Podcast
Citations Needed
Hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson · EN
Citations Needed is a podcast about the intersection of media, PR, and power, hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson.
31episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Episode 238: The Fictional, Racist, Paranoia-Sowing "Sleeper Cell" Media Construction
1w ago01:30:33Tap to summarizeIn this episode, we detail the vague, baseless racism-sowing media coverage and pop culture obsession with so-called "sleeper cells," a construction that has consumed post-9/11 America but suffers from one major problem: there's no evidence it exists.
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Live Show: 'How to Sell a Genocide' Book Talk at The Word Is Change Bookstore in Brooklyn, NY
2w ago01:03:50Tap to summarizeThis is a live recording between Nima and Adam at the Word is Change Bookstore May 7, 2026. In this conversation, we discuss key findings that can be found in Adam's new book, How to Sell a Genocide: The Media's Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza.
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News Brief: "Peak TV," Streamer Studio Accounting Gimmicks, and the Precarity of Hollywood Labor
3w ago00:47:54Tap to summarizeIn this News Brief, we talk with Miranda Banks and Kate Fortmueller, authors of the new book Boom to Bust: How Streaming Broke Hollywood Workers, about rising inequality and precarity in Hollywood, studio consolidation, and how the dream of fame and fortune, 100 years on, is still used to concentrate power and drive down wages.
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News Brief: How the Right Invented — and Exploited — the "Liberal Media" Trope
Apr 2200:51:25Tap to summarizeIn this News Brief, we talk with A. J. Bauer, assistant professor at the University of Alabama, about his new book," Making the Liberal Media: How Conservatives Built a Movement Against the Press". In our discussion we break down the corporate and ideological forces that shaped the popular idea mainstream media was crawling with fifth columnist agitators hostile to the values of Real America.
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Ep 237: How Selective, Patronizing 'Deradicalization' Discourse Pathologizes Anti-Colonial Struggle
Apr 1501:21:51Tap to summarizeIn this episode, we break down the long history of US media reducing recalcitrant populations' grievances to "terrorism," "hate," and "radicalism" in urgent need of re-education. With guest Prem Thakker.
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Ep 236: Manufactured Austerity and the Media Assisted 'Public-Private Partnership' Rip-Off
Apr 801:06:08Tap to summarizeIn this episode we discuss how privatization was rebranded 'Public-Private Partnerships' and unleashed decades of raiding of the public coffers by Wall Street. With guest Donald Cohen, founder and executive director of In the Public Interest.
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News Brief: As American Troops Hide in Civilian Hotels, US Media Ignores Pentagon's Use of 'Human Shields'
Apr 100:17:55Tap to summarizeIn this News Brief we examine CNN, the Atlantic, Washington Post and NYT's blatant 'human shields' double standard as reports emerge of US troops hiding from Iranian attacks in civilian infrastructure.
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News Brief: How Decades of Media Distortions and Lies about "Iran's Nuclear Program" Lead to War
Mar 2500:34:41Tap to summarizeIn this News Brief, we discuss a recent poll showing 70% of Americans are fundamentally wrong about the nature of Iran's "nuclear program"—including 1 in 4 who think Iran currently possesses a nuclear weapon, and detail how decades of sleazy media innuendo and fabrications got us to this point.
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"Shadow Fleets," Sanctions & Western Media's International Law-ification of Arbitrary US Dictates
Mar 1101:22:12Tap to summarizeIn this episode, we explore how arbitrary—often unilateral—sanctions against Enemy States are given the halo of international legal legitimacy with a combination of lies, slippery language and brainless court stenography. With guest Maryam Jamshidi, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Colorado School of Law.
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News Brief: As Trump Crushes Academia, the NYT and Atlantic Still Fight 'Woke' Wars from 5 Years Ago
Feb 1800:45:54Tap to summarizeIn this News Brief, we are joined by Chenjerai Kumanyika and Todd Wolfson of the American Association of University Professors to discuss Trump's gutting of higher education, its expansion on previous neoliberal privatization efforts, and how big donor and media backlash against "woke "academics and anti-Gaza genocide protestors is fueling the possible end of academic independence as we know it.
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