The Lonely Liberal Podcast

Nick Zenkin
  • 5.0 (13)
  • Society & Culture
  • Updated Weekly

The Lonely Liberal Podcast is a comedy and politics podcast hosted by Nick Zenkin. Every Sunday, Nick and co-host Rick break down the week's biggest stories in American politics — Congress, elections, the Trump administration, and whatever chaos the news cycle brings — with humor and a healthy dose of absurdity. Every Wednesday, Nick goes solo with a deep-dive episode, taking a sharp, funny, anti-establishment look at both Republican governance and Democratic Party timidity. Politics is depressing; this show makes it bearable. For host-read sponsorships and corporate ad inquiries, please contact: media@thelonelyliberal.com

  1. 6d ago

    How to Win a Swing District Without Faking It, with Matt Little

    Conventional wisdom says a swing district demands a candidate who runs to the center. Matt Little did the opposite, and won his primary in the most evenly divided district in Minnesota running unapologetically to the left. Nick sits down with him to figure out how. They get into the story that made Matt political in the first place (watching his mom fight her employer, her doctors, and her insurance company all at once), why he thinks conviction beats calculation in this moment, and what it's like to run in the state that's been at the center of every national story, from George Floyd to the assassination of a colleague he knew. Plus a genuinely eye-opening look at prediction markets from someone who watched people bet on his own race, and why he thinks "boring enough to win" isn't the flex his opponent thinks it is. Find the show at thelonelyliberal.com or @thelonelyliberal.

  2. Sep 27

    Trump Bans CNN, Netanyahu Name-Drops Hasan Piker, and Fetterman Keeps the Iran War Going

    Trump bans CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, launches a 24-hour Trump TV stream his own company then tries to trademark, and runs taxpayer-funded ads of himself set to the song "Love Me." We get into the chilling effect, ProPublica's reporting on Susan Collins and a defense contractor, a Putin-linked oligarch paying for Don Jr.'s wedding, RFK Jr.'s $4 million in book advances, John Fetterman casting the deciding vote to keep the Iran war going, and the Houthis hitting Riyadh. Then the UN: Netanyahu name-drops Hasan Piker from the podium, and Trump tells the world AI fears are the same hoax as climate change and that AI should be renamed "SI" — while Xi talks about keeping AI under human control and walks away looking like the adult in the room. Plus the Sanders–Casar superintelligence ban, whether the AI "race" with China is even real, Hegseth's get-out-the-vote video, and why China doesn't work as a campaign villain anymore. #Trump #PressFreedom #CNN #TrumpTV #SusanCollins #TroyJackson #DonJr #RFKJr #Fetterman #IranWar #Netanyahu #HasanPiker #Mamdani #UNGA #AI #Superintelligence #China #XiJinping #Hegseth #Midterms2026 (00:00) The nor'easter that wasn't, and our small-talk crutches (05:45) An embarrassing week to be American (06:39) Trump bans CNN, MS NOW and Politico (13:43) Trump TV and the trademark (15:43) Taxpayer-funded Trump ads (21:44) Susan Collins and the Navatek probe (31:21) A Russian oligarch paid for Don Jr.'s wedding (37:42) RFK Jr.'s $4 million in book advances (42:24) Fetterman's deciding vote on the Iran war (45:03) The Houthis hit Riyadh (50:05) Netanyahu vs. Mamdani at the UN (58:24) Why we defer to the legal definition of genocide (1:02:26) Trump's UN speech: AI, climate, and "SI" (1:13:13) Who wasn't at the Xi state dinner (1:14:22) The Sanders–Casar superintelligence ban (1:15:14) Is China even racing on AI? (1:21:43) The Greenland deal (1:22:05) Hegseth's get-out-the-vote video (1:26:53) Missouri's map, and China as a campaign villain

  3. Sep 23

    Loving the NFL When You Know It's Broken, with Christopher Harris

    Chris Harris is one of the most popular voices in fantasy football — but he's also five novels deep into a whole other life as a writer, and his newest, Pound Foolish, is a murder mystery set inside an NFL team. Nick sits down with him for a relaxed, wide-ranging hang that turns out to be about something bigger than football: how you keep loving something when you know exactly what's wrong with it. They get into why Chris built his own publishing company to put the book out, the con of getting fans to side with billionaire owners over players, and the tension at the heart of it all — as Chris puts it, you love this sport and it just doesn't love you back. From there it opens up to the thing this whole show circles: the NFL as maybe the last real "town square" we've got, why we stay fans of broken things, and how all of it rhymes with loving a country you're not always proud of. Plus fantasy talk, the "sin eater," and why meaning is where you make it. Pound Foolish is out now.

