Shows
Scheer IntelligenceHigh-Noon Saturday: Restarting the Gaza Genocide?Welcome to another edition of Scheer Intelligence. I’m your host, Robert Scheer, and today marks a significant new chapter for our program as we transition to Scheerpost, where we’ll continue our mission of exploring vital issues with depth and clarity. After nearly a decade of broadcasting through KCRW, we’re excited to bring you more frequent conversations, allowing us to engage with the news as it unfolds.In this inaugural episode under the Scheerpost banner, I’m joined by the esteemed Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst with over 27 years of experience, who has briefed three U...
2025-02-1342 min
Scheer IntelligenceHow Zionism went from protecting Jews to threatening themOn this final episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast hosted on KCRW but continuing on ScheerPost.com, host Robert Scheer welcomes Larry Gross, author and Professor Emeritus of Communication at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. The two cover Zionism, specifically through the lens of Gross, who lived in Israel and personally witnessed the country’s evolution from its earlier claim to progressive idealism under its Labor party founders to the brutalizing occupation of Gaza and the West Bank Palestinians.
Although the term Zionism carries negative international weight today, Gross tells the story of his fam...
2025-02-071h 15
Scheer IntelligenceDennis Kucinich explains new Automatic Draft Registration legislation being considered by Congress
The last time the United States saw large scale student anti-war protests was in response to the Vietnam War in 1968 and today against the genocide in Gaza. The last time the United States saw automatic draft registration was also during the Vietnam War era and today. Long serving Congressman Dennis Kucinich joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence to break down what the new automatic draft registration provision, which was passed by the House and now under consideration by the Senate, really means for the future of America.
2024-06-2132 min
Scheer IntelligenceMax Blumenthal: The Washington Post’s attack on The Grayzone
Everyday the Washington Post’s “democracy dies in darkness” grows evermore ironic and detached from the reality of what the publication—and legacy media as a whole—has become. In the latest clash between independent and mainstream press, one of the country’s largest remaining newspapers accused—and then retracted—a claim that The Grayzone had received payments from the Iranian media.
2024-06-2144 min
Scheer IntelligenceRon Kovic: ‘A dangerous country: An American elegy’
Paralysis from the chest down as a result of serving in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War may sound like devastation beyond reconciliation, but for Ron Kovic, it became a transformative and politically enlightening experience. The two-tour veteran amplified his activism a few years after being discharged from the army with honest and insightful writing about what serving in this war was truly like. His best-selling memoir, “Born on the Fourth of July,” was published in 1976 and later was made into a film adaptation directed by Oliver Stone.
He continued his activism, most notably with his s...
2024-05-3143 min
Scheer IntelligenceNavigating the deadly maze of the prison industrial complex
Being a 140-pound 19 year old, who had not yet had to shave is a daunting time to enter an American prison with a life sentence, especially when the system has no interest in rehabilitating you or helping you reintegrate into society. The greed of the prison industrial complex squeezing slave profits out of imprisoned people through the exploitation of the 13th amendment and the brutal system set up to limit opportunity usually leaves most who walk through the gates hopeless and abandoned.Dorsey Nunn, a formerly incarcerated individual, co-director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC) a...
2024-05-241h 17
Scheer IntelligenceGuaranteed income: The first step towards guaranteeing human rights in America
In this episode of Scheer Intelligence, host Robert Scheer is joined by author Natalie Foster, president and co-founder of the Economic Security Project, a network dedicated to advancing a guaranteed income in America and reining in the unprecedented concentration of corporate power.
2024-05-1743 min
Scheer Intelligence“Never Again” must apply to the the genocide of the Palestinians
Jordan Elgrably reminds people of the crucial stories behind those being bombarded daily in Gaza.
2024-05-1042 min
Scheer IntelligenceUS traffic of guns turns productive Mexicans into desperate refugees
The solution to Trump's exploitable border crisis is to end the US trafficking of guns for drugs that turns productive Mexicans into desperate refugees.
2024-05-0345 min
Scheer IntelligenceAn establishment scholar’s indictment of the West’s ‘blind support for Israel’s slaughter in Gaza’
The recent missile exchanges between Iran and Israel stirred fears of World War III, and while the action has cooled down, the uncertain path still looms with tension. Esteemed author and Middle East scholar Trita Parsi joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence to discuss what these attacks could mean going forward.
2024-04-2640 min
Scheer IntelligenceRay McGovern: One more presidential briefing with “President Scheer”
Ray McGovern, the 27-year CIA veteran who counseled seven presidents, joins host Robert Scheer in a "Theatre of the Absurd" reenactment of McGovern's historic role. Scheer plays a stern and uncompromising president receiving an uncomfortable briefing from McGovern on the most pressing issues of the day, from Ukraine to Israel to China.
