Congress came back to work on January 17th 2012 and they were met by crowds of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators. This interview with Mark Bray, part of the original press team for OWS, looks at the goals, the strategies, and answers concerns about how …

You know the prize fighter of the same name but you’ve never heard of the John L Sullivan from Manchester NH who served in Treasury and the Navy under Presidents Roosevelt and Truman. But there’s a new book out by Stephen Clarkson abot the life and tim…

Who better to analyze the just completed New Hampshire Republican Presidential Primary than former Republican Party Chair Fergus Cullen. What happened, how influential will Ron Paul’s “cause of liberty” be, how hated is Rick Perry by the party, what to…

Las Vegas and much of Southwestern US is lit up by dirty coal from Navajo Nation. Yet many of the impoverished people there lack electricity or water. Guest on this show is Elsa Johnson, a Navajo organizer who talks about recent successes they’ve had t…

It’s more than the similar time of year. According to guest Rabbi Michael Lerner, of Tikkun Magazine and chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, both holidays mark times in which people without power successfully took on the powers of tyrann…

Why has Buddy Roemer been kept out of Republican debates? He was governor of Louisiana and a member of congress and maybe the reason is that he’s talking about taking on the real power behind both parties. But as frontrunners come and go, he’s getting …

It used to be that the Republicans marched in lock step with religious-driven voters. According to Josh Lederman, who covers campaigns and elections for The Hill, the congressional daily newspaper, the days of the right’s monopoly on support from faith…

The big banks, together with the privately run Federal Reserve, are strangling our economy. Nearly half the money we pay when we buy virtually anything is for interest payments. But there’s no reason why states, regions, or municipalities can’t start t…

The police are there to serve citizens and protect us from dangers. The military makes war on enemies. A big difference, obviously. But for a number of reasons, America’s police have been morphing into more of a military force. Burt’s gust is Alex Pare…

Have you ever wondered about the legal fiction of corporate personhood? You are hardly alone. There’s a movement rapidly gaining steam to amend the Constitution to do away with this tremendous power now given to corporate entities at the expense of …

It’s known as a school for assassins and military coups. Though it was supposed to be shut down years ago, instead they just changed the name to Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. The Defense Dept argues it’s just a few bad apples b…

Democrats and Republicans kicked the can down the street with the idea that the secretive supercommittee would make the hard choices on deficit cutting instead of them. In this example of bipartisanship, it appears the interests of average citizens may…

Since the center has shifted so far to the right in recent years, what used to be the center in American politics is now seen as left. The New America Foundation’s Michael Lind wonders if the popularity of Occupy Wall Street may indicate a real change …

The first military use of Agent Orange was in 1961. There’s a new book out, called Scorched Earth: Legacies of Chemical Warfare in Vietnam. In this segment, author Fred Wilcox discusses what he’s discovered in thirty years of researching the subje…

It was October 25. 2002 that a freak accident took the lives of Senator Paul Wellstone and five others. Wellstone, of course, was the biggest thorn in the side of the White House’s planned war on Iraq. The guest on this show is Jim Fetzer who has thoro…

 It’s been part of American culture since the sixties. On this show we look into how feminism has evolved, with author Anna David, whose new book Falling for Me is experiencing brisk sales.
We know what it was back then, but what does feminism me…

The first guest, Toni Nagy, says “everyone who works for Wall Street has mommy and daddy issues.” The Salon and Huffington Post columnist looks to how we parent the curent generation as a major factor if we want more young citizens who are not just con…

While the left has very few electoral victories, author Michael Kazin argues it has very effectively changed the nation. The author of A Godly Hero: William Jennings Bryan talks about what’s gone right and wrong with America’s left, and ideas fo…

It’s been there since the very beginning of America: the struggle between ordinary people for economic democracy and the creditor class which fears and tamps down that democracy. In this hour, William Hogeland, author of two books: Declaration, and The…

Outspoken author of The Death of the Liberal Class, veteran journalist Chris Hedges says those young people at Occupy Wall Street are the real patriots, the real conservatives putting fears aside to take on what he calls “the criminal class.” On this s…

Truth-telling in the face of powerful and  fierce resistance; it’s part of our American identity. From Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle to unnecessarily vulnerable personnel carriers in Iraq, the average citizen depends on those brave enough to tell th…

Some say the fact that Hamas is against it means the proposed United Nations vote on recognizing Palestine as a state means it’s probablya good idea. On the other hand, many observers see it as a power play by Mahmoud Abbas. To analyze what’s at stake …

Fukushima. The NRC trying to ram through a 20 year extension for Seabrook. Entergy fighting Vermont’s legal power over the Vernon plant. Huge public relations campaigns to sell us on “safe clean nuclear.”  Presidential candidates talking about…

Aside from the nearly 3,000 lives lost, what lasting damage has been done to our cherished traditional American liberties? On the first segment, Burt’s guest is Marjorie Cohn, immediate past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She specifies reason…

Some progressives disenchanted with President Obama may be looking seriously at Republican Ron Paul. On this show, Alternet Washington Bureau Chief Adele Stan does just that: she takes a deeper look at who Ron Paul is and the actual positions he …

How different from the usual flock of Republican presidential wannabes is front-runner Texas Governor Rick Perry? All candidates since Reagan have sought the support of the Christian Right, but there is evidence suggesting he, and Micelle Bachmann, are…

The mainstream media have been so wary of Martin Luther King’s true message that when Glenn Beck claims to have inherited his mantle, millions actually believe him. Burt’s guest on this show, Huffington Post’s RJ Eskow takes a look at the real bra…

The Tea/Republican Party has been laregly successful in their spin that FDR failed. But beliefs once again do not match reality. Here two Roosevelt scholars, Drs. David Woolner and Thomas Ferguson,  discuss the real truth about the New Deal and it…

In 2009, the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity pushed a movement to re-instate segregation in Wake County North Carolina through a school board election. There’s a new video about the effort and AfP is threatening to sue the producers. On the fir…

The Tea Party these days looks with fondness to the 19th century as a time of rugged invidualism and unemcumbered free markets. As with so many mythic images, reality is exceedingly different. Like corporate personhood? Thank the railroads. Ever notice…