When corporate profits hit record highs but workers are still fighting for fair pay, safe conditions, and a seat at the table, something’s off. In this premiere episode of The Debrief, a special series from Cuckoo 4 Politics, host Michael Desrosiers brings you one-on-one conversations and post-show commentary that go deeper than the main episode ever could. These are the follow-ups, the “after the mic” moments where the real talk continues and nothing’s left on the cutting room floor. Michael si...
Jul 11, 2025•40 min
Flight attendants are the face of the airline industry, yet many still aren't paid until the plane leaves the gate—while executives take home millions. Michael Desrosiers talks with Sara Nelson, International President of the Association of Flight Attendants, about what’s behind the latest contract fight at United Airlines and why this moment matters for every airline worker. With decades of experience in labor organizing, Sara lays out how outdated laws, corporate tactics, and union density sha...
Jul 10, 2025•52 min
When governments want to help, they do. Refugees learn quickly who is seen and who is overlooked. Michael Desrosiers talks with Kayra Martinez, the founder of Love Without Borders for Refugees in Need, about what real support looks like and who gets it. Kayra has spent nearly a decade working with refugees in Greece, building an art-centered nonprofit that gives people more than just supplies. It gives them agency. How does someone with no formal training end up running a global humanitarian eff...
May 26, 2025•21 min
Immigration is a human story shaped by trauma, resilience and the fight to be seen beyond stereotypes. Michael Desrosiers is joined by Kayra Martinez, the founder of Love Without Borders for Refugees in Need, for a conversation that moves beyond headlines to the lived experiences of those forced to leave everything behind. What do we really know about the people crossing borders in search of safety? And how much of that understanding is shaped by fear rather than fact? Kayra shares what she’s se...
May 20, 2025•36 min
Families are drifting apart, friendships are fading, and the political divide feels deeper than ever. Michael Desrosiers sits down with returning guest Ken Diaz to talk about the personal cost of today’s political climate. Ken, a longtime advocate for workers’ rights and LGBTQ+ issues, shares how his own family relationships have unraveled over politics. What happens when a loved one shuts you out, not because of something you did, but because of who you voted for? The conversation explores how ...
Mar 19, 2025•45 min
Union power, corporate influence, and a presidency without guardrails—Michael Desrosiers and Ken Diaz break down what’s ahead for labor rights in Trump’s second term. Michael sits down with Ken Diaz, Master Executive Council President for United Airlines Flight Attendants, to talk about the challenges unions may face under the new administration. With Trump back in office, what happens to the surge in worker activism? Will the momentum behind union organizing hold, or will corporate influence pu...
Mar 05, 2025•52 min
“Is this America that I woke up to? I was naive to think we’ve moved forward,” says Michael Desrosiers in this episode of Cuckoo 4 Politics. Joined by his Raw & Uncut “sidekick” Sam Jean and Dr. Damary Bonilla-Rodriguez, an expert in diversity-focused leadership, Michael confronts the “aftermath”—raw emotions and deeper truths revealed by the recent election. Why do so many voters support flawed candidates? What keeps racism, sexism, and privilege so firmly embedded in our systems? Why does ...
Nov 25, 2024•1 hr 2 min
“We don’t want a candidate or a politician who uses strokes of fear. We want someone with plausible solutions.” Michael Desrosiers and Sam Jean discuss how race, gender, and identity shape the political landscape as we approach the November 5th election. They break down Donald Trump’s use of “silent signals.” These signals, which are in some form of coded language, speak to certain voter groups to reinforce division. How do these signals influence voters without them even realizing it? And what ...
Oct 30, 2024•45 min
“Trump’s cult of personality is also disturbing. He has cultivated a celebrity persona, blurring the lines between reality and perception, which led to the acceptance of concepts like alternative facts, or fake news,” says Michael Desrosiers as he unpacks Trump’s unique influence over public perception. In this new season opener of Cuckoo 4 Politics, Michael is joined by recurring guest Sam Jean to take a closer look at political amnesia and how it’s playing a role in the upcoming election. Why ...
Oct 28, 2024•55 min
“In this country, because someone has a lot of money, we treat them like they have the right to tell us what to do.” Sam Jean returns for the Season 3 finale, picking up where he and Michael left off in the previous episode’s discussion about the border crisis, the latest stirrings in Congress, and of course, Donald Trump. It seems Republicans will blame non-Americans for everything. While they continue to promote division in this country by treating immigrants to the U.S. as a threat, they also...
