← Green & Red: Podcasts for Scrappy Radicals
Green & Red: Podcasts for Scrappy Radicals
American Beauty. Our end to 2025 episode (G&R 452)
01:15:32
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to Green and Red Scrappy Politics for Scrappy People, a regular podcast on radical environmental and anti capitalist politics, brought to you by Bob Bozanko and Scott Parkins.
- [00:17]
B
Three, two, one. And we are recording. Welcome to the silky smooth sounds of the Green and Red Podcast. On the last few days of 2025, we are excited that we have been nominated for the NFL's Peace Prize. You know, we, we believe that we can safely bring about an end to the Russia Ukraine conflict, plus the Thai, Cambodia conflict, which has been going on for decades. And the NFL is going to give us a peace prize for it.
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A
So that's. You forgot, no mistake. It's the Donald J. Trump Green and Red Podcast.
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B
Oh, yeah, yeah, that's true.
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A
Everything is being renamed. And yeah, I think we're also finalists for the NASCAR Peace Prize, if I'm not mistaken. Right? Yeah. Trump was also recently awarded the idioming Peace Prize. I don't think I got much publicity out there. He's a man of peace. I believe he just claimed he ended the Hundred Years War. So, you know, just a very stable genius.
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B
You know, he, The. The War of Roses. The War of the Roses is, is next on his list, at least because he's, he's, I think he's going to actually just rip out the entire Rose Garden.
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A
He already has. Yeah.
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B
And when. And that's how he's going to win the War of the Roses.
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A
Oh, boy. We live in interesting times. It's the end of 2025, so this is something I guess we've done every year. You know, we've actually been doing this for six years. That's nuts.
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B
Yeah. In February. In February. Every six years.
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A
Yeah. 20, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25. That's six, almost six, four years. That's crazy.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And we always do kind of an end of the year show where sometimes serious, sometimes fun, sometimes both. And so, you know, we want to kind of give you this at the end of the year and of course, as always, we want to thank you for following us and supporting us and hope you keep doing it.
- [02:13]
B
Yeah. And it's the end of the year and we've been making some light pitches in our last few episodes and we've been putting out some fundraising emails and fundraising tweets and things like that. But as the year winds down and you'll probably be hearing this as the last day of the year when you'll be hearing this. If you want to support the Green and Red podcast, go to greenandredpodcast.org and hit that support button or become a patron@patreon.com backslash greenredpodcast. If you want to make a larger donation, you know, we'll take. We'll take whatever you got. You know, as Bob likes to say, as it. Whether it jingle, jingles, or folds, we'll take your cash. But if you make a larger donation, we also have a physical sponsor. And so you can just email us@greenred podcastmail.com and we can hook you up with our physical sponsor as well. I will say that we are pretty scrappy with how we do this podcast. Some of it's out of our own pockets, some of it's from the generosity of our friends and our patrons and our audience. We also have swag. If you're watching this on the video, you can see that I'm wearing a green and red podcast hat for 25 bucks. And if you want a hat, I will send you a hat for a $25 donation. Just email us at greenred podcast.org@gmail.org. excuse me. @gmail.com for that. And so. And.
- [03:56]
A
Just pause for a minute of this. I would say, like, 35, 3, 2, 1.
- [04:03]
B
We're recording, so let's go.
- [04:06]
A
So, yeah, in addition to the hats, we're getting some shirts made. I think we've shown them to you before, but we'll have those out. And also, if anybody's interested, I've talked about this a lot, and it's my first book, Masters of War. It's about the military in the Vietnam era. It has a dual purpose. After I wrote it, it became, I think, important in the debate over jfk, the JFK conspiracies, and, you know, other people. Noam Chomsky cited it quite frequently. It's blurbed at the back by Seymour Hirsch, who's. You can't do much better than that. And, you know, we've gotten a lot of other people who, you know, sent us emails and put up messages on social media saying how much they enjoyed it and found it useful in this debate over jfk, because what it shows quite clearly is JFK was not getting out of Vietnam. So. And that's for a 35 donation.
- [04:57]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [04:59]
A
And that includes postage and handling and all that stuff.
- [05:01]
B
Yeah. And same with the hats and same with the T shirts. And we'll be. We'll be.
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A
You'll.
- [05:04]
B
You'll really know when we get the. When that. When you get the T shirts up. So.
- [05:08]
A
Yeah.
- [05:10]
B
And so we would really appreciate it if you would Support the Green and Red podcast. Going into 2026, major media is being taken over by the far right, by the, by the billionaire class and independent media is more important than ever. And, and we're not like one of the big progressive, highly produced shows and we're not the Brooklyn hipster media industrial complex. But you know, there's a lot of small and scrappy little podcasts out there. And so you should support them and you should support us. More importantly, you should support us and so support independent media and support independent podc.
- [05:47]
A
And one of the things we're going to do, since it's the end of years, we're going to talk about some of the shows we did this year that stood out. I mean, all of them did, but some a little bit more. And that'll give you some idea of the kind of stuff we do and the kind of people we've talked to. And we need to actually put together a list of, you know, since the beginning we've, we've had some like great, great shows. Amazing people. We've had on Seymour hers, we've had on Noam Chomsky many times. You know, just all kinds of really great folks. Andy Basovich was a frequent guest and we deal with a lot of topics like Trump versus the ruling class, military opposition, a ton of environmental stuff, environmental activism, especially street activism that you don't find in, in many other podcasts. Right. And you know, I know we, we, it's kind of fun for us to take digs at the Brooklyn people, but you know, they recently had an article about like how the resistance was so big in, in 2025 and you know, great, they mentioned Bernie Sanders, no Kings. And I forget the other thing, which is still true. That's fine. Which is all great. I'm glad Mom Donnie won. You know, lefties who are attacking him, I think they need to step back and realize who they're real enemies. But not a word about what was actually happening in the streets. The reason, if Trump is even a little vulnerable, it's because of them. It's not because, I mean, Mamdani, actually that election helped because it raised the issue of affordability. But it's these people in the streets in LA and D.C. and Chicago and elsewhere who really have led the resistance. And that has nothing to do with Bernie Sanders or Mom Donnie or no Kings. Right. And you're not going to get that in Jacobin and you're not going to get that from the Jackaman associated podcast and all these hip, self important New York lefties Right. And when we've, like, from the beginning, that's kind of been really. Our main focus is to give a platform to folks like that who otherwise don't. And, you know, it's really cool now because we're at the point where people are actually contacting us, you know, and saying, hey, can we come on? And they're sending us books saying, hey, could you talk about this?
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B
So, yeah, and we.
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A
And we.
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B
And we've done.
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A
We.
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B
You know, a theme that we have had through our entire podcast that when Bob and I started talking about what we wanted our podcast to be was around organizing and direct action. And as you know, that was in 2019 when we started brainstorming the idea for this podcast. Now we're entering into 2026, where organizing and direct action is more important than ever. And part of that is people need to know their history. So we talk a lot about people's history. People need to understand the political economy. So we talk about the political economy. People need to understand the economy. And so we talk about the economy. People need to understand the, you know, the material implications of the politics that are going on, not just the cultural aspects. But then we also talk a lot about popular culture, which we also think is really important here. And so these have all been themes. These are all themes which strengthen organizing and direct action. We talk about the history of direct action, the history of organizing and the, you know, current. The current state of it, as you were, whether it's in the forests of the Pacific Northwest or whether it's in the streets of Los Angeles and Chicago and Washington, D.C. yeah, and there are.
