Most people know Mark Cuban as a Shark Tank investor or longtime owner of the Dallas Mavericks. But a few years ago, he started Cost Plus Drugs to cut out the middleman in a pharmaceutical industry he says is fundamentally broken.

Cuban wants healthcare for everyone—even if he doesn't think Medicare for All is the answer. He argues that transparency is the missing ingredient, and lays out what he thinks it would actually take to build a universal healthcare system that works.

Sarah McCammon speaks with Cuban about healthcare reform, AI, wealth inequality, the future of the Democratic Party, and why he believes politicians need to spend less time talking and more time solving people's everyday problems.

IN THIS EPISODE

00:00 — Cold open

1:14 — Why Cost Plus Drugs exists

4:54 — The transparency problem

9:13 — Universal healthcare vs. Medicare for All

16:10 — Billionaires and inequality

23:29 — Democrats, DSA, and social media

28:52 — AI and the future of work

38:08 — Advice for the next Democratic nominee

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After Donald Trump won in 2016, Jackie Payne did something unusual. She got in a car and spent two years just listening to women. What she found was a huge number of moderate women — in the suburbs and small towns — that both parties keep underestimating, and keep getting wrong. Closing that gap with America’s largest single voting bloc would meaningfully expand the coalition for progress and put extremists on the ropes.

Payne is the founder and executive director of Galvanize Action, a group focused on moderate women. That makes her uniquely plugged into what these women want, and full of ideas on how to persuade them.

Sarah McCammon spoke with Payne in Seattle.

IN THIS EPISODE:

00:00 — Cold open

01:02 — The shock of 2016

03:39 — Conflict, self-doubt, and standing alone

05:40 — Why white women: math and morality

10:48 — Who these women are

12:37 — The 2024 shift nobody noticed

18:09 — Broken arms and sick days

21:41 — The affordability-and-corruption recipe

24:14 — What's actually in their feeds

29:31 — Can a woman win in 2028?

45:02 — Make her feel seen

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They took very different roads into the Democratic Party. Walsh was a Tea Party congressman who campaigned for Donald Trump in 2016. Egbewole ran communications in Joe Biden's White House — and now she's a political commentator on Fox News.

They both have ideas about why the Democratic Party feels so out of touch to many red-state voters, and thoughts on how to win them back. Sarah McCammon spoke with them live on stage in Charleston, South Carolina earlier this year.

IN THIS EPISODE:
00:00 — Cold open

00:26 — Two roads into the party

02:19 — What turns gettable voters off

04:54 — Crime down 35% means nothing

07:23 — The online left monster

10:10 — Authenticity vs. fighting

11:18 — Why there's no going back to Obama

14:14 — Independent media is where voters are

16:42 — Going into enemy territory

17:58 — Win purple, own purple

19:03 — The national brand problem

23:27 — Ultimate advice for democratswhats 

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Pulido's opponent mocked his music career, saying the election wasn't about who you want performing at your niece's quinceañera. So he turned that dig into four thousand invitations to quinceañeras and other celebrations across Texas.

Pulido thinks the key to flipping the district is to keep showing up in unconventional places. Sarah McCammon spoke with him in Washington, D.C.

IN THIS EPISODE:

00:00 — Cold open

01:15 — The dig, flipped into 4,000 invitations

04:38 — Trust beats policy / ranch halls

07:47 — What "Tejano" means

12:25 — Immigration, up close

18:16 — Why Hispanic voters moved right

21:46 — The gender gap and purity tests

24:50 — Faith and the "godless" label

27:19 — Rural respect over money

30:31 — Why a Democrat / social media's cancer

32:38 — Celebrity: weakness or strength

36:06 — Why leave the stage for Congress

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She was born in Peoria, moved around as a kid, and landed back in the heartland. She likes to say she's one of the few members of Congress who's spent time on the kill floor of a meatpacking plant. And she just won her primary by more than 50 points against a challenger who said she wasn't progressive enough.

Now Budzinski represents a district that stretches from a college town to steel mills and soybean fields — and she's trying to answer a question her party can't afford to get wrong: how do Democrats win back working people who've stopped believing the party is fighting for them?

