Shows
Radio Free PizzaTropical TruculenceA little more than two weeks ago, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to María Corina Machado—Venezuela’s leading opposition figure and mentor to the opposition candidate Edmundo González defeated in the 2024 election—as a stalwart champion of democratic principles against authoritarianism. Of course, that characterization flies in the face of her participation in a 2002 coup attempt that declared the Venezuelan constitution null and void, and she receives the Peace Prize despite her past calls for foreign military intervention against President Nicolás Maduro, whom (as Radio Free Pizza covered last year) the country’s...
2025-10-2609 min
Radio Free PizzaDigital Treasury SpeculationsSince Bitcoin’s launch in 2009, cryptocurrency has slowly reshaped the contours of money and finance—blurring the lines between technology and currency, decentralization and control, speculation and strategy.That could be by design: longtime Radio Free Pizza gourmets may recall our Bitcoin Pizza Day bulletin in May of last year, in which we explored the recurring theory that Bitcoin may have been created by the American deep state through the cryptography research of the National Security Agency (NSA), linking BTC to: a 1996 NSA paper on “digital gold”; the SHA-256 algorithm that originated with the NSA; and speculation around S...
2025-09-1418 min
Radio Free PizzaFrom the Movement to the MassesThis summer, yours truly took a road trip from Minneapolis to Chicago for the Great Unity Convention of the Center for Political Innovation (CPI) on 12 July 2025 to show my support for the organization, its opposition to globalism and imperialism, and its advocacy for domestic and international peace. I didn’t speak onstage, but I waved an American flag, confident that it matched my shirt.As a sociopolitical education project and community dedicated to advancing an optimistic, pro-growth, anti-imperialist vision, CPI emphasizes what people can achieve collectively, advocating for development, collaboration, and the use of resources for the co...
2025-08-3155 min
Radio Free PizzaMassaging the NumbersOn Friday, President Donald Trump wrote a Truth Social post to fire Erika McEntarfer, head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), after a jobs report showed sharply weaker employment growth and large downward revisions for May and June: the July report showed only 73,000 new jobs and a rise in unemployment to 4.2%. May and June job gains were revised down by a combined 258,000—the largest non-pandemic adjustment since 1979. Trump criticized the revisions as implausible, politically biased, and “rigged” to make him look bad, while accusing McEntarfer, a Biden appointee, of politically manipulating the data but provided no evidence. Labor Secret...
2025-08-0315 min
Radio Free PizzaPromises KeptYou’ve probably heard already, but the mounting tensions between Iran and Israel have erupted into unrestrained war: on 13 June 2025, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, striking key Iranian nuclear and military sites, including Natanz and Tehran’s District 18, in an effort to halt what Prime Minister Netanyahu called Iran’s imminent nuclear threat. The campaign killed over 220 people, including top Iranian military and nuclear figures. Iran retaliated with the long-awaited Operation True Promise 3, firing over 100 missiles at Israel, one of which struck a hospital in Beersheba. In response, Israel escalated further with missile strikes on Tehran—one of which struck t...
2025-06-2212 min
Radio Free PizzaComeback KidDear Radio Free Pizza gourmets,I’m writing this from a place where the streets still remember my footsteps: the slow ones of childhood, the hurried ones of adolescence, and now these more thoughtful steps of return—streets I remember all too well. Yes, after the Mexican saga that I detailed in my March journal—confronting the emotional and financial fallout of a failed real estate investment—and now jobless, I’m back in my hometown of Minneapolis, which longtime readers will remember from my January 2024 dispatch examining the mainstream narrative of George Floyd’s death in 202...
2025-06-1509 min
Radio Free PizzaIsthmus AcquisitionsEarlier this year, we analyzed the geopolitical and economic developments stemming from the Trump Administration’s tariff policies and foreign strategy, suggesting that while these may initially seem divisive, they may inadvertently push toward deeper integration into a North American Union. With Chinese influence in Panama increasing through infrastructure investments, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio toured Central America, pressuring Panama to reduce Chinese ties, especially around the Panama Canal, with Panama withdrawing from China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Though China urged Panama to resist U.S. pressure, the regional imbalance of power suggested that the U.S...
2025-04-1309 min
Radio Free PizzaOld World's Last GaspMany worry about an oncoming World War III: and though we’ve been trying to keep our cool, you know that includes us, if you read between the lines of our last bulletin. But it’s not just Americans like us who have reason to worry that their government is positioning itself for war. Europeans, too, have reason for concern. Naturally they focus on the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which—when we here at Radio Free Pizza last covered it—in late 2024 launched U.S. and UK missiles into Russian regions, prompting Russian President Vladimir Putin to revise Russia’s nuclear...
2025-04-0615 min
Radio Free PizzaStraitjacket of HormuzLast year, we highlighted tensions between the Islamic Republic of Iran, the State of Israel, and the United States of America as they escalated through a series of attacks, intelligence accusations, and assassination plots. Iran launched Operation True Promise in April after Israel bombed its Damascus embassy, while U.S. intelligence increasingly framed Iran as a national security threat following the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi last May. Over the following months, Iran was accused of election interference, cyberattacks, and influencing protests, culminating in the FBI arresting an alleged IRGC-linked assassin targeting Donald Trump. In October, Iran launched...
