Scheer Intelligence

As the jury was deliberating its verdict in George Floyd’s murder by former police officer Derek Chauvin, BLM co-founder Melina Abdullah spoke with Robert Scheer about the movement’s enormous impact and the work that remains.  

Jonathan Taplin joins Robert Scheer to discuss his new memoir about the time he spent among rock-and-roll royalty like Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin. 

Writer-director Oliver Hermanus discusses his new film and the complex history of his native South Africa on this week’s “Scheer Intelligence.”

Maj. Danny Sjursen, ret. discusses Biden’s stalling on Trump’s commitment to end the US-Afghanistan war.

Political cartoonist Mr. Fish joins Robert Scheer to talk about the death of his art form and his most recent book, “Nobody Left.” 

The consumer advocate, author and former presidential candidate, refuses to mince words about Democrats and their corporate bedfellows in a new interview with Robert Scheer.

Larry Gross, who grew up in Israel shortly after it was founded, talks about the racism he witnessed in the young nation long before it occupied the West Bank and Gaza.

Investigative journalist Amelia Pang joins Robert Scheer to discuss the story of a Chinese prisoner at the heart of her gripping new book, “Made in China.” 

In a special Scheer Intelligence from a March 2019 conversation,  Robert Scheer talks with his lifelong friend and legendary poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who passed recently in San Francisco at the age of 101. The two discuss a host of topics, including the importance of not selling out and the founding of San Francisco’s landmark City Lights bookshop, where Scheer worked as a young man. 

Middle East scholar Juan Cole joins Robert Scheer to discuss what the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Films like “Palmer,” released on Apple+ in late January, are redefining how global audiences understand gender constructs in previously unthinkable ways. 

Joel Whitney joins Robert Scheer to talk about the lives of poets George and Mary Oppen, two admirable Americans persecuted for their leftist ideals.  

Director Sam Pollard did a deep dive into the FBI’s surveillance of MLK under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover in his documentary “ MLK / FBI ,” released by IFC Films earlier this month. Listen to the full conversation between Pollard and Scheer as they discuss the implications of that question, as well as address the  highly controversial summaries of the FBI’s MLK surveillance tapes  discovered...

In the second part of the “Scheer Intelligence” interview with Jonathan Alter, the author of “His Very Best” examines the former president’s mixed foreign policy record.

Raised in privilege amidst the barbarism of segregation, the oft-maligned president eventually embraced the New South liberalism that just swept his native Georgia’s election.

Clay Tweel’s HBO Max documentary on the New Age “cult of cults” that claimed dozens of lives raises powerful questions about the checkered histories of various religions. 

Matt Tyrnauer, director of the devastating Showtime documentary blockbuster “The Reagans,” reveals how Donald Trump was the logical heir to the Reagan Revolution beginning with his plagiarism of the Gipper’s “Make America Great Again” slogan and ending with the abysmal failure to confront a medical pandemic.

Historian Jon Wiener, who wrote “Conspiracy in the Streets” on the subject of the Netflix film, sets the record straight on this week’s “Scheer Intelligence.”

In the second part of a two-part interview, Thomas Frank explores how anti-populism made liberals comfortable with plutocracy. 

Robert Scheer sits down with professor and author Benjamin Madley to talk about a little known part of California's history.

Thomas Frank examines the history of American populism, and how it was distorted by Democrats and co-opted by Republicans. 

Dennis Kucinich, former Ohio congressman and mayor of Cleveland, weighs in on what the Democratic Party keeps getting wrong.

Publicly-funded media models make a lot of Americans nervous, but Victor Pickard argues it may be the only way to repair our tattered democracy.

Political anthropologist David Vine argues that the most visible evidence of the country’s global empire are the thousands of military installations it has around the world. 

Attorney Ronald Goldfarb offers a scathing indictment of American law and lawyers in his new book, The Price of Justice .