00:00 — Cold open
1:44 — Peoria roots and a working-class inheritance
4:00 — The kill floor in Kentucky
7:03 — A $15 wage won across the table
12:56 — On why she Democrats lost the working class
15:50 — Voting to deny ICE new money
21:46 — Workhorse, not show horse
25:10 — Money in politics and governing with power
32:16 — Her grandfather's American dream

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Sarah McCammon spoke with Ambassador Emanuel in Chicago about the Jewish upbringing that still shapes him, why he confronted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to his face in 2009, and why he says the party's divide on Israel is generational rather than partisan. 

Part 1 dropped last week.

IN THIS EPISODE:

00:00 — Cold open

00:56 — A secular country still searching for meaning

02:52 — The Sadiq Khan synagogue story

05:20  — His grandmother’s red purse and family passports

09:09 — Navigating this moment as a Jewish Democrat

13:53 — Going face-to-face with Netanyahu in 2009

16:01 — Where the Palestinian leadership failed

16:42 — "A very aggressive moderate"

20:36 — Why Democrats flinch at power

26:32 — What’s Next

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Ambassador Emanuel argues that America has spent 25 years sleepwalking — through the Iraq war, the Great Recession, and the pandemic — and that the people responsible were never held accountable. His solution starts somewhere you might not expect: a Mississippi classroom.

Sarah McCammon spoke with him in Chicago about his diagnosis of the country, the education plan he'd run from elementary school to free community college, how we confront AI anxiety, and why he says it's the crisis neither party takes seriously enough.

Part 2 drops next week.

00:00 — Cold open

01:27 — Why New Hampshire, and what a bike trip tells you

05:51 — "America has lost its nerve"

08:23 — The pattern: elites walk off clean

10:43 — How business put the China market over national security

14:33 — The Chicago school record

15:34 — Phonics, Mississippi, and a generation lost

16:06 — A plan for every graduate, and free community college

17:31 — Trades and "build baby build"

19:54 — Ban social media under 16

20:20 — AI anxiety and why the trades are the hedge

23:56 — How a president leads without commanding the states

27:12 — The three doors and the 80 percent

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The granddaughter of a Mexican immigrant who served in the Army, Sen. Cortez Masto grew up the daughter of a Las Vegas parking attendant — who went on to become lowkey Vegas famous. She became a prosecutor, then Nevada's attorney general, and she's married to a former Secret Service agent. And she's the first Latina ever elected to the U.S. Senate.

Sarah McCammon spoke with Sen. Cortez Masto in Washington about why she refuses to join the calls to abolish ICE even as she condemns agents’  behavior under Trump and is leading the push for accountability, what it actually takes to win swing voters, and the fights she says she'll never give up.

00:00 — Cold open

01:06 — Why Nevada wants to be first

04:05 — A message about costs

07:17 — What went wrong in 2024

08:18 — An immigrant family in Vegas

13:47 — A prosecutor's case against ICE

16:46 — Why not abolish ICE

17:56 — On "soft on crime"

20:01 — The case for moderates

24:36 — Showing up where you lose

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Higgins left a corporate career to run the Peace Corps in Belize, served as a diplomat, then won a county commission seat representing Little Havana. Now she's mayor of one of America's most immigrant-shaped cities.

Sarah McCammon sat down with Mayor Higgins in Miami to talk about building affordable housing, what it actually takes to win Latino voters, and why she's not afraid of the word "capitalist."

00:00 — Cold open

00:02:24 — Engineer in a blue jumpsuit

00:04:00 — Writing her own obituary

00:04:57 — Peace Corps to politics

00:08:29 — 100 days as mayor

00:15:05 — Winning Little Havana

00:21:19 — Leading through deportations

00:28:07 — Affordable housing in an unaffordable city

00:42:40 — "We can be Democrats differently"

00:45:16 — The Latino vote isn't monolithic

00:46:33 — Knocking on doors

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Sherrill is a former Navy pilot and the first female veteran ever elected governor. Sarah McCammon talks to Gov. Sherrill in Trenton about how she actually flipped Trump voters, why she declared a state of emergency for energy prices on day one, and what she would say to Democrats who keep losing.

0:00 — Cold open

1:50 — Deciding to fly

3:57 — Life on the carrier

7:00 — On Pete Hegseth

07:32 — Tailhook and women in combat

11:06 — Getting government to yes

14:19 — The day-one energy emergency

22:37 — Flipping five Trump counties

25:40 — Thinking long-term

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