2025-04-0217 min
Radio Free PizzaAprender CuestaDear Radio Free Pizza gourmets,As you might have noticed, it’s been about a month and a half since I’ve delivered a dispatch, bulletin, or spectacle. Maybe you've started to wonder what happened to me. To make it up to you for my absence, I’ve decided to tell you a little of what’s happened to me, in an autobiographical format that doesn't lean too much on the royal “we” and which instead keeps it all first-person: that is to say, welcome to this newsletter’s first journal. (Yeesh! I find this so tiresome. I...
2025-03-3018 min
Radio Free Pizza(The) Word Is "Bond"Here Zach interviews Daniel Natal—author of Actionable Ethics (2022) and host of the now-on-hiatus The Daniel Natal Show, on which Zach appeared last year—about the historical and contemporary implications of the international bond market for geopolitics. Daniel first explains (at ~2:45) the historical development of the international bond market and how the current Anglo-American financial system evolved from when the Baring Brothers created the concept of an international market for sovereign debt in the 18th century, allowing for cross-border investment in government bonds that financed infrastructure projects, wars, and nation-building efforts. Accordingly, Daniel emphasizes the bond market’s role...
2025-02-171h 30
Radio Free PizzaRetaking the IsthmusLast week’s bulletin covered tariffs that the Trump Administration imposed on Canada, Mexico, and China, and proposed that such could inadvertently act as a catalyst for establishing the North American Union between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, even as it seems to push countries further apart initially. Of course, just a day later, President Trump delayed his 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico for 30 days after both nations agreed to fortify their borders with additional troops, though a 10% tariff on Chinese imports still took effect. Meanwhile, Chinese countermeasures became clearer after the country imposed it...
2025-02-0911 min
Radio Free PizzaAll That Glitters Is Not GoldShow Notes🎧 In This Episode: Golden Monarch reveals how Bitcoin and cryptocurrency have evolved from a decentralized dream into a system manipulated by Wall Street, intelligence agencies, and global power players.✨ Featured Guest:Golden Monarch:Twitter: https://x.com/Golden__MonarchSubstack: Golden Monarch News🎧 Main Topic(s):How cryptocurrency has become a tool for financial control rather than liberation.🔑 Key Questions Answered:How has Wall Street taken over the cryptocurrency space?What role do politicians like RFK Jr. and Donald...
2025-02-051h 29
Radio Free PizzaTrending Toward a Technate?Following last month’s three-part exploration of the nascent North American Union, the first of this month saw developments that might throw a wrench in that agenda: the introduction of President Trump’s long-planned tariffs, sparking fears of a global trade war. His 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico—dropping to 10% for Canadian energy resources—and 10% on China are harsher and broader than the measures taken during his first term, and take effect almost immediately under emergency powers, citing illegal immigration and fentanyl trafficking as justification. Of course, experts naturally warn that the tariffs will hurt American consumers and busi...
2025-02-0213 min
Radio Free PizzaAdvocacy in Action🎧 In This Episode:Collin Radix-Carter's interview with Zach explores his journey from grassroots advocacy to founding INN, his insights on education policy, activism, and global Black solidarity, and his dedication to community upliftment as both an independent media host and educator.✨ Featured Guest:Collin (Ogbonna) Radix-Carter: https://x.com/ogbonna_collinINN YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IndieNewsNetworkINN Substack: https://www.innnewsletter.com/t/collin-radix-carterINN Linktree: https://indienews.network/🎧 In This Episode:Main Topic(s): Collin Radix-Carter's journey into independent media, the challeng...
2025-01-221h 16
Radio Free PizzaEnemies Among the Three AmigosLast Wednesday’s bulletin continued our exploration from last Sunday of the resurgent North American Union conspiracy theory, sparked by President-elect Donald Trump’s comments over the past few months about expanding U.S. territory to include Canada, Greenland, and Panama. Such comments connect interestingly to a great deal of evidence supporting the aforementioned conspiracy theories, in reverse chronological order: 2011’s The North American Idea: A Vision of a Continental Future, by Robert Pastor; the 2005 “Three Amigos” where then-President Bush, then-President Fox, and then-Prime Minister Martin of the U.S., Mexico, and Canada signed the Security and Prosperity...
2025-01-1916 min
Radio Free PizzaAbandoned BordersLast Sunday we covered the resurgence of conspiracy theories about a North American Union following once-and-future President Donald Trump’s provocative comments about expanding U.S. territory to include Canada, Greenland, and Panama, to which we drew parallels with the consequently revived conspiracy theory of the North American Union. However, we took no time to discuss the irony of those comments in comparison to Trump’s past fervent advocacy for a southern border wall, aimed at fortifying national boundaries. That of course contrasts starkly with any contemporary interest in territorial expansion, which would involve erasing or redrawing bord...
2025-01-1517 min
Radio Free PizzaAll Over the MapViewers of our most recent spectacle may recall our query about plans to engineer a North American Union—a supranational bloc in the mold of the European Union—following once-again-soon-to-be-President Donald Trump’s cheeky rhetoric since late November about adding Canada to the U.S. as a 51st state, which in December developed into his expressed interest in acquiring Greenland as a U.S. territory from Denmark (in part for its critical mineral wealth) and in reasserting control over the Panama Canal.Though his rhetoric struck a favorable chord with Canadian capitalist and media personality Kevin O’Leary, t...
