TUC Radio is a regular weekly program on over 60 radio stations and can be heard in many rural communities as well as in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle, Cleveland, Houston, Taos, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Vancouver and many other cities – as far as Cape Town, South Africa and into North Africa via Milano, Italy.
TUC Radio does not accept funding from government agencies or corporations. There is no financial backing from any radio station or even a non-profit. TUC Radio is free to air what I believe you find important. PLEASE support TUC Radio with your donation. Thank you!
Since 1993 attorney Steven Donziger has battled the oil giant Chevron on behalf of indigenous communities in the Amazon Basin. Their land has been polluted by toxic waste from oil drilling. 16 billion gallons of poisonous waste water that contained copper, mercury, lead and other carcinogens were dumped into rivers, lakes and impoundment ponds.
Steven Donziger, in 2013, helped lead the legal effort that won the largest court judgment in history for human rights and environmental justice, a $9.5 billion verdict against Chevron.
Chevron, following the verdict, sold their assets in Ecuador and left the country. The corporation threatened the plaintiffs with “A lifetime of litigation” if they attempted to collect. According to internal memos Chevron launched a highly funded and sustained [ . . . ]
Read More
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)
Dr. Chad Hanson is the Director of the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute. As Research Ecologist he is part of a growing movement of scientists and researchers who are calling into question many of the practices and policies of logging, not just the so-called fire suppression. Much of current research is presented in his 2021 book Smokescreen – Debunking Wildfire Myths to Save Our Forests and Our Climate. And the key themes are listed in his talk.
Hanson had a Zoom meeting in September 2021 with the Dogwood Alliance, a forest protection nonprofit based in Asheville, North Carolina – and prior guest on TUC Radio.
Rita Frost of the Dogwood Alliance moderated the meeting. The one hour talk and conversation [ . . . ]
Read More
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)
A revolution in the magnitude and scope of the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago The Great Turning, Awakened Action Symposium. On the Summer Solstice of 2020 Joanna Macy, from her home in Berkeley, spoke at the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Buddhist monastery had called for Awakened Action and invited Women Leaders to Speak to Race, Poverty, Climate, and the Covid Pandemic.
Joanna Macy is an eco-philosopher and a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. Now in her very early nineties she has for decades helped transform despair and apathy into constructive change. As teacher, writer of eight books and antinuclear activist she has created frameworks for personal and social change. Joanna Macy [ . . . ]
Read More
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)
George Wuerthner’s historic exposé of the destruction of the American West by cattle grazing (Archive) – And the shocking decision by the National Park Service in September 2021 to continue and even expand beef and dairy cattle grazing in the popular Seashore – just north of San Francisco on the unceded land of the Coast Miwok.
Cattle grazing should have ended there in the late 1980s. The area had become a National Park by an act of Congress in 1962 and the existing ranches were bought out at market rate with taxpayer funds. The ranchers were given 25 years to find new land and vacate. Instead they expanded the herds, and used political clout in Senate and Congress to [ . . . ]
Read More
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)
Does our modern techno-industrial society destroy the biophysical basis of our existence? Bill Rees is a population ecologist, ecological economist, and Professor Emeritus of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning.
He asks the question why humanity has not responded, in over 50 years, to warnings about rising greenhouse gases and heat, over exploitation of oceans, forests, soils and water; and species extinction.
Prof. Bill Rees also challenges the over-optimistic ”problem solvers” on the claim, in their version of the Green New Deal, that if we replace oil with solar we can continue living much as we do today – in an economy based on growth and consumption.
Bill Rees had been invited by the Institute on Religion in an Age [ . . . ]
Read More
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)
Prof. Rees first defined “Ecological Footprint” and “Overshoot” My colleague Alex Smith, host of Radio Ecoshock, put out a provocative statement on his weekly radio program. He announced: Who can question the Green New Deal and holy solar power? Guest Megan Seibert and super-scientist Bill Rees just published a scathing report. They say it’s time to shrink or die.” end quote. I was intrigued by the provocation and downloaded the 19 page paper – and an inspiring talk by Professor Bill Rees and will present excerpts of both on this program.
William Rees is a bio-ecologist, ecological economist, former Director and Professor Emeritus of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning. Rees is perhaps best [ . . . ]
Read More
Podcast (file2): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)
The former Greek Finance Minister in conversation with Dr Marc Lamont Hill on Al Jazeera, February, 2021 Techno-Feudalism is a term that’s in the news these days. It may mean control of the data by the few FAANG companies – that’s Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix; and Alphabet – formerly known as Google. Techno-Feudalism also applies to the dominance of finance and banking over state institutions – driving huge wealth inequalities.
