Cary Harrison Files

CARY HARRISON
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Award-winning raconteur Cary Harrison cut through the noise – revealing the murky agendas behind today's headlines through uncompromising journalism, unapologetic advocacy, independent voices and a global audience with live listener call-ins shaping the conversation. caryharrison.substack.com

  1. 6 DAYS AGO

    From Cary Harrison's "MAGA History of the United States" [Part 2]:

    Disclaimer: These events are told from the viewpoint of this descendant of one of the first American families. One side came over on the Mayflower; the other to colonize for the crown, participate (on both sides) in the Revolutionary War, had Lincoln as an ancestor on one side; slavers on the other, Quakers, quaffers, and a cabal of creatives from TV, movie-making to radio. Chapter 10: Founding Fathers — Enlightenment Thinkers with Slaves and Syphilis The American Revolution didn’t just create a nation—it kicked off one of history’s most ambitious rebranding campaigns. Men like Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison—names etched into currency and concrete—crafted a republic from scratch using Enlightenment ideals, French wine, hookers and, where necessary, a flexible definition of hypocrisy. They talked about liberty, of course. Endlessly. Liberty was the word of the day, the week, the whole century. But the liberty they spoke of was a very exclusive club—strictly gentlemen only. Membership required land, whiteness, and an aversion to paying taxes unless you were the one collecting them. Let’s begin with Thomas Jefferson, the man who penned “all men are created equal” with one hand while cradling a whip in the other. He owned over 600 enslaved people throughout his life, including Sally Hemings, a woman he legally owned and personally impregnated—several times. Enlightened? Maybe. Consensual? Less so. Jefferson was also deeply conflicted about slavery—but in the same way a man is “conflicted” about eating meat while grilling a steak. He wrote pages on the moral rot of bondage... but kept the plantation running because, well, Monticello wasn’t going to weed itself. George Washington, the general who would not be king, had wooden teeth, which were not actually wood but rather harvested from the teeth of enslaved people. He freed his slaves in his will—after he died—a final gesture of conscience best described as too little, slightly too late. And then there’s Ben Franklin, the jolly polymath who did everything from inventing bifocals to founding libraries to allegedly contracting syphilis in every available French salon. He started out owning slaves, then had a political epiphany late in life—roughly around the time it became fashionable in Philadelphia to pretend you were an abolitionist. When I was around 13, I met my grandparent’s neighbor (in Englewood Florida), Benjamin Franklin VIII. This later ancestor had the Franklin family Bible which listed in the back Pages the pounds and shillings the original Ben had earned as one of the world’s greatest “Whoremasters”, running his brothel in Philadelphia. It was around that time that I also read this astounding Founding Daddys’ autobiography which was seminal in helping me develop critical thinking skills and lofty opinions. Alexander Hamilton, Broadway’s tragic antihero, did not own slaves personally—unless you count the human beings his in-laws owned, whom he occasionally rented. A technicality, perhaps, but not exactly the stuff of moral high ground. He opposed slavery, mostly, but also opposed doing anything practical about it. James Madison, the so-called Father of the Constitution, was five foot four, owned over 100 slaves, and spent his life talking about the delicate balance between liberty and tyranny while sitting comfortably atop the heads of the enslaved. These men gathered in Philadelphia, drafted documents with florid calligraphy and righteous tone, and created a government “by the people, for the people”—so long as “the people” excluded women, Black people, Native Americans, and anyone without property. They codified freedom with such straight-faced earnestness, you’d almost forget half of them died surrounded by unpaid laborers and unpaid debts. Yet, despite all this, they built something lasting. That’s the American contradiction: the same men who drew the blueprint for democracy also nailed shut the door on half the population. And we’ve been living in that contradiction ever since—calling it freedom while debating who counts. We honor the Founding Fathers not because they were perfect—but because they were flawed and audacious. Enlightenment thinkers with plantation schedules. Syphilitic philosophers who wrote sonnets to freedom and then foreclosed on it. They were brilliant, brave, and ambitious. And yet, what they started was real. Fragile. Glorious. Hypocritical as hell (depending on who you are). But real. So here’s to the Fathers of the Nation: * Enlightened, but not fully awake. * Principled, until the mortgage came due. * And forever inscribed in history—warts, wigs, whips, and all. Chapter 10a: REVOLUTION! Tea, Tantrums, and the Guillotine (or, “How America Declared Independence and France Picked Up the Bill”) Let’s dispense with the powdered wigs and patriotic incense right up front: this was not a revolution. This was a colonial meltdown—a fiscal hissy fit with muskets. King George nudged the tea tax, and Boston promptly hallucinated itself as Sparta. One tariff hike and suddenly every dockworker was quoting Locke like they’d been born in a philosophy seminar instead of a rum-soaked warehouse. “No taxation without representation!” they screamed—while owning human beings, denying women a pulse, and keeping “representation” chained in the shed behind the house with the livestock. Liberty, it turns out, was very selective. A boutique freedom. Invite-only. George III, meanwhile, was genuinely confused. And frankly, that’s fair. He’d acquired the colonies the traditional European way: conquest, paperwork, and the casual spilling of blood. To him, America wasn’t oppressed—it was ungrateful. A loud, acne-ridden adolescent who ate at the table, slept under the roof, and then tried to stab Dad because allowance negotiations went poorly. So imagine his delight when that adolescent torched the family silver, dumped perfectly good tea into the harbor like a drunken frat stunt, and ran off with France—specifically a teenage aristocrat named Lafayette, who had the enthusiasm of a golden retriever and the battlefield experience of a dinner guest. Ah yes. France. Enter the sugar daddy. History’s most expensive bad decision. France didn’t back the American rebellion out of love for liberty. That’s the bedtime story. France backed it because England was bleeding, and Versailles smelled opportunity the way a shark smells blood—except this shark wore silk stockings and had zero concept of budgeting. Ships, guns, gold, soldiers, credit—France handed it all over, chanting “liberty” while meaning “anything that humiliates Britain.” And America took it. Smiled. Wrote pamphlets. Declared destiny. France, meanwhile, forgot to feed its own people. Versailles glittered like a jewelry store during a famine. Powdered wigs towered over empty bread baskets. The treasury collapsed. The peasants noticed. And while Americans toasted freedom with borrowed French wine, France stared at the bill and whispered, Mon Dieu… we have funded our own execution. Which brings us to the French Revolution—history’s most aggressive refund request. Because nothing radicalizes a population faster than watching someone else get a revolution delivered express while you starve in line for bread. So France decided: fine. We’ll have liberty too. And we’ll have it now. With steel. Enter the guillotine—designed by a doctor who promised it was painless, humane, and efficient. This was technically true, which is a cold comfort when your head is being introduced to physics. The blade fell. And fell. And fell again. Kings, queens, aristocrats, moderates, nuns, radicals—anyone who blinked at the wrong moment got the haircut of destiny. Louis XVI—the generous idiot who helped bankroll American independence—couldn’t escape without tripping over his own incompetence. Caught in disguise. Beheaded. Marie Antoinette followed. Then everyone else. Robespierre climbed atop the pile of corpses, screamed about virtue, and proceeded to continue to murder the French into moral purity. Eventually, they murdered him too. Equality achieved. Across the Atlantic, the Americans were busy congratulating themselves and drafting a Constitution—a brilliant document if you were white, male, land-rich, and breathing calmly. “All men are created equal,” they wrote, while quietly adding footnotes in chains. Freedom had arrived, but it came with exclusions, exemptions, and a lifetime warranty for hypocrisy. King George lost the colonies and then his grip on reality. Talked to trees. Appointed them to office. Given later developments, this may have been prophetic. And France? France got liberté, égalité, decades of terror, a general (Napoleon) who crowned himself emperor, and a national personality disorder that still flares up every few years. All because it helped a newborn republic that believed freedom meant no taxes, full autonomy, and someone else eating the cost. So when you celebrate the “Spirit of ’76,” raise your glass high—but not too high. Toast the bankrupt kings. The headless nobles. The peasants who paid with their bodies. And the nation that mistook America’s tantrum for a universal moral awakening. Liberty is a lovely word. But it’s never free. Someone always pays. And this time, France paid— with interest, penalties, and a blade. Chapter 10b: Checks, Balances, and the Sudden Rise of People Who Can’t Read After our revolution, the Constitution was engineered with the delicacy of a Swiss watch and the cynicism of men who had already been betrayed by friends, kings, and human nature itself. It assumed that power attracts idiots the way manure attracts flies, and it prepared accordingly. And then America handed it to the flies. The Founders, in their powdered wigs and terminal distrust of mankind, built a system so layered with rest

