Scheer Intelligence
243 episodes - English - Latest episode: 20 days ago - ★★★★★ - 352 ratingsScheer Intelligence features thoughtful and provocative conversations with "American Originals" -- people who, through a lifetime of engagement with political issues, offer unique and often surprising perspectives on the day's most important issues.
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Episodes
It’s a secret only when Uncle Sam says it is
March 29, 2024 07:00 - 45 minutesIn light of recent developments in the Julian Assange extradition case, former CIA officer John Kiriakou joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast, to delve deeper into the contradictions within the United States government and intelligence agencies regarding the disclosure of classified information and the veil of secrecy they maintain.
Does Zionism lead to genocide?
March 22, 2024 07:00 - 1 hourIn this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast, host Robert Scheer and The Grayzone editor-in-chief Max Blumenthal contextualize the events of Oct. 7 and afterward in relation to the history of Israel and Palestine.
“The banning of TikTok is an attack on the free market”
March 15, 2024 07:00 - 43 minutesOn this episode of Scheer Intelligence, David Greene, the Civil Liberties Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, joins host Robert Scheer to discuss the new bill that would ban the massively popular online social media platform, TikTok, in the U.S. In their conversation, they point out the hypocrisy of singling out one Chinese company for mass data collection, when there’s no evidence that TikTok collects data in any different way, or for any other purpose, than other social media c...
"LatinoLand": Complex, resilient and powerful
March 08, 2024 08:00 - 45 minutesAuthor Marie Arana, former book editor and columnist for the Washington Post and the inaugural literary director of the Library of Congress, joins today’s episode of Scheer Intelligence with host Robert Scheer to discuss her new book, LatinoLand: A Portrait of America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority, to answer the question — what does it mean to be Latino? While many know that Latinos often come to America, many forget that they have, in fact, always been in America.
"LatinoLand": Complex and powerful
March 08, 2024 08:00 - 45 minutesAuthor Marie Arana, former book editor and columnist for the Washington Post and the inaugural literary director of the Library of Congress, joins today’s episode of Scheer Intelligence with host Robert Scheer to discuss her new book, LatinoLand, to answer the question — what does it mean to be Latino? While many know that Latinos often come to America, many forget that they have, in fact, always been in America.
"Latinoland": Complex and powerful
March 08, 2024 08:00 - 45 minutesAuthor Marie Arana, former book editor and columnist for the Washington Post and the inaugural literary director of the Library of Congress, joins today’s episode of Scheer Intelligence with host Robert Scheer to discuss her new book, Latinoland, to answer the question — what does it mean to be Latino? While many know that Latinos often come to America, many forget that they have, in fact, always been in America.
The immiseration of the American worker is a bipartisan political scam
March 01, 2024 08:00 - 56 minutesOn this episode of Scheer Intelligence, host Robert Scheer and Les Leopold discuss Leopold’s new book, “Wall Street's War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It” that describes how both political parties created the economic suffering that Trump feeds on. The critical question the book asks is: Did the nightmare of the world economy have to go this way? Or is it really a failure of capitalism? Or is it a failure of people manipulating ...
Israel does not speak for Jews like us
February 09, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourOn this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast, Heyday Books publisher and former LA Times book editor Steve Wasserman and host Robert Scheer commit themselves to this conversation as Jews who have experienced these questions firsthand through their families in addition to having explored and reported on this topic throughout their careers.
As Palestinians continue to die, the history of their betrayal by the “Free World” tells us why
February 02, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourJuan Cole, a renowned history professor at the University of Michigan and expert on the Middle East and South Asia, joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to tackle inconvenient truths ignored by the media in the history of Israel and Palestine. This includes the conflation that criticizing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is somehow a form of Holocaust denial.
The Un-Oppenheimer: The story of a teenager who sought to save the world
January 26, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourJournalist and filmmaker David Lindorff explores the story of Ted Hall, who, at the age of 18 years old, leaked the secrets of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union in an attempt to secure a balance in the world’s most dangerous arms race. His book, “Spy for No Country: The Story of Ted Hall, the Teenage Atomic Spy Who May Have Saved the World,” makes the case that due to the courageous work of Hall and fellow Los Alamos scientist Klaus Fuchs, the idea of mutually assured destruction was born...
