The Real News Podcast

It’s been 20 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Since then, the US has channeled an unfathomable amount of its resources into the military-industrial complex, accelerating its metamorphosis into a nonstop engine of war and militarization with a decaying civil society attached to it. For the past 20 years, as the authors of a bombshell report by the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies have estimated, endless militarization since 9/11 has cost the US a staggering $21 trillion. In the first segment of this week’s Marc Steiner Show, we talk with Lindsay Koshgarian, program director for the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, and one of the co-authors of the report, which is titled State of Insecurity: The Cost of Militarization Since 9/11.Tune in for new segments of The Marc Steiner Show every Tuesday and Friday 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!

(Content Warning: bullying, harassment, suicide.)Evan Seyfried was a loving son, brother, and friend, and a dedicated worker. For 19 years, with a virtually spotless record, Evan worked at a local Kroger grocery store in Milford, Ohio, where he eventually became the dairy department manager. From October 2020 to March 2021, however, Evan suffered a torturous litany of bullying, harassment, and sabotage, according to a lawsuit filed by the Seyfried family. As the lawsuit alleges, it was this treatment, which was the result of a "conspiracy" involving numerous actors, including management-level supervisors at the Milford store, that caused Evan to eventually suffer a "transient episodic break" and take his own life. In this episode, we talk with Evan's mother Linda, his father Ken, and his brother Eric about the beautiful person he was, the horrific treatment he endured, and the need to hold those who wronged him accountable.Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org): Squire Truck, “A Journey into the Great Unknown”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 the second segment of this week’s Marc Steiner Show, we bring you the latest installment of our ongoing series “Not in Our Name,” which highlights the diverse voices of Jewish activists, artists, intellectuals, and others who are speaking out against the Israeli occupation. For this installment, Marc is joined once again by author and activist Shane Burley to examine a recent article Burley wrote for Tikkun magazine, “Jew-Hating Is Never About Jews.” In a crucial, cross-generational discussion, Marc and Burley explore changing attitudes among Jewish leftists not only regarding the violence of Israeli occupation, but regarding the existence of the Israeli state as an essential piece of Jewish identity. Shane Burley is the author of Why We Fight: Essays on Fascism, Resistance, and Surviving the Apocalypse (AK Press, 2021) and Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It (AK Press, 2017). His work has appeared in a range of outlets including NBC News, Jacobin, Al Jazeera, The Baffler, The Daily Beast, Truthout, In These Times, and Protean magazineTune in for new segments of The Marc Steiner Show every Tuesday and Friday 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!

Surveillance footage reveals police assaulting an unarmed man on his own property. While the use of force in the video is shocking on its own, what is even more shocking is the fact that the state of Texas is currently threatening the victim with 10 years in prison. On this week's PAR, we take an in-depth look into the common practice of stacking charges to intimidate citizens into taking plea deals, as well as the lack of accountability for aggressive police tactics that violate people's civil rights. We also examine the possibility that police may have targeted the victim in question for previously posting a YouTube video that exposed excessive force.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!

For many around the country, the new school year has already begun. And many districts are pushing forward with in-person schooling, even though we are in the midst of another COVID-19 spike, with new cases around the country rising to their highest point since January. Large swathes of the population are still unvaccinated, including 50 million children nationwide under the age of 12. Combined with the fact that vaccine and mask mandates have become another contentious subject of culture war hysteria and with the more contagious Delta variant causing a critical mass of new hospitalizations, school districts around the country appear to be on yet another collision course with COVID-19 that will likely lead to panicked returns to remote learning.This week on Working People, we talk with Casey Scully, a former elementary school teacher and current high school math interventionist in Charleston, South Carolina—a state that is second only to Tennessee in terms of new COVID-19 cases. We discuss the path that led Casey to become an educator, how she has navigated the past year and a half, and what she and her coworkers are currently experiencing with schools reopening.Additional links/info below...Casey's Twitter pageDan Levin, The New York Times, "The U.S. Reaches a Daily Average of 100,000 Covid Hospitalizations for the First Time Since the Winter Peak"Tina Hesman Saey, ScienceNews, "Schools Are Reopening. COVID-19 Is Still Here. What Does That Mean for Kids?"Jeff Amy, AP News, "Schools Reopen with Masks Optional in Many US Classrooms"AP News, "COVID: S. Carolina School District Back to Virtual Classes"The New York Times, "Tracking Coronavirus in South Carolina: Latest Map and Case Count"Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)Jules Taylor, "Working People Theme Song"Jules Taylor, "Carolina King"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!