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A
There'S a lot of good small lefty media out there. I mean, but give us a shot, too. And, you know, don't rely on. On all the, the big stuff. I mean, you know, we have issues with some of that. But when the New York Times turns Jacobin into its go to representative of the left, and, you know, we've got a problem when the New York Times approved of you. Right. And so, you know, we're not going to be. We're not gonna have Barry Weiss on or anything like that, you know, but I think we will, you know, kind of talk to people who you probably won't hear about otherwise. Talk about a lot of issues that you won't hear about otherwise. Talk about authors, talk to authors that you otherwise might not hear about. But we're also talking to authors who are very well known dealing with very important subjects.
- [09:43]
B
Right, right, exactly. And we, we talked to many authors and Journalists who are on the, on the rise, right, who are talking about stuff that, you know, you're starting to hear about. And we're able to get those folks.
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A
On our podcast on the Middle east where we have like really well known Middle east scholars from, from the U.S. from Iran, from other countries, you know, in the Middle East, Arabs, Palestinians. So yeah, we, we do our best and you know, we're not getting rich off this, I guess the Soros checks, I don't know if, if ICE like intercepted them or what, but we've never gotten them. So.
- [10:21]
B
Yeah, or Pam Bondi, I think it was Pam Bondi. Maybe it's like, you know, as has her people in the, in the postal office, Postal service doing, watching stuff, right?
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A
Yeah, she does that in between looking at the Epstein video.
- [10:34]
B
Right? Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [10:37]
A
Anyway, please support us, Please support us if you can, if you, if at the very least you can share it, right? Tell your friends, send an email out, you know, if you know, we're on all the media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Blue Sky, YouTube. Yeah, so share that. You know, at the very least, share it.
- [10:57]
B
But, but importantly for this time of year, make a tax free donation. Could be your last tax free donation of 2025. To greenred podcast.org hit the support button or go to patron@patreon.com backslash greenradpodcast.
- [11:13]
A
Yeah, and based on what Trump's telling us, you guys should have plenty of money out there because the economy is.
- [11:18]
B
Perfect, it's beautiful, it's amazing. It's the best economy ever.
- [11:21]
A
Best economy ever. So you should have plenty of disposable income.
- [11:25]
B
He's recently surpassed George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as the most, as the best presidents ever, is what he's being told. So part of that is his economic record, of course.
- [11:36]
A
I mean, you know, if you're betting it's Trump versus the field, you know.
- [11:41]
B
Exactly. Maybe we can get into the, our end of the year.
- [11:47]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [11:49]
B
One thing I want to front load this with is that there's been a lot of issues this year, like I, like I said at the beginning, so many issues that you can't even talk about all of the things going on. But recurring themes this year have been political violence, resistance to ice, like what we just talked about, the Epstein files, this increasing economic divide, turmoil, economic collapse, war with Venezuela, genocide in Gaza, and state repression, increasing state repression. And so we did about 95, almost 100 shows this year and we covered many of these topics. And so we just want to go through what we have thought are the best of our shows for this year. We're going to talk about those a little bit. And, and there's, there's shows where we have guests and have done interviews, and then there's also shows where it was just Bob and I, we talked about history and politics or and popular culture actually.
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A
So yeah, yeah, I separated mine that way. Like interview shows and then history, politics shows. And I have, like, it's a long list because we did so many great shows. And honestly, like, I feel bad about like not including even more on it. You know, in a lot of ways these were just, I mean, to some degree, like a lot of the, the stuff we do here is just fine. You know, I mean, like, it's important, I think, to talk about this now that I'm retired, I'm retiring. Professor. It's, it's really important for me to kind of try to keep my mind active. And I know Scott's very involved in, in the activist world, so it has a personal meaning to him. But it's also just a lot of fun, I think, you know, to talk to a lot of these folks, you know, to have these discussions. So do you want to start or do you want to. Like, the way I'm going to do it is I have a few that I think kind of are like kind of at a higher level. But then otherwise there's just a lot of good ones that I want to mention.
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B
But why don't we start with the higher level ones and then we can just kind of go through the. Some of the other ones a little bit more quickly.
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A
Yeah, my favorite probably because I think it's like an incredibly important topic. And the person to whom we talked, our guest is like really well known, a really well known historian. I've been reading her books for like 30 some years and that's Ellen Schrecker. And we had Ellen Schrecker on to talk about repression. Ellen Schrecker is the best historian of McCarthyism, like, ever. And we had her on. The episode was titled worse than McCarthyism Ellen Schrecker on Trump's Repression. And that just like that was, that's one of those. What was really cool afterward to say, hey, that was a really great interview and we talked to Alan Schrecker. But I think, you know, we can't undersell how important this is. Just the repression what we're seeing, not just with ice, but now, you know, everybody, everybody's at risk calling antifa, which they can't even describe terrorists, you know, going after people at the airport the new national security memorandum which basically says if you say anything bad about Trump, you're a, you're a terrorist. So if I had to pick just one, it would probably be that. Not an easy call, but. But I would pick that one.
- [14:54]
B
Yeah, I definitely think that was the, is the top of my list too. As, as far as like the best, most important shows that we've put out. And, and we've put, we've done a number of shows on state repression this year. So it's a very important topic. We've actually talked with journalist Will Potter and journalist Adam Fetterman. Adam Federman is actually a sort of recurring guest on this topic with us. Just recently sort of figured that out with him. And so this issue of state repression. But, but, but the sort of, but the Ellen Schrecker episode really is the, is the top and really sort of frames it in a really important way.
- [15:36]
A
I also had, and again, now it's harder to kind of, that does actually I think kind of stand out. Other than that, now we have stuff that's a little harder. Like I, we did two shows fairly recently on Latin America, which I really enjoyed. I thought they were really important. Rodrigo Auna, who is a scholar in Australia talking to us about Venezuela, he is also the producer of a new documentary called Venezuela the Cost of Challenging an Empire. And then just supposedly like a couple weeks ago we had on another great, really well known scholar, Aviva Chomsky, to talk about Trump's wars on Latin America and in particular Venezuela again. And those are obviously very timely right now.
- [16:18]
B
Yeah. And then, and then we also. It's amazing actually now looking at it, thinking about the sort of, some of the issues that I talked about have been the issues of 2025 is how many actually overlay the state repression. 2. Two other episodes that we had put on the list were also around state repression. One was the encampments where we interviewed the directors of a new film that came out earlier this year about the crackdown at Columbia and ucla. You know, there was a hundred, there was a hundred encampments on college campuses in 2024. The, the film really focuses on two of them. It was sort of produced through breakthrough news, but the encampments is about the protest encampments against the genocide in Gaza and then the crackdown on them. And then the other is we talked with civil rights attorney, civil rights legend, really Ron Kuby, who won some of the flag running cases in the late 80s and is still an activist lawyer and a criminal defense lawyer in New York. Where we talked about Trump's executive order that came out at the time on flag burning, which you really haven't heard much about that. What Ron said, I even put it in the title was this executive order means absolutely nothing, and it has gone absolutely nowhere. And so Ron was correct in what he had to say about that. And so those were also like two really great episodes that we'd put out.
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A
Yeah. Kubi also, I think is important because it shows. And, and this is a recurrent theme that you can challenge Trump. He's not this big, super mega demonic genius. Right. And, and, and like you said, you know, the flag burning thing has just been silly. Right.
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B
Speaking of silly.
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A
Speaking of silly, what?
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B
Oh, no, I thought you were going to go into the comedy episode.
