“Broad City” Star Ilana Glazer Guest-Hosted Our Podcast. She’s Really Good At It!

A special live event.

Rich Fury/Invision/AP

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On this week’s episode of the Mother Jones Podcast, host Jamilah King hands over interviewing duties to a surprise guest: co-creator and star of Comedy Central sitcom Broad City, Ilana Glazer.

This show was recorded at a live event in October hosted by Generator Collective, a group Glazer co-founded that puts interesting people in front of crowds to talk about policy and politics, among other campaigns to educate voters about pressing national issues.

At this event, part of a series focused on getting out the vote, Glazer interviewed our very own voting rights reporter, Ari Berman, onstage in front of an audience at Brooklyn’s Murmrr Theatre, about the dark history and current absurdities of voter suppression in America—and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s toilet habits. It also starts with a cute story about how Ari and Ilana first met.

The event series would, just days later, make national headlines: Glazer shut down a scheduled appearance when the venue, Brooklyn’s Union Temple Synagogue, was vandalized with anti-Semitic slurs in the wake of Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life massacre. Violent and threatening messages were scrawled on the hallways of the historic building. Glazer said she couldn’t put her audience at risk. “I can’t put these 200 people, who came to listen in a safe space—I can’t put them in that danger,” she told Democracy Now. “It was too freaky. It was too freaky to hold it.”

We’re revisiting this series for our special holiday set of conversations on the Mother Jones Podcast, including discussions with musician David Byrne and Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson. Thanks to Ilana, and to Generator Collective for permission to re-broadcast the event. The next conversations in Generator Collective’s events will take place January 28 and 29 in New York City at the Greene Space. You can follow Generator Collective on Instagram for updates and tickets closer to the date.

Listen to the whole show below:

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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