Announcing This is America and Other Very Big News About The Cycle

What you need to know as a Cycle subscriber

Dear The Cycle Subscribers,

Thanks to the increasing support of paid subscribers over the past year (who, I might add, are the very best people on Earth for supporting

independent journalism) I’m excited to announce some big changes coming to The Cycle!

My erstwhile co-author and partner in crime Aaron Murphy is joining The Cycle both as a producer and as co-host of a new show for paid subscribers premiering January 21st called This is America.

(Yes, he will also edit shit. I know how much my typos drive some of you batty).

This is America will be a weekly podcast summarizing and synthesizing the week’s news in a quick, gallows humor manner in just 30 minutes so that you don’t have to personally watch the daily trainwreck that is Trump 2.0 anymore, but can still fulfill your civic obligations to care.

I know many of you have turned off the news since Election Day, likely for the first time in your life.

I get it. I know you are over it because even I’m over it, and there is nothing I love more than politics and current affairs.

So, if after seeing our institutions and rule of law utterly fail to meet the moment for the past 10 years you just can’t take anymore of the day-to-day grind (or even if you do), Murph and I have got you covered!

We will be checked in for the checked out.

We have created This is America as a sort of shrine to one of my personal heroes, the foreign correspondent William L. Shirer who was assigned to Berlin during the first years of Hitler’s dictatorship.

If you are unfamiliar with Shirer’s work and are worried about American fascism, I suggest you read it as it will give you a front row seat to life under the Third Reich.

Even with heavy censorship, Shirer managed a live radio show from Berlin where he attempted to report as much reality as is possible with Nazi censors staring at him.

So badass was Bill Shirer that he kept a diary of his years in the Third Reich and risked certain death to smuggle them out of Germany when Germany invaded Poland and World War II started. He put them into a suitcase with a fake bottom that was searched by hand by the SS as he tried to leave.

Like I said, total badass.

I also love him because like us, he saw clearly what others seem to struggle to see.

So, This is America is my way of honoring Bill Shirer and everyone else who has had to brave danger to report from a dictatorship.

Now, you might be wondering, who is this Aaron Murphy guy?

Along with helping me produce Hit ‘Em Where it Hurts, Aaron has an impressive resume. He’s an experienced political operator, campaign manager and former chief of staff to U.S. Senator Jon Tester. He is the cowriter of Tester’s memoir, Grounded: A Senator’s Lessons on Winning Back Rural America (which I might note, hasn’t aged well. Sorry Aaron!)

Murphy is also the former executive director of Montana Conservation Voters, was a TV news producer, and one point, he hung out with Yogi as a Yellowstone Park ranger.

Along with This is America, Aaron joining The Cycle is going to mean some big changes are coming as we fancy things up a bit.

Here is something important: Free subscribers will continue to have access to my articles and to my long running pod cast series with top thought leaders, politicians, and authors. Those will never be firewalled and free subscribers will continue to receive that content.

But, in order to be able to afford to improve The Cycle, we need people to invest in our work through paid subscriptions. If you recently cancelled a legacy news subscription why not consider supporting The Cycle instead? As PBS says, we’re only able to produce this work because of “viewers like you.”

Along with This is America, paid subscribers will have exclusive access to several new features including a book club which will include opportunities to zoom with author(s), will get deep dive wonky analyses from Aaron on Trump’s implementation of Project 2025, and other cool shit we haven’t even thought of yet. (Got ideas? Email us).

The first episode of This is America which drops January 21st and covers what I expect to be a blitzkrieg of many terrible things all within 24 hours will be free for all subscribers. I do hope you’ll check it out.

The past doesn’t repeat, but it certainly echoes.