In this episode, we’re joined by a special guest, Hamilton Nolan, a journalist, author on labor and politics, union organizer, and activist. We talk about how journalism survived the death of print only to be swallowed and spit out by Big Tech, private equity, and monopoly capitalism.

We trace the rise and fall of online media, digging into Hamilton’s early days at Gawker. We discuss how corporate greed and tech oligarchs crushed newsrooms, turned mainstream media into compliant mouthpieces, and left independent reporting fighting for air. If you’ve ever wondered why layoffs hit newsrooms every few months, or why your favorite journalists are drifting onto Substack, or why AI summaries answer your questions without sending you to the article, this is why.

We delve into how Google’s algorithms and collapsing ad revenue triggered a traffic apocalypse, and how generative AI now threatens to replace the very labor it feeds on. We also talk about why unions are critical for the last remaining scraps of editorial independence and why journalism still matters in an era where "everything is content and nothing is read." Finally, Hamilton shares his take on solutions that might stop the ship from sinking, before the internet finishes eating itself.

To learn more about Hamilton Nolan, check out his website How Things Work and his book The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor.

In this episode, we discuss how the latest U.S. assault on Venezuela and the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro are part of a centuries-long project of American imperial domination in Latin America.

The goal isn't just to take over Venezuela’s oil reserves. The deeper objective of a new Monroe Doctrine is to control the Western Hemisphere and block China and other rivals from gaining influence.

What happened in Venezuela also reveals something bigger: An empire in decline, without a mask, using brute force to discipline its "backyard." At stake is the future of sovereignty and whether any other country can refuse submission to U.S. power.

We break down why Venezuela has been relentlessly targeted, from the moment Hugo Chávez asserted control over the country’s oil and challenged local elites and foreign capital. We place Venezuela within the longer history of U.S. coups, dictatorships, and dirty wars across Latin America.

We also talk about the political power of a reactionary, white upper-class opposition that has repeatedly aligned itself with Washington against the country’s poor and working-class majority.

Why are so many people hungry in the world's richest nation? In this episode, we unpack how food isn’t just something people eat. It’s a tool of power. From food deserts and ultraprocessed diets to collapsing health, we trace how modern food production is organized to maximize corporate profit while punishing the poor, the working class, and the oppressed.

We discuss how a handful of giant food conglomerates, like Cargill, quietly control the supply chains behind nearly everything you eat. These global monopolies use food as a weapon, flooding weaker countries with exports, destroying local farmers, and forcing nations into cycles of economic dependence where people go hungry at home.

We dive into the long history of food in colonization and racial inequality in the U.S. Drawing from the book Ruin Their Crops on the Ground by Andrea Freeman, we examine how deliberate starvation has been used by the American rulers, from indigenous land theft to the sugar plantations to SNAP benefits. This episode argues that food oppression and inequality are inherent to the capitalist production system.