The kidnaping of the century: How Patty Hearst became a revolutionary
January 19, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourOne of the biggest stories of the twentieth century, big enough to displace Watergate from the front pages of newspapers nationwide, takes the form of a novel in an attempt to use fiction as a vehicle to expose the truth of this media spectacle. Journalist and author Roger D. Rapoport joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to discuss the case of Patty Hearst and how Rapoport's new book, “Searching for Patty Hearst,” ventures into fiction in order to revea...
Ray McGovern: The Imprisonment of the Palestinian People Was Not an Act of God
January 05, 2024 20:00 - 59 minutesIsrael’s current war on Gaza and the Palestinians draws pessimism and hopelessness, reminding two veterans of its origin in another such war in the region in 1967, The Six Day War, which resulted In Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence to dissect the relationship Israel has maintained and exploited ever since that imperial conquest with support of the United States, and how the future ...
Four Deaths That Shaped Modern American History
December 29, 2023 08:00 - 47 minutesThe 1960s represented a pivotal time in American history, one that embodied vast change and influence in shaping what the country has become. From the Civil Rights movement to the Vietnam War to the moon landing, society was in a period of steadfast innovation, self reflection and self determination. The specter of death, however, could not escape the memory of the time, including the deaths of the millions of civilians and soldiers in Southeast Asia and the thousands of victims of racial vi...
Netanyahu’s Palestinian Genocide Is Also a Betrayal of the Jews
December 22, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourApart from the death, destruction and suffering bestowed upon the Palestinian people in Gaza by the hands of the Israeli government, an ideological battle is taking place around the world, especially in the United States, where Jewish people face discrimination, prejudice and attacks on their identity by the hands of other Jews.
The Never Ending War on Terror
December 15, 2023 08:00 - 40 minutesThe revelations of people like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and John Kiriakou have allowed the world to know about the sly and insidious turn Western governments took following 9/11. From torture programs to mass surveillance to extrajudicial captures and killings, it has become clear how far these governments have poured away their own values and beliefs.
‘If I was to be buried, I would want that on my stone’
December 08, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourNorman Lear, who died this week at the age of 101, visited the KCRW studio in Santa Monica, CA six years ago to sit down and talk with host Robert Scheer in this two-part interview about Lear’s life through his autobiography, “Even This I Get to Experience.” Scheer said of the book:
An Autopsy on Israel’s Historic Assault on the Palestinians
December 01, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourThis week’s episode of Scheer Intelligence welcomes someone with extraordinary courage and experience not only in Palestine but the Middle East as a whole. Dr. Tarek Loubani, a Kuwait-born, Canada-based Palestinian doctor, who also serves as the medical director at Gila, a global humanitarian healthcare organization, provides an indispensable account of what he knows is Palestine.
Settler Colonialism, Thanksgiving and Gaza
November 24, 2023 08:00 - 56 minutesAmerican historian, writer, professor and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz uses her studies on indigenous peoples’ history and her work with Palestinian diplomats and the United Nations to show how historic “settler colonialism” like in the United States relates to Gaza today. Dunbar-Ortiz makes the case, on this Thanksgiving edition of the Scheer Intelligence podcast, that inherent in that settler colonialism are the various definitions of genocide.
Humanity Has Failed Gaza
November 17, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourAmidst the carnage and political debacle surrounding Gaza and Israel, it can be easy to discuss the conflict with a macro view, where families, hospital workers, UN workers and journalists become statistics and political perspectives dominate. On this episode of the Scheer Intelligence, host Robert Scheer talks to the author of what Scheer claims are “arguably the two most important books that deal with the humanity of the Palestinian people.”
Abortion Pills Go Global
November 10, 2023 08:00 - 35 minutesAfter Ohio’s recent vote to enshrine the right to have an abortion into the state’s constitution, host Robert Scheer dives deeper into one of the underappreciated and underreported aspects of the fight for abortion rights on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast.
