The Real News Podcast

As Russia’s assault on Ukraine grinds on and fears over the deployment of chemical or nuclear weapons grows, Iran nuclear talks are picking up speed down in Vienna. The aim of these negotiations, ostensibly, is to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA), more commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, which the US withdrew from under President Donald Trump in 2018, though negotiations...

Hundreds of non-tenure-track lecturers and adjunct faculty at Howard University, one of the most storied higher education institutions in the US, have been fighting for nearly four years to negotiate their first union contract with the university administration. On Wednesday, March 23, just hours before they were set to go on strike, the union bargaining team reached a tentative agreement with the...

When a Terre Haute, Indiana, man was arrested for not walking on a sidewalk on a street that doesn’t have one, the Police Accountability Report investigated. We obtained body camera and dashcam video evidence that offers a rare glimpse into the indifference of American law enforcement—evidence that not only contradicts the allegations made by the arresting officer, but that also reveals how diffic...

Ever since World War II, the US economy has become increasingly reliant on the war industry to provide jobs. It was, in fact, World War II that converted our existing economy into one dependent on government spending from the Pentagon and its associated agencies and industries. But it is possible to convert the economy back the other way, from one centered on the war industry to one that generates...

Retired teacher Al Levie helped organize his high-school students in Racine, Wisconsin, then the students worked together to build a powerful movement. We are diving right back into our special series of conversations with teachers, organizers, scholars, and activists in Wisconsin that TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez, Cameron Granadino (TRNN), and Hannah Faris (In These Times) recorded in...

From her world-famous book "Dead Man Walking" to a life spent educating the public about the inhumanity of the death penalty, the work of activist nun Sister Helen Prejean is known around the globe. What is less widely known is the story of how Sister Helen came to do this work and, as the description for her latest memoir "River of Fire" notes, how she evolved in her “spiritual journey from prayi...

Since full-time lecturers at Howard University originally voted to unionize, they have spent nearly four years bargaining with the university administration to get their first contract. On March 23, just hours before lecturers and nearly 200 adjunct professors, who have been fighting for their second contract, were set to strike, the union secured a historic tentative agreement with the university...

4,500 educators with the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers have been on strike since March 8, demanding smaller class sizes, better pay and benefits, more mental health resources for students, and increased workforce diversity. After working through the COVID-19 pandemic and years of austerity policies, teachers and education support professionals (ESP) have reached their breaking point. “I have...

What the official narrative of US history should be, who gets to tell that history, and who the protagonists are have been recurring debates since the founding of the American republic, but they became especially important and heated in the aftermath of the Civil War—and they have been a defining feature of far-right politics ever since. At stake is the question of whose country this is and to who...

Another questionable arrest in a small town is raising more concerns about the state of policing in rural America. A man was repeatedly struck by police in Paducah, Texas, during an encounter that was caught on video and shared with PAR. We examine the arrest and discuss how it demonstrates the unchecked power of law enforcement in rural communities to inflict suffering on the people they're osten...

The horrific war in Ukraine is now entering its third week after Russian troops launched a full-scale invasion on Feb. 24. As Ukrainians fight for their lives and the world teeters on the edge of global conflict, the disastrous ripple effects of the war can be felt throughout the world. What will it take to organize and mobilize an international movement for peace and de-escalation? As part of the...

How did Wisconsin, once a bellwether of the progressive and labor movements, become the state that voted for Scott Walker and Donald Trump? In this episode of Working People, we continue our series on the struggles of teachers and public sector unions in the state of Wisconsin today. As part of a special collaboration between The Real News Network and In These Times magazine for “The Wisconsin Ide...

In January of this year, on the twentieth anniversary of the opening of the notorious military prison at Guantánamo Bay on the eastern tip of Cuba, the United Nations’ top human rights office issued an excoriating report on "Gitmo" and its continued operations. “Guantánamo Bay is a site of unparalleled notoriety, defined by the systematic use of torture, and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treat...