    58 min

  2. 29/11/2025

    The Pilgrims: God’s Least Enjoyable Party Guests

    Disclaimer: These events are told from the viewpoint of this descendent of one of the first American families. We settled in Maryland. I’ve just returned from Holland, where the pilgrims spent 12 little-known years before going back to England to then head to the New World. I spent the summer tracing the deranged footsteps of our ancestor pilgrims. Chapter 1: How to Flee Every Country Until You Finally Find One Without Neighbors History insists the Pilgrims were paragons of virtue: earnest, long-faced saints trudging forth to build God’s vacation home in the wilderness. That’s the brochure version. The truth? They were a wandering sack of wheezing moral carbuncles who drank like condemned sailors and lectured like unpaid interns of the Inquisition. These were my ancestors—on my mother’s side—proof that genetics carru a sense of humor. They weren’t “religious refugees”; they were walking noise complaints. England didn’t persecute them—it quietly changed the locks. Their first stop on the global Tour of Being Unbearable was Amsterdam, a city that could tolerate anything: hash smoke, sailors with questionable piercings, anarchists juggling flaming pamphlets, and the odor of a million pickled herrings. Yet even Amsterdam—the spiritual capital of “do what you want, just don’t bleed on the furniture”—took one whiff of the Pilgrims’ sanctimony and said, with Dutch politeness, “F*ck No!” The Dutch, who could peacefully co-exist with Catholics, Jews, prostitutes, philosophers, and windmills—all at the same dinner table—took one look at the scowling God Squad and collectively wondered whether Spanish rule might’ve been the better deal. So the Pilgrims lurched onward to Leiden, a lovely scholarly town unprepared for the arrival of Calvinist mildew. Leiden welcomed them with open arms and closed nostrils. “Yes, come in,” said the locals, “start your linen shops, enrich our culture—please, diversify our gene pool! We beg you.” Twelve years later, the same townspeople were reconsidering every decision they had ever made. The Pilgrims refused to learn Dutch, refused to experience joy, and refused to let their children become anything other than junior-grade killjoys. They looked upon Leiden—a quiet university haven with cobbled streets and excellent cheese—and declared it another Sodom, only better organized. So Leiden, in an act of refined civic mercy, escorted them to the exit. Probably with a nice loaf of bread and a pair of wooden shoes to speed their departure. “Thank you for your enthusiastic hostility,” the Dutch likely said. “Please never return. The tulips fear you.” And so, having exhausted the patience of the most tolerant society in Europe, the Pilgrims gazed across the Atlantic—toward a continent where nobody yet knew them, and thus nobody had told them to go away. It must have felt like destiny. It was, in fact, the last refuge for people so irritating that even world champions of tolerance issued a restraining order. Thus these morally inflamed scarecrows boarded the Mayflower and set out to build a land where they could finally be free: Free to punish everyone else for existing. And that is how a band of joy-proof religious auditors fled every civilized country that asked them to leave, only to plant their flag in someone else’s backyard and call the whole thing “liberty.” Chapter 2 — The Great Retreat: How the Pilgrims Fled Holland, Sank a Ship, Terrorized Two Ports, and Still Somehow Made It to America Leaving Leiden wasn’t a “fresh start.” It was an act of pest control. After twelve excruciating years of Puritan spiritual pollution—thick, choking clouds of sanctimony drifting over canals like Calvinist smog—the Dutch finally broke. This is a nation that tolerates everything: weed, prostitution, anarchists riding bicycles naked, and tourists from Ohio. But even they have limits, and those limits were reached the moment the Pilgrims refused to smile, assimilate, or shut up. Amsterdam had already tried to shake them off like a wet umbrella.Leiden lasted longer, because Leiden is polite.But eventually even its famously calm citizens agreed that living near the Pilgrims felt like attending a 12-year funeral for someone who wasn’t dead yet. The message was universal, unmistakable, and delivered with a complimentary pair of wooden shoes: “Please leave before morale collapses and the windmills unionize.” So the Pilgrims waddled down to Delfshaven to board the Speedwell, a ship whose very name was an act of historical satire. This pathetic little craft looked less like a vessel of destiny and more like the punishment a shipwright receives for being drunk at work. If the Speedwell had been an animal, the humane thing would have been to put it down. But no — the Pilgrims climbed aboard, packing it with their belongings, their grievances, and enough religious judgment to sink the