outside of his house to see who showed up at his front door. They would open his mail.
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The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
All this took place over a period of eight to ten years, depending upon how excited J. Edgar Hoover was getting.
Fresh Air
The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
I can't imagine he didn't know. But if he did know, he did not acknowledge it.
Fresh Air
The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Uh-huh. All 1,900 pages. The very interesting thing is there was this disconnect between Hoover in Washington and the FBI office in Los Angeles. The FBI in Los Angeles were the men on the ground in terms of surveilling the motion picture industry. And the head of the FBI office in Los Angeles was a man named Richard Hood. Because Hoover seldom went to Los Angeles.
Fresh Air
The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
And every once in a while, Hoover would yank Richard Hood's chain and say, I want you to do this and this and this regarding Charlie Chaplin and see about this and that. And at first, Hood goes about his business and does what his boss tells him to do. But as the 40s wear on, Hood begins to... Drag his feet.
Fresh Air
The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Because by 1946, 1947, the FBI had informers in the American Communist Party and they had the membership roster. And they knew who everybody in the American Communist Party was. That's why in 1947, when they called the Hollywood Ten to Washington to be cross-examined,
Fresh Air
The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Everybody in the Hollywood 10 either had been a member of the Communist Party and quit or was currently a member of the Communist Party. That's because they had the membership roster. So they knew that Chaplin was not a member of the party, had never been a member of the party, and never had given a dime to the party.
Fresh Air
The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
And if they had thought about it for more than 20 minutes, they would have realized that anybody with Chaplin's autocratic leanings as an artist, a man who was almost impossible for him to delegate anything, would never be privy or a member of a party with a top-down autocratic drift because he could not possibly have done what anybody else wanted him to do because Chaplin had never done what anybody else had wanted him to do.
Fresh Air
The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
He belonged to the Catalina Yacht Club. Oh, is there ideology? There you go. He belonged to the Lambs Club in New York, acting a bunch of actors. He never joined the Director's Guild. He never joined the Screen Actors Guild. No, he was absolutely not a joiner. Stuff like that had zero interest for him, and it meant nothing to him.
Fresh Air
The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
That he was a termite eating away at the foundation of America. And sooner or later, the House is going to collapse. Essentially the same charge that the investigators at the House Committee on Un-American Activities were making against all the people they were investigating.
Fresh Air
The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Nothing, basically, because Chaplin had never been a member of the party and he never actually was called before Congress. They kept threatening to call him before Congress, but they didn't.
Fresh Air
The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
And I suspect that's largely because they had all the authentic communists that they could call before communists or former communists that they could call before Congress, whereas Chaplin had never been in the party. So what exactly were they going to ask him?
Fresh Air
The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Yes, yes, because they were consistently spread and re-spread and re-spread again for a period of over 10 years, 12, 14 years. And it was a classic campaign of disinformation that had no – in most cases had zero relation to reality. there were some hilariously lunatic stories that hit the public prints of the things that Charlie Chaplin was supposedly involved in.
Fresh Air
The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
At one point there was a story, this is in the late 1940s, when the British and the Irgun were fighting the war in Palestine. And it was said that Chaplin was aiding the Irgun in slaughtering British soldiers, helping slaughter British soldiers. Well, he'd never been involved with the Irgun in any way.
Fresh Air
The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
My favorite of these lunatic disinformation stories came actually after he'd been kicked out of the country, when it was printed that he was going to adopt the children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who had just been put to death. And again, a complete lunacy, but... there was this steady drip, drip, drip of lunatic disinformation.
Fresh Air
The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
And gradually, the people that were prone to believe it, believed it. And the people that were not prone to believe it, gradually began to think, well, maybe.
Fresh Air
The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
Well, it would cause trouble now. No question it would cause trouble now. I think even people are even more sensitive about it now than they were then. At the time he was going to trial in the paternity suit involving Joan Berry, just as the trial was getting underway, he married Una O'Neill, the daughter of Eugene O'Neill. And she was 18 years old and he was 53.
Fresh Air
The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
so the His marriage seemed to confirm everything that the the Hearst Press and the Los Angeles Times Press and the Chicago Tribune Press all the right-wing newspaper chains were printing about him that he was a roue that he was a degenerate blah blah blah blah As it happened. He was married to uno Neil for the rest of his life very happily they had eight children together and
Fresh Air
The Exile Of Charlie Chaplin
But it seemed to confirm to the public at large that he was what the prosecution said he was.
Fresh Air
'Hacks' Returns! With Jean Smart, Hannah Einbinder, Paul W. Downs
You want to follow what's happening in Washington, D.C., but you don't want to be scrolling your phone all day. I'm Scott Detrow, and NPR has a podcast that can help. It's called Trump's Terms. Stories about big changes the 47th president is pursuing on his own terms. They're short, they're focused episodes that tell you calmly, factually, what is happening and what isn't.
Fresh Air
'Hacks' Returns! With Jean Smart, Hannah Einbinder, Paul W. Downs
Listen to Trump's Terms from NPR.
Short Wave
Are DOGE Cuts Making America Healthy?
You want to follow what's happening in Washington, D.C., but you don't want to be scrolling your phone all day. I'm Scott Detrow, and NPR has a podcast that can help. It's called Trump's Terms. Stories about big changes the 47th president is pursuing on his own terms. They're short, they're focused episodes that tell you calmly, factually, what is happening and what isn't.