2025-01-1212 min
Radio Free PizzaAn Interminable Golden AgeWelcome to 2025, Radio Free Pizza gourmets! To mark this latest January in our species’ never-ending march, I hope you’ll humor me enough to review our publication’s history, and thereafter to outline its journey forward.Some among you might have noticed that our dispatches and bulletins now come with audio voiceovers that Substack syncs to various platforms—Apple, Spotify, and YouTube, to be precise—generated with a voice clone of yours truly from ElevenLabs. Including the music (courtesy of Suno) that bookends and provides internal transitions to these voiceovers, this has all resulted in almost twelve hours (~11...
2025-01-0511 min
Radio Free PizzaWhat's in the CardsTo ring in 2025, Zach interviews Brian (Tarot by Fergus), a professional tarot card reader, about what he can tell us for the coming year. The friends spend a few minutes discussing their shared history in Minneapolis—which we delved into here almost a year ago—while Brian explains his reasons for leaving Minneapolis, citing increasing social tension, the 2020 riots, and subsequent urban decay.Soon enough, however, Zach inquires (at ~8:14) about possible alien-related events in 2025, partially inspired by recent drone sightings in New Jersey, and partially by a mid-1990s interview of journalist Jim Goodall. Brian’s reading sugges...
2025-01-0140 min
Radio Free Pizza2024 in RetrospectFinally! We’re almost at the end of it! Best (belated) wishes to celebrants of the holidays on the Gregorian calendar, and to all those who outlived the northern hemisphere’s 2024 winter solstice—first to Radio Free Pizza gourmets, of course, and then to humanity in general. As the year draws to a close, it’s only fitting to look back at the year that was. For this final dispatch of 2024, let’s revisit the major developments that defined the past twelve months, update any lingering narratives we’ve followed, and consider what these stories tell us about the road ahead...
2024-12-291h 38
Radio Free PizzaIndependence from the Ideology🎧 In This Episode:Zach interviews Indie, co-founder of INN, on his journey to anti-Zionism, the influence of Zionism in Jewish communities, the fight for Palestinian sovereignty, and the vital role of independent media in exposing imperialist narratives.✨ Featured Guest:Indie (Co-Founder, Indie News Network): https://x.com/IndLeftNewsINN YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IndieNewsNetworkINN Substack: https://www.innnewsletter.com/INN Linktree: https://indienews.network/🔗 Links & Resources:"Indie's Origin Story": https://www.indiemediatoday.com/p/indies-origin-storyIndie Media Awards: https://indiemediaawards.s...
2024-12-1858 min
Radio Free PizzaComing Full CrescentHere at Radio Free Pizza, we’re waiting on tenterhooks for the Islamic Republic of Iran to launch Operation True Promise 3 against the State of Israel for the latter’s 26 October attack on its nuclear research facility in Parchin, twenty miles southeast of Tehran. While Israel framed the strike as a preventive measure aimed to delay Iran’s nuclear program, skeptics question its effectiveness against the overall nuclear ambitions of the Islamic Republic, which has naturally vowed to retaliate.Viewers of our 2024 U.S. election spectacle will have surely noticed the concerns I voiced about the potential for an...
2024-12-1122 min
Radio Free PizzaParallel PoliticsThis past week, Zach sat down with Dr. Edgar Avendaño Mejía—whom premium subscribers will recall seeing in the third episode of Better Futures, to which the less fortunate can listen here—to interview him about Mexican politics, focusing on the concept of “Mexican humanism” and its relation to neoliberal policies. In Edgar’s assessment, the new government continues old politics with a new disguise. As an example he offers the policies of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) as Regent of Mexico City, such as selling parts of downtown to Carlos Slim for impro...
2024-12-0426 min
Radio Free PizzaConventional Winter (For Now)The day before the 18–19 November 2024 meeting of the “Group of Twenty” (G20) major economies in Brazil, still-President Biden authorized Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied long-range ATACMS missiles to strike deeper into Russian territory, marking a significant shift in U.S. policy. The announcement followed months of Ukrainian appeals for permission from NATO allies to use Western missiles in support of its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region—and it came only twelve days after the victory of Donald Trump in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, with the once-again-President-elect having claimed for almost two years that he could end the confli...
2024-11-2712 min
Radio Free PizzaLiberation VitalismLast month saw the passing of Gustavo Gutiérrez-Merino Díaz—one of the founders of liberation theology—at the age of 96. Rooted in the belief that the teachings of Jesus Christ call for social justice, particularly for the poor and oppressed, liberation theology developed in response to the massive inequality of Latin America in the 1960s and argues that faith should be a force for change, challenging the structures that perpetuate oppression, and that the Catholic Church must take an active role in the struggle for human dignity and justice. Accordingly, liberation theology emphasizes the need to address econom...
2024-11-2445 min
Radio Free PizzaElectoral AftermathSurely you’ve heard by now—and if you somehow missed it, I can’t express my envy—but after a campaign season that saw lawfare against a former president, an assassination attempt against the same, his opponent’s withdrawal due to obvious dementia, the anointing of another rival who scrambled even to assemble her policies, and a second assassination attempt on the challenger, Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris in the most recent U.S. presidential election. I suppose that news is important enough to warrant posting one our informational bulletins on Sunday, instead of the customary Wednesday release.Thoug...
