The Brian Lehrer Show

Three of our favorite segments from the week, in case you missed them.
Kate Manne, professor at the Cornell University Sage School of Philosophy, offers her take on the casual misogyny that allows rape culture to thrive (First) | The Left's pleas for Mayor Zohran Mamdani to fire NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch (Starts at 45:00) | The literary legacy of brothers Frank and Malachy McCourt (Starts at 1:10:00)
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Maria Ressa, journalist, CEO of the news outlet Rappler, professor at Columbia University and the author of The Fight Back: A Citizen's Guide to Standing Up to Dictators (Harper, 2026) talks about the role of the press and individuals in maintaining democracy, especially in this age of AI.
Photo: Maria Ressa at the book fair Frankfurt 2025 (Jaramo81, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International via Wikimedia Commons)

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Jon Campbell, Albany reporter for WNYC and Gothamist, talks about how the issue of affordability came up in this week's debate between Gov. Hochul and her Republican challenger, Bruce Blakeman.
Photo: New York Democratic gubernatorial candidate, current Gov. Governor Kathy Hochul and Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman face off in the only scheduled debate ahead of the November New York gubernatorial election at the Spectrum News NY1 studios on October 13, 2026 in New York City. (Anna Connors, Pool via Getty Images)

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Ash Wu, books news reporter at The New York Times, talks about Anne Carson, the Canadian poet, essayist and novelist who won this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, and where to start if you’ve never read her.
Photo: Anne Carson, poet, at the 2024 National Book Awards finalist reading in the NYU Skirball Center (Jay Dixit, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International via Wikimedia Commons)

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Kate Manne, professor at the Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell University, author of the Substack newsletter More to Hate, and many books, including Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women (Crown, 2020), offers her take on the casual misogyny that allows rape culture to thrive.

Photo: Students walk the campus grounds at Cornell University, on October 8, 2026, in Ithaca, New York. (Photo by Ryan Murphy/Getty Images)

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