Half the Answer

Liberal Currents
  • 4.2 (17)
  • NEWS COMMENTARY
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Caitlin M. Green and Trent R. Nelson interview experts who weigh in on current debates. In the process they seek not only to uncover answers to the questions of the day, but to explore why they are being asked in the first place. To understand the questions we ask, they believe, is half the answer.

  1. 5D AGO

    SCOTUS, the Fourth Amendment, and the Resistance

    Trent and Caitlin talk to Chris Geidner of Law Dork about the absolute deluge of legal news that seems to be crashing over us like a tsunami. What are the current assaults on our constitutional rights? What are judges and lawmakers doing to defend those rights? Why is Mike Johnson pretending the Fourth Amendment doesn’t exist? Resources: https://www.lawdork.com/https://bsky.app/profile/lawdorknews.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/chrisgeidner.bsky.socialMike Johnson being wrong about the 4th amendment: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mdxoltnsyz2aPerdomo decision: https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-files/noem-v-perdomo/Bondi demands voter rolls: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/01/pam-bondi-letter-to-minnesota-voter-roll-data-alex-pretti-ice-midterms-trump/MN US attorneys resigning: https://www.startribune.com/another-wave-of-departures-in-minnesotas-us-attorneys-office/601575569Mark Zaid security clearance case: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/13/trump-mark-zaid-restore-clearanceTulsi Gabbard at Georgia elections office raid: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/29/tulsi-gabbard-georgia-fbi-elections-raid

    1h 49m

  2. JAN 29

    ICE Flights and Accountability in Journalism

    Caitlin and Trent talk with journalist Gillian Brockell about her work tracking the flights and airline companies that move people in unsafe conditions to third-party recipient countries, where they will be imprisoned, mistreated, tortured, and possibly sent to their country of origin in violation of international law. Resources ICE flight monitor https://humanrightsfirst.org/ice-flight-monitor/ Unsafe Conditions on Deportation planes: https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-ice-air-deportation-flights Gillian "interferes" in illegal ICE flight https://bsky.app/profile/gbrockell.bsky.social/post/3lpnjho77jc25 Linda Brent (Harriet Jacobs) autobiography https://bookshop.org/a/115699/9780486419312 Protest Key Lime Air Jan. 31 in Alamosa https://arkvalleyvoice.com/demonstration-against-key-lime-airs-ice-connections-set-for-january-31-in-alamosa/ Key Lime Air https://boulderreportinglab.org/2025/12/28/cu-boulder-keeps-key-lime-air-contract-as-denver-ends-its-deal-over-ice-flights/ Denver Air Connections https://cnycentral.com/news/nation-world/denver-colorado-city-council-rejects-airline-contract-for-its-association-with-president-donald-trumps-administration-ice-immigration-agenda Gillian's Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/gbrockell.bsky.social What is ICE Air? https://gillianbrockell.ghost.io/what-is-ice-air/

    1h 24m

  3. JAN 22

    The Year We Lost Everything: Appraising 2025 and Fighting Back in 2026

    Trent and Caitlin ask Evan Urquhart about his 2025 wrap up piece on Assigned Media: "The Year We Lost Everything." They discuss the need to take stock of where we are on trans rights, autonomy and the various freedoms we hold dear, and the value of acknowledging that we are not hysterical or out of touch with reality when we feel those freedoms being wrenched from our grasp. We talk about the intense pressure in corporate media to maintain anti-trans bias and the wonderful work independent journalists are doing to find and share the truth.

