Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.
In this episode of Writer’s Voice, we explore the what’s going on with the current resurgence of psychedelics. My guest is Joe Dolce, whose new book, Modern Psychedelics: The Handbook for Mindful Exploration, dives deep into what these substances really do, why so many people are using them, and how science, politics, medicine, and culture are reshaping the conversation.
Dolce tells us why this is both an “exciting and confusing time” in psychedelic history—a time when reliable guidance is urgently needed in a moment of expanding access and misinformation.
“I thought it was a good opportunity… there’s still so much confusion and so much misinformation about what these are, how they work, why they work, who they don’t work for, who should take them, who shouldn’t take them.” — Joe Dolce
We talk about what psychedelics can help heal — from PTSD and addiction to depression and traumatic brain injury, why set and setting matter so deeply, how to micro dose psychedelics and how these substances can change not only individual consciousness, but maybe even how we relate to each other, to nature, and to the world we’re trying to save.
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Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.
Francesca speaks with Jonathan Slaght about his remarkable book Tigers Between Empires: The Improbable Return of Great Cats to the Forests of Russia and China.
Slaght tells the story of the 35-year Siberian (Amur) Tiger Project, one of the longest-running wildlife studies in the world, and how science, persistence, and cross-border collaboration helped bring a species back from the edge of extinction.
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Key Words: Jonathan Slaght interview, Tigers Between Empires, Amur tiger conservation, Siberian Tiger Project, wildlife conservation Russia China, endangered species recovery, human–wildlife conflict
Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.
This week on Writer’s Voice, we look at two stories from history that illuminate the choices people face as they confront evil: collaborate or resist?
First, independent scholar Charles Dick joins us to discuss Unknown Enemy: The Hidden Nazi Force That Built the Third Reich — the first full account of Organisation Todt, the massive construction arm of the Nazi regime that operated across Europe with lethal brutality. His book reveals how ordinary engineers and builders became central participants in enslavement and murder — and how much of this history remained hidden for decades.
“If you’re told… your prisoners are subhuman, you’re more likely to work them to death.” — Charles Dick
“If she believed in something, she was unbending — and always willing to pay the price of her convictions.” — Carla Kaplan
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Key Words: Unknown Enemy Charles Dick, Fritz Todt, Holocaust studies, Jessica Mitford biography, Troublemaker Carla Kaplan, The American Way of Death, muckraking journalism, civil rights history, Freedom Rides, Mitford sisters,Francesca Rheannon interview,
Drawing on interviews, archival materials, and Butler’s own journals, Morris shows how Butler’s discipline, political analysis, and upbringing shaped some of the most influential speculative fiction of our time.
“Now there is such a plethora of Black folk… writing science fiction and fantasy. It’s really exciting. And we have Octavia to thank for it.” — Susana Morris
The conversation covers Butler’s formative years; her neurodivergence and self-diagnosed dyslexia; her relationship with her mother; the creation of Kindred; and her prophetic insights into climate collapse, fascism, hierarchy, and the contradictions of American democracy.
Then, we air a clip from our 2012 interview with the late, great science fiction master, Ursula K. Le Guin.
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Key Words: Octavia Butler biography, Octavia Butler interview, Positive Obsession Susana Morris, Parable of the Sower prophecy, Black women writers, Afrofuturism, science fiction history, Black feminist literature, Francesca Rheannon interview,
Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.
In this, our 1,000th episode of Writer’s Voice, Francesca Rheannon interviews Julian Brave Noisecat about We Survived the Night, his memoir weaving Indigenous oral traditions, personal narrative, political history, and environmental insight.
Noisecat explores Coyote stories, the legacy of residential schools, intergenerational trauma, mixed-race identity, the meaning of home, Indigenous political traditions, and the contemporary struggle for land, water, and cultural continuity.
“The text itself is a woven narrative that combines different elements of nonfiction to put these different kinds of truths and storytelling in conversation with each other.”
Through humor, grief, myth, and investigative rigor, Noisecat reframes Indigenous storytelling as nonfiction — a mode of truth that Western traditions have long dismissed. This conversation highlights the power of indigenous stories to resist erasure, illuminate political histories, and recover cultural knowledge.