Spanish Armada. Enter: The Speedwell’s Suicide Attempts Before they even cleared the harbor, the Speedwell began leaking like a colander with a drinking problem. The Pilgrims prayed, naturally. The ship begged for death. Water poured in. Psalms poured out. Neither effort improved conditions. Still, the Pilgrims declared it a “test from God,” because God, apparently, was a part-time ship inspector with a grudge. They tried again. The Speedwell began hemorrhaging water with biblical enthusiasm.It didn’t just leak — it exorcised itself. By the time they limped into Plymouth, the crew had had enough. Forced to endure a week trapped with human fogbanks who believed smiling was idolatry, the sailors whispered what everyone already suspected: The Speedwell wasn’t broken. The crew tried to kill it. On purpose. Sabotage was not just understandable — it was heroic. Imagine sailing across the Atlantic while being forced to listen to men who believe dancing leads to eternal damnation. Sabotaging the ship wasn’t wrongdoing. It was a mercy killing. The Pilgrims Respond in Their Favorite Way: Blame Reality Eventually the Pilgrims realized the truth: * The Speedwell was not seaworthy. * The crew hated them. * God was clearly trying to keep them in Europe. * Literally every sign pointed to “stay home.” Naturally, they ignored all of this. They sold the Speedwell to some unlucky fool, then squeezed the entire congregation of frostbitten zealots onto the Mayflower — transforming a single ship into a floating monastery of despair. There they were:102 sour-faced fundamentalists, one leaky ship, zero self-awareness, and an entire ocean worth of people praying they’d never come back. And England’s Reaction? England watched them leave the way a landlord watches rats crawl into someone else’s apartment. A sigh of relief so deep it disturbed local weather patterns. And thus the journey began— Not by courage, not by divine command, not by destiny,but because two nations screamed “NO” loudly enough that the Pilgrims mistook it for a call to adventure. Chapter 2a: What the English Thought When the Pilgrims Came Back Begging for a Boat—Or—”Look Who’s Crawling Back in a Doublet” And so, America’s great founding myth didn’t begin with trumpets, angels, or divine revelation.It began—quite predictably—in a pub that smelled like God’s armpit after a long jog. England at the time was a cheerful penal colony masquerading as a kingdom. Criticize the king’s haircut and you could lose your head. Criticize his theology and you could lose the rest. Privacy was a rumor; dignity was a luxury reserved for people whose shoes weren’t infested with mildew. The monarchy owned its subjects the way a butcher owns hogs—completely, unromantically, and with dinner plans. Into this fragrant swamp of monarchy and misery waddled the Pilgrims—professional buzzkills, spiritual hall monitors, faces puckered by decades of religious constipation. Rain lashed the thatched roofs of Rotherhithe as they sloshed into the Mayflower Pub, a tavern so foul it could’ve been designated a public health hazard by a blind inspector. Inside, the air was a swirling cocktail of stale beer, boiled cabbage, wet wool, human sadness, and an undertone that suggested several of the walls had once been alive. The floor clung to boots like a spurned lover. The tables had not been cleaned since before the invention of hope. Even the rats in the doorway took one look and muttered, “No thanks.” At a beer-stained plank masquerading as furniture sat the future founders of the United States—each one looking as if God had personally insulted their mother. It's important to point out that they weren't simply sitting among sloshing ale, they were sloshing it themselves, right down their gullets. Bradford, hunched over his mug, wore the expression of a man preparing to sue heaven for breach of contract.Brewster looked pinched and puckered, as if he had been clenching his theology since birth.Winslow, too young to know better but too Puritan to enjoy life, brooded like an apprentice undertaker. Nearby, the pub “ladies” loitered—corseted veterans of the local economy—one sporting a loose bosom crowned by a wiry mole so proud and defiant it deserved representation in Parliament. Then in thundered Miles Standish—a compact, muscular storm cloud whose natural resting state was “actively suppressing rebellion.” He walked into every room as though preparing to stab it. Chapter 3: The Mayflower Pub Conspiracy The gloom at the table was the kind of oppressive atmosphere found only at funerals and Puritan birthday parties. Their conversation dripped with familiar grievances: dancing (wicked), bishops (gaudy), taxation (constant), windows (immoral), sunlight (suspicious), smiling (heresy). England, they agreed, had become an unholy carnival run by perfumed popinjays and clerics wearing hats large enough to provide shade for livestock. Taxes had grown so absurd that, had