Yanis Varoufakis is the former finance minister of Greece and Professor of Economics at the University of Athens. He is cofounder of the Democracy in Europe Movement DiEM25. That’s a pan-European political movement founded in 2016 by a group of Europeans, including philosophers and activists. They see [ . . . ]
Read More
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)
Alex Smith interviewed Ed Struzik on the recent out of control firestorms and how wetlands can limit their spread This extraordinary conversation between Alex Smith and Ed Struzik was broadcast on August 18, 2021, on the weekly one-hour radio show Ecoshock.
Struzik is a science journalist and Fellow at Queens University, Canada. In his book FIRESTORM he visits scorched earth from Alaska to Maine, and introduces the scientists, firefighters, and resource managers making the case for a radically different approach to managing wildfire in the 21st century. Wildfires can no longer be treated as avoidable events because the risk and dangers are becoming too great and costly.
Alex Smith also asks about Struzik’s October 2021 book SWAMPLANDS and the struggle [ . . . ]
Read More
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)
Radio based on films produced by Will Griffin for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space In May and June 2021 Will Griffin released two short films on the recent expansion of nuclear power into Space and on the secrecy surrounding the upgrade of a US radar installation on Norwegian soil.
These two short films are posted on the the website of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. That’s an international organization founded in 1992 with an unbroken record of education and activism on a rarely covered topic, the Weaponization of Space.
For the first film, published on May 6, 2021, Will Griffin writes in his summary: The Pentagon and multinational corporations are privatizing [ . . . ]
Read More
Podcast (file2): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)
Historian Iain Boal tells the story of The Beginning of the Mass Production of Nuclear Bombs The Italian physicist Enrico Fermi set off the first nuclear chain reaction in an underground tennis-court at the University of Chicago in 1942. 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 statue that seems to depict a skull plus storm trooper helmet [ . . . ]
Read More
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)
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. [ . . . ]
Read More
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 39.8MB)
How can a discussion of the enormous debt and looming homelessness faced by ordinary people in the US, once the covid pandemic is ending, be inspiring and visionary?
In preparation for that fight Thomas Gokey and the Debt Collective have begun organizing debtors into a union. They already had victories canceling $2.8 billion in student debt, medical debt, payday loans, probation debt and credit card debt.
Today the sheer magnitude of the problem we will have to deal with soon – over 40 million people in the US facing eviction once Covid moratoria disappear – is seen as an opportunity.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a New York Times best-selling author, a professor at Rutgers University, and an ordained Presbyterian [ . . . ]
Read More
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)
Tim Dodd asks: What comes out of the flamey end of a rocket?
I’m alerting you to the helpful information in Tim Dodd’s 2020 film immediately following the two space flights by billionaire Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos. Both businessmen are aiming at greatly increasing the number of flights into Space for commerce and space tourism.
Tim Dodd begins his film by wondering why NASA, with a mission of protecting the atmosphere, agrees to polluting space flights and their expansion into space tourism.
Tim Dodd is also known as The Everyday Astronaut. He is a science communicator, photographer, and musician. His website – everydayastronaut.com – features videos and information about past and upcoming spaceflight.
Tim is clearly a fan and supporter of [ . . . ]
Read More
Podcast (file2): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 39.9MB)
How will it affect Space Exploration and Tourism?
This program begins with part of the LIVE transmission from Mission Control of the launch on April 23, 2021, of the SpaceX Crew Dragon “Endeavor” to the International Space Station. The crew was being informed of a piece of orbital debris that might pass close to their spacecraft. They were told to cover the windows with kevlar blankets, put on their pressurized flight suits, and get into their seats just in case there was an impact that caused a loss of air pressure. Preparations for space junk collisions are now routine.
Meanwhile, at their point of destination, the International Space Station crew, in a monthly inspection, had found that their Canadarm had been pierced [ . . . ]
Read More
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)
The Australian physician and anti nuclear campaigner, Helen Caldicott, has since the late 1970s worked with Bruce Gagnon and Karl Grossman from Space For Peace to keep space free from weapons and nuclear material. And all had tried to prevent the deployment, in 1997, of the space probe Cassini to Saturn with 72 pounds of Plutonium-238 on board. A launch accident could have dispersed the deadliest material known to man across our planet.
Space Junk has become an important topic. As early as 2001 Bruce Gagnon was describing that of all the man-made objects in Low Earth Orbit, 95% are space junk: rocket thrusters, derelict satellites, and most of all, tiny fragments of debris from collisions and explosions. These pieces of [ . . . ]
Read More
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)
