This Is Hell!

Reporter, public records requester, researcher Julia Rock joins us to discuss her article at The Lever, "How Big Pharma Actually Spends Its Massive Profits: New research shows that pharmaceutical companies have spent more on enriching shareholders than drug research and development over the past decade."

Our host Chuck Mertz postpones his scheduled interview with philosopher Rebecca Gordon due to stomach flu. Lindsey Gorry fills in at the studio by playing back Gordon's interview with This is Hell! in 2016 about the case for prosecuting the Bush administration for post 9/11 war crimes. Also featuring an extra sticky week in Rotten History and new responses to the Question from Hell. Rebecca Gordon teaches at the University of San Francisco. She is the author of Mainstreaming Torture, American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes and is now at work on a new book on the history of torture in the United States. Prior to teaching at USF, Rebecca spent many years as an activist in a variety of movements, including for women's and LGBTQ+ liberation, the Central America and South Africa solidarity movements and for racial justice in the United States. If you would like to contribute to This is Hell! and the manufacture of dissent, you can buy merch, subscribe to Patreon, or donate any amount by following this link: https://thisishell.com/pages/support

Chuck welcomes friend of the show Brian Mier to talk about Brazil's January 6 knockoff event and the differences in how Brazil fights fascism to how the US refuses to. We have this week's Question from Hell!, your weekly Hangover Cure, and producer Sebastian brings a new Past inside the Present segment. In honor of Martin Luther King Day Sebastian talks about slavery in America.

Today we have the return of journalist Christopher Ketcham who co-wrote The Intercept piece, "The Shutdown of “Luxury Emissions” Should Be at the Center of Climate Revolt."

Stefania Maurizi is an investigative journalist currently contributing to the major Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano after working for the last 14 years for la Repubblica, consistently rated among the top two Italian newspapers, and for the italian newsmagezine l’Espresso. She has worked with Julian Assange and his organization WikiLeaks since 2009, teaming up with large teams of international media to cover and investigate all WikiLeaks' secret documents Stefania speaks with host Chuck Mertz about her book "Secret Power: WikiLeaks and Its Enemies" recently published by Pluto Press. This episode also features new responses to the Question from Hell and this week in Rotten History. https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745347615/secret-power/ https://stefaniamaurizi.it/en-idx.html https://twitter.com/SMaurizi www.fattoquotidiano.it twitter.com/fattoquotidian www.repubblica.it twitter.com/repubblica

Filmmaker and journalist Esmé von Hoffman talks with Chuck Mertz about her recent article "I Heard it was Safe" published by The Lever. Also featuring a new Past Inside the Present from Sebastian Wuepper and this week's Hangover Cure. Esmé von Hoffman runs Chalk Circle Films and is an award-winning filmmaker who draws on her experience in journalism, theater, and the visual arts to bring a fresh aesthetic to film and television. @esme_von https://esmevonhoffman.com/ https://www.levernews.com/i-heard-it-was-safe/?fbclid=IwAR3QLaIppaV_MCFMuLGPl9APw313M1lxM4AAtPckG94DX7rN-pH3ekKYK5Y

We despair with too few replies to this week's needlessly complicated Question from Hell!, reveal big news about the This is Hell! Team, and play the final Best of 2022 interview from January last year with Roberto Lovato talking about the implications of legalizing drugs and criminalizing psychodelics for people that have consumed them for hundreds of years.

Our latest 'Best of 2022' interview is with organizer and author Tracy Rosenthal who wrote The New Republic article, “Inside LA’s Homeless Industrial Complex,” which she argues exists not of some failure of homelessness policy but an example of the system working exactly as intended.

We replay listener-chosen Best of 2022 interview with CD Davidson-Hiers and Jeff Vandermeer on their article "Is Florida Becoming a Failed State?" published October 11th, 2022 by The Nation. Also featuring this week's Hangover Cure and new responses to the Question from Hell! www.thenation.com/article/society/…a-hurricane-ian/ CD Davidson-Hiers is a native Floridian who grew up on a 40-acre horse farm in North Florida. Her work has appeared in the Bitter Southerner, Flamingo Magazine, and USA Today. She works for the nonprofit Education Writers Association while also overseeing the Florida Student News Watch, an organization to mentor new journalists. Her work covering the US Covid-19 vaccine rollout received recognition from NPR, The Washington Post, Soledad O’Brien, and other national news outlets. Jeff VanderMeer’s award-winning novel Annihilation is set in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. His environmental advocacy has included helping save cypress swamp in North Florida and sponsoring research into the endangered frosted flatwood salamander. A 35-year resident of Florida, he has previously written about the state for, among others, Current Affairs and The Los Angeles Times.

From October, Brian Mier, editor and contributor to, “Year of Lead: Washington, Wall Street and the New Imperialism in Brazil,” co-editor of Brasilwire, Brazil correspondent for TeleSur English's News Program, From the South, and co-host on Brazil 24/7. Brian was on to discuss his most recent writing at the time, “Media Spins Lula Victory As Defeat,” which was posted just before Lula da Silva won the Brazilian presidential run-off over incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.