This week, President Trump called Baltimore “so far gone” amid the deployment of the National Guard in DC. In reality, Baltimore has seen record low rates of violent crime the past few years. Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott joins WITHpod to talk about the perception versus reality for crime stats in in Baltimore, the city’s Comprehensive Violence Prevention Plan and more.

Author and journalist E. Jean Carroll successfully sued Donald Trump in two civil suits, one for sexual abuse and another for defamation. The two suits resulted in a total of $88.3 million in damages awarded to Carroll, both of which are under appeal. She has written five books including her latest, “Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President." She joins WITHpod to discuss suing Trump, advice she has for young women and more.

The state of the U.S. economy will come into full view this week as a wave of crucial economic data is set for release, including the jobs report, inflation, consumer confidence and corporate earnings. Where is the U.S. in terms of the global economic order? And how did we get to this point? Aya Ibrahim served as senior advisor on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff in the Biden-Harris administration, led President Biden’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and Digital Assets Executive Order. She is also a former senior policy advisor at the National Economic Council. Ibrahim joins WITHpod to talk about her view on what Democrats need to do now, the United States’ standing in terms of technology, finance and more.

We’ve seen a good number of protests during Trump 2.0. What role does our ability to organize and protest play in this moment as we see the erosion of democracy right in front of us? Omar Wasow, associate professor of political science at UC Berkley, joins to discuss how he’s making sense of American politics at this moment, protests in this era and more.

Well, it was another consequential Supreme Court term. So, we had to have Chris's wife Kate Shaw, along with the other co-hosts of the Strict Scrutiny podcast, Melissa Murray and Leah Litman back to break down some of the biggest SCOTUS decisions including Medina v. Planned Parenthood, U.S. v. Skrmetti, and Trump v. CASA. There's a lot to discuss about the Court’s evolving ideology under Trump 2.0. This conversation was recorded on July 1, 2025.

Note: this episode originally published on 02/11/25. A lot of things are changing. And there’s a lot of things that the new White House administration wants to do differently. One of the areas where we’ve seen a lot of attention is cryptocurrency. Some of the latest developments are pretty confounding, to say the least. Lucky for us, our guest this week has spent years following crypto. Zeke Faux is a reporter for Bloomberg News and the author of “Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall.” He joins WITHpod to discuss some of the latest developments in cryptocurrency, concerns about the government purchasing it, Trump memecoins and more.

When news alerts went out that the US sent missiles to bomb Iranian nuclear sites, debates began about how deeply the US would continue to wade into the conflict between Israel and Iran. After days of panic, President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between the two countries. But it was Trump himself who, in his first term, stopped US efforts to limit Iran’s nuclear program. Robert Malley was the lead negotiator of the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal under then-President Barack Obama. To give context to the latest developments in the region, Malley joins WITHpod to talk about the the 2015 deal and its unraveling under Trump’s first administration. Malley is also a lecturer at Yale University and the co-author of the upcoming book, “Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine.” This conversation was recorded June 25, 2025.

You’ve probably come across content online that seems real but is actually fake. And that experience is becoming more common with the proliferation of AI generated content. Our guest this week points out that the mental gymnastics of this starts to take a toll. Jia Tolentino, a staff writer at The New Yorker, wrote a piece all about this aptly titled, “My Brain Finally Broke.” She joins WITHpod to discuss how AI is changing our perception of the world, how online content can make us more likely to detach from reality and more. Note: this episode was recorded on 6/11/25.