2024-11-1022 min
Radio Free PizzaShowtime in the USAOn the eve of the 2024 U.S. presidential election and again on the night thereof, Zach (Zacharoni Pizza) and Cameron (Cam Burger) discuss the conflict-ridden domestic and international climates and how the election might affect each. By way of introduction, the former describes himself as a one-time leftist who abandoned the left/right paradigm due to disillusionment with liberals given their demonstrated penchant for changing stances on issues like war and free speech, while the latter explains that he’s a leftist living in Trump country where it’s paradoxically easier to find like-minded leftists due to their scarcity. Came...
2024-11-061h 13
Radio Free PizzaThe Mother of All OctobersIn American politics, an “October surprise” describes a late-breaking event that emerges in the final weeks leading up to the U.S. presidential election in November, boosting one candidate’s chances or damaging the other’s just as many voters are making their final decisions, and dramatically shifting the course of an election and the U.S. political landscape. But what if we apply this concept to a historical event that not only upended the trajectory of a nation, but also reshaped the world order? The Russian Revolution of 1917, which started with the abdication of Czar Nicholas II in th...
2024-10-2752 min
Radio Free PizzaThe Frogged Bloc's MortarGeopolitics junkies, come get your fix! The 2024 BRICS+ summit now in progress in Kazan, Russia marks a critical juncture for the trading bloc and its growing list of members as they consider expanding their influence beyond talk and into a full-fledged economic powerhouse. For that reason, the summit might indeed mark a turning point in global finance and the international capital order: after all, attendees include not only President Vladimir Putin of the host country, President Xi Jinping of China, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, and President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, but also President Masoud Pezeshkian of...
2024-10-2325 min
Radio Free PizzaPhilosophizing with a Hammer (and Sickle)Believe it or not, Friedrich Nietzsche was born a hundred and eighty years ago yesterday. (I know: it really snuck up on all of us!) As soon as we realized it, we here at Radio Free Pizza considered it appropriate to briefly review how some of Nietzsche’s philosophy factored in to a couple of our past deliveries, and—much more importantly—to fill in whatever other details we can. Returning customers may remember our coverage as having mainly referred to Nietzsche’s thought in the context of political philosophy—since, around here, politics is our beloved [sport-]bal...
2024-10-1637 min
Radio Free PizzaPlato's ReckoningThough political landscapes are ever-changing, the human species (or Western civilization, anyway) nonetheless keeps revisiting the political philosophy of one of history’s most influential thinkers: Aristocles of Athens—AKA, “Plato”—the ancient Greek philosopher whose ideas on politics continue to influence modern thought. Known for his profound insights into the nature of justice, governance, and the human soul, Plato’s ideas have shaped Western thought for millennia. But what can his theories teach us in our modern society? In our efforts to understand how ancient wisdom might still illuminate the path forward in our complex world, it would sur...
2024-09-2952 min
Radio Free PizzaTurkey LinksLast Sunday some turkey (“a stupid, foolish, or inept person”) named Ryan Wesley Routh was arrested in West Palm Beach, Florida, after an alleged assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump on the links of his golf club—the second such attempt on Trump this year. Secret Service agents fired (first, this time) on the alleged attempted assassin after Trump had finished the course’s fifth hole—a par three, at which neither of them got a shot. Routh has a long criminal history (including a 2002 charge for possessing a “weapon of mass destruction”: a machine gun) and more recent politic...
2024-09-1813 min
Radio Free PizzaDoing the WorkHappy U.S. Labor Day to all you Radio Free Pizza fanatics! On Monday we in the imperial core fired up our grills and enjoyed a well-deserved break for one of our comparatively few days off, and it therefore seems appropriate to reflect on the struggles and victories of the workers who fought for the rights we enjoy today: such as, for example, those workers whom the U.S. government needed to appease after federal troops killed striking workers during the Pullman Strike of 1894, but whom they also needed to prevent from organizing with the socialists on May Day...
2024-09-0426 min
Radio Free PizzaRubicon FerriesHistorians remember Ancient Rome (753 BC – 476 AD) as a cornerstone in the historical development of political philosophy and governance models throughout Western civilization. The city’s historic periods of monarchy, republic, and imperial rule provided a diverse array of political systems that have profoundly influenced modern governance. The Roman Republic, in particular, introduced concepts of checks and balances, separation of powers, and civic duty, which have become foundational principles in contemporary democratic societies, while the rich political discourse of Roman philosophers and statesmen continues to inform and inspire political thought and practice today.Accordingly, Ancient Rome piques the inte...
2024-08-2541 min
Radio Free PizzaIdentify the PolicyNo matter how much we might complain, apparently they’re just determined to stage the 2024 American presidential election, so let’s take another look at what’s happening in the latest episode of today’s most-watched reality-show. This week, the drama changed scenes to Chicago for the still ongoing 2024 Democratic National Convention and the public coronation of Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s nominee, following President Biden’s decision to withdraw from the race due to health and cognitive concerns. While Biden endorsed Harris, some commentators suggested then that his withdrawal and endorsement may have been forced—as the current...
2024-08-2118 min
Radio Free PizzaBolivarianism on the BallotCitizens of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela beat their boots to the ballot-boxes last Sunday, where they made their choice between the incumbent President Nicolás Maduro of the United Socialist Party and his many opponents—but particularly the former diplomat Edmundo González—and between them decided who will sit in their country’s executive chair for the next six years, starting 10 January 2025.Obviously, Maduro won, with the National Electoral Council (CNE) reporting that he took 51.2% of the vote. That came paired with predictable claims from domestic opposition and international rivals of election fraud, which The Dissiden...
