In a special edition of Just Asking Questions recorded before a live audience on the Honduran island of Roatán, Reason's Zach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe talk with Mark Lutter, founder of the Charter Cities Institute, and Patri Friedman, founder and board member of Pronomos Capital, a venture capital firm that invests in charter cities.

The conversation took place at the Alternative Visions for Governance conference sponsored by the Reason Foundation, which publishes Reason. The conference happened within the jurisdiction of Próspera, an autonomous zone for economic development—known as a ZEDE—made possible by a 2013 law passed by the Honduran National Congress. 

They discussed lessons learned from the launch of Próspera, which has expanded despite a hostile presidential administration, the proliferation of biohacking and medical procedures within the zone, the history of self-governing cities, the relationship between charter cities and democracy, and where in the world prospects are best for future experiments in privatized governance. 

Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or on the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.

Patri Friedman and Mark Lutter: Does a City Need a State?

Today we unpack the ways in which the East India Company used knowledge and education to advance its interests in India. 

My guest is Joshua Ehrlich, an assistant professor at the University of Macau. His new book is The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge, which was published by Cambridge University Press.

freshedpodcast.com/Ehrlich/
--
Get in touch!
Twitter: @FreshEdpodcast
Facebook: FreshEd
Email: info@freshedpodcast.com
Support FreshEd: www.freshedpodcast.com/support/

FreshEd #355 – Knowledge, Politics, and the East India Company (Joshua Ehrlich)

Let us never become immune to shock and outrage over the US government’s failure to guarantee its citizens a safe clean water supply.  We must be outraged by the power that private players hold over us all with the blessings and collusion of officials whose titles suggest they should protect us. 


Investigative journalist Jordan Chariton has been reporting on the Flint water crisis for nearly a decade. His newly published book, We the Poisoned, examines how systemic governmental failures, abetted by municipal, state, and federal authorities, and complicit media, combined to allow the Flint catastrophe. 


Jordan talks to Steve about the devastating effects of neoliberal privatization schemes, driven by financial incentives and aided by powerful interests including Wall Street, which resulted in the use of untreated water from the polluted Flint River in a city already suffering from decades of economic decline. Privatization transformed public utilities into profit-driven entities, neglecting critical safety and quality controls. President Obama's inadequate federal response and successive Michigan administrations' culpability resulted in a combination of political negligence and deliberate actions all to avoid setting a costly precedent of government intervention.  


Lest we relax into the belief that such crises are incidental and rare, be warned. Privatization is on an upward trajectory. The people’s health and safety interfere with profits and in the US, profit reigns supreme.  


This episode offers a detailed portrayal of environmental racism, the perils of unchecked corporate power, and how both government and media support these atrocities. 


Jordan Chariton, Status Coup CEO, is an independent progressive journalist who has worked inside and outside the belly of the corporate media beast for over a decade. He worked at Fox, MSNBC, and TYT, before starting Status Coup. He is the author of the newly published book, “We the Poisoned: Exposing the Flint Water Crisis Cover-up and the Poisoning of 100,000 Americans.” 


@JordanChariton on Twitter 

@StatusCoup

The Poisoning Of America With Jordan Chariton

When people reject the concept of degrowth are they suggesting society continue to allow capital to ravage the earth? Are they saying the countries of the global North should continue exploiting and extracting from the global South? Are they pushing for more growth? 

Steve’s guest, Erin Remblance is an Australian researcher and activist who was spurred into action six years ago when the IPCC released their special report on global warming of 1.5°C. Since then, Erin has been creating courses, events, and materials that address the crises and work toward solutions.  

Erin and Steve discuss degrowth, a planned reduction in energy and material throughput to maintain ecological balance. (Throughput, for those unfamiliar with the term, is defined as “the amount of material or items passing through a system or process.”) 

The episode goes into the systemic issues of capitalism, which increasingly commodifies all areas of our lives in its relentless pursuit of growth.  

