Journalist and author Shane Burley joined me to discuss the specter of political violence in the United States, remarking on the recent assassination of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) founder and right-wing activist Charlie Kirk and the fallout of that event.

Christopher B. Zeichmann, scholar of religion and antiquity, joined me in an enlightening discussion about his new book, Radical Antiquity: Free Love Zoroastrians, Farming Pirates, and Ancient Uprisings, released through Pluto Press. In Radical Antiquity, we take an uncommon ground-level tour through the ancient Graeco-Roman world. Instead of viewing this period and place through the myopic lens of the elites of these societies—the so-called Great Men of History—Zeichmann impresses upon us the radical forms of democracy that were being practiced and the peoples that were practicing them during this period. From Spartacus and the uprisings of the enslaved, radical ascetic communities who extricated themselves from the trappings of civilization, and self-governing pirates that traversed the open seas, Zeichmann weaves together a tapestry of radical, leaderless, democratic peoples often overlooked in our view of the ancient world.

Thea Riofrancos joined me to discuss her new book, Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, just released through W.W. Norton. The green capitalist energy transition is underway. In what ways does alternative energy—so-called sustainable or green energy—differ from the fossil fuel extraction, distribution, and consumption that has underlain the global capitalist system since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution? Where are these sites of extraction? What critical minerals are being sought? Who stands to benefit and lose? What are the ecological impacts? And finally, how have various iterations of the left and the right embraced or rejected this emerging paradigm?

Roy Scranton returns to the podcast to discuss his new book, Impasse: Climate Change and the Limits of Progress, recently published by Stanford University Press. Call it the Anthropocene. The polycrisis. The petrocene, the pyrocene, the capitalocene. A world-ending, -rending apocalypse of a kind, of a magnitude—we grasp for a word, a language, to narrativize our predicament. The end of the world is upon us—an end of our world. Roy Scranton describes our moment as an impasse. We struggle to narrativize and imagine our path through. The vision of our collective horizons is muddied by the sheer unknowability of what the near and distant future holds. Narratives of progress have brought us to this confluence of crises as complex global systems collapse and shift under the weight of material limits on a hotter, more chaotic world.

Counterculture author and artist Stewart Home joined me in a discussion about his new book, Fascist Yoga: Grifters, Occultists, White Supremacists, and the New Order In Wellness, recently published by Pluto Press.

I am joined by returning guest John Feffer, director of Foreign Policy in Focus and author, to discuss the dramatic shifts and fissures in the global "rules-based order." With direct assaults on constitutional law and the administrative state at home, expressed via strongman authoritarianism and fascist politics; continuing support for Israel's genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing across Occupied Palestine, and the bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities during the so-called 12-Day War; and a flurry of on-again, off-again tariffs upending trade deals and economic partnerships, the United States and its dominant position in the global order have shifted considerably. What role have the international far-right movement and the billionaire class played in this sequence of events? John Feffer provides his insights into these subjects in this interview.

Anti-zionist writer and agitator Amanda Gelender joins me to discuss what she describes as the Jewish community's widespread fascism problem. I ask Amanda about her upbringing in a Jewish community and what role Zionism had in her perceptions of the State of Israel and Occupied Palestine, including stepping back from the question itself and interrogating the often unexamined contexts and built-in assumptions the question contains. We converse on how "Jewish feelings" are weaponized in the discourse on the Israel-US genocide of Palestinians in Gaza as an attempt to label any calls for its end and support for resistance to it as antisemitic. And lastly, another thread we pull on is the question of what fascism is and how, in our view, Zionism contained the seeds of fascism since its inception and nascent colonization efforts in Palestine.

I’m joined by Lyle Lewis, former endangered species biologist and author of Racing to Extinction: Why Humanity Will Soon Vanish. We discuss his decades long career working under the US Department of the Interior, and the various bureaucratic hurdles that stood in the way of protecting and preserving endangered species in the various roles he served there. Lewis holds a unique position, and describes why, and how, the human species will, in a relatively short time, face extinction.