This episode takes a look at that elusive idea of defining what art is. Where does that spark of creativity come from? What drives human beings to take an idea from our mind and create something in the physical world? As a starting point for this conversation we take a look back throughout history to see what people far smarter than all of us have …

We start off the show with some poetry: Bulls On Parade by Rage Against the Machine For our In The News segment on this show we take a look at the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and the odd circumstances surrounding his death. We're not talking about who should replace him on the bench or if President Obama should nominate someone or…

We start off the show with some poetry: Even When There's Little Choice, We Choose by Nicholas Gordon For our In The News segment on this show we take our one and only looks at the Republican and Democrat primary season. We have a clip from each side that proves the two party political machine is still very much in control and knows what they are d…

We start off the show with some poetry: Incident by Countee Cullen Next up we have and installment of Holy Shit where we take a look at (and listen to) the radio show Fortress of Faith and their list of questions to help figure out whether or not "Your Muslim friend is a terrorist". It would be a funnier list if it wasn't being taken so seriously b…

We're starting off 2016 with a new format for the show. Mic Check Radio is now a bi-weekly show. We start off this show with some poetry: Ballad of the Landlord by Langston Hughes Next up is an installment of the FBI Files, as we take a look at the sad entrapment case of Emanuel L. Lutchman. You can read the Criminal Complaint against him here. We …

We finish up our year end wrap up of Activist Cinema from 2015 with a brief discussion of some prominent LGBTQ films (The Danish Girl, Stonewall, Freeheld, Carol and About Ray) and how they were mostly not that good...but that is okay. We also compare the narrative device used in the film Stonewall with the exact same device used in the film Suffra…

We start off our annual year end wrap up with some news about the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigating the hiring practices of the major Hollywood studios. Turns out, the entertainment industry is shallow, image obsessed and sexist towards women. Hopefully this investigation will have better results than the 1969 investigation by t…

It's a really shitty time to be a kid in the world today, especially if you are one of the 250 million girls under the age of 15 who are forcibly married off by their family each year. UNICEF and Girls Not Brides are trying their best to raise awareness and combat child marriage, but on some parts of this planet a daughter is a commodity to be sold…

It's a really shitty time to be a kid in the world today, especially if your family is religious. Specifically if your family is Catholic and poor. In this episode we take a look at the abuse of children by degenerate priests, bishops, cardinals...basically white males in positions of power within the Catholic church. From the 2002 stories publishe…

It's a really shitty time to be a kid in the world today. Over 2 million of them will go thru the well oiled machine that is the international sex slave market. On this episode we look at how a human trafficking bust in New Jersey was a catalyst for Peter Landesman, a journalist, to travel the world and expose the system that keeps this market thri…

We are all affected by it...call it advertising, propaganda, programming, social engineering, psychological operations, or whatever other term could be applied. The act of a force outside of your mind trying to convince you to do something. In this installment we take a look at the world of propaganda we are currently stuck with. At this stage, we …

In this fifth and final episode of the Mic Check Radio Book Club series we conclude with the final chapters of the audio book, Propaganda by Edward L Burnays, published in 1928. Noam Chomsky has called this book "the main manual of the public relations industry". It may be 87 years old, but the ideas and concepts are still used (and successful) tod…

We are all affected by it...call it advertising, propaganda, programming, social engineering, psychological operations, or whatever other term could be applied. The act of a force outside of your mind trying to convince you to do something. In this installment we take a look at a perfect storm that developed starting in the 1950's. After WWII, ther…

As we work thru some serious computer issues, here is a rebroadcast from the archives. It dovetails perfectly with the upcoming Episode 6 in our We Are Being Programmed series. Sunday, August 11, 2013 Way back in 1987 a government funded study, Perception of Risk, was published in the journal Science. While the study is officially a look at how the…

In this fourth episode of the Mic Check Radio Book Club series we continue with the audio book of Propaganda by Edward L Burnays, published in 1928. Noam Chomsky has called this book "the main manual of the public relations industry". It may be 87 years old, but the ideas and concepts are still used (and successful) today. This book explores the ps…

We are all affected by it...call it advertising, propaganda, programming, social engineering, psychological operations, or whatever other term could be applied. The act of a force outside of your mind trying to convince you to do something. In this installment we take a look at what happened to the enormous propaganda machine after WWII was over. O…

In this third episode of the Mic Check Radio Book Club series we continue with the audio book of Propaganda by Edward L Burnays, published in 1928. Noam Chomsky has called this book "the main manual of the public relations industry". It may be 87 years old, but the ideas and concepts are still used (and successful) today. This book explores the psy…