Author and activist Shane Burley has observed and reported on the movements of the far right for many years, including the recent violent demonstrations by Proud Boys and other right-wing groups in Portland, Oregon. In the first installment of this week’s Marc Steiner Show, Burley issues a dire warning: The far right is continually working to recruit people who have been disaffected by capitalism and harness their rage for reactionary ends. To stave off the violent threats posed by the far right and build real political power, the left needs to find ways to tangibly improve people's lives. Shane Burley is the author of Why We Fight: Essays on Fascism, Resistance, and Surviving the Apocalypse (AK Press, 2021) and Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It (AK Press, 2017). His work has appeared in a range of outlets including NBC News, Jacobin, Al Jazeera, The Baffler, The Daily Beast, Truthout, In These Times, and Protean magazine.Tune in for new segments of The Marc Steiner Show every Tuesday and Friday 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!

Back in May, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez joined a special crossover panel hosted by the Srsly Wrong podcast on the radical history of May Day (International Workers’ Day). In this wide-ranging discussion, the panel also discussed how the US holiday of Labor Day was deliberately established over a century ago as a way to celebrate workers and the accomplishments of the labor movement without invoking the revolutionary spirit of May Day. To celebrate Labor Day this year while honoring the radical roots and the ongoing struggle of the international workers’ movement, we are sharing this conversation on the TRNN podcast feed for listeners.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!

For the state of Florida, August saw the highest number of COVID-19-related deaths since the very beginning of the pandemic. And yet, Gov. Ron DeSantis is continuing his crusade against mask mandates in schools, appealing a judge’s ruling that his office’s blanket ban on mask mandates is unenforceable. As we have covered previously on The Marc Steiner Show, DeSantis has cruelly demonstrated what it looks like when rightwing culture-war paranoia is translated into state policy. But how are Democrats fighting back? In this installment of The Marc Steiner Show, we talk with Florida State Representative Anna Eskamani about how Democrats can’t just be against the right—they have to stand up for something and do the work to build grassroots support. Eskamani is a member of the Florida House of Representatives, representing the 47th district in Orange County.Tune in for new segments of The Marc Steiner Show every Tuesday and Friday 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!

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has thrown America’s deeply dysfunctional system of caregiving into sharp relief: overcrowded and understaffed nursing homes account for a third of all COVID-19 deaths in the US. ICUs have been stretched to capacity while nurses, doctors, and other healthcare professionals—already beset by a nursing shortage prior to the pandemic—face high levels of burnout. And, of course, last year’s school and daycare closures put severe strains on many parents, particularly women, who have had to navigate 24/7 childcare while simultaneously trying to work their jobs, either remotely or in-person. Add to this the fact that care work has been the fastest-growing labor sector in the US, and it’s clear that any labor movement that is serious about building working-class power must be committed to organizing and fighting for care workers. But what does such a movement look like in practice? And how can we merge the struggles of care workers today with those of workers in other labor sectors.As part of a special collaboration with Jacobin magazine, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez joined hosts of The Jacobin Show Jen Pan and Paul Prescod for an extended episode examining the past, present, and future of the American labor movement. In this segment from the show, Pan explores the unique and varied struggles care workers face today, the importance of building a labor movement that includes care workers, and the ongoing fights by care workers in places like Worcester, Massachusetts, where 800 nurses at St. Vincent Hospital have been on strike since early March. We are sharing this segment with our TRNN audience with permission from Jacobin.Subscribe to the Jacobin YouTube channel and tune in every week for new episodes of The Jacobin Show.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!

Texas just enacted the strictest anti-abortion law in the country. Senate Bill 8, which went into effect at midnight on Sept. 1, effectively bans abortions after six weeks into a pregnancy, before most people who can give birth know they’re pregnant. One harrowing feature of the bill is that it deputizes private citizens as vigilante enforcers of the law, enabling them to sue anyone they believe to have “aided or abetted” someone getting an abortion after six weeks.On Wednesday night, just before midnight, the US Supreme Court declined to block the law based on an emergency application for a writ of injunction filed by abortion rights groups, securing a major victory for anti-choice conservatives. TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with writer and longtime TRNN contributor Molly Shah about the implications of Senate Bill 8 and how it fits into the larger conservative onslaught on abortion rights.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!