The BBC's Gaza Fiasco / Daniel Trilling

Listen live from 9AM - 10AM Central on WNUR 89.3FM or stream at www.thisishell.com

9:05 - Law professor Erin Murphy examines the blind spots in DNA forensic evidence.

Erin is the author of the Inside the Cell: The Dark Side of Forensic DNA from Nation Books.

This day in rancid, ugly, horrible, putrid, rotten history...

On this day in 1903 – [112 years ago] – a specially chartered passenger train was carrying the Purdue University Boilermakers, along with hundreds of fans, to a football game against their rivals at Indiana University. Just as the fast-moving train rounded a curve near Indianapolis, a coal train engineer, who was unaware of the Purdue train’s approach due to a railroad signaling error, backed his own train onto the main line. By the time the engineers of the two trains saw each other, it was too late. The railroad collision killed eighteen people -- including fourteen Purdue football players riding in their train’s lead car, which was smashed to pieces. 

On this day in 1984 – [31 years ago today] – Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi was shot and killed by two of her own Sikh bodyguards in the garden area of her official residence. The killing was widely viewed as an act of revenge, since four months earlier she had ordered Indian troops to enter the holiest shrine of the Sikh religion, the Golden Temple at Amritsar, to remove armed separatist rebels who had taken refuge there. Indira Gandhi had been heavily criticized for that military operation, which cost hundreds of lives, and had been accused of pursuing it for political reasons. But her assassination sparked a backlash among her supporters which led to even more violence, as riots broke out in the streets of New Delhi and other Indian cities, ultimately resulting in the massacre of an estimated three thousand Sikhs.

Listen live from 9AM - 1PM Central on WNUR 89.3FM or stream at www.thisishell.com

9:10 - Anthropologist Flagg Miller examines al-Qaeda's psychology via Osama bin Laden's cassette collection.

Flagg is author of The Audacious Ascetic: What the Bin Laden Tapes Reveal About Al-Qa'ida from Oxford University Press.

10:05 - Live from Mumbai, Valérie Bergeron reports on repression in Egypt and the first days of the Knife Intifada.

Valérie is in the middle of a trip across the Middle East and Asia.

10:35 - Antidote Zine's Ed Sutton explores the effects of refugees and right-wingers on direct democracy in Switzerland.

Ed will be doing the reporting himself, but Antidote has been transcribing and publishing stories on Switzerland and the refugee crisis all year.

11:05 - Anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing finds a matsutake mushroom growing beyond endstage capitalism.

Anna is author of The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins from Princeton University Press

12:05 - Sociologist Margee Kerr explores the science and psychology behind fear itself.

Margee's new book is Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear from PublicAffairs Books.

12:45 - Jeff Dorchen turns off his phone and focuses just long enough to write about distraction.

OK now he just wrote me on Facebook, he must be done writing his new Moment of Truth.

Here is what Chuck is reading to prepare for Saturday's show:

The Audacious Ascetic: What the Bin Laden Tapes Reveal About Al-Qa'ida - Flagg Miller [Oxford University Press]

Head them off at the pass: Fear of refugees swings Switzerland even farther right - The Economist

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins - A.L.Tsing [Princeton University Press]

Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear - Margee Kerr [PublicAffairs]

After a football-induced hiatus, This is Hell! is back with a one hour show. Listen 9AM - 10AM US Central. Four hours next week!

9:05AM - Civil rights attorney Flint Taylor challenges police torture and state secrecy at Chicago's Homan Square.

Flint's law firm, the People's Law Office, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of Chicago and six Chicago police officers.

9:30AM - Writer Sarah Kendzior explores the ties and tensions between Ferguson's Jewish and Palestinian activists.

Sarah wrote The Jewish and Palestinian Activists of the Ferguson Movement for Medium.

Atention citizens of Grand Rapids and West Michigan:

This is Hell! Monday nights at 11PM Eastern on Public Reality Radio!

Starting tonight, This is Hell! will be airing Monday nights at 11PM Eastern on WPRR Public Reality Radio. We're sending them a one hour version of the show each week (the first hit is always free) with the reminder that there's four hours of interview Hell each week at www.thisishell.com

If you know a radical / lefty with a radio in Grand Rapids or West Michigan, let em know that we're coming to their town / subdivision / squat. And if you want to hear This is Hell! in your community, get in touch with us and we'll bug that station together.