''This is Hell!'' is a weekly Saturday morning four hour radio show hosted by Chuck Mertz on
WNUR-FM
WNUR-FM (89.3 FM) is a 7,200–watt radio station based in Evanston, Illinois that broadcasts to Chicago and its northern suburbs. It is the student radio station of Northwestern University.
History
WNUR first began broadcasting on May 8, ...
in
Evanston, Illinois. It has been broadcasting regularly since 1996. In addition to the live broadcast the show provides a
podcast with archives going back to 2001.
Format
Each show consists of four or five long interviews with academics, authors, or activists. Each interview ends with the ''question from hell''; "a question we hate to ask, you may hate to answer, or our audience may hate the response''".''
Other features include pieces by a range of ''irregular correspondents'' from around the world, the most frequent being playwright and screenwriter
Jeff Dorchen
Jeff is a masculine name, often a short form (hypocorism) of the English given name Jefferson or Jeffrey, which comes from a medieval variant of Geoffrey.
Music
* DJ Jazzy Jeff, American DJ/turntablist record producer Jeffrey Allen Townes
* ...
, whose ''Moment of Truth''
closes the show, and less frequently Kevan Harris ''The Radical Pessimist'', and
Elvis deMorrow from the ''Konspiracy Korner''
URL Labs'LaddieO.com regularly delivers a ''Website of the Week''. The guests and irregular correspondents are interspersed with local, national and international information and news stories, as well as informed commentary on a range of subjects.
The show also typically includes a segment about hangover cures, both dubious and credible, and an ad for National Beer which culminates in the host deciphering a
rebus puzzle.
Guests
Notable guests have included
Dan Ellsberg,
G. Flint Taylor,
Sami Al-Arian,
Scott Ritter,
Noam Chomsky,
Greg Palast,
Juan Cole,
Naomi Klein,
Christopher Hitchens,
Ray McGovern
Raymond McGovern (born August 25, 1939) is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer turned political Activism, activist. McGovern was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990, and in the 1980s chaired National Intelligence Estimates and prepared ...
,
Alexander Cockburn
Alexander Claud Cockburn ( ; 6 June 1941 – 21 July 2012) was a Scottish-born Irish-American political journalist and writer. Cockburn was brought up by British parents in Ireland, but lived and worked in the United States from 1972. Together ...
,
Thomas Frank,
Dean Baker,
Glenn Greenwald,
Bill McKibben
William Ernest McKibben (born December 8, 1960)"Bill Ernest McKibben." ''Environmental Encyclopedia''. Edited by Deirdre S. Blanchfield. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2009. Retrieved via ''Biography in Context'' database, December 31, 2017. is a ...
,
Stephen Walt
Stephen Martin Walt (born July 2, 1955) is the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International relations at the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University and a political scientist.
A member of the realist school of international relations ...
,
Rami Khouri,
James Galbraith,
Barbara Ehrenreich
Barbara Ehrenreich (, ; ; August 26, 1941 – September 1, 2022) was an American author and political activist. During the 1980s and early 1990s, she was a prominent figure in the Democratic Socialists of America. She was a widely read and awar ...
,
Immanuel Wallerstein,
Dahr Jamail,
Paul Craig Roberts,
Andrew Bacevich
Andrew J. Bacevich Jr. (, ; born July 5, 1947) is an American historian specializing in international relations, security studies, American foreign policy, and American diplomatic and military history. He is a Professor Emeritus of International ...
,
Chris Hedges
Christopher Lynn Hedges (born September 18, 1956) is an American journalist, Presbyterian minister, author, and commentator.
In his early career, Hedges worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for ''The Christian Science Mon ...
,
John Mearsheimer,
Deepak Tripathi and
Seymour Hersh, many of whom have been on the show multiple times.
References
External links
This is Hell! website
American talk radio programs
Chicago radio shows
Political podcasts
1996 radio programme debuts
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