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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)

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)

TUC Archives – The Underground History of the Gold Rush

By MariaNovember 22, 2022Newest Podcasts

By Dr. Gray Brechin: Imperial San Francisco
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 [ . . . ]

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

Rebecca Solnit, HOLLOW CITY – TUC Archive

By MariaNovember 14, 2022Newest Podcasts

The destruction of San Francisco in the late 1990s
A new generation of writers Rebecca Solnit, Mike Davis, and Gray Brechin are inspiring us into seeing our familiar surroundings with new eyes. They also offer a different perspective on the radical transformation that development and venture capital have brought to so many cities. San Francisco, formerly famous for taking a travelers heart away, is now reaching for the soul and the wallet. A dot com boom combined with the growing biotechnology industry have driven housing prices up and residents and local small businesses out.
 
Rebecca Solnit says she wrote Hollow City in a hurry to document the beauty and rich culture that was being destroyed, and to support the growing movement of [ . . . ]

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

Prof. Michael Hudson: Super Imperialism, from the World Bank to Ukraine

By MariaNovember 8, 2022Newest Podcasts

Here are excerpts from a conversation on the new podcast site: India & Global Left. The well prepared host, Jyotishman Mudiar wants to know: “Why the US has a unique place in the history of imperialism?” And Michael Hudson describes how much power can be projected by control of the instruments of finance.
Michael Hudson is Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City – But unlike most academics he has also practiced banking as a balance of payments economist in Chase Manhattan Bank from 1964 to 1968.
Michael Hudson acts as an economic advisor on finance and tax law to governments worldwide including China, Iceland and Latvia.
Michael Hudson is the author of many books, among them:
Super Imperialism: [ . . . ]

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

From the City of Quartz to San Francisco – Mike Davis

By MariaNovember 1, 2022Newest Podcasts

A Conversation with Tim Redmond – TUC Archives
It was with sadness that I received the news that the urban historian Mike Davis died on October 25, 2022, at home in San Diego – in the county his parents reached by hitch-hiking during the Great Depression. From meat cutter and truck driver to college student and teacher – editor of The New Left Review, and successful author of twenty books – his life and academic career were extraordinary.
I met and recorded Mike Davis in San Francisco in March 2000 when he visited my neighborhood, the North East Mission Industrial Zone. We had all been affected by the dot.com boom of 1998 through 2000, driven by [ . . . ]

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

Yanis Varoufakis – Techno-Feudalism & the Death of Capitalism

By MariaOctober 25, 2022Newest Podcasts

Steven Parton interviews Varoufakis on Singularity Radio
Yanis Varoufakis is a Greek economist and politician who was the acting Minister of Finance in Greece during their debt crisis in 2015.
Varoufakis defines Techno Feudalism and how corporations have appropriated our identity and convinced us to consume things that we neither need nor want – creating environmental destruction. Also covered in this interview: why 2008 is a watershed moment for Capitalism; block chain VS bit coin; Universal Basic Income; and the question of democratic control of our technologies.
The host of Singularity Radio, Steven Parton, has focused on how technology is impacting the human condition and society as a whole. These are excerpts from the original podcast published on Sept. 23, 2022 [ . . . ]

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

President John F. Kennedy’s Speech for Peace

By MariaOctober 18, 2022Newest Podcasts

American University, June 10, 1963
Considered one of his most visionary and courageous speeches, Kennedy outlined a way to stop an imminent nuclear disaster, and beyond that find a path to world peace and nuclear disarmament. The historic records give much of the credit to Kennedy for avoiding a nuclear war with the Soviet Union in 1962 over nuclear missiles in Cuba and Turkey during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
On the 60th anniversary of the Missile Crisis, that brought the world closer to nuclear war than ever, analysts say that history repeats itself now, in October 2022. The two largest nuclear powers, the US and Russia, are in confrontation over Ukraine.
And instead of de-escalating all sides in this conflict [ . . . ]

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

Pathway to a Negotiated Peace in Ukraine with Prof. Jeffrey Sachs

By MariaOctober 11, 2022Newest Podcasts

The New York based organization Brooklyn For Peace invited Prof. Jeffrey Sachs to help devise a strategy to prevent nuclear war by negotiating a peace agreement. In their introduction to this talk on October 6, 2022, they praised him as a world-renowned economics professor and bestselling author. Sachs serves as the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he holds the rank of University Professor.
Jeffrey Sachs is very familiar with Russia and the former Soviet Union. Soviet President Gorbachev, and then Russian President Yeltsin, invited him to advise them on the transition from central planning to a market economy. He also observed directly the history and expansion of NATO.
Brooklyn For Peace has begun a campaign [ . . . ]

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

Freedom for Julian Assange and All Journalists

By MariaOctober 4, 2022Newest Podcasts

With Chris Hedges, Taylor Hudak and Stella Morris-Assange
Support for the journalist and publisher of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange focused on rallies in London and Washington DC on October 8, 2022. The former war correspondent and author Chris Hedges gave the most eloquent summary of the situation.
A new generation of journalists is coming out in support of Assange. Taylor Hudak is an American-Hungarian journalist and covers human rights, free speech, press freedom, US foreign policy and corruption. She produces video reports and interviews for the online publication acTVism Munich. She was invited to speak about Julian Assange at the Better Way Conference in Vienna on September 29, 2022.
Ten days earlier Chris Hedges was the guest of Project Censored. Director Mickey Huff asked [ . . . ]

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