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FEATURING MARA EINSTEIN - Ever watch people in line at the grocery store or the post office scrolling their phones on Instagram or TikTok? Perhaps you are one of those people, swiping up from one video to the other, enjoying entertaining content created by ordinary people just like you. 

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A new book makes the compelling case that most social media feeds are now filled with content that’s been created using the same marketing tactics as cults do. You’re not watching content as much as you’re endlessly scrolling through ads. Former marketing executive and media studies professor Mara Einstein helps us sharpen our radar for branded content.

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FEATURING MARA EINSTEIN - Ever watch people in line at the grocery store or the post office scrolling their phones on Instagram or TikTok? Perhaps you are one of those people, swiping up from one video to the other, enjoying entertaining content created by ordinary people just like you. 

📖New feature for paid subscribers! Read the rough transcript of the interview below the video.

A new book makes the compelling case that most social media feeds are now filled with content that’s been created using the same marketing tactics as cults do. You’re not watching content as much as you’re endlessly scrolling through ads. Former marketing executive and media studies professor Mara Einstein helps us sharpen our radar for branded content.

Extended Cut of Dr. Mara Einstein on her book Hoodwinked

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FEATURING NOAH WEIGHT & NYLA MOXLEY - When the Boeing corporation donated $10 million to the University of Washington campus for a new Interdisciplinary Engineering Building (IEB), university officials likely didn’t expect it to become the focus of student activism. In early May 2025, dozens of students and activists occupied the building in protest of UW’s ties to Boeing, a company whose weapons Israel is actively using to massacre Palestinians in an on-going genocide. 

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University officials, rather than meeting student demands, appear to be siding with Boeing and Israel, and have suspended students involved in the IEB occupation. Students have organized themselves into a formation called SUPER, which stands for Students United for Palestinian Equality and Return. 

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FEATURING CHRISTINE NEUMANN-ORTIZ - The state of Wisconsin has become a frontline in the fight for immigrant rights against Donald Trump’s regime. Not only did federal agents arrest Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan and charge her with breaking federal law over an immigrant’s capture by ICE agents, but Homeland Security Secretary Tom Homan has threatened to arrest Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers. Homan warned Evers with arrest for issuing guidance of their rights to state employees. 

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But Wisconsin’s immigrant rights movement is strong and is standing up to the Trump regime’s attacks creatively and persistently.

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FEATURING REV. JENNIFER GUTIERREZ - Two thousand four hundred mental health workers with Kaiser Permanente in Southern California are celebrating a major union win after more than half a year on the picket line. The workers, who are members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers won a contract that is retroactive to September 2024, that includes a 20% pay raise over four years and a new pension plan. 

The struggle was tough, with union members engaging in civil disobedience, risking arrest, and suffering without work for more than six months. The strike came just as the demand for mental health therapies in Southern California skyrocketed with tens of thousands of people losing their homes to wildfires. 

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The success of Kaiser’s mental health workers comes at the same time as more than 55,000 Los Angeles County workers went on strike in late April, and, just as the Los Angeles City Council passed a resolution raising the minimum wage for tourism workers to $30 an hour, the highest minimum in the nation. 

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FEATURING MELINA ABDULLAH - Five years ago on May 25, 2020, just months into a global shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the videotaped brutal murder of a Minneapolis Black man named George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer sparked a historic movement. The streets of US cities erupted into one of the most massive movements for social justice in history. Black Lives Matter, a rallying cry coined years earlier, now emerged from the lips of politicians and pundits as a broad consensus was reached that police had gone too far. 

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This latest chapter in the movement for racial justice didn’t come from nowhere. It was simmering for years, even decades, and leaders demanded an abolition of police and prisons, or at the very least, a defunding of police and a re-funding public safety institutions. Where is that movement today?

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FEATURING MARA KRONENFELD - This May 15 marked the 77th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, the “catastrophe” that led to a mass displacement of Palestinians upon the creation of the state of Israel. Palestinians in Gaza are struggling for their very existence as Israel continues to bombard the narrow strip of land with full throated logistical and moral US support. 

Israel has launched a ground assault, escalating an already-fully fledged genocide, killing hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza each day. Meanwhile, Israel also continues to enforce a policy of mass starvation, largely blocking UN aid trucks from entering. 

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Most mainstream media are missing the mass global solidarity movement rising up in support of Palestinians. An estimated hundred thousand people protested in the Netherlands, and half a million in London. Large protests have also been held in US cities. 

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FEATURING IBRAM X KENDI - On May 19, 2025, the great American revolutionary Malcolm X would have been 100 years old. To mark the centennial of the birth of an extraordinary human, we turn to Dr. Ibram X Kendi, one of the nation’s leading intellectuals and academics, whose latest book is a biography of Malcolm X for young readers. In it, Dr. Kendi explains how, “This book tells the story of a single life navigating racism on a course to be antiracist—to revolutionize society, to be free.

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Learn why Malcolm X's life matters even today

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FEATURING SANAA ANSARI KHAN - Since at least the September 11, 2001 attacks, Muslim Americand have been a persecuted group in the United States. After the Israeli genocide in Gaza began in October 2023, that persecution has sharply increased, particularly in digital spaces, where Muslim voices are overpoliced and held to different standards than non-Muslims. 

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Understanding the importance of narrative power, the Muslim Counterpublics Lab has released a new report underscoring how people can fight for their right to online speech in the face of extreme Islamophobia and free speech infringements.

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FEATURING MATT GARDNER - Channelling Donald Trump’s childish diction, the Republican-controlled House Ways and Means Committee has named the GOP’s tax and immigration legislation, “THE ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL.” 

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The bill would permanently codify changes made to the tax system under Trump’s 2017 tax law. It would additionally cut taxes on offshored corporate profits and numerous forms of income, including tips and Social Security benefits, and would cut billions from the Medicaid program to pay for those tax cuts. The bill also aims to undo President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness and climate progress, among many other things. But Trump has called on Republicans to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

The whole thing sounds a complicated mess, but not to fear, Matt Gardner, Senior Fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy helps make sense of this so-called “BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL.”

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