Afleveringen
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A local community tackles Trump's destructive agenda and politicians who collaborate with it.
Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/anatomy-of-a-movement
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Do you have a question about a particular Next Comes What? Do you have more of a comment than a question you'd like to send in? Do you have a local or a national success story?
Email your thoughts to nextcomeswhat at gmail dot com. You can write it. You might record it. You could even videotape yourself or your actions.
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Andrea Pitzer returned to Roanoke, Virginia, where she spoke in the days after the 2024 election, to see how the community is organizing to protect itself against Trump. She visited the weekly Monday protest outside the downtown office of Congressman Ben Cline to find a collection of frustrated but energized people demanding answers. After the protest, over 100 locals attended an organizing meeting at the library, where Andrea spoke briefly about the many risks and opportunities facing all of us right now. This week's episode looks at parts of what she shared in that meeting, as well as the role of local action and learning to sit in the uncomfortable places where we might do the most good. Andrea explains how stability is contagious and finally answers the question of how to explain to others why they should care about other people.
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The dismantling of our government has begun, which means fighting ignorance is critical. All of us are due for some education.
Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/unbreaking-things
Subscribe to Andrea Pitzerâs Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe
Do you have a question about a particular Next Comes What? Do you have more of a comment than a question you'd like to send in? Do you have a local or a national success story? Email your thoughts to nextcomeswhat at gmail dot com.
You can write it. You might record it. You could even videotape yourself or your actions.
This week's episode takes on what to do in the face of the ongoing lawlessness of the Trump administration. The courts are working to uphold their role; Congress is pretty inert for now. Yet even if both branches of government rise to meet the occasion by pushing back against the current administration, a lot will come down to us, to everyday people around the country. Andrea Pitzer talks about the weird dynamics created by online rage, and exactly how that nuclear-grade energy could be better used elsewhere. She considers the different kinds of ignorance we're facing and strategies for overcoming it. Building community groups and coalitions, understanding peoples' needs and what motivates them, and easing the suffering that's already been unleashedâaddressing these harms will also help us get ready to take bigger actions as Americans.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Showing up in public can derail Trump's attempts to destroy the federal government. #TeslaTakedown is a great start.
Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/when-protest-packs-a-punch
Subscribe to Andrea Pitzerâs Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe
You can find a #teslatakedown protest here: https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/teslatakedown
In this week's episode, Andrea Pitzer tackles what protest can accomplish and covers the March 7 Stand Up for Science demonstration in DC. She notes that physical bodies gathered together to demand change remind the government who really runs the country, and explains how vital it is to exercise that right. Considering ways that even small or unfocused demonstrations play an important "basic training" role in developing skills and building a movement, Andrea analyzes how to add more strategic elements as numbers grow.
The episode further explores picketing Tesla dealerships as an excellent approach in the current environment. Looking at America's past role in encouraging the ideals (though often not the actual practice) of democracy, Andrea outlines the moral vacuum left when those in the nation's capital decide to actively denounce democracy. We're entering dangerous territory. Solving the current crisis will likely come down to mass protests in the long run, and there's a lot we can do to make sure democracy wins.
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Russia and America have more in common than their betrayal of Kyiv, and we need to push back on this shift.
Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/blues-for-ukraine
Subscribe to Andrea Pitzerâs Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe
This week's episode of Next Comes What looks at the meeting between Donald Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week in light of Andrea Pitzer's previous experiences in Russia. She looks at what Trump and JD Vance were up to in the Oval Office, as well as recounting the morning she woke up in Moscow on a 2022 trip for book research to discover that Russia had invaded Ukraine. Andrea addresses how disinformation works, why it's short-sighted to condemn a whole identity as evil, and the ways Fox News plays to the worst impulses in citizens of both countries. Putin fans are cheering on what Trump did because in the end, both leaders have a similar view of how to govern and prefer a mafia state to any real democracy. Andrea offers some simple approaches for how to support Ukraine and stresses the need to recognize the way that we, too, are succumbing to competitive authoritarianism here in the US. We have to find ways to stop the destruction of our democratic institutions before there's nothing left of them to save.
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Effective resistance is happening around the country, but it still needs you to work.
Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/how-does-actual-resistance-work Subscribe to Andrea Pitzerâs Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Summing up just one day of recent court rulings, Andrea Pitzer explores whether judges are being assertive in upholding the law against onslaughts from Donald Trump and Elon Musk. She explains why attacking Musk can be so effective and shares a few of the ways he's being strategically ridiculed. From demonstrations at Tesla dealerships to town hallsâeven where elected representatives don't show upâpeople are making their voices heard in ways that will build momentum. Andrea considers additional powerful examples from Nazi Germany and Hawaiian sugar plantations where those in terrible circumstances managed to throw sand in the gears of authoritarian or exploitative rule. The episode looks at the role of violence in structural change across a century of examples, and draws some working conclusions about how to build the biggest and most effective movement. Andrea finishes by giving you concrete ways to find a community of people willing to work with you, or even to get out a message on your own, to stall or stop the disintegration of democracy. -
How the people and the courts will make or break American democracy under Trump 2.0.
Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/heroic-work-from-ordinary-people
Subscribe to Andrea Pitzerâs Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe
This week Next Comes What visits one of the dozens of "No Kings" protests around the country on Presidents Day and discovers just how unpopular Elon Musk has become. Talking with federal workers, concerned students, former Republicans horrified by Donald Trump's actions, and other everyday people, Andrea Pitzer finds out why demonstrators are showing up in greater and greater numbers. She dissects the roles that our courts and public protest can play in reestablishing U.S. democracy. Looking at why Congress is unlikely to resist Trump's attempts to steamroll its authority, Andrea considers the small steps all of us can take to begin smothering the extremism dismantling our country today.
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How decades of abuse at Guantanamo undermined democracy and built a black hole of detention for Trump today.
Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/choking-on-the-mess
Subscribe to Andrea Pitzerâs Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe
The latest Next Comes What episode takes on the "worst of the worst" mythology that Trump's cabinet used to justify sending immigrants to Guantanamo this month, and how this bucket of lies is no different than those that have been handed to the American public for years about the island. Andrea Pitzer talks about her own visits to Guantanamo a decade ago for pretrial hearings of detainees and to see the conditions of detention. She considers the ways in which falsehoods about people held there, torture undergone by detainees, and the very nature of whether the government can own memories have warped American justice under six presidents. Andrea traces how Gitmo's past has been seized on by Donald Trump to launch a new era of mass detention on the island. The issue concludes with the ways the administration's efforts to mislead have been undermined by journalists and everyday people, which court cases are already having an effect, and what you can do to help keep the steroidal twenty-first century expansion of this nightmare from becoming permanent.
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Freedom--how does it work? By putting a stop-work order on Trump and Elon.
Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/seizing-the-narrative
Subscribe to Andrea Pitzerâs Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe
This week, Next Comes What headed into DC to see what would happen in front of USAID headquarters the day Donald Trump and Elon Musk shut it down. Andrea Pitzer talked to workers protesting out front and to the politicians who held a media event to point out the harm Trump was inflicting on millions of the poorest and least powerful people in the world--and to the U.S. itself. She considers how much our democracy depends on Americans holding onto power by asserting their rights and speaking their minds in public. That means our elected officials, too. Andrea considers what weâand theyâought to be doing these days, and how a robocall she got from her congressman was a good first step to pushing back against the kind of authoritarian state Trump is trying to impose.
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Trump isn't just pushing corruption to get a cut of the action--he wants to run the whole game.
Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/corruption-overload
Subscribe to Andrea Pitzerâs Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe
Today's episode of Next Comes What looks at the 31 flavors of Trump's corruption and ways to block him. Andrea Pitzer shares her experiences observing corruption in Russia and explains how the Trump administration seems to be trying to catch up. She looks at the relationship between racism and corruption, then outlines the perils of our polluted information sphere (and how it got that way). She explores the corruption of the Supreme Court, of Republican legislators, and the office of the presidency itself, as well as laying out the straight-up grift that undergirds nearly everything Trump does. Summarizing a Carnegie Endowment report on how people around the world have fought corruption in recent decades, she notes the difficulty of ridding a country of it once tipping points have been reached. Andrea then points to effective means of keeping corruption at bay or rolling it back on a local level, many of them available to you in your community.
