2023 guests
69- (Dec 19, 2023)
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Hosts Greg Godels and Pat Cummings celebrate the podcast's third anniversary by reflecting on past guests and episodes, debating where they agreed and disagreed, discussing memorable conversations, and assessing the state of the American left.
68- (Nov 16, 2023)
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Physician and public health expert Stephen Bezruchka demonstrates that social and economic inequality is the primary determinant of health outcomes, using COVID-19 mortality data to show that the US's extreme inequality made it uniquely vulnerable to the pandemic.
67- (Nov 7, 2023)
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Journalist and author Sarah Kendzior argues that American conspiracy culture, far from being a fringe phenomenon, functions to keep citizens politically passive and provide cover for elite malfeasance, while real conspiracies by powerful actors go unaddressed.
66- (Oct 31, 2023)
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Sociologist Charles Derber argues that capitalism's growth imperative is the primary driver of ecological collapse and species extinction, showing how the profit motive structurally prevents the systemic changes needed to address the environmental crisis.
65- (Oct 26, 2023)
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Former campaign manager for Ralph Nader's presidential runs, Theresa Amato exposes the structural and legal barriers that lock third parties out of American elections, arguing the two-party system is an antidemocratic cartel that suppresses genuine political choice.
64- (Oct 10, 2023)
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Writer Fredrik DeBoer argues that elite capture has hollowed out progressive social justice movements, transforming them from tools of working-class power into vehicles for credentialed professionals seeking status, while abandoning material demands in favor of symbolic representation.
63- (Oct 3, 2023)
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Author Peter Serko discusses his historical novel Hattie's War, its characters, historical setting, and the real events that inspired it, exploring how fiction can illuminate forgotten historical episodes and progressive political themes.
62- (Sep 19, 2023)
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Author Christian Parenti discusses Alexander Hamilton's radical economic program for American industrial development and the political essay 'The First Privilege Walk,' examining both the subversive potential of America's founders and the history of social justice education.
61- (Sep 5, 2023)
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Investigative journalist Trevor Aaronson discusses his reporting and podcast on FBI undercover operations targeting domestic suspects, documenting how agents manufacture terrorism cases through entrapment, raising serious civil liberties concerns.
60- (Aug 22, 2023)
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Former UN human rights expert Alfred de Zayas critiques the international human rights establishment as selective, politically weaponized, and captured by Western governments applying human rights principles to allies while exempting US-backed abusers.
59 – (Jul 25, 2023)
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Poet, writer, scholar, and Vietnam veteran W.D. Ehrhart discusses his essay collection confronting the legacy of the Vietnam War, the lies that launched it, the trauma it inflicted, and the ways militarist mythology continues to distort American political culture.
58- (Jun 29, 2023)
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Historian Vijay Prashad analyzes the collapse of US military ventures in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan, showing what these catastrophic failures reveal about the structural limits of American imperial power and the resilience of resistance movements.
57- (Jun 12, 2023)
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Human rights lawyer and peace activist Dan Kovalik shares direct observations from a trip to Russia and Crimea, offering a firsthand perspective on the Russia-Ukraine conflict that challenges Western media narratives about conditions on the ground.
56- (Jun 6, 2023)
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Scholar Norman Finkelstein argues that contemporary “woke” identity politics and cancel culture are elite-driven ideologies that undermine working-class solidarity and genuine left politics while fostering new restrictions on academic freedom.
55– (May 25, 2023)
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Journalist Walker Bragman investigates the right-wing parent group Moms for Liberty, tracing its origins, dark money funding, connections to Republican power brokers, and its coordinated campaign to ban books and purge progressive content from public schools.
54– (May 18, 2023)
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Indigenous rights advocate Sarah Augustine discusses settler colonialism and the ongoing dispossession of Native peoples, challenging the myth of empty land and examining current struggles for indigenous sovereignty and land justice.
53 – (May 2, 2023)
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Labor organizer Chris Townsend examines the covert 'boring from within' labor-organizing tactics pioneered by William Z. Foster and whether such underground strategies remain viable for rebuilding worker power in hostile industries today.
52 – (April 27, 2023)
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Journalist Alissa Quart dismantles the bootstrap mythology embedded in American culture, showing how the belief that individual effort determines success naturalizes inequality and shifts blame from economic structures to struggling individuals.
51 – (April 25, 2023)
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Philosopher Carlos Garrido examines how purity-culture ideology has hobbled Western Marxism, arguing that sectarian demands for doctrinal perfection have isolated the left from the working class and prevented effective political organizing.
50 – (Mar 30, 2023)
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Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson provides pointed, accessible counter-arguments to 25 of the most common conservative talking points, offering a progressive rebuttal guide for debating right-wing claims about economics, race, crime, and governance.
49 – (Mar 7, 2023)
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Vietnam veteran and poet W.D. Ehrhart discusses Marine General Smedley Butler's classic anti-war pamphlet, still radically relevant nearly a century later, exposing war as a racket that enriches corporations while sacrificing soldiers and civilians.
48 – (Feb 9, 2023)
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Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat identifies the common playbook of authoritarian strongmen from Mussolini to contemporary leaders' cult of personality, machismo, violence, and the corruption of state institutions, and what it tells us about resisting fascism today.
47 – (Jan 26, 2023)
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Author Tom Hulst discusses the life of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, one of America's great civil libertarians, whose 36-year tenure and passionate advocacy for individual rights, wilderness, and dissent made him a towering and controversial figure.