The Real News Podcast

After 14 months of fruitless contract negotiations with the Harvard University administration, over 4,000 workers represented by the Harvard Graduate Students Union (HGSU-UAW Local 5118) walked off the job on an indefinite strike on April 21. According to the union, “Graduate student workers will suspend teaching and research labor until Harvard’s bargaining team takes substantive action in addressing the union’s key issues: pay that keeps pace with the rising cost of living, recourse for harassment and discrimination, support for non-citizen students, protections for academic freedom, and ‘fair share fees’ to equitably distribute the expenses of union representation, among others.” In this episode of Working P...

Israel’s genocidal destruction of Gaza is the culmination of a violent settler-colonial project that goes all the way back to the Nakba (“Catastrophe”) of 1948. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, former political prisoner and Black Panther Mansa Musa speaks with award-winning Palestinian author and former political prisoner Basem Khandakji about the decades-long destruction of Palestinian society and mass displacement of Palestinians from their homeland, as well as the perseverance of Palestinian prisoners under the totalitarian conditions of Israeli prisons.

Guests:
Basem Khandakji, born in 1983 in Nablus, is a Palestinian novelist, poet, and journalist. Arrest...

After members of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh won their strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in late 2025, which had lasted for over 3 years, they were notified in January that the paper’s wealthy owners, the Block family and Block Communications Inc., were shutting down operations. Then, in a stunning turn of events, the Post-Gazette was purchased in April by the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, which also owns The Banner in Baltimore, MD. While Post-Gazette workers were cautiously optimistic about the news, the union learned last week that the Venetoulis Institute is cutting at least 40 percent of its staff, including 80 pe...

Amid Israel’s ongoing destruction of Gaza, its illegal annexation of land in the Occupied West Bank, and belligerent warmaking in Iran and Lebanon, antisemitism around the globe is rising—but so is an international chorus of anti-Zionist Jews speaking out against Israel’s crimes. In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with renowned author and commentator Peter Beinart about his new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, and about the “civil war” within the Jewish world over Israel.

Guests:
Peter Beinart is a renowned author, professor, and analyst whose commentary...

From the dawn of the digital age to the current era of “artificial intelligence,” the future of literacy, reading, and book publishing is facing an existential threat. But Paul Coates—legendary activist, publisher, former Baltimore Black Panther Party member, and founder of Black Classic Press—has some critical wisdom to share in these perilous times about the revolutionary necessity of books. At a live event organized by Tubman House and Eddie’s Front Porch and recorded at the TRNN studio in Baltimore, MD, on March 6, 2026, community organizer and creator of Healing Justices Erica Woodland sits down with Coates for a wide-rangi...

After decades of decline, the organized labor movement in the US has seen a resurgence in rank-and-file militancy over the last decade, with increased strike actions and union drives in industries across the economy. And in the story of this recent revival of labor in America, the movement led by predominantly young baristas to unionize coffee giant Starbucks has played a pivotal role. The new documentary Baristas vs. Billionaires takes viewers on a journey through the last five years of the epic, ongoing struggle to unionize Starbucks, told by some of the workers and organizers at the center of that...

Inspired by January’s mass strike against ICE terror in Minnesota, a vast coalition of labor unions, democratic organizations, and community groups are organizing a nationwide economic blackout on Friday, May 1, International Workers Day. “May Day Strong events are being planned across the US,” Michael Sainato reports at The Guardian, “with organizers calling for ‘no school, no work, no shopping,’ in protest of government policies they say put billionaires’ needs above those of workers.” 

In this episode of Working People, we speak with a panel of guests who are all involved in organizing May Day events this week from Philadelphia...

Award-winning journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous has reported from war zones and disaster areas across the world—from Egypt, Syria, and Libya, to Iraq, Algeria, Haiti, and the United States—but nothing compares to what he’s seen in Gaza. In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Abdel Kouddous about the impossible task of documenting the full scale of devastation Israel has wrought on Gaza and, increasingly, on Lebanon.  

Guests:Sharif Abdel Kouddous is a journalist and editor for DropSite News based in New York and Cairo. He has reported from across the Arab worl...

2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the American Revolutionary War. While the national mythology behind the “America at 250” celebrations focuses on the 18th-century battle between Patriot and Loyalist elites, what does the story of the American Revolution and the founding of the United States look like through the eyes of enslaved people? In this episode of Rattling the Bars, host Mansa Musa speaks with Professor Justene Hill Edwards, author of Unfree Markets: The Slaves’ Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina.

