How Trump’s Controversies Distract from America’s Real Problems
Barrett Brown and filmmaker Alex Winter remind us that all of our broken institutions needed reform before Trump — and will need even more reform after he is gone.
Private Prisons Make a Buck with Inhumane Treatment of Immigrants
What is it like in an ICE prison? A former detainee describes the often inhuman conditions in which prisoners are kept.
The Free Speech Wars: Has the First Amendment Outlived Its Usefulness?
Is the norm of almost absolute free speech in the US going to survive? And should it?
FBI Whistleblower: America’s Culture of Violence Starts With Perpetual Wars
Coleen Rowley, a former FBI special agent and whistleblower on the failures of the FBI on 9/11, looks at mass shootings as a consequence of the US fighting perpetual wars.
Plundering Iraq’s Oil Wealth
The extraordinary, yet somewhat predictable, story of how the Iraqi people lost out as their country’s oil wealth was squandered as a result of corruption, deceit, political infighting, Western meddling and tribal conflicts.
Surveillance Capitalism Is Dead
Why the current internet business model of free news, free shipping, free internet and free searches has to go away — and what has to replace it.
Truth Decay: The Diminishing Role of Facts in Public Life
A new report from RAND examines how diminishing respect for objective facts is undermining the public marketplace for ideas that forms the foundation of democracy.
What Five ‘Domestic Terrorism’ Cases Tell Us About FBI Tactics
The new Peter B. Collins podcast looks at the similarities involving surveillance and paid FBI informants in five San Francisco Bay Area “domestic terrorism” cases.
Where All That Davos Money Sleeps at Night
A reminder about the Panama Papers, and why all the recent changes to the tax code will not result in trillions of dollars being repatriated to the United States.
Deutsche Bank: Where the Dots of Russiagate Connect
Martin Sheil, a retired branch chief of the IRS Criminal Division, discusses his WhoWhatWhy series on Deutsche Bank and how nearly all the main figures involved in Russiagate also have ties to the financial institution.
Voter Suppression May Be the Most Important Issue of 2018
Popular author and journalist Sarah Kendzior looks at the many battles ahead to combat voter suppression in 2018.
The Daniel Ellsberg Story You Won’t See in ‘The Post’
Thanks to the critically acclaimed movie “The Post,” which opens this weekend, the story of whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers is again part of the public discourse. But there is much more to it than the movie shows, Ellsberg tells WhoWhatWhy in this recent podcast.
Keyboards Are the New F-15s
A look at how social media’s “charisma of certainty” is changing the nature of warfare.
Be Afraid or Be Involved: Artificial Intelligence Is Close at Hand
The artificial intelligence revolution is here. It’s already impacting the economy and the military. It needs to be discussed now in the arena of public policy.
Conversation Is Not Dead — At Least Not At WhoWhatWhy
With a cocktail, a cup of coffee, or a friend, here are ten of our 2017 podcasts worth catching up with — or hearing again.
Daniel Ellsberg on Nuclear War
Forty-six years after the release of the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg reveals another set of documents on how nuclear war might have been waged in the 1950s and 60s.
Trump/Russia From 30,000 Feet
An overview of Guardian correspondent Luke Harding’s exposé of the 40-year Trump/Russia collusion.
The Whistleblower Who Could Have Prevented 9/11
Bill Binney was an NSA analyst whose work was so effective it was shut down. It threatened to derail the gravy train fueled by the kinds of problems he might have solved — including preventing potential terrorist attacks. The contractors and executives riding that train had a motto: “keep the problem going, so the money keeps flowing.”
A Rogue American Spy and Why North Korea Hates America
As the Korean War broke out, Donald Nichols was a major American player for the CIA. He helped launch the South Korean Air Force and picked bombing targets in the North. He ended up a non-person, discredited in the eyes of the US government. This is his story.
Laughs, Tears, the Deep State and Russ Baker at NY Comedy Festival
There is a lighter side even to serious topics, as WhoWhatWhy Founder Russ Baker demonstrates in a live podcast from the New York Comedy Festival.