Exploitation Nation, The Podcast, with Brittany Friedman

It’s the season finale of Exploitation Nation! To end season one, we have one more installment of our “What We’re Reading” series. What does it mean to die in police custody, and how are coroners implicated in shaping accountability and uplifting systems of power? This episode, Brittany sits down to chat with Terence Keel, author of “The Coroner’s Silence,” unpacking how written onto the bodies of...

In a single week this past March, federal courts saved the Florida panther’s habitat and restored the Endangered Species Act (ESA), after seven years of litigation. The very next day, a panel of federal cabinet officials called the “God Squad” voted unanimously to exempt the entire Gulf of Mexico oil and gas industry from that same law, citing “national security.” This month we tell both stories....

In this episode, our host, Dr. Brittany Friedman, sat down with Crop Swap LA’s founder & executive director, Jamiah Hargins, to discuss the intersections of urban farming, food insecurity, and sustainability. The two discuss Crop Swap LA initiatives to address food insecurity and provide healthy food options for LA neighborhoods. In the Truth in 10, our correspondent, Olivia, takes us IRL to one o...

In the second installment of our “What We’re Reading” series, we examine the political economy of confinement as seen through incarceration and immigration detention and the expanding role of private prison corporations contracting with government agencies–a multi-billion dollar industry. Drawing on abolitionist policy frameworks, this conversation features an interview with Bianca Tylek, author o...

What if “doing nothing” isn’t being lazy or apathetic, but an intentional political practice? In this episode, we unpack Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing and place it in conversation with Black feminist thinkers like Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, and bell hooks. We explore attention as a site of extraction and what it means to resist productivity, visibility, and constant availability in a world that...

What do the cases of Sean “Diddy” Combs and Jeffrey Epstein reveal about power, silence, and cover-ups? In this episode, we break down how allegations of sexual and gender-based violence can circulate for years without consequence, how institutions conceal harm until they are forced to be accountable, and why such violence is publicly exposed only when silence is no longer profitable. We also disc...

Tianna Laboy thought jail would cost her time. She did not expect it to cost her money, let alone the future of her child. In this episode, we follow her story and speak with April D. Fernandes, Ph. D., to uncover how confinement has become a profit center and what that means not only for the people inside, but for the little known origin story of America. This episode is a cinematic exploration o...