2024-04-1946 min
Scheer IntelligenceIs an American parliament the answer to our rotting democracy?
On this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast, host Robert Scheer welcomes Maxwell L. Stearns, a constitutional lawyer and professor at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law, to discuss his book, “Parliamentary America: The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy.”
2024-04-1244 min
Scheer IntelligenceIt’s a secret only when Uncle Sam says it is
In light of recent developments in the Julian Assange extradition case, former CIA officer John Kiriakou joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast, to delve deeper into the contradictions within the United States government and intelligence agencies regarding the disclosure of classified information and the veil of secrecy they maintain.
2024-03-2945 min
Scheer IntelligenceDoes Zionism lead to genocide?
In this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast, host Robert Scheer and The Grayzone editor-in-chief Max Blumenthal contextualize the events of Oct. 7 and afterward in relation to the history of Israel and Palestine.
2024-03-221h 32
Scheer Intelligence“The banning of TikTok is an attack on the free market”
On this episode of Scheer Intelligence, David Greene, the Civil Liberties Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, joins host Robert Scheer to discuss the new bill that would ban the massively popular online social media platform, TikTok, in the U.S. In their conversation, they point out the hypocrisy of singling out one Chinese company for mass data collection, when there’s no evidence that TikTok collects data in any different way, or for any other purpose, than other social media companies.
2024-03-1543 min
Scheer Intelligence"LatinoLand": Complex, resilient and powerful
Author Marie Arana, former book editor and columnist for the Washington Post and the inaugural literary director of the Library of Congress, joins today’s episode of Scheer Intelligence with host Robert Scheer to discuss her new book, LatinoLand: A Portrait of America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority, to answer the question — what does it mean to be Latino? While many know that Latinos often come to America, many forget that they have, in fact, always been in America.
2024-03-0845 min
Scheer IntelligenceThe immiseration of the American worker is a bipartisan political scam
On this episode of Scheer Intelligence, host Robert Scheer and Les Leopold discuss Leopold’s new book, “Wall Street's War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It” that describes how both political parties created the economic suffering that Trump feeds on. The critical question the book asks is: Did the nightmare of the world economy have to go this way? Or is it really a failure of capitalism? Or is it a failure of people manipulating capitalism?
2024-03-0156 min
Scheer IntelligenceIsrael does not speak for Jews like us
On this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast, Heyday Books publisher and former LA Times book editor Steve Wasserman and host Robert Scheer commit themselves to this conversation as Jews who have experienced these questions firsthand through their families in addition to having explored and reported on this topic throughout their careers.
2024-02-091h 30
Scheer IntelligenceAs Palestinians continue to die, the history of their betrayal by the “Free World” tells us why
Juan Cole, a renowned history professor at the University of Michigan and expert on the Middle East and South Asia, joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to tackle inconvenient truths ignored by the media in the history of Israel and Palestine. This includes the conflation that criticizing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is somehow a form of Holocaust denial.
2024-02-021h 01
Scheer IntelligenceThe Un-Oppenheimer: The story of a teenager who sought to save the world
Journalist and filmmaker David Lindorff explores the story of Ted Hall, who, at the age of 18 years old, leaked the secrets of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union in an attempt to secure a balance in the world’s most dangerous arms race.
His book, “Spy for No Country: The Story of Ted Hall, the Teenage Atomic Spy Who May Have Saved the World,” makes the case that due to the courageous work of Hall and fellow Los Alamos scientist Klaus Fuchs, the idea of mutually assured destruction was born and the U.S. lost its monopo...
2024-01-261h 38
Scheer IntelligenceThe kidnaping of the century: How Patty Hearst became a revolutionary
One of the biggest stories of the twentieth century, big enough to displace Watergate from the front pages of newspapers nationwide, takes the form of a novel in an attempt to use fiction as a vehicle to expose the truth of this media spectacle. Journalist and author Roger D. Rapoport joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to discuss the case of Patty Hearst and how Rapoport's new book, “Searching for Patty Hearst,” ventures into fiction in order to reveal the true story of how Patty Hearst wasn’t a victim in the end but wa...
2024-01-191h 04
Scheer IntelligenceRay McGovern: The Imprisonment of the Palestinian People Was Not an Act of God
Israel’s current war on Gaza and the Palestinians draws pessimism and hopelessness, reminding two veterans of its origin in another such war in the region in 1967, The Six Day War, which resulted In Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence to dissect the relationship Israel has maintained and exploited ever since that imperial conquest with support of the United States, and how the future of American foreign policy appears to once again be led not by informed individuals but rather by selfis...
