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Wednesday night will mark the biggest accomplishment in the already-dazzling career of Senator Kamala Harris, when she takes to the (virtual) stage at the 2020 Democratic National Convention to accept her party’s nomination for vice president. The culmination of many “firsts” accumulated across decades by the 55-year-old Californian, this week, Harris will become the first Black woman and the first woman of Indian decent to run on a major party ticket.

But she has always been a barrier-breaker. On this episode of the Mother Jones Podcast, our in-house Harris expert, Jamilah King, traces the senator’s political awakening back to her progressive-minded Indian mother, and charts her formative years as San Francisco District Attorney,  her elections first as Attorney General of California and then as Senator, to this historic moment—on the precipice of a historic run for the White House.

This time Jamilah will occupy the interviewee hot seat, while Mother Jones reporter Fernanda Echavarri takes over hosting duties, guiding listeners through a detailed assessment of Harris’s time as a prosecutor (and its potential political baggage), her forceful Senate appearances as inquisitor (and antagonist) of Trump appointees, and what her presence on the ticket means for presidential hopeful Joe Biden—and the country.

Representative Barbara Lee is a big fan of fellow Californian Senator Kamala Harris. Last year, she was the first high-profile politician to endorse Kamala Harris' bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. After Joe Biden clinched the top spot in the Democratic primaries, the former vice president's eventual choice of running mate was obvious, at least for Lee. "Kamala should be president," she said last week in a livestream conversation with Mother Jones Podcast host Jamilah King, just days before Harris got the nod. But Veep is the next best thing. “We know how to lead," Lee said of the power of Black women in the Democratic party, and beyond. "We know how to help regain the soul of America. And we have our unique history in this country to be able to lead out of the White House as president and vice president.”

This wide-ranging interview also touches on Rep. Lee's deep history of fighting for justice. She has insisted on a seat at the table at the highest echelons of political power for years. She's served as one of the few Black women in Congress for nearly three decades. She worked on Shirley Chisholm's campaign during Chisholm's historic bid for the White House in 1972—a campaign after which Kamala Harris modeled her own. Now Lee is at work on Capitol Hill trying to get Republicans to deliver much-needed economic relief in a wrecked economy.

Listen to this special Friday bonus edition of the Mother Jones Podcast to hear the full conversation, recorded as part of a livestream event on August 6, 2020. The full video is available on Mother Jones’ Youtube, Facebook, or Twitter accounts.

With schools and parents around the country facing tough decisions about safety and education, one author and academic has become something of a hero to parents everywhere for her sane, data-driven approach to surviving parenting during a pandemic. Emily Oster, a Brown University economist, is the pregnancy and early childhood guru for millennial parents. Expecting Better and her 2019 followup, Cribsheet, rethink the pregnancy-and-baby-literature cannon by adding something that’s been lacking: empiricism. Oster separates the good studies from the bad and lays out the best evidence to answer such critical questions as whether it’s safe to eat sushi while pregnant. Now, as the country finds itself in a fraught and deeply partisan fog of confusion about child care and education, Oster decided to apply the same type of analysis to COVID-19 research as she did to pregnancy and parenthood, through her newsletter and a website she co-authors with Harvard medicine professor Galit Alter and a team of researchers, called COVID-Explained. Aaron Wiener, a senior editor in MoJo’s DC bureau, spoke to Oster to see if she could bring together her research on young children and on COVID-19 to answer key questions about returning to school and day care facilities. And as a new dad himself (Cole is now 10-months-old), Aaron asks her for her guidance on what his young family—and all the other parents out there—should be considering as they decide whether it’s advisable to send their kids back to school.

An embattled president. A mass movement. A military used against citizens. We’ve been here before. In Mayday 1971, thousands of anti-Vietnam War protesters descended on Washington DC to try to shut down the federal government. By 10:30am, more than 5000 protesters had been arrested, stuffed into overflowing jail cells—eventually police had to commandeer RFK Stadium to accommodate all the arrests. It was America’s largest act of mass civil disobedience and ended in America’s biggest mass arrest: over 12,000 people. The Pulitzer-prize winning editor Larry Roberts joins the podcast this week as we bring to life this incredible moment in history. From President Nixon’s unconstitutional tactics, to dragnet mass arrests, to streets filled with teargas, to some unexpected support for these illegal actions from the future Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Roberts gets into the untold story of Mayday 1971. It is impossible to ignore one more important fact: This historical event carries eerie echoes of the moment we’re living through today. Roberts’ full investigation is detailed in his book, Mayday 1971: A White House at War, a Revolt in the Streets, and the Untold History of America’s Biggest Mass Arrest, which is out now.

Samantha Bee doesn’t think comedy will take Trump down. She calls her craft “impotent beyond belief” in the face of the daily presidential wrecking ball. But then, the creator and star of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee thinks preaching to the choir is absolutely fine—moral, even.“Talking to the people that you agree with is very good,” she tells Washington D.C. bureau chief David Corn, in this wide-ranging conversation recorded onstage at the Comedy Cellar in New York City. “I think it’s important to have as many voices as possible just go, ‘This is wrong. I disagree with this. This is how it should be. We’re not all crazy!”

When she started, Bee felt sure that airing just six episodes would result in the whole show being canceled for being too sharply opinionated. Now she thinks of her weekly, Emmy Award-winning (and just re-nominated) program—in its fifth season despite the pandemic—as “my own little historical record of this age.” It’s become a platform from which to educate, commiserate, and shock, with a panoply of facts, jokes, and mini-seminars about how the hell we got here and how to fix it. And she couldn’t care less if her critics call her an activist.“Look, when you have a show, you’ve got to do something with it,” she tells Corn. “To not use it to do something with it in a time of great distress feels like a huge waste to me. Why wouldn’t you?”

This interview, taped in February, is part of a limited series co-produced by Mother Jones and the Comedy Cellar, the venerable stand-up venue. Don’t miss Corn’s recent interviews with Debbie Harry and John Leguizamo by subscribing to the podcast.

Debbie Harry is an icon, punk rock star, and self-proclaimed spokesperson for bees. As the frontwoman of Blondie, she came up through the avant-garde art scene in 1970s New York, trading artistic inspiration with Andy Warhol, Basquiat, and Patti Smith. After breaking into the mainstream with its 1979 album Parallel Lines, Harry and the rest of the band have been bending musical genres ever since.

In this raw and in-depth interview with Mother Jones DC Bureau Chief David Corn, Debbie Harry opens up about her past and her compulsive creative drive. She shares stories about what it was like breaking into the male-dominated music industry, why she loves David Bowie, and how she came up with her alter-ego Blondie. Plus, she shares how she is using her fame to protect the honeybees.

Corn’s interview with Harry is one in a series of several notable guests featured over three episodes of the Mother Jones Podcast. It’s a special summer interview series with a very “2020” origin story: Earlier this year, the coronavirus pandemic stalled work on a new podcast, co-produced by Mother Jones and the Comedy Cellar, but not before three fascinating guests joined Corn for in-depth interviews about art, politics, comedy, and the philosophies that infuse their work. These chats were too good to simply shelve; last week we heard from actor and comedian John Leguizamo, and next week we’ll hear from talk show host Samantha Bee.