Prison Industrial Complex

It’s Hump Day! Sam speaks with Alec Karakatsanis, founder of the Civil Rights Corps and author of Alec’s Copaganda Newsletter on SubStack, to discuss his recent writings on police body cameras. First, Sam runs through updates on the US Presidential race, dropping inflation, Ilhan Omar’s primary W...
It’s Casual Friday! Sam and Emma speak with political commentator Olayemi Olurin to round up the week in news. First, Sam and Emma run through updates on the totally natural passing of Alexei Navalny, Israel’s raiding of Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, Israel’s new West Bank settlement program, c...
It’s Hump Day! Sam and Emma speak with independent journalist Erin Reed, author of the Erin In The Morning newsletter on SubStack, to discuss the state of anti-trans legislation moving its way around the country in 2024. Then, they speak with Margie Mason & Robin McDowell, investigative repor...
It’s an EmMajority Report Thursday! She speaks with Orisanmi Burton, assistant professor of anthropology at American University, to discuss his recent book Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt. Then, she’s joined by David Vine to discuss his project en...
It’s an EmMajority Report Thursday! Emma hosts Sarah Brayne, professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, to discuss her recent book Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing. Then, Emma is joined by Donna Murch, associate professor of History at Rutgers Un...
Sam and Emma host Meg O’Connor, senior reporter with The Appeal, to discuss her recent piece ”POLICE KILLED HIS SON. PROSECUTORS CHARGED THE TEEN’S FRIENDS WITH HIS MURDER.”. Then, they’re joined by Kathy Hempstead, senior policy advisor at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, to discuss the impen...
Emma hosts Joanna Schwartz, professor at UCLA Law School, to discuss her recent book Shielded: How The Police Became Untouchable. Then, she’s joined by Sam Mellins, senior reporter at New York Focus. to discuss New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s top judicial nominee, Judge Hector LaSalle, being struck ...
Emma hosts Jarrod Shanahan, assistant professor of criminal justice at Governors State University, and Zhandarka Kurti, assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at Loyola University, Chicago, to discuss their recent book States of Incarceration: Rebellion, Reform, and America’s Pun...
Sam and Emma host Graham Rayman, criminal justice reporter for The New York Daily News, and Reuven Blau, senior reporter for The City to discuss their recent book Rikers: An Oral History. First, Sam and Emma run through updates on this weekend’s mass shooting at Monterey Park, a former New York F...
Happy Halloween! Sam and Emma host Daniel Nichanian, editor-in-chief of Bolts Magazine to discuss all of the biggest ballot measures that will be decided in next Tuesday’s midterm elections. Then, they are joined in the studio (!) by Christian Smalls, the President of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU)...
It’s Casual Friday! Sam and Emma host Dave Weigel, author of the “Americana” newsletter at Semafor, to discuss the state of play less than 2 weeks out from the midterm elections. Then, they’re joined by Matthew Film Guy! Emma and Sam first run through updates on the midterms, including Schumer’s ...
Emma hosts Dan Bouk, associate professor of history at Colgate University, to discuss his recent book Democracy’s Data: The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them.Then, Emma’s joined by Akela Lacy, politics reporter for The Intercept, to discuss her recent reporting on the Pennsyl...
Sam and Emma break down the biggest headlines of the day as we get into the final weeks before the 2022 Midterm elections. They begin by running through updates on the Oklahoma City governor’s race, the Fed’s labor crunch and subsequent recession, and student loan relief, before talking protest, ...
Sam and Emma host Daniel Medwed, Professor of Law and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University, to discuss his recent book Barred: Why the Innocent Can’t Get Out of Prison. First, Sam and Emma run through updates on Russian escalation, JD Vance’s relationship to a big opioid pill mill physicia...
Sam and Emma host writer Shon Faye to discuss her recent book The Transgender Issue: Trans Justice Is Justice For All. Then, Sam and Emma are joined by Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District to discuss President Biden’s recent student loan debt forgiveness plan, as we...
Emma hosts Dan Canon, civil rights lawyer and professor at the University of Louisville, to discuss his recent book Pleading Out: How Plea Bargaining Creates a Permanent Criminal Class. Emma begins by running through the arrest of an Iranian citizen for planning an extrajudicial assassination att...
Emma hosts Gina Dent, Associate Professor of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, to discuss her recent book Abolition. Feminism. Now., co-written with Angela Davis, Erica Meiners, and Beth Richie. Professor Dent and Emma begin by discussing how the mainstream roles of fe...
Emma hosts Sara Matthiesen, Professor of History at George Washington University, to discuss her recent book Reproduction Reconceived: Family Making and the Limits of Choice After Roe V. Wade, and how reproductive rights and the concept of choice have been manipulated and under attack in the age ...
Emma hosts Alleen Brown, reporter at The Intercept, to discuss her recent article series ”Climate and Punishment”. Then, Emma is joined by the AMQuickie’s very own Jack Crosbie, currently stationed in Kyiv, to give us an update from the ground! Alleen begins by situating the research that led her...
Emma hosts James Kilgore, Research Scholar at the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois, to discuss his recent book Understanding E-Carceration: Electronic Monitoring, the Surveillance State, and the Future of Mass Incarceration, on the technological advancements in the surveil...
Sam and Emma host Tony Messenger, Metro columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, to discuss his recent book Profit and Punishment: How America Criminalizes The Poor In The Name Of Justice, on how municipalities across the US have instituted a system of debtors’ jail, trapping poor folks into a ...
