Dexter Filkins, a staff writer at The New Yorker joins us to discuss his new article, "Was There a Connection Between a Russian Bank and the Trump Campaign?" The article examines a series of mysterious communications between a Trump Organization server and a Russian bank in 2016.

Ruth Beckermann joins us to discuss her new film, which will screen at the New York Film Festival titled, “The Waldheim Waltz.” Kurt Waldheim was an Austrian diplomat and politician who served as Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1982. In 1986, his nation elected him as president despite a controversy over his previously undisclosed role in the Nazi regime during World War II. Using archival footage, Beckermann studies how various media reported Waldheim’s accession and, more broadly, the influence of false naïveté and political pressure by those in positions of power.

Journalist Sarah Smarsh joins us to discuss her book, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth. During Smarsh’s childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, the forces of cyclical poverty and the country’s changing economic policies solidified her family’s place among the working poor. By telling the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves, Smarsh challenges us to look more closely at the class divide in our country.