Writer&#039;s Voice

Builders of Terror, Ally to Justice: Charles Dick on Organisation Todt & Carla Kaplan on Jessica Mitford

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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

Then, in Segment Two, biographer Carla Kaplan returns to Writer’s Voice to talk about Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford. Kaplan brings to life the incomparable “Decca” Mitford — aristocrat, Communist, civil-rights activist and bestselling muckraker.

“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,

You Might Also Like: Carla Kaplan, MISS ANNE IN HARLEM, Andrew Nagorski, THE NAZI HUNTERS

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Positive Obsession: Susana M. Morris on the Life, Vision & Influence of Octavia Butler

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Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

In this episode of Writer’s Voice, Francesca Rheannon speaks with Susana M. Morris, acclaimed scholar of Black feminist thought, about her new biography Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler.

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,

You Might Also Like: Ursula K. Le Guin, THE UNREAL AND THE REAL, Cory Doctorow, THE LOST CAUSE.

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WE SURVIVED THE NIGHT: Julian Brave Noisecat on Story, Survival & the Power of Indigenous Truths

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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,

You Might Also Like: Rebecca Nagle, BY THE FIRE WE CARRY, Tyson Yunkaporta, SAND TALK

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[top image: carving by Ed Archie Noisecat]

Bruce Holsinger on AI’s Moral Dilemmas and Elizabeth George’s New Inspector Lynley Mystery

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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 Displacements explored 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 book A 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

You Might Also Like: Bruce Holsinger, THE DISPLACEMENTS, Elizabeth George, SOMETHING TO HIDE

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The Wisdom of the Wild: Adam Nicolson on BIRD SCHOOL & Isabella Tree on Rewilding

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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

Then we replay an excerpt from my 2020 interview with Isabella Tree, author of Wilding: The Return of Nature. Nicolson counts her as a friend and fellow traveler in reimagining how we live with the natural world.

“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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Key Words: Adam Nicolson, Bird School, birds, ecology, wildlife observation, biodiversity, Writer’s Voice podcast, Isabella Tree, Wilding, Knepp Estate, rewilding, biodiversity, habitat restoration,

You Might Also Like: Isabella Tree (full interview), The Minds and Lives of Animals with Joe Shute and Brandon Keim

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Ben Passmore on Black Resistance & David Baron on the Martian Craze

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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,

You Might Also Like: Tamara Payne on Les Payne’s THE DEAD ARE ARISING, Aaron Robertson, THE BLACK UTOPIANS.

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Cory Doctorow on Big Tech’s “Enshittification” & Bill McKibben on Solar Hope for the Planet

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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

You Might Also Like: Bill McKibben, OIL AND HONEY, Cory Doctorow, PICKS AND SHOVELS

Edward Wong on China’s Imperial Past and Present: AT THE EDGE OF EMPIRE

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Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

In this episode of Writer’s Voice, we talk with Edward Wong, diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times and former Beijing bureau chief, about his new book At the Edge of Empire: A Family’s Reckoning with China.

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

You Might Also Like: Michael Klare on the Pentagon, China and Climate, Tessa Hulls, FEEDING GHOSTS

Lives on the Margin: Evanthia Bromiley’s CROWN and Judy Karofsky’s DISELDERLY CONDUCT

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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

You Might Also Like: Fighting Ageism, Caring For Elders

Ross Halperin on BEAR WITNESS: Fighting Gang Violence & Restoring Justice in A Violent Land

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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

You Might Also Like: Talking the Trumpocene with Jeff Sharlet, Lauren Markham, The Far Away Brothers

Reality Winner on I AM NOT YOUR ENEMY: The Intercept’s Betrayal, Trump’s Double Standard, and the Egregious Espionage Act

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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

You Might Also Like: Daniel Ellsberg, THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE, James Risen, PAY ANY PRICE

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SCIENCE UNDER SIEGE & BURNED BY BILLIONAIRES: Michael Mann and Chuck Collins on Defending Truth and Democracy

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Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

Today, we look at two urgent threats to our world: the assault on science and the concentration of wealth.