Palestine’s Obituary
November 03, 2023 07:00 - 1 hourHistorian Juan Cole minces no words in offering a grave and sobering account of the conflict in Palestine and Israel on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast. In a comprehensive reflection of the history and current day situation in the Middle East, Cole uses his expertise as one of the leading historians of the region to paint a picture of the war. He asserts that in all definitions of the words, Israel is actively committing war crimes, like the United States in Iraq, a genocide ...
The Palestinians play David to Israel’s Goliath
October 27, 2023 07:00 - 48 minutes“There's no room for complexity in the American media when it comes to Israel and Palestine,” said Robin Andersen, the award-winning author and professor emerita of communication and media studies at Fordham University, to host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast. In the almost three weeks since the October 7th attacks in Israel, the coverage around the war in the Middle East is as alert as ever, except only for one side, Andersen and Scheer discuss. The real an...
What About the One State Solution With an Equal Vote for Every Palestinian and Israeli?
October 20, 2023 07:00 - 59 minutesPalestinian American journalist Mnar Adley makes the case for one democratic nation with each Palestinian and Israeli having the equal right to vote on their governance on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast.
Do Republicans Want Americans to Starve?
October 13, 2023 07:00 - 35 minutesThe topic of feeding those in need doesn’t sound like it should be controversial but the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in the United States is bizarrely under attack by Republicans in the current Congress. Joining host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast is Christopher Bosso to discuss his newest book, “Why SNAP Works: A Political History—and Defense—of the Food Stamp Program.”
Labor Is Back and Standing Tall
October 06, 2023 07:00 - 43 minutesLabor has once again emerged as a hot button issue in the United States, so much so that even the likes of Joe Biden and Donald Trump have been spotted lurking around picket lines and union events popping up across the country. To talk about the rise in the American labor movement, Harold Meyerson, editor at large for The American Prospect, joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast. Meyerson has a distinguished career reporting on labor issues for multiple p...
Where Did It All Go Wrong for the Internet?
September 29, 2023 07:00 - 1 hourThe Wild West days of the Internet are over, conclude Scheer Intelligence host Robert Scheer and his guest, The Grayzone founder and editor Max Blumenthal. They recall a time when one could find scorching exposés of anti-establishment news on sites like Salon, with the potential to reach millions of readers, that has evolved into a tightly controlled and intensely surveilled space dominated by a handful of Silicon Valley monopolies. Inconvenient information doesn’t stand a chance and will mo...
John Kiriakou: Never Forget America’s Torture Legacy
September 22, 2023 07:00 - 1 hourTorture. It stands as one of the pillars of American exceptionalism. While it was a major part of the war on terror—one worth hundreds of millions of dollars—a selective amnesia allows it to slip through the pages of history. John Kiriakou suffered for attempting to solidify the record on a torture program that the U.S. has excused itself from countless times through Hollywood propaganda, innumerable redactions to official documents and silencing of dissidents. Kiriakou joins host Robert Sc...
The Four Billionaires Who Want to Control the Universe
September 08, 2023 07:00 - 47 minutesIn Jonathan Taplin’s new book, “The End of Reality: How Four Billionaires are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars and Crypto," the internet innovation expert delves into activities of the gang-of-four powerful oligarchs: Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Andreesen, breaking down their increasing profits and infinite ambitions to control and influence domestic and global affairs while sending our technology innovation in a profit-driven, dystopian direction, corrupt...
Why is The New York Times Burning Peace Activist Jodie Evans at the Stake
September 01, 2023 19:00 - 43 minutesThe New York Times has revealed what the future could potentially look like in an impending war with China. Through conjecture and innuendo-filled reporting, America’s “paper of record” went out of its way to attack one of the country’s most fierce peace movement fighters — Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans.
The Liberal Darling That Wasn’t: UC Berkeley’s Troubled Past
August 25, 2023 07:00 - 35 minutesThe University of California at Berkeley is widely considered one of the most progressive and historically transformative universities in not only the United States, but the world. This is printed all over pamphlets written for prospective students and talked about endlessly by tour guides giving people the privilege to walk through such a prestigious site. What isn’t discussed, however, is the other side of that history, the one mired by involvement with the military industrial complex, wit...