2024-01-0659 min
Scheer IntelligenceFour Deaths That Shaped Modern American History
The 1960s represented a pivotal time in American history, one that embodied vast change and influence in shaping what the country has become. From the Civil Rights movement to the Vietnam War to the moon landing, society was in a period of steadfast innovation, self reflection and self determination. The specter of death, however, could not escape the memory of the time, including the deaths of the millions of civilians and soldiers in Southeast Asia and the thousands of victims of racial violence. The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and Robert Kennedy delivered...
2023-12-2947 min
Scheer IntelligenceNetanyahu’s Palestinian Genocide Is Also a Betrayal of the Jews
Apart from the death, destruction and suffering bestowed upon the Palestinian people in Gaza by the hands of the Israeli government, an ideological battle is taking place around the world, especially in the United States, where Jewish people face discrimination, prejudice and attacks on their identity by the hands of other Jews.
2023-12-221h 07
Scheer IntelligenceThe Never Ending War on Terror
The revelations of people like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and John Kiriakou have allowed the world to know about the sly and insidious turn Western governments took following 9/11. From torture programs to mass surveillance to extrajudicial captures and killings, it has become clear how far these governments have poured away their own values and beliefs.
2023-12-1540 min
Scheer Intelligence‘If I was to be buried, I would want that on my stone’
Norman Lear, who died this week at the age of 101, visited the KCRW studio in Santa Monica, CA six years ago to sit down and talk with host Robert Scheer in this two-part interview about Lear’s life through his autobiography, “Even This I Get to Experience.” Scheer said of the book:
2023-12-081h 05
Scheer IntelligenceAn Autopsy on Israel’s Historic Assault on the Palestinians
This week’s episode of Scheer Intelligence welcomes someone with extraordinary courage and experience not only in Palestine but the Middle East as a whole. Dr. Tarek Loubani, a Kuwait-born, Canada-based Palestinian doctor, who also serves as the medical director at Gila, a global humanitarian healthcare organization, provides an indispensable account of what he knows is Palestine.
2023-12-011h 28
Scheer IntelligenceSettler Colonialism, Thanksgiving and Gaza
American historian, writer, professor and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz uses her studies on indigenous peoples’ history and her work with Palestinian diplomats and the United Nations to show how historic “settler colonialism” like in the United States relates to Gaza today. Dunbar-Ortiz makes the case, on this Thanksgiving edition of the Scheer Intelligence podcast, that inherent in that settler colonialism are the various definitions of genocide.
2023-11-2456 min
Scheer IntelligenceHumanity Has Failed Gaza
Amidst the carnage and political debacle surrounding Gaza and Israel, it can be easy to discuss the conflict with a macro view, where families, hospital workers, UN workers and journalists become statistics and political perspectives dominate. On this episode of the Scheer Intelligence, host Robert Scheer talks to the author of what Scheer claims are “arguably the two most important books that deal with the humanity of the Palestinian people.”
2023-11-171h 09
Scheer IntelligenceAbortion Pills Go Global
After Ohio’s recent vote to enshrine the right to have an abortion into the state’s constitution, host Robert Scheer dives deeper into one of the underappreciated and underreported aspects of the fight for abortion rights on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast.
2023-11-1035 min
Scheer IntelligencePalestine’s Obituary
Historian Juan Cole minces no words in offering a grave and sobering account of the conflict in Palestine and Israel on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast. In a comprehensive reflection of the history and current day situation in the Middle East, Cole uses his expertise as one of the leading historians of the region to paint a picture of the war. He asserts that in all definitions of the words, Israel is actively committing war crimes, like the United States in Iraq, a genocide and ethnic cleansing aimed at eliminating the Palestinian presence from their homeland.
2023-11-031h 06
Scheer IntelligenceThe Palestinians play David to Israel’s Goliath
“There's no room for complexity in the American media when it comes to Israel and Palestine,” said Robin Andersen, the award-winning author and professor emerita of communication and media studies at Fordham University, to host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast.
In the almost three weeks since the October 7th attacks in Israel, the coverage around the war in the Middle East is as alert as ever, except only for one side, Andersen and Scheer discuss. The real and fabricated stories of Israeli devastation plastered mainstream outlets during the onset of the war, but...
2023-10-2748 min
Scheer IntelligenceWhat About the One State Solution With an Equal Vote for Every Palestinian and Israeli?
Palestinian American journalist Mnar Adley makes the case for one democratic nation with each Palestinian and Israeli having the equal right to vote on their governance on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast.
2023-10-2059 min
Scheer IntelligenceDo Republicans Want Americans to Starve?
The topic of feeding those in need doesn’t sound like it should be controversial but the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in the United States is bizarrely under attack by Republicans in the current Congress. Joining host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast is Christopher Bosso to discuss his newest book, “Why SNAP Works: A Political History—and Defense—of the Food Stamp Program.”
