Left Anchor

The dumbest people in politics are always going on about how we need more "debate" between various factions. But Stanford political scientist James Fishkin has a much more sophisticated argument that actual deliberation--not cable news morons shouting at each other--has a vital role to play in democratic functioning, and has actually carried out several experiments to that effect. He joins us to talk about his book Can Deliberation Cure the Ills of Democracy?

Today we've got Rutgers labor historian Eric Blanc back on to discuss his recent article on the sewer socialists of Milwaukee. Back in the early 20th century, Wisconsin was the epicenter of the most successful socialist movement in American history, with socialists running Milwaukee for nearly 50 years starting in 1910. How did they win, how did they build power, and what did they do with it? With Zohran Mamdani poised to take charge of New York, this is some highly relevant history. Check out the second half of the episode here!

Today we have Dr. Lucian Staiano-Daniels on to talk about his book The War People: A Social History of Common Soldiers during the Era of the Thirty Years War. It is something of an obscure conflict these days, but he explains why understanding it matters today, and in particular how the era is quite similar to 2025 in many ways—we also are experiencing a severely destabilizing revolution in information technology (social media now, the printing press then), political problems in a federalized empire with a rickety, anachronistic structure (America now, the Holy Roman Empire then), and a good old crisis of state finance (Trump’s illegal budget moves now, how Charles II infringed on the rights of the English parliament, along with many others, then). Enjoy!

Today we have economics professor Marshall Steinbaum on to talk about the potential fall of Larry Summers due to his association with Jeffrey Epstein, and what it reveals about the culture of the economics profession and policymaking in the Democratic Party. Subscribe now to hear the whole episode! Here are the articles mentioned in the discussion: 1. Claudia Sahm’s initial post: “Economics is a Disgrace.” 2. Claudia’s account of the retaliation she faced for that post: “Economics Truly is a Disgrace.” 3. Writeup of the resulting controversy in the Georgetown student newspaper. 4. “Breach of Trust in Hostile Takeovers”— Andrei Shleifer and Summers’s indictment of capitalism. 5. “How Harvard Lost Russia,” a journalistic account of the USAID-Harvard-Shleifer-Summers fraud case. 6. Marshall’s article on what happened in the last decade-plus of Democratic economic policy-making: “A Real Post-Neoliberal Agenda.” 7. Marshall’s recent essay in LPE Blog about antitrust: “Anti-monopolism as an Ideology of the Left.”

Zohran Mamdani won in New York City, and so did Democrats in New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and even Mississippi. What happened and why? We dig in. Check out Ryan's articles on Zohran and Chuck Schumer, as well as our previous episode on Zohran.