Junk Science Is Putting Innocent People in Prison
August 18, 2023 07:00 - 52 minutesThe perception of certain types of trial evidence as cutting-edge, foolproof, and reminiscent of Hollywood can inadvertently sway juries into assuming the guilt of countless individuals. Techniques such as bite marks, blood splatter analysis, ballistics evidence, and others appear to present irrefutable indications of involvement in criminal activities. However, concealed within this seemingly conclusive cache of evidence lies a substantial amount of what is known as junk science. This is wh...
Veteran CIA Analyst on Russia Ray McGovern Has Never Been More Scared of Nuclear Catastrophe
August 11, 2023 19:00 - 1 hourA retired CIA expert on Russia and rare voice of reason coming from the bowels of the American deep state, Ray McGovern joins host Robert Scheer on another edition of the Scheer Intelligence podcast. With world peace, nuclear weapon prudence and film critique on the agenda, McGovern and Scheer delve into a host of relevant issues stemming from the war in Ukraine and the history behind it. From Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” to CNN's strange truthful broadcast on Ukraine’s counteroffensiv...
The Constitution Still Betrays Women
August 04, 2023 07:00 - 46 minutesOn this episode of Scheer Intelligence, host Robert Scheer is joined by Professor Julie C. Suk, an eminent expert in constitutional law and a professor of law at Fordham University. Together, they delve into the challenges women face in society, which stem from the Constitutional framework despite the century old passage of the 19th amendment that belatedly granted women the right to vote.
A Story More Provocative Than Oppenheimer?
July 28, 2023 07:00 - 46 minutesThe world has somehow reached a moment where the use of nuclear weapons has possibly never been closer and the interest in nuclear weapons has possibly never been higher. With the release of Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” a compelling dialogue emerges concerning the utilization of nuclear weapons, as the biopic delves into the life of the father of the atomic bomb and his profound doubts about the barbaric weapon he unleashed on the world. An even more captivating narrative about dissent...
The NSA Is It’s Own Worst Enemy
July 21, 2023 07:00 - 1 hourThere has been no journalist that has been more effective in penetrating the self-serving secrecy of the NSA and the security state than James Bamford, the Emmy-nominated filmmaker and best-selling author. He joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence to discuss his latest book, Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America's Counterintelligence. While Bamford has engaged in his share of muckraking on the NSA in his previous works, his new book fo...
Decriminalizing Being Human
July 21, 2023 07:00 - 43 minutesDespite the United States accounting for around 5% of the world’s population, it houses nearly a quarter of the world’s prison population. This often discussed metric begins to make sense when examining the major cities like Los Angeles, New York and others, where things like poverty and mental illness are often considered “crimes.” Host Robert Scheer digs into this phenomenon in Los Angeles on this week’s episode of Scheer Intelligence with Melissa Camacho, a senior staff attorney at the AC...
The Era of Nukes and No Diplomacy: “Crossing a Rubicon to Armageddon”
July 07, 2023 07:00 - 1 hourThe Doomsday Clock continues to tick toward nuclear war, but at its fastest pace ever. Professor Jackson Lears, a former naval officer serving on a U.S cruiser carrying tactical nuclear weapons, considers the current moment more frightening than at any time during the Cold War. Then, there was intense alarm for the fate of the earth and the survival of the human race. Today, rather than diplomacy or negotiation, talk revolves around new weapons shipments, disappointment in Ukraine’s countero...
Ray McGovern: Russia’s ‘Coup’ Is Actually Biden’s Disaster
June 30, 2023 07:00 - 1 hourUnderstanding foreign policy in Russia is complicated. Over the past weekend, the media said Russia was undergoing a coup and then they weren’t. The leader of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was a brutal military figure, then suddenly a liberator of Putin’s hold on Russia. These entanglements in narratives require an impartial judge, someone who can make sense of it for the way it is. After years of doing this on a daily basis for the president of the United States, Ray McGovern joins h...
The Century Long War on Cannabis Is a War on Science
June 23, 2023 07:00 - 51 minutesHarvard physician Peter Grinspoon fights back against years of war on youth and communities of color.
Norman Solomon: Bipartisan Obsession with War
June 16, 2023 07:00 - 51 minutesIn War Made Invisible, journalist Norman Solomon explains that Biden is as guilty as Trump in ushering a potential nuclear holocaust.