We are all affected by it...call it advertising, propaganda, programming, social engineering, psychological operations, or whatever other term could be applied. The act of a force outside of your mind trying to convince you to do something. In the forth episode of this series we take a look at the Golden Age of Propaganda, World War II. We do this …

In this second episode of the Mic Check Radio Book Club series we continue with the audio book of Propaganda by Edward L Burnays, published in 1928. Noam Chomsky has called this book "the main manual of the public relations industry". It may be 87 years old, but the ideas and concepts are still used (and successful) today. This book explores the ps…

We are all affected by it...call it advertising, propaganda, programming, social engineering, psychological operations, or whatever other term could be applied. The act of a force outside of your mind trying to convince you to do something. In the third episode we play a couple of clips of commercial radio from the 1940's, then we enter 'The Lab'. …

On this supplemental episode we kick off a series of the Mic Check Radio Book Club. It's the audio book of Propaganda by Edward L Burnays, published in 1928. Noam Chomsky has called this book "the main manual of the public relations industry". It may be 87 years old, but the ideas and concepts are still used (and successful) today. This book explor…

We are all affected by it...call it advertising, propaganda, programming, social engineering, psychological operations, or whatever other term could be applied. The act of a force outside of your mind trying to convince you to do something. In the second episode of this series we take a look at the early, early days of advertising...before cars too…

We are all affected by it...call it advertising, propaganda, programming, social engineering, psychological operations, or whatever other term could be applied. The act of a force outside of your mind trying to convince you to do something. In the kick-off episode of this series we go over the etymology and definitions of the above terms and then g…

Here's the initial news headline that caught my attention "FBI Arrest Ohio Man in ISIS Inspired Attack on US Capitol Building". This headline caught my eye for a number of reasons; I live in Ohio, the FBI has a track record of coaxing isolated individuals into "plots" like this and the idea of attacking the US Capitol sounds terrifying. So, in this…

More details on Police State tactics of surveillance. The FBI (and the court system) has determined that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy once a citizen has left his or her home. So, if you are outside of your house, you will be monitored. How? Two of the new surveillance weapons used by the United States Intelligence Community are the…

A look at some of the great examples of Activist Cinema from 2014, and a little bit of behind the scenes information about the 'Sony Hack'. No No: A Dockumentary, The Internet's Own Boy, The Unknown Known, Citizenfour, Night Moves, Selma. [Click to Listen]By Occupy the Media Collective

Eric Garner, killed by a cop in Staten Island, NY. John Crawford, killed by a cop in Bevercreek, OH. Michael Brown, killed by a cop in Ferguson, MO. Tamir Rice, killed by a cop in Cleveland, OH. Is there some sort of racist-cop trend that has cropped up recently around the country or is there a larger issue here? If we have a half-asses compulsory …

[Rebroadcast: Episodefrom February 9th, 2013]From push notifications, corporate news channeltickers, billboards, newspaper headlines, blog titles, Facebook updates andtwitter posts - the depth of our information diet is getting smaller and lessdiverse. In this episode we take a look at alternative ways to expand themind with in depth information. F…

FBI - Spying - US Citizen's. It's a simple set of search terms. If you search it every six weeks or so you will find no shortage of reasons to be pissed off. This weeks tale includes an internationally know non-profit organization that is funded by "donations" from the top corporations in the world and how they hosted the current head of the FBI an…

Activist Cinema 11: We're trying something new with this episode of Activist Cinema...we're discussing a film that I hate. The term 'Citizen's United' is very familiar to most activists these days, but it's mainly due to the infamous Supreme Court case. In the case the court decided: "that the First Amendment prohibited the government from restrict…

Here we (U.S.A.) go again. Remember during Gulf War II, George W. Bush famously used the term Coalition of the Willing when it came to the invasion and occupation of Iraq? According to W's administration, these 48 countries were essential partners in this illegal war. However, countries like Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau and the Solomon Islan…

Anastasia Pantsios published a fantastic article at EcoWatch about Ohio's shameful role at the forefront of the fracking industry. The article is based in part on the U.S. Government Accountability Office report, Drinking Water: Characterization of Injected Fluids Associated with Oil and Gas Production (also known as GAO-14-957R) that examined the …

In part 3 of our series on the education system in the United States of America, we take a look at the continued influence of Foundations - mainly the ones started and funded by the Carnegie and Rockefeller. We also discuss the Columbia Teachers College and their project, the Lincoln Experimental School. Then we look at the effects of the Progressi…

In this clip show, we take a look at how the Corporate Media (CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, etc.) have used ISIS (or ISIL or IS) as the new international 'boogie man' in order to amp up the feelings of terror on the public and justify more military action in the Middle East. The result is eerily similar to the build up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The …

