Macro N Cheese

**Milestone 300! We dedicate this, the 300th weekly episode, to our loyal listeners, and we wish to recognize the valiant work of our underpaid podcast crew – correction: our unpaid podcast crew – who have put in thousands of hours editing audio, correcting transcripts, writing show notes, creating artwork, and posting promos on social media. To have the next 300 episodes delivered to your inbox as soon as they’re released, subscribe at realprogressives.substack.com 

Project Censored has been a valuable resource for Macro N Cheese. This week, sociologist Andy Lee Roth talks with Steve about information gatekeeping by big tech through their use of AI algorithms to stifle diverse voices.  The discussion highlights historical and current instances of media censorship and looks at the monopolization of news distribution by corporate giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter.  

In an economic system that is fully privatized, trustworthy journalism is another casualty. News, which should be treated as a public good, is anything but.  

Andy Lee Roth is associate director of Project Censored, a nonprofit that promotes independent journalism and critical media literacy education. He is the coauthor of The Media and Me (2022), the Project’s guide to critical media literacy for young people, and “Beyond Fact-Checking” (2024), a teaching guide about news frames and their power to shape our understanding of the world. Roth holds a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a BA in sociology and anthropology from Haverford College. His research and writing have been published in a variety of outlets, including Index on Censorship, In These Times, YES! Magazine, The Progressive, Truthout, Media Culture & Society, and the International Journal of Press/Politics. During 2024-2025 his current work on Algorithmic Literacy for Journalists is supported by a fellowship from the Reynolds Journalism Institute. 

projectcensored.org 

@ProjectCensored on Twitter 

**Our Substack brings every new episode of this podcast as well timely alerts about our book clubs and webinars and reminders for Tuesday night’s gatherings of Macro ‘n Chill. All this and more, straight to your inbox. Subscribe now: realprogressives.substack.com 

Recently, Steve appeared with host Sean St. Heart on Coup Save America, a weekly podcast committed to breaking through political rhetoric and focusing our attention on the core problems affecting our nation. The episode’s title was Exploring Modern Monetary Theory with Steve Grumbine, but of course it’s almost impossible to limit an MMT conversation to macroeconomics alone.

From the Coup Save America show notes: 

Coup Save America is a weekly talk show hosted by Sean St. Heart that plants the mental seeds of social change by inciting a politically progressive coup of knowledgeable citizens to challenge the status quo.  

coupsaveamerica.com 

@coupsaveamerica on Twitter

If NIMBY is the classist rejection of affordable housing ("Not in my back yard”), then YIMBY is sold as the progressive counter to it: “Yes, in my back yard; because I believe affordable housing should be widely available, even in my own neighborhood.” But of course, housing development has nothing to do with the needs of the poor or the working class. It has nothing to do with the public purpose. 

Steve’s guest, political economist David Fields, explains: 

YIMBY’s want us to believe that sheer quantity will bring prices down, because that’s how the market works.  Those who object are accused of NIMBYism. In addition,  

The episode explores the misleading narratives of YIMBYism and compares the market-driven approach to housing to trickle-down economics, emphasizing the constructed scarcity and profit motives behind urban planning. David points out the misuse of economic models like the Marshallian Cross, highlighting flaws in the market logic often used to justify YIMBY policies.  

David and Steve talk about the broader neoliberal agenda of privatization and deregulation, and its stranglehold on government policies. Awareness and organization are needed to combat systemic class inequality in housing and beyond. 

David Fields is from a critical realist and genetic structuralist ontology and epistemology. His work centers on the intricacies concerning the interactions of foreign exchanges and capital flows, with economic growth, fiscal and monetary policy and distribution, whereby critical attention is paid to the notion of endogenous money. He also delves into the political economy of regional development to study patterns with respect to the nature of housing, social stratification, and community planning. 

@ProfDavidFields on Twitter

The titans of capital aren’t just the obscenely wealthy. They are the directors of transnational finance companies; they manage the money of the obscenely wealthy.

Steve’s guest, political sociologist Peter Phillips, is the author of Titans of Capital: How Concentrated Wealth Threatens Humanity. The titans, he says, have doubled their AUM (assets under management) in the past 5 years.

So, if you’re wondering why the US has military interests in Ukraine or Gaza. Look to the titans, whose firms are investing in the defense industry. They profit off of war

While the titans are massively increasing the wealth of the top .05 percent of the world’s population, over 20,000 people die each day from starvation and easily curable diseases.

