Off The Record With Paul Hodes

Chris Hill of Motley Fool Money explains why Facebook is spiraling, and where that situation may be headed. Also, a big week for the big economic picture; a rough week for Big Tech Companies Not Named Apple; and Amazon has a bold but slightly confusing new offering.

Also, Elon Musk fuels the online dumpster fire, how a quirk in polling may have caught the Democrats, and is John Fetterman's auditory issue really an impediment to him doing the job of US Senator?

Mark Bergman, a top Dem political consultant working on some of the biggest races around the country, joins Matt to look at which factors have really been shaping the midterm elections, where things stand now, and how the dynamics are looking in each of the biggest races on the map.

As we barrel toward the midterms, the parties have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into delivering their messages to voters. Doug Thornell may be responsible for more of those ads than anyone.  He's a partner at SKDK, one of the top strategic communications companies in the world, and one of the few Black media consultants in Democratic politics.  So when we asked him what making all those ads has shown him about the challenges that the party faces, he had something interesting to say. "The Democratic Party has an image problem.  And we have for awhile now." 

Also, are debates uniformly terrible? And is Kanye too crazy for Tucker Carlson?

Andrew Heaton is a comedian, author, and political satirist. He’s also the host of “The Political Orphanage” comedy and news podcast.  As a couple of passionate moderates, Matt and Andrew dive in to some of the goings-on in politics recently that are driving us the most nuts.  Then we get into some of the really good ideas we've heard on our shows recently, from why multi member congressional districts might fix some our partisanship to how to survive a nuclear war. 

Something is wrong in America, and we’ve gotten so used to it, we don’t really talk about about, or not enough anyway. We are in a major happiness recession, and we have been for a long time. The highest proportion of Americans ever (80%) say they are satisfied with their family’s financial situation, while an all-time low reports being “very happy” in their lives (14%). Over the last 40 years, a median of 66% of Americans have told Gallup they were “dissatisfied.” In the decade or so before the pandemic sent our despair into overdrive, major depression was rapidly rising, the suicide rate was up 35%, drug use and death were skyrocketing, birth rates were down 23%, and Americans told Pew researchers that they had become deeply pessimistic about the future. Our guest today, Catherine Sanderson, has become a widely cited author for her contributions on positive thinking and achieving better parenting, happier aging, and more courage in our lives. Dr. Sanderson is the POLER Family Professor and Chair of Psycholo

Did the January 6 hearings accomplish anything? Did Democrats actually botch the impeachments? Is inflation taking center stage again and killing Dems' ability to talk economic accomplishments?  And are we about to start eating...congressmen?

Matt joins legendary West Virginia radio host Howard Monroe to talk about what going "beyond politics" means, and also to dive into whether Trump will actually testify, where Trump's latest scandal rates in the all-time list, and whether Marjorie Taylor Greene is actually about to be in charge in Washington DC.

In November of 2019, the two top reporters covering the first impeachment of then-President Donald Trump for the Washington Post got together over a bottle of water and decided to write a book about what had really happened. Now, that book is finally hitting bookshelves tomorrow. It’s called “Unchecked, the Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump.”  The authors, Rachael Bade and Karoun Demirjian, join the show to reveal why the outcome of those impeachments was not as inevitable as people think, why Democrats pulled their punches, and what sliding doors moments might have changed everything.

Former USA Today / current Editorial Board Columnist and worldwide Twitter star Jason Sattler (known online as @LOLGOP) joins for a massive rundown of the most burning questions in politics heading into the midterms.  Borrowing from podcast legends Bill Simmons and Zack Lowe, Matt and Jason ask 15 big "are we sure" questions like "Are we sure that Democrats aren’t missing golden opportunities in the North Carolina and Ohio Senate races?"  "Are we sure that the Herschel Walker scandal is even in the top five of Republican hypocrisy scandals in the last 20 years?" "Are we sure we won’t have a constitutional crisis in this election?" And "Are we sure that we’ve seen the biggest October Surprise come out yet?"  Go to The Takedown YouTube channel for the full episode on video. 

We are proud to say that Beyond Politics just won an award from the New Hampshire Association of Broadcasters for outstanding Feature Story, so we are re-issuing that interview. One night, New Hampshire Supreme Court Chief Justice Justice Broderick awoke to find himself in the ICU.  He had been attacked by his son. The  story made national news.  But it was only after the cameras left that the real story begins. Since that day, Justice Broderick has been on a  journey of discovery and leadership on mental health in America. He’s working to improve understanding and awareness of mental illness in order to get rid of some of the myths, encourage discussion and treatment, and begin to change the unfair and shameful culture that surrounds mental health in America. Today on Beyond Politics, a  remarkable story of health, struggle, recovery, and hope, and a look at  the reality of one of America's greatest and least understood challenges.