Short Wave
Your Allergies May Be Getting Worse
You want to follow what's happening in Washington, D.C., but you don't want to be scrolling your phone all day. I'm Scott Detrow, and NPR has a podcast that can help. It's called Trump's Terms. Stories about big changes the 47th president is pursuing on his own terms. They're short, they're focused episodes that tell you calmly, factually, what is happening and what isn't.
Short Wave
Your Allergies May Be Getting Worse
The scary new movie Sinners from the director of Black Panther finds Michael B. Jordan playing twin brothers. It's got vampires, it's got great music, and it's a fun one to see with a big crowd.
Short Wave
Your Allergies May Be Getting Worse
We'll tell you why you should see Sinners on the biggest screen you can. Listen to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR.
Short Wave
This Telescope Could Find "Planet 9"
Astronomers have got to change from observing little areas of sky to basically data mining. It's got to be like a fire hose of data coming in when it goes online. And we're going to have to sift through it to find everything, including planets.
Short Wave
This Telescope Could Find "Planet 9"
It's a question of just what kind of planet it is, where it is, how bright it is, how big it is. And Vera Rubin is our best bet to find it in the next few years, probably. And it's going to turn over more rocks than anyone has turned over before.
Short Wave
This Is Your Brain On Dessert
All right, we're back and we're going to start with dessert because I'm that kind of person.
Short Wave
This Is Your Brain On Dessert
I, along with so many others, have had that happen so many times. Like, why? What is going on? Why are our bodies telling us to do this?
Short Wave
This Is Your Brain On Dessert
So let me make sure I'm following that, okay? So their brains are signaling they're full, but they're still at the same time tripping more brainwires that are saying, eat more sugar. Yeah.
Short Wave
This Is Your Brain On Dessert
So my first question is, how do I stop being a radio host and do this instead, take part in these researches? But beyond that, my other question, are there any hypotheses here for why our brains are set up this way?
Short Wave
This Is Your Brain On Dessert
Okay. Let's talk seals next. I hear some of them are doing science now.
Short Wave
This Is Your Brain On Dessert
It's okay because we're all going to the sugar-eating jobs.
Short Wave
This Is Your Brain On Dessert
Help me make this connection a little more. What does seal weight have to do with ocean health? Like is this if the seals are eating enough food, we're in good shape?
Short Wave
This Is Your Brain On Dessert
I am always happy to be here, but I'll be honest, I'm only here because I heard we might have dessert.
Short Wave
This Is Your Brain On Dessert
Hear me out. What if instead of weighing seals, they just did like a fish census?
Short Wave
This Is Your Brain On Dessert
Dessert, check. Seals, check. Next, collecting water from fog, which... Does not strike me as a new thing, right?
Short Wave
This Is Your Brain On Dessert
How does this actually work? Like, is this similar to like collecting condensation?
Short Wave
This Is Your Brain On Dessert
How much of an impact could this make on a city's water supply?
Short Wave
This Is Your Brain On Dessert
That's all well and good, but again, I'm going to stress that I was promised dessert.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How Trump's Immigration Policy Is Taking Shape
Following the news out of Washington, D.C. can be overwhelming. I'm Scott Detrow, and NPR has a podcast that can help. It's called Trump's Terms. Stories about big changes the 47th president is pursuing on his own terms. Each episode is short, usually around five minutes or so. We keep it calm and factual. We help you follow what matters, and we leave out what doesn't.
The NPR Politics Podcast
How Trump's Immigration Policy Is Taking Shape
Listen to Trump's Terms from NPR.
The NPR Politics Podcast
Trump's Tariff Tumult
Following the news out of Washington, D.C. can be overwhelming. I'm Scott Detrow, and NPR has a podcast that can help. It's called Trump's Terms. Stories about big changes the 47th president is pursuing on his own terms. Each episode is short, usually around five minutes or so. We keep it calm and factual. We help you follow what matters, and we leave out what doesn't.
The NPR Politics Podcast
Poll: Majority Thinks Trump Is Making Changes Too Quickly
Following the news out of Washington, D.C. can be overwhelming. I'm Scott Detrow, and NPR has a podcast that can help. It's called Trump's Terms. Stories about big changes the 47th president is pursuing on his own terms. Each episode is short, usually around five minutes or so. We keep it calm and factual. We help you follow what matters, and we leave out what doesn't.
The NPR Politics Podcast
Poll: Majority Thinks Trump Is Making Changes Too Quickly
Listen to Trump's Terms from NPR.
The NPR Politics Podcast
Roundup: Congress Works On Budget; Cabinet Meets; Good TV
Following the news out of Washington, D.C. can be overwhelming. I'm Scott Detrow, and NPR has a podcast that can help. It's called Trump's Terms. Stories about big changes the 47th president is pursuing on his own terms. Each episode is short, usually around five minutes or so. We keep it calm and factual. We help you follow what matters, and we leave out what doesn't.
The NPR Politics Podcast
Roundup: Congress Works On Budget; Cabinet Meets; Good TV
Listen to Trump's Terms from NPR.
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
WWDTM: Eric Idle, Bridget Everett + Jeff Hiller, and more!
Jeff got all three questions correct. Yeah. It's a record.
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
WWDTM: Eric Idle, Bridget Everett + Jeff Hiller, and more!
You want to follow what's happening in Washington, D.C., but you don't want to be scrolling your phone all day. I'm Scott Detrow, and NPR has a podcast that can help. It's called Trump's Terms. Stories about big changes the 47th president is pursuing on his own terms. They're short, they're focused episodes that tell you calmly, factually, what is happening and what isn't.