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A
Oh, I was actually. That's, that's. Man, you read my mind. I was also thinking it is silly. But it's also another case of like taking on the state. We had on Sophia McClellan, who'd been on before in the aftermath of Trump, making sure they're basically getting Stephen Colbert fired and then going after Jimmy Kimmel and for about what, five, six days getting him fired. Right. And I think it's important to. We called this show Trump vs. Comedy Colbert in South Park. South park, maybe that's another thing unto itself, Right. With Professor Sophia McClellan. You know, it's important. I think the Jimmy Kimmel thing is really instructive. Right. Because there was just such a blow up about that that APC backed down pretty quickly. Right. You know, Trump hated Kimmel. He'd been tweeting about getting rid of him. The head of the FCC wanted him gone and ABC complied. ABC capitulated before that. Right. When Trump threatened to sue them, as Faye McClellan's talked about this in 20. Was it 2020, she wrote a book called Trump was a joke or 21 about how satire was important in knocking him down. And you know, he's very kind of crazy, sensitive, narcissistic guy. And so I thought that was important, you know, and it also, I think, you know, if, if that many people can mobilize without any notice to save Jimmy Kimmel's job, which I think is important, I don't want to downplay it, but, you know, that's not the biggest issue we face. Right. If you can do that to save Jimmy Kimmel, then you can do that, help the people in Chicago or the people in LA or your neighbors. Your neighbors or whoever. Right. And it just shows like that Trump is not some, like mega, you know, Mik who you can't touch. And, and we also, at the time, that was when I think the first south park episode came out. South park hasn't let up. And by all accounts, in the White House, that really gets to Trump. He really hates that. It gets under his skin. And you know, there's, that's not how you win the war, but it's, it's a good tactic. There's nothing wrong with it, you know.
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B
Yeah, so death by a thousand cuts.
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A
Yeah, and that, that's fine. And you know, making fun of them, I mean, that's, you know, big, you know, big dictators like that. It's, it's, it's important, I think, to kind of cut them down.
- [20:32]
B
Just, just to go, go along with the, the theme of dissent and resistance against Trump is. I'm going to point out that we did an episode on, on military dissent against Trump. We talked with Zach Henson, who's a military vet. He's also part of About Face, Military Vets Against War. It was at the time, over the summer when they had this big bust of a military March through Washington D.C. and so we talked with Zach about one, they were actually doing direct actions against the march in D.C. and then, and then we just talked about military resistance and military dissent in general with Zach as well.
- [21:20]
A
And that's the main thing we've been doing for six years. This is where I'm not immodest. I know a bit about this stuff because I've been writing about it for 30 years. And, and this is something, you know, like about two, three months ago, one of the very well known New York lefties wrote a thing about Trump and the military. And these people were like, oh, my God, I never knew that. How important is, it's like we've been doing this for six years, you know, and we continued, we did talk to Zach Henson, but we've also done plenty of shows on this, including this year on our own. And you know, this is important. I mean, as lefties, we have this image of this monolithic military. And don't get me wrong, there are plenty of crazy people like, you know, Dan Kane and, and others in it. But, you know, the Pentagon right now isn't all that thrilled. You can see people are getting fired, people are resigning. There, there's a lot going on. There's so much going on that we don't even know about.
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B
Right.
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A
And groups like About Face are organizing, they're working, they're going into the streets to talk to these soldiers who are being deployed guardsmen. And soldiers who are being deployed in American cities telling them, you don't have to do this. Right. And, you know, we did a show about Mark Kelly who got in trouble for making a video. And Mark Kelly is as far away from this as you can get. Right. Mark Kelly is kind of a John McCain type. Right. But even Kelly, you know, is trying to warn these people, saying you don't have to follow illegal orders, and that's really important. And, and we've definitely been on top of that.
- [22:48]
B
Yeah, we've done. We've done a number of shows on that. We also did a show about the. When the. Pete Hegseth.
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A
The.
- [22:56]
B
The Secretary of Defense changed the name of the Department of Defense, saying it's too woke to changing it to the Department of War, although you need congressional approval to do that, which they've never done. So technically it's not really happened. Even though they've changed all the plaques. We've done some shows on the, on the history of the Department of Defense. For example, we did. We did a show on how World War II was won because Trump.
- [23:23]
A
Those are like the history shows. We still have to finish the.
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B
Oh, oh, oh, oh, sorry.
- [23:27]
A
No, no, no. We have. I think we have a couple more, don't you?
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B
Yeah.
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A
Of like, interviews. Yeah, yeah.
- [23:32]
B
Sorry.
- [23:35]
A
We don't have rules here.
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B
Yeah.
- [23:37]
A
Okay. We're in our case, remember.
- [23:40]
B
I'll have to clean a little this up.
- [23:44]
A
So beside.
- [23:47]
B
Beside, you know, in our, in our. Also in our interviews, we'll. I'm just seeing where we are.
- [23:57]
A
So.
- [23:58]
B
Also, another great interview is a longtime friend of the podcast and longtime friend of both of ours. We did a show on Hurricane Katrina 20 years later where we talked with Scott Crow, who was one of the founders of the Common Ground hurricane relief. And, and we talked about the formation of the Common Ground relief effort. And then we talked about Hurricane Katrina, and then we actually just talked about the long slope history of disaster. And we actually talked a lot about it in context of Trump as well with Scott. It was a great interview. It was the 20th year. It was the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Very important topic.
- [24:44]
A
And I mean, that's one of the more important and impressive direct action organizations that we've seen in a long time. Like, really, I think since the 60s and 70s. And, and there's a lot of lessons, even if. And they fit into other categories, too. It's not just about Katrina. It's. It's about, you know, you can apply these ideas that Scott had in New Orleans after Katrina and use them and adapt them for a lot of other type of issues too. And Scott Cross, very well known. He's a great guy. It's always good to talk to him A couple more. I had one just because we also like doing shows that kind of take on conventional wisdom and we like to tweak other people on the left, believe it or not. And we had on a show called the Fraud of Recycling. And unfortunately I forgot to write down the journalist's name. I don't know if you probably remember.
- [25:40]
B
It, but Rebecca Johns.
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A
Yeah, but then there was the guy who wrote the actual article, Rebecca Johnson. There was another guy on too. They were. Both of them. They'd written an article called the Fraud of Recycling. Anyway, the theme of it was that industry is promoting advanced recycling as a false solution to the plastic crisis. So instead of basically, you know, limiting or somehow getting rid of using plastic. Right. I read a piece just today, if you drink bottled water, you're going to get 90,000 micro particles of plastic with. Whereas if you just drink like tap water, you get like three or 4,000. Right. And so we're hearing that, you know, like, take responsibility. If you recycle, everything will be fine. And as we know, there are, I don't know, like 7 billion plastic bottles thrown out every year. And I just, like, that's. That's eye opening, you know, when you do shows like that, that take on these kind of sacred cows, right. Recycling, you know, I recycle. I mean, I'm not going to stop doing it. But I think it's also important to understand that by itself really is doing pretty much nothing.
- [26:41]
B
You know, Davis Allen.
- [26:42]
A
Davis Allen. Yeah, that was. I really, you know, like some shows you really learn a lot from along those lines. I didn't have this on the list, but the one we did, we just released it like two or three days ago, was like that with Nell Bernstein. Because that, like, I knew that was great. I knew nothing about that.
- [26:59]
B
Y. Yeah. So we. We talked with journalist Nell Bernstein about the. Actually this, this thing happened over the last 20 years, which is the decline of incarcerated youth in the US and the. And the decline of youth prisons. Like, it's something like a 75% reduction in the number of incarcerated youth. She has a new book out called In Our Future We Are Free. And we talked about, we talked actually in great detail about that book. It's actually our last release of the. Before this episode.
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A
Yeah, the only one I have left, it's about. And only one from Gaza, which is kind of crazy, right? Because we did so many on the Middle east and Gaza with Askander Sadiqi and Nature Origin of. But we spoke with a very well known fellow from Houston who I've known for years. Judah Fadi is a physician and a poet. He's won all kinds of national poetry awards. His family is from Palestine and much of his poetry is about the genocide. He writes and speaks with such passion and clarity and moral force. And Fadi, Judah, is somebody, you know, we should all know about. And I just was so happy that we got a chance to talk to him.
