Pod Save America and Crooked Media founding member Jon Lovett isn’t just a podcasting legend or Barack Obama’s speechwriting secret weapon. He's a quick study of our political discourse and a cultural vanguard. Now he’s spilling the tea on everything from the “vandalism” Trump is unleashing on American institutions, the Hollywood heavy-hitter who had a hand in THAT Trump joke at the White House Correspondents' Dinner and what it was really like working with Hillary Clinton. Lovett also offers some hard truths Democrats need to face if they hold any hope of getting back into power. Plus: his hot take on the Epstein scandal and whether it could deliver a knock-out blow to Trump’s support with the MAGA faithful.

A note to listeners: Tickets are on sale now for MSNBC Live – our second live community event featuring more than a dozen MSNBC hosts. The day-long event will be held on October 11th at Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan. To buy tickets visit msnbc.com/live25.

Want to listen to this show early and without ads? Sign up for MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts.

When systems are failing, what do you triage first? That's a question that keeps constitutional law superstar Melissa Murray awake at night. As a law professor at New York University, a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and co-host of the “Strict Scrutiny” podcast, Melissa is well-versed in examining our legal system at the intersection of the social and political, and she knows that what is being broken will take a long time to rebuild. In this episode, Melissa joins Nicolle to talk about why Justice Sotomayor's dissents from the bench send a message about protest amid a conservative supermajority on the High Court, the power of Black women voters, and how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

A note: Tickets are on sale now for MSNBC Live – our second live community event featuring more than a dozen MSNBC hosts. The day-long event will be held on October 11th at Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan. To buy tickets visit msnbc.com/live25.

Want to listen to this show without ads? Sign up for MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts.

From the war in Ukraine to the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, Jacob Soboroff is no stranger to covering tragedy. His first-hand account of family separations along the Southern border during Trump’s first term became a bestselling book and later the critically acclaimed documentary “Separated” by Academy Award winning director Errol Morris. Now, Soboroff is back chronicling the human toll and devastating impact of Trump’s new immigration crackdown, including an exclusive interview for “The Best People”: with Narciso Barranco, the gardener and father of three whose violent detention by masked ICE agents in California this June went viral.

Plus: tickets are on sale now for MSNBC Live – our second live community event featuring more than a dozen MSNBC hosts. The day-long event will be held on October 11th at Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan. To buy tickets visit msnbc.com/live25.

Want to listen to this show without ads? Sign up for MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts.