From the unhinged anti-immigrant rhetoric at Tuesday’s presidential debate to Elon Musk’s insane Twitter harassment to David Sirota’s fascinating new podcast on corruption, we’ve got a full show for you this week with lots of exciting twists and turns. Listen to our analysis of the debate and to our conversation with David about his exciting new podcast, “The Master Plan,” detailing how big money launched a successful coup to steal our democracy.

Social media (especially X; we shudder to think about what’s making the rounds on Facebook) has been blowing up, since Tuesday’s debate, with both memes and rightful outrage about former president Donald Trump’s extremely racist fearmongering about immigrants in his back-and-forth with Kamala Harris. Commenting on unsubstantiated neo-nazi lies that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, OH are eating residents’ cats (???), Trump has since made this graphic, racist image a rallying cry, evoking it multiple times on Tuesday night to the visible disgust and derision of the Democratic nominee. His further claim that Democrats seek to perform “transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison” is just so far-fetched, so over-the-top in its hateful conservatism, that it’s been more the subject of mockery than outright ire. But both of these comments point to the dangerous cruelty, prejudice, and xenophobic rhetoric fueling Trump’s campaign: Tuesday’s debate performance offered zero substance, seeking instead to resonate with the least humane and most hateful impulses of the public. For him to succeed, again, in this way would be unthinkable.

We also had David Sirota back on the show to talk about his new pod Master Plan — give it a listen! He’s been working on it for years at The Lever, and currently available episodes cover decades of top-secret government corruption, giving Sirota the chance to flex his formidable investigative-reporting skills. Here’s an opportunity to learn more about the profit motives guiding our government to sell out public interest, overturn our most cherished rights, and entrench its own corrupt power — David and his team has made it possible in this wonderful new podcast, which we discuss in our exclusive interview with him! You can listen to this episode as a podcast when it’s released tomorrow on Apple Podcasts, Pandora, Spotify, and more.