2023-10-1335 min
Scheer IntelligenceLabor Is Back and Standing Tall
Labor has once again emerged as a hot button issue in the United States, so much so that even the likes of Joe Biden and Donald Trump have been spotted lurking around picket lines and union events popping up across the country. To talk about the rise in the American labor movement, Harold Meyerson, editor at large for The American Prospect, joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast. Meyerson has a distinguished career reporting on labor issues for multiple publications, among them the L.A. Times and Washington Post.
Meyerson says public...
2023-10-0643 min
Scheer IntelligenceWhere Did It All Go Wrong for the Internet?
The Wild West days of the Internet are over, conclude Scheer Intelligence host Robert Scheer and his guest, The Grayzone founder and editor Max Blumenthal. They recall a time when one could find scorching exposés of anti-establishment news on sites like Salon, with the potential to reach millions of readers, that has evolved into a tightly controlled and intensely surveilled space dominated by a handful of Silicon Valley monopolies. Inconvenient information doesn’t stand a chance and will more often than not be algorithmically butchered into oblivion.
2023-09-291h 22
Scheer IntelligenceJohn Kiriakou: Never Forget America’s Torture Legacy
Torture. It stands as one of the pillars of American exceptionalism. While it was a major part of the war on terror—one worth hundreds of millions of dollars—a selective amnesia allows it to slip through the pages of history. John Kiriakou suffered for attempting to solidify the record on a torture program that the U.S. has excused itself from countless times through Hollywood propaganda, innumerable redactions to official documents and silencing of dissidents.Kiriakou joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to run back his story as the whistleblower who...
2023-09-221h 33
Scheer IntelligenceThe Four Billionaires Who Want to Control the Universe
In Jonathan Taplin’s new book, “The End of Reality: How Four Billionaires are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars and Crypto," the internet innovation expert delves into activities of the gang-of-four powerful oligarchs: Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Andreesen, breaking down their increasing profits and infinite ambitions to control and influence domestic and global affairs while sending our technology innovation in a profit-driven, dystopian direction, corrupting both sides of the political aisle. Host Robert Scheer’s question: “Wait a minute, what else is new” in capitalism?”
2023-09-0847 min
Scheer IntelligenceWhy is The New York Times Burning Peace Activist Jodie Evans at the Stake
The New York Times has revealed what the future could potentially look like in an impending war with China. Through conjecture and innuendo-filled reporting, America’s “paper of record” went out of its way to attack one of the country’s most fierce peace movement fighters — Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans.
2023-09-0243 min
Scheer IntelligenceThe Liberal Darling That Wasn’t: UC Berkeley’s Troubled Past
The University of California at Berkeley is widely considered one of the most progressive and historically transformative universities in not only the United States, but the world. This is printed all over pamphlets written for prospective students and talked about endlessly by tour guides giving people the privilege to walk through such a prestigious site. What isn’t discussed, however, is the other side of that history, the one mired by involvement with the military industrial complex, with the conquest of indigenous lands and with the creation of the greatest mass murder weapon of all time.
2023-08-2535 min
Scheer IntelligenceJunk Science Is Putting Innocent People in Prison
The perception of certain types of trial evidence as cutting-edge, foolproof, and reminiscent of Hollywood can inadvertently sway juries into assuming the guilt of countless individuals. Techniques such as bite marks, blood splatter analysis, ballistics evidence, and others appear to present irrefutable indications of involvement in criminal activities. However, concealed within this seemingly conclusive cache of evidence lies a substantial amount of what is known as junk science. This is why Chris Fabricant, the director of strategic litigation at the Innocence Project, wrote his latest book, “Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System.”
2023-08-1852 min
Scheer IntelligenceVeteran CIA Analyst on Russia Ray McGovern Has Never Been More Scared of Nuclear Catastrophe
A retired CIA expert on Russia and rare voice of reason coming from the bowels of the American deep state, Ray McGovern joins host Robert Scheer on another edition of the Scheer Intelligence podcast. With world peace, nuclear weapon prudence and film critique on the agenda, McGovern and Scheer delve into a host of relevant issues stemming from the war in Ukraine and the history behind it. From Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” to CNN's strange truthful broadcast on Ukraine’s counteroffensive, the old boys from the Bronx prod each other’s encyclopedic minds to try and make sense of the state of...
2023-08-121h 27
Scheer IntelligenceThe Constitution Still Betrays Women
On this episode of Scheer Intelligence, host Robert Scheer is joined by Professor Julie C. Suk, an eminent expert in constitutional law and a professor of law at Fordham University. Together, they delve into the challenges women face in society, which stem from the Constitutional framework despite the century old passage of the 19th amendment that belatedly granted women the right to vote.
