podcast review

It’s true, a lot of us love true crime. We love the mystery, we love the stakes, and perhaps most of all, we are utterly captivated by the depths of depravity people seem capable of. You may be one of those people that can’t get enough analysis of some really nasty folks. You may also have run out of satisfying podcasts in that subject area. You may simply be interested in hearing about horrible people.

I remember the first episode of Revolutionary Left Radio that I listened to. It was released on May 31, 2020, six days after the murder of George Floyd, entitled “America on Fire.” It is 38 minutes of white- hot revolutionary anger spit like fire from the mouth of Brett O’Shea, the host of the show, who primarily conducts interviews with radicals from a global range of backgrounds and interests, engaged in every struggle being waged by the international left today: from Wobblies in the US to Palestinian activists in the West Bank and Naxalite militants in India.

I started listening to the YIKES podcast during quarantine when my understanding of environmentalism was a lot less intersectional than it is now. I believed that environmental disasters were the fault of individuals and that it was everyone’s “job” to make individual changes. Particularly, my previous beliefs surrounding environmentalism were white-centered. I thought everyone could go vegan, zero waste, or off-grid if they really wanted to. The YIKES podcast pushed me to evaluate my perspective and is continuing to help me unlearn a lot of the beliefs I had previously held.