Exploitation Nation, The Podcast, with Brittany Friedman

We’re told the prison system is broken, but a new book by sociologist Dr. Susila Gurusami documents instead that the system is not broken at all but operating exactly how it was built to. This month, we sat down with Dr. Gurusami to discuss Break the System: Criminalized Black Mothers and the Reproductive Politics of Abolition, based on years of fieldwork in South Los Angeles. Her rigorous research and talent for storytelling provide a portrait into the lives of formerly incarcerated Black mothers, revealing how a multitude of state institutions collude to keep Black mothers from their families and in turn punish Black communities. Tune in as we discuss key themes in the book from “reproductive warfare” to “abolitionist motherwork,” and conclude with a look at how coalitions are currently mobilizing to keep their communities safe, demand funding for life-affirming institutions, and push back against the ongoing threat of prison expansion.

Resources

No New Prisons IL

Coalition to Decarcerate IL

What is a Feminist Jail & Why Shouldn’t We Fall For It?

https://www.susilagurusami.com/

Break the System, by Susila Gurusami

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Since 1989, Cook County, the seat of Chicago and largest criminal court in the U.S., has produced 215 murder exonerations with roughly 113 of them tied to false confessions. For the Season 2 opener of Exploitation Nation, we sit down with Brown University sociologist Dr. Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, author of Crime Fictions: How Racist Lies Built a System of Mass Wrongful Convictions (Random House, 2026). The book details, through extensive research, the racist narratives police and prosecutors construct around Black children long before a jury ever hears the case. We discuss everything from police secret “street files” to in-custody torture and their role in the production of crime fictions. This book upends the common misconception that wrongful convictions are rare or the result of unintended consequences.

Co-producers: Brittany Friedman and Olivia Aminatta Jobe

Resources:

Crime Fictions by Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve

Crook County by Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve

https://www.nicolevancleve.com/contact

Wrongful Convictions, Equal Justice Initiative

Innocence Project

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It’s the season finale of Exploitation Nation! To end season one, we have one more installment of our “What We’re Reading” series. What does it mean to die in police custody, and how are coroners implicated in shaping accountability and uplifting systems of power? This episode, Brittany sits down to chat with Terence Keel, author of “The Coroner’s Silence,” unpacking how written onto the bodies of the vulnerable is a hidden system of silence that perpetuates state violence. Stay tuned for the Truth In 10, where our podcast correspondent, Olivia, hits rewind on some past moments this season. Thanks for listening this season, and be sure to follow us on Instagram, BlueSky, Substack, and X at CaptiveMoneyLab.

Co-producers: Brittany Friedman and Olivia Aminatta Jobe

Resources:

https://laist.com/news/education/ucla-terence-keel-new-book-coroners-silence-students

https://www.ucla.edu/research/article/terrence-keel

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/08/07/deaths-in-custody-reporting-act-problems

https://www.incarcerationtransparency.org/

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In a single week this past March, federal courts saved the Florida panther’s habitat and restored the Endangered Species Act (ESA), after seven years of litigation. The very next day, a panel of federal cabinet officials called the “God Squad” voted unanimously to exempt the entire Gulf of Mexico oil and gas industry from that same law, citing “national security.” This month we tell both stories. The wins: a federal appeals court blocking a 10,264-acre development on top of panther habitat, the ESA getting most of its legal teeth back, anti-wildlife riders stripped from the 2026 funding bill, and the slow recovery of the North Atlantic right whale after years of advocacy. The exploitation: $8 million in oil industry lobbying, 17 anti-wildlife riders that did make it into law, a 26% gutting of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and a Gulf whale species with fewer than 100 left on Earth currently fighting for its life. We close with a discussion of what the concept of “shifting baselines” means for how environmental degradation becomes normalized over time within each subsequent human generation.

