Have you heard about Larry Krasner? He’s a lefty progressive lawyer in Philadelphia that made his name by defending the underdogs, representing activists and suing police officers. Last year, he was elected as Philadelphia’s District Attorney, meaning he now runs the mass incarceration machine he’s spent his decades-long career criticizing. He might be the last person in the world you would expect to be the chief prosecutor for the city of Philadelphia, but if you truly want to see criminal justice reform what better place to start? People looking at the growth of mass incarceration are increasingly focusing on the key role that prosecutors play, and in just six months Krasner has already radically changed that role. Chris Hayes got a chance to talk to Larry Krasner about “storming the palace doors”.Read more at NBCNews.com/WhyIsThisHappening

What does it look like when fracking comes to town? For folks in poor rural areas, parts of Trump Country before we had Trump Country, fracking can mean opportunity, wealth, and autonomy for some, destruction and ruin for others. Journalist Eliza Griswold tells a story that begins in the Niger delta and brings her to the doorstep of a family farm in Southwest Pennsylvania in the midst of the energy boom. There, in the towns of Amity and Prosperity, she learns about the intimate and complex reasons why people chose to bring fracking to their town, and the crisis they face when mysterious illnesses begin to appear.Read more at NBCNews.com/WhyIsThisHappening

Families are being ripped apart at the border, a Republican Congressman retweeted a Nazi sympathizer, and Trump White House officials are being protested with increasing regularity. It is feeling pretty rough out there – so just how bad is it? There have been some folks looking to the Civil War when discussing the current landscape of political polarization. While it’s not quite that bad, just exactly where are we on the scale of ‘everything’s fine’ to ‘Civil War’? Chris Hayes and Vox editor-at-large Ezra Klein have been checking in on this very question throughout the Trump administration. In this episode, they talk about unique problems of the American political project, the staying-power of political identities, and what we can learn from the X-Men superhero, Legion. Read more at NBCNews.com/WhyIsThisHappening

How did Hurricane Maria evolve from a natural disaster into a human catastrophe in Puerto Rico? While the official death count remains at 64, a Harvard study suggests thousands were killed. While the hurricane left its devastating mark on the island, there were already destructive forces in play long before the storm made landfall. Forces that made Puerto Rico uniquely vulnerable to the ravaging effects of the storm and its aftermath. So when did the problems in Puerto Rico start? And how did they manifest in the lead up and aftermath of Hurricane Maria? Naomi Klein says that to understand what happened you need to go way back before the storm. She explains how Hurricane Maria acted as an accelerant to a process long underway and that could continue to get worse as Puerto Rico tries to pick up the pieces. Visit NBCNews.com/WhyIsThisHappening for more.

There seems to be a lot of talk about this idea of political tribalism lately. Critiques that groups are increasingly insular not just around politics but about race or religion or any number of identity markers, and that this isolation makes it impossible to have meaningful conversations about the big issues facing our country. We’ve witnessed groups rallying around their side in ways that can be ugly, discounting the thoughts of the ‘Other’ on the mere status of being other, but is that true of all of political tribalism? Is it a dangerous group in-thinking or can it look like positive, meaningful group organizing? Chris Hayes is torn about the ambiguous use of political tribalism as a critique of certain types of politics, so he brought in Amy Chua to work them out. Amy Chua has been studying prejudice for 20 years and has a new book out called “Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations”. In this episode, Chris Hayes and Amy Chua wrestle over these questions and discuss whether political tribalism is even inherently a bad thing to begin with. Visit NBCNews.com/WhyIsThisHappening for more.

The Trump administration is forcibly separating immigrant children from their parents, something they are hoping will deter immigrants from entering the country. It's sparked widespread outrage, protests and lawsuits, with the White House now attempting to distance itself from its own policy. How did we get here? Lee Gelernt has worked on immigrants right’s issues with the ACLU since 1992 and is now the lead lawyer suing the Trump administration to stop taking kids away from their parents. In this episode, Gelernt explains how immigration and national security became so conflated, how it connects to 9/11, and describes the trauma these families are going through. Read the full transcript at NBCNews.com/WhyIsThisHappening.

From the rise of fake news and the troll farms pumping it out to the harvesting of our Facebook data by groups like Cambridge Analytica, Chris Hayes knows the internet feels pretty crappy these days. In this episode, Hayes examines how something once seen as a miracle of human connection became a free-for-all frenzy to get your clicks, and marvels at the lengths companies will go to keep your eyes to your screens. These are the ideas Tim Wu has spent a career, and two books, exploring. So, when we ask what created the conditions for this environment and angst surrounding our experience with the internet, we turn to Tim.

Since his first day in office, Donald Trump has been testing the boundaries of the law on multiple fronts. From his open hostility towards the investigation into his campaign’s involvement with a foreign adversary, to his policy prescriptions by way of executive order, to the way Donald Trump runs his own White House, this President has challenged the rule of law like no other recent President. So, in the case of Donald Trump v. the Law – who’s winning? And what can we learn from what’s happened so far? In this episode Chris gets answers from Kate Shaw, a law professor from the Cardozo School of Law who has worked in both the White House, the Supreme Court, and who also happens to be his wife. It also happened to be her birthday on the day this was recorded, and yes, that came up. Read more at NBCNews.com/whyisthishappening

Is President Donald Trump a conservative? While other contemporary writers and thinkers may be quick to write the President off as an anomaly to the conservative movement, Corey Robin has another theory. He argues that if you trace conservatism back through the centuries to understand what the movement is really truly about, then Donald Trump makes perfect sense. Corey Robin, author of “The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump”, is the guy who can explain why this is happening. Read more at NBCNews.com/whyisthishappening