2024-07-3121 min
Radio Free PizzaThe Horrible Rumors About Comet Ping PongThe Pizzagate conspiracy theory of 2016 alleged that high-ranking members of the Democratic Party, including former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her campaign manager John Podesta, were involved in a child-sex-trafficking ring operating out of a Washington, D.C. pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong. Proponents of the theory claimed that coded messages about illegal activities were hidden in emails leaked by WikiLeaks, which fact-checkers debunked—and, I have to add, I couldn’t find any results there either when I searched for the term “pizza arrangement”; however, one to Podesta from a late trustee of the Sandler Foundation about his lost han...
2024-07-2846 min
Radio Free PizzaBrandon Lets Go“Great news!” you might have responded earlier this week upon learning that President Biden’s social media account had announced (on National Ice Cream Day) that he has decided not to run in the 2024 U.S. presidential election: those of you, at least, who would rather prevent elder abuse. About half an hour later, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him as the Democratic nominee. While initially unexplained, Biden’s decision surely stems from the obvious decline of his health and cognitive abilities—which somehow only became evident to the mainstream press during his disastrous 27 June debate with Donal...
2024-07-2417 min
Radio Free PizzaSomeone Tried It in ButlerI’d hazard to guess you’ve heard how, on 13 July 2024, former U.S. President and Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump was shot in the upper right ear at a campaign rally in Butler, PA, in an attempted assassination that killed one attendee and critically injured two others. Trump was promptly surrounded and assisted by Secret Service agents, then transported to a hospital where he was treated and released in stable condition. The assailant, Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired eight rounds from a nearby building before being killed by a Secret Service sniper. This incident marked the first time...
2024-07-1712 min
Radio Free PizzaStar-Spangled BrandingHappy Independence Day to all those Radio Free Pizza fanatics living in the USA! (Or to everyone else, my sincere apologies for the policies of the U.S. ruling class, though U.S. citizens deserve an apology from them too.) The eve of America’s birthday seems like the perfect time to reflect on the past, present, and future of our nation’s political landscape. Just as our May Day bulletin explored MAGA Communism to honor the triumphs of the labor movement, today’s edition of our irregular Wednesday bulletins explores the ongoing reception of MAGA Communism and its treatm...
2024-07-0318 min
Radio Free Pizza2024 in ProgressHappy northern-hemisphere midsummer! First to the followers of Radio Free Pizza, of course, and next to humanity in general. As we find ourselves in the midst of the year’s journey, with the summer solstice marking the peak of daylight in the northern hemisphere, it seems like a perfect moment to pause and reflect on how it’s all been going. For this mid-year dispatch, let’s delve into the significant developments of the past six months, revisit the ongoing stories we’ve been tracking, and maybe even try to anticipate what unfolding narratives the latter half of the year may...
2024-06-301h 32
Radio Free PizzaThe Jailbird JournalistJulian Assange walked free on Monday from Belmarsh prison after more than a decade of confinement or imprisonment for exposing government war crimes through WikiLeaks, had agreed to a plea deal with the U.S. allowing him to plead guilty to one felony charge of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security material. Assange soon landed in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory, to formalize the plea agreement—receiving a sentence of time served for the 62 months he has already served in Belmarsh prison in the UK—enabling his immediate release and return as a free man...
2024-06-2608 min
Radio Free PizzaHunter's AccidentHunter Biden was convicted yesterday on three felony charges related to his 2018 purchase of a revolver, where he falsely claimed on a federal gun form that he was not using drugs. The prosecution’s case included testimonies from Hunter’s ex-wife, ex-girlfriend, and Hallie Biden, who testified that she discarded the gun due to safety concerns. The defense called witnesses, including Hunter’s daughter Naomi, who testified about his condition during that time. Jurors quickly reached their verdict, and Hunter showed little emotion as it was read. The date of his sentencing hasn’t yet been scheduled, but will happen n...
2024-06-1213 min
Radio Free PizzaBig Apple & Banana RepublicSurely you know by now that former President Donald Trump was convicted last week of 34 felony charges in a New York state court centering around bookkeeping issues related to payments to Stormy Daniels, thereby becoming the first former U.S. president to receive a criminal conviction after leaving office. Trump now awaits his sentencing, scheduled for 11 July.Commentary from The Telegraph last Friday offered a view of the international reaction, arguing that the conviction represents a profound miscarriage of justice driven by political motivations rather than legal merit. Here, William Jacobson and Kemberlee Kaye criticize Manhattan prosecutor...
2024-06-0516 min
Radio Free PizzaSplit Value CircuitsOur March dispatch outlined a political philosophy that we (cheekily) called Libertarian Communism: a socialism with American characteristics aiming to maximize individual liberty while fostering communal ownership and control over the means of production for basic goods and necessities. The embedded contradiction in the name is designed to (hopefully) capture attention across the left- and right-wings of the American body politic, and if typical Americans indeed have short attention spans, it might even sell well—if only to a narrow segment of the population, and only for the briefest time. (From the time generously afforded me on Th...
2024-05-2652 min
Radio Free PizzaBitter Taste ConsummatedHappy Bitcoin Pizza Day to all the crypto enthusiasts tuning in to Radio Free Pizza! While I’d like to keep the faith in our usual programming of full-length dispatches, today’s edition of our irregular bulletins doesn’t just mark the latest recurrence of Bitcoin Pizza Day, but also serves up a slice of intrigue: is Bitcoin (BTC) merely a machination of the American deep state?I don’t know! But if you’ve spent much time perusing our menu, you know that speculation on conspiracies yields a few of the ingredients for some of our more exoti...