- [28:32]
B
I had two other that weren't on the list that Bob and I had agreed upon one. Another one is about Gaza, which was also a recent end of the year, towards the end of year one, which was Terms of Servitude where we talked with Professor Omar Zaza, who is a professor at San Francisco State. He actually has written a book about how Big Tech is silencing the voices of Palestinians, mostly through shadow banning and targeting Palestinian influencers and things like that, but then also providing data and metadata to the Israelis to assassinate Palestinians on the ground in Gaza, which I actually thought was a really important topic to talk about. And very. And very. It was, God, I'm just totally choking today. It was, it was very sort of current moment, a good moment to be talking about that with everything that goes on with Big Tech in our society right now. And then the other one I wanted to mention, which I actually was a little bit on my bucket list of a person to talk to was George Cassia Ficus who has written a number of books about like movements from 1968 up through, you know, Arab Spring and Occupy and has been written recently about the, the Asia Uprisings. The title of the episode was like One Uprising after Another. But it was actually really great to talk with George as well.
- [30:02]
A
We also did a lot of shows which we call like the History of Politics. Oh, I forgot one. Tim Shirock on Korea, 75th anniversary. Good too. But the History Politics shows, those are the ones that Jeff Scott and I do. We do a lot of those because it's our show. We can do whatever we want, right? We can put. Why don't we just change the name to the Scott and Bob Green and Red Podcast, right? Not remember Johnny Carson? Johnny Carson broke the mold because it became not just a Tonight show, but Tonight show starring Johnny Carson. So we are going to do that unless Trump wants to pay us for naming rights, you know. Yeah, but the History Politics shows, the first two are very self serving, not gonna lie. They're they're me being immodest number one, because I always like talking about this. We did our kind of becoming annual show about JFK on November 22, 1963. The myths, fables and conspiracies of JFK, where once again, we just talked about the truth about Kennedy. And we update them as new information comes out, new documents come out, and we hear more stuff from the crazies, the. The nutty Oliver Stone, Flounder and Pinto kind of lefty QAnon Kennedy cult type people. And so I always enjoy doing that. And I think that one's really important to get the truth out about Kennedy. The other is just a talk I gave, which I was just really proud of at the Jerusalem center, the Jerusalem fund in Washington, D.C. it was called Vietnam then Palestine now, which was kind of a historical comparison between Vietnam, the national liberation struggle there, national liberation struggle in Palestine, how the US Responds to it. If I ever get off my butt and finish it, that will be coming out as an article at some point, but we'll see. So those two were, you know, meant a lot to me. They were. They were very important to me, and I really enjoyed them. So.
- [31:55]
B
And then along with the theme of Mark Kelly and military dissent and the Trump and Hegseth interactions with the military, for lack of a better description, the one two other episodes that we identified as important are the Defense Department wasn't woke. It was an agent for Empire, which was a episode about the history of the Department of Defense and, and how changing the name back to the Department of War actually, you know, it's a little bit of a disservice because the Department of Defense was actually the real agent for Empire versus, like, what Trump and Hexeth are doing now, calling it.
- [32:42]
A
The Department of War is actually limiting it. Yeah. Yeah.
- [32:45]
B
But they're limited. So there you go.
- [32:47]
A
They're not the brightest. Yeah.
- [32:49]
B
And then the. And then the other one was how World War II was wonderful, where Trump basically, where Trump is talking about how the US Actually needs to take all the credit for winning World War II. And we actually talk about historical fact, which contradicts that.
- [33:07]
A
Yeah. We also did a Show on the 80th anniversary of the Cold War, which touched on some of that as well. So those were fine.
- [33:17]
B
The only pop culture one that we put in here, we did a few less of those. We're going to talk a little bit about some of the pop culture stuff in the next thing we're talking about, but the only pop culture episode that we really put in Here was the conspiracy thrillers shaped by 1970s America, where we talked about the three days of the Condor, the Parallax View and All the President's Men. And that actually has been. I've gotten a lot of good feedback about that episode. It's been very popular.
- [33:48]
A
Yeah, we did. We got a real good response to that. And there are a couple others we'll talk about, I think, in the. In the next segment, too. The last two I have were, again, kind of one very personal to me, which was Trump's favorite president, who was William McKinley. Right. William McKinley's from Niles, Ohio, where I now live. And Trump has repeatedly talked about how much he admired McKinley because of his tariff policy. So we talked a little bit about what that really meant, what America was like in the 1890s and what those tariffs actually did. And kind of is a. An annex to that. We did tariffs 101 trade, taxes and revenues in U.S. history. And this is kind of. I used to teach about this stuff. So this was kind of fun, too, where we just talked about what tariffs do historically, what they meant, how they're really supposed to be used for developing countries, not for big industrial BMs, whether they work, they help, who they hurt, and so on. I think it was a really good kind of brief economics lesson that is pretty understandable because I'm not an economist, so I couldn't describe it in far more complex and unexplicable terms. So I thought that was kind of useful, too. And I think for that. I don't know if you have any others for the history, politics, the ones we did. Right. So one thing we do, because everybody does it at the end of the year, we talk about the lives we lost. We need some. We mentioned Sarah McLaughlin. We need some Sarah McLachlan music serenading over this to talk about segue to segue.
- [35:18]
B
That's right, yeah.
- [35:19]
A
Segue. Right.
- [35:20]
B
But some very sad teenage girl sort of music.
- [35:23]
A
Yeah. But, you know, there were, as always, especially as I get older, I think about death more often. Right. We did lose some really important people on the left side, since you just mentioned pop culture. We did shows and two people who died this year who we're not going to spend time on because we already did these. We did really, I think, important shows on Robert Redford and Rob Ryan.
- [35:44]
B
Eric. Yeah, yeah. And important, important figures.
- [35:48]
A
Yeah.
- [35:49]
B
Other folks who we actually thought talked about doing shows on them, but didn't think they were significant enough in the sort of left political sphere. But we do think that they were Iconic to our culture, particularly in that new wave of like 60s 70s film. Included gene Hackman, who was in Bonnie and Clyde and the French Connection and the Conversation. Right. Conversation is actually a very important political movie. Would have actually made our. If we did, had done four films on the conspiracy theory, the conspiracy thrillers that with the fourth one would have been the Conversation.
- [36:29]
A
And then now I'm thinking like, why didn't we?
- [36:32]
B
Yeah, why didn't we? Well, it's future show. Right. And then Diane Keaton is obviously a very important iconic figure through Woody Allen films. She was in Reds, Warren Beatty's Reds, lots of other. I mean, she was in the sort of 90s, sort of, you know, baby boomer women's films. You saw her with Cole Hahn and Bette Midler a lot, I think. But, you know, also very important and, you know, actually very much touched the two of us as well.
- [37:07]
A
Yeah, well, she's got a career start in Hair on Broadway, which is like a really one of the most important anti war plays ever. And then you mentioned Reds. I mean, as Louise Bryant, that was. I think she's the best female actor I've ever seen. Diane Keaton and as Louise Bryant, it was just. Wow, it was dynamite. Yeah, yeah. So she definitely needs to be shouted out for that. A couple people who like, really stood out to me, who we didn't talk about. One is a. Is a. Is a. An entertainer. Tom Lehrer. Tom Lehrer was a satirist. He had a show in. Well, no, he didn't have a show. He was on the David Frost show called this Was the Week that was. And he used to do music and he did satirical numbers. The Vatican Rag, you know, Werner von Braun. What's the one? Spoofs on nuclear war. Who's next? What's about the atomic bomb? Tom Lehrer kind of laid the groundwork, I think, for kind of more modern and contemporary political satire, which, you know, we talked about like, like we mentioned earlier. And Tom Lehrer, you know, I used to play his songs in class a lot and the students would get a kick out of it, you know. And he was in his mid-90s and died. And Tom Lehre, I think, is really, really an important figure in American kind of, you know, cultural resistance, which, which we do talk about as was somebody who. Important to me, not as well known, Jules Pfeiffer. Pfeiffer was a cartoonist. As a playwright, he wrote the screenplay for Carnal Knowledge and for Popeye, Robert Altman's films, but also a little gem of a Movie called Little Murders, which I think starred Elliot Gould and maybe Alan Arkin, I can't remember precisely. So Jules Feifer was somebody. If you're ever kind of looking for somebody, something new, check out Jules Pfeiffer movies or Jules Pfeiffer cartoons or whatever. Right. Really important guy.
