Now playing on Otherppl, a conversation with Sarah Kendzior. Her new book, Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America, is available from Flatiron Books.

 
This is Sarah’s second time on the podcast. She first appeared in Episode 516 on April 25, 2018.

She is best known for her reporting on St. Louis and the 2016 election, her academic research on authoritarian states, and her New York Times bestselling debut The View from Flyover Country. She is a co-host of the podcast Gaslit Nation and was named one of Foreign Policy’s “100 people you should be following on Twitter to make sense of global events.” Her reporting has been featured in Politico, The Atlantic, Fast Company, The New York Times, Globe and Mail, and more. She lives in St. Louis.

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Now playing on the Otherppl podcast, a conversation with Sarah Kendzior. Her book, The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America, is available from Flatiron Books.

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Now playing on Otherppl, a conversation with Steve Almond, author of Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country?, available from Red Hen Press.

This is Steve’s third time on the program. He first appeared in Episode 9, on October 16, 2011, and again in Episode 302, on August 10, 2014.

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So, I hear you’ve written another book.

That’s right. It’s called The Infernal Library and it’s a study of dictator literature, that is to say books written by dictators, that is to say the worst books in the history of the world. I trace the development of the dictatorial tradition over the course of a century, starting with Lenin, then exploring the prose of Lenin, Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, et al before arriving in the modern era where I analyze the texts of Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, and assorted post-Soviet dictators (among others). It’s a bit like Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon, only the books are terrible and many were written by mass murderers. It can also be read as an alternative cultural history of the 20th century, with implications for our own troubled times.

“What’s going on over here?!!”

Donald J. Trump, moments before body-slamming Vince McMahon, 04/01/07

There’s perhaps no better arena to understand the spectacle at the heart of Donald Trump than the modern faux wrestling ring, where the fights are staged, the punches pulled (unless it’s the Don), and when blood spills it’s either fake or planned.

So what fucking possessed you? A Trump book, I mean really.

My publisher, Unnamed Press, called me last January and we both wanted to do something against Trump and his minions. We threw around a few ideas, some of them legal, and came up with the idea—who would’ve thunk it—of a book. But not just any book, but one where I’d dig deep, not only into Trump, but into the intellectual, cultural and social roots of what brought us to this point. You know, context. Also, I was depressed, what else was I gonna do but spend my days obsessing over this man we had somehow elected. The old saying, write a book or get over it—someone said that, right?

But why’d anyone want to spend a few more hours inside that sociopath’s head than they already have to?

Fuck it. We Lost.

Or, an Old Man Burns in a Chair

Days before the November 8 election, while driving through rural New England, I was invited to, of all things, a Guy Fawkes Night celebration—the annual British custom of commemorating the failed plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament by burning an effigy of the lead conspirator—held at a farmhouse in northern Vermont. Champagne bottles were sabered open, a sorta Irish band jammed jigs, and a bearded guy dressed in a kilt wandered around playing the bagpipes. It was a liberal crowd, Hillary and Bernie supporters, with a local Democratic state politician glad-handing among them. The air was charged with a palpable sense of excitement. Everyone knew Hillary would ace it, the first woman president. The atmosphere was electric smug celebration. I was one of them,

Now playing on the Otherppl with Brad Listi podcast, a conversation with Jared Yates Sexton, author of The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore, available from Counterpoint Press.

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“Nobody would pass me the ball. Even friends who I thought were my friends wouldn’t pass me the ball.” These words from my nine-year-old after another round of recess Darwinism style bounced around in my head like a bright orange basketball stealing my sleep at 2:00 a.m and making me despise a group of four-foot tall 4^th graders.

“I blame Trump,” I tell my husband (also at 2:00 a.m.). In a mumbled sleep chatter he reminds me that childlike cruelty existed well before Donald Trump became the President. I know if my husband was fully awake he would share yet another tale of the bullying he experienced as a child, which is supposed to make me feel better because look at him now, but I’m a fire sign, I’m a fighter, and even though he has fallen back asleep I continue this fight with the cracked plaster on our ceiling wondering what the world would be like if we all simply believed in passing the ball.

It’s not like I’ve ever played in a basketball league before, but as a native Angelino I did grow up in the era of the Showtime Lakers. By default that makes me a Chick Hearns-style sideline expert on the benefits of passing the ball. Of course most of the Lakers back then were known for their dynamic running game and flamboyant offense, but then there were players like Coop. If you called him Michael Cooper you clearly didn’t grow up in Los Angeles. Cooooooooop, heralded for his defense and his beyond belief Coop-a-loops he would slam-dunk on his rivals after retrieving a perfectly timed pass from Magic Johnson or Norm Nixon. Even NBA all-stars of a basketball dynasty recognized to win the game they needed to pass the ball.

It seems if you’re not open it makes more sense to pass the ball. It also seems a team would get more open shots the more times they moved the ball. But 4^th grade asphalt antics aren’t about the open shot. It’s about taking the shot whether you can make the shot. It’s about ego and arrogance and power. It’s also about a pack mentality where one group of kids endeavors to dominate over the other, especially if the “other” is different from the pack.

This week on the Otherppl with Brad Listi podcast, Brad Listi offers his thoughts on Election 2016.

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Since Lindsay Lohan’s life seems to be playing out like a campy made-for-cable movie these days (She ran over a pedestrian! She’s going to jail! Her family is insane!), it should have made sense that she was tapped to play Elizabeth Taylor on Lifetime.  Who else would they get? Kate Winslet? Instead, when the news broke the Internet lit up with snarky speculation and gleeful derision. Then, months later, the reviews started popping up. Everyone from the Hollywood Reporter to Huffington Post urged us to watch this train wreck of a biopic and cackle until our abs ached. The reviews promised a Mommie Dearest “so bad it’s good” kind of flick. They told us to play drinking games. They said we’d have a great time. They set us up.

Mitt Romney is staking his presidential candidacy on his long business career and the values reflected in the photograph below, taken from a Bain Capital Christmas card in the 1980s. If recent polls are any indication, a majority of American voters might be ready to buy in.