Chris Hayes tells Terry Gross about how the last decade affected his politics:

My disposition as a human being is kind of a go-along-to-get-along person. I tend to trust authority. I tend to think people in charge broadly know what they’re doing, don’t lie to you, aren’t going start wars for no reason and, you know watching Iraq happen and then watching the financial crisis happen and then Katrina in the middle of that, you know, you turn around and, you think, ‘Wait a second: No one is on top of anything. Who the heck is in charge here? These people who say that they know what they’re doing don’t know what they’re doing. I’m not going to trust them the next time they tell me they know what they’re doing.’ It’s a radically unmooring feeling to recognize that people that you just figured kind of had it under control don’t have it under control and might be totally incompetent or completely corrupt or totally self-dealing.

Image of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina by greenmanowar

Chris Hayes tells Terry Gross about having people pay attention to his appearance once he started appearing on television:

You start noticing that people are noticing how you look and it is a profoundly alienating experience when it first happens, where you go on TV and you say something about some topic of the day and on the Internet people are like, ‘What was up with that shirt?’ ‘What was up with your hair?’ and you think, ‘Oh, that’s kind of a bummer.’ I think, actually, as a man it was a really useful, tiny sliver — a tiny, empathetic window — into what navigating the world as a woman often is, in which looks are so fore-grounded and so scrutinized and so discussed.

Keith Olbermann tells Terry Gross about leaving MSNBC, his new show on Current TV, why he thinks large news networks can be stifling, and what he thought about his suspension from MSNBC for donating to political candidates: “If you’re doing a political opinion show and your political opinions are nearly universally liberal — and you have been caught donating to Democratic candidates in three instances — I don’t think there’s a conflict of interest.” [complete interview here]