- [39:12]
B
The. The only other one in the sort of entertainment world that I, I want to mention, which I've actually wanted to do a show on. One of his films for a while is Robert Benton, who made films more, you know, around the Depression era, around the west and around, like, neo Western kind of neo Western themes. He did films like Tender Mercies. The one I actually want to do a show on at some point is Places in the Heart, which is about the Depression era Texas, starring Sally Field and John Malkovich and Danny Glover and Ed Harris as actually and Amy Madigan. But I, I think that I, I think that a lot of his film sort of touches on some, like, rural Americana times that have passed us sense. And I, I think he's made some important contributions to the sort of culture with more of a progressive politic.
- [40:10]
A
One thing that I forgotten until I kind of looked him up while we were preparing for this was he directed a film called the Human Stain. It's based on a novel by Philip Roth. And. And we talk a lot about cancel culture and stuff like this. This is way ahead of the time. This was kind of at the start, right. It's a Philip Roth novel. A lot of people on the left hated it. But it's about a professor who gets accused of being. Saying something really, really offensive and, you know, gets destroyed. And I do think that's a very real thing. And I think it's something that we, we. We can't just dismiss and say, oh, that's propaganda. I mean, the right wing is the one who really does that. Absolutely. You know, especially look at what, like, you point out the encampments, right. They're going after people all the time. But it does happen in other venues too. And, and Benton really did a great job, I think, on that. Right. Yeah. Very important. Another person kind of entertainment, maybe not, is Bill Moyers, who I think Moyes worked with lbj. He was always a good liberal, but the kind of liberal, like, I mean that this is like, good liberal is usually kind of, you know, sarcastic and derisive. In this case, I really mean it. Bill Moyers, after he left the White House, had a PBS show on. For how long? For like 30, 40 years, I think. And, and he opened, Opened up the doors to like, all kinds of people who, you know, really weren't getting that kind of attention before, you know, left scholars and people talking about the economy and offered like a. In terms of being in the mainstream. One of the most kind of critical, you know, views that you could get came from Bill Moyers. So all in all, if there were. If liberals were like Bill Moyers, we wouldn't have nearly as much to bitch about, you know, it up.
- [41:48]
B
He's someone who a lot of journalists, particularly left journalists, from progressive journalists, like, look to as is like an early, you know, pioneer, I guess you could say he was.
- [42:00]
A
Yeah.
- [42:02]
B
We also wanted to hit on a couple of musicians. Jimmy Cliff Passed Away. His songs tackled themes around. Around the war in Vietnam, social justice, poverty, racism. Lots of stuff around Hope for Change. It was very much using powerful reggae rhythms to inspire these harder moments. Yeah, the harder they Come, for example. And then Sly Stone. Sly of Sly in the Family Stone. I love Sly Stone. I love Sly in the Family Stone. You know, his politics were centered on racial and radical inclusion, post civil rights ideas. I actually affiliate him a lot in my mind with black power, you know, but you see. You see anthems like Everyday People and stand. You know, he had a song called There's a Riot Going on. Promoted a vision of black and white people creating, you know, fighting racism together and fighting segregation. And it was also just like a lot of like, joyful, funky music, you know.
- [43:16]
A
And there was a moment in that era where he was as big as anybody, you know.
- [43:19]
B
Yeah.
- [43:20]
A
Like, he was. He was like a genuine rock star, you know, like after the Beatles, you know, you had that kind of period there. And Sly really stood up for that. The other singer I have very different than, than Jimmy Cliff and Sly Stone was Peter Yarrow from Peter Paul and Mary, which is really an important folk group. You know, they were part of that folk revival in the late 50s, early 60s. And you know, their songs, you know, their best known songs were like Puff the Magic Dragon and Leaving on a Jet Plane, you know, covers Lawrence.
- [43:52]
B
Where have all the flowers do they do where all the flowers gone?
- [43:56]
A
Well, they, they. Yeah, they covered. That's just because they covered like Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan and they were at every rally ever, you know, many, many, many years ago. I lived in, outside D.C. in Maryland. And every year Tacoma park, which is kind of still a well known kind of hippie enclave, would have a folk festival and Pete Seeger would perform pretty much every year. And then Peter, Paul and Mary are, I think they were still together. Maybe Mary, Mary Travers had died already by then. I don't remember that. But Peter Y. Would be there and I mean, he was just in terms of conveying those messages and taking, you know, the music of people like Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan and making it, you know, putting it on AM radio and was, was really critical. And you know, I know, you know, I would play his songs to my son when he was a baby, you know, so Peter Yarrow, I think, you know, in terms of that folk revival is, is really an important figure there.
- [44:47]
B
And then when we get into the, the pop politics, which is a lot of the sort of remaining folks on our list and politics is a. I, let's use a wide, a wide berth here. We added Pope Francis to the list. Pope Francis was. Been a pretty important figure the last couple of decades. The first South American Pope. You know, he did a whole lot to challenge the church on a lot of issues which are, you know, near and dear our hearts, like poverty and human rights and war and things like immigration was very critical of, of the Israelis and the genocide in Gaza as well was very critical of Trump until like his dying day.
- [45:40]
A
His last phone call was to a priest in Gaza who he called like I think every night. Yeah. And in his will he left whatever he had to, I believe the same people in Gaza. Yeah. And his last meeting, his last face to face meeting ever was with J.D.
- [45:57]
B
Vance.
- [45:58]
A
So I don't think we need to tell you how to connect those dots. Right.
- [46:03]
B
Yeah, we'll leave, we'll, we'll let you figure it out from there.
- [46:08]
A
Yeah, I mean, I'm a very, very recovering Catholic, but Il Papa wasn't a bad guy. And the new guy is really, I think, standing up to Trump on some of these issues too. I mean, it's still a regressive institution, but within that, you know, they, they have significant global influence. And so to have them and I think, you know, to, to take the church had been moving in this really hardcore right wing direction. You know, Benedict was like literally the leader of the Inquisition in the Vatican. Right, right. And so Francis was really, I think an important break from that. Right. And little, I mean, they, they spoke, I don't know, more humanely about like gays and, you know, women and things like that. You know, didn't really change church doctrine, but certainly told people not to be so hateful and discriminatory. So yeah.
- [47:00]
B
The other, the other two on here, pretty significant. Jose Mahuka Mojica, who was a Uruguayan politician, revolutionary and Farmer, who served as the 40th president, president of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015. And then the other MUA actually, like.
- [47:26]
A
Drove an old VW Beetle and wore, like, old clothes with holes in him, and. And he really was kind of a peasant and really embraced that and. And never, you know, didn't leave office wealthy like most world leaders do. Right?