2023-08-0446 min
Scheer IntelligenceA Story More Provocative Than Oppenheimer?
The world has somehow reached a moment where the use of nuclear weapons has possibly never been closer and the interest in nuclear weapons has possibly never been higher. With the release of Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” a compelling dialogue emerges concerning the utilization of nuclear weapons, as the biopic delves into the life of the father of the atomic bomb and his profound doubts about the barbaric weapon he unleashed on the world. An even more captivating narrative about dissent amongst the Los Alamos scientists who created the bomb is close to release, and its timing couldn't be more p...
2023-07-2846 min
Scheer IntelligenceThe NSA Is It’s Own Worst Enemy
There has been no journalist that has been more effective in penetrating the self-serving secrecy of the NSA and the security state than James Bamford, the Emmy-nominated filmmaker and best-selling author. He joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence to discuss his latest book, Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America's Counterintelligence. While Bamford has engaged in his share of muckraking on the NSA in his previous works, his new book focuses on an even more pernicious aspect of the intelligence apparatus: their carelessness in allowing foreign governments access to some of our o...
2023-07-211h 12
Scheer IntelligenceDecriminalizing Being Human
Despite the United States accounting for around 5% of the world’s population, it houses nearly a quarter of the world’s prison population. This often discussed metric begins to make sense when examining the major cities like Los Angeles, New York and others, where things like poverty and mental illness are often considered “crimes.” Host Robert Scheer digs into this phenomenon in Los Angeles on this week’s episode of Scheer Intelligence with Melissa Camacho, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California.“First of all, it has to do with the criminalization of poverty, the criminal...
2023-07-2143 min
Scheer IntelligenceThe Era of Nukes and No Diplomacy: “Crossing a Rubicon to Armageddon”
The Doomsday Clock continues to tick toward nuclear war, but at its fastest pace ever. Professor Jackson Lears, a former naval officer serving on a U.S cruiser carrying tactical nuclear weapons, considers the current moment more frightening than at any time during the Cold War. Then, there was intense alarm for the fate of the earth and the survival of the human race. Today, rather than diplomacy or negotiation, talk revolves around new weapons shipments, disappointment in Ukraine’s counteroffensive failures, and even drone strikes in Moscow. But far less attention has been paid to the prospect of nu...
2023-07-071h 09
Scheer IntelligenceRay McGovern: Russia’s ‘Coup’ Is Actually Biden’s Disaster
Understanding foreign policy in Russia is complicated. Over the past weekend, the media said Russia was undergoing a coup and then they weren’t. The leader of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was a brutal military figure, then suddenly a liberator of Putin’s hold on Russia. These entanglements in narratives require an impartial judge, someone who can make sense of it for the way it is. After years of doing this on a daily basis for the president of the United States, Ray McGovern joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence to do just that.
...
2023-06-301h 31
Scheer IntelligenceThe Century Long War on Cannabis Is a War on Science
Harvard physician Peter Grinspoon fights back against years of war on youth and communities of color.
2023-06-2351 min
Scheer IntelligenceNorman Solomon: Bipartisan Obsession with War
In War Made Invisible, journalist Norman Solomon explains that Biden is as guilty as Trump in ushering a potential nuclear holocaust.
2023-06-1651 min
Scheer IntelligenceYou Sure You Want to Eat That Sentient Being?
Peter Singer knows it is difficult to make a lonely stand against the mega corporate food processing machine. To make meaningful changes to diet, to care more about where food comes from and to consider the vast laundry list of problems that comes with the international food industry requires a great deal of attention to detail and resourcefulness. Singer, through his persuasive and forgiving prose, makes it easier for folks to get in the know about what a trip to the supermarket really entails. Singer joins host Robert Scheer for this week’s Scheer Intelligence episode to talk about th...
2023-06-0943 min
Scheer IntelligenceIn American Prisons, You’re Nothing More Than a Number
Often overlooked, ignored and damned, the cycle that throws people in the prison system and spits them out is a calamitous yet integral part of the American experience. People who find themselves at the short end of the stick—usually poor, uneducated and of a minority race—find themselves worse off, excommunicated from society and filled with more trauma and neglect. Keri Blakinger was not poor, was highly educated and white, yet found herself in the same spot and was treated in the same cold and dehumanized fashion. In prison, as Blakinger points out, “You become a number.”
2023-06-0248 min
Scheer IntelligenceThe China Dragon Roars Back Whether the US Likes It or Not
The Western world, in the midst of being primed for a war with China, often has a limited understanding of who this supposed enemy is. Is it a communist force ready to challenge the U.S.’s capitalist and hegemonic structure? Is it an economic ally providing an indispensable factory floor for our corporate interests? Or is it somehow a combination of both? Joining host Robert Scheer this week on Scheer Intelligence is Suisheng Zhao, professor and director of Center for China-U.S. Cooperation at the University of Denver Josef Korbel School of International Studies, who hopes to provide cl...
