Cascade PBS Ideas Festival

What a Day host Jane Coaston talks with former Minnesota Senator, comedian and author Al Franken about public policy and political comedy. There's a lot to talk about, and Franken doesn't sugarcoat any of it.

Cory Doctorow, author and technologist, coined the term "enshittification" to describe why apps and services like X, Facebook and Uber are more expensive, harder to use and worse for us, even as they've also gotten worse for advertisers, sellers, publishers, drivers and other businesses. We'll explore why Doctorow posits Trump's tariffs could fight "enshittification" and make the internet better.

On CNN's One Thing, host David Rind talks to experts, reporters and people impacted by the news. This special edition features a frank conversation with Jeff Flake, Director of the Institute of Politics at ASU and former Arizona Senator and Ambassador to Turkey, about diplomacy in a second Trump administration, the MAGA takeover of the Republican Party and the future of conservatism in America.

Nick Gillespie moderates a conversation with civil liberties advocate Nadine Strossen and constitutional lawyer and author Glenn Greenwald about free speech in 2025. From battles over campus protests to cutting federal funds for universities to questions of media objectivity and restricted press access to White House events, the debaters consider what the First Amendment means in the Trump 2.0 presidency.

Mike Pesca, host of The Gist, interviews CNN Anchor Jake Tapper and Axios National Political Correspondent Alex Thompson about their book Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. They discuss if this was more a cover-up or a combination of wishful thinking and herd mentality.

Radiolab is an award-winning podcast that explores the edge where science, philosophy and human experience meet. In this special live edition, co-host Latif Nasser brings his signature curiosity and boundary-pushing storytelling to a talk with Rebecca Lemov, historian of science at Harvard, about the history of brainwashing and its troubling implications for today.