The Chatterbox

Robert Musil (1880-1942) was an Austrian novelist, famous for The Man Without Qualities. Set in Austria just before the start of World War I, it features a character who tries to live without fixed principles. But is it a good idea to conduct your life in this way? Is it even possible? Could having a rigid system of beliefs make you insensitive to changes in society? Is there a happy medium between dogmatism and spinelessness? Josh and Ray remain flexible with Bence Nanay from the University of Antwerp, author of Philosophy Without Qualities: Robert Musil, the Thinker (forthcoming).

On December 14, hard-right candidate José Antonio Kast was elected as Chile’s president with over 58% of the vote. Kast built his campaign around the promise of expelling undocumented migrants and has been called the “Trump of Chile.” On today’s show, host Allen Ruff is joined by journalist Nyki Duda to talk about the political history of Chile and what led to the election of Kast.

Duda says that what makes Kast different from other far-right leaders like Trump or Bolsonaro, is that he developed his career within the institutional Right in Chile. His father was a member of the German Nazi Party who fled Europe to avoid accountability for his crimes. Kast’s father established himself within the landed gentry outside of Santiago and, with Kast’s brother, was involved in a series of murders around the 1973 coup. Kast’s other brother was one of the “Chicago boys” who implemented neoliberalism in Chile. Kast has never renounced his family’s crimes and is poised to be the most right-wing leader Chile has seen since the Pinochet dictatorship, says Duda.

There was a time in the 90s when Chile was seen as a model of democracy and economic growth in Latin America coming off the repressive regimes of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. But that dream has not come to pass. Duda describes the legacy of Pinochet-era “anti-terror” laws and attempts to rewrite the dictatorship-era constitution and the media misinformation campaign against the draft of a new constitution that would have created plurinational status for Indigenous tribes and introduced rights of the environment. 

Duda also discusses the 2019 student protests and the violent government backlash, including the case of Nicolás Piña. 

Nyki Duda is an editor at Al Jazeera digital and researcher at Lead Stories. As a freelance journalist, she covers migration, social movements and far-right politics. Her writing has appeared in Truthout, Jacobin, In These Times and more.

Featured image of José Antonio Kast from 2009 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0 CL).

The post The Run-up to the “Trump of Chile,” José Antonio Kast appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

The United States spends over a $100 billion dollars more a year on the military than it did at the height of the Cold War. What does it get year upon year for that money? Since 2001, America’s overseas war have led to nearly a million deaths. Ben Freeman discusses the intersection of interests that drive America’s military spending, including the private contractors who receive half of the US military budget and the universities, Hollywood movies, and media funded by the Pentagon or its arms manufacturers.

William D. Hartung and Ben Freeman, The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home Bold Type Books, 2025

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The post The Trillion Dollar War Machine appeared first on KPFA.

Featuring Alejandro Velasco, Gabriel Hetland, and Yoletty Bracho on the US attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro. An expansive conversation analyzing Trump’s imperialist project and assessing Chavismo and its oppositions from Chávez through Maduro.

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In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, it fell to Britain to maintain the balance of power in continental Europe – but how could a small island manage such a task? How could it prevent the rise of another tricorned tyrant? That's the subject of Andrew Lambert's sweeping new book No More Napoleons. Speaking to Kev Lochun, he explains how Britain helped maintain peace in Europe without the need for huge armies, why Belgium was so important to maintaining stability on the continent, and why the idea of ‘Britannia Rules the Waves’ continues to be relevant today.

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This week: 2025 ended on high for the US stock market but no one seems too pleased with its performance. Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck, unpack the story of the US markets in 2025, why it was outperformed internationally, and the role AI has  played. Then, the hosts discuss how, amid the uncertainty and chaos of Trump’s trade war, Mexico has found a way to come out on top. And finally, 2025 saw a boom for dealmaking with $2.4 trillion in global mergers and acquisitions. Meanwhile, old fashioned conglomerate Berkshire-Hathaway is changing hands with Warren Buffett stepping down at the age of 95. Will the new CEO keep with Buffett’s conservative investment strategy?

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President Trump has his sights set on Greenland. If he succeeds, what mineral wealth will he find there? Adrian Finch, Professor of Geology at St Andrews University has been visiting Greenland for more than 3 decades and explains what so called ‘rare earth elements’ are found in Greenland and why.

Professor Danny Altmann talks to Tom Whipple about a new project to understand the genetic and metabolic similarities between two illnesses; Long Covid and ME.

To discover more fascinating science content, head to bbc.co.uk, search for BBC Inside Science and follow the links to The Open University.

Presenter: Tom Whipple

John le Carré, born David Cornwell in 1931, was a British novelist renowned for his morally complex spy fiction. Writing under a pen name gave him the freedom to publish while he worked in both MI5 and MI6, but after the breakthrough success of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, he left the intel community world for good. Le Carré’s work spanned the globe, covering terrorism and drug networks, private banking and pharmaceutical exploitation, arms trades and resource plundering- often drawing on the people and places he knew firsthand. Le Carré’s vast personal archive is all on display in the new John le Carré: Tradecraft exhibition at the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library. Historian and curator Jessica Douthwaite joins Sasha to talk about the exhibition and what it reveals about his life and work.

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This show is brought to you from Goat Rodeo, Airwave, and the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. This episode was produced by Flora Warshaw and the team at Goat Rodeo. At the International Spy Museum, Mike Mincey and Memphis Vaughan III are our video editors. Emily Rens is our graphic designer. Joshua Troemel runs our SPY social media. Amanda Ohlke is our Director of Adult Education and Mira Cohen is the Vice President of Programs.

Interviewer: JOSHUA ROSE. In this episode of the Andrea Mitchell Center podcast, Joshua Rose speaks with Penn Political Science Professor JULIA LYNCH about her book Getting Better: The Policy and Politics of Reducing Health Inequalities and the politics of public health. Drawing on case studies from the United States, Brazil, Germany, and the UK, the conversation explores how social inequality, democratic participation, and political will shape health outcomes - and why expanding political voice may be one of the most powerful tools for improving public health.