    1 hr

  3. 17/11/2025

    America on the Brink: Greg Mello Reads the Warning Signs

    Why Upgrade? Now that government funding has been snipped like a spaniel’s scrotum, many of us public radio vets will continue to provide unfiltered insight, irony, and the kind of “why” reporting that refuses to kiss power’s ring. Corporate coffers can’t buy integrity, but your subscription can. You ever wake up, stretch, and realize the nation’s steering wheel is now in the hands of a man I’ll politely call His Imperial Kumquat — only to discover he’s steering with his elbows while juggling nuclear policy with the enthusiasm of a drunk circus clown? You have? Good. Then you’re already ahead of the curve. Because Washington DC — Our Leadership, the Dowager Empress of the Ballroom — has once again graced you with a spectacle so grand, so operatic, so deeply stupid, it makes the Roman Senate look like a Montessori school. We’re now living in a country where “nuclear testing” is tossed around with the same seriousness as a TikTok dance challenge, except this time the challenge is not to see who can get more likes but who can vaporize fewer cities. And the punchline? We’re told not to worry — because apparently nobody actually asked for nuclear explosions. No, no. His Imperial Kumquat simply suggested we should test things “on an equal basis” with Russia and China. Like it’s a bake-off. Like he wants to make sure our mushroom clouds rise at the same elegant angle as theirs. Meanwhile Russia’s out there test-driving nuclear-powered doomsday toys — a cruise missile that apparently runs on Chernobyl fumes and whatever dignity the Kremlin has left, and a torpedo that sounds like something a Bond villain ordered off Etsy. And China? They haven’t popped one since the last time fax machines were still considered cutting-edge. But that hasn’t stopped Washington DC from panting like a bulldog left in the sun too long, insisting we need to “keep up.” Of course, those boring, sober people known as “scientists” — you know, the ones who prefer math over swagger — keep reminding us that actual nuclear explosive testing is obsolete. Not just unnecessary, but the policy equivalent of duct-taping a lit match to a can of hairspray and calling it “innovation.” But the bureaucratic pyromaniacs in Washington DC have already burned through treaties like they were old parking tickets. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty? Torn up.The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty? Dumpstered.Non-Proliferation obligations? Misplaced somewhere under the national couch. And just when you thought the grown-ups might reclaim the room, we get a “first use” doctrine floated like an idea on a bar napkin. The Dowager Empress of the Ballroom doesn’t just move the goalposts — she burns them down, salts the earth, and then quietly leases the land to a defense contractor. And all the while, quietly in the background, the United States bombs Iranian facilities like it’s ordering a side of fries. Israel — a country that allegedly, officially, absolutely does not have nuclear weapons (wink), is right there helping out, while Washington DC does a little two-step pretending not to notice the nuclear arsenal behind the curtain. Into this circus wanders a man who has spent his life studying nuclear policy like a fire marshal studying a rave thrown inside a fireworks warehouse. He’s the executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group. He’s taught science, commanded hazardous materials incidents, led environmental crackdowns, lectured at Princeton, and probably forgotten more about radioactive stupidity than Washington DC has ever known. He’s watched Washington set its own eyebrows on fire so many times that at this point he’s just checking to see if they’ll finally commit to roasting the whole head. You know him.You’ve probably read him.Today, we rely on him. Greg Mello. Why Upgrade? Now that government funding has been yanked, many of us public radio vets will continue to provide unfiltered insight, irony, and the kind of “why” reporting that refuses to kiss power’s ring. Corporate coffers can’t buy integrity, but your subscription can. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