2023-05-271h 18
Scheer IntelligenceThe Teapot Dome scandal: When democracy worked to hold the fat cats accountable
Over 100 years ago, the United States had corrupt politicians who could actually be prosecuted for their crimes in gaming the economy. As mythical as it may seem, the history of a small band of radical and gutsy senators who were willing to put it all on the line for justice can serve as inspiration for those who have only ever seen their political representatives bought and paid for. In Crooked: The Roaring '20s Tale of a Corrupt Attorney General, a Crusading Senator, and the Birth of the American Political Scandal, author, producer and Emmy winner Nathan Masters explores the...
2023-05-1941 min
Scheer IntelligenceEven at Ground Zero of the Climate Crisis Denial Remains the Norm
It is so easy for people to throw trash on the floor, waste food and water and engage in endless consumerism without being truly connected with the Earth around them. Without witnessing a first hand account of the destruction to the natural environment from the persistently damaging habits of society, there is little incentive to change. The scary and all encompassing problems of climate change will devastate the planet indiscriminately regardless, and it is because of this that writer, editor and professor David Gessner decided to embark on a journey that details the need for this understanding amongst the...
2023-05-1932 min
Scheer IntelligenceInterpreting for the U.S. Army of the Deaf
It has been almost two years since the distressing scenes of packed airports, people chasing after departing U.S. aircraft and the Taliban emerging on top were witnessed with the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan. Amidst the commotion and confusion, what was certain was the fear within one type of Afghan citizen, the interpreters of the American military. Without them, U.S. forces would have been an army of the deaf, engaging in pivotal and deadly operations in a country thousands of miles away.
2023-04-281h 00
Scheer IntelligenceIs Tik Tok a U.S. Deep State front?
Alan MacLeod’s reporting on the influx of former government employees at TikTok, Meta, Twitter and other social media companies helps define the scope of the U.S. censorship regime.
2023-04-211h 02
Scheer IntelligenceIt's Called the American Dream Because You Have To Be Asleep to Believe It
A thorough dissection of America’s capitalist mythology reveals the sham to which lots of people continue to subscribe, despite growing nationwide suffering.
2023-04-1449 min
Scheer IntelligenceIran 1953: The Birthplace of Western Backed Coups
The story of a U.S. backed coup destabilizing a country for the benefit of Western capitalist interests is one so often repeated that each instance is a sort of classic novel in the dystopian series from the 20th century on. The tale of the Iranian coup in 1953 is indeed a classic, as it was the first of its kind. With its share of infamous characters—mainly the CIA and British MI6—as well as its lasting impact on the region, its citizenry and the world, the coup in ‘53 proved to be a monumental shift in world politics, one of gre...
2023-04-0754 min
Scheer IntelligenceAmerica’s Slavery-Ridden Origin Story: Facing the Uncomfortable Reality
Writer Dionne Ford dives deep into her ancestry and confronts the complexities of being a Black woman in America with the blood of both the enslaved and the enslaver.
2023-03-3156 min
Scheer IntelligencePrivate Opulence and Public Squalor in the US
The Federal Reserve is not working for the people but for wealthy individuals and corporations that can afford to have a say in the rules.
2023-03-241h 01
Scheer IntelligenceIt’s China’s Turn To Give Peace a Chance
A major shift in global relations has recently transpired. To some in America, it may look like the second coming of the Evil Empire. To much of the rest of the world, it’s a welcome chance for a renewed multipolar order, where the sovereign desires of nations are respected and new collaborations can be established. The deal brokered between Iran and Saudi Arabia, brought together by China, to restore diplomatic relations, is a clear example of that. The 20-year anniversary of the Iraq War is bringing even more attention to the faltering era of U.S. global hegemony an...
2023-03-1744 min
Scheer IntelligenceLooking at the skeletons inside the NFL’s closet
Renowned sports journalist Dave Zirin talks about his latest documentary, which explores the unjust, unfair and deeply racist history of the NFL coupled with its commitment to nationalism, militarism and corporatism.
2023-03-1046 min
Scheer IntelligenceThe Nightmare Espionage Act That is Killing Julian Assange and the First Amendment
The use of the century old Espionage Act in the Julian Assange case continues to set the chilling precedent of a bleak future in American journalism, a precedent that endangers even those outside US borders.
2023-03-0357 min
Scheer IntelligenceRay McGovern: The Last Chance to Avoid World War III?
After a year of war and carnage in Ukraine, the fighting continues, and there are no signs of it slowing down. In fact, military budgets have increased, the weapons shipments have multiplied and the number of countries involved has reached world war levels. In a time of conflicting narratives, misinformation and rampant propaganda, history proves to be one of the few sources of wisdom left to predict and caution what the future holds.
2023-02-241h 23
Scheer IntelligenceThe US Is Sending Its Worst Down to Mexico
Violent drug cartels often dominate headlines about Mexico but the Ayotzinapa case reveals a more sinister involvement from the US side of the border.
2023-02-1735 min
Scheer IntelligenceThe Birthplace of Dystopian America
Cop City Atlanta is a privately funded, local community surveillance campus that has already taken the life of one protestor as a harbinger of the police state on the horizon.
2023-02-101h 05
Scheer IntelligenceNuclear War Imminent?
Retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William J. Astore who served in the nuclear missile command fears the end of human life through nuclear war is more likely than in the Cold War era.
2023-02-0351 min
Scheer IntelligenceJane Olson: Storytelling Exposes Humanity
Numbers and facts only tell half the story of some of the world’s most horrendous circumstances.
2023-01-2740 min
Scheer IntelligenceEx-CIA Agent John Kiriakou: The Deep State’s Attack on Dissent Beginning With MLK
The FBI, CIA, NSA and other agencies have historically exploited their power but their limits appear boundless in the modern age.
2023-01-2035 min
Scheer IntelligenceIsrael Fascist?
Israel’s sharp turn to the extreme right has startled American Jews.
2023-01-1334 min
Scheer IntelligenceDr. Warren Hern: Humans are a metastasizing cancer terminating all life on the planet
Physician and anthropology scholar Dr. Warren Hern delves into some of the most upsetting aspects of human behavior as a fatal threat to all life on earth in the near future.
2023-01-0644 min
Scheer IntelligenceFact-Checking Jesus
The Rev. Madison Shockley discusses the historical, political and controversial misconceptions of the Christmas story.
2022-12-2345 min
Scheer IntelligenceYou know gay rights are mainstream when Biden picks up the Rainbow flag
Larry Gross, author of the LGBTQ civil rights treatise, “Up From Invisibility,” honors the achievement of the new same-sex marriage law with only feint appreciation for the president who signed the bill.
2022-12-1634 min
Scheer IntelligenceWho’s crazy, you or your nation?
Dr. Gabor Maté’s new book strips back the realities of the neoliberal system that has been plaguing the health of US and the world citizens.
2022-12-0944 min
Scheer IntelligencePeace Candidate Matthew Hoh: War is a cancel culture
How Democrats, their pro-war Republican cohorts and the media canceled the U.S. Senate campaign of ex Marine and US foreign policy official Matthew Hoh.
2022-12-021h 17
Scheer IntelligenceThe US spends almost as much on healthcare as the rest of the world combined and has one of the worst outcomes
Esteemed physician Dr. Stephen Bezruchka explains why spending the most in the midst of inequality and flawed politics produces an unhealthy prognosis.
2022-11-2545 min
Scheer IntelligenceJoel Beinin: Israel’s Elections Spell More of the Same for the Country, Only With an Even Uglier Face
Historian Joel Beinin uses his personal experiences to paint a picture of Israel, past and present, as a country and an idea.
2022-11-1852 min
Scheer IntelligenceHighly regarded poet Javier Zamora tells the riveting story of his hellish nine-week journey as a nine-year old child
In this week's Scheer Intelligence interview, as in his New York Times bestselling book, “Solito: A Memoir,” celebrated poet Javier Zamora cuts through the nasty dehumanization about undocumented immigrants with the focused memory of his perilous journey as a child refugee attempting to join his family under the most vulnerable of circumstances. With their lives overturned by the U.S.-sponsored war in El Salvador, Zamora's parents had found refuge in California, but it took eight years and the risky efforts of a paid smuggler to open the possibility for their child to join them.
2022-11-1246 min
Scheer IntelligenceIs Elon Musk the best or the worst for Twitter?
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Legal Director Corynne McSherry discusses with host Robert Scheer the internet control issues raised by Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and what may lie ahead for it and other social media giants.
2022-11-0437 min
Scheer IntelligenceIs Dennis Kucinich the last Democrat for peace?
For 16 years the former Democrat congressman from Cleveland advocated for peaceful alternatives to the madness of war, but now members of his party in Congress are permitted only the voice of the warmonger.
2022-10-2833 min
Scheer IntelligenceHow the Federal Reserve and allied central bankers wrote the obituary for competitive capitalism
Former Goldman Sachs managing director Nomi Prins exposes the role of the Federal Reserve and other western central banks in creating a world economy for the superrich while enabling the impoverishment of much of the world’s population
2022-10-2135 min
Scheer IntelligenceEduardo Carreon: Adopting the mindset of the oppressor
Indigenous Los Angeles psychology graduate student Eduardo Carreon analyzes the mindset of disgraced former LA City Council leader, a Latina whose racist bile scorned Black and gay colleagues and others, including indigenous members of her own Latinx community.