First, climate scientist Michael E. Mann talks about the book he co-authored with infectious disease expert Dr. Peter Hotez, Science Under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces that Threaten Our World. It’s a guide to defending truth, evidence, and reason against disinformation and attacks on science.

“If we lose our ability to have shared facts, we lose our ability to have democracy.” — Michael Mann

Then, author and inequality scholar Chuck Collins joins us to discuss his book Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power Are Ruining Our Lives and Planet. He reveals how a handful of billionaires manipulate markets, politics, and culture — and what we can do to fight back.

“Extreme wealth is destabilizing our democracy.” — Chuck Collins

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Key Words: Michael Mann, Peter Hotez, Science Under Siege, disinformation, threats to democracy, attacks on science, climate denial, vaccine denial, Chuck Collins, Burned by Billionaires, wealth inequality, billionaire class, oligarchy, democracy under threat, economic justice, concentrated wealth

You Might Also Like: Michael Mann, THE NEW CLIMATE WAR, Chuck Collins, ALTAR TO AN ERUPTING SUN

HOW TO SAVE THE AMAZON & ARCTIC PASSAGES: Andrew Fishman on Dom Phillips’ Legacy & Kieran Mulvaney on Climate and Power in the Far North

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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.

Journalist Andrew Fishman joins us to talk about completing the last book by Dom Phillips, How To Save The Amazon: A Journalist’s Deadly Quest for Answers. Phillips was murdered in 2022 for reporting on the destruction of the rainforest — and this book is his legacy.

“Dom’s idea was to answer the question: what do we need to do to save the Amazon?” — Andrew Fishman

Then we head north with writer Kieran Mulvaney. His book Arctic Passages: Ice, Exploration, and the Battle for Power at the Top of the World uncovers how centuries of ambition and today’s climate crisis are colliding in the Arctic.

“[The Arctic] is both a frontline of climate change and a frontline of geopolitics.” — Kieran Mulvaney

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Key Words: Andrew Fishman, Dom Phillips, How To Save The Amazon, Amazon rainforest, deforestation, Indigenous rights, environmental journalism, climate change, Kieran Mulvaney, Arctic Passages, Arctic exploration, climate crisis, polar regions, environmental justice.

You might also like: Rowan Jacobsen, WILD CHOCOLATE, Sherri Goodman, THREAT MULTIPLIER

HOLY GROUND & A YEAR OF COMPASSION: Catherine Coleman Flowers and Colleen Patrick-Goudreau on Justice, Hope, and Living Kindly

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Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

Episode Summary

This episode of Writer’s Voice explores two inspiring approaches to building a more just and compassionate world. It’s part of September’s WV programming in honor of Climate Week. Two nationwide mobilizations are happening for Climate Week: Make Billionaires Pay and Sun Day.

First, environmental activist Catherine Coleman Flowers tells us about her new memoir Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, And Finding Hope. She shares her journey from Lowndes County, Alabama to the national stage, her deep roots in faith and family, and her fight for sanitation justice, climate action, and dignity for all.

“In the darkest of times, hope is still possible. Indeed, it is essential.” — Catherine Coleman Flowers

Then, vegan advocate Colleen Patrick-Goudreau joins us to talk about her book A Year of Compassion: 52 Weeks of Living Zero-Waste, Plant-Based, and Cruelty-Free. She offers practical steps to live with compassion for animals, people, and the planet—showing that small changes add up to big impacts.

“We don’t get to choose whether we can make a difference or not. We get to choose only if the difference we make is negative or positive.” — Colleen Patrick Goudreau

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Key Words: Catherine Coleman Flowers Holy Ground, environmental justice, sanitation justice, climate change activism, Colleen Patrick-Goudreau A Year of Compassion, plant-based living, vegan lifestyle tips, zero waste, plastic reduction, food waste composting,

You might also like: Naomi Klein: Climate Changes Everything, Melanie Joy, WHY WE LOVE DOGS, EAT PIGS, AND WEAR COWS