What Rachel Maddow Has Been Thinking About Offscreen

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 14 October 2022

⏱️ 84 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“The Rachel Maddow Show” debuted in the interregnum between political eras. Before it lay the 9/11 era and the George W. Bush presidency. Days after the show launched in 2008, Lehman Brothers collapsed, and a few weeks later Barack Obama was elected president. And then history just kept speeding up. The Tea Party. The debt ceiling debacles. Donald Trump. The coronavirus pandemic. January 6th. The big lie. Maddow covered and tried to make sense of it all. Now, after 14 years, she has taken her show down to one episode a week and is beginning other projects — like “Ultra,” the history podcast we discuss in this episode. But I wanted to talk to Maddow about how American politics and media has changed over the course of her show. We discuss the legacies of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cycle of economic crises we appear to keep having, Maddow’s relationships with Pat Buchanan and Tucker Carlson, where the current G.O.P.’s anti-democracy efforts really started, how Obama’s presidency changed politics, how Maddow finds and chooses her stories, the statehouse Republicans who tilled the soil for Trump’s big lie and more. Book Recommendations: Hitler in Los Angeles by Steven J. Ross Nazis of Copley Square by Charles R. Gallagher Hitler’s American Friends by Bradley W. Hart The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger 1940 by Susan Dunn Down in New Orleans Billy Sothern Thoughts? Email us at [email protected]. (And if you're reaching out to recommend a guest, please write “Guest Suggestion" in the subject line.) You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma. Our researcher is Emefa Agawu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I'm Ezra Klein, this is the Ezra Conchell.
0:24.4	Rachel Maddow is the nightly show on MSNBC, debuted on September 8th, 2008.
0:29.9	You read that date now and it's clear what a hinge moment that was between political
0:36.0	eras.
0:37.3	Before that, you have the 91st era of the George W. Bush era, the era of politicians
0:43.1	constantly wearing and fighting over flagpins on their lapels.
0:47.3	By the time Maddow show hits the air though, Barack Obama is weeks away from winning the
0:51.3	presidency.
0:52.3	Lehman Brothers is days away from collapsing.
0:55.9	American politics is on the cusp of reorganization.
1:01.1	Maddow helmed that 9 p.m. slot for 14 years.
1:04.7	Her show really defined an era of liberal cable news.
1:08.0	MSNBC's whole lineup was reoriented to work around her style to try to learn her lessons.
1:14.8	And let me risk understatement by saying a hell of a lot happens over the course of that
1:18.9	14 years at Rachel Maddow's in that chair.
1:21.9	And she is that whole time a pretty serious observer and even at times, shaper of it.
1:28.0	So I want to talk to her about the ways American politics and media change over the time,
1:33.1	what she saw and why she thinks it happened.
1:36.9	And now as she steps back, she's taken her show to once a week.
1:40.4	She signed up to do a lot of other kinds of content, including a new podcast about a
1:44.9	really remarkable moment in our history called Ultra that we talk about here.
1:49.3	I wanted to get a sense of why she's become so interested now in what the past can tell
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from New York Times Opinion, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of New York Times Opinion and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.