While the ruling class and their media mouthpieces insist that capitalism is going to save the world and money will trickle down...

Steve and Peter discuss ways in which the titans are able to bend policy to their own purposes. They mention the role of groups like the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations.

The episode also compares the approaches of the US and China, illustrating China's success in alleviating extreme poverty through state-driven economic strategies and how the US tries to spin China as a threat.

Steve and Peter talk about the need for revolutionary social movements to challenge the entrenched capitalist structures and demand wealth redistribution, using the insights of MMT to spur new thinking about alternative economic possibilities.

Peter Phillips is a Professor of Political Sociology at Sonoma State University since 1994, former Director of Project Censored 1996 to 2010 and President of Media Freedom Foundation 2003 to 2017.

Steve’s guests are Charles Derber and Yale Magrass, authors of Who Owns Democracy: The Real Deep State and the Struggle Over Class and Caste in America.

The concept of the deep state has been employed by different political ideologies, most recently the right under Trump. But its existence is real, and its service to the ruling class can be traced back to the founding of the US.

Among other ideas, Charles and Yale stress the distinction between shallow democracy and the real thing. From their book’s abstract:

The episode’s conversation examines a historical and contemporary concept of caste in the US, which some of our listeners may find surprising. The discussion also covers contradictions within the capitalist class, the impact of the military-industrial complex, and the potential implications of the upcoming election.

Charles Derber, Professor of Sociology at Boston College, is a public sociologist and life-long activist who writes about structural and cultural analysis of capitalism, public goods, the environment, and social movements seeking transformational change, He is the author of twenty-eight books.

Yale Magrass is a Chancellor Professor of Sociology at University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. He is the author/co-author of nine books, most co-authored with Charles Derber, and 80 articles. His work focuses upon how militaristic capitalism distorts everyday life as it promotes inequality, bullying, environmental devastation, and war.

When people reject the concept of degrowth are they suggesting society continue to allow capital to ravage the earth? Are they saying the countries of the global North should continue exploiting and extracting from the global South? Are they pushing for more growth?

Steve’s guest, Erin Remblance is an Australian researcher and activist who was spurred into action six years ago when the IPCC released their special report on global warming of 1.5°C. Since then, Erin has been creating courses, events, and materials that address the crises and work toward solutions.

Erin and Steve discuss degrowth, a planned reduction in energy and material throughput to maintain ecological balance. (Throughput, for those unfamiliar with the term, is defined as “the amount of material or items passing through a system or process.”)

The episode goes into the systemic issues of capitalism, which increasingly commodifies all areas of our lives in its relentless pursuit of growth.

“The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” Robert F. Kennedy, 1968, included in Erin’s slide presentation, An Introduction to Degrowth

Follow Erin Remblance and find her work on LinkedIn, Substack, and Twitter:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/erin-remblance/

https://erinremblance.substack.com/

https://twitter.com/remblance_erin

https://the-healthy-habits-accelerator.circle.so/c/start-here/the-rules

**Find a transcript of each week’s episode on our Substack, where we also offer links to resources discussed in the interview. Subscribe now at https://realprogressives.substack.com/ 

Daniel Conceição is back to discuss the social damage of rentier capitalism and the potential to address it through the insights of Modern Monetary Theory. 

Rentier capitalism derives profit from ownership and manipulation of assets rather than through productive activity. While industrial capitalism also creates inequality, rentier capitalism, or rent seeking, exacerbates the division.  

State-controlled money creation could nullify some of the speculative advantage of rentiers by directly funding critical public services, such as housing and healthcare. It may not be the ultimate answer, but it’s worth looking at. 

Daniel and Steve discuss the importance of overcoming mainstream economic fallacies that serve the interests of the financial elite. 

Daniel Negreiros Conceição did his undergraduate studies in Economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and his postgraduate studies at UMKC (under Professors Wray, Kelton, et al). He is a professor of macroeconomics and public finance at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He helped create the Institute for Functional Finance and Development (iffdbrasil.org),  and he helps run the Brazilian Modern Money Network (https://mmtbrasil.com/) aimed at producing more easily accessible material for teaching MMT to the wider public.  

@stopthelunacy on Twitter 

**Join us Tuesday evenings for Macro ‘n Chill, an informal gathering where we listen to and discuss this podcast. Register here for our September 10th session https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/29d4cc27-0123-4885-aaa8-6ff95947498d@7d53fbd0-6b43-4143-9400-6b0b36a25e55 

Steve’s guest is Nolan Higdon, an author and expert in media literacy. They discuss surveillance in education, which Higdon covers in his book, co-authored with Allison Butler, Surveillance Education: Navigating the Conspicuous Absence of Privacy in Schools.