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Key Words: Julian Brave Noisecat interview, We Survived the Night, Indigenous memoir, Coyote stories, residential schools history, Native American literature, intergenerational trauma, Indigenous resurgence, Salish culture, environmental justice Indigenous communities, land dispossession history,
Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.
This week on Writer’s Voice, Bruce Holsinger tells us about his new novel Culpability, a story about a family shattered by a self-driving car accident — and about the ethical and emotional consequences of artificial intelligence.
Holsinger, whose earlier novel The Displacementsexplored climate catastrophe, turns his sharp eye to the ways technology mirrors human flaws, illuminating our collective complicity in shaping the systems that govern us.
“For all that we talk about the ethics of AI, the systems themselves are completely indifferent to our fates.” — Bruce Holsinger
Then Elizabeth George, the beloved creator of the Inspector Lynley series, talks about her new bookA Slowly Dying Cause. It’s a masterful mystery that explores grief, obsession and moral reckoning. Set in Cornwall, it interlaces complex storylines around a suspicious death, a fractured family and the consequences of unresolved grief.
“The whole book is about grief — and letting go of grief.” — Elizabeth George
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Key Words: Bruce Holsinger, Elizabeth George, Culpability, A Slowly Dying Cause, AI ethics, mystery fiction, artificial intelligence novel, Inspector Lynley series
Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.
This week on Writer’s Voice, we turn our attention to the living world—and our place within it.
First, writer Adam Nicolson joins us to talk about his luminous new book, Bird School: A Beginner in the Wood. It’s the story of how he built a shed in his Sussex woods and spent two years learning from the birds who shared it with him. In the process, Nicolson discovered not just the intelligence of birds, but also a new way of seeing the world—a way that erases the hard line between humans and nature.
“To tend to the reality of the birds’ minds is to find yourself in a completely renewed world.” — Adam Nicholson
“We’ve grown up with a picture-postcard idea of beauty—neat edges, canalized rivers, everything controlled. We’re just beginning to understand that it’s not sustainable.” — Isabella Tree
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Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.
In our first segment, comic artist Ben Passmore takes us on a time-bending, darkly funny journey through more than a century of Black resistance in his graphic history Black Arms to Hold You Up. It’s a story of struggle, rebellion, and what liberation really means when the fight never ends.
“We’re in a life-or-death struggle, and I think we need to accept that.” — Ben Passmore
Then, science journalist David Baron joins us to talk about The Martians — the true story of how turn-of-the-(last)-century America fell in love with the idea of life on Mars. From telescopes to tabloid headlines, Baron shows how our dreams of other worlds reveal who we really are.
“It was a time of great unrest… and so the idea that maybe Earth was clearly turning out not to be a very perfect place — and that maybe there was a better civilization on the planet next door — really captured the public’s imagination.” — David Baron
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Key Words: Writer’s Voice, Francesca Rheannon, Ben Passmore, David Baron, Black Arms to Hold You Up, The Martians, graphic novels, civil rights, alien craze, Black resistance, Mars, Percival Lowell, H.G. Wells, podcast author interview,
Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.
This episode of Writer’s Voice features two leading voices confronting the defining challenges of the 21st century — corporate monopolization and climate breakdown.
Cory Doctorow, author of Enshittification, reveals the hidden mechanics behind the digital decay of our online platforms — how they move from serving users to exploiting them, and what systemic reforms, from antitrust enforcement to tech worker unions, can reverse the trend.
Bill McKibben, author of Here Comes The Sun, shares an unexpectedly hopeful vision for the climate movement, documenting how plummeting solar and wind costs are reshaping economies worldwide and creating a moral turning point for civilization itself.
Together, these conversations show that both the digital and planetary crises share a root cause — the concentration of power — and that the path forward lies in collective action, technological democratization, and the reclaiming of our common future.
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Key Words: Cory Doctorow, enshittification, Big Tech, Amazon, Google, Facebook, antitrust, AI bubble, Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFA, digital rights, surveillance capitalism, Bill McKibben, Here Comes The Sun, climate change, renewable energy, solar power, wind energy, batteries, climate justice, energy transition, balcony solar, climate hope
Part memoir, part history, and part frontline reporting, the book traces Wong’s journey to uncover his father’s hidden past in Mao’s China, his family’s divided loyalties between Communist and American ideals, and what those personal histories reveal about China’s trajectory under Xi Jinping.