“The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” Robert F. Kennedy, 1968, included in Erin’s slide presentation, An Introduction to Degrowth 

Follow Erin Remblance and find her work on LinkedIn, Substack, and Twitter: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/erin-remblance/ 
https://erinremblance.substack.com/ 
https://twitter.com/remblance_erin 
https://the-healthy-habits-accelerator.circle.so/c/start-here/the-rules

Degrowth Through Social Movements With Erin Remblance

Despite campaign promises by Trump to support Social Security, he has nominated Dr. Oz to head the agency over Social Security and Medicare; Oz, a man who owns over a half million dollars worth of Medicare Advantage stock. In the group's recent paper "Republicans Are Already Breaking Trump’s Promise to Protect Social Security", Social Security Works talks about a number of ways Social Security and Medicare are already being sabotaged.

Buzz - 11 - 20 - 24 - Linda - Benesch

This week on the Global Research News Hour, we examine the agendas of the billionaire tech pros behind the Trump administration and see that there is a heck of a lot more to be worried about than what has been recently reported in the legacu media. In our first hour we will have a conversation with the author, journalist and the co-founder of the Dailyclout Naomi Wolf about the digital theft Elon Musk perpetrated at the end of January and the repercussions for the public in America and abroad. Then in our second half hour, UK author and journalist Iain Davis joins us to talk about his latest series of articles entitled The Dark MAGA Gov-Corp Technate, which alleges that the wealthy Tech lords standing in the shadows behind him are using their positions to further goals toward a Technocratic future, whether Trump is aware of it or not.


Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Who Serves Whom? A Technocratic Future.

In her recent study "Who Would Pay the Biggest Price for Postal Privatization?" for the Institute for Policy Studies, Global Economy Project Director Sarah Anderson provided a careful analysis of the pros (spoiler alert, there are none) and cons of privatization of the USPS, which Trump has drafted an executive order as recently as February and which was approved by Musk last month. Anderson's study showed that rural customers will bear surcharges costs, as they do for UPS and FedEx, and also with less competition for price competition with the void of the USPS, other private carriers will be emboldened to increase prices.

buzz-4-30-25-Sarah-Anderson

A nomeação do Papa foi política? Será pró-LGBT? Ou esta questão não faz sentido, pelo maniqueísmo que transporta? Não terão sido os Papas mais recentes políticos? No limite, as greves da CP não serão contraproducentes? A privatização resolveria o problema? Ao ter deixado passar o cartaz, os tribunais portugueses permitem que o Chega suba mais patamares? A presença de Lula em Moscovo gera vergonha alheia?

Ep. 258 - O novo Papa; Greves selvagens da CP; Cartaz do Chega; A parada de Putin

No Cure for the Greed is a raw, roots-driven protest anthem that pulls back the curtain on America’s broken healthcare system. With verses built on real stories of denial and betrayal, and a chorus that cries out with gospel defiance, the track weaves folk, blues, and soul into a call-to-action. It names the lawmakers, indicts the profiteers, and delivers a blistering spoken word indictment of political complicity. At its core, it demands what should never have been negotiable: that healthcare is a human right. 
“Bernie was right. Universal healthcare is a right.”

No Cure for the Greed

Interview by Simon and Thierry Leonis with Philippine, Flavie, Leen, , Simon and Fady One.

Although the event was initially denied authorization, the request was resubmitted as a demonstration, which was then approved by the police.

On the agenda: DJ sets by the Women Do It Better collective, broadcast by Radio Vibration, a friendly bar, and a defiant, activist atmosphere.

The organizers are calling for citizens to reclaim public space.
“We’ll make as much noise as necessary to denounce the increasing privatization of public space, which is now being taken over by commercial interests or by the City itself under the guise of vague calls for projects,” the non-profit stated.

https://bruxelles.substack.com/p/the-peaceful-gathering-began-at-5

Podcast Protest Piknik Elektronik - Vibration FM

From flower child to frontline. I write protest anthems that call out injustice, awaken courage, and remember the country we once believed in. Barking Justice Music is my rebellion.

