675 episodes

Journalists tell you what you’re missing from the mainstream news. Co-hosted by award-winning journalists Maria Hinojosa and Julio Ricardo Varela, IN THE THICK has the conversations about race, identity and politics few people are discussing or want to discuss.

In The Thick Futuro Media and PRX

    • News

Journalists tell you what you’re missing from the mainstream news. Co-hosted by award-winning journalists Maria Hinojosa and Julio Ricardo Varela, IN THE THICK has the conversations about race, identity and politics few people are discussing or want to discuss.

    Gov. Wes Moore on Redefining Patriotism, from TIME’s Person of The Week

    Gov. Wes Moore on Redefining Patriotism, from TIME’s Person of The Week

    This week, we’re sharing something special from our friends over at TIME. It’s a preview of their first original podcast, Person of the Week. Each week, TIME Senior Correspondent Charlotte Alter hosts candid conversations with the people who shape the world, about the forces that shape them.

    In this episode, Maryland Governor Wes Moore dives deep into the heart of patriotism, unpacking the often-misunderstood term, the symbolism of the American flag and what it means to be an American in today's changing world.

    Listen to more episodes of Person of the Week here.

    • 11 min
    A Message for Our Listeners

    A Message for Our Listeners

    Maria checks in with an important update about In The Thick. Your favorite political podcast is taking a break for the rest of 2023. While we won't be releasing any new episodes during this hiatus, all of our previous episodes are still available on your podcast feeds. We’ll be restructuring and coming up with something new and better than ever as we get ready for our 2024 election coverage!


    And we want to hear from you, dear listener. Reach out to us on social media and let us know what you’d like to see on the show in the coming year.

    Peace for now– but we’ll be back. No te vayas!

    • 2 min
    AI Is Not What You Think

    AI Is Not What You Think

    In this episode, we’re unpacking AI. Julio is joined by Karen Hao, contributing writer for The Atlantic focusing on AI, to talk about the human impact of the rapidly evolving technology and what it means to decolonize AI. 

    ITT Staff Picks: 


    Rebecca Tan and Regine Cabato report on the “digital sweatshops” across the Global South, where workers have to sort and label data for AI models, in this article for the Washington Post. 
    “Many creative types are wrestling with the credit conundrum and questions around copyright when it comes to making use of content that has been trained on original illustrations, graphics, and written material,” writes Ko Bragg, in this article for The Markup.
    Prosecutors from across the US are asking lawmakers to create a commission to study the impacts of AI on child exploitation, reports Meg Kinnard for The Associated Press.


    Photo credit: AP Photo/Richard Drew

    • 26 min
    A Pivotal Moment in American Labor

    A Pivotal Moment in American Labor

    Futuro Media is taking a short summer break, so we’re sharing an episode from 2022, where Maria and Julio talk with Kim Kelly, labor journalist and author of “Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor,” about the history of labor organizing in the United States and what it says about the labor movement today. They also discuss how women of color have been at the forefront of these movements.


    Photo credit: AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez

    • 33 min
    The Party of Authoritarianism

    The Party of Authoritarianism

    Julio and guest co-host Fernanda Santos kick off the show with some of the latest news, including the first Republican 2024 presidential debate, and an update on extreme climate across the globe. In our roundtable, Mike German, fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program, joins Maria and Julio to talk about why people of color join white supremacist movements, and how authoritarianism in the Republican Party is nothing new. 

    ITT Staff Picks: 


    As the GOP presidential debates make their premiere in Milwaukee, Jeanne Whalen reports on Donald Trump’s failure to make good on a promise of bringing a manufacturing boom to Wisconsin, in this piece for the Washington Post. 
    The deadly fires in Maui reveal the danger of compounding climate events. Emily Pontecorvo writes, “While the precise relationship between the fires, the hurricane, and climate change has yet to be determined, these kinds of “compound” events are likely to increase in a warming world, with consequences that are hard to predict,” in this article for Heatmap. 
    Mike German answers nuanced questions in this Spanish-language Q&A with editor-in-chief of Brennan en Español, Mireya Navarro.


    Photo credit: AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall

    • 29 min
    Oppenheimer’s Nuclear Colonialism

    Oppenheimer’s Nuclear Colonialism

    Maria and Julio discuss the indictment of Donald Trump and his allies in Georgia, and the devastating fires in Maui. Then, we share a recent episode of Latino Rebels Radio. Julio talks to Myrriah Gómez, associate professor at the University of New Mexico, about the film “Oppenheimer” and its omission of New Mexican history in the creation of the atomic bomb.

    ITT Staff Picks:


    “Trevian Kutti, a former publicist for rappers Ye (Kanye West) and R-Kelly, is named as a co-defendant in the sprawling RICO case against Trump and his allies. Charged with three felony offenses, Kutti is accused of participating in the overarching criminal enterprise to subvert the election, as well as conspiring “to solicit, request, and importune Ruby Freeman, a Fulton County, Georgia, election worker, to engage in conduct constituting the felony offense,” writes Nikki McCann Ramirez in this article for Rolling Stone.
    Mitch Smith and Kellen Browning talked to some of the families of people that are still missing in Hawaii, in this article for The New York Times.
    Myrriah Gómez writes about how the Manhattan Project negatively impacted Indigenous and Mexican communities in New Mexico, a part of the story that was conveniently left out of the movie Oppenheimer, in this article for The Latinx Project.


    Photo credit: AP Photo

    • 38 min

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