The Brian Lehrer Show

Three of our favorite segments from the week, in case you missed them.

Divisions Within Political Movements: The DSA (First) | Luigi Mangione Pleads Guilty (Starts at 34:26) | The Elizabeth Street Garden, and More Housing News (Starts at 1:02:02)

If you don't subscribe to the Brian Lehrer Show on iTunes, you can do that here.

Photo: New York City Democratic Socialists (NYC-DSA) hold a rally in Union Square marking the start of a campaign to tax the rich and win universal childcare on November 16, 2025, in New York City, United States. (Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On this Summer Friday, we've put together some of our favorite recent interviews, including:

Elie Mystal, justice correspondent and columnist for The Nation magazine and bestselling author of Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America (The New Press, 2025), looks back at the recently concluded Supreme Court term.

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, civil rights scholar, architect of Critical Race Theory and the concept of intersectionality, professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Columbia Law School, cofounder and executive director of the African American Policy Forum, and the author of Backtalker: An American Memoir (Simon & Schuster), talks about how key moment's in her life contributed to her groundbreaking legal concepts.

Mason Williams, historian and associate professor at Williams College, and the author of City of Fortune: Inequality and the Making of Contemporary New York (W.W. Norton, 2026), argues that New York's recovery from the 1970s fiscal crisis ushered in an era of deepening inequality.

Rossana Rosado, a commissioner of the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), CUNY trustee, former New York Secretary of State, former editor, CEO and publisher of El Diario-La Prensa, and the author of memoir Bronx Attitude (Elite Voices/Halo, 2026), talks about her life and work.

 

These interviews were lightly polished up and edited for time, the original versions are available here:

Elie Mystal on the Supreme Court & the Constitution (July 7, 2026)

Kimberlé Crenshaw's Life and Work (May 11, 2026)

Today's Inequality & NYC's Post-1970s Recovery (July 7, 2026)

Rossana Rosado's Bronx Attitude (July 15, 2026)

 

Photo: People resting on grass at Sheep Meadow: Central Park, N.Y.C., 1997 (LBM1948, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For the first time, China was viewed more positively than the U.S. globally in a recent Pew report. Adam Segal, Ira A. Lipman Chair in Emerging Technologies and National Security and Director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council of Foreign Relations, talks about China's foreign policy and their use of "soft power," with AI tech, and more.

Photo: Tourists visit the Qiansimen Jialing River Bridge at night to view and photograph the illuminated night scenery along the Yangtze River waterfront, August 4, 2026 in Chongqing, China. (Photo by Li Wenming/VCG via Getty Images)

 

 

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

New York Daily News education and youth issues reporter Cayla Bamberger talks about the results of the DOE's recent survey of NYC public school students and what over 357,000 students think about issues ranging from boredom to safety to vaping. 

Photo: Choir students from New York City public school 22 attend the ceremonial swearing in of Zohran Mamdani as New York City’s 112th mayor at City Hall on Thursday January 1, 2026. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

 

 

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Rommel H. Ojeda, senior community correspondent and engagement reporter for Documented, and Ralph Thomassaint Joseph, Caribbean communities correspondent for Documented, talk about how people, communities, and businesses across New York City are feeling the federal immigration crackdown.

Photo: Haitians living in Brooklyn join local politicians and others at an Immigrant Resource Fair and Know Your Rights Event in an area of Brooklyn known as 'Little Haiti' on July 28, 2026, in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

 

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.