The Real News Podcast

In the state of Louisiana, 786 inmates—none of whom were ever sentenced to death—died behind bars between 2015-2019 while serving out their prison sentences. Since Black people are already incarcerated at disproportionate rates, these deaths have been disproportionately among Black inmates. This information has not been publicly available until now, because no single authority in Louisiana is required to collect such data. When law professor Andrea Armstrong and her students took it upon themselves to conduct this research, they were shocked by what they found. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, TRNN Executive Producer Eddie Conway speaks with Armstrong about investigating the quiet horror happening inside Louisiana prisons and what can be done to stop it. Professor Armstrong joined the Loyola University New Orleans,College of Law faculty in 2010 and founded IncarcerationTransparency.org, a database that provides facility-level deaths behind bars data and analysis for Louisiana and memorializes the lives lost. She is a leading national expert on prison and jail conditions and is certified by the US Department of Justice as a Prison Rape Elimination Act auditor.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!

Like Frito-Lay, Nabisco, John Deere, and Heaven Hill Distillery, cereal giant Kellogg’s has seen consumer demand skyrocket during the pandemic, reporting profits of $1.25 billion in 2020. To meet this demand, many workers in Kellogg’s plants around the US report pulling 12-16-hour shifts seven days a week, leaving little time for anything outside of work beyond sleep. But the creation of a two-tier employment system in 2015 has meant that newer employees in the lower “transitional tier” are earning significantly less than their coworkers for doing the same work. Demanding that the company raise the floor for all of its employees, Kellogg’s plant workers in Nebraska, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee have been on strike since Oct. 5.In this special video edition of Working People, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez discusses the ongoing strike with Dan Osborn, who has worked at the Omaha, Nebraska, plant for 18 years and currently serves as president of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM), Local 50G.Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive at freemusicarchive.org): Jules Taylor, "Working People Theme Song"Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!

As we previously reported at The Real News, voters in Berlin were recently faced with a game-changing referendum to expropriate housing held by giant corporate landlords who have made the city increasingly unaffordable for most residents. The passing of the referendum, and the organizing that made it possible, was not only a shock but a source of hope for many around the world who have seen options for affordable housing gobbled up by vampire capitalists and large companies contributing to the runaway financialization of the housing market. How were Berliners able to take on these big landlords and pass this historic referendum? What happens now? And can Berlin provide a model for those fighting for housing justice around the world?In this segment of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with longtime TRNN contributor Molly Shah and Berlin-based activist Ian Clotworthy about the recent referendum and the great global housing struggle to come. Ian Clotworthy is from Ireland and has lived in Berlin for about 10 years; he is active in DW Enteignen (where he represents the Right2TheCity group), DSA Berlin, and the Green New Deal for Europe. Molly Shah is a freelance writer and social media consultant based in Berlin, and she’s a regular contributor to The Real News. Prior to moving to Germany, Molly was an activist, teacher, and lawyer in Louisville, Kentucky.Tune in for new episodes of The Marc Steiner Show every Tuesday on TRNN.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!

In October of 1966, the Black Panther Party was founded in Oakland, California. Since then, the Panthers have been a driving radical force for Black liberation, self-defense, and community organization and self-determination. In this special episode of Rattling the Bars commemorating the 55th anniversary of the founding of the BPP, TRNN Executive Producer and former Lieutenant of Security for the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party Eddie Conway speaks with Black Panther Party archivist Bill Jennings about the legacy of the Panthers and how people are carrying on that legacy today.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!

America's most popular TV host, Tucker Carlson, continues to share baseless COVID-19 conspiracy theories with his millions of Fox News viewers while comparing vaccine mandates to authoritarian overreach. In reality, though, Carlson's pushing of debunked conspiracy theories obscures the real scandal: America's high rate of vaccine hesitancy, combined with the hoarding of COVID-19 vaccines by wealthy countries like the US, all but guarantees billions in profits for vaccine manufacturers and Big Pharma for years to come. TRNN's Jaisal Noor reports.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!

Facebook had a very bad week last week. First, Frances Haugen, a former product manager at Facebook assigned to the Civic Integrity group, blew the whistle on her past employer, leaking a cache of internal company documents and testifying in front of Congress that the social media giant is knowingly and repeatedly “paying for its profits with our safety.” Then things got significantly worse when Facebook basically disappeared from the internet for 6 hours on Monday, Oct. 4. This was the biggest outage Facebook had experienced since a 2019 crash that took the site offline for over 24 hours. Facebook has said that last week’s outage was unrelated to news about the leaks and that it was the result of a routine software update gone horribly wrong. The outage, however, affected billions of people who depend on the suite of applications and services owned by Facebook that went offline, including Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram.While Facebook is back online and the news cycle has largely moved on, it’s important to take a step back and examine what these outages tell us about the precariously assembled infrastructure of our digital world, our global dependence on that infrastructure, and the implications of having that infrastructure controlled by private, incredibly powerful, and voraciously profit-seeking entities like Facebook. In this interview for The Real News podcast, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with writer, commentator, and legal services attorney Sparky Abraham, who wrote a 2020 article for Current Affairs titled “A Series of Tubes: Reclaiming the Physical Internet.”Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!

