Welcome to this monthly-ish mix episode of the award-winning Best of Left podcast.

In our regular episodes, we focus on one major theme, presenting our top takes in the first hour or so,

before diving deeper into each of those topics in the second half.

For monthly-ish-mix episodes like this one, we skim across the surface

of the past several weeks as a sort of quick recap and reference guide. So if you don't have

the time or energy for our full deep dives, maybe just our regular top take sections are for

you. But if that's still too much, keep an eye out for these monthly-ish mixes to catch you up.

Plus, these are great episodes to send to your friends who don't already listen because they're basically a highlight reel or movie trailer for the show.

The only difference being that these are like three hours long, which is rare for movie trailers.

A quick note of promotion, this podcast is turning 20 years old in January. So you can get a

discounted membership and details about helping us celebrate by sending us a message about your

experience with following the news in recent decades. Just go to best of the left.com

slash 20. That's two zero. And we've also launched a new show on the Best of the Left YouTube channel called Solved.

We use our curation skills and put them toward gathering interesting articles and ideas

that collectively help us solve some of the biggest problems of our day.

Best of Left members get solved early and ad-free as a podcast, but anyone can check out the video

version of the show on the Best of Left YouTube channel. Now, as for today's episode, we have four

big sections and lots of subtopics. If you want to skip around, reference the show notes for

guidance. We'll be starting with Section 1, the weight of empire that will look at the infrastructure

of violence and control, from

De Cheney's legacy to the reigniting nuclear arms race to the humanitarian catastrophe in

Sudan.

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