The Chatterbox

Augusto Pinochet became Chile's leader after a bloody, U.S.-supported coup killed socialist president Salvador Allende in 1973. He defended the coup. But as he attempted to control the narrative, stories of violence were already casting a shadow over his new regime. As we continue our series on authoritarianism, host Nahlah Ayed and panelists explore Pinochet’s popularity with centre-right Western leaders, the referendum that removed him from power, and the story of his eventual arrest and trial.

Listen to other episodes in this series:

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Benito Mussolini's Italy

How to Defeat Authoritarianism | Idi Amin's Uganda

Guests on this podcast:

Carolina Echeverría is a Chilean-Canadian artist, author and cultural mediator whose work explores memory, migration and belonging.

Teresa Macías is a professor in the school of social work at York University. Her expertise is on the enduring legacies of human rights violations from the Pinochet dictatorship.

Kevin Coleman is an associate professor of history at the University of Toronto.

Anti-government protesters in Serbia carry banners that reference Yugoslav and American pop culture. Two of their peers set out to find out why.

With Milena Dragićević Šešić and Tatjana Nikolić (University of Arts, Belgrade).

* * * On Remembering Yugoslavia PLUS: an ad-free episode; exclusive for Yugoblok members. * * * 

Remembering Yugoslavia is a Yugoblok podcast exploring the memory of a country that no longer exists. Created, produced, and hosted by Peter Korchnak.

• Show notes and transcript: Yugoblok.com/Serbia-Protests/
• Instagram: @rememberingyugoslavia & @yugo.blok
• JOIN YUGOBLOK

Support the show

In this episode, we're joined by Carsie Blanton for a conversation on communist folk music and the role of politics in art. Carsie Blanton is a songwriter, touring musician, and organizer with Artists Against Apartheid and People's Songs—an organization of musicians dedicated to adapting, distributing, and performing songs for liberation.

The conversation begins with Carsie giving us a sense of her experience as a Jewish, anti-Zionist musician after Oct 7th and how the repressive atmosphere and her experience on the Global Sumud Flotilla shaped the way she thinks about art and political discourse. She tells us how this experience led her to (re)launch an organization from the 1940s named People's Songs dedicated to adapting, distributing, and performing songs for liberation.

We discuss the ways that communist musicians organized historically and what the response from the FBI and repressive apparatus was to this organizing. We talk about the Congress for Cultural Freedom, for example, and other soft power approaches by the CIA to promote a noncommunist, compatible left in the sphere of art, music, and culture more broadly.

We discuss the repression that musicians faced, from Paul Robeson to Malvina Reynolds, and how the explicitly left, communist politics presentin folk music shifted and dissipated during neolberalism. We end by discussing the challenges facing musicians today in the context of the new Red Scare, how Carsie has navigated this, and how musicians and artists can get involved in organizing.

We are now on Youtube! You can find us and subscribe to our channel at youtube.com/@upstream_podcast

Further resources:

• Carsie Blanton's webiste
• Support Carsie on Patreon!
• People's Songs
• Artists Against Apartheid
• Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL)
• Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, by Francis Stonor Saunders
• The Folk Singers and the Bureau The FBI, the Folk Artists and the Suppression of the Communist Party, USA-1939-1956, by Aaron Leonard
• Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism, Gabriel Rockhill (Monthly Review Press)
• All Power Books
• Radical artists to explore: Bamboo, Robeson Singers, the Neighborhood Kids, Billy Bragg, The Burning Hell, Devon Sproule, Linqua Franqa, Tuneyards, Nathan Evans Fox

Related episodes:

• Palestine Ep. 15: The Gaza Freedom Flotilla w/ Chris Smalls & Huwaida Arraf
• Cuba Ep. 9: Conjuring up the Red Menace w/ Charisse Burden-Stelly
• The Intellectural World War w/ Gabriel Rockhill
• The Western Left w/ Gabriel Rockhill
• US Labor & Imperialism Pt. 1: the War Against Communism w/ Jeff Schuhrke
• Black Scare / Red Scare with Charisse Burden-Stelly
• Marxism for the Masses w/ Savannah from All Power Books
• Voting for Socialism w/ Claudia De La Cruz & Karina Garcia

Intermission music: "FBI" performed live by Carsie Blanton

Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Margaret talks to you about Trump's latest boogieman, the Italian hacktavists who helped free the internet

Sources:

https://publish.fid-media.de/server/api/core/bitstreams/f8e99026-0049-4da6-bd2e-1b5a9d84b477/content 
https://www.inventati.org/campaign/press 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_State_list_of_Foreign_Terrorist_Organizations 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specially_designated_global_terrorist 
https://www.icnl.org/resources/research/ijnl/solving-the-necessity-conundrum-what-the-drug-war-can-teach-us-about-due-process-for-u-s-charities-in-the-fight-against-international-terrorist-financing 
https://web.archive.org/web/20160126020743/http://www.jta.org/2009/05/28/news-opinion/united-states/holy-land-founders-get-life-sentences 
https://scalawagmagazine.org/2025/08/palestinian-political-prisoner-shukri-abu-bakers-poetry-book-debuts-in-houston/ 
https://anarchistnews.org/content/go-forth-and-multiply-may-10-100-1000-servers-spark 

