The Corbett Report Podcast

What is intellectual property, exactly? Where does this pernicious idea come from? And how does this philosophical wrong turn lead us not just into the heart of absurdity, but toward the censorship of the internet and the control of your genome? Find out in this jam-packed edition of The Corbett Report . . . and stay tuned for the worldwide debut of James Corbett's blockbuster online protest song, IP Freely (Screw YouTube)!

Once a sleepy farming region, Silicon Valley is now the hub of a global industry that is transforming the economy, shaping our political discourse, and changing the very nature of our society. So what happened? How did this remarkable change take place? Why is this area the epicenter of this transformation? Discover the dark secrets behind the real history of Silicon Valley and the Big Tech giants in this important edition of The Corbett Report.

Telecom companies are currently scrambling to implement fifth-generation cellular network technology. But the world of 5G is a world where all objects are wired and constantly communicating data to one another. The dark truth is that the development of 5G networks and the various networked products that they will give rise to in the global smart city infrastructure, represent the greatest threat to freedom in the history of humanity.

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing wrote George Orwell 70 years ago, and the observation remains true today. But bad writing is not just bad writing; the language employed by politicians (and their string pullers) can literally be a matter of life and death. Join James today on the podcast as he delves into the tyrants' linguistic weapons and how we can arm ourselves against them.

We all know the old trope of the tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist who believes crazy things like “the government is spying on us” and “the military is spraying things in the sky” and “the CIA ships in the drugs.” Except those things aren’t so crazy after all. Here are five examples of things that were once derided as zany conspiracy paranoia and are now accepted as mundane historical fact.

There’s something strange about the idea of a minimum wage. It’s one of those subjects that everyone has a strong opinion about, even if they have no idea what makes actual economic sense. But perhaps the most surprising thing of all is that the minimum wage has a dirty secret that most economists don’t want you to know about. Today we explore The Dark History of the Minimum Wage.

In the face of the crisis of science, it is easy to throw our hands up and watch as the old guard of the scientific establishment circles the wagons and goes back to business as usual. But there are real solutions to these problems, and we all—scientists and non-scientists alike—have a part to play in implementing them. Today on The Corbett Report we explore Solutions: Open Science.

In recent years, the public has gradually discovered that there is a crisis in science. But what is the problem? And how bad is it, really? Today on The Corbett Report we shine a spotlight on the series of interrelated crises that are exposing the way institutional science is practiced today, and what it means for an increasingly science-dependent society.

In 1961, a psychologist conducted an experiment demonstrating how ordinary men and women could be induced to inflict torture on complete strangers merely because an authority figure had ordered them to do so. In 2001, the United States government formed the Transportation Security Administration to subject hundreds of millions of air travelers to increasingly humiliating and invasive searches and pat downs. These two phenomena are not as disconnected as they may seem. Join us today on The Corbett Report as we explore The TSA (and other experiments in evil).

Live (by which I mean recorded) from western Japan, it's The 2nd Annual REAL Fake News Awards, that ceremony where the worst Fake News offenders of the past year are dishonoured with the shameful Dino awards. So will The Guardian retain its title as biggest purveyor of fake news or will a new challenger come along to take its place? Find out in this year's most exciting award show!