LSD has long been feared. No question, it is uniquely powerful. But does it have potentially uniquely powerful benefits as well? On this program, Dr. Phil Wolfson delves into many aspects of the substance; the foolhardiness of the drug war,

Celebrated in 45 states, a lot of people don’t know about Juneteenth. It was the day in 1865 when formerly enslaved people learned of the Emancipation Proclamation. But what kind of freedom was it then and where is it today?

Millennials would make a big mistake to give up on the Democratic Party. There is proof that liberals are successfully taking it back from the corrupt corporate wing. On the first half, In These Times staff writer Theo Anderson specifies

Is truth still the first casualty of politics? Not in the UK, where Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn stunned PM Teresa May. He dared to tell the truth; authenticity works. So says Marc Weisbrot of the Economic and Policy Research Center. And

As we are bombarded by endless news about Russian hacking, interfering with our democracy, a more subtle yet equally serious concern is how much we have become like our former enemy. What we value most of all about The United

The forces currently in power may actually believe that by killing democracy they are saving America. Or they may just be driven by simple greed. In his new book: Kill It to Save It; An Autopsy of Capitalism’s Triumph Over

He published The Realist from 1958-2001. A magazine of satire that afflicted the powers that were. Paul Krassner along with Abbie Hoffman launched the Yippies to inspire young people in the late 60s, mixing rock and roll with politics. And

How dangerous is it that Americans are adjusting to truths changing by the hour? What is official truth now may not be so tomorrow. It’s all up to Trump’s White House. We mere citizens must accept and believe the dictate

You can’t incarcerate people into mental health. Prisons are a very old concept and it’s time to ask: Do they accomplish the goals for which they were created? What can we do with dangerous people if we do away with

In the American war on drugs, the Mexican drug cartels work hand in glove with the  federal, state, and local police. Most of the guns used in the tens of thousands of killings in recent years come from (guess where)

Imagine being an intelligence professional. At great personal risk, you gather information crucial to America’s security. Then you have to share that information with the president. How would you feel when he blithely give those secrets to the Russians, of

Who better than a military person to talk about the dangers of what he sees as a worship of all things military? Major Danny Sjursen commanded troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and here talks about his deep concern about military,

What can winning look like if the nation is decimated in the process? Sara Tesorieri speaks to us from Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, where she is working with the Norwegian Refugee Council to provide desperately needed humanitarian aid. The

How much did the election of Trump turn French voters away from the right wing populist Marine LePen in the May 7th election? To what degree is her party, the National Front, still racist? What is the danger of normalizing

Tax breaks for capital gains are a form of class privilege. So says history of US capitalism professor Julia Ott. It’s better public relations for Southern senators than outright Jim Crow, but taxing capital gains less than ordinary income was

Imagine your very existence being seen as proof of guilt. The blatantly racist anti-immigrant policies Trump is known for did not originate with him. In fact, as our guest Avi Chomsky, professor of history and coordinator of Latin American, Latino,

We all focus on the top, the presidency and then congress. But more than you may think is at stake at the state level. Top corporations are focused where they can accomplish a lot for themselves relatively cheaply. A little

Behind the simple image of two madmen facing off with nuclear weapons, there’s a lot more to the North Korea story we don’t know. For example, who knew that more bombs were dropped there in the early 50s than in

Franklin Roosevelt understood that to be successful at defeating foreign threats, reliance on military power alone was insufficient. In this discussion from 2012 with David Woolner, Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute looks beyond the presidential candidates of the day

As Oliver Wendell Holmes observed, “Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.” But today’s greed-driven super-rich are determined to destroy America’s traditional valuing of the common good. If regular people hate taxes, then the top one tenth of one

On the one hand, somebody had to do something. Using Sarin gas to kill babies must not go unchallenged. On the other hand, what did the Tomahawk missile attack accomplish? What about the thousands of innocents already killed by all

The Democratic nominee was the very antithesis of populism; with her hand out to big money interests seeming to ignore everyday people. So we got Trump. In an article written by internationally recognized historian Alfred McCoy has written about The

It was the beginning of a 50 year split among liberals. Those in power, President Johnson in particular, wanted to relegate Dr. Martin Luther King to his safe civil rights leader role. But boldly, Dr. King spoke out against imperialism

It’s 2017 and no one would dispute that Germany is indeed “Europe’s pre-emininent power.” But on April 6, one hundred years ago America declared war for the explicit purpose of preventing this, though no one was really sure what the

Direct action is successful when it creates a crisis for those in power. It baffles the powers that be because it is truly democratic, merely a movement of movements. So says L.A. Kauffman, organizer of many direct action events, and

The right wing depends for its power on people not reading. Books have always been subversive. They lead to critical thinking. On the first part of this show, Ken Gloss,  proprietor of the internationally renowned Brattle Book Shop talks about

Violence at anti-Trump protests is a gift to the powers being protested. Just as the Weathermen in the late sixties were greatly appreciated by Nixon, so too the Bannon/Trump Right loves to label protestors as violent thugs. A veteran of

“Just following orders” is no defense. In a democracy we assume that individuals in society will take personal responsibility and disobey immoral commands. But as many experiments have shown, people rarely question orders from authorities. Our guest on this show

http://media.blubrry.com/keeping_democracy_alive/dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48358971/LowerEd.mp3At for-profit universities, they’re not admission offices, they’re sales forces. It’s no accident that today for-profit colleges and universities are proliferating. They exist to turn a profit for investors, and that means maintaining a class of low income people. Instead

“Voting third party helps those you despise.” So argues Raymond Buckley, who recently ran for chair of the Democratic National Committee. The fact that the race was high in the news demonstrates the beginning success for necessary changes in the