- [47:44]
B
And then the other is Assata Shakur, hero to many on the left in the US and other parts of the world. Joanne Chessamyn, born Joanne Chessamine. She was part of various radical black power groups in the New York, New Jersey area. Was involved in a shootout with New Jersey state troopers that left at least one New Jersey state trooper dead. She actually spent some time in prison and then escaped and escaped to Cuba and where she was a hero. She was the top of the FBI's most wanted list for. Until she died. And, you know, where she was a teacher. She kept pretty low profile in Cuba because she didn't want the US Government figuring out where she was. I don't know if they did or not. And, you know, she was a. She said a lot of, like, really important things and did a lot of important teachings and. And. And things like that. No one's going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody's going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that the knowledge. If they know that the knowledge will set you free, you know?
- [49:00]
A
And also inspired her nephew to become fairly well known.
- [49:04]
B
Yeah, Tupac Shakur.
- [49:08]
A
Yeah, I just have a couple who aren't really in categories, per se. Robert J. Lifton, who, when he died, it didn't really get much attention, which surprised me. Robert J. Lifting was psychiatrist. He studied. I mean, he studied a lot of things, right? It's like the old Bob Dylan line, my father once said. Well, he said so many things. Robert J. Lifton studied the survivors of war, very importantly Hiroshima, World War II. I discovered him through a book called Home from the War, which was about Vietnam veterans. And Lifton began working with Vietnam vets as they returned back from Vietnam, late 60s, early 70s. And really, PTSD was not new, right? In World War I, it was called shell shock, and it had all kinds of other, you know, derivations. But, you know, people had talked about that at the end of every war, soldiers come home and they're just, like, traumatized by what they've seen. And Home from the War was really, really important in that area. It really kind of opened up the door to discuss these issues like ptsd. Soldiers began talking about what they had seen, what they had done in Vietnam, especially anti war groups like VVAW really embraced lifting. It led to other books like Jonathan Shea's Achilles in Vietnam and then a bunch of stuff. And, you know, Hollywood picked it up and they would, you know, often in an exploitive way, talk about vets who had been traumatized in Vietnam. And they often portrayed them as kind of crazy, which was unfortunate.
- [50:43]
B
Right.
- [50:44]
A
But Lifton is, I think, in terms of, you know, kind of psychiatry, psychological history. We had a. Years ago, I had a colleague who did that and she would talk about how important lifting was. And so he's somebody. If you haven't, you know, it's a good. I mean, home from the war is a good place to start, but really anything he did is. Is useful. Right. The last one, I don't know if you have any others. The last one I have, somebody you could probably talk about better than me is the famous environmentalist Jane Goodall. Right?
- [51:11]
B
Yeah. Jane Goodall was a primatologist, an anthropologist, known for her study with chimpanzees in Africa. Became very noted as a climate change advocate and an advocate of rainforest preservation and things like that. Very influential figure within the environmental movement.
- [51:36]
A
Yeah. So, you know, a lot of important people, we're at that point now where, you know, as you get older, you start to see this more often. Right. So. But all of those folks are worth learning more about if you don't. Right. So finally, because it's the end of the year and everybody does, we have to give out our green and red awards. Right. Because why not? Right. And so, and in the spirit of Donald Trump becoming the first winner of the FIFA Peace Prize, Right. We have a few awards like that. I don't know if Scott came up with any. I was just kind of sitting around today trying to think about this stuff. But my first one, and there was only one candidate for this, it's the Nick Riviera Prize in medicine. If you don't know who Nick Riviera is, you probably didn't watch the Simpsons. He's the very famous quack doctor there, Right. Hi, Everybody. This is Mr. McCraig with a leg for an arm. And an arm for a leg. But that, of course, there's only one person who can get the Nick Riviera Medicine Prize now. The rfk. Right. Who has told us that vaccines are not necessary. We're seeing outbreaks of measles, we're seeing people dying. Kids are dying from whooping cough. He's canceled medical Research into cancer, cancers and. And you name it. Right. He is. I guess we could have called this Also if you watch 30 mark the Leos Spin Medical Medicine Prize. But RFK, at this point now Trump and Hex could blow the world up. But at this point, I think RFK has killed more than anybody, hasn't he?
- [53:17]
B
It's up there. I. I would say that, yeah. I mean, I think Hexeth is on track, but.
- [53:24]
A
Well, they have nuclear weapons, so. Right. They could do. God knows what they could do. You know, the second award I have, which is, I think, pretty easy to figure out, it's the St. Francis Assisi award. St. Francis Assisi, you know, loved animals. Right. And, you know, they came to him, they talked to him. And that, of course, who else could that be but Christy Noem, Department of.
- [53:47]
B
Secretary of the Homeland. Of Homeland. Of the Secretary of the Homeland.
- [53:51]
A
Right. And I don't want to compare brutalizing people to dogs, but, you know, she bragged in her memoir about shooting your dog, shooting her goat. And now if she could get away with it, she'd probably be doing that at seacot in El Salvador. Right? And so clearly, you know, the. The biggest animal lover. Right. The Frank Burns Decorated Military Service Award. Right. You remember Frank Burns from mash. That would, of course, go to Pete Hegseth. Right? Hegseth has this sterling.
- [54:24]
B
Major Frank Burns. Major Frank Burns. And Major Pete Texa.
- [54:28]
A
Major Pete Hexaf. Although to Frank Burns credit, he was actually in a war zone, you know, as a regular officer. Pete Hegseth. Well, I guess he was in Iraq. He was there with the National Guard. And I think they're both kind of these faux Christians, Right? They would both pray a lot and talk like kind of Robert Duvall played Frank Burns in the movie. Right. Very religious and all that. So I think Pete Hegseth definitely fills the bill there. And we'd all be better off if he was on a TV show rather than. Than running the Pentagon. Right? Yeah. The sexiest couple alive. People magazine always puts out a sexiest man, the sexiest woman alive. This year we have the sexiest couple alive, which is, of course, J.D. vance and his future ex wife, Erica Kirk. Right?
- [55:12]
B
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
- [55:14]
A
Don't know what else that could be. Were you gonna say something or.
- [55:19]
B
No, I have one, but I think you.
- [55:21]
A
Oh, good. Okay. Well, yeah, I have two more. One is the Leonard Zellig Award. If you remember Leonard Zelig, he could, like the Woody Allen character who could change into whatever was around him. And this year, I think the Only person I could think of who could, you know, honor be honored with. That would be Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has somehow gone from the crazy, most batshit crazy right wing conspiracy lunatic to being the biggest thorn and the main opposition to Donald Trump in, like, less than 12 months, which is really quite remarkable. Marjorie Taylor Greene is really less.
- [55:55]
B
In less than six months.
- [55:56]
A
Less than six months. Really? Yeah. Marjorie Taylor Greene is now saying things that you won't hear Schumer and Jeffrey say. Right. And it is kind of a zelig, like evolution. Right.
- [56:07]
B
Big New York Times story about it right now.
- [56:09]
A
Yeah. The last one, unfortunately, we couldn't give it away. It's called the Three Wise Men and a Virgin award because there was no one in Washington, D.C. who would fit the bill. We couldn't find any candidates. We didn't even give that one away this year. Yeah.
- [56:23]
B
The one I have is the Memorial Pee Wee Himmler Award, which goes to Stephen Miller. We can't leave Stephen Miller out of this as well. You know, if you, there's. If, if you look at him particular, in particular at certain angles, he looks a lot like Peewee Herman, especially if he was mixed with him. If he had, if his parents had bred with Himmler. It's very scary.
- [56:49]
A
It's creepy. Like, the first time I ever saw him in Himmler, the pictures, like, wow, I wonder if, like, he was born, like, the day after Himmler died. Maybe there is something to that, you know, Reincarnation. Yeah, I got it.
- [57:02]
B
I also, I also think we should come up with one which is called Crazy Trump, or, excuse me, Crazy Fox Grandpa. And that should go. And that goes to Trump. Like, every time I ever see him talk, I, I, it's, it's just like someone's grandpa at Thanksgiving dinner.
