Ralph Nader Radio Hour

Ralph welcomes Sherry Turkle, Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT and an expert on culture and therapy, mobile technology, social networking, and sociable robotics to talk about our addictions to screens and how to break out of them. Plus, our resident constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein, opens the program with everything you need to know about the latest Trump indictment.Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law.  Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.I think it’s important for the audience to recognize that 100% of the incriminating evidence was supplied by Trump appointees or supporters. No Democrat made a cameo appearance. There was no incriminating evidence from any opponent of Donald Trump. It’s all his own people. And therefore, when you think about the indictment, the i

Ralph spends the whole hour with Jennifer Vanderbes, author of “Wonder Drug: The Secret History Of Thalidomide In America And Its Hidden Victims.” Thalidomide was never “commercially available” in the U.S., but American doctors handed out samples to patients even though no one could prove the drug was safe. Or could definitively say what the drug did. And by the time thalidomide landed at the FDA for approval, whistleblowers, journalists, doctors, and patients in Germany, Australia, and the UK were sounding the alarm about its shocking side effects.Jennifer Vanderbes is an award-winning novelist, journalist and screenwriter. Her latest book is Wonder Drug: The Secret History Of Thalidomide In America And Its Hidden Victims.It did not shock me researching this story that the pharmaceutical firms operated with a focus on profit, and that allowed for cutting corners. What really did shock me in my research was realizing that the doctors uniformly gaslit these patients. And it was stunning to me that you didn’t h

Ralph and our resident constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein, discuss how they compiled letters they sent to various government officials and representatives that have gone unanswered into a book titled “The Incommunicados” and how this unresponsiveness violates our First Amendment right to petition our government for redress of grievances. Then Washington Post opinion columnist, Helaine Olen, highlights the corporate equivalent, how hard it is to reach a human being for customer service and how all of this plays into the free-floating anger and general unrest of an American population that feels unheard.Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law.  Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.Today, I couldn’t have gotten through to members of the Senate or House on the auto safety issue. We couldn’t have gotten thr

Ralph welcomes Maxim Thorne director of the non-partisan Civic Influencers, an organization that trains young people to inspire their peers to vote and therefore swing elections toward issues they care about and also fights “generational gerrymandering,” efforts by certain states to make it harder for 18 to 29-year-olds to vote. Plus, Ralph gives his take on some recent news items, answers your questions, and comments on your recent feedback.Maxim Thorne is a lawyer, activist, philanthropist, and a Lecturer at Yale. He has worked with the NAACP, Human Rights Campaign, New Jersey Head Start Association, GLAAD, the Executive Committee of the Yale Law School, and the Yale Alumni Task Force on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. He currently serves as Chief Executive of Civic Influencers, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to inspiring young people to make their voices heard—and their votes count.When we think about how important young people are to saving our democracy, and voting on pro-democracy candidates, an

Ralph welcomes Abigail Disney, to discuss her work trying to get her namesake’s company to pay their workers a fair, livable wage as told in her documentary, “The American Dream: And Other Fairy Tales.” Plus, Erica Payne cofounder of The Patriotic Millionaires and co-author of “Tax The Rich!” returns to update us on their latest work educating ordinary Americans about how they can advocate for a fairer tax system.Abigail Disney is a social activist, philanthropist, and an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker. She is also Chair and Co-Founder of Level Forward, an ecosystem of storytellers, entrepreneurs, and social change-makers dedicated to balancing artistic vision, social impact, and stakeholder return. She also created the nonprofit Peace is Loud, which uses storytelling to advance social movements, and the Daphne Foundation, which supports organizations working for a more equitable, fair, and peaceful New York City. She is Co-Founder of Fork Films, a nonfiction media production company, which produces origi

Ralph welcomes journalist and executive director for intellectual capital at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Hal Weitzman, to discuss his book “What’s The Matter With Delaware? How the First State Has Favored the Rich, Powerful, and Criminal—and How It Costs Us All.”Hal Weitzman is Executive Director for Intellectual Capital at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and editor-in-chief of Chicago Booth Review. A former Financial Times editor and foreign correspondent, he is the author of Latin Lessons: How South America Stopped Listening to the United States and Started Prospering and What’s the Matter with Delaware?: How the First State Has Favored the Rich, Powerful, and Criminal—and How It Costs Us All.We know that lawyers and investors in corporations hate political uncertainty because it might affect their profit-making process. And in Delaware they’ve perfected that system. They have completely bypassed any political uncertainty, and therefore also bypassed any oversight

Ralph spends the entire hour with co-founder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, Norman Solomon, to discuss his latest book, “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine,” which examines how our “military-industrial-media-intelligence complex” conspires to suppress the truth about war.Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of War Made Easy, Made Love, Got War, and his newest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine.The tacit motto of huge media outlets like the New York Times is: Being pro-war means never having to say you’re sorry. If a journalist or a media outlet is in favor of the US engaging in war, that is couched as “objective.” If a journalist (such as Phil Donahue on MSNBC) in the leadup to the war even raises questions, serious questions critical of an impending invasion or ongoing US war then tha

