Bill Resnick talks with economist David Weiman about the political forces encouraging the growth and maintaining of prisons and punitive policing in the USA. They consider not only media influence and legislators desire to keep jobs in their areas but also the fear-enhancing effects of social isolation and division and the correlation between inequality and incarceration. They discuss the impact of widely available guns and lobbying in support of gun rights. They consider the role of mental health professionals, the use of psychoactive drugs, and the likelihood that mental illness is a consequence of incarceration rather than a cause of crime. Weiman provides a brief history of the relation between drug laws and mass incarceration: although NY's Rockefeller drug laws became a model for Nixon's war on drugs, they did not initially increase incarceration rates because the NY police and legal system declined to implement them punitively until Ed Koch came to political prominence. The interview touches on the connection between drug crime and lack of economic alternatives in good jobs.

Alan Wieder talks with local singer-songwriter-activist David Rovics about his work, about living in Oregon, where the police have killed more black men per capita than anywhere else, about releasing songs online for free download, and about his new online book Have Guitar Will Travel.

Alan Wieder hosts this episode, featuring music from David Rovics as well as an interview with him, a discussion of the economics and politics of mass incarceration, a review of a recent comic novel, and a commentary on the ideology of austerity.

Bill Resnick talks with David Weiman about Mass Incarceration

Book Mole Larry Bowlden reviews Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette?

Alan Wieder talks with singer songwriter activist David Rovics

Well-Read Red Tom Becker an essay on the ideology of Austerity

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Joe Clement talks with Jason Read about psychoanalytic philosopher Slavoj Zizek and Sophie Fiennes philosophical documentary: The Pervert's Guide to Ideology. This is the second film Zizek and Fiennes have made together, the first being The Pervert's Guide to Cinema. Both films analyze dozens of films and uses films to illustrate concepts in psychoanalysis, the critique of ideology, and how we might recognize the subtle and difficult ways we are implicated in ideology.

Jason Read is a philosophy professor at the University of Southern Maine. He blogs at Unemployed Negativity and is interested in marxist and feminist theory, film and popular culture, and the politics of work.