A Conversation with Peter Bebergal About How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll

Peter Bebergal is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is the author of the new book Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll. 

During this week's show, Peter and Chauncey discuss the appeal of magic and the occult for musicians and artists, the moral panics about Satanism and heavy metal music during the 1980s in America, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, as well as how African trickster figures and other cultural practices influenced black music in America and across the Black Atlantic. Peter and Chauncey also talk about digital versus analog culture and the history of pen and paper as well as tabletop role-playing games.

Friend of the podcast Jared Yates Sexton, contributing writer for publications such as The New Republic as well as The New York Times, also stops by to make his predictions (and share some concerns) about this weekend's WWE Wrestlemania 33 event. 

On this week's show, Chauncey also shares his thoughts about some new data from this year's General Social Survey which shows that Republicans still believe that black people are dumb, lazy, and stupid. During this week's podcast, Chauncey also reads the obituary of Bill Minor, a journalist and a great white brother in the Black Freedom Struggle who passed away several days ago.

This episode with Peter Bebergal can be downloaded from Libysn and also listened to here.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes, Spotify and at Stitcher.

The Chauncey DeVega Show can now be found on iHeartRadio.

A Conversation with Anti-Racism Educator and Activist Jane Elliott About the Blue-Eyed/Brown-Eyed Teaching Exercise, Racism, and the Rise of Donald Trump

Jane Elliott is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. Elliot is an anti-racism educator and activist who is most famous for her Blue-Eyed/Brown-Eyed teaching exercise.

During this week's show, Jane and Chauncey discuss Donald Trump and his racist movement, the origins of the Blue-Eyed/Brown-Eyed teaching exercise and the problem with language such as "white privilege". Jane Elliott also shares a powerful story about overcoming fear and confronting death threats.

On this week's show, Chauncey also shares his thoughts about how the Republican Party, Donald Trump and Paul Ryan want to kill the "useless eaters", the flood of developments that further implicate the Trump administration as being pawns of Vladimir Putin, and reads a personal story about the Meals on Wheels food program. During this week's podcast, Chauncey also warns the public about a child con artist who looks like Gary Coleman that scammed him out of money.

This episode with Jane Elliott can be downloaded from Libysn and also listened to here.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes and at Stitcher.

The Chauncey DeVega Show can now be found on Spotify as well.

A Conversation with Political Scientist Andrew Gelman About the 2016 Election, Mama DeVega Makes Her Return, and Jane Elliott Chimes In

This week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show features three great guests.

Political scientist and statistician Andrew Gelman is the first guest. He is a professor at Columbia University and the author of several books including Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do. He recently wrote a great piece for Slate called "19 Lessons for Political Scientists from the 2016 Election". During this week's episode, Dr. Gelman does some great teaching and sharing about the 2016 presidential election and what the so-called "smart people" got right and wrong.

Civil rights activist and educator Jane Elliott chimed in for the second segment of this week's podcast. She is most famous for her much discussed and documented Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes teaching and learning exercise from the 1960s. In the five decades since, Sister Elliot has not stopped speaking speak truth to power about the color line, prejudice, and bigotry in America and around the world. This is a preview of next week's full episode with Jane Elliott.

Mama DeVega also makes her return to The Chauncy DeVega Show. She gives thanks for the kind birthday gifts that the friends of the podcast and Chauncey DeVega sent her way. Mama DeVega and Chauncey also debate the merits of attending one's own funeral while still alive and how best to fake a death. Mama DeVega also shares a story about her encounter--or so she believes--with one of the 9-11 hijackers.

During this week's podcast, Chauncey talks about Sean Spicer's press conference where he defended Donald Trump's lies about wiretapping, the evil Trump 2018 budget and its plans to kill the "useless eaters", and gives out a "you big dummy award" to Rachel Maddow.

This episode with Andrew Gelman, Jane Elliott, and Mama DeVega can be downloaded from Libysn and also listened to here.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes and at Stitcher.

The Chauncey DeVega Show can now be found on Spotify as well.

Intelligence Expert Malcolm Nance Believes That Donald Trump Could be the Benedict Arnold of Our Times

On an almost daily basis there are new revelations about the questionable and perhaps illegal connections between President Donald Trump’s administration (and before that his campaign) and the Russian espionage apparatus under the control of Vladimir Putin. It is no longer appears to be a question of whether the Russian government actively worked to undermine or affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, but who aided it in doing so.

Trump’s short-lived national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was forced to resign because he did not disclose his contacts with Russia. In addition, Jeff Sessions, now the attorney general, met repeatedly with the Russian ambassador and known intelligence operative Sergey Kislyak. Trump campaign aides Roger Stone and Paul Manafort also had extensive contacts with the Russian government. Stone has even publicly admitted to communicating with WikiLeaks — a group known to act as a conduit for classified information — in an effort to smear Trump’s rival Hillary Clinton. And Trump and his inner circle have unknown but likely extensive financial connections to Russian banks, financiers, corporations and the Russian government.

