Today I am deeply honored to speak with novelist, essayist, and scholar Yuri Herrera about his new novel, Season of the Swamp, which is a deeply researched and dazzlingly imagined account of Benito Juarez’s time spent in exile in New Orleans.&n...

Today I am delighted to speak with Andrew Ross about his new book, The Weather Report: A Journey Through Unsettled Climates. In this study, Ross revisits areas of the world that he has written about before—Palestine, the United Arab Emirates, P...

Today I am happy to speak with Ananya Roy and Veronika Zablotsky about their co-edited volume, Beyond Sanctuary: The Humanism of a World in Motion, which was based on a Sawyer Seminar they convened at UCLA. The essays collected in this...

I am delighted to talk with scholar, journalist, and activist Thea Riofrancos about her new book, Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism.  She takes us deep into the mining of lithium and the production of lithium batteries...

Today I am delighted to talk with Roderick Ferguson about his provocative and much-needed intervention, “An Interruption in Our Cowardice.”  Initially driven by his deep disappointment in some Black intellectuals’ compliance and even assis...

Today I have the true honor of speaking with journalist, storyteller, historical researcher, and Native American ceremonial dancer Julian Brave Noisecat about his book, We Survived the Night.  This highly original book blends many...

Today we speak with Rachel Kuo about her book, Movement Media: In Pursuit of Solidarity, recently published by Oxford University Press. This fascinating study understands political activism through a unique perspective, asking the ques...

Today I have the privilege and pleasure of speaking with Nicholas Mirzoeff and Priscilla Wathington about the genocide in Gaza, and how developing a new way of seeing and writing is demanded of us to address this historical moment. In the words...

Intimidation, repression, and punishment with regard to activism for Palestine has only increased over the past year. Today I speak with three campus organizers from Students for Justice in Palestine who remain determined and committed, even in...

Today I am delighted to welcome activist and scholar Erin McElroy to the podcast. She is the author of a remarkable book, Silicon Valley Imperialism: Techno Fantasies in Postsocialist Times. At the center of this rich and provocative study is t...

Today I am honored to speak with Nilo Tabrizy, co-author of a remarkable and powerful book, For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran's Women-Led Uprising. This interview complements another episode I did with her collaborator, ...

Today I am deeply honored to speak with journalist Fatemeh Jamalpour about her book, For the Sun After Long Nights, which she wrote with fellow journalist Nilo Tabrizy.  In September 2022, the world learned of the murder of a young Kurdish...

Today I am both excited and frightened to talk with Tamara Kneese and Xiaowei Wang, two individuals whose research, writing, and activism has for years insisted on the materiality of the technologies that have brought us things like artificial ...

Today I talk with Omar Zahzah about his new book, Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital/Settler Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle. This is an immensely informative study, which details the convergenc...

Today I talk with Omar Zahzah about his new book, Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital/Settler Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle. This is an immensely informative study, which details the convergenc...

Today I have the immense honor and privilege to speak with Ellen Schrecker, who has been referred to as “the dean of the anti-anti-Communist historians.”  Well known for her classic studies of McCarthyism, today Schrecker explains how much...

Today I am delighted to talk with Eunsong Kim about her stunning book, The Politics of Collecting: Race & the Aestheticization of Property. It is remarkable in its theoretical conceptualization, argument, and archival work. Kim arg...

In February, a New York assemblyman little known outside New York City was polling at 1% in his bid for mayor of NYC.  This Tuesday, he became mayor-elect, after running a remarkable and inspiring campaign that drew 100,000 volunteers to k...

Today I have the pleasure of talking with Dean Spade about his new book, Love in a Fucked-up World: how to build relationships, hook up, and raise hell together. This book builds on all of Dean’s previous books, and shares their commit...

In 2017, activist-scholar Robyn Maynard published her groundbreaking study, Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present.  Today, I have the privilege of talking with her about the second edition of this study...

Today I talk with Professor Nisrin Elamin about the situation in Sudan, where we find both a war between rival factions and these same factions continuing counter-revolutionary campaign against pro-democracy forces. We discuss how regional acto...

How have young people in rural areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo invented new forms of radicalism in response to the impact of new flows of foreign investment and the inability of normal national and international politics to serve thei...

Today I have the pleasure of talking with Supriya Khandelwal and Koa Tran, two members of the South Bay Youth Changemakers, and one of its co-directors, Amulya Mandava. This Asian American organization, located at the heart of Silicon Valley, s...

Today I have the honor and the pleasure of speaking with legal scholar Mary Anne Franks, about her book, Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment.  As the title of the book indicates, this is a fearless and iconocla...

Today I am delighted to speak with primatologist Christine Webb about her new book, The Arrogant Ape: The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why it Matters.  The title of the book itself is a concise and precise description of its t...