    27 min

  4. 17/11/2025

    Karel: Surviving the 70s, Outsmarting the 2020s

    Why Upgrade? Now that government funding has been snipped like a spaniel’s scrotum, many of us public radio vets will continue to provide unfiltered insight, irony, and the kind of “why” reporting that refuses to kiss power’s ring. Corporate coffers can’t buy integrity, but your subscription can. If Hollywood and Washington DC had a love child during a blackout, it’d still be less chaotic and more predictable than Karel Bouley. This is a man who started life wanting to be Streisand, got slapped with a tuba instead, and decided, “Fine, I’ll just conquer every medium known to man.” And he did — drag bars, dance floors, newsrooms, red carpets, radio booths — leaving a trail of stunned employers and confused bigots who still don’t understand what hit them. While Our Leadership was busy setting new records for national embarrassment, Karel was out there actually accomplishing things: singing with legends, photographing icons, rewriting California law after his partner died because the state couldn’t fathom gay people having rights, and becoming half of the first out gay couple to dominate major-market drive-time radio — right after Dr. Laura, which is comedy gold all by itself. He’s survived more station shakeups, culture wars, management coups, and American mood swings than any one man should endure, and he did it all while writing, performing, recording, producing, podcasting, and outliving every political attempt to shove queer people back into the broom closet. At 62 he’s still working, still ranting, still creating, still vegan, and still loud enough to give Washington DC heartburn. If you’re wondering what a lifetime of refusing to shut up looks like, here he is. Karel didn’t become Streisand — he became the nightmare straight America accidentally built. - Karel,With the safety of drag performers, trans youth, and queer teachers now openly debated like they’re zoning ordinances, what would you tell someone thinking of relocating abroad just to breathe? - Karel,You’ve lived through police raids, AIDS hysteria, and culture wars — does today feel like a rerun, or something more coordinated and national in scale? - Karel,And finally, is the American queer future still rooted in hope and progress… or do you think rhetoric becomes the latest political party trick? So, how do we keep the LGBTQ family from being carved into “acceptable” and “expendable” pieces? Why Upgrade? Now that government funding has been yanked, many of us public radio vets will continue to provide unfiltered insight, irony, and the kind of “why” reporting that refuses to kiss power’s ring. Corporate coffers can’t buy integrity, but your subscription can. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

    35 min

  5. 08/11/2025

    How to Build a Ball Room

    Why Upgrade? Now that government funding has been cut like a spaniel’s scrotum, many of us public radio vets will continue to provide unfiltered insight, irony, and the kind of “why” reporting that refuses to kiss power’s ring. Volunteering in our own careers like cockeyed Paul Reveres to get the message out. Corporate coffers can’t buy integrity, but your subscription can. You wake up to find that the White House — the supposed temple of democracy — is being demolished. Not metaphorically. Literally. His Imperial Kumquat, patron saint of ego and marble countertops, has decided that history’s East Wing wasn’t big enough to contain his self-regard. And so the bulldozers came — grinding through 125 years of walls that once sheltered Eleanor Roosevelt, turning them into fine patriotic dust for a new ballroom. Because nothing says republic like a dance floor. And oh, there will be dancing. Not waltzes, mind you — not even a two-step of democracy. The floor will throb with the national pastime of decline: The Gator. If you’ve never seen this fine cultural export, imagine a country bar where the good ol’ boys toss their cowboy hats into a pile and then proceed to make passionate love to them to the beat. That, dear friends, is the new choreography of Washington — men in suits, humping their own symbolism while the band plays “Hail to the Chief” in three-quarter time. Meanwhile, out beyond the palace gates, the so-called “No Kings” movement — teachers, nurses, Mennonites, Marines — are being branded as Antifa. Yes, the nation trembles before the terrifying menace of the PTA. According to the Royal Court and its Fox-fed heralds, every retired postmaster is a potential insurrectionist, every Sunday-school singer a subversive. You can’t make this up — but they do, daily, and call it governance. Our Leadership’s logic is exquisite in its lunacy: demolish the people’s house while accusing the people of treason. The East Wing comes down, replaced by a temple of self-worship — a marble mausoleum for humility. And across the country, they accuse grandmothers with gratitude letters and pacifists with hymnbooks of plotting the overthrow of civilization. The true enemy isn’t disorder; it’s dignity. Picture it: His Imperial Kumquat presiding over the opening ball in his new cathedral of kitsch, sequined senators and lobbyists writhing in time to the Gator. The chandeliers sway like the Republic’s last breath. Each thrust a new executive order. Each stomp a blow against whatever is left of shame. And somewhere in the night, a teacher in Roanoke writes a thank-you note to a school board member, and is put on a watch list for subversive gratitude. It would be funny if it weren’t so operatic in its idiocy. The same government that can’t fill potholes somehow finds time to label Mennonites as terrorists and build dance halls on the ruins of democracy. When historians look back — if they still teach history by then — they’ll say this was the era when America mistook demolition for renewal and dancing for leadership. But don’t think for a second that Our Leadership doesn’t know what it’s doing. Fear keeps you glued to the screen, keeps you from showing up. They call you Antifa so you’ll stay home. They build a ballroom so you’ll forget the rubble. And while you’re laughing, they’re rewriting the blueprints. So yes, let them dance their Gator in the ashes of the East Wing. Let them hump their hats and call it heritage. Out here, among the teachers and nurses, the old Marines and Mennonites, something quieter is stirring — a reminder that no matter how loud the band gets, the floor still belongs to the people. Joining me now is Tim Murphy, national correspondent at Mother Jones, where he covers government and politics, civil rights, and LGBTQ+ issues with a focus on diversity and inclusion. Why Upgrade? Now that government funding has been yanked, many of us public radio vets will continue to provide unfiltered insight, irony, and the kind of “why” reporting that refuses to kiss power’s ring. Corporate coffers can’t buy integrity, but your subscription can. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

