Join us for our weekly podcast, featuring in-depth interviews with newsmakers and commentary from a progressive point of view. Regular panelists include Truthdig editor Robert Scheer and contributors James Harris and Josh Scheer. You can listen right on the page, or by subscribing with iTunes or another podcast-friendly program. Podcasts may be either audio or video format.
Is the war in Afghanistan worth the sacrifice of even one American life? Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter says, “No! ... We are allowing the battle in Afghanistan to be defined by a domestic American political imperative. There is no urgency in Afghanistan, there is urgency in Washington, D.C.”
Peter Richardson’s new book about the groundbreaking Ramparts Magazine says the rag changed America. Truthdig arts and culture editor Kasia Anderson asks the author and former Ramparts Editor Robert Scheer, Truthdig’s editor-in-chief, why its impact isn’t better remembered, and what will take its place.
Georgetown University law professor David Cole’s new book, “The Torture Memos,” investigates how key members of the U.S. Office of Legal Counsel rewrote the law to make torture legal.
Josh Silver from FreePress.net joined us to discuss the Glenn Beck phenomenon, Obama’s health care plan and our country’s dependence on for-profit media.
John Dunbar of the Center for Public Integrity has analyzed the Obama administration’s home loan modification program, which aims to keep troubled borrowers in their homes, and finds it “highly problematic.”
The Truthdig panel talks to radio host and author Thom Hartmann about his new book, “Threshold,” the need for serious financial regulation and his trip to Darfur.
This week the Truthdig panel talks about the racial politics behind the arrest of high-profile Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., who himself said, “I was cast by him [the policeman] in a narrative and he didn’t know how to get out of it.” Also, pop culture critic Sheerly Avni gives a big thumbs up to a new and telling film about the Iraq war, “The Hurt Locker.”
Rep. Dennis Kucinich talks about winning a big victory for health care reform, grilling Hank Paulson over the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch merger, and the battle against crony capitalism.
We talk with UC Santa Cruz history professor Matthew Lassar about the FCC, how Internet has altered the media, and why college kids can’t stop checking their Facebook accounts during classroom lectures.
In this episode, we talk with Maplight.org’s executive director, Dan Newman. Maplight, which lobbies for greater transparency in government, is a nonprofit group dedicated to illuminating the connection between money and politics. Its data reveals which politicians are on the take and the source of questionable political contributions.
Paul Starobin, author of the new book “After America: Narratives for the Next Global Age,” says a dramatic rethinking of geographic boundaries and economic responsibility would greatly improve the U.S. and states like California.
Starobin suggests that America’s broke, ill-governed and way-too-big nationlike state, California, might be saved, truly saved, not by an emergency federal bailout, but by a merciful carve-up into three republics that would rely on their own ingenuity in making their connections to the wider world.
This week on the podcast: Sheerly Avni and Omar Turcios from The Beat Within, a magazine written by and for the troubled kids in juvenile prisons. Such facilities could be “recruiting grounds for crime fighting,” argues Avni, and that’s in our self-interest. “If you want to stop crime—very simple. You look at a bunch of 5-year-old kids in the ghetto. Ask yourself: ‘Do I want them to be criminals or not in 10 years? What’s that going to do to the value of my home?’ ”
Sasha Abramsky discusses his new solution-oriented book about the millions of Americans who work 40 hours a week and still go hungry, “these forgotten communities and these forgotten families who are doing everything they’ve been told they need to do to survive and ... they’re still being pushed backward by economic forces that they really don’t control.”
In its zeal to crack down on illegal immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is detaining and deporting American citizens. The Center for Investigative Reporting’s Andrew Becker talks about his investigation into this disturbing trend.
Pentagon whistle-blower Karen Kwiatowski returns to the Truthdig podcast to take stock of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which she says are effectively “a government jobs program for the military and military contractors.”
The “Democracy Now!” host talks about her book, the state of activism and why “the media are the most powerful corporations on Earth—more powerful than any bomb, more powerful than any missile.”
Mark Danner made headlines last week with his essay in The New York Review of Books on the CIA’s use of torture and a secret report from the International Committee of the Red Cross detailing such practices. Find out why he says, “Torture is for people with weak nerves.”
President Obama has called on Americans to volunteer in their communities, but the economic meltdown makes civilian service a tough sell. In this interview, Russ Finkelstein, associate director of idealist.org, argues that “we all have something to give,” even those of us without much time and money.
You may have heard about the scandalously overpriced presidential helicopters the U.S. had ordered from Italy, but did you know they may have been a payoff for forged intelligence used to sell the war in Iraq? It’s all a part of “a web of conspiracy and deceit,” says journalist Paolo Pontoniere.
John Isaacs, executive director of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, joins the podcast with a status report on the spread of nuclear weapons. Cutting a deal with Iran and North Korea while getting the U.S. and Russia to downsize their own arsenals won’t be easy, but it may be only a matter of time—and diplomacy.
The Truthdig Podcast is back and better than ever. This week the panel tackles our obsession with imperfect athletes, the first days of the Obama administration and the decline of media. Special guest Megan Tady, campaign coordinator for Free Press, joins James Harris and Josh Scheer.
Barack Obama is rumored to favor Lawrence Summers as his treasury secretary. That’s a terrible choice, says Robert Scheer, if the president-elect is at all concerned about the financial meltdown.
Battlefield in the War of Ideas
