Newest Podcasts

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!

Feminist Theology and Women in the Muslim World (ONE of TWO) Archive

By MariaMarch 7, 2023Newest Podcasts

Special for International Women’s Month 2023  Dr. Riffat Hassan is a Muslim theologian from Pakistan who opposes the Islamic view of the inferiority of women. She says that since anti women legislation and custom are enacted in the name of theology, it is necessary to study the Koran and investigate the source. This required courage since challenging traditional interpretation of the Koran can be a capital offense. On the other hand we are all familiar with the claim that Islam has given women more rights than any other religious tradition. And Riffat Hassan decided to deal with that contradiction.
Riffat Hassan began her quest in 1984 when her feminist friends in Pakistan asked her to help define the theological [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:58 — 39.8MB)

Fossil Fueled Climate Change & War: Double Doomsday with Dr. Peter Carter

By MariaFebruary 28, 2023Newest Podcasts

A speech on the one year anniversary of the climate destroying war in Ukraine Peter Carter from British Columbia, Canada, is a retired medically trained doctor with a background in environmental health protection.
In 2009, moved by James Hansen’s public statement that the world was in a state of planetary emergency due to climate change, he founded the Climate Emergency Institute and remains it’s director. He published on global climate change science and impacts, Arctic climate change, risk assessment and biodiversity. He has presented at many leading science and climate change conferences including the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the European Geosciences Union (EGU). And he is an IPCC expert reviewer.
The IPCC and other United Nations organizations have warned us that [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

90 Seconds to Midnight with Dr. Helen Caldicott

By MariaFebruary 21, 2023Newest Podcasts

An interview by Steve Taylor for the Global Justice Ecology Project
This thought provoking conversation took place on January 25, 2023, one day after the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced the hands of the Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds before midnight—in large part due to war in Ukraine.
Dr. Helen Caldicott is an Australian peace activist and environmentalist. She discusses the extreme and imminent threat of a nuclear holocaust due to a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia in Ukraine. She also addresses nuclear fusion and the relationship between the nuclear power industry and nuclear weapons.
Helen Caldicott is the author of many books and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She was named by the Smithsonian as one [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Chris Hedges interviews Matt Taibbi on Hamilton 68

By MariaFebruary 14, 2023Newest Podcasts

Hamilton 68 was a Twitter based dashboard designed to be used by reporters and academics to “measure Russian disinformation”
Chris Hedges wrote: The panic over Russian disinformation that followed the election of Donald Trump often relied on a source now known to have been fraudulent, Hamilton 68.
Matt Taibbi wrote: Virtually every major news organization in America has used material from the Hamilton 68 dashboard, including NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and the Washington Post. Mother Jones alone did at least 14 stories pegged to the group’s “research.” Even fact-checking sites like Politifact and Snopes cited Hamilton 68 as a source.
This is a February 10, 2023, interview by Chris Hedges of Matt Taibbi on The Real [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Ukraine’s President Zelensky is promising ‘big business’ for Wall Street and US corporations

By MariaFebruary 7, 2023Newest Podcasts

Credit to Ben Norton, founder and editor of Geopolitical Economy Report
In his speech to the U.S. National Association of State Chambers on Jan. 23rd, 2023, Zelensky credited asset managers and corporations that are already active in Ukraine – among them BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and J.P. Morgan Chase, Elon Musk’s Starlink and Westinghouse.
But that is just the beginning. Rebuilding Ukraine, Zelensky said, “will be the largest economic project of our time in Europe.”
The areas of investment listed by Zelensky range from weapons and defense to construction, from communications to agriculture, from transport to IT, from banks to medicine. “And, I invite you to work with us right now”.
Ben Norton, investigative journalist and the founder and editor of the Geopolitical Economy [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

How Science Is Manipulated By Industry

By MariaJanuary 31, 2023Newest Podcasts

With Prof. Yogi Hendlin & Ari Whitten
When this conversation took place in April 2022 Ari Whitten and Prof. Yogi Hendlin had just met in Costa Rica and were inspired by their common interests.
Here are excerpts from their 90 minute conversation on environmental toxins and how they affect our health. They discuss in detail how industries, that produce these toxins, manipulate research and evade responsibility.
Ari Whitten is the founder of The Energy Blueprint, and a best-selling author.
Prof. Yogi Hendlin is an environmental philosopher and public health scientist. He has a PhD in Environmental Philosophy from the University of Kiel, Germany, and holds graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and UCLA and bachelor’s degrees from UC Berkeley. He’s currently [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Marilyn Waring: War is the biggest growth industry of all – Archive TWO of TWO

By MariaJanuary 24, 2023Newest Podcasts

Killing people, or preparing to kill them, is considered very valuable in the international economic system
Marilyn Waring was only 22 when she was first elected to the New Zealand Parliament. She was shocked and dismayed when she learned that all countries that are members of the UN are forced to keep their books and design their budgets under the system of National Income Accounting. The international trade in arms is the biggest growth industry of all. Killing people, or preparing to kill them, is considered very valuable in the international economic system. The death, homelessness, injury, poverty and starvation caused by the use of these weapons is not even registered as a deficit.
This segment opens with war. Under the GDP [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:59 — 39.8MB)

