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Government

The Melting Pod

by Amanda Baran, Doug Rand, and Claire Trickler-McNulty

Today: #119 in Government on our combined chart.

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Government
#119 New on this chart
#118 Pulse 8

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DateApple Podcasts
Oct 3#118

About the show

The Melting Pod brings you stories of our dysfunctional immigration system, and where we go from here.  Hosted by three friends who’ve served inside the federal government for two decades and four presidents of both parties, The Melting Pod will give you a deeper understanding of the immigration headlines, without jargon or shallow punditry.  Amanda Baran, Doug Rand, and Claire Trickler-McNulty will also bring you extraordinary people with extraordinary stories to tell – about how we got here and where we're going.

Latest episodes

  • News Dive: The Great De-Legalization, H-1B Follies, and Midterm Predictions

    September 10, 2026 · 1 hr 1 min

    We plunge beneath the latest immigration headlines to make sense of the senseless. What is the human cost of revoking deportation protections from over a million people? Why is the newly proposed H-1B fee precisely $103,265? Why are your…

  • Asylum Is Not a Loophole, with Colleen Zengotitabengoa

    September 4, 2026 · 1 hr 17 min

    What is asylum? Simply put, the United States must not return someone to a country where they have a well-founded fear of persecution. Following the atrocities of World War II, Congress created a U.S. asylum system under international…

  • Confessions of an Immigration Bureaucrat, with Michael Valverde

    August 13, 2026 · 1 hr 5 min

    Every year, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) makes millions of highly consequential decisions that affect individual people’s lives. Applications for green cards, work permits, asylum and refugee status, even U.S…

  • Three Big Lies About Immigrants and Fraud, with Sonya Schwartz

    July 22, 2026 · 56 min

    From the first moments of his first campaign for president, Donald Trump has accused immigrants of fraudulently obtaining public benefits, immigration protections, and even votes. Does any of this hold up under scrutiny? We asked Sonya…

  • A Winning Message on Immigration, with Beatriz Lopez

    June 30, 2026 · 1 hr 3 min

    In the 2024 presidential election, Republicans spent nearly $600 million on political advertisements pounding Biden (and then Harris) for botching the border. The Democrats’ uninspiring message in response was: “No we didn’t.” Ever wonder…

  • The Reality-Based Economics of Immigration, with Jenny Hunt

    June 19, 2026 · 49 min

    Jenny Hunt is a Rutgers University professor, the former Chief Economist at the Department of Labor, and a key contributor to the gold-standard, 600-page consensus report on the economic consequences of immigration. Don’t worry, we’re…

  • News Digest: Green Card Chaos, Hunger Strikes, and Stern Dad Energy

    June 3, 2026 · 1 hr 8 min

    We dive underneath the latest immigration headlines to make sense of the senseless. Why did the Trump administration threaten to shut down U.S. green card processing? Why did the press believe that Markwayne Mullin would be a kinder…

  • The Truth About ICE, with Jason Houser

    May 26, 2026 · 1 hr 2 min

    From calls to abolish ICE to deeply held misconceptions about immigration and criminality, few agencies generate more heat and less light than Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In this episode, we dig into the reality of how ICE…