With Rayelle Davis. If the United States is in a state of decline, then at the thin end of the wedge sits Appalachia, one of the country’s most deprived regions, mythologized by outsiders and misunderstood the world over.

Embedded as a therapist within this community, Rayelle Davis frames the addiction, suicide, and “diseases of despair” that plague the region as a consequence of cultural trauma, exploitation, and systemic neglect.

In this month’s episode, we talk with Rayelle about her new book, Money in the Mountains: The Cultural Trauma of Appalachia. We discuss how Appalachia functions as an internal colony, where everything of value is extracted by a distant elite. We also look at the opioid crisis, the relationship between whiteness and the ‘hillbilly’, the psychological abuse of the American Dream, and how deeply ingrained cultural values of hard work and self-reliance perpetuate harm and prevent healing.

Money in the Mountains is 40% off for podcast listeners through plutobooks.com. Just use the coupon PODCAST at the checkout.

With Adam Johnson.

As bombs rained down on Gaza in October 2023, images of mass death and destruction gripped the world, and openly genocidal statements from Israeli leaders foretold the magnitude of horrors to come. But mainstream media was quick to downplay, obscure, and repackage an emerging campaign of extermination into a slick “war on terror” framework.

We're joined on show this month by Adam Johnson, author of How to Sell a Genocide: The Media's Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza.

We discuss the US media’s role in enabling one of the most devastating campaigns of mass killing in modern memory. Adam unpacks how major outlets like The New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC systematically sanitized Israel’s war crimes, hid the US’s central role, and dehumanized the Palestinian people. We also discuss the ways in which liberal media continues to provide cover in the context of the US-Israeli war against Iran.

How to Sell a Genocide is 40% off for podcast listeners on plutobooks.com. Use the coupon PODCAST at the checkout.

Economic inequality is rampant, the climate crisis is at its tipping point. Fascists are poised to take power, or already hold it. It feels like the amount of work needed to overcome these injustices is too much to handle. But what if there is a way to lower the threshold to action?

We are joined on the show by Nani Jansen Reventlow, author of Radical Justice: Building the World We Need, who argues that we all have our own spheres of influence and expertise, and each of us can be the revolutionaries we need; after all, no one else is coming to save us.

In this episode, Nani and Chris have a wide-ranging conversation exploring some of the major interconnected issues of our day, and the tapestry of activism required to bring about systemic change: from strategic litigation, digital rights and technology, to the ways in which climate and racial justice dovetail in the movement for reparations.

Radical Justice is 40% off for podcast listeners on plutobooks.com. Use the coupon PODCAST at the checkout.