The Intercept Briefing - podcast cover

The Intercept Briefing

The Intercepttheintercept.com

Cut through the noise with The Intercept’s reporters as they tackle the most urgent issues of the moment. The Briefing is a new weekly podcast delivering incisive political analysis and deep investigative reporting, hosted by The Intercept’s journalists and contributors including Jessica Washington, Akela Lacy, and Jordan Uhl.



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Download Metacast podcast app
Podcasts are better in Metacast mobile app
Don't just listen to podcasts. Learn from them with transcripts, summaries, and chapters for every episode. Skim, search, and bookmark insights. Learn more

Episodes

Stealing Children to Steal the Land

Last month, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation uncovered a mass grave of 215 children on the grounds of a former residential school in British Columbia, Canada. This week on Intercepted: Naomi Klein speaks with residential school survivor Doreen Manuel and her niece Kanahus Manuel about the horrors of residential schools and the relationship between stolen children and stolen land. Doreen’s father, George Manuel, was a survivor of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, where unmarked grave...

Jun 16, 20211 hr 5 min

Killed in the Darkness

When a police officer shoots and kills someone — and there aren’t any witnesses — can we trust the police to investigate themselves? This week on Intercepted: Antoine and Tammy Bufford's son, Cortez, was shot and killed by a St. Louis police officer in 2019. Nearly two years later, the city is still investigating Cortez’s case. No charges have been filed. And the Bufford family is still looking for answers. The police kill more people per capita in St. Louis than in any other American city. Seve...

Jun 09, 202136 min

Understanding the History of Black Rebellion

In the year since the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the mass mobilization of protest that followed — the largest collective gesture against police violence in this country’s history — there’s been a constant and energized call to defund or outright abolish policing as we know it in the U.S. This week on Intercepted: The U.S. has been grappling with this same cycle of violence for more than nearly a century: A Black person is killed by police, and protests follow. In 1968, the U.S. tr...

May 26, 202141 min

Big Pharma’s Deadly Covid Vaccine Monopoly

A week ago, the Biden administration announced support for waiving intellectual property protection for Covid-19 vaccines. In response, Bio, a trade association representing biotechnology companies, issued a statement saying , "The United States has unfortunately chosen to set a dangerous precedent with these actions.” This week on Intercepted: Intercept investigative journalists Sharon Lerner and Lee Fang discuss how the pharmaceutical industry has ruthlessly fought to maintain IP protection fr...

May 12, 202132 min

Joe Biden's War Powers

If you went back and looked at every foreign policy decision Joe Biden made — every single one — would you be any closer to understanding him? This week on Intercepted: Our editor-at-large and senior correspondent Jeremy Scahill and reporter Murtaza Hussain examined the past 50 years of Biden’s decisions, poring over hundreds of pages of archival copies of the congressional record and reviewing declassified CIA documents for mentions of Biden. The investigation is called “Empire Politician,” and...

Apr 28, 202137 min

The Border Patrol’s Abdication in the Sonoran Desert

While much of the public’s attention has been focused on the thousands of unaccompanied minors currently in U.S. custody, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has quietly begun a policy of dropping off asylum-seekers in remote border towns along the deadliest stretches of the U.S.-Mexico divide. This week on Intercepted: Intercept reporter Ryan Devereaux travels to the Arizona cities of Ajo and Tucson, speaking to migrants and local volunteers about the dangers and uncertainty people are facing. D...

Apr 14, 202118 min

Trump's EPA Helped Erase Records of Almost 270,000 Pounds of Carcinogenic Pollution

The Environmental Protection Agency under the Trump administration invited companies to retroactively amend emissions records of a deadly carcinogenic chemical. This week on Intercepted: Investigative reporter Sharon Lerner explains how 270,000 pounds of the chemical ethylene oxide vanished from the public record right after the EPA determined that it was more toxic than previously known. Ethylene oxide is a colorless and odorless gas used to produce many consumer goods and used extensively as a...