- [57:17]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [57:18]
B
Who watches too much Fox? That's all it is.
- [57:20]
A
We could give so many out. Oh, I forgot there's the Leather Daddy award, which is Trump, and the, the Republicans. Right. These are Leather Daddy, man, no matter what.
- [57:29]
B
Yeah.
- [57:29]
A
You know, he smacks them around and they say, give me more Daddy. So, yeah, yeah, this could go on forever, but it's, it's pretty bleak. This is the point where we need more Sarah McLachlan music. This point where we get serious. Right, Right. Talk about what really happened this year. Right.
- [57:46]
B
Yeah.
- [57:47]
A
You know, rough times.
- [57:48]
B
As we went through our list of our episodes, I think we kind of hit on a lot of this.
- [57:54]
A
Yeah.
- [57:54]
B
The, the one thing I, the one thing I really want to focus in on, like I said at the beginning, is That a theme that we have in our show, which is not a theme you hear on a lot of other lefty lefty shows, is, is around organizing and direct action. I've actually heard big name podcast hosts say they don't like having activists on because they're boring. And I honestly think because they have these soft Democrat slash socialist politics, they're actually afraid of anarchists or they don't like anarchists or whatever where we've, you know, we, we embrace those politics. Anarcho, cynicalism, anarchism, what have you, direct action. And so we've done a lot of shows on a lot of this resistance. There was a lot of resistance in 2025. And I, I al, we actually did a segment called the State of the Resistance. Talking about this with, with Patrick Young, who's an organizer in dc. I, I, I do want to say that we're, we're not, we, we actually Bob and I have talked about this quite a bit, especially when these were happening. But the no Kings rallies were important. They're an important gateway drug for people to get involved. The you know, soccer moms who are going out of their houses in Minneapolis and, and, and filming ice on their phones as they're harassing undocumented and documented brown and black people. You know, those are the people who go to the no Kings rallies. And so those no King rallies were, are important. I don't want to, I don't want to on that. I think, I think it's important. I, I do think a lot of.
- [59:32]
A
Lefties have been on it and I think that's really short sighted.
- [59:35]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and we can talk about indivisible and move on being connected to the Democrats, sure, whatever. But like that's not everybody who's in the streets and there's a lot of ways that they could probably organize the no Kings rallies better. But you know, a lot of people are getting in the streets and a lot of people are involved. I think it led to these massive waves that we're seeing at the ballot boxes. Also not a big fan of the Democrats. I actually would say a big theme of this show is that beat up on liberals and Democrats and those who punch left all the time. I do think what's been happening in special elections and what happened in this off year election was actually pretty important as well. I think that's connected to the no King stuff. But I, I do think what we're seeing in the, in the blue cities and the blue states that Trump has decided to go after with his stormtroopers with people like Greg Bevino and ICE and Kristi Noem and, you know, starting in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, dc, Whether it's ICE or the National Guard, Charlotte, Portland, New York, lots of other places is that we're seeing like a real resistance. We're seeing where commute. Like, it's not even activists who are doing this anymore.
- [60:46]
A
It's.
- [60:47]
B
You'll see ICE raid a neighborhood and then everyone comes out of their houses and swarms them and runs.
- [60:53]
A
Teachers, Chicago teachers are just fucking inspirational.
- [60:56]
B
And LA teachers too.
- [60:57]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [60:58]
B
And, and so, but, but like just the way much communities and neighborhoods are actually pushing back on these people. There was one in. It was somewhere in upstate New York. It was in Rochester. It was early on. It was in Rochester or Buffalo or somewhere like that where the, the. It was a black neighborhood and they were harassing, trying to get undocumented Latinos. And like the whole neighborhood came out against them. They slashed their tires. They actually had to flee ICE did because they were in fear of their own safety.
- [61:28]
A
Or in New York, they blocked them in. They couldn't get out of there.
- [61:31]
B
Yeah, it was in Chinatown. Yeah. And so I do think that we need to be raising the stories of this resistance over and over. I think it's actually very important. And that's going to be the theme for the rest of the Trump administration. Who knows what's going to happen in the election next year. They're predicting a blue wave, but we'll see. The Republicans are doing everything they can to try and steal the election and suppress votes and gerrymander and whatever else. But whatever's going to happen, it's going to really require a lot of people on the streets pushing back on the, the authoritarians. I also will say that it's also going to require a lot of people pushing back pretty hard on the Democrats because these, like, corporate Democrats aren't really much. I mean, I guess they're not out and out authoritarians like the Trump people.
- [62:18]
A
But like, they're, they're authoritarians with rainbows and pronouns.
- [62:22]
B
Yeah, yeah. And they love. And they love the billionaire class as much as, you know, the Republicans do. And so that's what, you know, there needs to be accountability on all, at all levels and fighting them all the time. So I just want, I just wanted.
- [62:38]
A
To say that they went into this Miller and, and Holman and Bavino and bonding, but they all went into this assuming they would just steamroll it. Right. And you know, from the. As they were gobsmacked from the start by the level of, of resistance they were seeing in the streets. And you know, which has been vital, which is why, you know, you know, people think I just like, like taking pot shots at Jackman, which I kind of do. But you know, I think recently that says a lot about them. They did talk about, you know, what their, their resistance, which is Mamdani Sanders and no kings. I have nothing. Well, Bernie Sanders is a totally different story. But I'm glad, mom Donnie won. I really am. And you know, he, he won by unapologetically defending Palestine and talking about Israel. I think that's important. He brought up economic issues like affordability. I think that's important. I have no problem with no kings. Right. Like a lot of other people on the left. But that's where they stopped. And that's why we so much about the Brooklyn hipster left, because they don't talk about the kind of stuff that's going on in the streets and activism and all that. It's very much a, an old, it's an old left kind of analysis which has some virtue working class politics. I get all that. But I think it's really important to understand, you know, if the Nobel Prize, like was legit, not given to, you know, warmongering fascists like, you know, Marina Machado, right. It would be. Well, if a real Nobel Prize was given out, it would go to the people of Gaza. I mean, like nobody else really. But if not, you do have these people who are resisting here in the United States who, you know, really are standing up and the Democratic Party isn't doing for them. 75 Democrats voted for a resolution praising ICE as like valiant civil servants. The Democratic Party just voted. The vast majority of Democrats just voted in favor of a new military spending bill, Pentagon spending bill, which gave Trump more than he asked for. Right. And so it's these people in the streets who are really doing that. Also, if there really were like the Green and Red Peace Prize, we would take into account people like Greta Thunberg, you know, who the media loved her when she was, you know, talking about global warming. But now, you know, you know, she's, she's a bad, she's Hamas. Right. And one of my favorites who I think is really been kind of, you.
- [65:03]
B
Know, really anti capitalist and pro Hamas.
- [65:05]
A
Anti capitalist, pro Hamas, Right. Francesca Albanese, the UN's Special Rapporteur for Palestine who has been attacked, put on sanctions lists. She can't get health care, she can't get at her bank account. Right. Because she has again, unapologetically defended Palestine and criticized Israel. Right. So there are a lot of folks like that who really have done great stuff. I mean, it's been a rough year. I've, you know, you've known me for a long time. I mean, I always try to be measured about like any analyzing things and I never always had like panic. It's not a really good strategy. Still not right. But you know, I've been, you know, I mean, this is 2025 has been a gut punch. It really has.
- [65:50]
B
It's hard. It's not hard. It's hard not to panic in this world.