This week we welcome back Professor Randall Kennedy to help us pay tribute to three principled, uncompromising African American activists, Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report, human rights champion, Randall Robinson, and legendary actor, singer, and activist, Harry Belafonte.Randall Kennedy is Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School where he teaches courses on contracts, criminal law, and the regulation of race relations. He is the author of several books, including Contracts: Happiness and Heartbreak, For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law, and Say It Loud! On Race, Law, History, and Culture.You’ve chosen three very interesting people [Randall Robinson, Harry Belafonte, and Glen Ford]. And I think that one thing that the listeners should keep in mind is that the three that you’ve chosen are all progressive; they are very different… Because the tent of progressivism should be a large tent— not everybody’s going to think the same, and indeed there’s going to be some friction between va

Ralph welcomes New York Times reporter, Binyamin Applebaum, author of “The Economists' Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society” about how Chicago School economists of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s “who believed in the power and the glory of markets… transformed the business of government, the conduct of business, and, as a result, the patterns of everyday life.”Binyamin Appelbaum is the lead business and economics writer on the Editorial Board of the New York Times. From 2010 to 2019, he was a Washington correspondent for the Times, covering economic policy in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. He previously worked for the Charlotte Observer, where his reporting on subprime lending won a George Polk Award and was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. His latest book is The Economists' Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society.The central attraction of neoliberalism—of market fundamentalism— is that it tells rich and powerful people that they are right and good. It

A “license to loot” is what our guest, economist William Lazonick, calls stock buybacks. Until the Reagan Revolution, stock buybacks were considered market manipulation and at the very least are an unproductive use of profits used only to pump up the stock price and enrich upper management, while neglecting workers’ wages, capital expansion, and innovation. Ralph and Professor Lazonick break it all down for you.William Lazonick is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. His recent work includes Predatory Value Extraction: How the Looting of the Business Corporation Became the US Norm and How Sustainable Prosperity Can Be Restored,  and the forthcoming book Investing in Innovation: Confronting Predatory Value Extraction in the U.S. Corporation.The ideology that enables buybacks, that makes a lot of people including economists say, “Oh, they’re just fine. The money’s just going to the economy,” is what I call the myth of the market economy—the way in which we get capital forma

Ralph welcomes Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, Gretchen Morgenson, co-author of “These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs – And Wrecks – America,” where they name names in this “heads we win, tails you lose” system of predatory capitalism.Gretchen Morgenson is the senior financial reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit. A former stockbroker, she won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for her “trenchant and incisive” reporting on Wall Street. Previously at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal,” she and coauthor Joshua Rosner wrote the bestseller Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon about the mortgage crisis. Their latest book is These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America.The way corporate criminals get their way is by trying to make things too complex and too abstract for your daily lives. But when Gretchen [Morgenson] talks about these plunderers, and let’s call them “predatory capitalists”, don’t think that

Auto safety expert, Byron Bloch, joins us to tell the story of how citizens in conjunction with the Sierra Club defeated a highway widening boondoggle in Maryland. Then we welcome microgrids manager at the Green Justice Coalition, Sari Kayyali, to tell us how microgrids in his community have saved money and the environment. Finally, we catch up with the director of Progressive Democrats of America, Alan Minsky, in Washington DC to talk about high speed rail and the post-Bernie progressive movement.Byron Bloch is an independent consultant and court-qualified expert in Auto Safety Design and Vehicle Crashworthiness. Over the years, he has fought for safer fuel tanks, stronger seats, the need for airbags, better truck underride guards, and has testified on these safety issues at Congressional Hearings, and to NHTSA. He contributed to the Sierra Club’s successful campaign to strongly oppose and stop the proposed widening of the 1-270 and Capital Beltway and the scheme to also add privatized toll lanes.What we hav

We welcome former Writers Guild of America (West) president and current co-chair of the negotiating committee, David Goodman, who also happens to be the head writer for many of your favorite TV shows like “The Family Guy” to tell us why TV and movie writers are on strike. Then, grad students Sandra Oseguera and Jesus Gutierrez stop by to update us on their continuing fight to save the anthropology library at UC Berkeley, a battle that has wider implications for how more and more universities across the country are becoming corporatized. Plus, Ralph highlights some trenchant listener feedback.David A. Goodman has written for over 20 television series. His best-known work is as head writer and executive producer on Family Guy. He was the president of the Writer’s Guild of America West from 2017 to 2021. In that capacity, Mr. Goodman led the Guild in a campaign to force the Hollywood talent agencies into adopting a new Code of Conduct to better serve the needs of their writers.  Today, he serves as co-chair of t

In conjunction with the American Museum of Tort Law, we conduct another live Zoom recording where Ralph welcomes legendary trial lawyer Shanin Spector to discuss the constitutional right of wrongfully injured people to have their day in court and the corporate forces that are trying to limit this most basic of American principles. Then, Ralph and Mr. Spector take questions from our live audience.Shanin Specter is a founding partner of Kline & Specter, one of the leading catastrophic injury firms in the United States. Beyond winning substantial monetary compensation for his clients, many of Shanin’s cases have prompted beneficial societal changes. He has also taught law for many years and this academic year is teaching tort and trial courses at UC Law SF, Drexel Kline and Stanford Law Schools.Last week, I found myself in Washington DC at the Federalist Society debating the resolution that America should abolish the right of trial by jury, which is being advocated by an otherwise distinguished professor at

On a relatively lighter note, we welcome national baseball writer for the New York Times, Tyler Kepner, to talk about issues in the sports world in general but more specifically about his latest book “The Grandest Stage: A History Of The World Series.” Also joining the conversation will be friend of the program, Ken Reed, policy director of League of Fans, whose book “How to Save Sports: A Game Plan” has been updated. Plus, Ralph pays tribute to the late activist and entertainer, Harry Belafonte and has some choice words for Bernie Sanders’ early endorsement of Joe Biden’s 2024 presidential campaign.Tyler Kepner is national baseball writer for the New York Times, where he has covered every World Series Game of the last two decades. He's not just a sports reporter, he's a sports historian. He is the author of K: A History Of Baseball In Ten Pitches, and The Grandest Stage: A History Of The World Series.Certainly, it’s the apex of the season— the thing that every fan ultimately looks forward to. The World Serie

Ralph welcomes Samuel Levine who heads the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission to give you tips on how to use this government agency to protect yourself from corporate fraud and abuse. Plus, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, Dr. Michael Carome stops by to give us the latest warnings about harmful medical devices and his take on the safety of the mRNA Covid vaccine.Samuel Levine serves as Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. Before assuming this role, he served as an attorney advisor to Commissioner Rohit Chopra and as a staff attorney in the Midwest Regional Office. Prior to joining the FTC, Mr. Levine worked for the Illinois Attorney General, where he prosecuted predatory for-profit colleges and participated in rulemaking and other policy initiatives to promote affordability and accountability in higher education.We announced what we call a “click to cancel” rule. And this is a rule about subscription plans. What the proposed rule says is that compa

In a live Zoom event in conjunction with the American Museum of Tort Law, Ralph welcomes safety expert, Russell Kendzior, who runs the National Floor Safety Institute to discuss where, why, and how slip-and-falls happen, how to prevent them, the legitimacy of slip-and-fall lawsuits, and the role of the Consumer Product Safety Commission for a phenomenon that for older adults every year causes over 36,000 deaths and $50 billion in medical costs.Russell Kendzior is the President of Traction Experts, Inc. and founder of the National Floor Safety Institute. Mr. Kendzior is internationally recognized as the leading expert in slip and fall accident prevention and has been retained in more than 1,000 slip, trip, and fall lawsuits. He hosts the podcast The Safety Matters Show, and he is the author of several books, including Falls Aren’t Funny: America’s Multi-Billion Dollar Slip-And-Fall Crisis.This concept of simply testing to an internationally-recognized consensus standard and labeling the product is really what

We continue our indictment of the U.S. war machine by welcoming William Hartung of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft to break down the bloated military budget and what we can do about it. Then Cindy Sheehan, joins us to talk about her journey as the mother of a fallen soldier to become the most prominent anti-war activist of the Bush/Cheney era. Plus, Ralph comes down hard on states that deny their citizens Medicaid.William Hartung is an expert on the arms industry and US military budget, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex, and the co-editor of Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War.The Pentagon wants to get rid of some of these weapon system programs, and the Congress says “Oh no, we’re going to continue them because… it’s a jobs program. It creates jobs, or it retains jobs that are already in shipyards or elsewhere.” Of course, you can never get

We are joined for the full hour by geopolitical financial expert and financial historian, Nomi Prins, to discuss her new book, “Permanent Distortion: How Financial Markets Abandoned the Real Economy Forever,” which highlights the huge gap between the high-flying stock market, versus back down here on earth, where average people struggle to make ends meet.Nomi Prins is an economist, author, geopolitical financial expert and financial historian. She is the author of several books, including Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World, All the Presidents’ Bankers, Other People’s Money: The Corporate Mugging of America, and It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bonuses, Bailouts, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street. Her latest book is Permanent Distortion: How Financial Markets Abandoned the Real Economy Forever.The idea of “Permanent Distortion” is that when the financial system needs it, it gets the money. And lot of it. And in an uncapped way. And in an unregulated way. And in a non-transparent way.

Ralph welcomes economist, attorney, and investigative journalist, James Henry for his expert take on what is going on in the banking system and what we can do to keep it from blowing up. And Professor and former Nader’s Raider, Alison Dundes Renteln, takes on the commercialization of our universities in her book “The Ethical University: Transforming Higher Education.”James Henry is a leading economist, attorney, consultant, and investigative journalist, who has written and spoken widely on the problems of tax justice and development finance. He is a lecturer and Global Justice Fellow at Yale University.The first thing we learn from the history of banking crises in the United States is that banks are really the Achilles heel of capitalism. This keeps happening. And we got used to a period when banking crises— we thought— had been taken care of, that we could just assume that someone in the Fed, or in the US Treasury, or regulators at the global level would understand all this stuff and they would reform the sy