Ah Long spent years building a life in Shanghai. Then the pandemic arrived.

China's Zero-COVID policy cost him his job, his relationship, and eventually his faith that he could build a future there. So he did something almost unimaginable: he set out alone for the United States, crossing the Darién Gap, surviving robberies, and surrendering at the US-Mexico border to seek asylum.

But by the time he arrived, America had changed, too.

In this episode, reporter Aria Young follows Ah Long's extraordinary journey from China to New York and examines how both Beijing and Washington have turned to the language of emergency to expand executive power. The story asks a larger question: when governments rule through crisis, what happens to the people caught between?

Guests:

Ah Long, Chinese asylum seeker living in New York

Rory Truex, Associate Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University

Rev. Mike Chan, Executive Director of Ministries in New York at Chinese Christian Herald Crusade

Additional Resources:

Crossing the Darién Gap: Migrants Risk Death on the Journey to the US, Diana Roy and Sabine Baumgartner, Council on Foreign Relations

Deportation Data Project

A Study of Chinese Law on Restricting Personal Liberty for Public Health Protection: Taking the COVID-19 Epidemic as the Entry Point, Tengfei Liu and Zhongwu Ma, Frontiers in Public Health

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.

Subscribe to Things That Go Boom wherever you get your podcasts.

A quick note: Independent journalism like Things That Go Boom only exists because of listener support. And right now, Newsmatch is doubling all donations — making it a powerful moment to give. If you love our show (and we hope you do!) consider making a tax-deductible contribution today.

👉 https://inkstickmedia.com/donate/

Enjoy the show!

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

For a century, the weapons industry has helped shape St. Louis — from the McDonnell Douglas fighters that once symbolized American air power to Boeing’s sprawling factories today. But when thousands of machinists walked off the job this year, something cracked in “Fighterland, USA.”

In this episode, we head to the picket line to hear from the workers who build America’s bombs and jets — those struggling to afford rent, groceries, and daycare while assembling weapons worth more than their annual salaries. Reporter Sophie Hurwitz takes us inside a city reckoning with its identity: Can St. Louis really become the “Silicon Valley of defense” when the jobs it’s banking on are shrinking? What happens when an economy built on war no longer guarantees stability? And what does labor power look like in an industry whose products help shape conflicts worldwide?

While some in town are fighting to keep defense dollars flowing, others want St. Louis to imagine a different future. This is the story of a strike, a city, and a century-long relationship with the military-industrial complex now reaching its breaking point.

Guests:

Sophie Hurwitz, Reporting Fellow, Inkstick Media; Breanna Donnell, Rick Perdue, Mason, and other Boeing Machinists; Stephen Quackenbush, Professor and Director of Defense and Strategic Studies, University of Missouri; Maxi Glamour, 3rd Ward Committeeperson, St. Louis

Additional Resources:

“How One Dissenter Left Boeing,” Sophie Hurwitz, Inkstick Media

“The Year Arms Contractors Stopped Supporting Pride,” Sophie Hurwitz, Inkstick Media

San Diego’s Barrio Logan is a place defined by both proximity and resistance — pressed against naval shipyards, fenced in by freeways, and crowned by the Coronado Bridge. For decades, the community has lived with the noise, the pollution, and the promises that never quite came true.

When the USS Bonhomme Richard went up in flames in 2020, the Navy said there was “nothing toxic in the smoke.” Residents knew better. It was just the latest chapter in a long story of damage left unresolved — one that began when the waterfront was seized for the war effort and continued through decades of rezoning fights, health crises, and a ballot-box battle that pitted neighbors against the city’s most powerful industry.

In this episode, Things That Go Boom travels to San Diego to ask: what does it mean to live — and keep fighting — in the shadow of the military’s hometown? Featuring voices from across the neighborhood, we trace how a community beneath the bridge built its own language of survival.

GUESTS: Dr. Alberto López Pulido, Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of San Diego; Brent Beltrán, Publisher, Calaca Press; community activist; Ramón “Mr. Ray” Fino, Vietnam veteran, lifelong Barrio Logan resident; Angel Garcia, Commander, VFW Post Don Diego 7420

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Environmental Health Coalition: Barrio Logan Community Plan

Chicano Park Museum: Logan Heights Archival Project

Intersectional Health Project San Diego: Barrio Logan

“Fallout From Trump’s EPA Cuts Includes Long-Sought Barrio Logan Park,” Philip Salata, inewsource