“I realized that much of my father’s experiences living in China under Mao sort of set the stage for the rule of the Communist Party later in the years I was witnessing it.” — Edward Wong
From the trauma of revolution and famine to the nationalism driving China’s global ambitions today, Wong shows us the direct line between Mao’s authoritarian rule and the tightening grip of Xi’s regime.
And he asks a question that resonates far beyond China: what does this story tell us about the dangers of authoritarianism in our own time?
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Key Words: Edward Wong interview, At the Edge of Empire, Mao Zedong, Xi Jinping, Chinese authoritarianism, Uyghurs, Tibet, state capitalism, Chinese history, climate policy China, modern China politics, Chinese empire, Writer’s Voice podcast
Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.
In this episode of Writer’s Voice, we hear from two authors illuminating the human cost of broken systems — one through fiction, the other through investigative memoir.
In the first half of the show, we speak with Evanthia Bromiley about her haunting and lyrical debut novel Crown. It follows three days in the life of a single mother and her nine-year-old twins as they face eviction in the scorching landscape of the American Southwest — a meditation on poverty, love, and resilience in a society that too often looks away.
“Everything here finds a way to grow through what is broken.” — Evanthia Bromiley
Then, in the second half, we turn from fiction to fact with Judy Karofsky, whose book DisElderly Conduct: The Flawed Business of Assisted Living and Hospice exposes how an unregulated eldercare industry is failing our most vulnerable — the elderly and their families. She shares her own story of trying to find adequate care for her own mother as the latter entered her final years.
“Civilizations are judged by how we take care of the elderly. And right now, we are not doing a good job.” — Judy Karofsky
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Key Words: Evanthia Bromiley Crown, Judy Karovsky Diselderly Conduct, Writer’s Voice podcast, Francesca Rheannon interviews, fiction about poverty, homelessness in literature, assisted living crisis, hospice industry corruption, eldercare reform, private equity in healthcare
Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.
Today, a gripping story of courage, faith, and friendship in one of the most dangerous countries on Earth. Ross Halperin joins us to talk about his extraordinary book Bear Witness: The Pursuit of Justice in a Violent Land. It’s the true story of two men — an American missionary and a Honduran teacher — who took on the gangs, corruption, and impunity that plague Honduras, one of the most violent nations in the world. Together, they built a radical experiment in justice that dared to succeed where governments failed.
“They didn’t want to be hypocrites. They didn’t want to be like these other gringos that come down here and live behind gates and have drivers and security guards. They wanted to live with and like the people they wanted to help.” — Ross Halperin
Then, we air a clip from our 2023 interview with Jeff Sharlet about his book The Undertow, which examines the spread of rightwing ideology among the masses and the new fascist movement it’s spurred.
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Key Words: Ross Halperin, Bear Witness, Kurt Ver Beek, Carlos Hernández, Association for a More Just Society, ASJ, Honduras violence, gang violence, U.S. drug policy, narco-trafficking, Jeff Sharlet, Christian nationalism, rightwing extremism
Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.
Today, a remarkable conversation with Reality Winner, the NSA whistleblower who leaked proof of Russian interference in the 2016 election and paid for it with the harshest sentence ever imposed under the Espionage Act.
Reality Winner’s new memoir, I Am Not Your Enemy, tells the story of what led her to leak the document, the fallout from her arrest, and what her arrest tells us about our military-industrial complex — and our eroding democracy.
“Depending on where you are on the totem pole will determine how you fare once charged with a crime — or if you’re even charged with a crime in the first place.”
She speaks about how her punishment compared with the leniency shown to elites like Donald Trump and David Petraeus, and why the Espionage Act is uniquely unjust. Plus — an explosive revelation about why Winner believes The Intercept deliberately exposed her as their source.
“Everything that happened to me following the sending of the document to The Intercept was by design.”
We spend the hour with Reality Winner in a deeply revealing conversation you don’t want to miss.
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Key Words: Reality Winner, I Am Not Your Enemy, NSA whistleblower, The Intercept, Espionage Act, Russian election interference, whistleblower prosecution, Donald Trump classified documents, national security leaks, government secrecy
Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.
Episode Summary
This week on Writer’s Voice, two stories from the planet’s frontlines: the Amazon rainforest and the Arctic ice. Two urgent stories from Earth’s frontlines — and why they matter for us all.
