#1815 Sanctioned Ignorance: The Assault on Museums, Libraries, and American Memory
Air Date: 8-16-2026
Today we look at what Toni Morrison called "sanctioned ignorance," the deliberate manufacture of a version of the past that keeps citizens from connecting the dots between what their government did then and what it's doing now. They're doing it by attacking museums, libraries, and everyone dedicated to ensuring that people have access to accurate information because that's what it takes to implement authoritarian control over a society. It's also the reason that countries under authoritarian rule suffer from the lack of benefits that comes with the free exchange of ideas.
Read more#1804 Elon Musk, the First Trillionaire, and the Broken System That Made Him
Air Date: 6–27-2026
Today we trace how one man went from receiving a $278 million government grant to becoming the world's first trillionaire who spent .025% of his wealth to get Trump elected, then used his position to slash programs that help people while stoking race riots overseas.
Read more#1798 FIFA Sportswashing Fascism: The World Cup from Mussolini to Trump
Air Date: 6–5-2026
Today we explore sportswashing past and present, from fascist dictators who first weaponized the World Cup to FIFA's modern extractivism model of corrupt capitalism, and why workers, unions, and fans are now organizing to reclaim the game from those profiting off it.
Read more#1795 You Say You Want A Revolution: Successful Revolutions are the Boring Ones
Air Date: 5–26-2026
Today we examine what separates successful revolutions from failed ones, ask why so many revolutions of the 2010s fell short, understand how revolutionary energy gets neutralized, and explore the strategic case for nonviolent resistance.
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#1788 Monthly-ish Mix: The America That Almost Was—Empire Abroad, Control at Home, and the Long Arc of Resistance
Air Date: 05-01-2026
The Monthly-ish Mix™ is here to get you caught up on recent news without being overwhelming! This month we open with Jesse Jackson's death as a reckoning with the multiracial coalition America chose not to build, trace the American playbook from the 1953 Iran coup to Cuba to the current war on Iran, examine how the same logic of control operates at home through AI monopolies, sports money, and captured courts, and close with the religious and labor traditions that have always driven change — plus Orbán's defeat in Hungary as proof that authoritarian projects don't last forever.
Read more#1786 Defeating Viktor Orbán in Hungary and the Authoritarian Playbook Worldwide
Air Date: 4–24-2026
Today we explore how Viktor Orban spent 16 years transforming Hungary into a blueprint for 21st-century autocracy, how that blueprint traveled directly to the United States and what Hungary's stunning defeat of Orban can teach Americans about fighting back against authoritarianism.
Read more#1776 Trump's Pharaoh Complex, Our Flawed Constitution, and the 250th Anniversary
Air Date: 3–11-2026
Today is episode 1776, in the year of our nation's 250th birthday, and we thought the occasion called for something big. So, we're tracing the full arc — from the constitutional compromises that made this country possible to the authoritarian vanity project that those compromises eventually also made possible. We're talking about the history, the structures, and the insecure current-but-temporary president who thinks a $400 million ballroom and a coin with his face on both sides will make him a pharaoh.
Read more#1772 From Fragile to Fascist: How Broken Masculinity Feeds Authoritarianism
Air Date: 2-19-2026
Today we trace the pipeline from masculine grievance to fascism. We'll hear how ICE agents' own family members describe them as low-IQ bullies chasing signing bonuses, why a former white nationalist explains that the alternative to unpacking discomfort is becoming overtly racist, how incel culture evolved from lonely forums into a MAGA recruitment tool, and what researchers found about why men socialized to equate violence with manhood end up joining state-sanctioned death squads.
Read more#1771 They Need You in the Dark: Information, Journalism, and the Fight Against Fascism
Air Date: 2-15-2026
Today we explore the gap between free speech rhetoric and the reality of arrested reporters. We'll hear how a decade of cancel culture panic over college students gave way to actual government suppression of journalists, why the DOJ is perverting a law designed to fight the Ku Klux Klan to prosecute Black journalists, how the administration that promised to "bring back free speech" is maintaining lists of forbidden words, and what history teaches about humor as a weapon against authoritarianism.
Read more#1128 Confronting Fascism in the Land of Free Speech (Throwback)
Original Air Date: 8-25-2017

