This Is Hell!

Chuck is out sick this week, so the producers run the show in Limbo Mode. Sebastian presents a 2015 interview with South African political economist Patrick Bond, talking about the FIFA bribery scandals of which the now (in 2022) ongoing world cup in Qatar is a fruit.

We speak with political science scholar, Nojang Khatami who is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Justitita Center for Advanced Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt. Beginning in the fall of 2023, he will be Assistant Professor of Political Science at Fordham University. Nojang is on to talk about his Boston Review article, “The Lifeblood of Iranian Democracy: From street demonstrations to song, dance...

Alec Karakatsanis joins Chuck Mertz to discuss his piece "Warning to Journalists About Elite Academia" published at https://equalityalec.substack.com/ . Alec is the founder and executive director of Civil Rights Corps and Author of Usual Cruelty. New responses to the Question from Hell and this week in Rotten History.

Chuck interviews political scientist Lilliana Mason on her books on partisan violence in the United States. We also introduce this week's Question from Hell!, and the weekly Hangover Cure. Producer Sebastian talks about why it's really better to not use the term "Kristallnacht" to talk about the pogroms against German Jews on November 9, 1938.

Board Operator Dan spins some golden oldies; two classic interviews with John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman. Regular shows resume next week!

Lindsey replays an interview with Jenny Odell from May 18th, 2019. Odell is an artist and author of the books How to Do Nothing and the forthcoming, Saving Time. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/672377/saving-time-by-jenny-odell/

We revisit an interview with Michael Parenti from November 2005. Chuck is back next week.

Sudip Bhattacharya talks about his article at HardCrackers.com, "Socialism or Suburbia." Sudip is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at Rutgers University. He is also a writer, organizer, and you can find his other work at outlets like Protean Magazine, CounterPunch and Reappropriate, and the Aerogram.

Correspondent Brian Mier connects with host Chuck Mertz to discuss the upcoming run-off 2022 Brazilian presidential election between Jair Bolsenaro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Also featuring this week's Rotten History, Chuck has Christmas in October, and Lindsey shares the pear harvest from Oriana's Orchard. Brian is an editor and contributor to, “Year of Lead: Washington, Wall Street and the N...

CD Davidson-Hiers and Jeff Vandermeer speak with Chuck about their article "Is Florida Becoming a Failed State?" published October 11th, 2022 by The Nation. This week's Hangover Cure and new Question from Hell. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/florida-hurricane-ian/ CD Davidson-Hiers is a native Floridian who grew up on a 40-acre horse farm in North Florida. Her work has appeared in the B...

We have filmmaker Joe Winston on to discuss his new movie, ‘Punch 9 for Harold Washington, “The story of Harold Washington, elected in 1983 as Chicago's first African-American Mayor, the political battles he fought, and his legacy to Chicago and the nation.”

Los Angeles, California-based freelance journalist Cerise Castle speaks with host Chuck Mertz about her research and reporting published on Knock LA: “A Tradition of Violence,” the first history of deputy gangs inside the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the largest local law enforcement agency in the United States. The investigation was published as a 15-part reporting series exposing 18...

We have on Jodi Dean, author of, "Socialist Reconstruction, A Better Future for the United States."

Theologian, ordained minister, and anti-poverty activist Liz Theoharis is on to discuss her TomDispatch article, "No More Sacrifices: Mercy Makes Good Policy." Liz is Co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival and director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. She is the author of, "Always With U...

Reporter Alex Vuocolo speaks with host Chuck Mertz about his NOEMA Magazine article "The Disappearing Art Of Maintenance" published September 22nd, 2022. This week in Rotten History and new listener responses to the Question from Hell.

Elyas Nawandish is on to talk about his article at The Intercept, “I Watched the Afghan Government Collapse Under the Weight of Its Own Greed: Our leaders failed to give Afghan soldiers the food, tools, and respect they needed to defeat a brutal insurgency.” Elyas is an Afghanistan Observatory Scholar at New America. Since 2014, he has worked with the Kabul-based Etilaat Roz daily newspaper, where...

We speak with Fatema Ahmad, co-author, along with Azadeh Shahshahani, of a new article at The Progressive, “The Surveillance State Can’t Solve White Supremacy: After the January 6 attack, federal surveillance programs expanded to counter white supremacist violence have made Black and brown communities their main target.” Fatema is executive director of the Muslim Justice League.

Sophie Lewis returns to This Is Hell on Tuesday, October 4th to speak with host Chuck Mertz about her new book, Abolish the Family, out on Verso, October 2022. https://www.versobooks.com/books/4075-abolish-the-family Sophie Lewis is the author of Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family (Verso, 2019), hailed by Donna Haraway as “the seriously radical cry for full gestational justice that I long...

It's Chuck's Birthday! Jubilations all around! We welcome writer, researcher, and oral historian Lyndsie Bourgon to talk about her book "Tree Thieves - Crime and Survival in North America's Woods." We also present your Hangover Cure for this Monday, and have a new Question from Hell! for the week. Also producer Sebastian talks immigration history in another installment of The Past Inside the Prese...

Journalist Kari Lydersen is an author and assistant professor of journalism at Northwestern University. She's on to discuss her article at The New Republic, "Can Liberal Evanston, Illinois, Atone for Its Racist Past?"

Hadas Thier returns to This is Hell! to discuss her In These Times Article "A Left Answer to Inflation." Producer Alex returns for one show. We have new answers to this week's Question from Hell!, and This Week in Rotten History.

Chuck talks to cultural anthropologist Andrea Vetter and economic historian Matthias Schmelzer about their new book "The Future is Degrowth - A Guide to a World Beyond Capitalism. https://www.versobooks.com/books/3989-the-future-is-degrowth We also have your hangover cure for this Monday, and this week's new Question from Hell!

Investigative journalist Boyce Upholt wrote The New Republic article, "Will the Next Pandemic Start With Chickens?: This spring, a virulent strain of bird flu ripped through U.S. farms. The public hardly noticed. That we could ignore the disease shows just how little we’ve learned about the origin of new viruses."

Host Chuck Mertz speaks with with Geographer Matthew Huber to discuss how individualized focus on the purification of consumer choices divides the working class and depletes energy for collective organizing against the the Capitalist culprits profiting off the extraction of environmental resources. Matthew T. Huber is Professor of Geography in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs a...

Legal scholar Daniel Medwed talks about his book "Barred: Why the Innocent Can't Get Out of Prison." We present your Hangover Cure, talk about the weekend's Listener Appreciation Party, and present this week's Question from Hell!.