Sam and Emma host Carl Lindskoog, assistant professor of history at Raritan Valley Community College, to discuss his recent book Detain and Punish: Haitian Refugees and the World’s Largest Immigration Detention System, to discuss his recent book Detain and Punish: Haitian Refugees and the World’s...
Sam and Emma host New Yorker contributor Eyal Press to discuss his recent book Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America, on the moral division of labor and the emotional burden of getting by for countless Americans. They start off with Everett Hughes’ essay “Good Pe...
Sam and Emma host Keisha Blain, Associate Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, to discuss her recent book Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America, on how Hamer’s long life led up to a final decade and a half of incredibly influential activism. Professor Bl...
Emma hosts Alexandra Brodsky, civil rights attorney at Public Justice, to discuss her recent book Sexual Justice: Supporting Victims, Ensuring Due Process, and Resisting the Conservative Backlash, and how the culture around sexual assault and harassment has shifted drastically over the last decad...
Sam and Emma host public sector immigration lawyer Daniel Melo to discuss his recent book Borderlines: The Edges of U.S. Capitalism, Immigration, and Democracy, which contextualizes immigration policy within the history of the US, and exploring what we can do to push back against the unfair desig...
It’s Casual Friday! Sam and Emma host Astra Taylor, co-founder of the Debt Collective and author of the recent book Remake the World: Essays, Reflections, Rebellions, to discuss the 10-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. Then Sam and Emma are joined by Heather Digby Parton, proprietor of Hull...
Emma hosts Dave Zirin, sports editor at The Nation, to discuss his recent book The Kaepernick Effect: Taking A Knee, Changing the World. Emma starts off by weighing in on former Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney’s excoriating testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, where she...
The MR Crew are off for Rosh Hashanah today (happy New Year for all who celebrate!), but Sam doesn’t leave you hanging-he sits down with Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the University of California, Berkeley Law School, to discuss his recent book Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Po...
Sam and Emma host author and activist Victoria Law to discuss her new book, “Prisons Make Us Safer”: And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration, on how our perception of incarceration has been wrong from the start. Sam, Emma and Victoria explore our carceral state and how racism and social contr...
Sam hosts Heather Parton, columnist at Salon.com and proprietor of the überblog “Digby’s Hullabaloo,” and friend and known pacifist David Feldman. With the former, they chat about the U.S.’s relationship with both domestic and foreign violence, discussing the devastating tragedies of gun violence...
Sam and Emma host author and activist Victoria Law to discuss the recent spate of anti-Asian hate crimes and her new book “Prisons Make Us Safer.” Then philosopher Jules Evans joins the program to discuss his theory of “Conspirituality” on the link between New Age spirituality and conspiracy in A...
Sam and Emma host Maurice Chammah, staff writer at The Marshall Project, and author of Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty joins the show to discuss his new book and how America might move beyond its shameful history of capital punishment. Sam and Chammah explore how th...
Sam hosts Daniel Nichanian (@Taniel), Founder and Editorial Director of The Appeal: Political Report, to discuss his What’s on the Ballot? project and the local and state criminal justice votes that could shape the future of immigration enforcement and policing.
Sam hosts Garrett Felber, professor of history at the University of Mississippi, to discuss his new book, Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State. Sam and Felber discuss the organizing tactics used by black nationalists from within the car...
Michael Brooks hosts Alexandria Neason, staff writer at the Columbia Journalism Review, to discuss her piece “Officials Say…” and her reporting on the relationship between the media and police.
Sam and Michael Brooks break down the latest headlines and stories from last night’s primaries, police reform messages from Capitol Hill, and the on-going Covid19 pandemic.
Brooklyn College professor Alex Vitale (@avitale) joins Sam to discuss law enforcement reform, police abolition, and his book The End of Policing. (Free ebook version available now from Verso books!)
Good morning, this Thursday is another Sam/Michael hybrid episode. Today’s show features an interview Sam recorded with Iowa University Law Professor Sarah Seo about her latest book, Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom. Sam and Seo discuss how the rise of personal automo...
Peter Edelman (@peterbedelman), Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law and Public Policy and the faculty director of the Center on Poverty and Inequality at Georgetown University Law Center, joins us to discuss his book, Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America.
On today’s show: Trump wants to abolish immigration judges. Kris Kobach, a possible pick for Trump’s “immigration Czar,” advocates for “processing towns” where asylum seekers are concentrated into “camps.”
Alexandra Natapoff (@ANatapoff), Law professor at U.C. Irvine, criminal law scholar, and author, joins us to discuss her book, “Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal.” What is a misdemeanor, and how is it different from a fe...
Benjamin Dixon (@BenjaminPDixon ), co-founder of the North Star and Virgil Texas (@virgiltexas ), of Chapo Trap House, join us.
Former Missouri State Senator and author of  Mr. Smith Goes to Prison: What My Year Behind Bars Taught Me About America’s Prison Crisis explains the campaign violation that sent him to prison. Where Jeff Smith served his prison sentence and why he always supported prison reform. The untapped pote...
Ryan Cooper, a National Correspondent The Week Magazine explains how local jails are abusing human rights. How minor charges and Police harassment lead to the jailing and abuse of non-violent offenders and how local jail systems can be reformed.
Independent journalist Beth Schwartzapfel explains the persistence of American prison labor, how little is provided to prisoners, half of prisoners have full time jobs, invented felonies and the end of slavery, how prison labor is exploited, why OSHA can’t intervene to protect prison labor, the e...
McMaster University Professor and author of  Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education Henry Giroux explains what exactly Neoliberalism is, why civic literacy is a threat to Neoliberalism, the public education crisis, why Neoliberals view the function of government as protecting the 1%, the delusio...