The panel looks at the big economic news, including the Saudi oil production cut and the return of a potential railroad workers strike, and asks how much it will matter on election day.  Also, is the Herschel Walker scandal a political nothingburger, why are Republicans hitting the crime angle so hard, and Biden finally passes a "green new deal."

Quitting gets a bad rap. But the thing is, we know from psychological research, behavioral economics, and the professionals who help top business leaders to make decisions that actually, we should be doing a lot more of it, and a lot sooner. In fact, most us stick with losing propositions far too long, and a lot of the time the smartest decision is to make s strategic decision to focus on something else. So why don't we? And can we learn to be better judges of when to throw in the towel? Our guest, Annie Duke, is well known to anyone who got caught up in the poker boom of the mid 2000s as one of the top professionals in the game, but over a decade ago she quit, and now she’s a bestselling author, a corporate speaker, and consultant on decision-making, as well as Special Partner focused on Decision Science at First Round Capital Partners, a seed stage venture fund. Her newest book is Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. For our WKXL radio listeners she’s also a Concord New Hampshire native.

Today, we feature the host of an amazing podcast called Gatecrashers, an eight-part series that tells the fascinating history of how the modern college admissions system (in fact, the entire notion of academically rigorous elite schools) that we know in America -- with its applications, essays, interviews, standardized tests, and US News lists -- all sprang from a surprising starting point: an effort to control how many Jews, and even what kind of Jews, were getting into the most prestigious schools. As the Supreme Court takes up a case that may end affirmative action in higher education, we couldn't have a more timely or important look at how we ended up with the modern higher education system.  Mark Oppenheimer created and reported Gatecrashers and he’s a Senior Editor at Tablet. From 2010-2016 he wrote the Beliefs column about religion for The New York Times. He also hosts the Unorthodox podcast about Jewish life and culture. He’s also the author, most recently, of Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Syna

Neil Levesque of the St. Anselm's Institute of Politics returns to run through findings from their latest high quality poll, showing why Democrats have an edge in key races despite President Biden's low approval, whether Democratic meddling in Republican primaries worked, what role abortion is really playing in the election, and whether we're getting an early bead on the shape of the 2024 Republican presidential primary. 

The panel breaks down how Herschel Walker could have avoided a potentially campaign-sinking message catastrophe (besides not being an awful person in the first place) with some age-old political tactics. Also, Trump lawyers lying, huge issues on the Supreme Court docket, and is Mehmet Oz about to be eaten by Alicia's dogs?

Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland was a professor of constitutional law at American University’s Washington College of Law for more than 25 years.  That’s part of the reason he was named the lead impeachment manager for the Senate trial during the second impeachment of then-President Donald Trump for inciting an insurrection at the United States Capitol. For over a year, he has been serving as a member of the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. He says that the Committee has now established beyond any doubt that Trump was culpable for the insurrection.  He reveals the big items that the Committee has uncovered that the media and the public may have missed, what missing pieces of the story he'd still like to fill in during the remainder of the Committee's work, and whether Ginni Thomas is in what amounts to a religious cult around Donald Trump.

It's been called risky, controversial, playing with fire...and that's just the Democrats talking.  But now that the tallies are in, it is clear that Democrats spending $53 million to wade into Republican primaries was the right move.  Matt joins The New England Take to explain why, based on his article published on The Editorial Board and Alternet.

Recently the Center for American Progress issued a report that said “Online service companies have produced substantial wealth, but these gains have failed to reach the American workforce more broadly. Pervasive, ubiquitous digital surveillance has eroded Americans’ civil liberties. Exploitation of people’s data has created novel consumer threats around privacy, manipulation of consumer behavior, and discrimination. Americans face these and other harms from online services, including but not limited to widespread fraud, abuse of small businesses, abuse of market power, faulty algorithms, racist and sexist technological development, cybersecurity challenges, threats to workers’ rights, curtailed innovation, and challenges with online radicalization and misinformation.”  But one of the authors of that reports says that despite this massive litany of destructive problems, big tech platforms can be fixed, and the Internet can be...good!  Erin Simpson of CAP joins to explain. Photo by Rahul Chakraborty o