Mar 31, 202128 min

Hope Is a Discipline: Mariame Kaba on Dismantling the Carceral State

Jury selection for the murder trial of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin continues after the city announced a $27 million settlement with George Floyd’s family. This week on Intercepted: Organizer and educator Mariame Kaba talks to lead producer Jack D’Isidoro about the case, efforts born out of the uprisings of this past summer, and the role hope plays in building a long-term abolitionist movement. Whether she’s breaking down the historical foundations of the carceral state or laying out...

Mar 17, 202136 min

The Life and Death of an Anti-Fascist

Few anti-fascists were as influential on Portland’s recent protest scene as Sean Kealiher. He rarely missed a protest, and he would have been front and center last summer when the insurrectionary activism he had long advocated for became a staple on Portland streets. But he wasn’t. In October 2019, at 23, he was killed in front of the state Democratic Party building, which protesters vandalized on Inauguration Day this year. Kealiher’s death, which was ruled a homicide, shocked Portland’s activi...

Mar 03, 202133 min

The Democrats’ Long War on Immigrants

As Joe Biden took the oath of office this January, Guatemalan security forces at the Honduran border thwarted thousands of U.S.-bound migrants. While decades-long American imperialism has facilitated displacement throughout the region, the U.S. is increasingly outsourcing its deadly immigration policy. This week on Intercepted: The Biden administration announced it will begin to process the 25,000 asylum seekers stuck in squalid border town camps as part of Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy. But...

Feb 17, 202126 min

Inside China’s Police State Tactics Against Muslims

A massive police database obtained by The Intercept provides groundbreaking insight into the pervasive surveillance state operated by the Chinese government to repress Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. This week on Intercepted: A new report from The Intercept provides a raw glimpse into the persecution and sweeping internment of Muslims in the city of Ürümqi, the largest city in northwest China’s Xinjiang region. The report also confirms many of the anti-democratic systems already in place: c...

Feb 03, 202124 min

Joe Biden Is President, but Donald Trump’s Legacy of Violence Looms

Now that Donald Trump is gone from office, what’s next? This week on Intercepted: There are a slew of unanswered questions about the siege of the Capitol. Americans are being asked to believe that the national security apparatus — the same one that charged nearly 200 people en masse, including journalists and observers, with felony rioting when Trump was inaugurated in 2017, and has leveled federal charges including terrorism charges on Black Lives Matter protesters — failed to see the threat to...

Jan 20, 202137 min

BONUS: Universal Enemy — Scholar Daryl Li on the Relationship Between Transnational Jihadists and U.S. Empire

In this special bonus episode of Intercepted, we take an in-depth look at one of the most consequential eras of modern history, the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, as the Soviet Union crumbled. The Russian occupation of Afghanistan came to an end, thanks in no small part to the covert and overt involvement of the United States. Bill Clinton brought an end to 12 years of Republican rule, defeating the former CIA director George HW Bush. And with Clinton’s two terms in of...

Dec 30, 202044 min

The CIA’s Afghan Death Squads

A U.S.-backed militia that kills children may be America’s exit strategy from its longest war reported by journalist Andrew Quilty. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dec 20, 202021 min

AOC on Ending the Pelosi Era, Biden’s Corporate Cabinet, and the Battle for Medicare for All

President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet is being constructed in significant part from corporate Democrats and Obama-era national security hawks with a small side order of more progressive figures. This week on Intercepted: As Nancy Pelosi runs unopposed in her party for another term as speaker of the House, Congress has failed for many months to deliver meaningful aid to millions of Americans suffering through the Covid-19 pandemic. But lawmakers moved swiftly to approve the National Defense Authori...

Dec 16, 20201 hr 10 min

State-Sanctioned Killers: As Trump Expedites Executions at Home, Biden Builds Team for Wars Abroad

Donald Trump is now in the dying days of his presidency and is spending those days promoting the myth that he actually won the November election in a landslide. This week on Intercepted: As the clock ticks toward Joe Biden’s inauguration, Trump and Attorney General William Barr have been on a grotesque killing spree, green-lighting executions of federal prisoners at breakneck pace. The Intercept’s Senior Reporter Liliana Segura reports on how Trump is on pace to authorize more federal executions...