The media circus surrounding Democrats’ internal battle over infrastructure spending and the Build Back Better Act can make us focus too intently on the individual representatives involved and ignore the bigger picture. But the fact of the matter is the lives of many Americans, our ability to seriously address the climate crisis, and the upcoming outcome of the midterm elections all hang in the balance. On this segment of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc is joined by a lively panel of guests—Max Sawicky, Karen Dolan, and Bill Fletcher Jr.—to discuss the drastic implications of the battle unfolding on Capitol Hill right now.Max Sawicky is an economist, writer, and senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research; he has worked at the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, the Economic Policy Institute, and the Government Accountability Office. Karen Dolan is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and currently directs the Criminalization of Race and Poverty project; her public scholarship and activism focus on anti-poverty issues, juvenile justice, criminal justice reform, and transgender rights with a focus on race, gender, and gender identity. Bill Fletcher Jr. has been an activist since his teen years and previously served as a senior staff person in the national AFL-CIO; he is the former president of TransAfrica Forum, a senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, and the author of numerous works of fiction and non-fiction, including ‘They’re Bankrupting Us!’ And 20 Other Myths about Unions and The Man Who Fell from the Sky.Tune in for new episodes of The Marc Steiner Show every Tuesday on TRNN.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!

We conclude our series of interviews from rural Wisconsin with farmers and community members fighting to defend life as they know it from the onslaught of Big Agriculture and the factory farming industry. As part of a special collaboration between The Real News Network and In These Times magazine for “The Wisconsin Idea,” TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez, Cameron Granadino (TRNN), and Hannah Faris (In These Times) travelled to Polk County in Western Wisconsin over the summer to speak with residents about their fight to halt—or, at least, adequately regulate—a proposed concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) that would house 26,000 hogs and produce millions of gallons of liquid manure every year.In this interview, Alvarez sits down with Lisa Doerr, who has been on the front lines of this struggle and lives right down the road from where the proposed CAFO would be built. Doerr and her husband own and operate a hay farm in Polk County that supplies food for small-scale livestock farmers in the area.Additional links/info below...Working People, "Kristy Lynn Allen"Working People, "Hog Wild (w/ Lisa Doerr, Forest Jahnke, Hannah Faris, & Maeve Conran)"Maximillian Alvarez, Cameron Granadino, & Hannah Faris, The Real News Network, "Factory Farms Pose an 'Existential Threat' for Rural Wisconsin Communities"Grace Connatser, Wisconsin State Farmer, "Documentary Captures Rural Wisconsin's Struggle with Hog CAFOs"Maeve Conran, Just Solutions, "Rural Wisconsin Communities Battle Industrial Scale Hog Farms"Simon Davis-Cohen, In These Times, "'In for a Fight': Rural Wisconsinites Resist Influx of Industrial Hog Facilities"Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org):Jules Taylor, "Working People Theme Song"Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!

There’s been a lot of news this week—so much news, in fact, that one of the biggest global stories in recent memory has seemingly gotten buried under the deluge of headlines. Just days ago, as Brett Wilkins writes, “what’s being called the ‘biggest-ever leak of offshore data’” involved the publication of “a cache of nearly 12 million documents” exposing “the hidden wealth, secret dealings, and corruption of hundreds of world leaders, billionaires, public officials, celebrities, and others.” Like the Panama Papers (2016) and the Paradise Papers (2017), the Pandora Papers leak provides definitive evidence that the super-rich are ripping all of us off, siphoning inordinate amounts of wealth away from our societies, stashing it for themselves, and using their power and influence to rig political and economic systems in their favor.In the second segment of this week’s Marc Steiner Show, Marc and Chuck Collins from the Institute for Policy Studies walk listeners through the importance of the Pandora Papers leak, what the documents reveal, and what we can do to stop the pillaging of our societies by the super-rich. Chuck Collins is the director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he co-edits the IPS website Inequality.org. He is also the author of Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!

Just weeks ago, as we reported previously on The Real News, onlookers in the US and around the world were horrified yet again by scenes of pain, desperation, and brutality at the US-Mexico border in Del Rio, Texas. With COVID-19 and global vaccine apartheid continuing to exacerbate a public health crisis, with continuing political turmoil following the assassination of former President Jovenel Moïse in July, and after another devastating earthquake shook the battered nation in August, thousands of Haitian refugees have been forced to leave their homes in the hope of seeking asylum in the US.Instead of having their appeals for asylum heard and their situation recognized for the crisis of humanity that it is, these refugees were met by menacing US Border Patrol agents on horseback who rode them down and rounded them up in brutal fashion. Since then, the US government under President Joe Biden has deployed the Trump-era Title 42 policy to mass expel thousands of refugees back to Haiti without hearing their asylum claims, even though the Department of Homeland Security designated Haiti for Temporary Protected Status in May.While the news cycle has moved on from the immediate so-called “crisis at the border,” the nightmare for Haitians and the country of Haiti is still very much ongoing. In this interview, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez talks with Pascal Robert about the larger political context that led to the horrifying scenes at the US-Mexico border last month, and about the deep disdain, fear, and imperialist designs that have historically shaped US policy toward Haiti and its people. Pascal Robertis an essayist and political commentator whose work covers Black politics, global affairs, and the history and politics of Haiti. He is the co-host of the podcast THIS IS REVOLUTION, a frequent contributor to the Black Agenda Report, and his writing has been featured in outlets like The Huffington Post, Alternet, and the Washington Spectator.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!