Curtis Eller is a banjo player, songwriter and rock & roll singer who's songs describe a dreamlike vision of American history where all points in time have collapsed into one. A twenty-year show business veteran, Eller has developed a devoted international following with his band, The American Circus.

I'm giving away two tickets to see Curtis in Cleveland on Saturday, July 15th at the Wizbang Circus School and Theater. To enter, just share this episode and follow Curtis on social media and send a link to your post or a screenshot to [email protected]. All Patreon supporters will automatically be entered. The winner will be announced on July 12th.

Links to follow and support Curtis Eller:

https://www.curtiseller.com/

https://curtiseller.bandcamp.com/

https://www.patreon.com/curtiseller

https://twitter.com/CurtisEller

Songs used in this episode:

Jimmy Falun Gong is the pseudonymous host of the podcast “Programmed to Chill”, which describes itself as a show about “business, crime, parapolitics, and esoterica”. Jimmy does multi-part deep dives into the history of intelligence agencies, who financed hitler, the industrialists who profited and persisted after WWI and II, international spycraft, and it only gets darker and weirder from there. He’s got a wry and dry dry style of breaking down his research on dark and slippery topics that I enjoy quite a bit.

We talk about our paths to paranoia, why more people should be more paranoid and attentive to local issues, some of his podcast’s greatest hits, the origins and reasoning for Jimmy’s cheeky alias, and much more.

P2Chill Links: https://linktr.ee/ProgrammedtoChill

Unedited episode available to Patreon supporters: https://www.patreon.com/bzdouglas

In part 2 of my interview with Philip Fairbanks we discuss Walking the Wire,  a new podcast series releasing in April that will re-examine  David Simon's groundbreaking series, "The Wire", episode by episode.  This Friday at 9pm EST Philip will be joining me for a livestream Q&A on YouTube, Facebook, or via Twitter Spaces.

Follow Walking The Wire on Twitter:

Q&A Livestream Links:

Look for part 2 of this interview in a couple days. This Friday at 9pm EST Philip will be joining me for a livestream Q&A.

If you're a Patreon supporter, a PDF copy of Fairbanks book is available for you at https://www.patreon.com/bzdouglas. 

FOOTNOTES:

I recently watched the excellent video essay, "A Modern Anarchism Part 1" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag9EcQsqP_8), and immediately reached out to the creator, Anark, to schedule an interview. On today's episode, we dive right into discussing how we each came to adopt anarchy as our political identities, how we practice anarchy individually, and then swim around in some philosophical waters as we envision the many facets of a modern anarchism.

Anark's video is described as follows:

"This video is the first in a several part series where I am developing a modern synthesis of anarchism. It is not intended as an introduction to anarchism, but instead a broad coverage of anarchist ideas, discussing the state, Capital as Power, kyriarchy, the mega-machine, queer anarchism, Black anarchism, social ecology, decolonial ideas, and much more... Here we will lay out the anarchist mode of structural critique and apply this theory of power to a variety of hierarchical power structures."

Follow and Subscribe to Anark: 

https://www.youtube.com/c/Anark

It's time for a review of 2021 and what the major events of the last year mean for us going forward in 2022.

Original Video:

*** PANELISTS ***

Progressive American

My guest today, the first of the new year, is Nico Walker, author of the novel, Cherry. The book is a fictionalized account of an unnamed character who follows a path very similar to Walker’s own life story. He joins the army at 19, serves in Iraq as a medic, spirals into heroin addiction as he deals with crippling PTSD, and finally sets off on a spree of bank robberies.

This interview actually came about because Nico reached out to me a few weeks ago following the publication of my investigation into Tony Viola’s wrongful prosecution. Walker was Viola’s cellmate a decade ago, and the two have kept in touch over the years.

On today’s show, Walker and I discuss Iraq, the spirals of addiction, the futility of the drug war, and the frustrating tragedy of Viola’s case.

+++ SUPPORT  +++ 

Likes, Shares, and Subscribes are free, and they help with the Algorithm gods! 

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bzdug  

This Friday I’ll be doing a livestream year in preview and Q&A on YouTube, Twitch, and Twitter Spaces. I’ll preview some of the stories I’m looking into, and share some ideas on other projects I’m hoping to produce. 

A meta discussion of my latest story investigating allegations of prosecutorial misconduct against Dan Kasaris and Mark Bennett.

Read the full report here: https://bzdouglas.substack.com/p/unreliable-witnesses-suppressed-evidence

Please support my independent journalism by becoming a paying Substack subscriber or Patreon supporter.

The story of Tony Viola told in the press up until now leaves one with the impression of a devious criminal who was defrauding banks out of nearly fifty million dollars through a complicated mortgage fraud scheme with a cast of shady operators. If the news coverage was to be believed, the affable, honorable, and generous person Viola’s friends and family all knew was merely a facade hiding a duplicitous, unscrupulous, greedy monster.

Visitors of FreeTonyViola.com will find a much different story. It’s a scrappy but fairly polished little website managed by Viola himself, setup with the express purpose of providing journalists and lawmakers with evidence of Viola’s innocence by exposing the flagrant prosecutorial misconduct he has endured.

Several local and national journalists have quietly taken an interest in his case, but have either been intimidated by the possibility of litigation, too busy to thoroughly vet Viola’s claims, or stymied by editors and publishers.

Visit https://bzdouglas.substack.com to read the full story.

My interview with LaTonya Goldsby and Kareem Henton, President and Vice President of Black Lives Matter Cleveland. We discuss this local organization's history, and the important work they are doing in Cleveland and the surrounding areas to help the Black community, demand for justice for victims of police violence, and push for major reforms policing in our area.

A major topic of discussion is the potential impact of the passage of Issue 24, which would establish meaningful citizen oversight of the Cleveland police through an amendment to the city charter.

** Links to follow and support BLM Cleveland ** 

https://www.blmcle.org/

https://www.facebook.com/BLM216

https://twitter.com/blm_216

https://www.instagram.com/blm_216/

https://linktr.ee/BLMCle

** More about Issue 24 **

The Amendment:

Citizens for a Safer Cleveland: