Dasha Nekrasova is an actress and political commentator who co-hosts the popular Red Scare podcast. She is also a victim of one of the more bizarre cancel culture stories in recent memory. Over time, ...

If we want to understand how we arrived in this authoritarian moment in 2025, we need to understand one of the central pathways that brought us here: McCarthyism. In his firsthand account of the 1949 ...

HARI SREENIVASAN: Bianna, thanks. Clay Risen, thanks so much for joining us. First, I guess for our audience that might not have paid attention in history class, the Red Scare. Why did it happen? What ...

NPR's Steve Inskeep speaks with author Clay Risen about his new book, "Red Scare," which tells the story of McCarthyism based in part on newly declassified sources. A new book by journalist Clay Risen ...

Early in “Red Scare,” Clay Risen’s thorough, impassioned but even-handed study of Cold War hysteria in the U.S., the author makes a point of explaining what his subject is — and isn’t. “There is a ...

Red scares in the American past and present. What are the parallels between the rise of McCarthyism in the 1950s and today? “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” So begins ...

Seventy-five years ago, in his February 1950 Wheeling speech, Senator Joseph McCarthy alleged that 205 communists had infiltrated the U.S. State Department, posing a dire threat to U.S. national ...

Journalist Clay Risen is out with a new narrative history of the Red Scare, based in part on newly declassified sources. In Red Scare, Risen depicts McCarthyism as a cultural witch hunt against all ...

Clay Risen discusses his new book "Red Scare." The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 was passed amid anti-communist fears during the early Cold War. That period of history is the focus of the ...