- [65:52]
A
It's hard not to be scared and freak out. You know, when people tell me they are, you're not going to say, well, don't. There's no reason to, you know, and, and in my estimation the biggest reason to be concerned is because the Democrats and the media and liberal institutions like universities and law firms and others haven't really stood up the chong. Right. And you're starting to see that break a little bit now, you know, and you know, there may be some virtue in people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Indiana Republican Party, which refused to, to gerrymander, you know, redistrict and gerrymander again to give themselves more seats. The governor of Oklahoma, who is as useless as they come, refused to send National Guardsmen to other cities, saying, hey, I wouldn't like it if Illinois Guard came into Oklahoma. Right. Thomas Massie and Rand Paul, who are both crazy right wingers, but they're leading the resistance to Trump's war against Venezuela, not the Democrats.
- [66:54]
B
And Massey Greener probably legit anti Semites as well.
- [66:57]
A
Oh, I, I think so, Mass. Absolutely. Right. And but you know, Chuck Schumer's only criticism is that if he wants to go to war, he needs congressional authorization. Right. Which may be true, but that's kind of beside the point because basically he could get it. He could get it tomorrow if he wanted to. Right. You're not going to stop. It's like saying people should impeach Trump. Sure. And I should, you know, have a pet unicorn. You know, so these folks out there are really critical and you know, and it's all over the world, right? In Gaza, in la, in Chicago, you know, just everywhere. In Venezuela now, in Cuba, Colombia, you know, we're seeing this kind of real global conflict right now. And you know, clearly we have this resurgent to call them right wing, is under, understating how bad they are. Right.
- [67:55]
B
We're supposed to actually have a show on this group in the UK called Palestine Action. And the guest has rescheduled, hopefully not canceled, but rescheduled. And, you know, those folks are. Have inspired a movement of people in the UK if they just hold a sign that says, I support Palestine Action, they're getting terrorism charges, including Greta Thunberg this week. And the leaders are actually in prison and all on hunger strike.
- [68:20]
A
Hunger strike.
- [68:21]
B
You know, that's. It's courageous stuff that's going on right now. And. And Palestine Action has also spread to other parts of Europe as well. And Palestine Action, basically monkey wrenches, you know, factories that produce weapons for the Israeli military.
- [68:37]
A
Yeah. And. And this is done under a Labor government. Right. In Britain. And we're seeing people like supporters of Palestine are being manhandled and attacked in Germany, all over. All over Europe. Right. Spain and.
- [68:50]
B
And your people. Your people. What your people have done.
- [68:53]
A
Maloney's not. But the Italians definitely, they've threatened straight. They've gone on strike, general strikes. In Italy, they've refused to.
- [69:01]
B
Spain, too. Spain, too.
- [69:02]
A
Load ships. Yeah. Spain, Ireland. And Spain. And Ireland, you actually have government support as well. Italy, not so much with Maloney. The Italians have always been pro Palestinian. I mean, if you, you know, know, every time I've been there, I've seen Palestine flags and. And stuff like that. But, yeah, there. There are people. And one thing that's really disappointing here, and I would hope somebody's working on it, you know, at a very high level, is American labor has really been embarrassingly, criminally silent through this. There have been elements of it, you know, like labor councils and so on, but the big unions, the FLCIO and Sean Fain and, well, forget the Teamsters and Sean o' Brien have really done nothing. And that's. That's unconscionable. That's negligent. And so hopefully something will happen there. Right?
- [69:51]
B
Yeah, absolutely.
- [69:53]
A
It's been a rough year. What can you say other than, like, just keep fighting, you know, keep hope alive.
- [69:58]
B
Keep hope alive. Yeah.
- [70:02]
A
Do as much as you can. Right. You know, not everybody has the same ability, the same circumstances, you know, organize, organize, organize.
- [70:12]
B
We like to. We often in our show, our.
- [70:14]
A
Our end of the year quotes, organize, organize, organize. Yeah. Yeah.
- [70:19]
B
I mean, that's. That's really all we can do. And once again, that's the. The role of the Green and Red podcast is to promote that organizing.
- [70:27]
A
One last thing, when you see other people standing up, it. It's. That's a lesson. I mean, you're not alone. Right, Right. And, like, even I get that way. There are times When I think, oh, it's over. But then you'll see people. And it could be like Jimmy Kimmel, right? Or I think more importantly, it could be all of these, like, people in the streets, these teachers in Chicago. And, you know, a couple months ago, a bunch of, you know, for lack of a better term, suburban housewives in Illinois went to an ICE facility and, and did civil disobedience. They sat down and forced them to arrest them, right? And that's it.
- [71:01]
B
You know, here in the Bay Area. Here in the Bay Area, 40 clergy were arrested in a nice facility last week.
- [71:08]
A
Priest. The priests in Chicago who are getting, like, pepper balled in the head, you know, getting shot at, you know, that, that, that makes me feel better that, you know, you're not alone in this. I mean, hell, if you look at the public opinion polls, we're the majority, right? Unfortunately, you know, the media goes along with them and the Democrats go along with them.
- [71:27]
B
And, you know, I, I'll also say that I. I see a lot of people in despair about the state of the world because we have this authoritarianism pushing in on hard on the US and other parts of the world. And I see a lot of people. I see a lot of people with a lot of hope and joy as they take action, as they get involved. There's an American naturalist named Edward Abbey who said the antidote to action is the antidote to despair. And, and even if. Even if we're not going to win, at least taking action and doing it with others is actually can help alleviate some of your fear and, and some of your despair.
- [72:08]
A
There have been. There have been, like, legit lab studies of people who. People on the left tend to be more depressed than people on the right, which isn't surprising. But people on the left who are activists are actually way better off than anybody, right? Yeah, it does. And getting out there because you feel like you're doing something and you see other people, and that's really important. I mean, my whole life I've, like, that's always been important to me. I'm out there with a lot of other people. Right. Like, you know, I went to no Kings rally in Warren, Ohio, and there were like a thousand people there. And like, that kind of. I was like, wow. Like, I wasn't expecting that. Right. This is not a hotbed of left politics, like, where you are, right? And yet, you know, you see it. And, and that's. And that's, you know, even if you don't want to go, you don't have to. You know, you don't have to do civil disobedience. You don't have to confront ice. But being there, you know, is. Is important. It's important. It's. As Staughton, the great Stockton and Alice Lynn would say, it's. It's an accompaniment, you know, it's an accompaniment and that's important. If you can accompany somebody, then you're doing something really important. Yeah.
- [73:12]
B
I think we can wrap it there. We can wrap. We're going to wrap 2025 there, folks. You've been listening to the Green and Red podcast, talking about 2025. As we pass into 2026, we'll have lots of new interviews and shows coming at you in 2026. We got lots of people on deck who say they're going to talk to us.
- [73:35]
A
And so Christy. No. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Stephen Miller. Right.
- [73:39]
B
Steve Bannon.
- [73:41]
A
Right.
- [73:41]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [73:42]
A
Katie Vance. They're all lined up.
- [73:44]
B
J.D. vance, J.D. vance's couch. So please check us out in 2026. You can check us out on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Blue Sky. If you're watching this on YouTube, hit that subscribe button. If you are listening to this on audio platform, please give us a rate and review as it helps us with the algorithms. And if you really like us, especially in this last day, last days of 2026, please give us money. We'll take whatever kind of whatever you got. Whether it. I love it when you say it, Bob.
- [74:19]
A
I can't say it as whether it's folds or jingles.
- [74:22]
B
Folds or jingles. Just go to greenredpodcast.org and hit that support button. Or become a patron@patreon.com backslash greenredpodcast.
- [74:33]
A
Can I say one last thing?
- [74:35]
B
And Bob has one last thing to say.
- [74:37]
A
Think globally. Guillotine locally. Yeah, yeah.
- [74:41]
B
2026 will be more important than ever. And until men misbehave and make a lot of trouble. And we'll talk to you again next year.
- [75:01]
A
Sam.