This Is Hell!

Chuck's 16 Favorite Books of 2016

Dec 1 2016

Posted by Matthew Boedy

And the Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe’s Crisis and America's Economic Future

Yanis Varoufakis
Interview

The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of America's Soldiers

Joseph Hickman
Interview

Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War

Leila Al-Shami and Robin Yassin-Kassab
Interview

Coming to Our Senses: Affect and an Order of Things for Global Culture

Dierdra Reber

Interview

The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution

Micah White

Intrview

Evicted: Power and Profit in the American City

Matthew Desmond

Interview

Feeding the Future: School Lunch Programs as Global Social Policy

Jennifer Geist Rutledge

Interview

From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Interview

The Limousine Liberal: How an Incendiary Image United the Right and Fractured America

Steve Fraser

Interview

Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?

Thomas Frank

Interview

The Math Myth: And Other STEM Delusions

Andrew Hacker

Interview

The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America

Andrés Reséndez

Intrview

The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker

Katherine J. Cramer

Interview

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

Ibram X. Kendi

Interview

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

Arlie Russell Hochschild

Interview

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide

Carol Anderson

Interview

Reading List - December 1

Nov 30 2016

Posted by Matthew Boedy

Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy - Heather Ann Thomspon [Pantheon]

America needs a network of rebel cities to stand up to Trump - Kate Shea Baird and Steve Hughes [Medium]

Four Ways to Look at Standing Rock: An Indigenous Perspective - Kayla DeVault [YES! Magazine]

Dead Pledges Debt, Crisis, and Twenty-First-Century Culture - Annie McClanahan [Stanford University Press]

A Blueprint for a New Party - Seth Ackerman [Jacobin]

Episode 928

Saturday on This is Hell!

Nov 25 2016

Posted by Matthew Boedy

Listen live from 9AM - 10:30AM Central on WNUR 89.3FM / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast

9:10 - Writer Ruth Whippman surveys America's maddening happiness-industrial complex.

Ruth is author of America the Anxious: How Our Pursuit of Happiness Is Creating a Nation of Nervous Wrecks from St. Martin's Press.

9:55 - Doug Henwood and Liza Featherstone explain what went wrong with Candidate Hillary.

Liza contributed to and edited False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton from Verso Books. Doug wrote My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency from OR Books.

Episode 927

Moment of Truth: November 19 2016

Nov 19 2016

Posted by Matthew Boedy

SHOT: the election considered as a failed hangover cure

Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.

Alcohol is, among other things, a remedy for some of the symptoms of injustice. When abused properly, alcohol produces a hangover, which can seem more painful than injustice, though injustice is more chronic and intractable. Maybe that's why there are more remedies for hangovers than there are for injustice.

The hangover is a medical condition affecting the brain, mostly, but what affects the brain affects the entire body. The model where every part of the body corresponds to a part of the brain is called "Penfield's homunculus." It is. Look it up. Not coincidentally, Penfield's is also a brand of wine. Look that up. I believe people recognized at some point that when you drank too much Penfield's wine your brain turned into a Penfield's homunculus. I think that is the science of the thing.

There is also a Penfield's homunculus of the butt. The butt and the brain are analogous to each other. For example, they both comprise a pair of lobes. And like the brain, every part of the body has a corresponding region of the buttocks. This is the Gluteus maximal version of reflexology. Basically, the brain is like a peeled buttocks protected inside your skull instead of your pants. And because of the homunculus, it's basically a peeled YOU inside your cranium.

Now, when you drink too much alcohol, you get dehydrated. The lubricating fluids around the brain dry up. So in the morning, your brain scrapes against the inside of you skull, which is very rough. And it chafes. And the brain, being a peeled buttocks, is very tender. Very tender.

So what's a better hangover cure, coffee or more alcohol? Well, coffee is a diuretic, so it will dehydrate you more. And alcohol also dehydrates you. So neither is as good for you as a big greasy breakfast, in my opinion.

But a lot of America disagrees. We part ways on this. The George W Bush administration was like a miserable drunken Neo-conservative night of tearing up the town. We woke up at the end of spring, 2008, all our three trillion dollar surplus gone, we didn't remember how or where we spent it, we'd done things we don't remember to make all our friends hate us, and the global economy which we'd been driving was wrapped around a telephone pole.

So America said to itself, How do we cure this Bush hangover? Let's try coffee first. And Americans like... read more

Rotten History - November 11

Nov 19 2016

Posted by Matthew Boedy

On This Day in Rotten History...

