Listen to The Professional Left Podcast Episodes

Episode 999 of The Professional Left takes a detour through the smoke-filled back rooms of mid-century Chicago machine politics to explain something essential about the moment we're living in right now — because it turns out that Mike Royko had the whole…

Episode 998 of The Professional Left opens with a game of "Who's This Jagoff?" — a quiz that turns out to be a master class in how the Both Sides Do It lie gets laundered through the media, repeated without evidence, and rewarded with radio shows and…

Episode 997 of The Professional Left uses the sudden, very public firing of Scott Pelley from 60 Minutes as a jumping-off point to ask a much bigger question — why do the people with the biggest megaphones still have absolutely no idea what Democrats…

Episode 996 of The Professional Left takes a hard look at the media circus surrounding the Maine Democratic Senate primary, asking who is actually stirring the pot, why they're stirring it, and who benefits when a private matter between a married couple drowns…

Episode 995 of The Professional Left takes a deep dive into one of the most revealing tricks in modern political history — the quiet, deliberate shift from "we" to "they" that happens every time a prominent Republican needs to pretend they had nothing to do…

Episode 994 of The Professional Left takes a hard look at the war on memory — the long, grinding campaign to erase what actually happened to this country and replace it with a comfortable myth that lets the people who caused the damage off the hook. A…

Episode 993 of The Professional Left finally arrives at the pivotal year of 2008 — the moment the Republican party began eating itself alive — and traces exactly how a party that had just driven the country into a ditch decided that the best response was…

In this episode of The Professional Left, Driftglass and Blue Gal trace how the Clinton-era budget surplus was dismantled piece by piece during the Bush years, setting the stage for the catastrophic financial collapse of 2008. While millions of Americans lost…

Episode 991 of The Professional Left starts with a question that sounds absurd on its face — are Americans "underbabied"? — and then spends an hour making the case that the people asking that question are the same ones who have spent decades doing…

Episode 990 of The Professional Left takes a step back from the daily chaos to talk about something the mainstream media almost never bothers with — scale — and why understanding it is the difference between seeing propaganda clearly and getting played by…

Episode 989 of The Professional Left takes on one of the most overused words in modern politics — "authenticity" — and asks whether anyone in American political media is actually serving the real thing, or just a smooth, processed, cheese-like substitute…

Episode 988 of The Professional Left is a drama in three acts, each one taking a hard look at a political strategy that keeps failing — and the people who keep insisting it will work next time. Driftglass and Blue Gal dig into the endless, maddening cycle of…

Episode 987 of The Professional Left takes a deep look at the concept of authority — where it comes from, who really has it, and what happens when the people in charge decide the rules no longer apply to them. Driftglass and Blue Gal trace a clear line from…

Episode 986 of The Professional Left traces how one simple political rule — Ronald Reagan's "Eleventh Commandment" never to speak ill of a fellow Republican — quietly mutated over decades into something far more dangerous. Driftglass and Blue Gal dig into…

"The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter." -- The Maltese Falcon Episode 985 of The Professional Left takes a deep dive into the word "normalizing" — a term that gets thrown around constantly in political coverage, but rarely gets a clear definition.…

In this episode of The Professional Left, Driftglass and Blue Gal take a hard look at how America ended up in yet another Middle East war — and why the whole thing feels like a rerun that somehow got worse the second time around. Drawing a sharp line from…

In this episode of The Professional Left, Driftglass and Blue Gal dig into the decades-long project that brought American politics to its current breaking point — and what it really means that we've arrived here. A viral social media feud involving a Twitch…

Episode 982 asks: Did Trump magically bamboozle 70 million voters overnight, or did the GOP spend 40 years deliberately breeding an army of angry, paranoid, racist chumps? How is it that we are living in "Dune III" right now, when the movie doesn't come out…

Episode 981 traces the Republican descent from the 1990 New York Times editorial warning about Gingrich's "slash and burn" politics through Limbaugh, Fox News, and Trump—a 36-year disaster that Liberal bloggers warned about while being dismissed as cranks.…

Episode 980 uses The Walking Dead's central question—"The world we knew is gone, but keeping our humanity? That's a choice"—to examine whether we accept that the political and cultural America we once knew is finished. Driftglass and Blue Gal trace the…

Episode 979 begins with Project Hail Mary and science fiction nerds auditing movies on street corners, then pivots to Ozymandias and what lasts versus what crumbles to dust. Driftglass and Blue Gal ask why there are hundreds of documentaries about the Roman…

Driftglass and Blue Gal compare Bush's Iraq debacle with Trump's Iran war—the lying, the cover-ups, the profiteering, the attacks on critics—revealing Trump isn't a break from the Republican past but a continuation of it, just bigger, dumber, and louder.…

(And we talk about the Illinois Democratic Primaries!  They were counting votes as we recorded.) Episode 977 examines the 2026 Illinois Democratic primary while dissecting David Axelrod's fantasy that Democrats should rerun the Obama 2008 campaign in 2028,…

Episode 976 examines the signs and portents showing Trump's base starting to fracture as broken promises about Epstein files and "no foreign wars" collide with reality. Driftglass and Blue Gal track special election upsets across the country, from New…

Episode 975 takes a trip back to Chicago to explore how big cities weather economic shocks that would destroy smaller towns—a lesson that matters as Trump's oil crisis, job losses, and ACA cuts hit rural Trump voters hardest. Driftglass and Blue Gal examine…

Episode 974 examines why Trump's illegal war with Iran is splintering the MAGA base and fueling Democratic victories in special elections across the country. Driftglass and Blue Gal trace how Trump won in 2016 by offering Republican voters absolution for the…

Episode 973 explores biblical healing miracles to reveal what they teach about choice, cruelty, and the difference between victims who deserve compassion and abusers who don't. Driftglass and Blue Gal revisit the story of the Gerasene man possessed by "Legion"…

Trump's State of the Union was a two-hour Willie Horton ad designed to keep his shrinking base loyal through blood-soaked imagery borrowed from imperial Rome. Proleftpod traces how Michele Bachmann's 2011 Tea Party response prefigured today's MAGA lies by…

Episode 971 examines why fact-checkers keep losing to Republican lies in America's ongoing culture war, and why better stories—not more facts—are the only way to win. Driftglass and Blue Gal break down Will McGrath's powerful essay "In the Resistance, We…

Episode 970 asks why Democrats are always expected to play by rules that Republicans openly mock and destroy, and whether apologies from Trump voters mean anything without actual accountability. Drawing on one writer's (Jamil Smith) refusal to accept an…