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Episode 46: Renaldo Hudson & Alice Kim
From Death Row to Life! The criminal punishment system is institutionalized dehumanization. It’s organized violence congealed, concentrated, and out of control. The everyday disposal of living human beings is normalized in these spaces—in the name of humanity and solidarity we refuse to become accustomed, and we resist accommodation. We’re joined in conversation with two dazzling […]
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Episode 45: Beth Richie & Erica Meiner
Joy and Justice: Collaborating toward Freedom We live in a time and a place where the cage has become naturalized, where punitive, punishing measures are the “normal,” “common sense” responses to any harm or despair. Crushing cruelty deletes care and support. We’re joined by two powerful thinkers and life-long freedom-fighters: Beth Richie is head of […]
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Episode 44: Ryan Alexander-Tanner
Artists ask no one’s permission to interrogate the world, and the art of teaching embraces that same ethic. Art can shock us into new awarenesses, challenge cliche, dogma, orthodoxy, and received wisdom from every corner. Good teaching can do the same. Art can allow fresh and startling winds to blow as it ignites our freedom […]
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Episode 43: Timmy Chau
The vast US military machine is capable of demolishing governments and countries—as it has shown recently in Libya and Yemen and Iraq—but it is incapable of bringing peace or progress or prosperity to the conquered. Afghanistan is the latest US-built catastrophe, a classic imperial adventure—the architects will claim that this time was unique, that they […]
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Episode 35: Peggy Shepherd
We have a choice: we can save the planet, and life on Earth, or we can save racial capitalism, white supremacy, extraction and exploitation. Which will it be? We’re joined in conversation with Peggy Shepherd, an activist and organizer, a community educator and a leading figure in the fight for environmental justice. She is the […]
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Episode 34: Howard Waitzkin
The US is a rich country with a shitty health care system. What went wrong? The short answer: capitalism. Good medicine at its heart requires trust and an assumption of honesty and good intentions; the market requires nothing more nor less than profits for shareholders. The corporate capitalist capture of health care destroys the natural […]
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Episode 42: Transitions
Malik Alim, 28-years-old, an inspirational organizer and activist, a spark of energy and hope for me and countless others, died in a dreadful accident on August 20, 2021, and we’ve been grieving this tragedy ever since—an unfathomable loss to his family, to our community and to the world. With Malik’s death, we suspended Under the […]
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Episode 41: Dima Khalidi
Optimists and pessimists share a fundamental orientation: they are determinists, certain that thing will turn out well (or horribly). Because I have no idea how things will turn out (and neither does anyone else), or even what’s next, I choose hope as a politics, hope as a state of mind—I get up each morning with […]
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Episode 40: Joel Westheimer
When fascism gained power in Italy, two processes unfolded simultaneously: the generalized crisis and crumbling of authority, the loss of the ability to lead through consent, as well as a movement of people away from old ideologies, opening to new and unexpected horizons. It was a moment of political “in-betweenness”—the communist leader Antonio Gramsci wrote […]
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Episode 39: Jay Gillen
Each of us—and every human being—should expect and demand decent standards of action concerning freedom and justice from all institutions, including schools, and from all earthly powers. It’s our duty to testify against, to disrupt, to undermine, and, when possible, to overthrow cruel systems in the interest of creating something better. We’re joined by Jay […]