2024-05-2215 min
Radio Free PizzaMake America Gain AltitudeHappy May Day to all you Radio Free Pizza fanatics! Though my last dispatch claimed that you wouldn’t hear from me for a few more weeks, it looks now like I just can’t quit—at least not while I keep finding such fresh and interesting ingredients out there in the marketplace of ideas. So, for the sake of keeping my word, this release isn’t a Sunday dispatch, but instead, the first of Radio Free Pizza’s irregularly posted Wednesday bulletins: this one to celebrate the 19th-century American labor movement winning itself an eight-hour workday in 1886, a...
2024-05-0113 min
Radio Free PizzaThe Hot & Fresh Pizza-Man: Year OneHappy anniversary, beloved customers! Now, technically I’m two days early, if you check the date on my first dispatch, but I just couldn’t wait: not if I wanted to keep up my biweekly-on-Sundays release schedule, anyway—the demands of which inspire me, in fact, to tell you all now that I’m taking a month off, and without that pair of slices, I’m afraid you’ll just have to go hungry.But I won’t leave you with nothing: I plan to fool around a little in the chat for Radio Free Pizza on Substack’s app...
2024-04-1439 min
Radio Free PizzaTomorrow's History, Today!In charting a course towards a more participatory society that ensures all citizens receive a fair share of its economic prosperity, the people of the United States of America ought to adopt a “socialism with American characteristics” attuned to our unique cultural and historical context: for the sake of discussion, let’s call it Libertarian Communism.Rooted in the principles of individual liberty, community autonomy, and direct democratic governance, this vision of Libertarian Communism seeks to forge a society where citizens collectively own and manage the means of production. For that reason, I proposed earlier this month establ...
2024-03-3144 min
Radio Free PizzaWorkin' ÜberzeitOne of last month’s slices profiled Collective Action Comics’ season-long critique of Mark Millar’s The Ultimates (2002–’04). In that season’s final episode, host Nat Yonce addresses the question of collective action, advocating for mass resistance and sustained momentum against oppressive forces. That dispatch’s conclusion intertwined this call to action with my own argument affirming the cultural value of superhero narratives, and with the broad entreaty to creators, embedded within that argument, that they embrace the responsibility of authentic storytelling to inspire positive change and social awareness, and that they therefore ensure their stories accurately represent the complexities o...
2024-03-1737 min
Radio Free PizzaImpoverished with Market EfficiencyOur last slice of Radio Free Pizza detailed (in part) the catastrophic failure of mRNA injections deployed in response to the 2020–’23 coronavirus pandemic, but we got through it without mentioning one of the U.S. pandemic response’s most visible mainstream dissidents: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom I maintained at the start of this year would make a fine Antichrist, if I were in charge of casting.Similar to my coverage of Dr. Robert Epstein’s work exposing Big Tech’s influence on elections, mentioning Kennedy now means broaching a subject I’ve meant to cover for a while—but...
2024-03-0327 min
Radio Free PizzaAsking for SecondsLet’s talk about what it seems like some would rather forget: the 2020–’23 public health emergency of the coronavirus pandemic, and the global response to the same.Since 12 December 2019—when treatment began on the first patients in Wuhan, China, for what was later identified as the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), following what the U.S. Senate concluded in 2023 was most likely an accidental leak, from a lab funded by American taxpayers conducting gain-of-function research that manufactured more infectious viruses than exist in nature, and which planned to engineer novel coronaviruses specifically—the world has grappled w...
2024-02-1829 min
Radio Free PizzaThe Midnight of MythIn a heterogeneous culture comprising a variety of communities with different traditions, languages, and histories, shared symbols and iconography in the narratives available in public entertainment encourage social cohesion and shared identity. Our narratives act as a universal language, allowing individuals from various cultural backgrounds to communicate and understand each other with reference to common stories and symbols, fostering empathy and breaking down barriers between different groups. With collective ethical principles encapsulated in shared narratives and iconography, public touchstones like superhero sagas help in transmitting cultural values intended to guide a society’s members, in providing an ideological framework th...
2024-02-0438 min
Radio Free PizzaMinneapolis Can't Get UpIn late May of 2020, protests following the death of George Floyd turned to riots, resulting in the burning of Minneapolis’ 3rd Precinct, with personnel stationed there ordered to abandon their posts before rioters set it ablaze. In all, more than a thousand properties were damaged, with 35 families displaced and one man killed in his business as it burned. City officials estimated in 2020 that it will take a decade to rebuild from the second-most-expensive riots in U.S. history, behind the 1992 Los Angeles riots after the beating of Rodney King. Three and a half years on, violent crime plagues the ci...
2024-01-2130 min
Radio Free Pizza2024 in ForecastHappy (Gregorian) new year! First to the followers of Radio Free Pizza, of course, and next to humanity in general. (Or, to Orthodox Christians in particular, merry Christmas Day.) For our first dispatch of 2024—seven days after the Gregorian calendar turned, eight days before we hit New Year’s Day on the Julian calendar, and thirty-four days before it appears on the Chinese one—let’s address any of the coming months’ predictable developments, any potential updates to those ongoing stories we covered the previous year, or anything else we might expect in the offing.ElectioneeringSurely t...