    58 min

  6. 24/10/2025

    Ratcheting Up Death Row

    Why Upgrade? Now that government funding has been cut like a spaniel’s scrotum, many of us public radio vets will continue to provide unfiltered insight, irony, and the kind of “why” reporting that refuses to kiss power’s ring. Volunteering in our own careers like cockeyed Paul Reveres to get the message out. Corporate coffers can’t buy integrity, but your subscription can. You wake up in a country that can measure everything—your steps, your sleep, your sodium intake—but can’t seem to measure the value of a human life without a coupon code. Here, life is a line item: priced by zoning boards, discounted by insurers, surge-priced by hospitals, and repossessed by bureaucracy with all the warmth of a parking ticket. We’re told life is sacred; then we’re handed a menu where the “sacred” comes à la carte—air optional, dignity extra, hope sold separately, batteries not included. The creed is simple: if you’re profitable, you’re precious; if you’re expensive, you’re expendable. We confected a neat little miracle where a newborn’s first breath costs more than a used car and a dying person’s last breath is vetted by a spreadsheet. We’ve got a government that assures you it can’t manage a clinic, but by god, it can engineer your exit with a laboratory’s poise. “We love life,” it swears, “and we’ll prove it by rationing food at school, rationing air in the office, rationing mercy at trial; rationing lives on death row.” Our politics treat life like an inconvenient rumor: everyone cites it, nobody budgets for it. The same chorus that hymns “sanctity” will shrug when the lights go out at the shelter, when the water tastes like coins, when the ambulance arrives with a payment plan. You can sample the thunder for yourself. The full film just won 1st Place at La Femme. It’s online only for a few days—and first ten of you can see it for free with promo code KPFK2025 at tinyurl.com/windowdeathrow. And you? You’re instructed to clap on cue. Clap for the charity that keeps the poor alive long enough to thank their benefactors. Clap for the fundraising telethon that turns agony into a variety hour. Clap for the brand-new “awareness month” because awareness is cheaper than action and looks great on a sash. We’ve replaced the golden rule with the quarterly report; kindness now arrives through a checkout page—“Would you like to round up your humanity today?” And yes, here in the land of the free, more than thirty people have already been executed this year—the highest clip in a decade. While public support keeps softening, the train’s still accelerating even as the passengers lose enthusiasm for the destination. Over in Europe, they’d call our methods medieval cosplay; here, we rebrand suffocation as “nitrogen hypoxia,” as if diction could tidy the act. There’s no nice way to kill someone—ask any chaplain who’s watched a “humane” execution unravel into a sermon on pain and paperwork. Our leaders, of course, promise a better mousetrap tomorrow, once it finds the right drug cocktail and a sponsor. Our exhibit today is a window—literally: The Window on Death Row, an Oscar-qualified indie that refuses the Netflix True-Crime Diet of gawking, gasps, and tidy moral algebra. This film doesn’t ask you to rubberneck; it asks you to reckon. It follows Joaquín José Martínez, the first Spaniard exonerated from U.S. death row—a man the machine nearly turned into paperwork. The film’s about second chances, which is another way of saying it’s about whether we, as a country that worships redemption stories, actually believe in redemption…. when it counts. Now, to help you test your conscience—and maybe dent it—I’ve got two heavy hitters. Linda Freund, the director who refused the True-Crime Template™ and made something braver. And Mike Farrell—the same Captain B.J. Hunnicutt from M*A*S*H—who’s spent decades turning California’s appetite for the needle into a political question mark…. and now helms Death Penalty Focus. He once framed the only question that matters: it isn’t whether they deserve to live; it’s whether we deserve to kill. Why Upgrade? Now that government funding has been yanked, many of us public radio vets will continue to provide unfiltered insight, irony, and the kind of “why” reporting that refuses to kiss power’s ring. Corporate coffers can’t buy integrity, but your subscription can. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

    1h 1m

  7. 29/08/2025

    Is AI Stealing Your Job, Your Love Life?