Surveillance capitalism, which emerged in the late 20th century, profits from datamining, largely without public awareness. Nolan emphasizes the increased intrusion into schools, particularly following changes to FERPA laws in 2012 allowing private tech companies to collect and use student data. The discussion highlights the false sense of security offered by the surveillance tools as well as the biases ingrained in AI used in education.

The topic takes on special significance when considered along with the broader implications for society, including the erosion of democracy and the intensification of neoliberal ideology that prioritizes profit over public welfare.

Nolan Higdon is a founding member of the Critical Media Literacy Conference of the Americas, Project Censored National Judge, author, and lecturer at Merrill College and the Education Department at University of California, Santa Cruz. Higdon’s areas of concentration include podcasting, digital culture, news media history, propaganda, and critical media literacy.  He is the author of The Anatomy of Fake News: A Critical News Literacy Education (2020); Let’s Agree to Disagree: A Critical Thinking Guide to Communication, Conflict Management, and Critical Media Literacy (2022); The Media And Me: A Guide To Critical Media Literacy For Young People (2022); and the forthcoming Surveillance Education: Navigating the conspicuous absence of privacy in schools (Routledge). Higdon is a regular source of expertise for CBS, NBC, The New York Times, and The San Francisco Chronicle.

Find his work on Substack: nolanhigdon.substack.com 

@NolanHigdonCML on Twitter 

@ProjectCensored 

Macro N Cheese brings you another twist. A couple of months ago, Steve appeared as a guest on 1Dime Radio in a two-part series that we’re now presenting as a single episode.  Tony has been on our podcast several times, now Steve is on his turf. The result is a productive meeting of the minds. He and Steve both view the world through a Marxist lens, and they both agree Marxists need MMT.  

The discussion goes into the American Revolution as they consider the possibility of democracy in a modern capitalist system. They examine bourgeois control over politics and economics. They look at the limitations of capitalism in meeting society’s vital problems and talk about the devastating effects of privatization. They compare a UBI to a program of universal basic services and agree there’s no contest.  

Tony runs the YouTube channel "1Dime" and the podcast 1Dime Radio. On his main channel, 1Dime does video essays and mini-documentaries that involve the political economy, history, geopolitics, leftist theory, and various socio-political topics. 1Dime is known most for his videos involving MMT and Marxian thought, such as "The Problem With Taxing The Rich" and "Why Billionaires Prefer Democrats."  Check out his YouTube channel, 1Dime and his podcast, 1Dime Radio, on Apple, Spotify, and most podcast platforms.  

@1DimeOfficial on Twitter 

Let us never become immune to shock and outrage over the US government’s failure to guarantee its citizens a safe clean water supply. We must be outraged by the power that private players hold over us all with the blessings and collusion of officials whose titles suggest they should protect us.

Investigative journalist Jordan Chariton has been reporting on the Flint water crisis for nearly a decade. His newly published book, We the Poisoned, examines how systemic governmental failures, abetted by municipal, state, and federal authorities, and complicit media, combined to allow the Flint catastrophe.

Jordan talks to Steve about the devastating effects of neoliberal privatization schemes, driven by financial incentives and aided by powerful interests including Wall Street, which resulted in the use of untreated water from the polluted Flint River in a city already suffering from decades of economic decline. Privatization transformed public utilities into profit-driven entities, neglecting critical safety and quality controls. President Obama's inadequate federal response and successive Michigan administrations' culpability resulted in a combination of political negligence and deliberate actions all to avoid setting a costly precedent of government intervention.

Lest we relax into the belief that such crises are incidental and rare, be warned. Privatization is on an upward trajectory. The people’s health and safety interfere with profits and in the US, profit reigns supreme.

This episode offers a detailed portrayal of environmental racism, the perils of unchecked corporate power, and how both government and media support these atrocities.

Jordan Chariton, Status Coup CEO, is an independent progressive journalist who has worked inside and outside the belly of the corporate media beast for over a decade. He worked at Fox, MSNBC, and TYT, before starting Status Coup. He is the author of the newly published book, “We the Poisoned: Exposing the Flint Water Crisis Cover-up and the Poisoning of 100,000 Americans.”

@JordanChariton on Twitter

@StatusCoup