Zipcode Zero Kevin Maley

“Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longa be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. " - John F. Kennedy, 1961
For over half a century, from the end of the Second World War to the turn of the millennium, avoiding nuclear war has been a key pillar of American foreign policy – guided by arms agreements, communication and common sense.


But today, many of those controls have faded away or ceased to exist – and the Bullet of Atomic Scientists – has warned we’re closer to the nuclear precipice than we have ever been before. 90 seconds to midnight, to use their terminology.


In fact in one of the most recent near misses, in the steppes of Eastern Europe, U.S. intelligence officials estimated that in the fall of 2022 it came down to the flip of a coin as to whether or not Russia would use a tactical nuclear weapon to stave off a Ukrainian offensive.


So how did we get here? Why has the fear of nuclear catastrophe faded from the public imagination even as the threat has increased? And what the hell happened in Ukraine that brought us so close to the edge? Today I am joined by The New York Times' W.J. Hennigan to discuss.


Bill, as he goes by, is serving as the lead writer for an ambitious, NYT series on nuclear threats and the challenges our world faces in combating proliferation. Bill has deep expertise covering the U.S. military and national security issues. He has reported from more than two dozen countries across five continents, covering war, the arms trade and the lives of American service members.


Bill come to the Times from Time magazine, where he was most recently a senior correspondent. In 2021, he received the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense for his series on the role of the U.S. military throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Last year he was part of a reporting team that received the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for Washington Correspondence on the Jan. 6 attack and its aftermath. Before joining Time in 2017, Bill worked for more than eight years at The Los Angeles Times, where he covered the Pentagon and the defense industry. He has earned several awards and citations, including the Associated Press Media Editors Award for international perspective and the National Press Club’s Michael A. Dornheim Award, and he was part of a team of journalists who won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting.

Twitter: @wjhenn

At The Brink Link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/07/opinion/nuclear-weapons-nytimes.html



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Today’s guest is Ryan Grim, author of the new book “The Squad – AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution”. 
 
Ryan Grim is the Intercept’s Washington bureau chief and cohost of the show Counter Points. He was previously the DC bureau chief for HuffPost, where we led a team that won a Pulitzer Prize. Grim has been a staff reporter for Politico and the Washington City Paper as well as a contributor to MSNBC and The Young Turks. He’s the author of the books We’ve Got People: From Jesse Jackson to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the End of Big Money and The Rise of a Movement, and This is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America. He is the host of the podcast Deconstructed and lives in Washington, DC.
 
In the book, Ryan recounts the rise of progressive forces in the Democratic Party since the 2016 Sanders campaign and how they have helped reveal tension points within the left, including on identity vs class, establishment vs insurgent and grassroots vs big money politics. We talk about all those themes and more. 
 
If you enjoy the show, please remember to hit like and subscribe. Happy holidays to all and enjoy.

Book:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250869081/thesquad

Twitter:
@ryangrim




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We’re now in two months of the Israel-Gaza War and after a brief ceasefire, the fighting has erupted again. 
 
I think its hard to understand this current conflict without understanding the history of Israel and Palestine, and how it led to where we are today
 
To help with that understanding, today’s guest is Dr Zachary Foster
 
Zach is a historian of Palestine, having gotten his PhD in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He’s a distinguished fellow at the Rutgers Center for Security, Race and Rights. He also runs the PalestineNexus.com, which offers an invaluable newsletter, accessible research and even courses you can enroll to learn more. 
 
Zach and I go through a brief history of Israel and Palestine over the course of the 20th century, including why Jews emigrated to Palestine, the impact of the 1917 Balfour Declarationand why Palestine effectively became a british colony that was critical to the imperial interests of the empire, the post World War II partition of Mandatory Palestine, the humanitarian catastrophe that came out of the 1948 and how Israel came to occupy the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. We also talk about the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel and dive into the horrific conditions of life in Gaza today.
 
It’s a lot to cover but Zach was the right man for this job – his deep knowledge of the history is incredible and the insights he offered made for a really substantive, meaningful discussion. It’s been one of my favorite shows so far and I hope you all find value in the conversation.
 
If you do, don’t forget to download the show, share clips with friends, and help spread the word about Zipcode Zero. Enjoy

Website
PalestineNexus.com

Twitter
@_ZachFoster



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Foreign policy is all over the news these days as wars rage from The Middle East to Eastern Europe. To help get a better sense of those issues, as well as what a better, more values based U.S. Foreign Policy could look like, I am joined today by Matt Duess. 
Matt is the Executive Vice President at the Center for International Foreign Policy. In the past Matt has served as a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, he served as a foreign policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders, he was president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace and an analyst at the Center for American Progress. So he comes very well credentialed.