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A cold day in hell on the streets of DC as the city shows us how to handle Trump. Read the post that inspired this episode:
https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/a-cold-day-in-hell Subscribe to Andrea Pitzerâs Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Today's episode of Next Comes What is a report from the nearly empty streets of DC, a tale of two cities, one of which snubbed DonaldTrump. Andrea Pitzer goes to Capitol Hill and Capital One Arena, talking to those visiting town for the inauguration. She finds pattern in the rhetoric served up to her by supporters of Trump and discovers the cold heart of his support. Andrea attends a Martin Luther King Jr. memorial at Metropolitan AME church, and hears Al Sharpton spin a very different story about America. She compares the two visions of the future on offer then runs into a tiny four-person protest of students who have come to the city with handmade cardboard signs. Looking at the executive orders announced later the same day, she points to a path forward in the grim era that has now begun. -
What to expect when you're expecting an authoritarian.
Our inauguration episode. Read the post that inspired this episode.
Subscribe to Andrea Pitzerâs Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What
This episode of Next Comes What is about how to manage the next four years, starting from Day One. Andrea Pitzer discusses the amazing ways that countries around the globe in danger of losing democracy are trying to save themselves right now, the new dangers that the twenty-first century presents to those facing authoritarianism, and some of the most effective ways to confront the threat barreling down on us.
She looks at heroic examples in Poland, Myanmar, Brazil, and South Korea, as well as times when everyday Americans have helped change the U.S. into the country they wanted it to become. And she outlines the very real risk, if we're not careful, of people on the left falling into an existence just as removed from reality as the one adopted by MAGA on the right. And she explains how to stay engaged during the crisis now confronting us.
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Homelessness has long been used to criminalize suffering and expand detention.
Read the post that inspired this episode.
Subscribe to Andrea Pitzerâs Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What.
Today's episode of Next Comes What is about the relationship between homelessness and concentration camps around the globe, as well as a close look at those living without a home in America today. Andrea Pitzer explains how homelessness has historically been used as a political weapon to expand detention for other groups of civilians. She recounts how Mussolini, Hitler, and even Herbert Hoover went to war against the homeless between World War I and World War II, and narrates the terrible worldwide legacy of their actions. In the second half of the episode, she interviews Brian Goldstone, the author of the forthcoming book There Is No Place for Us, which tells the story of five families who are all part of Atlanta's Black working homeless population. Goldstone lays out the violence that consigns people to homelessness, and discusses with Andrea the concrete ways listeners can take action to secure housing for everyone currently without it â and keep those of us who are lucky enough to have it from losing it.
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Not everything will go wrong. Some thoughts for the New Year.
Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/everything-won-t-go-wrongSubscribe to Andrea Pitzerâs Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe
Today's episode of Next Comes What is about finding holiday joy even in bleak times. In preparation for the New Year and a new administration coming in, Andrea Pitzer recounts how people in extreme conditions in the past held religious services, celebrated feasts, and even set up circus performances. She considers stories of Arctic explorers celebrating Twelfth Night or turning their clothes inside out to bring good luck in the New Year, with little possibility that they would survive the winter. Even presidents who tried to do the right things historically have often failed in their efforts. Andrea looks at actions by Jimmy Carter and Harry Truman that were undone by their political foes. And yetâjust as in the camps and in the High Arcticânot everything that could have gone wrong did. She makes a plea for determination over inspiration and hopes that everyone might choose to embrace their agency in 2025. -
From years of teaching self defense and martial arts, some tips for difficult holiday conversations.
Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/fighting-words
Subscribe to Andrea Pitzerâs Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/next-comes-what/id1779885475
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7lUaIWeKl0oET2DJVTWhy4
Those times you want to punch somebody over holiday dinner, but you donât? Andrea Pitzer is here to say âWell doneâ and to give you some options between starting World War III and just enduring nasty rhetoric. In this short holiday-themed episode of Next Comes What, Andrea talks about the years she spent teaching martial arts and self defense and offers ideas for fraught conversations when youâre more interested in getting your point across than winning. From the power of reaching people with the quiet voice to minding your footwork and not wasting your energy, hereâs hoping you can enter 2025 with no hangovers, no arrest record, and no regrets.
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Defending immigrants from camps and chaos
This week's episode traces the ties between immigrants and concentration camp history then turns to an immigration expert to discuss what Trump will do next. Andrea Pitzer dives into the past of a centuries-old law used to lock up foreigners in Americaâthe very law Trump allies hope will expedite mass deportation. Then she talks about the situation on the ground with Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council, who describes Trump's plans for the coming months and the big obstacles to executing them. They offer concrete ways the public can help at-risk immigrants, from volunteering with the Council itself to passing laws in their own communities.Read the post that inspired this episode.
