TUC Radio – Page 2 – Independent Radio on CDs, DVDs and the Internet

The Beginning of the Nuclear Age (TWO of TWO)

By MariaNovember 18, 2025Catalog, Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts, Nuclear

The First Nuclear Chain Reaction – Enrico Fermi and Henry Moore – ARCHIVE
The Italian physicist Enrico Fermi set off the first nuclear chain reaction in an underground tennis-court at the University of Chicago in 1942. His experiment led directly to the building of the plutonium bomb that destroyed the city of Nagasaki.
Exactly 25 years after that experiment, with Fermi already dead of radiation induced leukemia, a statue by Henry Moore was unveiled on December 2, 1967, at that location, to commemorate the first self sustained nuclear chain reaction.
Boal describes the fascinating clash of ideas, from the early anti nuclear resistance by SDS students in the US and the British CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament), to the visual impression of Moore’s [ . . . ]

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The First Nuclear Chain Reaction – Enrico Fermi and Henry Moore (ONE of TWO) – ARCHIVE

By MariaNovember 11, 2025Catalog, Newest Podcasts, Nuclear

Historian Iain Boal tells the story of The Beginning of the Nuclear Age (ONE of TWO) The Italian physicist Enrico Fermi set off the first nuclear chain reaction in an underground tennis-court at the University of Chicago in December 1942. His experiment led directly to the building of the plutonium bomb that destroyed the city of Nagasaki.
There are competing claims as to the beginning of the nuclear age. Was it the day of Trinity, was it Hiroshima, or was it Fermi with his willingness to risk a nuclear explosion in the middle of a crowded city.
But more important than the date is the need to comprehend the fundamental change that the beginning of the nuclear age has brought about. Albert [ . . . ]

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TUC Archives: The Quest for Water and the American West

By MariaNovember 4, 2025About, Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts, Uncategorized

By Dr. Gray Brechin: Imperial San Francisco
This is Part TWO of the history of San Francisco. The town that grew from 16 houses on sand dunes in 1850 to the largest city on the West Coast in only 30 years.
Gray Brechin explains in the first chapter of his book Imperial San Francisco how the gold rush connected two major factors for city building: A swelling of the population and the growth of investment capital.
But the mix of people and money was lacking another major ingredient: water. As the first wave of destruction of California was brought about by gold mining, the second wave was caused by the damming of rivers, and the flooding of land for reservoirs, even eventually inside [ . . . ]

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TUC Archives – The Underground History of the Gold Rush by Dr. Gray Brechin: Imperial San Francisco

By MariaOctober 28, 2025Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts, Uncategorized

This is part of the history of a city, grown from 16 houses on sand dunes in 1850 to the largest city on the Pacific Coast in only 30 years. The book, Imperial San Francisco by Dr. Gray Brechin, is one of the few examples of a scholarly dissertation that becomes a very popular book. Imperial San Francisco brings to light the huge sacrifices extracted from the surrounding land by large cities, from Babylon to the Italian city states to the instant cities of North America.
This program focuses on the Gold Rush and the early conflicts between mining and farming. Next week we’ll talk about the valleys flooded and the rivers diverted to bring water to SF. Was it worth [ . . . ]

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Michael Parenti: Capitalism’s Apocalypse – ARCHIVE

By MariaOctober 21, 2025Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts

Why the rich can’t save anybody – not even themselves 
2024 Tribute – Updated Archive: Parenti predicted the financial crisis and said that giant corporate capitalism – by it’s very nature – is an apocalyptic system. When unregulated the built in elements of ever increased growth may well bring the whole system down. And he described the growing national debt not as a tragic mistake but as a means to shift ever more money from the tax payers to the financial institutions in the form of interest payments.
This speech is an analysis of the many structural flaws of a capitalist system that puts it on a permanent collision course with democracy. Recorded on August 23, 2008 at the closing reception [ . . . ]

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Fred Gray – Civil Rights Attorney for Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Black History Month 2025

By MariaOctober 14, 2025Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts

TUC Archive: Fred Gray, just out of law school, made a commitment to destroy everything segregated in his home state of Alabama Rosa Parks was only Fred Gray’s second case. Gray represented Claudette Colvin, a teenager, who nine months earlier had been the first to refuse to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus – and in turn inspired Rosa Parks.
When Rosa Parks was arrested in 1955 for violating the segregated seating ordinance, 26-year-old Martin Luther King was chosen to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and 24-year-old Fred Gray became his and the movement’s lawyer. Gray’s legal victory in the federal courts ended the boycott 381 days later.
Fred Gray won scores of civil rights cases in education, voting rights, [ . . . ]

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In Memory of Bertolt Brecht (Archive)

By MariaOctober 7, 2025Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts

For Brecht’s 100th birthday in 1998 the Royal National Theatre from London gave a performance in his honor at Theater Artaud in San Francisco
Bertolt Brecht and many other artists in post WWI Germany were courageously and proudly democrats, socialists or communists. They had experienced the horror of the first World War and were determined to prevent a second one. So when Hitler and the Nazi party actually assumed state power in 1933 they were all marked and most of them left the country immediately. Their exodus destroyed much of the cultural/political rebellion of the 1920s.
Even though Brecht, the playwright, poet, director and theoretician of the stage, was persecuted by the Nazi’s, he was forced to leave his home in exile [ . . . ]

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Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda, Part TWO of TWO