2024-01-0734 min
Radio Free Pizza2023 in RetrospectHappy (Western) holidays! First to the followers of Radio Free Pizza, of course, and next to humanity in general. For our last dispatch of 2023, wedged between two high holy days—just before Christmas where it lands in the Gregorian calendar, and just after the modern Festivus with its instantly beloved traditions—it seems fitting to address now any developments to those ongoing stories we’ve covered this year, along with a smattering on some of those important stories that our coverage missed.Hunter in the CrosshairsOur slice from July covered (some of) Hunter Biden’s legal...
2023-12-2425 min
Radio Free PizzaDigital Society Admin GuideIn today’s dystopian clown show, the World Economic Forum (WEF) annually convenes in the picturesque town of Davos, Switzerland. Here, an international sampling of business, political, academic, and cultural personalities gather to shape global agendas and foster public-private cooperation surrounding today’s pressing issues—ranging from economic development and environmental sustainability to technological advancements—in the interest of advancing a technocratic globalism that benefits an international elite. The WEF articulated its current aims under the “Great Reset” agenda that it proposed and popularized as a response to the 2020 pandemic, during which the organization came to greater public promi...
2023-12-1028 min
Radio Free PizzaPeeking Under the HatLast time on Radio Free Pizza, we talked about U.S. imperialism in Latin America as it relates to the history of social engineering. Today, let’s turn our attention to the same geopolitical phenomenon, but this time, in the context of global trade.You’re familiar, I’m sure, with the Panama Canal: the artificial waterway spanning 65 kilometers (shoreline to shoreline) of the Isthmus of Panama in Central America, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and serving for more than a century now as a vital shortcut for global maritime trade, significantly reducing travel time and costs...
2023-11-2637 min
Radio Free PizzaManufacturing the Cultural MarketplaceMore than a few dispatches now from Radio Free Pizza have made some hay over the idea of “social engineering.” In political science, the term refers to the deliberate manipulation of societal structures, norms, and institutions by governments or political actors to achieve specific policy objectives. This can involve strategies aimed at changing public opinion, shaping cultural narratives, or enacting policies that influence the behavior of a society. Social engineering in political science often focuses on the use of propaganda, censorship, and psychological tactics to control or sway the masses, with the ultimate goal of consolidating power or advancing a pa...
2023-11-1225 min
Radio Free PizzaDividing from the RightDo you think the United States has a Nazi problem?I mean, if you’re reading this, then odds are pretty good you’ve heard of Operation Paperclip, so you’re probably inclined to say yes. If not, don’t feel bad: I just think it’s uncommon knowledge, and I think of my readers as uncommon people. For those unaware, Operation Paperclip was a covert program conducted by the U.S. after World War II to recruit German scientists, engineers, and technicians from the defeated Nazi regime and bring them to the U.S., famously satirized in the tit...
2023-10-2924 min
Radio Free PizzaWhether Sweet or Sour, the Sauce Must FlowIn a recent dispatch, we explored the historic background to the announced expansion of BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, now admitting Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Argentina to (what they’ve apparently decided to call) BRICS-11 in 2024—and contrasted it against the post-WWII (unipolar) capital order. If you’re not familiar with BRICS, The Washington Post summarizes it pithily: The BRICS group of emerging market nations […] has gone from a slogan dreamed up at an investment bank two decades ago [by economist Jim O’Neill] to a real-world club that control...
2023-10-1524 min
Radio Free PizzaThe Function of the SuperheroSuperheroes have undoubtedly demonstrated their potential for organic contribution of positive cultural value in contemporary society as a secular equivalent to the fables, myths, fairytales, parables, folklore, and other traditional narratives that, in historical societies, served a similar function of contributing to personal and societal development. Just as those traditional narratives conveyed moral lessons in the past, superheroes’ struggles with complex choices and ethical dilemmas communicate moral values to their readers, and initiate critical discussions about right and wrong. Their journeys of self-discovery mirror the ancient function of myth in offering audiences a model through which the individual can re...
2023-10-0124 min
Radio Free PizzaCapital Out-of-OrderLate last month, the 15th annual BRICS summit convened in Johannesburg, South Africa, between the chief executives of participating countries—except of course Vladimir Putin, precluded from attending physically due to a warrant by the International Criminal Court—at which President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa announced that Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have been invited to expand BRICS and will become members of the international bloc on the first of next year.Richard Medhurst’s reporting from that same week offers a tidy analysis of the impact we can expect from o...
2023-09-1728 min
Radio Free PizzaThe Circus on StrikeOur last two (free) slices of Radio Free Pizza explored a phenomenon we named cultural austerity: the manipulation (systemic or deliberate) of cultural expressions, entertainment, and communication platforms to shape public perceptions, values, and behaviors to preserve and reinforce the existing power dynamics, political structures, and socioeconomic hierarchies of the prevailing system. By promoting choices and behaviors among consumers that align with the interests of the ruling class, cultural austerity aims to secure consent for policies and practices that maintain the dominance of the capital order, with the result of obscuring broader social issues and discouraging collective solidarity among...