How much damage has been caused to the American people by Trump’s Russian gambit? Most important, are Donald Trump and his advisers working in support of Russian interests and against those of the Unites States? Are they traitors? How did this all transpire?

In an effort to answer these questions, I recently spoke with Malcolm Nance, a career intelligence and counterterrorism officer for the United States government. In his more than three decades working in that capacity, Nance served with U.S. Special Operations forces, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies. He has worked in the Middle East, North Africa, the Balkans, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. A frequent guest contributor on MSNBC, Nance has authored several books, including “The Plot to Hack America: How Putin’s Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election.”

In trying to make sense of  the constant revelations about Trump’s connections to Russia, we are often hearing the truism that “the cover-up is worse than the crime.” But in this case, it seems that the public is just seeing the tip of the iceberg. 

You are absolutely correct. I think that the activities that have occurred and the thing that we’re seeing indicate a scandal on an order of magnitude greater than anything that’s occurred in the 20th century. What’s occurring now is as close to Benedict Arnold as I think we’re ever going to get in American history. It had better be because the only alternative to what we’re seeing with this information is, if it’s not espionage, then it will be the largest financial scandal in American history.

One would think that someone would have taken Trump’s associates aside and told them, about the ambassador and others, “These guys are Russian spies using diplomatic status as cover?” Did they not understand that or did they just ignore it?

You would think that the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Michael Flynn — who had his own coterie of spies, by the way — would know that. But what would override that? Only one of two things would override that. This incredible belief that you give me a boatload of money and I get a boatload of money. Then you get these incredible, unbelievable returns promised to you, and you bring in more people. That’s what we’re seeing here, in this whole crew . . . and I refer to them in my book as “the Kremlin crew” . . . in that they saw relationships with Russia and the extractive energy industries as an ATM that would make them madly wealthy beyond anything if they controlled the levers of government.

The only other way to explain it is that they ideologically bought into [the idea] that Vladimir Putin is the greatest man on Earth and that the Russian antidemocratic system and autocracy is their way of life. I can’t believe that. I think they wanted to win at all costs, and at the end of “win at all costs,” whether that meant cooperating with Russia or working with them, there was the promise of outrageous quantities of money.

Why was the mainstream American media so far behind on the story with Trump and Russia? Incompetence? Fear? Laziness?

A Conversation with Malcolm Nance About the 2016 Election, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and the Plot to Hack America

Malcolm Nance is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. Nance was a career counterterrorism and intelligence officer for the U.S. government’s Special Operations, Homeland Security, and Intelligence agencies, with over 33 years of experience in combating radical extremism. An honorably retired U.S. Navy Arabic-speaking intelligence collections operator, field interrogator, Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape specialist and founder of the Advanced Terrorism, Abduction and Hostage Survival School, he spent more than two decades on clandestine antiterrorism and counterterrorism intelligence operations in the Middle East North Africa, the Balkans, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa in direct support of the Special Operations and Intelligence Community.

He is a frequent contributor to MSNBC and other media outlets such as CNN, ABC News, FOX News, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, and Al Arabiya. Malcolm Nance is also the author of numerous books including The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election.

During this week's show Malcolm and Chauncey discuss how Vladimir Putin hacked and manipulated the 2016 presidential election as well as the United States corporate news media and Right-wing voters, map out how Donald Trump has likely been compromised by Russian intelligence agencies, the role of white supremacists such as Stephen Bannon and Sebastian Gorka in Trump's White House, spy craft, and the ways that Vladimir Putin's efforts to undermine American democracy are part of a larger global gambit.

On this week's show, Chauncey also shares his thoughts on the the new movie Logan, last week's WWE pay-per-view Fastlane,  and digs up some little known history about the role of African-American spies and other covert agents during the Civil War.

This episode with Malcolm Nance can be downloaded from Libysn and also listened to here.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes and at Stitcher.

The Chauncey DeVega Show can now be found on Spotify as well.

A Conversation with Colin Dickey About Ghosts, Hauntings and American Cultural Memory

Colin Dickey is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is the author of several books including Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places. During this week's show Chauncey and Colin channel the Art Bell show as they discuss hauntings and collective memory, why skepticism is a requirement, the Winchester ghost sightings, the TV show American Horror Story, Native American burial grounds, as well as the color line, slavery and the spectral imagination. Colin and Chauncey also debate the merits of the recent Ghostbusters reboot and the very problematic gender politics of the original film. 

During this week's podcast, Chauncey talks about his trip home to see Mama DeVega, what it was like to shoot an AR-15 at the gun range, and offers an assessment of the recent revelations about the traitors in the Trump White House. Chauncey also does a little research and shares an audio recording of a former black American slave telling the WPA project the ghost stories he learned as a child.

This episode with Colin Dickey can be downloaded from Libysn and also listened to here.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes and at Stitcher.

The Chauncey DeVega Show can now be found on Spotify as well.