For a century, thousands of young baseball players have lived with low wages, overcrowded housing, and all-night rides in uncomfortable buses in order to play in baseball’s minor leagues, hoping to eventually make it to the majors. Now their lives are changing—because they organized a union. Kelly Candaele and Peter Dreier report.

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The largest anti-war demonstrations in American history were protests in the fall of 1969--with more than two million people in the streets demanding “End the War in Vietnam.” But did those demonstrations help end the war? Historian Chris Appy comments on the new documentary, “The Movement and the ‘Madman,’” on PBS American Experience March 28.

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Do masks work -- to help stop the spread of covid? A New York Times columnist recently said that they don’t, and cited an authoritative review of research as his source. But it turns he was wrong about that study. Gregg Gonsalves explains.

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Sunday is Oscar night in America--and, as usual, we have a lot of complaints about the nominations. So does John Powers - he’s Critic at Large on the NPR show Fresh Air with Terry Gross. We talk about this year’s films we didn’t like – and some we thought were wonderful.

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The worst thing that happened to Black History during Black History Month was not Ron DeSantis banning critical concepts and approaches - it was the College Board revising its new African American Studies curriculum to meet all of his demands. But now scholars in Black History, Black Studies and related fields are fighting back--Kimberlé Crenshaw will explain. She founded the African American Policy Forum .

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Covid remains the number 3 cause of death in the US, after heart disease and cancer, with almost 3,000 deaths every week. But Biden and the Democrats are ending the federal covid emergency. Is that really a good idea? Gregg Gonsalves comments—he’s The Nation’s public health correspondent and he teaches epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health.

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The Royal Family and “The Crown”– you know, Queen Elizabeth and Charles and Diana, and the Netflix series about them. Gary Younge explains why he loathes the monarchy in Britain, but loved “The Crown” on Nexflix.

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Ireland since the fifties: how a country dominated by a corrupt Catholic church came to legalize gay marriage and abortion -- by referendum. Fintan O'Toole's much-honored ‘personal history’ of Ireland, titled “We Don’t Know Ourselves,” is out now in paperback.

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We’re still thinking about Victor Navasky, who died on Jan. 23. He was editor or publisher of The Nation for 27 years, starting in 1978, and author of several books, including one about his life in magazines, titled “A Matter of Opinion.” We’ll listen to our conversation about that book, recorded in 2006.

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What if government provided a basic income to all residents?  Something like $1000 a month? How much could that change inequality and poverty? Sasha Abramsky reports on the experiment in Los Angeles with Universal Basic Income.

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Walmart is the biggest employer in America, and the Walton family, the children of Walmart founder Sam Walton, is the richest family in the world. The company has raised wages and become more socially conscious-but it provides a case study of the limits of socially conscious capitalism. Rick Wartzman will explain – his new book on Walmart and its workers is titled “Still Broke.”

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Who’d want to see a movie about Harvey Weinstein? But the film “She Said,” about the two New York Times reporters who broke the Harvey Weinstein story, is not about Harvey; it’s about the system that protected him. And it’s really good. Katha Pollitt comments.

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Andrew Bacevich talks about our “very long war,” going back at least to the sixties, and about the relative insignificance of Donald Trump. His new book is "On Shedding an Obsolete Past: Bidding Farewell to the American Century.”

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“Bad Mexicans” – that’s what the revolutionaries of 1910 were called as they fought on both sides of the US-Mexico border against the robber barons and their political allies. UCLA historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez tells that story, and talks about her book on race, empire, and revolution in the borderlands.

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Our Christmas music special: Bob Dylan fans have been puzzled and troubled by his Christmas album, “Christmas in the Heart”, ever since he released it in 2009. To help figure out what Dylan was doing, we turned to Sean Wilentz--he’s the official historian at the official website BobDylan.com, and he also teaches American history at Princeton. (Originally broadcast in 2009)

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The largest strike in the nation entered its fifth week: 36,000 grad student employees of the University of California, including teaching assistants who are not grading final exams. The union agreed to mediation—which seems unlikely to succeed. Nelson Lichtenstein has our update.

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The largest strike in the country this year, and the largest in the history of higher education, entered its fourth week at the University of California. Historian Nelson Lichtenstein explains what's happening with grad student Teaching Assistants, Research Assistants, Tutors and Postdocs.

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Should Supreme Court base its decision on what it can discern about the original intent of the framers? That’s what the “originalists” say – and they dominate today’s court. Erwin Chemerinsky comments; he’s dean of the law school at UC Berkeley and the author most recently of “Worse Than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism.”

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The fight against pollution in LA’s port communities, where 300,000 people, mostly Latino, live next door to oil refineries, chemical facilities, and one of the largest oilfields in the nation. For decades they’ve been fighting for basic rights and a cleaner environment. Eliza Moreno has that story.

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In Los Angeles the terrible sheriff has lost his re-election campaign. Gustavo Arellano, the LA Times columnist, comments, and reports on how the billionaire developer running for mayor campaigned for the Latino vote.

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