This is Fine

Welcome to Episode 1.16: No Nukes Is Good Nukes, or Is It? Thanks for listening, Finers; please subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast app, and make sure to keep a copy of this episode in your local fallout shelter. In this two-parter, we get down into the details of nuclear weapons history with Alex Wellerstein of the Stevens Institute of Technology. We discuss various efforts intended to achieve nuclear disarmament, who has the authority…

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Welcome to This Is Fine episode 1.15: Contraventional Wisdom. Thank you very much for listening, Finers.  Please subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and remember that George Bush the Elder pardoned the Iran-Contra criminals to protect himself from criminal liability. In this week’s podcast, we talk about Iran-Contra, a little over thirty years after Reagan’s apology to the country for the scandal in March 1987.  We focus mainly on Malcolm Byrne’s conclusive 2014 book, “Iran-Contra:…

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Welcome to This Is Fine episode 1.14: Heads I Win, Tales You Lose. Thank you very much for listening, Finers.  Please subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, but be sure to seek legal advice before listening to this podcast. In this week’s podcast, Judith Miller, a law professor at the University of Chicago who worked as a federal public defender, joins us to give a public defender’s perspective on our criminal justice system.  We discuss…

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Welcome to This Is Fine episode 1.13: Mo’ Prisons, Mo’ Problems. Thank you very much for listening, Finers.  Please subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and play this podcast during your next traffic stop. In this week’s podcast, we discuss mass incarceration and some of the injustice in our criminal justice system.  We discuss Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and Chris Hayes’ A Colony in a Nation. We briefly touch on order: police shootings,…

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Welcome to This Is Fine episode 1.12. Thank you very much for listening, Finers.  Please subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and remember that this podcast is “in-network” for most insurance plans. In this week’s podcast, we take on the state of American health care, discussing at length the recently passed Republican zombie bill, the American Health Care Act, as well as Elizabeth Rosenthal’s book, An American Sickness, which discusses health care’s broken cost structure….

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Welcome to This Is Fine episode 1.11: The New, New Marshall Plan. Thank you very much for listening, Finers.  Please subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and use a printout of this link as your token the next time you play Monopoly! In this week’s podcast, guest Marshall Steinbaum, a senior economist and fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, joins us to discuss how there is no free market to be found in the state of…

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Welcome to This Is Fine episode 1.10: Fox Populi. Thank you very much for listening, Finers.  Please subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and share this link with your Comcast representative the next time you’re on hold. In this week’s podcast, guest Sam Thielman helps us understand the business model that has sustained Fox News.  We also talk about the ways in which state and local politicians have conspired with large corporations in places like…

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Welcome to This Is Fine episode 1.9: Sons of Autarky. Thank you very much for listening, Finers. Please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and share this link with your favorite dad or uncle. In this week’s podcast, we talk about how the crisis of declining male labor force participation, the opioid epidemic, the Trump vote, and racism are all connected by one powerful narrative, autarkic patriarchal white labor (APWL). That’s the belief that a man’s…

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Welcome to This is Fine, Episode 1.8: Any Organized Party. Thank you for listening, Finers. Please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and disseminate it at the next party congress. In this week’s podcast, we talk with writer, academic, activist, and erstwhile Twitter-opinion-haver Freddie DeBoer about the challenges of left organizing in the runup to the 2018 elections. We contemplate whether the left can usefully cooperate with the Democratic Party, ask what a more small-d-democratic platform…

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Welcome to This Is Fine, episode 1.7: How Deep Is Your State? Thank you very much for listening, Finers. Please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or your favorite app, and share this link with your favorite subject of a FISA warrant. In this week’s podcast, we talk Turkey, or specifically the differences between the Deep State in a country like Turkey and the law enforcement and intelligence services in the U.S., particularly their leaks about the Trump campaign’s involvement…

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