Whowhatwhy's Podcasts

Andrew Keen is the Anthony Bourdain of technology. The author, entrepreneur and futurist has traveled the far corners of the world to see what works and what doesn't. He has seen the internet reflecting both the best and the worst of us, and concluded that we and our technology need to grow up.   In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, Keen talks to Jeff Schechtman about the next chapters in the digital revolution.   Keen reminds us that we’ve been here before. The digital revolution is not that dissimilar from revolutions and changes that preceded it. But “history is not an algorithm.”   To shape technology — before it shapes us — will take human agency to make the kind of changes that will allow us to define ourselves in contrast to our machines.   Keen outlines five tools to fix our digital future. Among them, we need to address inequality, jobs and education, he says, and we need to bring humanity back into the sciences. He admonishes us that, while our technological future may be global, Silicon Valley is not

The shrinking role of facts and evidence-based analysis in American public life poses a threat to democracy, to policy making, and to the very notion of civic discourse.   This is the alarming conclusion spelled out in the RAND Corporation’s recently released 300+ page report provocatively titled “Truth Decay.” The co-author of this report, RAND political scientist Jennifer Kavanagh, is Jeff Schechtman’s guest on this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast.   The report’s authors compare what’s happening now in the public arena to four other historical periods when truth was under siege: the era of “yellow journalism,” the rise of tabloids and talk radio, the impact of television on news media, and even the advent of so-called New Journalism. What the authors found, Kavanaugh says, is that disagreements over objective facts have never been so wide and so deep.   The RAND report examines the growing lack of trust in institutions, the erosion of civil discourse, the ever-worsening political paralysis and lack of policy dis

Are undercover FBI agents responsible for pushing some of the terrorism suspects it arrests toward acts of violence? That is the question Peter B. Collins tackles in his brand new WhoWhatWhy podcast. In this premiere episode he talks with investigative journalist Darwin BondGraham of the East Bay Express in Oakland, CA, about his recent report “Terror or Entrapment?” (https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/terror-or-entrapment/Content?oid=12242075) BondGraham looked into five recent cases of “domestic terrorism” in the San Francisco Bay Area that seem to follow a predictable script, involving social media surveillance, paid FBI informants and the “pre-crime” strategy used by the Bureau. Collins says these five cases are among hundreds that represent a national trend. The investigations often seem to be tainted by undercover agents posing as terrorists, and by “recruitment” methods that verge on entrapment. All of these cases appear driven by a deep-seated Islamophobia, and arguably siphon off FBI resources th

With the annual gathering of global financial elites taking place this week in Davos, and all the recent news focusing on money laundering, taxes and the .0001 percent, it seems an appropriate time to take another look at where so much of the wealth-that-dare-not-speak-its-name is being stashed.   Back in 2016 we learned that a Panamanian law firm had become a kind of digital safe-deposit box for tainted money and tax evaders. WhoWhatWhy has extensively covered this story, which laid bare something like an alternative global financial system — an incredibly complex web of offshore accounts, lawyers, guns and money.   In the wake of Davos and the ongoing revelations about Deutsche Bank, it seems important to take a fresh look at the “Panama Papers.” My guest for this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast is journalist Jake Bernstein, who has devoted years to uncovering and explaining what is really going on behind the scenes of international finance.     One can’t help wondering: How many owners of the private jets at Da

Martin Sheil, a retired branch chief of the IRS Criminal Division, discusses his WhoWhatWhy series on Deutsche Bank and how nearly all the main figures involved in Russiagate also have ties to the financial institution.

Popular author and journalist Sarah Kendzior looks at the many battles ahead to combat voter suppression in 2018.

A look at how social media’s “charisma of certainty” is changing the nature of warfare.

The artificial intelligence revolution is here. It’s already impacting the economy and the military. It needs to be discussed now in the arena of public policy.

Forty-six years after the release of the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg reveals another set of documents on how nuclear war might have been waged in the 1950s and 60s.

An overview of Guardian correspondent Luke Harding’s expose of the 40-year Trump/Russia collusion.

Bill Binney was an NSA analyst whose work was so effective it was shut down. It threatened to derail the gravy train fueled by the kinds of problems he might have solved — including preventing potential terrorist attacks. The contractors and executives riding that train had a motto: “keep the problem going, so the money keep flowing.”

As the Korean War broke out, Donald Nichols was a major American player for the CIA. He helped launch the South Korean Air Force and picked bombing targets in the North. He ended up a non-person, discredited in the eyes of the US government. This is his story.

With the world feeling like it's spinning out of control, with a new crisis happening every day at a speed beyond our ability to process, humor may be the only thing that can get us through. For this holiday weekend, WhoWhatWhy’s Jeff Schechtman sits down with Chicago comic and professor Al Gini to talk about humor, satire and why we need both to fend off our fear of the world.   Certainly there is no algorithm for what’s funny. Time, place, context, language and audience all matter a lot. But what’s clear is that humor is an essential part of the human experience, and vital for coping with the daily onslaught of the unthinkable and unimaginable.   Gini and Schechtman talk about the evolution of humor. From the simple jokes of Henny Youngman and the early satire of Will Rogers to the more sophisticated satire of Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce and today, Jon Stewart. Gini reminds us that we need satire in order not to die of the truth. Also, when very little seems to bind us together anymore, even the right and left c

Worried about Russian hackers or other outsiders meddling in US elections? Arguably, the greatest threat to our democratic system comes not from the outside but from forces within our own two-party system that are trying, and often succeeding, to prevent American citizens from voting.   In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, Jeff Schechtman talks to journalist Greg Palast, author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, about “caging” and “crosscheck” — two species of “dirty tricks” that are being used ever more frequently to suppress votes. While the primary practitioners have been Republicans, encouraged for years by Karl Rove, Palast explains that Democrats are using similar tricks to gain advantages in primary elections.   In “caging,” letters are sent out to voters who must spend time away from their primary addresses, such as minority soldiers stationed abroad or students during summer recess. When the letters come back as “undeliverable,” the senders can use this as a reason to get those voters taken off the r

In this nearly hour-long interview, WhoWhatWhy Editor-in-Chief Russ Baker takes veteran podcaster Peter B. Collins through the details of Anthony Weiner’s fall — and the effect it had on Hillary Clinton’s presidential race. They go deep into the shadows where political traps are constructed.