Georgia made history this week: The state elected a Black Senator on Tuesday for the first time ever. Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Morehouse graduate who serves as senior pastor of the storied Ebenezer Baptist Church once pastored by Dr. Martin Luth

9: The System Check Book Club

Jan 1st, 2021 1h 9m

This week on System Check we are saying farewell to 2020 and hello to 2021 with our first System Check Book Club. Your hosts Melissa and Dorian first aired this Book Club as a Live Event on YouTube and Facebook just in time for holiday reading.

8: Could This Pandemic End Up Making Our Healthcare System Stronger?

Dec 18th, 2020 43m 23s

President-elect Joe Biden has made history: This week, he announced that Rep. Deb Haaland would be his pick for head of the Interior Department, the first Native American person ever to a Cabinet-level position, making Biden’s Cabinet the most

7: The Pandemic Didn’t Have to Be This Bad

Dec 11th, 2020 38m 16s

Defund. That one word has motivated thousands across the country to take to the streets this year to end police violence against Black Americans, and it has also become the punching bag for some Democratic politicians to explain their electoral

6: There Is No Room to Mess Up This Presidential Transition

Dec 4th, 2020 35m 2s

Seventy-eight: That’s the number of days between the Presidential election and the Presidential inauguration. Much needs to be accomplished in those days for the peaceful transition of power. The stakes are higher than you think, and there are

5: It’s Time America Abolished Poverty

Nov 27th, 2020 40m 23s

There are a lot of jobs we as a country don’t value. Think farm work, child care, service jobs—these low-wage, often racialized and gendered jobs form the backbone of our economy, but if you’ve worked in any of these fields, you know how hard i

4: Why Are People Poor?

Nov 20th, 2020 33m 19s

This week, your co-hosts Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian Warren get personal.Melissa’s Grandma Rosa lived and worked in poverty in the Jim Crow south. She was a seamstress who suffered from arthritis, and she made tremendous personal sacrif

3: How Georgia Turned Blue

Nov 13th, 2020 48m 56s

When Stacey Abrams won the Democratic primary in Georgia’s gubernatorial election two years ago, System Check hosts Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian Warren wrote an article for Time Magazine, saying, “If Abrams can win the general election and b

2: White Supremacy Is Baked Into Our Electoral System

Nov 6th, 2020 42m 44s

How did we get here? How did we get to the end of a week in which Americans cast 160 million votes, the highest number ever in a general election and the highest voter turnout among eligible citizens in over a hundred years, a week in which one

1: Every Vote Must Count

Oct 30th, 2020 49m 3s

Welcome to System Check. On this podcast, we’re going to break down the big, unwieldy, seemingly immovable systems that structure our politics and our lives. In the ten episodes in this season, we will delve into the history of these systems, a

Trailer

1: Introducing: System Check

Oct 21st, 2020 2m 28s

Lights are blinking. Alarms are blaring. The dashboard of our democracy is warning us that it is time to check our systems. On System Check, the latest podcast from The Nation, hosts Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian Warren turn down the frenzy