Dec 29, 2023•55 min•Season 3Ep. 50
“Hopefully, this is a renaissance,” says Sam Jean, who returns to Cuckoo 4 Politics for another episode of Raw & Uncut as we wrap up 2023. It’s been a year full of high profile labor strikes, which remind people of the power of unions to stand up to corporations to fight for a living wage. Of course, this doesn’t stop many people from blaming immigrants for depressed wages and low employment. America has a history of demonizing its most newly arrived citizens, blaming them for all its proble...
Dec 27, 2023•44 min•Season 3Ep. 49
“I don’t care that he’s 80, because the choice is between him and Donald Trump,” says Sam Jean, who returns to weigh in on President Joe Biden as Biden prepares to run for re-election in 2024. The greatest criticism leveled at the president, from his own party as well as his Republican detractors, is that he is too old for the job. Sam argues that people’s perception of Biden is based on the media taking clips out of context. Michael recounts attending a rally where Biden appeared spry and in co...
Dec 06, 2023•34 min•Season 3Ep. 48
“There's no one that I see who can beat Donald Trump. He's vanquished all of them,” says Sam Jean, who returns for another special Raw & Uncut edition of Cuckoo 4 Politics. He and Michael discuss the GOP candidates running for the U.S. presidency in 2024. Mike Pence is an irrelevant dearth of charisma, who has returned to his pre-Trump irrelevancy. Nikki Haley has plenty of charisma but is running a campaign from 2002. Michael’s dislike for Tim Scott borders on the irrational, yet is still n...
Nov 29, 2023•48 min•Season 3Ep. 47
“They live in a completely different world, and that world is disassociated with the majority of Americans,” says Sam Jean, friend of the show, who joins Michael for another episode of Raw & Uncut, where they talk about the chaos erupting in the House of Representatives under the (lack of) leadership of the GOP. Ignoring any separation of church and state, Republican leaders are making sectors such as healthcare, academia, law enforcement political and the fallout is manifold. Not only does ...
Nov 22, 2023•56 min•Season 3Ep. 46
“Even if you’re not involved in a case, it’s important to care who is sitting in these seats,” says Judge Jill Beck. For the past year, Judge Beck has traveled throughout all 67 counties of Pennsylvania, in a campaign to be elected to the state’s Superior Court. She joins Cuckoo 4 Politics to explain what goes on in all four levels of the court system – something that even lawyers find confusing at times. She also explains what judges do not, or should not, do. Despite many peoples’ growing fear...
Nov 01, 2023•51 min•Season 3Ep. 45
“A district attorney is for all the people, so I want to be a unifier of political division,” says First Assistant District Attorney of Monroe County, Pennsylvania, who returns to Cuckoo 4 Politics to talk more about the issues facing his district and how he plans to solve them when he is, hopefully, elected District Attorney. Mike himself has been on both sides of the political divide–a divide host Michael Desrosiers believes continues to be further drawn by Republicans who insist on maintainin...
Oct 19, 2023•58 min•Season 3Ep. 44
“The interplay between drug addiction, mental health and domestic violence—those three big issues contribute a lot to repeat offenses, recidivism, that revolving door analogy,” explains Mike Mancuso, who is currently running for District Attorney of Monroe County, Pennsylvania. Having worked as a first assistant district attorney since 2004, Mike has worked on countless such cases, has seen the way they overlap with each other and understands how best to approach these problems. This conversatio...
Oct 06, 2023•51 min•Season 3Ep. 43
“We’ve got to protect the community but in a way that builds trust within the community,” says Don Leeth who is running for District Attorney in Monroe County, PA this Fall, beginning with the Democratic primary election which takes place on May 16. In December of 2020, Monroe County was the scene of a fatal altercation between Pennsylvania state troopers and a young man named Christian Hall. Don and Michael discuss the case and the issues it raises about the need for transparency and external i...
Apr 27, 2023•59 min•Season 3Ep. 42
“There seems to be no safe place in America,” says Michael, noting that even in places that were once considered places of solace, people have to worry about being shot. Sam Jean joins another episode of Raw & Uncut to talk about gun control in America and its intersection with issues of race. The episode was recorded in the wake of Tyre Nichols dying at the hands of five Memphis police officers. They note the hypocrisy of allowing anyone to acquire a gun while requiring training and permits...
Apr 13, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 3Ep. 41
“A lot of people have a movie-like version of the real world,” says Sam, who returns for another episode of Raw and Uncut, “and it doesn’t work like that.” People are hungry for performative politics because President Biden’s scandal-free tenure doesn’t fill the void of entertainment left by Trump. People see the Chinese balloon flying over the Midwest and expect it to be shot down as if life were an action movie, not thinking of the implications of that actually happening. Taking the balloon do...