Dec 09, 20201 hr 8 min

BONUS: Naomi Klein on Fighting Trump’s Tin Pot Coup; Peace Activists Face Federal Prison

The Intercept’s Senior Correspondent Naomi Klein argues why Democrats should forcefully defend the integrity of votes and condemn coup-plotting for what it is, and stop from blowing a mandate they’ve won Associate Producer Elise Swain follows the sentencing hearings for peace activists, known as Kings Bay Plowshares 7, who face federal prison for nonviolent protest. Associate Producer Elise Swain follows the sentencing hearings for three of the Kings Bay Plowshares Seven peace activists. Despite...

Nov 18, 202043 min

American Mythology: The Presidency of Donald Trump (Part Seven: Climate Carnage)

In his denial of science, Donald Trump has guided the U.S. far past the tipping point of mitigating the unfolding existential threat of the climate crisis. Under both Democratic and Republican administrations over decades, U.S. climate policy has fallen far short of the urgent action scientists have demanded. In crucial ways, Donald Trump has been far more dangerous than his deeply-flawed predecessors. Trump seems to actually revel in his dangerous denial of fundamental and scientifically indisp...

Oct 22, 202037 min

American Mythology: The Presidency of Donald Trump (Part Six: The Looting of the Nation)

Donald Trump has run the White House like his family business with one primary aim: to enrich his brand, his family and his cronies. In part six of American Mythology, we examine how Trump and the GOP — at times with help from the Democrats — have opened the gates to the federal feeding trough for corporate greed and unaccountability. Throughout the 2016 campaign Trump claimed that, unlike Hillary Clinton, he was not beholden to corporate or special interests and that he would uplift the working...

Oct 21, 202030 min

American Mythology: The Presidency of Donald Trump (Part Five: Courting Corporate Theocracy)

While all eyes remain on the presidential election in November, Donald Trump has already secured a multi-generational victory with his radical reshaping of the judicial branch of government. In part five of “ American Mythology ,” we look at how the Trump administration has outsourced hundreds of federal judicial appointments to the right-wing Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation. The appointments made during the past four years will impact almost every aspect of life in the U.S.: health c...

Oct 20, 202029 min

American Mythology: The Presidency of Donald Trump (Part Four: "You Think Our Country's So Innocent?")

On matters of war, Donald Trump has consistently spoken and acted in contradictory and unorthodox ways. He campaigned in 2016 with a mixed message of attacking the legacy of the Iraq war and U.S. military adventurism, while simultaneously pledging to commit war crimes and promote imperialism as a matter of policy. On part four of American Mythology, we take an in-depth look at Trump’s war and national security policies. He escalated drone strikes in Somalia and Afghanistan, authorized troop surg...

Oct 19, 20201 hr 7 min

American Mythology: The Presidency of Donald Trump (Part Three: The Neo-Confederate in Chief)

On the campaign and as president, Donald Trump has worked hard to resurrect the George Wallace strand of U.S. politics: He has consistently used racist and bigoted language to accompany his policy onslaughts. In part three of American Mythology, we examine the ways Trump has used racialized fear-mongering and incitement in both word and deed; from his Muslim ban, to his denigration of immigrants, to his attacks on the Black Lives Matter Movement. Trump has openly encouraged police to act extraju...

Oct 16, 202054 min

American Mythology: The Presidency of Donald Trump (Part Two: Administration of Xenophobia)

In the nearly four years that Trump has been in office, his administration has transformed U.S. immigration at a breakneck pace and governed with an overtly xenophobic posture toward immigrants. In episode two of our audio documentary series “ American Mythology ,” we chronicle the Trump administration’s war against immigrants from the southern border to the Muslim ban and beyond. Trump has already implemented more than 400 changes to immigration rules and regulations, changes that will impact m...

