Scheer Intelligence

Joseph Weisberg, a former CIA officer and the creator of the TV show “The Americans,” joins Robert Scheer to examine common misconceptions about the Cold War.

Andrew Cockburn brilliantly documents the motivations behind the U.S. military’s war lust in his new book, “Spoils of War.”

Journalist Stephen Davis documents in detail the lead up, cover up and aftermath of a 1990 hostage crisis that few recall.

In this week’s installment of Scheer Intelligence, host Robert Scheer hears from Kiriakou the inside story of how the the program started as part of a cynical power struggle between the CIA and FBI, why torture does not save lives or secure better intelligence, and how, while the program was started under Republican President George W. Bush, it was a top appointee of President Obama, himself a key architect of the torture program, who chose to prosecute him five years after his interviews with ABC which should have made him a national hero instead of a disgraced felon.

In this week's Scheer Intelligence podcast, host Robert Scheer discusses the paradoxical past, present and future of China's "socialist market" economic model with Nathan Gardels, author of "It Is No Longer Glorious to Get Rich in China," published this week by Noema, a magazine of the Berggruen Institute.

Maj. Danny Sjursen weighs in on the U.S. exit from Afghanistan and Gen. David Petraeus’ dangerously false narrative about our country’s longest war.

Peter Edelman examines how Americans are still tormented by the specter of President Bill Clinton’s worst domestic policy failure.

Prisoner-turned-journalist Eddie Conway talks about how the immorally cheap labor of those caught in the prison industrial complex is the shame of the U.S. economy.

Dr. Kelly Denton-Borhaug, a professor of religious studies, examines how Christian rhetoric is used to justify endless wars and the “moral injury” they inflict.

Activist Achal Prabhala speaks to Robert Scheer about the wealthy countries’ reluctance to end global vaccine apartheid.

Journalist Richard Silverstein has been sounding the alarm bells about the private surveillance spyware sold by Israel’s NSO for years.

Marion Nestle’s book “Unsavory Truths” contains shocking revelations about how the science that influences what we eat is corrupted by corporate interests.

John and Gabriel Shipton talk to Robert Scheer about the WikiLeaks founder’s grueling struggle to be freed from a London prison as the Biden administration demands his extradition.

In a new book, journalist Larissa Zimberoff examines how companies have changed the way we eat in the name of climate change without always considering their products’ health impacts.

The second American Revolution: A work in progress

Ximena Vengoechea wants to teach us how to listen again with her new book “Listen Like You Mean It,” but is that even possible in a capitalist world?

The former Congress member talks to Robert Scheer about his life and the dramatic events surrounding his political rise, as told in his new book “The Division of Light and Power.”

Sherry Buchanan, author of “On the Ho Chi Minh Trail,” discusses what she learned about the Vietnam War from the Vietnamese women who survived its frontlines.

John Kiriakou, a CIA torture whistleblower, offers expert insight into Israel’s most recent attacks on the Palestinian territories on this week’s “Scheer Intelligence”

Maj. Danny Sjursen weighs in on U.S. intelligence agencies’ recent admission that a report that the Taliban had been paid by Russia to kill Americans is most likely false.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges joins Robert Scheer to discuss the WikiLeaks founder’s plight as he languishes in a British prison.

Journalist and anti-war activist David Harris speaks to Robert Scheer about his resistence to America’s genocide in Vietnam and his education in federal prison.

As the jury was deliberating its verdict in George Floyd’s murder by former police officer Derek Chauvin, BLM co-founder Melina Abdullah spoke with Robert Scheer about the movement’s enormous impact and the work that remains.

Jonathan Taplin joins Robert Scheer to discuss his new memoir about the time he spent among rock-and-roll royalty like Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin.

Writer-director Oliver Hermanus discusses his new film and the complex history of his native South Africa on this week’s “Scheer Intelligence.”