    56 min

  4. JAN 18

    2025's Word of the Year

    Caitlin and Trent chat with linguistics scholars Savi Namboodiripad and Daniel Midgley on what word most exemplifies 2025. Was it a new coinage? A pre-existing word that gained a new meaning or usage this year? A word that seemed to be on everybody's lips in 2025? Resources: https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/word-of-the-year "6 7" song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07xpV4ix2K8 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/27/more-than-20-of-videos-shown-to-new-youtube-users-are-ai-slop-study-finds https://www.economist.com/culture/2025/12/03/and-the-economists-word-of-the-year-for-2025-is https://www.dictionary.com/articles/word-of-the-year-2025 https://corp.oup.com/word-of-the-year/ https://www.cam.ac.uk/news/cambridge-dictionary-reveals-word-of-the-year-2025 https://blog.collinsdictionary.com/language-lovers/collins-word-of-the-year-2025-ai-meets-authenticity-as-society-shifts/ https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/2147118/is-that-grocery-product-really-canadian-or-is-it-maple-washing "getting sendy" song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYAQEJyqR7E group 7 https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2025/10/27/tiktoks-group-7-meme-explained/ https://www.merriam-webster.com/slang/lore https://www.merriam-webster.com/slang/unc https://www.merriam-webster.com/slang/chopped https://www.merriam-webster.com/slang/huzz https://theconversation.com/the-rise-of-the-performative-male-how-young-men-are-experimenting-with-masculinity-online-268742 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20563051221126040 https://dailyillini.com/opinions-stories/columns-opinions/culture/2025/10/25/opinion-unmasking-performative-male/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kianbakhtiari/2025/09/28/performative-males-gen-z-irony-and-the-death-of-sincerity/ https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/us/rapture-tiktok-sept-23.html Epstein's email simulator https://www.jmail.world/ https://othermeans.io/p/the-glonzo-strategy https://www.theverge.com/policy/798491/frog-portland-trump-national-guard https://the-monsters.fandom.com/wiki/The_Monsters https://lafufu.art/blog/labubu-vs-lafufu https://www.thelist.com/1817157/what-is-mar-a-lago-face-who-has-tried-the-trend/ https://bsky.app/profile/canadiandictionary.bsky.social/post/3m7tf3jm2fc2c https://www.huffpost.com/entry/oprah-podcast-no-contact-adult-children-parents_n_69389e85e4b0fb6244b0daa8 https://fortune.com/2025/12/29/trump-tariffs-cost-25000-per-month-small-business-importers-center-american-progress/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/ https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/us/politics/doge-musk-trump-analysis.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-doge-government-spending-2025-b2890243.html https://www.vox.com/culture/376401/r-word-slur-return-euphemism-treadmill-cycle https://www.lawdork.com/p/the-kavanaugh-stop-50-days-later https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/30/politics/trump-taco-angry-tariff https://www.buzzfeed.com/abbyzinman/canadians-elbows-up-explainer https://pen.org/banned-words-list/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2025/03/15/these-197-terms-may-trigger-reviews-of-your-nih-nsf-grant-proposals/ https://www.dailydot.com/memes/everythings-computer-trump-quote-meme/ https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/trump-promises-harsher-ice-crackdowns https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/12/27/chatgpt-suicide-openai-raine/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/snap-welfare-queen-ai-memes-1235460824/ https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/10022/who-coined-the-phrase-rapid-unscheduled-disassembly#10219 https://www.wordorigins.org/big-list-entries/rapid-unplanned-disassembly-rud https://becauselanguage.com/131-wotwoty-2025/

    2h 12m

  5. JAN 15

    Understanding Stephen Miller

    Trent and Caitlin catch up with Greg Sargent from The New Republic about his recent piece exploring the family history and ideology of Stephen Miller. How did the product of Russian Jewish refugees come to see today's refugees as incapable of integration in American society? What are the white nationalist positions on who is a real American, and how does Miller navigate his position in relation to those ideologies? Why do these unlovable jerks insist on the myth that community and empathy are suicidal? Resources: The New Republic: https://newrepublic.com The Daily Blast Podcast: https://newrepublic.com/podcasts Greg's piece on Miller: https://newrepublic.com/article/204191/stephen-miller-maga-terror-state-dark-plot Stephen Miller on Somali immigrants: https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/11/politics/stephen-miller-trump-immigration-law-somalia Facts about Somali community in MN: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/5-things-to-know-about-the-somali-community-in-minnesota-after-trumps-attacks Hatemonger: https://bookshop.org/a/115699/9780062986726 When The Clock Broke: https://bookshop.org/a/115699/9781250390417 Furious Minds: https://bookshop.org/a/115699/9780691255262 DHS Twitter Account: https://archive.ph/Vg8c7 Stephen Miller's cousin: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/stephen-miller-cousin-alisa-kasmer/

