Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at background briefing.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with a political earthquake on Sunday, with President Biden stepping down and naming his vice-president Camilla Harris as the Democratic presidential candidate,

which has resulted in a flood of donations and a universal endorsement from the Democratic National Committee and Democratic House and Senate

members, including Nancy Pelosi.

Joining us for an historical context on how the most important hire in the world has been made

with good, bad and ugly consequences is Gauta Mukunda, a former research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School

Center for Public Leadership and author of Indispensable, when Leaders Really Matter, and the host

of Nasdaq's World Reimagined Podcasts. He was formerly a professor at Harvard Business School

and Distinguished Visiting Professor at Swartzman College.

And his latest book is Picking Presidents, How to Make the Most Consequential Decision in the World.

Then we'll examine the vice-presidential sweepstakes and the importance of swing states in Kamala Harris's

pending decision and speak with Anthea Butler, the Geraldine

R. Siegel Professor of American Social Thought at the University of Pennsylvania. She's the author

a number of books, including the rise of the new religious right, and most recently, white evangelical

racism, the politics of morality in America. Then finally we'll speak with Ben Burgess, the politics of morality in America.

Then finally, we'll speak with Ben Burgess, the host of the Give Them an Argument podcast and

YouTube channel and a philosophy instructor at Morehouse College and a columnist for Jacobin.

His books include Give Them an Argument, Logic for the Left, Cancelling Comedians,

While the World Burns, A Critique of the Contemporary Left, and Christopher Hitchens. What he got right,

how he went wrong, and why he still matters. And we will discuss his latest article at Jacobin

so much for a newly reborn Republican Party, now that it appears the Democratic

...