Let me just start off this article by saying that podcasts are not supposed to be for unbiased news. The majority of political podcasts are a commentary on news that has happened. As one of my teachers once told me, “read your news before watching it,” and I have listened to that sentiment ever since. 

So, I listened to Chris Hayes’ podcast “Why Is This Happening?” from MSNBC and NBC News THINK, and I was pleasantly surprised. I normally don’t listen to political commentary because I feel pressured to agree before solidly forming my own opinion, but I found myself agreeing with a lot of his points. The two episodes I listened to, “America’s Isolation with Samantha Power” and “Avoiding Election Disaster with Edward Foley,” were very interesting and seemed to have well-founded arguments. Both episodes had a guest speaker that was knowledgeable about the topic and Chris Hayes asked questions, occasionally chiming in, adding his own thoughts and expanding on the analysis. 

In the “America’s Isolation” episode, Chris Hayes and Samantha Power, the former U.S. ambassador to the UN, talked about the negative side effects of the rise of American impunity, essentially the idea of no accountability, under the Trump administration. This episode really broadened my perspective about American politics. It was interesting to hear about the international implications of our domestic policy downfalls. Though I learned some new things about the intricacies of personal liberties, this episode also solidified my views of President Donald Trump’s attitude toward accountability, which is that he is completely incapable of accepting the repercussions or responsibility for his actions.

In the episode covering election security, Chris Hayes and Edward Foley, the chair of constitutional law and director of election law at The Ohio State University, dive into the threats that Trump has placed over the looming election. When reading the news, you see the individual offenses, but once Hayes listed off all the voter suppression methods that have been employed in this election, my jaw dropped. This podcast did a really good job of inviting somebody very knowledgeable about the topic and discussing it. Something they talked about that isn’t covered by the mainstream media very often is the sheer amount of cases that the Trump campaign has filed in regard to the election, amounting to around 300 cases alone. 

I would listen to this podcast again because I found parts of it extremely interesting, especially all of the legal cases surrounding the election. It expanded my view to parts of politics and their implications that I normally wouldn’t be aware of. However, I discourage people from listening to this podcast as their only source of news because it has a very clear liberal bias.