Apr 07, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Season 3Ep. 40
“So we have this issue in this country, that we keep essentially trying to rewrite the past, to make it seem like it wasn't what it was,” says Sam Jean Esq., who returns for another episode of Cuckoo 4 Politics: Raw & Uncut. He references Skip Gates who said that countries that confront their histories of racism do better than countries that don’t. Yet, people in positions of power are literally rewriting history to make certain segments of the population feel more comfortable. The hypocrisy...
Mar 23, 2023•45 min•Season 3Ep. 39
“There’s an excitement in being able to look down on someone,” says Darryl Colon, who resumes his conversation with Michael about the origins of racism in America. Darryl discusses President Lyndon B Johnson’s Kerner commission, a committee of all-white conservatives who placed the issue of racism at white America’s feet. As Michael points out, Black Americans historically have not been afforded the same opportunities to assimilate into society as have newly arrived Americans, particularly Europ...
Mar 07, 2023•51 min•Season 3Ep. 38
“Differences should be celebrated, not eliminated,” says Darryl Colon, the first guest on the new season of Cuckoo 4 Politics. Darryl, who has several advanced degrees in the field of psychology and mental health, explains that differences among races are nothing more than genetic adaptations to regional climates. Yet, the enormous power of imagery, particularly the medium of film, has profoundly influenced the way races feel about themselves and each other. He explains that Black characters, pa...
Mar 02, 2023•46 min•Season 3Ep. 37
“Growing up, there was an idea that some people just were not going to serve in public office,” says Sam Jean, who returns to resume the discussion about the results of the US midterm elections. This week, he and Michael discuss the “celebrification” of American politics. It’s evident in candidates like former football player and recent Republican candidate for the state of Georgia, Herschel Walker, and former news anchor Kari Lake who recently ran on the Republican ticket for Governor of Arizon...
Dec 19, 2022•52 min•Season 2Ep. 36
“I told you that you can’t pay attention to certain narratives,” says returning guest Sam Jean on this episode of Cuckoo 4 Politics. As it turns out, Sam was correct about his midterm predictions, and that the much-publicized Republican Red Wave turned out to be a drip. Sam attributes this and other false beliefs to fake news and fear campaigns put out by the Republican Party. Many people also believed that their hometowns would reach crime levels comparable to major cities like New York and Chi...
Dec 09, 2022•49 min•Season 2Ep. 35
“It’s complicated,” says Geoffrey Gordan who, along with his wife Elizabeth, returns to the show to discuss contemporary politics from the point of view of residents of hotbed states like Arizona. The question of the day is what compels Latinos to vote for either Republicans or Democrats. Right away, as he explains, there is the difference between Hispanic and Latino. Elizabeth points out the difference between Latinos who have lived in America for generations and those who have recently arrived...
Dec 02, 2022•40 min•Season 2Ep. 34
“We don’t like to talk about these things because they’re not sexy,” says Elizabeth Coleman Gordan, of the work required to actually implement change in communities. She and her husband Geoffrey, join Michael for part two of their conversation about the political climate in Arizona as the mid-term elections approach. Michael and Geoffrey both agree that too many people expect instant gratification, and aren’t realistic about the political process. Several of the most pressing issues of the day a...
Nov 03, 2022•1 hr•Season 2Ep. 33
“There are significant concerns with respect to our democracy,” says Geoffrey Gordan, on this episode of Cuckoo for politics. This episode begins a new series where Michael talks to residents of state’s to get their take on the political climate. Today, he welcomes Geoffrey and his wife Elizabeth Coleman Gordan, residents of Arizona, a state with a large independent base. They explain there is ‘a trifecta’ of elections that will take place in November: governor, senator, and secretary of state. ...
Oct 27, 2022•38 min•Season 2Ep. 32
“This is why I’m becoming more and more cynical every day. Because none of it is making any sense to me,” says Sam Jean, Michael’s friend, and frequent guest, about the constant hypocrisy and double standards practiced in the world today, by Republicans in particular. Republicans only need one example to paint all Democrats with the same brush, but the same rules never apply to them. Republican sex offenders in high political positions are the quickest to call other people sexual predators or da...
Jul 28, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 2Ep. 31
“I thought we understood that a woman had the right to access an abortion,” says Sam Jean, longtime friend of Michael’s, who returns to the podcast to discuss the recent ruling by the US Supreme Court to overturn abortion rights at the federal level. Sam believes that Republicans are using the issue of abortion as a fundraising tool because this resonates with a large portion of their fanbase. Michael raises the question whether this issue is the last stronghold available to men as a means to co...
Jul 13, 2022•45 min•Season 2Ep. 30