2023-09-0328 min
Radio Free PizzaI Call It a FamineLast time on Radio Free Pizza, I coined the term “cultural austerity” while in production on that dispatch. Or, in truth, I only thought I coined it. I’m glad I didn’t try to take credit for it, because I’ve since found out my predecessors were numerous. Fortunately for my ego, my brief research so far hasn’t revealed any authors who used the term in quite the same sense. Following after the research of Clara Mattei, I meant it to indicate when economic interests launch projects of social engineering to subvert and undermine working-class political mo...
2023-08-2036 min
Radio Free PizzaYou Say TomatoKnowing I’m a writer, you’d probably guess that I’m interested in language. Those of you with exceptional memories (and, I suspect, a peculiar interest in semiotics) may also assume from my brief discussion of diaphoristics that I’m particularly interested in how differences arise depending on how speakers of a language use it. Since languages are dynamic systems that adapt to the needs of their speakers, languages may simplify complex structures, or develop more efficient ways of expressing ideas, according to changes in a population’s communication patterns. The intimate connection between language and culture me...
2023-08-0627 min
Radio Free PizzaLast Piece of EightSince starting Radio Free Pizza, I’ve set a mental target for the first eight posts. I picked the number because restaurants usually serve pizza pies in eight slices (when they’re not cut into squares), and there’s some utility for me in staying faithful to a theme, even if it’s something as absurd as “developing a ‘personal brand’” solely from the username I’ve staked out across platforms. Of course, this sometimes misleads people into thinking I write about pizza or pizzerias. I’ve decided that’s an acceptable tradeoff, though in truth I probably only enjoy pi...
2023-07-2329 min
Radio Free PizzaWho Picks the ToppingsLast month, Mark Bailey (one ongoing participant in the experiments of Diaphora Co.) launched The Free Mind Gazette. In his most recent release, Bailey touched briefly on cancel culture—a subject I explored in my last dispatch—and speculated about the roots of this modern social phenomenon:Our control regime has arranged our legal and economic systems in such a way as to shield powerful bad actors from accountability. And most of our informal accountability structures have disappeared as society has become more diverse and we’ve become more atomized. Many sense that the absence of these struct...
2023-07-0923 min
Radio Free PizzaCanceled OrdersAlright, time for me to stop stalling: “Radio Free Pizza analyzes society, culture, politics, economics, and media,” this newsletter’s description currently warns, so let’s drop the literary pretensions. But, rather than surrender comic books (literature’s ugly stepchild: someone should care for it), I’ll use it to provide an example of, and a segue to discussing further, a familiar phenomenon in the contemporary United States. I speak of cancel culture. Of course, I only speak of it in whispers, fearing so much for my livelihood should I ever speak ill of it, though still...
2023-06-2516 min
Radio Free PizzaImprovised Recipes“Diaphora is (becoming) Diaphora,” we told them. By that I mean the slogan of Diaphora Co. in one of its several iterations over the past eight-or-so years, the variations of which one could track from the changing URLs of content shared to our Facebook page.Of course, despite the tremendous effort invested in branding, the name still isn’t significant enough for ChatGPT to know it as a proper noun when I asked it, “What is Diaphora?”: I apologize, but I couldn’t find any specific information about “Diaphora” that relates to a well-known concept or term. It's po...
2023-06-1112 min
Radio Free PizzaLiterato's AntipastoWhat comes to your mind when you see the name “Metropotamia”?I’m guessing you imagine a city of dazzling lights and breathtaking architecture: a bustling, vibrant cityscape with towering skyscrapers, bustling streets, and a diverse range of people and cultures. See the same name on a poster for a movie, I suppose you might imagine a city of hushed intrigues, dark secrets, and hidden depths lurking in its skyscrapers' shadows. But what would you think if you saw it on the cover of a book?Enter Patrizio della Luna, squatting at the...
2023-05-2810 min
Radio Free PizzaPizzaioli AssociatiScrambling on Wednesday night to brainstorm my dispatch for this week, I’ve suddenly realized: Wednesday's the old-school new comic book day that would’ve had me excited as lad! So—since : 1. I’ve told you twice now that I write indie comics; 2. I publish these dispatches on Sundays; and, 3. I understand writers on Twitter promote themselves on #ShamelessSelfPromotionSunday—let me tell you all about Local Interest Pulp, illustrated by Dave La Violette.Dave and I met as fellow patrons of a neighborhood coffee shop in Uptown Minneapolis. (At this point, “Uptown” should be read as irony.) In fact we beca...
2023-05-1412 min
Radio Free PizzaSlice of LifeLooking over my last dispatch, it seems a little grandiose: “the world has problems that we can solve together.” When I see someone in the public sphere virtue-signaling their commitment to some undefined altruism, nowadays I feel pretty suspicious. I suppose I can at least give myself some credit for building the backdoor for me to mention Better Futures, the podcast miniseries I’ve released intermittently on the subject.Someday soon I hope to give it a proper finale. However, I’ve since discovered the work of James Corbett and found happily that his #SolutionsWatch series a...
2023-04-3012 min
Radio Free PizzaThe Pizza Delivery ComethHello again world, allow me to reintroduce myself: I’m Zach (@zacharonipizza; “Zaquerí Nioúel” to keep the stink off my gov’t name), writer of software documentation by day, and by occasional nights and weekends, writer of indie comic books, and, as interim founder of Diaphora Co., editor and publisher in the field of arts and entertainment. I’ve spent my working career with one goal, among many, of bringing stories to life and helping authors share theirs with the world. Of course, that pursuit has needed to compete with various diversions, such as the one presented for you here.
2023-04-1609 min