Things That Go Boom

A few hours outside Bogotá, a giant yellow circus tent rises above the countryside. Inside, families laugh at clowns, gasp at acrobats, and cheer for trapeze artists soaring overhead.
The performers are all members of the Colombian military.
For more than three decades, Circo Colombia has sent active-duty soldiers across the country to perform for communities, many of them in regions shaped by decades of armed conflict. Military officials say the circus builds trust, provides entertainment, and offers a different face of the armed forces.
But not everyone sees it that way.
Some Colombians view the circus as a sophisticated public-relations project for an institution still grappling with allegations of corruption, violence, and abuses committed during the country's long civil conflict. Others argue the performances can blur the line between entertainment, recruitment, and intelligence gathering.
Reporter Natalie Skowlund travels to the town of Supatá to step inside the tent and meet the people at the center of this unusual story: soldier-clowns, former military performers, circus historians, government officials, and audience members trying to make sense of what happens when the military puts on a show.
In this episode: Why Colombia has a military circus, what it reveals about the country's relationship with war and memory, and how one former circus soldier came to see the circus not as a tool of the military, but as a path to freedom.
Guests:
Professional Soldier Luís Javier Cardenas, clown and trapeze artist with Circo Colombia
Franci Guzmán and Ana Pinzón, audience members at Circo Colombia show in Supatá, Colombia
Rosa Elena González Moreno, Colombian Ministry of Culture Circus Program Coordinator
Jonathan Hernández, professional circus artist and former soldier performer with Circo Colombia
Olga Lucía Sorzano, PhD, Colombian circus scholar and director of Artemotion
Additional Resources:
A Spanish-language report on the history of circus in Colombia.
Tatan's Instagram account.
Colombia's military circus, live, in the AP archive.

After a Norfolk Southern train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, residents were told the air was safe and the situation was under control. But for many people living there, the emergency never really ended.
In this episode, East Palestine resident and Rail Watch founder Jess Conard takes us inside the chaos and confusion of the derailment’s aftermath: shifting evacuation zones, lingering chemical smells, chronic health problems, and the exhausting burden of trying to prove harm after disaster strikes.
But this story isn’t just about one train derailment. It’s about what actually counts as an emergency in the eyes of the federal government — and what kind of response that label unlocks.
As Congress routinely moves billions of dollars quickly and flexibly for war and national security priorities, communities impacted by industrial disaster often struggle to access long-term healthcare, environmental testing, or meaningful support. Through conversations with budget experts Steve Ellis and Julia Gledhill, this episode examines how emergency spending works, how “urgent” becomes a political category, and what those choices reveal about whose suffering matters.
Because emergencies don’t just expose broken systems. They expose what those systems were built to protect.
Guests:
Jess Conard, founder and executive director of Rail Watch
Steve Ellis, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense
Julia Gledhill, research analyst at the Stimson Center
Additional Resources: 
Rail Watch
The Ghost Budget: US War Spending & Fiscal Transparency, Linda J. Bilmes, MIT Press Direct
The United States Is Self-Destructing Amid Empire Collapse, Julia Gledhill, The Nation
Defense Divided: Overcoming the Challenges of Overseas Contingency Operations, Laicie Heeley and Anna Wheeler, Stimson Center

Wars. Raids. Climate disasters. Political violence. Economic shocks. Surveillance. States of emergency that never seem to end. We live through them all while still trying to get dinner on the table, make rent, raise kids, and imagine a future.
This season, Living in the Emergency follows people navigating a world shaped by permanent urgency — and examines who benefits when fear, instability, and crisis become the organizing logic of everyday life.
From emergency spending… to military spectacle… to disasters whose consequences linger long after the cameras leave… this season explores how emergencies reshape communities, politics, and the boundaries of what we learn to accept.
Hosted by Laicie Heeley, Things That Go Boom returns on May 25th with reported, narrative-driven stories about the systems and decisions hiding inside the chaos.
Because this isn’t one crisis.
It’s a condition.
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For decades, the US economy has been deeply intertwined with war-making — from Cold War-era aerospace and nuclear weapons to today’s AI-driven military technologies. But this wasn’t always seen as inevitable.
In the 1970s and ’80s, organizers built unlikely coalitions across the peace, labor, civil rights, and faith movements to challenge military spending and push for an economy that served people instead of perpetual war. Their work helped popularize the idea of economic conversion: redirecting public resources away from weapons production and toward jobs that meet human needs.
In this episode, we revisit that history — and ask what it can teach us now. As communities organize against new defense-tech projects and local governments continue to subsidize weapons manufacturers, activists are once again grappling with how to confront the war economy — and what a more just, peaceful alternative could look like.
This is the final episode of our season, MIC Drop, reporting on how the military-industrial complex shapes local economies — and how communities are organizing in response.
Guests: 
Dr. David Cortright, former Executive Director of SANE; Larry Frank, former Development Director for Jobs with Peace LA; Nathan Kim, Graduate Research Associate at DAIR
Additional Resources:
Cortright v. Resor Reenactment and details about the Waging Peace event at George Washington University
UCLA: Memory Work Los Angeles project on Jobs with Peace
Recording of the 1982 Central Park Rally 
Brown University Costs of War Project

As violence continues in Gaza, a new strategy inside the Palestine solidarity movement is taking shape — one aimed not at city streets or college campuses, but at the arteries of the global economy.
Around the world, dockworkers have refused to unload ships tied to Israel’s military supply chain. In Italy, Morocco, India, and Sweden, those refusals have sparked national strikes and port shutdowns. But in the United States — where 70% of Israel’s weapons originate — things look very different.
This episode dives into the complicated reality facing American activists trying to “block the boat”: a divided labor movement, powerful unions with clashing politics, and a military-industrial complex that shields its most sensitive logistics behind military bases and Air Force cargo planes.
We meet East Coast organizers struggling to reach conservative longshore workers, West Coast veterans who once helped stop South African apartheid cargo, and the researchers studying how social-movement unionism succeeds — and fails.
What power do workers really have to stop the flow of war? And what happens when activists push that power to its limits?
Guests: 
Tova Fry, organizer and activist with Port Workers & Communities for Palestine
Katy Fox-Hodess, Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield
Rafeef Ziadah, Senior Lecturer at Kings College
Lara Kiswani, Executive Director of the Arab Resource & Organizing Center
Clarence Thomas, retired dock worker at ILWU Local 10
Charmaine Chua, Acting Associate Professor of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley
Additional Resources: 
Community picket lines and social movement unionism on the US docks, 2014–2021: Organizing lessons from the Block the Boat campaign for Palestine, Katy Fox-Hodess and Rafeef Ziadah, Critical Sociology
Reds or Rackets? The Making of Radical and Conservative Unions on the Waterfront, Howard Kimeldorf
This Union Is Famous for Opposing South African Apartheid. Now It’s Standing With Gaza., Sarah Lazare, The Nation
Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area, Peter Cole