Pennsylvania Stands Up's Onah Ossai explains the process of deep canvassing, an organizing tool that breaks through bigotry and disinformation by having compassionate conversations. Read the full report from TRNN's Jaisal Noor on deep canvassing in Pennsylvania here: This series was made possible with the support of the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous a...

As the horrific Russian invasion of Ukraine continues and anti-Russian sentiments are boiling over, Americans have found themselves hearkening back to the moral and narrative frames that defined Cold War-era cinema to make sense of this moment and our role in it. From Red Dawn to Rocky IV, Hollywood depictions of the pitched battle between the scrappy, freedom-loving West and the cold, monstrous O...

The far right is not a monolithic project; it is, rather, a movement of movements that have grown out of the failures of capitalism as a social order and that are fueled by human society’s darkest tendencies (racism, misogyny, xenophobia, greed, domination, etc.). What are these different movements that make up what we call the far right today? What vision of social order are they fighting to impo...

The election of Donald Trump and the insurrectionary violence at the US Capitol on Jan. 6 are a bad dream that many desperately want to forget. But the political, economic, and cultural forces driving far-right political movements in the US and around the world have been brewing for decades, and they are not going away—quite the opposite, in fact. We need to understand where these forces come from...

Russia’s war in Ukraine is part of a tectonic geopolitical realignment that the US in particular and the West in general are unable and unwilling to comprehend. Help us continue producing The Marc Steiner Show by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer: Donate: https://therealnews.com/donate-pod-mss Sign up for our newsletter: https://therealnews.com/nl-pod-st Get The Marc Steiner Show updat...

Prosecutors caught a Baltimore cop making an illegal arrest on body cam, prompting a lengthy investigation. Their findings lead to a major indictment, so will the police department release the rest of the evidence? Help us continue producing Police Accountability Report by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer: Donate: https://therealnews.com/donate-pod-par Sign up for our newsletter: http...

We're kicking off Season 5 of Working People with a multi-part series on teachers and public sector unions in the state of Wisconsin. As part of a special collaboration between The Real News Network and In These Times magazine for “The Wisconsin Idea,” Max, Cameron Granadino (TRNN), and Hannah Faris (In These Times) traveled to Wisconsin in the summer of 2021 to investigate two intertwining storie...

From the moment Russian troops invaded Ukraine the entire corporate media apparatus in the US moved to 24-7 coverage, filling airwaves with talking heads relentlessly beating the drums of war. Combined with Big Tech’s sophisticated means for silencing and punishing dissenting voices, the increasingly hostile and propaganda-filled discourse that is taking shape today is eerily reminiscent of the “R...

(Content Warning: bullying, harassment, suicide.) In September 2021, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez spoke with the family of Evan Seyfried about a lawsuit they filed against grocery giant Kroger, which alleges that Evan was bullied, harassed, and sabotaged by store managers Shannon Frazee and Joseph Pigg to the point that he suffered a “transient episodic break” and took his own life. It...

Conservatives in America have long argued that the death penalty is a necessary fixture of our legal and carceral system, both as a “crime deterrent” and as a means of serving justice. But more conservatives today are questioning the moral, fiscal, and practical justifications for this barbaric practice. TRNN Executive Producer Eddie Conway and Charles Hopkins, better known as Mansa Musa, speak wi...

“War destroys all systems that sustain and nurture life–familial, economic, cultural, political, environmental, and social,” Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges writes. “Once war begins, no one, even those nominally in charge of waging war, can guess what will happen, how the war will develop, how it can drive armies and nations towards suicidal folly.” In this urgent, unscheduled segme...

Are Texas police laying the groundwork to thwart cop watchers by sending them to jail for simply using cellphone cameras to film them? This is the serious question raised by a series of charges that accuse a group of Texas cop watchers of engaging in organized crime. In this episode of the Police Accountability Report, hosts Taya Graham and Stephen Janis investigate the basis for the accusations a...