Co-producers: Brittany Friedman and Olivia Aminatta Jobe

Resources:

“We Won Back Endangered Species Act Protections”

“U.S. exempts oil industry from protecting Gulf animals, for ‘national security’”

“North Atlantic ‘right whale’ population shows recovery”

“Lawsuit Seeks to Protect Endangered Florida Panthers From Massive Development”

“The shifting baseline syndrome as a connective concept for more informed and just responses to global environmental change”

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In this episode, our host, Dr. Brittany Friedman, sat down with Crop Swap LA’s founder & executive director, Jamiah Hargins, to discuss the intersections of urban farming, food insecurity, and sustainability. The two discuss Crop Swap LA initiatives to address food insecurity and provide healthy food options for LA neighborhoods. In the Truth in 10, our correspondent, Olivia, takes us IRL to one of Crop Swap LA’s volunteer events on an early March Sunday morning. We hear from some volunteers about what inspired them to volunteer and, of course, answer the hard-hitting question: What’s your favorite fruit or vegetable?

Co-producers: Brittany Friedman and Olivia Aminatta Jobe

Resources:

https://www.cropswapla.org/

https://www.ronfinley.com/

https://civileats.com/2018/06/04/a-reparations-map-for-farmers-may-help-right-historical-wrongs/

Reparations & Rematriation Mapping Tool

https://blackfoodjustice.org/

https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/food-and-nutrition-insecurity-linger-in-la-county/

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In the second installment of our “What We’re Reading” series, we examine the political economy of confinement as seen through incarceration and immigration detention and the expanding role of private prison corporations contracting with government agencies–a multi-billion dollar industry. Drawing on abolitionist policy frameworks, this conversation features an interview with Bianca Tylek, author of “The Prison Industry: How It Works and Who Profits,” and Founder and Executive Director of Worth Rises. We break down recent data showing dramatic year-over-year profit increases for major contractors, explore ongoing legal disputes shaping forced labor and modern-day slavery, and what you can do to support campaigns to abolish the prison industry.

Co-producers: Brittany Friedman and Olivia Aminatta Jobe

Resources:

https://worthrises.org/

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2025.html

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/supreme-court-rules-against-private-prison-firm-alleged-to-have-forced-immigrant-detainees-to-work-for-1-a-day

https://theconversation.com/we-study-mass-surveillance-for-social-control-and-we-see-trump-laying-the-groundwork-to-contain-people-of-color-and-immigrants-221073

https://abolitionistfutures.com/latest-news/practising-everyday-abolition

What if “doing nothing” isn’t being lazy or apathetic, but an intentional political practice? In this episode, we unpack Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing and place it in conversation with Black feminist thinkers like Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, and bell hooks. We explore attention as a site of extraction and what it means to resist productivity, visibility, and constant availability in a world that profits from all three. We ask how care, slowness, and most importantly, unavailability can be tools for survival and imagining something more sustainable and authentic. For “The Truth in 10,” Olivia walks us through Black, queer, and POC independent booksellers around the country that you must visit.

Resources:

https://www.standwithminnesota.com

https://www.immigrantdefenseproject.org

http://www.ilrc.org/community-resources/

https://nipnlg.org

Co-producers: Brittany Friedman and Olivia Aminatta Jobe

What do the cases of Sean “Diddy” Combs and Jeffrey Epstein reveal about power, silence, and cover-ups? In this episode, we break down how allegations of sexual and gender-based violence can circulate for years without consequence, how institutions conceal harm until they are forced to be accountable, and why such violence is publicly exposed only when silence is no longer profitable.

We also discuss the new Netflix documentary series executive-produced by 50 Cent about “Diddy,” its social media reception, and how the series shines a light on the mechanisms of complicity that allow exploitation to persist for several decades. For “The Truth in 10,” Olivia walks us through the top things she learned from this new documentary.

Co-producers: Brittany Friedman and Olivia Aminatta Jobe

Tianna Laboy thought jail would cost her time. She did not expect it to cost her money, let alone the future of her child. In this episode, we follow her story and speak with April D. Fernandes, Ph.D., to uncover how confinement has become a profit center and what that means not only for the people inside, but for the little known origin story of America.

This episode is a cinematic exploration of what it means to survive in a system where prison time is treated like a hotel bill. For “The Truth in 10,” Olivia answers the phone lines to understand what everyday people from all walks of life know about prison pay-to-stay.

Co-producers: Brittany Friedman and Olivia Aminatta Jobe