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.

In our last episode of 2025, we take a look at the American revolutionary John Brown, who believed slavery was a crime so violent and heinous that it could not be ended through patience, compromise, or moral appeals.

Brown’s commitment to Black liberation, which was rooted in faith and a keen understanding of American society, led him from “Bleeding Kansas” to the 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, an act that helped ignite the Civil War (The Second American Revolution, 1861-1865). Brown knew his actions would cost him his life, and on the day of his execution, he wrote that the crimes of the U.S. would only be purged “with blood.”

Often dismissed as a madman or fanatic, Brown was in fact one of the few white abolitionists willing to fight to destroy slavery outright. Brown’s life, strategy, and sacrifice should be studied and honored by all those devoted to today’s freedom and resistance struggles. As Malcolm X later put it, “When you want to know good white folks in history where black people are concerned, go read the history of John Brown.”

We also touch on the radical abolitionist tradition, including the uncompromising and quirky Quaker, Benjamin Lay.

Listen to John Brown's Body, sung by Paul Robeson

In this episode, we speak with Eli Erlick, celebrated author, trans activist, and educator based out of New York City, who recently published the groundbreaking new book Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950.

In a time of moral panic when trans people are being turned into political scapegoats, with hundreds of new bills restricting their rights and visibility, Erlick’s book is a powerful reminder that trans people have always been here. Drawing on court files, newspapers, and other primary sources, Erlick uncovers the lives of trans kids, workers, activists, and athletes who lived long before words like “transgender” existed.

We talk with Eli about why reclaiming erased history matters now; why there is no such thing as the “first” trans person; how language shapes who is allowed to exist; early gender-affirming care and activism; Magnus Hirschfeld’s legacy; and how trans athletes, youth, and public life became today’s battleground in the culture war.

As Erlick writes, “History has always been a malleable tool used for political ends.” This episode is about restoring the past that reactionaries are trying to erase, and using history as a tool for truth, understanding, and future liberation.

You can learn all about Eli, order her book, and check out her tour dates on her website elierlick.com.

In this episode, we dig into the origins of the internet as a Cold War surveillance project and trace how Silicon Valley grew up inside the U.S. defense ecosystem. We look at how companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Palantir didn’t just partner with the government and state machinery—they were shaped by it. These tech titans provide the cloud systems, predictive algorithms, and data pipelines modern militaries and intelligence agencies depend on. We answer the question: Why are the world’s biggest tech companies American, and why are they so deeply intertwined with the military and intelligence world?

Pulling from Yasha Levine’s Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet and Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, we break down how tech giants turned all of us into raw material for trillion-dollar platforms, and how the normalization of constant tracking quietly erased the idea of privacy. From predictive policing and digital profiling to the smart devices that follow us everywhere, we’re living in a system where our clicks, movements, and conversations fuel both corporate profit and government control. The outrage that once met surveillance, from the MIT critics of the 1960s to the Snowden leaks, has faded into passive acceptance.

Underneath it all is a bigger question: What does freedom look like in a world built for permanent observation? The tragedy isn’t the technology; it’s how deeply it’s been weaponized for control, inequality, and empire. This episode asks whether a different digital future is still possible, or if we’re already too deep inside the surveillance machine to find a way out.

This Halloween, we open the Bible and uncover the stories Sunday School skipped. From vengeful bears and zombie armies to divine wrath, these are just some of the tales that prove the Good Book can double as nightmare fuel.

Every story is straight from scripture, complete with citations, but told with a signature mix of dark humor, skeptical commentary, and spooky sound design.

It’s the Bible like you’ve never heard it before.

Conspiracies aren’t fringe anymore. They’re at the heart of American politics. In this episode, we explore how conspiracy theories have taken root in everything from social media feeds to White House discourse. Today, the internet acts as a megaphone for conspiracies, from flat earth theory to racist ideology such as the "Great Replacement Theory.” When there’s declining trust in media, science, and politicians, conspiracy thinking often fills the void. We dive deep into why people embrace false cures and disinformation, seeking hidden forces to make sense of their own powerlessness.

Follow us down the rabbit hole as we examine how Donald Trump has embraced and amplified conspiracy culture, using it as a political tool to manipulate public perception, and how the Trump administration has normalized what was once considered extreme. We also look at a few government coverups and lies (there are far too many to fit in one episode) to argue how historical reality is often far darker than the worst conspiracy.

"Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts." – William Burroughs