Marilyn Waring: Our economic system assigns no value to peace and to the preservation of the environment – Archive ONE of TWO

By MariaJanuary 17, 2023Newest Podcasts

Under the GDP accounting system war is the biggest growth industry of all  Marilyn Waring’s work and inspiring life are described in a documentary film by Terre Nash. I’m bringing back the soundtrack of this film to support a debate on the unquestioned need for economic growth at all cost and on what course to take to end the war on Ukraine.
At age 22 (in 1974) Marilyn Waring became the youngest member of the New Zealand Parliament. She chaired the prestigious Public Expenditures Committee and became familiar with the Gross Domestic Product system and decided to disclose its pathologies in a film, her teachings at AUT University in Auckland and really her life as a feminist economist. The [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:53 — 39.7MB)

A New Global Treaty on Plastics is Being Negotiated at the United Nations

By MariaJanuary 10, 2023Newest Podcasts

Mark Leon Goldberg interviews Andres del Castillo
By now we have all seen images of plastic garbage patches floating in the ocean, beaches and riverbanks swamped with plastic trash, entangled sea-creatures suffocating – but data on the presence of plastics in soils and air are new – Discarded plastics break down into microplastics less that 5 mm in length – and they degrade further into nano-plastics that can only be seen under a microscope.
There are now microplastics found in human lungs and blood and placentas; and the latest scientific studies show that babies are drinking microplastics in their mothers’ milk.
Here is a report from the first meeting to control plastic held in Uruguay in December 2022. 160 of the 192 [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

A Poison Like No Other – Matt Simon

By MariaJanuary 3, 2023Newest Podcasts

How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies
Microplastics are making the news. This program opens with a clip from Aukland, New Zealand, broadcast on December 15, 2022. Research published in the Environmental Science & Technology journal shows that 74 tons of microplastics fell from the air on Auckland in 2020.
Almost all plastics in use today are so called “petrochemicals,” products made from fossil fuels like oil, coal, and gas. This industry is booming and plastics are showing up not just in manufacturing, construction and road building, but in our personal environment, our homes, households, clothes, furniture, and the food distribution systems we depend on.
The very thing that makes plastic so useful – its toughness – means it never really [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Michael Parenti: How I Became an Activist – PARENTI SPECIAL

By MariaDecember 27, 2022Newest Podcasts

2023 Rebroadcast to remember and honor Michael Parenti who will turn 90 later this year
Parenti rarely talked about his life. How does a NYC street kid get accepted to Yale? How does he lose the privilege of his PhD. in an arrest at a demonstration against the war on Vietnam, and become an internationally acclaimed author and lecturer?
Michael Parenti grew up in a poor, working class Italian community in New York City. When he received his PhD in political science from Yale in 1962 he was the success and pride of his family. He risked and ended his academic career when he openly opposed the war on Vietnam. Ultimately the choice he made then was a good one. He now [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

A Love Letter to my Grandmother and a Detour into Fast Fashion

By MariaDecember 21, 2022Newest Podcasts

I’m recording this at the end of December 2022 – as a celebration of three decades of producing TUC radio as an independent community program. And as a love letter to my grandmother who did all the clothes-making and repairing at home.
If she were now by my side would she even recognize the land she walked on when she was a teenager at the turn of the century? And how would she react to fast fashion?
An article in the Guardian says that textile production consumes more oil than Spain uses in a year, and significantly contributes to the fashion industry’s huge climate footprint. Synthetics also continue to have an impact long after production, shedding plastic microfibers into the environment when [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

WWI – The Christmas Truce of 1914

By MariaDecember 13, 2022Newest Podcasts

Silent Night in trenches of the Western Front
The Christmas Truce was an unofficial cease-fire on parts of the Western Front. Guns fell silent for one to several days. Soldiers emerged from the trenches and talked, exchanged gifts and kicked around a soccer ball. Trenches were close in some places, separated by 50 yards or less.
The Story of the Christmas Truce WWI is a documentary film about this spontaneous cease-fire. Thanks to historians Peter Hart, Taff Gillingham and Robin Schaefer, and their choice of rare documentary photos, footage and archived letters from soldiers of both sides. The documentary focuses on the section of the trenches where British and German soldiers were facing each other.
This radio program goes into distribution on [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Joanna Macy – Inspiration for December 2022

By MariaDecember 6, 2022Newest Podcasts

“On the way to destroying our world we are beginning to wake up from a millennia long sleep.”
Here are excerpts from a conversation between the scholar of Buddhism and activist Joanna Macy and Vicki Robin, a writer, speaker, and host of the What Could Possibly Go Right podcast. Robin’s goal is to interview people who see far and serve the common good and help us to see more clearly and act more courageously.
Joanna Macy wrote: “The most remarkable feature of this historical moment is not that we are on the way to destroying our world – it’s that we are beginning to wake up – as if from a millennia long sleep.”
Joanna Macy is an author, teacher and a scholar [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

TUC Archives: The Quest for Water and the American West

By MariaNovember 29, 2022Newest Podcasts

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 [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)