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In Tainted Tools: New Materialisms As a Decolonial Project (Manchester University Press, 2026), Angela Last offers a provocative intervention into the tense relationship between new materialist and decolonial thought. Although both seek to challenge dominant European categories and hierarchies, they are often treated as incompatible. New materialisms, in particular, have been criticised for sustaining a white, universalised vision of the human and overlooking the racialised histories embedded in the "nonhuman." 
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The book traces these tensions to an earlier encounter between new materialist and decolonial projects forged through experimental combinations of Marx and Nietzsche. Once used to counter fascism, Stalinism and colonialism, this politically charged fusion gradually became depoliticised, leaving unresolved contradictions. Rather than reviving these early formations, the book brings their strategies into dialogue with contemporary new materialist and decolonial approaches to build greater theoretical solidarity in times of crisis.

Angela Last is a cultural geographer working at the intersection of postcolonial and science studies.  

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Elites, especially in tech, over at least the last decade have espoused repugnant ideas arguing that extreme social inequality is not only inevitable, but desirable. Acclaimed historian Kim Phillips-Fein argues that there is a long US tradition promoting wealth inequality that has once again moved from the shadows into the mainstream.

Please donate in support of KPFA and Against the Grain.

The post Fund Drive Special: The Long Struggle Against Equality appeared first on KPFA.

We are back! EQUALS Season 9 is officially here.

And we’re starting with a massive question: Is neoliberalism dead?

To answer it, we are thrilled to welcome back one of the world’s greatest economists on inequality and globalization, Branko Milanović, to discuss his groundbreaking latest book, The Great Global Transformation.

In this season premiere, we pull back the curtain on:

The Changing Global Economic Order: Why the old-world order is giving way to a new doctrine of "national market liberalism," blending market economics with far-right nationalism.

The Extraordinary Concentration of Capital and Income: The shocking underlying data showing how cash income from property is hyper-concentrated in the hands of the few.

The Rise of a New Global Elite (Homopluteia): A look at the unique, workaholic class who are simultaneously rich through capital and highly paid through their labor—and how their strict view on meritocracy shapes modern inequality.

The Hidden Link to International Conflicts: How extreme inequality historically pushes powerful countries toward zero-sum geopolitics and imperial expansion.

We also dive into how artificial intelligence is poised to drastically pivot income inequality, why the economic ideology of the 1990s managed to disguise itself as mere "common sense", and Branko’s thoughts on establishing an International Panel on Inequality.

If you enjoy the episode, please like, share, comment, and leave us a review. Follow us on X @EQUALShope and on LinkedIn.

This is Branko’s second appearance on EQUALS. If you missed his first incredible insights, listen to the previous episode here.

Don't just listen, join thousands of others reading our weekly digest on inequality. Sign up at https://www.equals.ink/

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Drilled global climate justice reporter Nina Lakhani interviews Elisa Morgera, the UN Special Rapporteur on Climate Change about Morgera’s latest report on the fundamental shortcomings of credit markets. Posed as a solution to the climate crisis, carbon credit markets have for years failed to deliver, while violating the human rights of the people most impacted by the climate crisis. Meanwhile, states have developed carbon tunnel-vision, fixating on schemes to reduce carbon emissions, while avoiding the root cause of the issue: fossil fuels. Lakhani and Morgera discuss all that and more.

Reading list from today’s show:
 
1. Elisa Morgera's latest report on rethinking carbon markets. 

2. Elisa's report on transforming food systems

3. Diana Taremwa-Karakire's recent piece for Drilled on a Kenyan carbon credit project

4. Nina Lakhani’s analysis on the Santa Marta climate conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels 
 
5. More reporting on the failures of carbon markets 
 
6. Amy Westervelt's book: https://geni.us/broughttoyouby

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Energy markets take center stage as crude oil, heating oil and RBOB grapple with major supply disruptions, refining constraints and an increasingly complicated geopolitical backdrop.

On this episode of The Futures Rundown, Mark Longo welcomes back Brian Pieri, founder of Energy Rogue, for a deep dive into the wild action across the energy complex. Brian breaks down the disconnect between the physical and financial crude oil markets and explains why today's oil market feels like a volatile game of volleyball — with traders trying to keep crude in the air while waiting to see who eventually spikes it.

They also explore the surge in heating oil and diesel, refining bottlenecks, RBOB, natural gas seasonality, LNG exports and the growing impact of AI-driven electricity demand. Plus, Mark and Brian run through the biggest weekly and year-to-date movers across futures, including energy, metals, agriculture and crypto. Then it's time for the Futures Free-for-All, with listener questions on USO vs. XLE, the challenges of futures-based energy ETFs, memories of crude oil's historic plunge below zero in 2020, and the outlook for nuclear power and uranium.