FreshEd is a weekly podcast that makes complex ideas in educational research easily understood. Five shows. Three languages. 

Airs Monday.

Visit us at www.FreshEdpodcast.com

Twitter: @FreshEdPodcast

All FreshEd Podcasts are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Listener-sponsored, volunteer-powered, noncommercial community radio broadcasting to south-central Wisconsin at 89.9 FM and online at wortfm.org via our studios in Madison. 

We provide an outlet for communication, education, free expression, entertainment, training and access for the purpose of sharing music, information, news, and cultural experiences, and strive to give people underrepresented elsewhere in traditional media a voice. 

NOTE: Most of the content posted at this time are news stories or talk shows. 

MUSICIANS:  We NEVER look on our SoundCloud for music submissions, so it's not a very efficient way to contact us. Please go to www.wortfm.org and click on Music --> Music Submissions for our submission info and guidelines. Thanks and we look forward to hearing your music!

Founded in 1968, Reason is the planet's leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. Our podcast offerings include:

The Reason Roundtable
Every Monday, the libertarian editors of the magazine of “Free Minds and Free Markets”—Matt Welch, Nick Gillespie, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Peter Suderman—discuss and debate the week’s biggest stories and what fresh hell awaits us all.

The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie
Want to know what comes next in politics, culture, and libertarian ideas? Reason’s Nick Gillespie hosts relentlessly interesting interviews with the activists, artists, authors, entrepreneurs, newsmakers, and politicians who are defining the 21st century.

The Soho Forum Debates
Reason presents a libertarian-themed debate series recorded monthly before a live audience in New York City. Moderated by former Barron's Economics Editor Gene Epstein, the Soho Forum features Nobel prize winners, radical thinkers, and other public intellectuals facing off over the future of bitcoin, veganism, sex work, illegal drugs, electric vehicles, abortion, robotics, government debt, and other controversial topics.

Macroeconomics has never been so ... delish!  Macro and Cheese explores the progressive movement through the lens of Modern Monetary Theory, with hot and irreverent political takes, spotlights in activism, and the razor sharp musings of Real Progressives Founder and host Steve Grumbine.  The cheese will flow as experts come in for a full, four course deep dive into the hot queso. 

Comfort Food for Thought!

Fady One – Producer, DJ, Curator & Promoter
Based between Brussels and Ostend, Fady One has spent over a decade carving a unique path at the intersection of civic engagement, musical creation, and artistic mentorship. She is a producer, DJ, curator, and promoter, notably for Piknik Elektronik and Zukunft, and manages the independent label Piknik Elektronik Records.

Renowned for her percussive, hybrid, and deep sets, she has performed worldwide — from Paris to Hamburg, Bali to Singapore, New York to India — in clubs and on radio. She has introduced audiences to major artists such as Max Cooper, Rone, Parra for Cuva, Traumer, and Kollektiv Turmstrasse, while continuously supporting independent music scenes.

In recent years, Fady One has deliberately focused on community-driven and inclusive projects. She channels her energy into Piknik Elektronik, her independent label, and her latest productions, including Ayisha and the hypnotic Heartbreak Desert remix. She performs exclusively at events she curates or organizes, guided by an ethical, open-source, and collaborative approach — reflecting her software R&D work on decentralization, transparency, and collective autonomy.
Collaboration info@piknikelektronik.com

A realidade a partir de um triângulo que foi vergonha e hoje é Orgulho. Político, sempre. Cultural e Social, quando nos apetecer. Comunitário e atrevido, se estivermos para isso. Um podcast sem linhas de formatação, mas com todas as formas da diversidade.

Correio dos Ouvintes: darkroom@triangulacaodocirculo.pt

New tracks tagged #privatization