  4. Sep 21

    Massie Moves to Impeach Hegseth, Congress Flees Town, and Kash Patel Defends Bestiality

    Good news, for once. The Supreme Court killed Trump's mail-in voting order 7-2, ending a fight we've been tracking on this show since July. Kavanaugh sided with the majority. Alito and Thomas dissented. And the thing worth pausing on: this is the third court ruling in a row rejecting it, which suggests the guardrails are bending but not breaking. Then Thomas Massie filed eight articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth — war powers violations in Iran, the school strike a UN committee now says was likely a war crime, the Caribbean boat strikes, kidnapping Maduro. He filed it as a privileged resolution, forcing a vote within two days. So Mike Johnson canceled Congress. The House won't return until after the midterms. We count how many times Johnson has now used a vacation to avoid a vote he doesn't want. Congress also left town days after nearly every major tech executive asked to be regulated on AI, with a kill-switch bill and a development pause both dying in the oven. We get into AOC's argument about refusing to bail out the AI bubble when it pops, and why "Congress is less qualified to understand it" is a strange thing for a Speaker to say out loud. Also: the Fed raises rates for the first time since 2023 and Trump's own hand-picked chairman admits the Fed can't fix energy prices, JD Vance asks voters to "give us another chance," the EPA guts carbon standards and a new Fish and Wildlife memo makes killing endangered animals legal as long as you weren't aiming at them, thousands form a human chain around the Kennedy Center, and Gavin Newsom says from the middle of a Montana river that he won't run against Kamala Harris. And then Kash Patel, under oath, explains why bestiality is no longer an automatic disqualifier for FBI applicants. We play the clip. It does not get better. (00:00) Flight talk with Rick and Nick (03:38) We have a Twitter now, please follow it (05:42) Good news: SCOTUS kills the mail-in voting order (08:46) Mitch McConnell is somehow still alive (11:10) Massie files eight articles against Hegseth (12:15) The UN says the school strike was likely a war crime (17:17) Congress skips town on AI regulation (20:04) What data center regulation should actually look like (29:00) The seven-week recess (30:01) The Fed raises rates (35:32) Vance: "give us another chance" (40:40) The EPA guts carbon standards (50:08) Killing endangered species is legal now (54:13) The Kennedy Center human chain (56:15) Newsom won't run against Kamala (01:00:09) Are the Democrats running Harris again? (01:07:07) CLIP: Kash Patel defends bestiality

  5. Sep 17

    What the Flock? The Cameras Reading Every License Plate in America

    There's a good chance there's a camera on your street logging every car that passes, including yours. It's probably made by Flock Safety, a company most people have never heard of that's now worth $8.4 billion and makes roughly four out of every five license plate readers in the country. Nick breaks down what these cameras actually are — and why "Flock camera" describes three different products, not one: the plate readers you've seen on poles, the Condor cameras that pan, tilt, zoom and auto-focus on people, and Nova, the software that turns a license plate into a person and then links that person to their relatives and associates. He traces how a 2017 Atlanta startup founded by two Georgia Tech guys sold its first cameras not to police but to homeowners associations, where there are no public hearings, no council votes and no surveillance ordinances — and how those neighborhoods unknowingly joined a national network. Then the backlash: the Texas sheriff's office that searched more than 83,000 cameras with the reason "had an abortion, search for female," the Border Patrol back doors, the Texas school district whose eight cameras were searched 733,000 times in a single month, the officers looking up their exes, and the sixty Condor cameras left livestreaming on the open internet with no password — one of them pointed at a playground. Plus the bipartisan No FLOCK Act introduced this week, why it doesn't go far enough, and Nick's verdict: the cameras aren't the problem. The network is. Flock Safety, license plate readers, ALPR, surveillance, privacy, Condor, Nova, No FLOCK Act, ICE, Border Patrol, 404 Media, Andreessen Horowitz, HOA, data brokers, police surveillance, civil liberties, Fourth Amendment

  6. Sep 14

    Trump's "Cheat Like Hell" Pledge, RFK Erases Two Measles Deaths, and Fetterman Defects

    Nick is back from France with a grievance about trains, and the news did not wait for him. At the first-ever Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Trump had the crowd raise their right hands and pledge to him — including a pledge to "cheat like hell" and vote whether or not they're registered. Then he promised every American adult $5,000 if Republicans hold Congress. We play both clips in full, because neither of us could do them justice. Also from Dallas: an attendee screams "he should be shot" while Ted Cruz attacks Mamdani from the stage, Abbott and Cruz make banning Sharia law a convention plank, Turning Point USA lines up behind Vance for 2028, and Mike Rogers calls Hasan Piker Abdul El-Sayed's running mate. John Fetterman shows up by surprise video at the Republican convention to introduce a Republican senator and pledge to work with Trump. He's now more popular with Pennsylvania Republicans than the actual Republican is, and only 22% of Pennsylvania Democrats view him favorably. Then RFK Jr.'s week: he personally ordered the CDC to delete Pennsylvania's two measles deaths from the national tally, suggested they were fabricated by the governor's office, and the official 2026 American measles death toll now stands at zero. He's also been flying to Republican campaign events on $9,000-an-hour military jets — the exact thing Trump fired his first-term health secretary for. And the new Surgeon General nominee holds stock in McDonald's, Coca-Cola, and Philip Morris. Plus: the Supreme Court blocks Missouri's gerrymander twice in a week, Denver sues to keep armed ICE agents out of polling places, a federal court rules there's no constitutional right to clean drinking water, Trump says the Iran war lasts until November, Gloria Steinem dies at 92, Hunter Biden launches a laptop meme coin, and a robot in Russia roundhouse kicks a customer.