Guests:
Justene Hill Edwards is an associate professor of History in the Corcoran Depart...

Former political prisoner Mahmoud al-Arda was first arrested by Israeli occupation forces in 1992 due to his involvement in the First Intifada and his membership in Islamic Jihad. Since then, for the past three decades, al-Arda has been incarcerated in different Israeli prisons, and he made international headlines in 2021 after leading a daring, successful, but short-lived escape from the maximum-security Gilboa Prison. In this blockbuster episode of Rattling the Bars, host Mansa Musa—a former Black Panther and political prisoner in the US—speaks with al-Arda after he and 2,000 other Palestinian prisoners were finally released from incarceration in Israel in 2025.

Just decades from now, millions of people all over the world will be forced to move because of climate change. In his new book, Shelter from the Storm: How Climate Change Is Creating a New Era of Migration, acclaimed journalist and migration researcher Julian Hattem reports from the front lines of the environmental apocalypse, taking readers on a journey from the South Pacific to the Indian subcontinent, to the Mediterranean. TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Hattem about his new book and about the massive human displacement that is already being caused by climate change today.

This podcast...

On Aug. 22, 2025, the small-town lives of residents living near the Smitty’s Supply facility in Roseland, Louisiana, changed forever when an explosion occurred at the automotive lubricant plant. The explosion and ensuing fire, which burned for days, triggered evacuations across the area, blanketing homes and businesses with smoke, soot, and oily residue, while spilling petroleum products from the plant into area waterways, including several adjacent ponds and the Tangipahoa River. While the Environmental Protection Agency claims that the area is safe, according to the agency’s own chemical monitoring, residents say they’ve been left behind and kept in the dark a...

Hours after a temporary ceasefire deal between the US and Iran was announced last week, Israel unleashed a massive, deadly bombing campaign on Lebanon. In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with award-winning Iranian-Canadian journalist Samira Mohyeddin about the reality that Israel is a rogue state intent on pursuing more war, not diplomacy or peace, and that the US-Israeli war on Iran was never about nuclear threats but about weakening Iran’s economic and regional power—at devastating costs to civilians.

Guests:
Samira Mohyeddin is an award winning producer and broadcaster based in T...

While international attention has decreased in recent months, the horrors Israel continues to systematically unleash on Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank have not. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, host Mansa Musa—a former Black Panther and political prisoner—speaks with renowned scholar-activist Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi about Israel’s apartheid system of incarceration and the urgent fight to free Palestinian political prisoners detained by Israel.

Producer / Videographer / Editor: Cameron Granadino


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In the small town of Williamsport, MD, about an hour and a half from Baltimore, the Department of Homeland Security purchased a massive shipping warehouse for $102 million with plans to turn it into an ICE detention center. But local efforts to expose, delay, and shut down the Trump administration’s heinous plans for this makeshift concentration camp are growing. A broad coalition of local officials, faith leaders, and civil rights organizations have filed an amicus curiae brief in the State of Maryland v. Noem lawsuit, urging the US District Court for the District of Maryland to halt DHS’s rushed plan...

The U.S. has funneled billions into allies in the region under the guise of fighting the drug traffickers. It has ripped apart countries. And the violence has only gotten worse. Decades of fighting, with little to show for it except human rights abuses, displacement, and tens of thousands of dead and disappeared.

In the last episode, host Michael Fox took you to Mexico City to walk through Mexico's Museum of Interventions and witness, first hand, the long history of foreign and, in particular, U.S. intervention in the country. 

Today, he brings listeners up to t...

Nearly a year after workers voted to authorize a strike, non-union city and commercially contracted security officers in Baltimore, MD, will walk off the job on April 9 in an Unfair Labor Practice strike against their employer, Abacus Corporation. In their yearslong effort to unionize and secure more job security, better pay, accessible healthcare, and safer working conditions, workers at Abacus have reported rampant union busting and violations of their labor rights. In this episode, we speak with Laura Dixon, a veteran security officer and Abacus employee, and Jaimie Contreras, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, Local 32BJ. 

From the Trump administration’s lies and flip-flops to social media feeds filled with AI slop and misinformation, it is infuriatingly difficult to get accurate and honest information about what is actually happening in the US-Israeli war on Iran. But award-winning journalist, lawyer, and former TRNN Board member Dimitri Lascaris has been reporting on the ground in Iran for the last two weeks, from the Strait of Hormuz to the Minab elementary school where US tomahawk cruise missiles killed 168 students and teachers on February 28. We speak with Lascaris about what he’s seen in Iran, and the sides of war peop...