By MariaSeptember 30, 2025Newest Podcasts

Archive: Journalist John Pilger has called Alex Carey “a second Orwell in his prophesies” This segment covers the little known role of the US Chamber of Commerce in the McCarthy witch hunts of post WWII. Carey also shows how the continued campaign against “Big Government” plays an important role in bringing Reagan to power. Also mentioned the famous secret memo by Lewis Powell, later Supreme Court Justice, that set in motion what Bill Moyers today calls “the revolt of the rich.”
Alex Carey said that the people of the US have been subjected to an unparalleled, expensive, 3/4 century long propaganda effort designed to expand corporate rights by undermining democracy and destroying the unions. Carey’s unique view of US history goes back [ . . . ]

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Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda, Part ONE of TWO

By MariaSeptember 23, 2025Newest Catalog Items, Newest Podcasts, Uncategorized

Archive: This is TUC Radio’s all time most popular program Alex Carey wrote that the people of the US have been subjected to an unparalleled, expensive, 3/4 century long propaganda effort designed to expand corporate rights by undermining democracy and destroying the unions. The 20th century, he wrote, is marked by three historic developments: the growth of democracy via the expansion of the franchise, the growth of corporations, and the growth of propaganda to protect corporations from democracy. Carey’s unique view of US history goes back to World War I and ends with the Reagan era.
Noam Chomsky dedicated his book “Manufacturing Consent” to the memory of Alex Carey. Chomsky says that the Australian sociologist would have written the definitive history [ . . . ]

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The Assassination of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March, Michael Parenti – Archive

By MariaSeptember 16, 2025Newest Podcasts, Uncategorized

Who was Julius Caesar, a dictator or a populist? And who really was Brutus, who murdered him on the Ides of March? A young hero or a participant in a deep seated conspiracy? This intriguing lecture by the noted author, speaker, activist and scholar Michael Parenti provides surprising new insights and parallels to today that are both shocking and amusing.
This rebroadcast is part of the very popular and ever expanding series on what Parenti called Real History, a different and intriguing reading of a surprisingly large number all too familiar stories.
Parenti spoke about his Pulitzer Price nominated book: The Assassination of Julius Caesar, a people’s history of ancient Rome. He was recorded in the summer of 2003 in San Francisco [ . . . ]

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Conversation between Brian Eno and David Graeber

By MariaSeptember 9, 2025Newest Podcasts

Even though Brian Eno and David Graeber both had become internationally famous by 2014, the musician, visual artist and culture critic Brian Eno and the Professor of anthropology, author and co-founder of Occupy Wall street, David Graeber had not yet met in person. And here, thanks to the creative concepts of Artangel, they met on stage for an improvised conversation.
Artangel is a London-based arts organization that has – since 1985 – commissioned and produced notable site-specific works in unexpected places, plus several projects for TV, film, radio and the web.
Michael Morris is introducing Brian Eno and David Graeber. These are excerpts of their 80 minute conversation on Occupy Wall street, democracy compared to anarchism, and the need to protect the [ . . . ]

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Hurricane Katrina and the War on the Poor (from Archive)

By MariaSeptember 2, 2025Newest Podcasts

SF Paramedics Prevented, at Gun Point, from Rescuing Themselves and Others
After being turned away from shelters they and a large group of African Americans try and walk to safety. Gretna Sheriffs block the Greater New Orleans Bridge across the Mississippi and shoot over their heads when they try to leave the flooded city. Later their temporary shelter is destroyed by a helicopter, a police officer, gun drawn, threatens them in a furious rage and takes away their food and water. Just before night he forces the group to flee into the night of a ‘shoot to kill’ curfew in New Orleans.
When they finally get picked up they, and thousands of others, sit in a dirty cage at the New Orleans [ . . . ]

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Edward Said: Palestine and the Universality of Human Rights, Archive 2003

By MariaAugust 26, 2025Newest Podcasts

Among the over twelve hundred programs in the TUC Radio archives this is one of my favorites. Thats based on the respect I have for the speaker, Edward Said, and the ongoing sadness that, to this day, so little is known about the history of Palestine.
This is Edward Saids last major speech on Palestine, the war on Iraq and the Bush administration. On September 25, 2003, a message made its way around the world. Edward Said, Palestinian American, world famous professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and fearless defender of the Palestinian cause had died of leukemia in New York City, far from the city of Jerusalem where he was born in 1935.
In 1948 Said and his [ . . . ]

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Onkalo ” Into Eternity ” TUC Radio Archives

By MariaAugust 19, 2025Newest Podcasts

Blasted into bedrock of the island of Olkiluoto in Finland on the shores of the Baltic Sea, Onkalo has to remain secure for 100,000 years.
Danish filmmaker Michael Madsens documentary of the building in progress of Onkalo is a meditation on eternity, insanity and the impossibility of projecting anything 100,000 years into the future.
The film also proves eloquently and with expert statements the terrible danger that arises from so-called spent nuclear fuel from power plants and makes us see Fukushima with very different eyes.
This radio program presents excerpts from the film and its amazing sound design.
DATE: film released in 2010

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Timothy Mousseau: Chernobyl and Fukushima ” Biological Implications of radiation – TUC Archives

By MariaAugust 12, 2025Newest Podcasts

The team studies birds, insects, microbes, and plants at over 1,000 sites, returning year after year. They found significantly increased rates of genetic damage.
When the biologist, Professor Tim Mousseau, concluded this talk by showing heartbreaking pictures of the birds of Chernobyl and their tumors and birth defects, the physician and anti nuclear campaigner Dr. Helen Caldicott stepped up to the podium to thank him.
She said: I want to pay homage to Tim Mousseau, who with his colleagues is actually endangering his life by going into extremely high radioactive areas doing pioneering work, which is going to change the concept of radiation exposure to humans. What is happening to the animals, the insects and the plants is going to happen to [ . . . ]

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