Matt and I had an interesting discussion on Israel and Gaza, the causes of the invasion of Ukraine and whether or not the U.S. is interested in peace, NATO expansion into the Pacific and what the rules-based international order is really about.


If you like the show please remember to hit like, subscribe and share. We’re still running our annual t-shirt contest and currently have Dave Iacucci in the running to take first place, so if you want that swag then get active.
Enjoy the show. 

Twitter:
@mattduss

Website:
https://www.internationalpolicy.org/



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Today’s guest is former Congressman Mike Capuano, who represented Massachuetts’s 7th Congressional District from 1999 to 2019. 
I pick Mike’s brain on a wide range of issues, including, of course, Israel and Gaza, Ukraine, what he thinks of Matt Gaetz’s demands, whether or not we should abolish the Senate and what he thinks of an old proposal to combine Boston, Cambridge and Somerville
This Thanksgiving I’m thankful for all you listeners and your ability to follow, like and share the show. We’re coming up on our annual t-shirt contest which I’m excited to share more details about in the future. For now, enjoy the show.  
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Representative Capuano previously served as a member of Congress for twenty years, initially representing the interest of the 8th District. Following redistricting in 2013, he was elected to serve the 7th District of Massachusetts including his native Somerville, parts of Boston, Cambridge, and Milton, and the communities of Chelsea, Everett, and Randolph. Capuano began his life in political office as a member of the Somerville Board of Alderman at age 25, where he would write one of the first sanctuary cities ordinances in the country. He eventually ran successfully for Mayor in 1989, a role which he held until 1999 when he was elected to Congress. During his time in Washington, Representative Capuano was a passionate advocate for urban issues, founding five Congressional caucuses including one each for former Mayors, Community Health Centers, and Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities, as well as Sudan and Korea. He was also a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and long-time advocate for a single-payer health care system. He served on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the Financial Services committee. During his tenure, he helped to secure federal funding for affordable housing redevelopment in Roxbury, increased resources for community health centers and medical research, and major transit investment like the Boston area Green Line extension. He earned his BA from Dartmouth College and JD from Boston College.

Twitter
@mikecapuano

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 In an economy with steady growth, low unemployment and core inflation down to 3.2%, why do so many Americans say that the Biden Administration has left them worse off economically? How is Trump winning or tied with voters under 30? 

And why are the Democrats, once the party of the common man,  continuing to lose the support the working class, not just among white voters but increasingly among non-white voters? 

 To discuss those questions and more, I’m joined today by Robert Kuttner. Robert a journalist, writer and scholar -  is a co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, a professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School, an author of many great books, most recently “Going Big: FDR’s Legacy, Biden’s New Deal, and the Struggle to Save Democracy” as well as 2018’s Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism, one of my favorite books for understanding the post-war economic order and the rise of the neoliberal era.
 On the show Bob hit on a wide range of issues – including Biden’s prospects for next year, whether Carter was our first neoliberal president, the state of the British and German economies, the elitism of the Democratic Party, Israel and free speech on campus, and much more – it’s a heck of a show, folks. 
Always remember to hit the like button, subscribe, and share with your friends. It might just win you a free Zipcode Zero t-shirt.
Enjoy the show.

Website: https://robertkuttner.com/

American Prospect: https://prospect.org/

Twitter: @rkuttnerwrites

Full Bio:
For most of his career, Bob has been an economics journalist. He is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect magazine, He was a longtime columnist for BusinessWeek, and continues to write columns for The New York Times international edition. He was a founder of the Economic Policy Institute and serves on its board.
Bob is author of thirteen books, including the 2008 New York Times bestseller, Obama’s Challenge: American’s Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency; and most recently, The Stakes 2020 His best-known earlier book is Everything for Sale: the Virtues and Limits of Markets (1997). His other books on economics and politics include: The Squandering of America (2007), The End of Laissez-Faire (1991); The Life of the Party (1987); The Economic Illusion (1984); Revolt of the Haves (1980), and Debtors’ Prison (2013).
As a scholar and teacher, he has taught at Boston University, the University of Oregon, the University of Massachusetts, and the Institute of Politics at Harvard, as well as his present chair at The Heller School at Brandeis.
He is the two-time winner of the Sidney Hillman Journalism Award, the John Hancock Award for Business and Financial Writing, the Jack London Award for Labor Writing, and the Paul Hoffman Award of the United Nations Development Program for his lifetime work on economic efficiency and social justice. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Fellow, German Marshall Fund Fellow, and John F. Kennedy Fellow.
Bob’s journalism and scholarly research has been at the intersection of economics and politics. His current research is on the impact of globalization on political democracy at the level of the nation state; and on possible alternatives to the current structure of the economy that would be more conducive to greater equality of income, wealth, and opportunity as well as to stronger democracy.



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