When state violence and systemic denial of full citizenship by the state makes true belonging impossible for Black people, Black anarchists have envisioned and fought for a free life beyond the state. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, author William C. Anderson explores the rich, radical tradition of Black anarchism and its connection to prison abolitionist movements.

Guests:
William C. Anderson is a writer and activist from Birmingham, AL. His work has appeared in outlets ranging from The Guardian, MTV, Truthout, British Journal of Photography, to Pitchfork. He is the author of The Nation...

While facing decades-long political efforts to throttle and privatize the United States Postal Service (USPS), and while US Postmaster General David Steiner ominously warns that the USPS will “run out of money” within a year, postal workers continue to deliver the mail and serve communities across the country. But that job has gotten harder, more dangerous, and more complicated in recent years. From increases in targeted violence against letter carriers to the Trump administration’s attacks on mail-in voting, to ICE and Border Patrol agents invading communities on their mail routes, USPS workers are confronting many daily hazards on the job th...

Earth’s Greatest Enemy, the new blockbuster documentary by independent journalist and filmmaker Abby Martin, is an expansive and terrifying investigation into the existential threat that US empire in general—and the US military specifically—poses to humanity and to our planet. In this panel discussion, recorded after a live screening of Earth’s Greatest Enemy on Jan. 29 at the TRNN studio in Baltimore, Maryland, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez and Dharna Noor, fossil fuels and climate reporter for The Guardian, speak with Abby Martin about how US militarism and imperialism are destroying the planet—and what can be done to stop them...

Increasingly, Trump has his sights set on Mexico—promising to send in US troops in the name of fighting cartels and advancing a so-called drug war policy. But Trump’s actions harken back to an era of US empire much, much older.

See, Mexico has withstood a long history of foreign intervention by the Spanish, French, and multiple times by the United States.

In 1848, Mexico lost more than half its territory to the United States. The US states of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and more used to be part of Mexico. 

Today, host...

3,800 workers and Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 7 members at the massive JBS beef processing plant in Greeley, CO walked off the job on an unfair labor practice strike on March 16. This is the first strike ever at the Greeley plant—one of the largest in the country—and it’s the biggest meatpacking strike in the US since the 1985-86 strike at the Hormel plant in Austin, MN. As Caitlyn Clark and Lisa Xu report in Labor Notes, “Strikers say JBS has been increasing the speed of the production line while cutting work hours from 40 a week to 35, squeezing out more...

The Democratic Party has lost to Donald Trump and MAGA twice, and is continuing to lose working-class voters by clinging to corporate power, militarism, and a leadership class increasingly disconnected from its base. In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Norman Solomon about his new book, The Blue Road to Trump Hell, and the reality that the right can only be stopped by both confronting Democratic failures and rebuilding a grassroots politics rooted in class, peace, and social movements.

Guests
Norman Solomon is the cofounder of RootsAction.org, executive director of...

This week, March 24th, is the 50th anniversary of the 1976 Argentine coup that sunk the country into a brutal U.S.-backed military dictatorship. The regime would unleash terror across Argentina, disappearing 30,000 people in just seven years. Thousands detained. Tortured. Murdered.

But people would resist, like the family members of the disappeared — the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. They have marched for five decades to demand justice and the return of their children and grandchildren, alive.

In Argentina, March 24 is known as the National Day for Memory and Truth and Justice. It honors the victims of...

With the public outraged over the US-Israeli war with Iran, the Epstein Files coverup, and a cost-of-living crisis, even President Trump’s base of supporters is fracturing, and Republicans are fixing to get slammed in the upcoming midterm elections. Perhaps that explains why Trump and MAGA Republicans are obsessively focused on attacking voting rights, taking federal control over the electoral system, and preemptively casting doubt on the midterm election results before the elections even happen. TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Ari Berman, national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones, about MAGA Republicans' effort to rig the midterms—and what can...

Diane Wilson is a fourth-generation fisherwoman and a lifelong resident of Seadrift, Texas. Wilson has become a global folk hero over the course of her epic, decades-long journey from shrimp boat captain and mother of five to social and ecological justice warrior who took on a multibillion dollar corporation polluting the bays along her beloved Texas Gulf Coast. But the fight to save her home from industrial pollution is far from over. On March 2, Wilson began a hunger strike outside the Dow Chemical Company / Union Carbide plant in Seadrift. “I have a tent and am camping out 24 hours, 7 days a we...