You Sure You Want to Eat That Sentient Being?
June 09, 2023 07:00 - 43 minutesPeter Singer knows it is difficult to make a lonely stand against the mega corporate food processing machine. To make meaningful changes to diet, to care more about where food comes from and to consider the vast laundry list of problems that comes with the international food industry requires a great deal of attention to detail and resourcefulness. Singer, through his persuasive and forgiving prose, makes it easier for folks to get in the know about what a trip to the supermarket really enta...
In American Prisons, You’re Nothing More Than a Number
June 02, 2023 07:00 - 48 minutesOften overlooked, ignored and damned, the cycle that throws people in the prison system and spits them out is a calamitous yet integral part of the American experience. People who find themselves at the short end of the stick—usually poor, uneducated and of a minority race—find themselves worse off, excommunicated from society and filled with more trauma and neglect. Keri Blakinger was not poor, was highly educated and white, yet found herself in the same spot and was treated in the same col...
The China Dragon Roars Back Whether the US Likes It or Not
May 26, 2023 19:00 - 1 hourThe Western world, in the midst of being primed for a war with China, often has a limited understanding of who this supposed enemy is. Is it a communist force ready to challenge the U.S.’s capitalist and hegemonic structure? Is it an economic ally providing an indispensable factory floor for our corporate interests? Or is it somehow a combination of both? Joining host Robert Scheer this week on Scheer Intelligence is Suisheng Zhao, professor and director of Center for China-U.S. Cooperation ...
The Teapot Dome scandal: When democracy worked to hold the fat cats accountable
May 19, 2023 07:00 - 41 minutesOver 100 years ago, the United States had corrupt politicians who could actually be prosecuted for their crimes in gaming the economy. As mythical as it may seem, the history of a small band of radical and gutsy senators who were willing to put it all on the line for justice can serve as inspiration for those who have only ever seen their political representatives bought and paid for. In Crooked: The Roaring '20s Tale of a Corrupt Attorney General, a Crusading Senator, and the Birth of the...
Even at Ground Zero of the Climate Crisis Denial Remains the Norm
May 19, 2023 07:00 - 32 minutesIt is so easy for people to throw trash on the floor, waste food and water and engage in endless consumerism without being truly connected with the Earth around them. Without witnessing a first hand account of the destruction to the natural environment from the persistently damaging habits of society, there is little incentive to change. The scary and all encompassing problems of climate change will devastate the planet indiscriminately regardless, and it is because of this that writer, edit...
Interpreting for the U.S. Army of the Deaf
April 28, 2023 07:00 - 1 hourIt has been almost two years since the distressing scenes of packed airports, people chasing after departing U.S. aircraft and the Taliban emerging on top were witnessed with the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan. Amidst the commotion and confusion, what was certain was the fear within one type of Afghan citizen, the interpreters of the American military. Without them, U.S. forces would have been an army of the deaf, engaging in pivotal and deadly operations in a country th...
Is Tik Tok a U.S. Deep State front?
April 21, 2023 07:00 - 1 hourAlan MacLeod’s reporting on the influx of former government employees at TikTok, Meta, Twitter and other social media companies helps define the scope of the U.S. censorship regime.
It's Called the American Dream Because You Have To Be Asleep to Believe It
April 14, 2023 07:00 - 49 minutesA thorough dissection of America’s capitalist mythology reveals the sham to which lots of people continue to subscribe, despite growing nationwide suffering.
Iran 1953: The Birthplace of Western Backed Coups
April 07, 2023 07:00 - 54 minutesThe story of a U.S. backed coup destabilizing a country for the benefit of Western capitalist interests is one so often repeated that each instance is a sort of classic novel in the dystopian series from the 20th century on. The tale of the Iranian coup in 1953 is indeed a classic, as it was the first of its kind. With its share of infamous characters—mainly the CIA and British MI6—as well as its lasting impact on the region, its citizenry and the world, the coup in ‘53 proved to be a monume...
America’s Slavery-Ridden Origin Story: Facing the Uncomfortable Reality
March 31, 2023 07:00 - 56 minutesWriter Dionne Ford dives deep into her ancestry and confronts the complexities of being a Black woman in America with the blood of both the enslaved and the enslaver.