Maj. Danny Sjursen, ret. discusses Biden’s stalling on Trump’s commitment to end the US-Afghanistan war.

Political cartoonist Mr. Fish joins Robert Scheer to talk about the death of his art form and his most recent book, “Nobody Left.”

The consumer advocate, author and former presidential candidate, refuses to mince words about Democrats and their corporate bedfellows in a new interview with Robert Scheer.

Larry Gross, who grew up in Israel shortly after it was founded, talks about the racism he witnessed in the young nation long before it occupied the West Bank and Gaza.

Investigative journalist Amelia Pang joins Robert Scheer to discuss the story of a Chinese prisoner at the heart of her gripping new book, “Made in China.”

In a special Scheer Intelligence from a March 2019 conversation, Robert Scheer talks with his lifelong friend and legendary poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who passed recently in San Francisco at the age of 101. The two discuss a host of topics, including the importance of not selling out and the founding of San Francisco’s landmark City Lights bookshop, where Scheer worked as a young man.

Middle East scholar Juan Cole joins Robert Scheer to discuss what the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Films like “Palmer,” released on Apple+ in late January, are redefining how global audiences understand gender constructs in previously unthinkable ways.

Joel Whitney joins Robert Scheer to talk about the lives of poets George and Mary Oppen, two admirable Americans persecuted for their leftist ideals.

Director Sam Pollard did a deep dive into the FBI’s surveillance of MLK under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover in his documentary “MLK / FBI,” released by IFC Films earlier this month. Listen to the full conversation between Pollard and Scheer as they discuss the implications of that question, as well as address the highly controversial summaries of the FBI’s MLK surveillance tapes discovered by King’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, David J. Garrow in 2019.

In the second part of the “Scheer Intelligence” interview with Jonathan Alter, the author of “His Very Best” examines the former president’s mixed foreign policy record.

Raised in privilege amidst the barbarism of segregation, the oft-maligned president eventually embraced the New South liberalism that just swept his native Georgia’s election.

Clay Tweel’s HBO Max documentary on the New Age “cult of cults” that claimed dozens of lives raises powerful questions about the checkered histories of various religions.

Matt Tyrnauer, director of the devastating Showtime documentary blockbuster “The Reagans,” reveals how Donald Trump was the logical heir to the Reagan Revolution beginning with his plagiarism of the Gipper’s “Make America Great Again” slogan and ending with the abysmal failure to confront a medical pandemic.

Historian Jon Wiener, who wrote “Conspiracy in the Streets” on the subject of the Netflix film, sets the record straight on this week’s “Scheer Intelligence.”

In the second part of a two-part interview, Thomas Frank explores how anti-populism made liberals comfortable with plutocracy.

Robert Scheer sits down with professor and author Benjamin Madley to talk about a little known part of California's history.

Thomas Frank examines the history of American populism, and how it was distorted by Democrats and co-opted by Republicans.

Dennis Kucinich, former Ohio congressman and mayor of Cleveland, weighs in on what the Democratic Party keeps getting wrong.

Publicly-funded media models make a lot of Americans nervous, but Victor Pickard argues it may be the only way to repair our tattered democracy.

Political anthropologist David Vine argues that the most visible evidence of the country’s global empire are the thousands of military installations it has around the world.

Attorney Ronald Goldfarb offers a scathing indictment of American law and lawyers in his new book, The Price of Justice.

The epic battle by Steve Donziger to get Chevron to pay a $9.5 billion judgment he won in 2011 for its “mass industrial poisoning” of Indigenous Amazonian tribes in Ecuador has left him under house arrest for 13 months, disbarred, with a lien on his home, frozen bank accounts, $32 million in legal fees and no way to make a living. The judgment has not yet been paid.

James Steyer is taking on Mark Zuckerberg and other tech barons and he wants to empower the rest of us to do the same.

Rabbi Michael Lerner, a lifelong progressive, talks about his new book and what he found lacking in the Democratic Socialist’s presidential campaign.