In 1915 – (101 years ago) – the Swedish-American labor activist and songwriter Joe Hill was executed by firing squad, in the state of Utah, for allegedly having shot and killed a grocer and his son. A jury had convicted Hill on circumstantial evidence, even though eyewitnesses could not identify him in court and the murder weapon was not found. In the weeks before his death, tens of thousands of people around the world campaigned in vain for clemency, convinced that Hill had been convicted mainly for his involvement with the Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the IWW or the Wobblies. The campaigners included labor activists, Mormon dignitaries, the Swedish foreign minister, and even US President Woodrow Wilson. On the day of his death, Hill sent a telegram to IWW leader Bill Haywood. It read, [quote] “I die like a true blue rebel. Don’t waste time in mourning. Organize.” Joe Hill’s body was shipped from Salt Lake City to Chicago, and he was cremated at Graceland Cemetery. His ashes were divided into hundreds of small packages, mailed to union locals and supporters across the United States and on six continents, with instructions to scatter the ashes in all corners of the world.

In 1984 – (32 years ago) – a major tank farm in San Juanico, Mexico, was rocked by a series of massive explosions that began in early evening and continued well into the next morning, consuming one-third of Mexico City’s supply of LPG, or liquid petroleum gas. The explosions and fire destroyed the tank farm and devastated the surrounding town. Some five to six hundred people died in the inferno, consumed so completely that only two percent of their remains could be recovered afterwards. Another five to seven thousand people suffered major injuries, including severe, life-changing burns. It was the worst LPG disaster in history.

Rotten History is written by Renaldo Migaldi

Election 2016 Reading List

Nov 18 2016

Posted by Matthew Boedy

TIH producers and staff share some of their favorite writing / stuff on the 2016 election:

Chuck Mertz - After Trump [Robin D.G. Kelley / Boston Review] Trump’s election means more police brutality towards black people [Patrisse Cullors / Guardian] Electing Trump: the moment America laid waste to democracy as we know it [Gary Younge / Guardian] We must rethink globalization, or Trumpism will prevail [Thomas Piketty / Guardian] It was the Democrats' embrace of neoliberalism that won it for Trump [Naomi Klain / Guardian] Why the White Working Class Rebelled: Neoliberalism Is Killing Them (Literally) [Juan Cole / Truthdig]

Daniel Cox - Vengeance Is Mine [Dan O’Sullivan / Jacobin] November 10, 2016 episode [Behind the News with Doug Henwood]

Jeff Dorchen - Listening to Trump [Christian Parenti / Nonsite]

Brian Foley - President Trump: How and Why... [Jonathan Pie]

Kevan Harris - What Will and Won’t Constrain Trump [Richard Lachmann / Policy Trajectories]

Steve Horn - Revenge of the Forgotten Class [Alec MacGillis / ProPublica] Inside the Loss Clinton Saw Coming [ Edward-Isaac Dovere / Politico]

Theron Humiston - Trump: Tribune of Poor White People [J.D. Vance / The American Conservative]

Alexander Jerri - Saturn devours his young: President Trump [Salvage] President Trump [Delete Your Account]

Ed Sutton - White Nationalism Lives and All White People Need to Own It [Radfag] No President [Mark Greif / N+1]

Spencer Thayer - Clintonism the Future? NYT’s Political Science Fiction [Jim Naureckas / FAIR]

Julianne Tveten - Swat Team: The media’s extermination of Bernie Sanders, and real reform [Thomas Frank / Harper's] / A Blueprint for a New Party [Seth Ackerman / Jacobin]

Saturday on This is Hell!

Nov 18 2016

Posted by Matthew Boedy

Listen live from 9AM - 1PM Central on WNUR 89.3FM / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast

9:10 - Writer Richard Seymour surveys the wrecked landscape of American politics after Trump.

Richard and his fellow editors at Salvage wrote the essay Saturn devours his young: President Trump.

10:00 - Journalist Michelle Chen profiles the millions of Americans who never had a vote.

Michelle wrote the article For Millions, the Election was Always Lost for Dissent.

10:35 - Doctor Zaher Sahloul reports on providing medical care to Syrians under fire in Aleppo.

Dr. Sahloul wrote about his experiences in the op-ed I'm a doctor in Chicago. Here's what I saw when I went to help in Aleppo for the Guardian.

11:05 - Journalist Trevor Timm explores the possibilities of President Trump's inherited surveillance state.

Trevor's most recent Guardian op-eds are Obama has handed a surveillance state and war machine to a maniac and If Donald Trump gets his way, his administration will be disastrous.

12:05 - Occupy Wall Street co-founder Micah White explains why political power will not be captured in the streets.

Micah wrote the essay Two Paths Forward at his website, and the op-ed Protests won't stop Trump. We need a movement that transforms into a party for the Guardian.

12:45 - In a Moment of Truth, Jeff Dorchen considers the election as failed hangover cure.

Jeff assured me that this piece killed the other night at his LA-based literary competition thing he does.

Episode 926

What Happened

Nov 12 2016