  7. Sep 2

    How Trump Sold Fake Populism, with Charles Derber

    Everyone calls Trump a populist. Sociologist Charles Derber thinks that's exactly the con. Nick sits down with Derber — professor at Boston College and author of Fighting Oligarchy: How Positive Populism Can Reclaim America — for a conversation that lays out something most people never hear said clearly: there are two kinds of populism, and they're opposites. One points people's anger at the billionaires and corporations running the show. The other keeps all the anger but redirects it — at immigrants, at "the deep state," at cultural elites — so the billionaires walk free. Trump ran the second kind. And it worked because the Democrats abandoned the first. They get into how a billionaire convinced working people he was their champion, why the old robber barons at least built libraries while the new ones just want to leave for Mars, and the question Nick keeps pressing: are these really "hard times"? America is historically rich — so is the anger about real hardship, or about precarity and the sheer visible gap between ordinary people and a trillionaire class? Plus: why so many Americans now say they're done with big corporations, what a "positive populism" would actually look like, and whether the wave of insurgent candidates Nick's been interviewing all month is the real thing finally arriving. Charlie's book Fighting Oligarchy is out now.

  8. Aug 30

    Trump Takes Venezuela's Oil, Renames Lake Ontario, and Dems Condemn Hasan Piker

    Nick went to the Ed Markey rally in Boston — front row, with Bernie, Warren, and Ayanna Pressley. What Bernie Sanders still sounds like at 85, why the crowd was two-thirds seniors and one-third teenagers with almost nobody in between, and the question Hannah asked on the drive home that neither of us can shake: if this is a fascist takeover, why does the fight only start two years in? Then the news. Trump announced what he's calling the biggest oil deal in world history — an unnamed private company gets hundred-year rights to 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan reserves, with the US taking 55% of output and the right to buy at cost. Nobody will say who the partners are. We also get into Don Jr. quietly lobbying Republican attorneys general to leave prediction markets alone, a business he happens to be paid by. Canada becomes the first US ally to take the tariff hit rather than fold, and Trump responds by signing an executive order renaming Lake Ontario to "Lake America." That leads into a game: how many things has Trump renamed this term? Rick guesses. The real number is worse. Hasan Piker's comments about American Jews draw condemnation from Jeffries, Booker, and Gottheimer — and Abdul El-Sayed distances himself three weeks after they campaigned together. We get into where the phrasing went wrong, why the sentiment underneath it isn't crazy, and why the Democratic response was exactly what Republicans were hoping for. Also: the first US measles deaths of 2026 with a county coroner disputing the state's finding, congressional Democrats quietly tracking a hundred election-interference scenarios ahead of November, nine activists sentenced to between thirty and a hundred years over an anti-ICE protest in Texas under a terrorism enhancement, and Milo Yiannopoulos — a loud supporter of Trump's immigration crackdown — gets arrested by ICE for overstaying his visa and deported. (00:00) Rick and Nick at Progressive Palooza (09:13) Would Markey beat Moulton with young voters? (12:38) The ad that's just Markey's face aging (15:22) "Hasn't Trump been in office two years?" (21:14) The biggest oil deal in world history (27:57) Don Jr. and the prediction markets (31:35) Flock cameras and the issue Democrats are ignoring (34:22) Canada is the first ally to fight back (42:07) Lake America (42:16) GAME: How many things has Trump renamed? (46:56) Donald's Ducks (48:39) Six months of war in Iran (50:06) The Left Eats Itself: Hasan Piker (01:04:57) The first measles deaths of 2026 (01:07:06) Democrats are tracking 100 election scenarios (01:10:03) The Prairieland Nine (01:12:32) ICE deports Milo Yiannopoulos

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5
out of 5
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About

The Lonely Liberal Podcast is a comedy and politics podcast hosted by Nick Zenkin. Every Sunday, Nick and co-host Rick break down the week's biggest stories in American politics — Congress, elections, the Trump administration, and whatever chaos the news cycle brings — with humor and a healthy dose of absurdity. Every Wednesday, Nick goes solo with a deep-dive episode, taking a sharp, funny, anti-establishment look at both Republican governance and Democratic Party timidity. Politics is depressing; this show makes it bearable. For host-read sponsorships and corporate ad inquiries, please contact: media@thelonelyliberal.com

Information

  • Creator
    Nick Zenkin
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    The Lonely Liberal Podcast

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