Beautiful Day is a feel good, uplifting pop rock song that serves as a reminder to all of us that it is always possible to be optimistic.

Its a Beautiful Day

Its A Beautiful Day

CORRECTED DESCRIPTION 13 May 2024

This is a piece created by Duncan Chapman from recordings of forced rhubarb growing at David Westwood & Son rhubarb farm, near Wakefield. You can hear the rhubarb buds popping as they burst and also some mud as we squelched around in the dark. The audio has been cleaned up as much as possible to remove the sound of both the M62 and M1 motorways which are nearby!

A mass of popping rhubarb - forced rhubarb growing at DWS Farm

Dorothy Roberts is an award-winning author and expert on the interplay of gender, race, and class in legal issues concerning reproduction, bioethics, and child welfare. She is a professor of law and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Chuck Mertz interviews Roberts about her latest book, TORN APART: How the child welfare system destroys black families—and how abolition can build a safer world. 

TORN APART available Now at Basic Books https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/dorothy-roberts/torn-apart/9781541675445/

Family Policing Punishes Poor Families and Protects White Supremacy  / Dorothy Roberts

This song was inspired by gangster and florist Charles Dean O'Banion (shot dead in his flower shop on November 10, 1924) and the long defunct Chicago punk bar named after him.

Blood On The Roses (remix)

Chuck is out of action this week COVID, so we are featuring past interviews with upcoming guests who all have new books coming out on the days we are scheduled to interview them in upcoming weeks. Today's episode features two listener-favorite historians. First up is Quinn Slobodian on his 2023 book "Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy." Greg Grandin follows with a discussion of his Pulitzer Prize-winning 2020 book "The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America."

A classic Moment of Truth with Jeff Dorchen follows the interview.

Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisishell

Chuck has Covid pt. 2: Technoauthoritarian Frontiers / Quinn Slobodian & Greg Grandin

Released on Linear Obsessional's free download label, my album The Terminal Beach was first conceived in the early 80's.  It is a personal story as much as an attempt to capture JG Ballard's short story.  

A man maroons himself upon a former nuclear test atoll in the Pacific.  The small landscape is festooned with concrete structures.  Lakes, bunkers and two thousand blocks.  Wrecked bombers and more structures than even Ballard gets time to write about.  A story written in the shadow of the cold war, it perfectly captured who and what I was in my early 20's.  Come with me here, and see the sights?

Chuck has Covid pt. 2: Technoauthoritarian Frontiers / Quinn Slobodian & Greg Grandin

This Is Hell!

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