ABOUT THIS PODCAST 🔗
SEASON TWO: THE KINGMAKERS IS HERE
For early access to future episodes and exclusive bonus content, click here to upgrade to a paid subscription to The Lever.
Master Plan, the award-winning investigative podcast series from The Lever, reveals the hidden forces behind today’s biggest problems — and how small groups of powerful people engineered those problems to serve their own interests. We are exposing their schemes.
Narrated by David Sirota, an award-winning investigative journalist and Oscar nominee for his work on the film Don’t Look Up.
Master Plan has received the 2025 National Press Club Award for Audio Journalism, the New York Festivals Radio Award for Best Investigative Journalism Podcast, multiple Signal Awards for Best News & Politics Podcast and Best Writing. It was an Ambies finalist for Best Politics podcast and was named a Webby Awards Honoree.
Learn more at masterplanpodcast.com
For early access to future episodes and exclusive bonus content, click here to upgrade to a paid subscription to The Lever.
Master Plan, the award-winning investigative podcast series from The Lever, reveals the hidden forces behind today’s biggest problems — and how small groups of powerful people engineered those problems to serve their own interests. We are exposing their schemes.
Narrated by David Sirota, an award-winning investigative journalist and Oscar nominee for his work on the film Don’t Look Up.
Master Plan has received the 2025 National Press Club Award for Audio Journalism, the New York Festivals Radio Award for Best Investigative Journalism Podcast, multiple Signal Awards for Best News & Politics Podcast and Best Writing. It was an Ambies finalist for Best Politics podcast and was named a Webby Awards Honoree.
Learn more at masterplanpodcast.com
Hosts:
Update frequency:
biweekly
Average audio length:
45 minutes
English
United States
34 episodes
since Aug. 5, 2024
serial
AUDIENCE OF THIS PODCAST 🔗
~63.00% of listeners are from United States.
🇺🇸
US
63.00%
🇨🇦
CA
10.33%
🇸🇬
SG
7.00%
🇧🇪
BE
2.33%
🇬🇧
GB
2.33%
🇩🇪
DE
2.00%
🇦🇺
AU
2.00%
🇦🇹
AT
1.33%
🇳🇴
NO
1.33%
🇫🇷
FR
1.33%
🇳🇱
NL
1.33%
🇮🇳
IN
1.00%
🇷🇸
RS
0.66%
🇨🇭
CH
0.66%
🇮🇩
ID
0.33%
🇸🇪
SE
0.33%
🇧🇷
BR
0.33%
🇯🇵
JP
0.33%
🇩🇰
DK
0.33%
🇨🇴
CO
0.33%
🇮🇪
IE
0.33%
🇨🇿
CZ
0.33%
🇵🇷
PR
0.33%
🇫🇮
FI
0.33%
Others
0.07%
* Data source: directly measured on Listen Notes. real-time
OLDEST EPISODE 🔗
A secret plot. A public theft. A democracy corrupted.
Discover the truth. The first season of Master Plan, a new podcast from The Lever is avalable now wherever you get your podcasts.
Listen early and ad-free at masterplanpodcast.com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
PREVIOUS EPISODES 🔗
Ever wonder how America became so corrupt? It didn’t have to be this way. Our series begins in 1971, a time when hot pants were hot, bell bottoms were swinging, and campaign cash flowed like… milk.
Get ad-free Master Plan episodes by becoming a paid subscriber. Enjoy bonus episodes, exclusive co…
There’s a lost tale behind Watergate: corporate bagmen, suitcases of illegal cash, and Nixon circumventing the very campaign finance rules he’d just signed into law. Amid the blowback, Nixon leaves a ticking time bomb in the heart of Washington.
Get ad-free Master Plan episodes by becoming a paid …
A seemingly moderate corporate lawyer grows alarmed by anti-corruption reformers’ policy wins and writes a manifesto detailing how corporations and oligarchs can dominate American politics. Months later, he’s confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court by senators unaware that his manifesto is going viral …
How did corporate executives and politicians turn Lewis Powell’s memo from a blueprint into a master plan — and begin executing it? In this episode, we uncover proof of a secret “Powell Memo Task Force,” as well as clandestine meetings involving America’s most powerful businessmen, a future preside…
You might remember Mitt Romney’s infamous line: “Corporations are people, my friend.” But where did this idea come from? In this episode: how the Ford Administration and the Powell Memo movement turned to the Supreme Court to establish the precedent that legalized corruption: money is speech, and c…
When five U.S. senators get caught pressuring a regulator on behalf of a financial magnate, they become known as the “Keating Five.” The public is predictably outraged. But what no one expects is that one of those senators will learn from his mistakes and become the staunchest campaign finance refo…
After a series of setbacks in the push to legalize corruption, the master planners know they must take over the U.S. Supreme Court and halt the trend of Republican-appointed justices siding with campaign finance reformers. So in the early 2000s, they deploy their new judicial machine in an epic bat…
As President George W. Bush declares “Mission Accomplished” in the Iraq War, his administration wages a different war with swing-state senators defying his judicial nominees. Operatives like Leonard Leo and Brett Kavanaugh seize the moment to try to dramatically shift the balance of the Supreme Cou…
An anti-abortion legal activist starts using the federal courts to chip away at campaign finance restrictions, setting his sights on the Supreme Court. Indiana lawyer James Bopp Jr. engineers the Citizens United case and hand-tailors it for Justice Anthony Kennedy’s storied swing vote — setting him…
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Lever & David Sirota, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
PODCAST SEARCH ENGINE
You can use our website to search 3,828,991 podcasts and 196,507,194 episodes by people, places, or topics.
If I have seen further than others, it is by listening to podcasts and standing upon the shoulders of
giants.
‐ Isaac "Llamacorn" Newton
CLAIM THIS PODCAST
Why to claim podcasts?
If you are a podcaster, the best way to manage your podcasts on Listen Notes is by claiming your Listen Notes
podcast pages.
It is a great, free way to engage the podcast community and increase the visibility of your podcasts.
After claiming your Listen Notes podcast pages, you will be able to:
✓
Manually refresh the RSS feed to sync up
✓
Get a verified badge (
✓
) alongside with your podcast name on Listen Notes
✓
Post classified ads for sponsorship,
guests, co-hosts,
cross-promotion...
✓
Respond to listener comments on Listen Notes
✓
Use speech-to-text techniques to transcribe your show and
edit transcripts
✓
Improve the presence of your podcasts, e.g., self-service
podcaster interview...
✓
If you share your Listen Notes page and at-mention @ListenNotes
on X (formerly Twitter),
our official X (formerly Twitter) account will retweet to promote
your show to our followers.
Coming soon:
◯ Self-service promotion on Listen Notes
◯ Track your podcast stats on Listen
Notes, e.g., listens, page
views...
◯ Manage episodes
EDIT
Thank you for helping to keep the podcast database up to date.