In part 2 of our series on the education system in the United States of America, we take a look at how compulsory schooling was legislated into existence and then financed. From 1889 to 1906 William Torrey Harris was the Commissioner of Education for the United States of America. That is an uninterrupted, 17 year stretch in which he shaped the teac…

In the kick off episode for a series on the education system in the United States of America, we take a look at the Prussian education system that was established after that country's devastating defeat at the hands of Napoleon's military in 1806. Decades after that system was up and running, Prussia was a serious force to be reckoned with in Europ…

Activist Cinema 10 - It's a double feature today as we take a look at two documentary films that compliment each other quite well. The Weather Underground (2002) uses archival footage and interviews to look at the actions taken by the Weather Underground in the late 1960's and early 1970's. A hardcore group of activists committed to the violent ove…

In our third and final episode in the World Cup 2014: Capitalism, Corruption and Protest series we address the lack of protests in Brazil during the World Cup. We also take an extensive look at the police state tactics of Brazil and what it means for a country to host a "mega event" such as the World Cup or the Olympic Games (for Brazil, this will …

In part II of our World Cup 2014 series we take a look at the initial proposal the government of Brazil presented to FIFA and how the reality has shaped up all these years later...here a hint, the budget more than quadrupled. We specifically take a look at the construction at three of the 12 stadiums and the pit corruption, extortion and over billi…

Our introductory episode covering the most watched (and most corrupt) sporting event in the entire world, the FIFA World Cup. We start off looking at why soccer can and is an important sport, especially on the world stage. Then we move into a brief overview of what has been going on in Brazil - both in the streets and within the halls of the Brazil…

Activist Cinema Episode 9 - Collapse (2009) was directed by Chris Smith and is essentially a monologue film. There haven't been too many of these kinds of film made, but within this small sub-genre of films, Collapse is one of the best. We choose this film as a nice end cap to the We're So Fucked series of episodes as most of the ideas and sentimen…

The fourth and final in episode in our We're So Fucked series (We're So Fucked - We're So Fucked 2: Bringing Down the System - We're So Fucked 3: Don't Do Anything) ends on a happy note, sort of...We start the discussion with the idea that there are no easy fixes for all of the worlds problems and how personal a choice it is to actually get up ever…

On this episode we discuss the four steps the State has already set up that allow them to kill activists. Step 1: Redefine and/or blur the lines of definitions (ex. Terrorism, Domestic Terrorism, Eco-Terrorism)[Link]. Step 2: Create a precedent for killing US civilians [Link]. Step 3: Federal authorities are already cool with targeting activists [L…

On May 26th, 2013 we put out an episode called The FBI Creates Terrorists - which was, itself, a follow up to What is Terrorism? - and just about one year later...not a single thing seems to have changed. On this weeks episode we take a look at a few specific cases. Farooque Ahmed, Liberty City Seven, James Cromitie, Derrick Shareef and Nicolas Mic…

The wonderful folks over at CrimetInc have posted a superb article about how the current Ukrainian Revolution is/was hijacked by the Fascist and Nationalist of that particular country. The example used in this article is specific to Ukraine, but the details will sound familiar to anyone who has read a news story in the past three years about simila…

It's that time of year again...the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was re-uped for another year. What devious items were snuck in this year? In the last two years, indefinite military detention of United States citizens (NDAA 2012) and overturning the 63 year old Smith-Mundt Act which prohibited domestic dissemination of government propag…

This episode follows We're So Fucked and We're So Fucked 2: Bringing Down the System. On today's installment of this sporadic series we look at one of the two options that are laid out before us: Do Something or Don't Do Anything. The later is the focus for this episode. Doing nothing has never been easier or more entertaining (assuming you live in…

Activist Cinema Episode 8 - The Square (2013) is an excellent example of a journalistic documentary. It covers the protests in Egypt's Tahrir Square that started in 2011 and stays with several citizens (protestors, activists and lawyers) over a two year period. The ups and downs of seeing two presidents removed from power, violent military crackdow…

As a tangent series to the Activist Cinema episodes we've been doing for awhile now, here is short playlist of fantastic Activist Music - The Punk Rock Edition Vol.1. Transmission - S.T.U.N. Punk Rock Song - Bad Religion Controlled Opposition - Anti Flag Suburban Home - Descendents Lady Liberty - Rancid Jerk of All Trades - Lunachicks Dwindle - Fal…

On this episode we take a closer look at the so called 'Russian Anti-Gay Laws' with the help of a very insightful white paper - Russian Federation Anti Gay Laws: An Analysis and Deconstruction by Brian M. Heiss. Why are these laws getting so much corporate media coverage? Is it all just to remind people to tune into the Winter Olympics and by Coke …