Why Leaders Lie

Bestselling author, journalist, and historian, Eric Alterman, joins us for an exciting conversation discussing his book, Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie -- And Why Trump Is Worse. Eric is a Distinguished Professor of English and Journalism at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. From 1995-2020, he was The Nation’s “Liberal Media" columnist and is now a contributing writer to the magazine and also to The American Prospect, where he writes the weekly “Altercation” newsletter. He has been named a Media Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a Schusterman Foundation Fellow at Brandeis University, a Fellow of the Society of American Historians and a member of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Alterman is the author of the national bestseller What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News, as well eleven other books, including We Are Not One: A History of America’s Fight Over Israel, to be published in November, 2022 by Basic Books. He is also the winner of the George Orwell Prize, the Stephen Crane Literary Award and the Mirror Award for media criticism (twice). He holds a Ph.D in US history from Stanford minoring in Jewish Studies, an M.A. in international relations at Yale and a B.A. from Cornell. He lives in Manhattan and tweets at @eric_alterman and has an open Facebook Page.