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This week, after nearly 1,000 days of arbitrary detention, the environmental and human rights lawyer Steven Donziger was released from house arrest. On this week’s podcast, Donziger talks to Intercept investigative reporter Sharon Lerner and Ryan Grim about his decadelong legal battle with Chevron over land contamination in Ecuador.

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As deputy campaign manager for Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential run, Ari Rabin-Havt got an intimate look at the daily life of the independent senator from Vermont. Now he’s chronicled those experiences in a new book, “The Fighting Soul: On the Road With Bernie Sanders.”

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In 2020, former foster child Mackenzie Fierceton received a Rhodes Scholarship as a self-identified “first generation, low income” student at the University of Pennsylvania. But the acclaim quickly devolved into acrimony as the university and the Rhodes Trust began questioning aspects of Fierceton’s backstory. The battle between her and the school was chronicled by Rachel Aviv in the New Yorker earlier this month. Fierceton joins Ryan Grim to discuss the saga of her battle with UPenn and why the Ivy League institution seems to have so much trouble recognizing the complexity of poverty in America.

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The Yemen cease-fire, which took effect last week, is the first serious truce between the country's warring parties in six years. The factions in Yemen agreed to a two-month truce proposed by the United Nations. And on Thursday, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, Yemen’s exiled president, said he would transfer power to an eight-member presidential council, suggesting progress in ending the war. All of this comes on the heels of a new Yemen War Powers Resolution — announced by Reps. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. — to end U.S. involvement in the war. Hassan El-Tayyab, the Friends Committee on National Legislation’s legislative director for Middle East policy, joins Ryan Grim to discuss the cease-fire, efforts to end the war in Yemen, factors at play, and the likelihood of finally seeing an end to the war and humanitarian crisis in the country.

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David Sirota went from advising Sen. Bernie Sanders's 2020 presidential campaign to co-developing the story for Adam McKay’s film “Don’t Look Up,” which was nominated for — among other things — the Academy Award for best picture. It didn’t win, but Sirota was in Hollywood for the big night. He joins Ryan Grim to discuss why Hollywood is so averse to political films, the difficulty of generating interest in the climate crisis, and, yes, the slap.

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The Biden administration is drafting an executive order to invoke the Defense Production Act to develop green energy storage technology — an essential element for a clean energy future. The war in Ukraine and soaring oil and gas prices have renewed conversations in Washington about passing a major clean energy package. Recently at CERAWeek, a major energy conference, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin shared his views on what he would and would not support. Ryan Grim and Duchuy Huynh, CEO and director at Green Cooling Tower Solutions, unpack Manchin’s thoughts on transitioning to clean energy. They also discuss the present state of clean energy technology and what’s needed to fully bring about a green energy future and displace fossil fuels.

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In standard economic theory, prices are simply expressions of information about the scarcity of (and demand for) goods. But in his new book “Price Wars: How the Commodities Markets Made Our Chaotic World,” writer and filmmaker Rupert Russell argues that the modern era of algorithm-driven speculation has normalized unpredictable price swings in commodity markets and turned prices into “engines of chaos.” Russell joins Ryan Grim to discuss.

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The CERAWeek conference took place this week in Houston. CERAWeek is an annual gathering of major players in the energy sector; CEOs, government officials, and financiers are among the conference's attendees. The major theme this year, of course, was the effect of Russia’s war in Ukraine on global oil and gas markets — in particular, President Joe Biden’s announcement Tuesday that the U.S. would move to ban imports of Russian oil. The New Republic’s Kate Aronoff was there in Houston to witness the conference. She joins Ryan Grim to discuss what she saw and heard, including — yes, actually — a Broadway song parody titled “Don’t Cry for Me, Hydrocarbons.”

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“Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us,” declared Russian President Vladimir Putin last week. “It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.” This conception of Ukrainian history forms the bedrock of Putin’s justification for invading the former Soviet republic, independent since 1991. On this week’s podcast, Ryan Grim talks with Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko about his country’s history, from the Dark Ages up the current war. They discuss Ukraine’s history of anarchist politics, the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution that toppled pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych, and the tangled question of modern Ukrainian identity.

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