UK

Green Councillor Daniella Radici, Martin Summers and Tony Gosling discuss Financial services firm KPMG who have been given a slot on BBC Radio Bristol 'volunteering' a 7:30am 'business news' for the BBC Breakfast show but failing to reference a pro-Coalition government report talking up the economy promising 200,000 jobs about to come to Britain, but who wrote this report and why have the BBC given up their editorial independence?

Last episode we reflected on whether people's penchant for doomsday predictions and tales of the living dead was connected to their common experience of life under capitalism. This time, given the absence of an apocalyptic Mayan doomsday event, we ask whether a conscious effort to reject such catastrophism is in order, and what a progressive future might look like.

On our last show before December 21st, 2012, we examine the spectre of 'catastrophe'. Does the popularity of undead imagery reveal anything about modern society? We begin by revisiting David Graeber's insights on Tiv mythology at the time of the African slave trade, then examine the underpinning of the modern university and schooling systems as a way to decode the barrage of modern day warnings of the 'Fiscal Cliff'.

Is planet earth facing a food crisis? Are there too many people here? Can humanity afford to tackle desertification in the Sahel? Filmmaker Mike Freedman, food activist Tristram Stuart, author Ronald Wright and finally permaculturist and aid worker Tony Rinaudo all contribute their voices to this week's challenge to simplistic and reductionist thinking on such matters.

Whether in terms of biodiversity, Peak Oil, water shortages or whatever, we've looked many times on this show at the damaged and degraded planet earth that we are leaving for our children. This week we take another angle, looking at the damage done to the very brains and minds of our children.

This week, exceptionally, we hear two pieces from a single speaker, John Taylor Gatto. After a period of neglect following a stroke in 2011, Gatto is steadily recovering. We reflect on his genius with two classic talks: "Bianca, You Animal, Shut Up!" and "The Neglected Genius of American Spirituality".

Did you know that the earth is currently experiencing the biggest mass extinction in the last 65 million years? That half the worlds' plants and animals may go extinct in the next 30 years? Or that extinctions are happening at an accelerating pace already around 1000 times the natural rate?

This week we conclude our reading of David Graeber's Debt, The First 5000 Years with a focus on the fraud of land 'ownership' and economics. A mix of new and familiar speakers include a reading by Lyn Gerry from episode 90 and a radio adaptation of an Adam Curtis film, The League of Gentlemen.

This week we learn how much effort has been put to making people assume that the virtues of capitalism are beyond question. We hear three Marxian commentators offering their own angles on the development of capitalism in USA, interspersed with a reprise of Noam Chomsky from episode 29 on the elite's determination to control the public mind lest the democratic state serve the wishes of the majority rather than the privilege of the few.

As we approach the climax of David Graeber's Debt, The First 5000 Years, we begin a series of talks by Economics Professor Richard Wolff introducing Marxian class analysis.

This week is something of a continuation of episode #624, featuring the second part of economics professor Richard Wolff on Marxian class analysis, and we approach the end of David Graeber's Debt, The First 5000 Years. I hope it works as an aid to help to rethink what you think you know about economics and politics and to jettison any categories of thought which you find unhelpful.

This episode we note some similarities between the so called extreme 'left' and 'right' ends of the political spectrum - when the government claims the ability to unilaterally decide how to run things, the stated ideology often goes by the board anyway. Bryan Gould discusses the confidential 'trade agreement' TPP, noting that it is less about free trade and more about subduing national sovereignty to the multinational corporations who devised it. In our second hour, we continue with Richard Wolff's Marxian class analysis, looking specifically at the 1917 Russian revolution.

This week, two Marxist professors speak on the social impact of capitalism and especially in USA. First, Silvia Federici speaks on 'The Progressive Process of Desocialization', how capitalism breaks down communities and people's human relationships of care. Next it is the turn of Richard Wolff who applies his Marxian class analysis to the US household, noting that more and more adults are rejecting the traditional (feudal) model of domestic exploitation and either living alone or in more egalitarian patterns.

We accompany our continued reading of David Graeber with Richard Peet on the Rise of Finance Capital. In our second hour, an outspoken Chris Hedges gives his own account of the rise of neoliberalism and reports on the America you won't have heard about on Commercially Controlled media, which he researched for 2 years to write his latest book.

Our first hour is a presentation by Noam Chomsky on the emerging world order in which USA is dominating the world's remaining energy resources in the Middle East and in which this same militancy is being aggressively visited on resistance at home. In our second hour, we look at the anniversary of the occupy movement and the efforts underway to build grassroots resistance to the stranglehold of the predatory elite financiers.

As we return to reading David Graeber this, we look at the origins of capitalism in USA - how the system of self-sufficient slave estates and family farms gave way to one of wage labor. Then we ask, were the events of 11 years ago the cover for a massive financial fraud? We conclude by reflecting on what these angles contribute to our understanding of 'capitalism' and the importance of personally, consciously stepping away from it.

We hear three different perspectives on the Mental Health of the US population - and indeed upon the American concept of 'mental health. Is it a matter of fixing broken brains with carefully targeted drugs? Our speakers agree that the US public have been profitably misinformed by professional experts full of ideas about how they should and shouldn't behave.