This Is Hell!

Agroecologist and epidemiologist Rob Wallace returns to This is Hell! to discuss his new book, "The Fault in our SARS, COVID-19 in the Biden Era". Also featuring this week's Hangover cure and Rotten History. Rob Wallace is an evolutionary epidemiologist with the Agroecology and Rural Economics Research Corps. He is author of Big Farms Make Big Flu and coauthor of Clear-Cutting Disease Control: Capital-Led Deforestation, Public Health Austerity, and Vector-Borne Infection. He has consulted with the Food and Agriculture Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

We have on journalist Katya Schwenk to discuss her Baffler Magazine article, "The Crime Wave That Wasn't." Faithful correspondent Jeff Dorchen explores ways to dissolve world Leadership. And the Question From Hell contest collapses into its barn-burning resolution.

Dr. Lewis Gordon, department head and professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, discusses his most recent book titled, Fear of Black Consciousness. This episode also features this week in Rotten History and new responses to the Question from Hell! Lewis Gordon is a philosopher at the University of Connecticut who works in the areas of Africana philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology, social and political theory, postcolonial thought, theories of race and racism, philosophies of liberation, aesthetics, philosophy of education, and philosophy of religion. He has written particularly extensively on Africana and black existentialism, postcolonial phenomenology, race and racism, and on the works and thought of W. E. B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon. Find Fear of Black Consciousness at: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374159023/fearofblackconsciousness Manufacturing dissent since 1996: https://thisishell.com/pages/support

Recorded Monday, January 30th 2023, we speak with Rachel Garbus, a writer and editor based in Atlanta. Rachel discusses her piece recently published on Welcome to Hell World titled, "Stopping Cop City, the murder of Tortuguita, and the trees that got us here". This episode also includes a new Question from Hell! and this week's Hangover Cure. https://www.welcometohellworld.com/stopping-cop-city-the-murder-of-tortuguita-and-the-trees-that-got-us-here/ Rachel Garbus is a writer, editor and oral history maker in Atlanta, GA. She writes for Atlanta Magazine, covering politics and arts & culture for print and digital. She is the culture editor at WUSSY Mag, with writing and podcasting about all things queer with a Southeast lens. She is the co-founder of Out Down South, a multimedia history project and podcast celebrating the stories of LGBTQ+ Southerners. She's on Twitter @rachel_garbus Manufacturing Dissent since 1996: https://thisishell.com/pages/support

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: we spin the never-before-aired-on-WNUR-because-it-was-the-start-of-covid interview from 3/25/20 with Max Haiven who had, at that time, just written the ROAR Magazine article, “No return to normal: for a post-pandemic liberation: Today, new forms of solidarity, mutual aid, and common struggle are emerging in the pandemic. How will they shape tomorrow’s struggles for a post-capitalist world?” Also, from behind the paywall we retrieve Chuck's poignant recollection of his long-lived romantic partnership that requires no state sanction. And the Question From Hell contest careens towards its dazzling fulfillment.

We revisit the strange times of the early 2020 Covid-19 pandemic social breakdown with interviews that never before graced the radiowaves of 89.3 WNUR, Northwestern University community radio across Evanston and North Chicago. At the time, we were locked down and out of the broadcasting studio. This interview was originally recorded on March 31st, 2020 with economist Eileen Applebaum about her article, "The U.S. Response to COVID-19: What’s in Federal Legislation and What’s Not, but Still Needed" written with Shawn Fremstad for CEPR. We consider it with 2023 hindsight and review the present week's Question from Hell! The entire past show exists on our website at: https://soundcloud.com/this-is-hell/tih20200331 Manufacturing dissent since 1996: https://thisishell.com/pages/support

We play the first of three "lost" interview from the early days of the Pandemic that was never played on the radio. We also present this week's Question from Hell! as well as the Hangover Cure. And then producer Seb has a best-off repeat of a Past inside the Present from last summer, the last he will read live in studio before leaving for greener pastures.

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, o

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

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.

We replay a listener chosen favorite interview from 2022 with Dorothy Roberts, an award-winning author and expert on the interplay of gender, race, and class in legal issues concerning reproduction, bioethics, and child welfare. She is a professor of law and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Chuck Mertz interviews Roberts about her latest book, TORN APART: How the child welfare system destroys black families—and how abolition can build a safer world.

Live from Sebastian's living room where he hasn't calibrated his mic correctly, here's the Best of 2022 for Boxing Day with an interview from July 2022 with writer Kate Manne on abortion rights and pregnancy criminalization.

We continue our Best of 2022 series, wherein we revisit the very best interviews of the past year. This week we return to our interview with Gerald Horne, author of, “The Counter-Revolution of 1836: Texas Slavery & JIm Crow and the Roots of U.S. Fascism.” Gerald continues his dynasty of repeated appearances on our year-end best-of round-ups! Moreover, this week's Question From Hell contest reaches its electrifying culmination.