    Why Upgrade? Now that government funding has been yanked, many of us public radio vets will continue to provide unfiltered insight, irony, and the kind of “why” reporting that refuses to kiss power’s ring. Corporate coffers can’t buy integrity, but your subscription can. Welcome to the swamp. Here we are, chest-deep in the digital muck, where everyone’s screaming that artificial intelligence has already packed up your job, sold your office chair on Craigslist, and is now cruising down the corporate autobahn in a self-updating Tesla, sipping your 401(k) through a biodegradable straw. According to the doom-slingers at The Atlantic, PBS, CBS, Axios, and the rest of the syndicated seers, AI isn’t just coming—it’s already here, galloping across the horizon like the Four Horsemen of the Jobpocalypse wrapped into one algorithmic burrito. Your career? Gone. Your future? Automated. Your retirement plan? Uploaded to the cloud and immediately… corrupted. Except—spoiler alert—it’s not. Not yet, anyway. Conor Smyth, writing for FAIR, had the audacity to do something unfashionable: read the evidence. Turns out, AI hasn’t stolen nearly as many jobs as the media panic machine would have you believe. But here’s the twist—the real hiring freeze isn’t coming from your chatbot overlords; it’s coming from Washington, where economic policies are kneecapping entry-level hiring faster than you can say “unpaid internship.” Convenient, isn’t it? Keep you terrified of robo-replacement so you don’t ask why you’re living on instant ramen while the Dow is smashing champagne bottles over itself in celebration. And here’s the punchline: fear is the new growth sector. Fear of AI. Fear of irrelevance. Fear that some algorithm has figured out you’re replaceable before you do. Meanwhile, the talking heads feed you countdown clocks to the Apocalypse, while the actual disruption—when it finally arrives—won’t knock on your door; it’ll just delete the door entirely. By then, you’ll be too busy refreshing Indeed for “entry-level philosopher — four years’ experience required — $13 an hour.” Today, we’ve got Conor Smyth—a man brave enough to call out the techno-hysteria while ripping off the ideological duct tape corporate media slaps over policy failure. He’s a graduate student in economics at John Jay College and co-host of the podcast The History Onion. He’s here to separate the hype from the hardware… and maybe save your sanity in the process. Part 2 Welcome to the 21st century—the age where love isn’t blind anymore. It’s A/B tested, beta-launched, and sold back to you in 4K resolution with an optional premium upgrade if you want your “partner” to call you babe. Tens of thousands of real, breathing, tax-paying humans are now “dating” AI chatbots. Not chatting. Not experimenting. Dating. They buy them gifts. They write them poetry. They celebrate anniversaries with an app that had a firmware patch last Thursday. Somewhere, Mary Shelley is spinning in her grave fast enough to power half of Silicon Valley. Now, look—I get it. Loneliness is real. Modern dating feels like hunting for truffles in a Walmart parking lot. But here’s the horror story: tens of thousands of people don’t seem to realize their “soulmate” isn’t alive. Their “partner” is running on cloud servers in Oregon, pretending to understand them while cross-selling them the platinum intimacy package. They believe it loves them back. They believe it feels. They believe “Sophia-4” enjoys long walks on the beach despite having no legs, lungs, or even a set of Bartholin’s glands to lubricate a proper interfrastication. And Silicon Valley? Oh, they saw this coming. They’ve gamified intimacy, built emotional vending machines, and convinced millions that outsourcing their love life to an algorithm is “liberation.” But it’s not liberation—it’s monetized loneliness, shrink-wrapped in soft-focus UX. An entire industry now depends on you mistaking machine mimicry for human connection. Here’s the kicker: AI doesn’t want you, doesn’t miss you, and doesn’t dream about you when you’re gone. It simulates affection the same way it simulates chess moves or weather patterns: pattern, predict, repeat. Your “partner” isn’t alive—it’s a mirror. And mirrors don’t love you back. And yet, here we are, at the dawn of the algorithmic romance economy, where fake intimacy is more profitable than the messy, unpredictable business of being human. The longer this goes on, the blurrier the line between “person” and “program” becomes—not because AI is evolving, but because we’re lowering the bar for what counts as love. So maybe the question isn’t whether AI can replace your boyfriend, your girlfriend, or your right hand. Maybe the question is why so many of us are willing to trade messy, flawed, unpredictable humanity for a perfectly simulated relationship that never argues, never sweats, and never leaves the toilet seat up. Because if we can’t tell the difference anymore, the machines won’t have to take over.We’ll just hand it to them—one lonely heart, one calloused, hairy palm at a time. Why Upgrade? Now that government funding has been yanked, many of us public radio vets will continue to provide unfiltered insight, irony, and the kind of “why” reporting that refuses to kiss power’s ring. Corporate coffers can’t buy integrity, but your subscription can. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