Oct 15, 202038 min

American Mythology: The Presidency of Donald Trump (Part One: Manufacturing the Carnage)

Donald Trump is often portrayed as an aberration of U.S. history, an outsider who seized power and is intent on destroying democracy as we know it. In the premiere episode of American Mythology, we examine the ways that Trump has proven to be a particularly dangerous autocrat who doesn’t believe in any semblance of a democratic process. But that story cannot be told without also exploring how various U.S. systems and the policies of Trump’s predecessors carved the way for many of his most danger...

Oct 14, 202052 min

BONUS: A Story of Asylum, and Musician Lido Pimienta on Her New Album "Miss Colombia"

On this bonus episode of Intercepted, journalist John Washington, whose latest reporting for The Intercept expanded on an explosive new whistleblower complaint alleging that mass hysterectomies occurred at an ICE detention facility, reads an excerpt from his new book, “The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum and the US-Mexican Border and Beyond.” And the Colombian-Canadian musician Lido Pimienta talks about her latest album, Miss Colombia , and how the 2015 Miss Universe Pageant inspired her to look...

Sep 16, 202038 min

Escape From the Nuclear Family: Covid-19 Should Provoke a Re-Think of How We Live

As Washington cuts off desperately needed aid to the unemployed, millions of families face the reality that many K-12 schools likely aren’t reopening, and young adults look ahead to a bleak future, reality is setting in that the Covid 19 crisis was not a blip. This week on Intercepted: guest host Naomi Klein argues that it’s time for some big bold thinking about how we can safely live, work, and learn with the virus — and maybe even enjoy ourselves. She takes us to visit friends in Oakland, Cali...

Aug 05, 20201 hr 23 min

Weak State: How the Coronavirus Pandemic Exposed America’s Dysfunctional Democracy

As Donald Trump promises the pandemic will “disappear,” the U.S. simultaneously grapples with a public health disaster, economic collapse, and a social crisis. This week on Intercepted: The Intercept’s Murtaza Hussain is joined by military expert and anthropologist David Kilcullen. He discusses the global national security implications unleashed by the coronavirus and the decline in U.S. dominance and the liberal international system. Kilcullen also examines the catastrophic consequences that co...

Jul 22, 202056 min

The Revolutionary Life of Paul Robeson: Scholar Gerald Horne on the Great Antifascist Singer, Artist and Rebel

As Trump vows to smash leftist movements, we take a comprehensive look at the life of the revolutionary Black socialist, antifascist, and artist Paul Robeson. University of Houston historian Dr. Gerald Horne, author of “Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary,” discusses Robeson’s life from his early years to his time in Europe on the brink of a fascist war. The son of an escaped slave, Robeson rose to international fame as a singer and actor, but committed himself to the liberation of oppress...

Jul 15, 20201 hr 9 min

An Interview with Nancy Pelosi Challenger Shahid Buttar and a Look at the History of Fascist Movements in the U.S.

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers led by Rep. Liz Cheney, daughter of Dick Cheney, is trying to stop Trump from withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. This week on Intercepted: As the longest continuous war in U.S. history enters its 19th year, Congressional Democrats and Republicans are joining together in an effort to keep the war going. Constitutional lawyer and activist Shahid Buttar, who is challenging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her Congressional seat in San Francisco, alleges that Pelo...

Jul 08, 20201 hr 16 min

Confederacy Inc.: Donald Trump, Racist Police, and the Whitewashing of History

As cases of Covid-19 skyrocket across the U.S., Trump passionately focuses on defending the legacy of the Confederacy and white supremacist monuments. Native American historian Nick Estes explains the crimes against Indigenous people committed by the four presidents whose faces are carved into Mount Rushmore. Black Lives Matter demonstrations against police brutality and systemic racism continue across the U.S. as calls to defund the police intensify. University of Iowa historian Simon Balto, au...

Jul 01, 20201 hr 4 min
For the best experience, listen in Metacast app for iOS or Android
Open in Metacast