    1h 16m

  6. JAN 12

    The U.S. in Venezuela: The International Community and the Donroe Doctrine

    Caitlin and Trent speak with Mark Copelovitch, a political science professor from University of Wisconsin–Madison. They discuss the problem of a world power going rogue, the lack of viable responses for countries like Venezuela and Denmark, and the costs to international trust when the US is so unreliable. Resources: https://polisci.wisc.edu/staff/mark-copelovitch/ https://www.markcopelovitch.com/ https://bsky.app/profile/mcopelov.bsky.social https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfXZxn2z8U0 https://archive.is/OriWG

    59 min

  7. JAN 9

    The U.S. in Venezuela: Why Is Corporate Media Being So Weird?

    Trent and Caitlin check in with the Handbasket’s Marisa Kabas about the year that has been the first week of 2026. What are we doing in Venezuela, and why is corporate media being so weird about it? What are the ethics of publishing scoops that involve military actions? Why are we doing our war crimes from a resort ballroom in Florida? Resources: https://www.thehandbasket.co/ https://www.semafor.com/article/01/03/2026/new-york-times-washington-post-held-off-on-reporting-venezuela-raid https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/05/politics/video/trump-mar-a-lago-war-room-maduro-venezuela-vrtc https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/trumps-donroe-doctrine-aims-to-dominate-the-americas-b31208dd?mod=Searchresults&pos=3&page=1

    59 min

  8. 12/26/2025

    The Imaginary "War on Science"—and the Real One

    Trent and Caitlin talk with philosophy of science expert Nathan Oseroff-Spicer about his review of the book "The War On Science," how the book misses the mark, what strategies its authors use to downplay the threats from the right and fabricate a threat from the left, and what motivations could possibly lead thirty-nine scholars to create such a meritless collection of propaganda under the leadership of someone like known pest Lawrence Krauss. Resources: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/wars-on-science-real-and-otherwise/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/warscience/ https://www.dailynebraskan.com/news/administration/breaking-this-hurts-unl-eliminates-4-programs-despite-faculty-student-pleas/article_e0d11a61-0fcc-4e66-b364-d16e89bea336.html https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ai-chatbot-journal-research-fake-citations-1235485484/ https://blog.apaonline.org/2025/11/13/llm-usage-and-manipulation-in-peer-review/ https://www.advocate.com/news/second-ou-instructor-suspended https://www.facebook.com/OUNightlyTV/posts/pfbid02nieL7PmXwUDAnNcHzK9HLBWdCQ1EyjA7S1pDvrRxEaGw7qkqAR3oGtjXwFXkb4KBl UPDATE: grad student no longer teaching https://www.koco.com/article/samantha-fulnecky-professor-graduate-instructor-no-longer-at-ou-oklahoma/69841882 https://pen.org/trumps-compact-for-higher-education-faq/ https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-pares-down-grant-review-process-reducing-influence-outside-scientists https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/12/17/aap-hhs-funding-rfk/ https://bsky.app/profile/crampell.bsky.social/post/3ma7aivcros2a https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hundreds-of-thousands-of-deaths/ https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/rumeysa-ozturk-what-i-witnessed-inside-an-ice-womens-prison?srsltid=AfmBOoqRks5pzgFv2QyjsvuUvNt6E41InSCPQmXwWOoFvxftjMoRvkSy https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/judge-releases-palestinian-student-at-columbia-who-was-arrested-at-citizenship-interview https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2025/11/20/columbia-denies-mahmoud-khalil-sipa-24-campus-access-for-planned-events-citing-security-reasons/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jeffrey-epstein-emails-reveal-ties-to-prominent-scientists/

    2h 42m
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4.2
out of 5
17 Ratings

About

Caitlin M. Green and Trent R. Nelson interview experts who weigh in on current debates. In the process they seek not only to uncover answers to the questions of the day, but to explore why they are being asked in the first place. To understand the questions we ask, they believe, is half the answer.

Information

  • Creator
    Liberal Currents
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    63
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Liberal Currents
  • Show Website
    Half the Answer

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