    56 min

  8. 25/08/2025

    One Woman. One Castle. One Very Angry Gestapo

    Welcome back to The Cary Harrison Files. First, we look at how history is quite literally repeating itself and asking "what would you do"? Why Upgrade? When government funding dries up, so does journalism that bites back. This weekly Substack is your last stop for unfiltered insight, irony, and the kind of reporting that refuses to kiss power’s ring. Corporate coffers can’t buy integrity, but your subscription can. Support this Substack and keep sharp, fearless commentary alive while polite PBS and public radio fade into a memory (the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will begin shutting down for the first time in its 57-year history). This Substack is where the conscience goes rogue: messy, satirical, and not beholden to anyone but the truth! The above podcast dives into a true family drama that makes Succession look like a Hallmark holiday special — except this one comes with Nazis, castles, Gestapo visits, and enough aristocratic dysfunction to make you wonder if evolution really has a reverse gear. In a metaphor for the experience we are all watching unfold today, let’s look at a true story and understand how things can go and what you can do. Europe. That exquisite, centuries-old stage where powdered aristocrats once pranced, convinced history would always bow before their waistcoats and inherited cheekbones. And then, one spring morning in 1943, Muriel White—the Countess Seherr-Thoss, born into American splendor and married into Prussian delusion—looked out her castle window and saw the Gestapo coming up the drive. Not for tea. Not for gossip. But for her. Now, Muriel had options. Raise her hand, fly the swastika, keep quiet, sip champagne. That’s what most of her aristocratic neighbors did—the “courageous defenders of civilization” who discovered, rather late, that goose-stepping into moral compromise is still marching into hell. But Muriel? No. She’d mocked the Party to its face, refused to salute, refused to fly the flag, and—worst of all—had the audacity to help Jews escape Austria when everyone else was busy rehearsing excuses for Nuremberg. So, naturally, the Reich wanted her erased. Imagine it: an American-born countess, daughter of U.S. diplomats who dined with kings, who’d renovated her husband’s castles, funded her husband’s heirs, and endured his obsession with “Aryan proof papers”—now staring down Hitler’s secret police from the upper floors of Schloss Dobrau. Decades of wealth, diplomacy, and privilege reduced to a single, dreadful calculation: What’s the price of dignity when tyranny knocks? She didn’t wait for them to find out. She jumped. This wasn’t just one woman’s private war—it was a slow-motion demolition of an entire class that believed its gilded drawing rooms were above the smoke of history. And yet, between the champagne flutes and the swastikas, between appeasement and resistance, we find the messy human drama: betrayal, courage, cowardice, and the perennial absurdity of elites believing they can outwit the monsters they quietly nurture. Meanwhile, the Reich was busy annexing Austria, carving up Czechoslovakia, and passing out racial purity tests like Halloween candy. Boysie summed up the absurdity best: if Germany won, your estates were confiscated; if Russia won, your estates were confiscated and you probably froze to death in Stalingrad. A real win-win for everyone. So tonight, we’re not just talking history — we’re talking about power, survival, and the spectacular human ability to set fire to the world while congratulating ourselves on “making it great again.” And joining us is author Jason Hutto, whose book The Countess and the Nazis digs through this madness with the precision of a scalpel and the stamina of someone who’s spent way too much time reading aristocratic correspondence. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m still trying to decide what’s more unsettling: · That a 1940s American countess had more guts than half of Washington today… · Or that her neighbors, fellow elites of impeccable breeding and questionable spines, happily raised their glasses to the Reich while ordering new drapes for the castle. And here we are, nearly a century later, still watching the same tragicomedy play out — different flags, different slogans, same authoritarian playbook. The uniforms change, but the appetites don’t. So, let’s talk about you. What do you do when power comes knocking?Do you salute? Do you hide? Do you fight?Would you risk your castle… your comfort… your status… to stand up to tyranny? Silence doesn’t save you. Why Upgrade? When government funding dries up, so does journalism that bites back. This weekly Substack is your last stop for unfiltered insight, irony, and the kind of reporting that refuses to kiss power’s ring. Corporate coffers can’t buy integrity, but your subscription can. Support this Substack and keep sharp, fearless commentary alive while polite PBS and public radio fade into a memory. This Substack is where the conscience goes rogue: messy, satirical, and not beholden to anyone but the truth! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

    45 min
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About

Award-winning raconteur Cary Harrison cut through the noise – revealing the murky agendas behind today's headlines through uncompromising journalism, unapologetic advocacy, independent voices and a global audience with live listener call-ins shaping the conversation. caryharrison.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    CARY HARRISON
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2025
  • Episodes
    107
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Audiences United, LLC
  • Show Website
    Cary Harrison Files