Safe for Democracy

It’s a day late but nowhere near a dollar short (except, I guess, in terms of what I’m paid for these shows; in that case it’s several thousand behind: Ho Chi Minh’s entrance into our story. I don’t have a subsidiary story to tell in this set of notes, like I often enough did have … Continue reading Vietnam II: Ho Chi Minh →

I’m back from down south in Oaxaca, and I’ve got the cut-down of the show that Rob Morris and I did, along with my buddy Ernie Piper, about a month ago. I met Ernie during a very brief stint in Istanbul, and since then he’s been all over the Near East and Eastern Europe, writing … Continue reading SFD Talk — Unending Oil →

Hey folks— It’s a longish show where myself and some Peace Corps friends of mine talk about two of the last few shorts, Liberal Arts, Again and Land and Food and Capitalism. The audio isn’t anything I could have wanted, and the looseness isn’t everything I did want, but it’s the first of what may be … Continue reading Peace Corps Chats →

Hey Folks, We’re back to a mix of history and short shows, which means we’re back to quick intros on the smaller episodes. It looks like I’m finally going to pull together that shorts discussion with some of my old Peace Corps buddies this week, and if I don’t have Vietnam II out by Monday—I’m … Continue reading SFD Short—Political Cynicism →

We're starting, literally, with the dawn of human history and carrying it all the way up to the 1700s. Like the folks over at Blank Check, we're connoisseurs of context, and to get Vietnam right in a way that the Americans didn't from 1946 to 1975, and in a way that even Ken Burns failed to get it in 2017, we've got to go way back.

Writing on the first script starts in earnest this week, and I thought everybody deserved to know more or less where we’re headed. This episode gets into all that, and, for anybody following along, gets into some of the books that are going to be the backbones of the series: Ellsberg, Daniel. Secrets: A Memoir of … Continue reading Vietnam: A Plan →

It’s the last of all news shows, folks, and it’s barely newsy at all. We’re talking about monopolies in the American economy, which was, incidentally, the subject of Robert Reich’s last book, Saving Capitalism. The show explains itself, and as it promises, here’s some graphs for you: This is an Econ 101 graph of perfect … Continue reading SFD Short—Monopolies →

I’m getting back on track after my internet outage, and as promised, here’s a make-up of a sort for those last couple of weeks. This is the show that Rob and I recorded back in December, and which went up earlier this week as the December news show on Patreon. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, this … Continue reading Diminished US Power—A Conversation with Rob Morris →

Hey folks, Boy do we have some housekeeping. You probably noticed there hasn’t been a show the last two Mondays. That’s because fourteen full days ago, my internet went out, and it didn’t come back until pretty upsettlingly recently. I let everybody who’s checked the Facebook know, but if you’re just engaged with SFD through … Continue reading SFD Short—The Point →

I’ve been saying, for longer than it was exactly true, that everything’s bad and it’s only getting worse. The world’s come around to my point of view though, and at least in the US, almost a year out now from the inauguration, it certainly seems to be going that way. The President’s interviews, when anybody … Continue reading Liberal Arts, Again →