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We talk with Dean Spade about his book Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (And The Next).
Then, at a time when domestic violence is skyrocketing, we re-air our 2019 interview with Rachel Louise Snyder. Her book is No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us.
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We talk with Jenny Offill about her acclaimed cli-fi novel, Weather. Then, Ben Ehrenreich tells us about Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time.
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We talk with Heather McGhee about her important new book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone And How We Can Prosper Together. It’s about how the politics of racial division keeps working class people of all races from having what they deserve.
But first, we talk with Michelle Commander of the Schomburg Center about the anthology she’s co-edited: UNSUNG: Unheralded Narratives of American Slavery & Abolition.
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We talk with Rebecca Sacks about her powerful debut novel, City of a Thousand Gates. It’s about the intersecting stories of the peoples of Israel and Palestine, and how oppression twists and informs the humanity of perpetrators and victims.
Then, we replay our 2016 interview with Palestinian-American novelist Susan Abulhawa about her second novel, The Blue Between Sky and Water.
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We talk with world renowned climate scientist Michael Mann about his book, The New Climate War. It’s about all the ways the fossil fuel industry and its allies seek to discredit, divide, and deflect the movement to save the climate from making our planet uninhabitable.
Later, we check in with Nation magazine political correspondent John Nichols about his recent post about the fight over the COVID19 relief plan.
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We talk with Paul Pitcoff about his memoir, Cold War Secrets. It’s about growing up in leftwing circles in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s with a father who had a hidden past.
Then, a woman is raped and finds a path toward healing by examining the objects associated with her trauma. We talk with Laura Levitt about her memoir, The Objects That Remain.
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What’s the prospect for a Green New Deal in the Biden administration? We talk with Guido Girgenti about the book he co-edited with the Sunrise Movement’s Varshini Prakash, Winning The Green New Deal.
Then, we talk with wildlife photographer Ian Shive about his stunning book of photos and essays about America’s wildlife refuges. It’s called Refuge: America’s Wildest Places.
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We spend the hour talking with Hugh Raffles about his new book, The Book Of Unconformities: Speculations On Lost Time. It’s part natural history, part memoir, part meditation on the relationships between people and rocks throughout time.
Then, at the end, a short story about the Cure Hunter from Francesca’s book Province of the Heart.
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We talk with veterinary behaviorist Meghan Herron, editor of Decoding your cat: The Ultimate Experts Explain Common Cat Behaviors And Reveal How To Prevent Or Change Unwanted Ones. It’s out from the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists.
Then, let’s not forget the puppies! We re-air our 2017 interview with dog rescuer and rehabilitator Amy Sutherland about dogs in shelters, getting them adopted and keeping them out of shelters to begin with. Her book is Rescuing Penny Jane: One Shelter Volunteer, Countless Dogs, and the Quest to Find Them All Homes.
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This week on Writer’s Voice, we talk with Rabbi Michael Lerner about his book Revolutionary Love: A Political Manifesto to Heal and Transform the World.
Then we look deeper into how to build solidarity in our divided nation. We air excerpts from some other conversations about that issue that aired this year on Writers Voice.
We talk with Tim Wise about Dispatches from the Race War, Jane Kleeb about Harvest The Vote; Dr. Abdul El Sayed about Healing Politics and Tyson Yunkaporta about Sand Talk. How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The World.
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We spend the hour talking with Tamara Payne about her late father Les Payne’s acclaimed biography of Malcolm X, The Dead Are Arising. It just won the National Book Award.
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We talk with Victoria Bond, co-author of Zora and Me, a terrific middle grades trilogy of novels about Zora Neale Hurston, about the last in the series, Zora and Me: The Summoner.
Then, we talk with ninety year-old Irene Butter about her spellbinding memoir of living through the Nazi Holocaust, Shores Beyond Shores.
Finally, we recommend a novel by Ellen Cooney as a gift for the Holidays or for reading any time.
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We talk with social justice advocate and author Tim Wise about his new book Dispatches From The Race War.
Then we talk with Mehrdad Azemun of People’s Action about a “weapon of mass connection” the organization is using to bridge the political divide.
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Mehrdad Azemun on Deep Canvassing
Is America hopelessly divided between those who voted for Donald Trump and those who voted for Joe Biden? Or can a “weapon of mass connection” be used to bridge the divide?
That’s a bet being made by a national economic and racial justice organization called People’s Action. It’s a coalition of grassroots groups operating in 30 different states on issues like climate justice, student debt, mass incarceration, health care, and housing—and on mobilizing voters to turn out for those issues.
The “weapon of mass connection” People’s Action uses (maybe a better word is “tool”) is something called “deep canvassing“.
Francesca spoke with Mehrdad Azemun, national political strategist with People’s Action, about deep canvassing and more for this episode of our online series, What You Need To Know.
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We talk with Jess Walter about his novel The Cold Millions. It’s about the first Gilded Age with striking parallels to the Gilded Age 2.0 we’re living in right now.
Then, we revisit our 2015 interview with Lara Vapnek about her biography of one of the historical characters who appears in Walter’s novel: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. It’s called Rebel Girl.