2022-10-1445 min
Scheer IntelligenceFake journalism is only the first draft of fake history
35-year teaching veteran Jim Mamer explores the uncomfortable areas of history most schools fail to teach and what it means about the state of the world today.
2022-10-0743 min
Scheer IntelligenceZachary Karabell: China Is not the enemy - it is America’s indispensable economic ally
Author Zachary Karabell pleads that despite the militaristic noise, China and the U.S. share an economic dependency that would rupture the domestic economy of both nations if severed.
2022-09-3038 min
Scheer IntelligenceBiden’s peace for Afghanistan is a humanitarian disaster
The U.S. withdrew its troops and with them all humanitarian aid while freezing Afghanistan’s foreign reserves, leading to mass deprivation for Afghanistan’s innocent civilian population.
2022-09-2338 min
Scheer IntelligenceA Somali boy’s escape from Somalia’s harrowing genocide leads him to his dream paradise—and the brutality of American racism.
On this week’s Scheer Intelligence, Boyah Farah, a young refugee from Somalia’s hellish civil war describes his family’s narrow escape from death and their arrival in the placid suburbs of Boston. But life was more a nightmare than the dream he had imagined.
2022-09-1745 min
Scheer IntelligenceRussian and western leaders squandered Mikhail Gorbachev’s legacy. Now we’re all paying the price.
Katrina vanden Heuvel, editorial director and publisher of The Nation, remembers the Russian leader—whom she called a friend—as a committed pro-peace thinker, on this week’s “Scheer Intelligence.”
2022-09-0941 min
Scheer IntelligenceWhat killed America’s peace movement?
CODEPINK founders Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans are rare voices of conscience confronting the bipartisan warmongers.
2022-09-0239 min
Scheer IntelligenceThe terrifying research nuclear powers don’t want you to see
Climate scientist Alan Robock, one of the authors of a groundbreaking Nature Food paper on the little-discussed impacts of nuclear war, talks to Robert Scheer about his work.
2022-08-2638 min
Scheer IntelligenceThe menace that is Amazon and Walmart
Columbia Law School professor Kathryn Judge talks to Robert Scheer about the exploitation of monster behemoth retail companies revealed in her new book “Direct.”
2022-08-1932 min
Scheer IntelligenceThat time the KKK tried to kill Paul Robeson
Joel Whitney, the author of “Finks,” joins Robert Scheer to discuss a little-told episode in the socialist actor and singer’s life and why it’s seemingly been erased from our collective memory.
2022-08-0533 min
Scheer IntelligenceKatie Halper: ‘Trump broke liberals’ brains’
The comedian and host of two popular progressive podcasts offers her take on why the American left keeps getting things wrong.
2022-07-2938 min
Scheer IntelligenceFist bumping the dictator we pretend to love
Former Mideast CIA operative John Kiriakou discusses his recent trip covering Biden in Saudi Arabia and what he’s learned about America’s “special relationship” with the country.
2022-07-2246 min
Scheer IntelligenceSaving broke and broken America, one town at a time.
Michelle Wilde Anderson speaks to Robert Scheer about how four working class towns struggling with poverty and broke governments still managed to progress.
2022-07-1539 min
Scheer IntelligenceVietnam War veteran Ron Kovic, author of “Born on the Fourth of July” and subject of Oliver Stone’s iconic Vietnam War film, will mark his 76 th birthday watching a war that portends the end of civilization
At a time when the war that could end civilization escalates, peace activist Ron Kovic marks his July 4 birthday sounding the alarm about the true costs of war, a sentiment shared by his girlfriend of 16 years, TerriAnn Ferren.
2022-07-0143 min
Scheer IntelligenceHas America lost the key to democracy?
The authors of “Let’s Agree to Disagree” offer a guide to fostering critical thinking and dialogue in a society that seems to have forgotten how to engage in either.
2022-06-2435 min
Scheer IntelligenceCraig McNamara reveals the truth behind the lies of his father, Robert McNamara
The author of “Because Our Fathers Lied” lays bare agonizing truths about America his father helped to shape.
2022-06-1743 min
Scheer IntelligenceRalph Nader: Is there any hope left for Democrats?
The former presidential candidate speaks to “Scheer Intelligence” host Robert Scheer about the shreds of democracy left in America.
2022-06-1041 min
Scheer IntelligenceCan the U.S. handle a multi-polar world?
A veteran foreign correspondent returns from three decades covering the rise of the East to grapple with an America that is more dangerously parochial than ever.
2022-06-0355 min