Citations Needed18 Marras 2020

Episode 123: How Liberal Meta-Demands for "Investigations" and "Studies" Are Used to Silence Activists

"Joe Biden Calls For 'Immediate, Full And Transparent Investigation' Into Jacob Blake Shooting," Forbes reports. "Obama Fraud Task Force Takes on the Big Banks," Bloomberg News proclaims. "Democratic lawmakers call for vote on bill to study reparations," announces CNN. It seems that every time there's a movement toward righting a historical or current wrong, whether police violence, corporate abuses, or climate. change, policymakers muster the same tepid "solution": initiate a committee, investigation, commission, study, or, if they want to sound super militaristic and Serious a "task force" to probe the issue. This type of rhetorical filler offers elites the best of both worlds: Creating the appearance of attentiveness and progressiveness without requiring any meaningful, overt ideological commitments. Tethered to explicit political objectives, calls for investigations or studies can be a useful lobbying tool, but absent this, they are more often than not a political trick, psychological tools to compel activists and those outraged on social media to take a break, because now the professionals are handling it. The effect: the political equivalent of a five-day cooling off period, wait the outrage out and channel activist energy into Get Out the Vote fodder and superficial reform-ese that never truly upsets the existing order. On this episode, we study the phenomenon of the liberal appeals for bare-minimum interventions in times of political crisis, looking at how vague and open-ended calls for studies, committees, task forces, and commissions are designed to elevate the reputations of spineless politicians while nullifying the social movements that actually seek racial, economic, and climate justice. Our guest is Briahna Joy Gray, former national press secretary for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign.

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Ep 240: How the Media's "Burden," the "Straining Resources" Framing Manufactures the Expendable Other

In this episode, we discuss the ideological work done by our media's default frame of immigrants, poor seniors, homeless people, and those with disabilities as "burdens" and "strains" on our limited r...

8 Heinä 1h 34min

News Brief: Despite 9-Figure Infusion from Silicon Valley, Abundance Still Seeks Popular Support

In this news brief, we catch up with Dylan Gyauch-Lewis, senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project, to discuss Abundance's PR problems, why this latest neoliberalism rebrand isn't catching on an...

1 Heinä 38min

News Brief: The ADL's Bogus Origin Story and Its Rise as Ideological Enforcer for Empire and Israel

In this News Brief, we talk with Emmaia Gelman, author of The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State, about how––despite posing a civil rights org––the ADL functions as defender of colonialism an...

24 Kesä 42min

Episode 239: The Vague, Capital-Serving Co-Optation of "Affordability" Politics

In this episode, we detail the long history of generic "affordability" discourse and how, post-Mamdani, it's become the go-to establishment buzzword justifying tax breaks for developers, deregulation,...

17 Kesä 1h 20min

News Brief: The Call to Boycott—and Delegitimize—the New York Times

In this News Brief, we talk with Chris Mills Rodrigo from Writers Against The War On Gaza about their campaign to boycott the New York Times and remove the "paper of record" from its pedestal of alleg...

28 Touko 40min

Episode 238: The Fictional, Racist, Paranoia-Sowing "Sleeper Cell" Media Construction

In this episode, we detail the vague, baseless racism-sowing media coverage and pop culture obsession with so-called "sleeper cells," a construction that has consumed post-9/11 America but suffers fro...

20 Touko 1h 30min

Live Show: 'How to Sell a Genocide' Book Talk at The Word Is Change Bookstore in Brooklyn, NY

This is a live recording between Nima and Adam at the Word is Change Bookstore May 7, 2026. In this conversation, we discuss key findings that can be found in Adam's new book, How to Sell a Genocide: ...

13 Touko 1h 3min

News Brief: "Peak TV," Streamer Studio Accounting Gimmicks, and the Precarity of Hollywood Labor

In this News Brief, we talk with Miranda Banks and Kate Fortmueller, authors of the new book Boom to Bust: How Streaming Broke Hollywood Workers, about rising inequality and precarity in Hollywood, st...

6 Touko 47min