Subscribe to Andrea Pitzerâs Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What. -
People have organized in hard times before. There's almost always something that can be done.
Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/going-to-roanoke
Subscribe to Andrea Pitzerâs Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/next-comes-what/id1779885475
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7lUaIWeKl0oET2DJVTWhy4
This episode looks at what regular people can do when a government aims to actively oppress those itâs meant to serve. Andrea Pitzer discusses ways individuals have come together in the face of repressive measures to build community and protect the most vulnerable. Looking at examples from Myanmar to Soviet Russia and Chile, she finds commonalities in very different settings. Then turning toward America, she shows how simple yet extraordinary resistance has a history going back to before the end of the Revolutionary War. Taking a trip this month to Roanoke, Virginia, to be part of one womanâs attempt to organize her city, Andrea outlines the communityâs strong response and offers an adaptable blueprint for anyone who wants to do the same in their hometown.
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Humor as a weapon in oppressive states.
Read the post that inspired this episode:
https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/laughter-in-the-dark Subscribe to Andrea Pitzerâs Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe This episode looks at how humor works in resisting strongmen and the ways comedy might be a useful tool against the next administration. Andrea Pitzer considers why dictators (and wannabes) are vulnerable to mockery and explores examples from Syria to Serbia--including some from America's own past. In a political universe that's been repeatedly infiltrated by entertainers (Reagan, Ventura, Trump, and more!), it's worth asking whether satire works differently these days. Andrea finds success stories and cautionary tales as she sketches the limits, risks, and untapped potential of jokes. Outlining the ways the temptations of cynical humor might divide us from the very people whose help we need to make real change, she asks questions about who gets to be in on the joke in a democracy. -
Why propaganda works and how we fight it
This episode looks at evil in the world and how the stories people hear shape their political thinking. Andrea Pitzer considers the horrors of governments running concentration camps, and her encounters with people who insist that one group of perpetrators is supremely evil in ways other humans could never be. From Germans to Russians, Palestinians to Israelis, and even Americans, she asks listeners to consider the power of narrative in shaping hatred.
Using the viral is-it-blue-and-black-or-is-it-white-and-gold debates about The Dress a decade ago, Andrea talks about the persuasive worldviews that lead people to abandon reality and her own experience growing up immersed in a delusional perspective. She addresses the commitment that moneyed, powerful interests have in building these narratives as a distractionâone that further isolates and divides the public, the better to fleece it. She closes with why this process isnât inevitable and how you can shore up the country and the world to resist it.
Subscribe to Andrea Pitzerâs Degenerate Art to support Next Comes What.
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In our second episode, we consider where we're headed with a rogue president in charge of a rogue state. We take a look back at how people stood up against torture after 9/11 and show how everyday Americans are already defying Trump allies this week.
Andrea Pitzer returns to a longtime source, Mark Fallon, who was at one time NCIS chief of counterintelligence for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. In the months after 9/11, Fallon worked to stop the torture program at Guantanamo in its early development, later going public to denounce the U.S. embrace of illegal methods.
When she first talked to him almost a decade ago, Fallon told her that the torture program had turned the U.S. into a rogue state, and that accountability would be required to return the country to democracy. In light of Trump's willingness to ignore the rule of law both domestically and abroad in ways far beyond most U.S. presidents, Andrea considers what it means to have a shameless executive in charge of a rogue state and how we might follow Fallon's example by standing up in the face of unethical or illegal activities. She offers a heartening early example from Oklahoma of people doing just that.
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From the moment election results started rolling in, people have been wondering how bad life will get during a second Trump Administration.
A decade ago, Andrea Pitzer went around the world to talk to people who had survived authoritarian rule, in order to write the first comprehensive history of concentration camps, ONE LONG NIGHT.
In this first episode of Next Comes What, recorded three days after the election, she talks about different ways that authoritarians have come to power, how Trump's rise relates to them, the real danger we're now in, some good news about why it won't all go the way Trump is planning, four areas where we'll likely see aggressive measures in January 2025, and a long list of ways (large and small!) for you to use the next two months to protect yourself and help preserve democracy.
