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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.
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We talk with novelist Nicole Krauss about her acclaimed first collection of stories, To Be A Man.
But first, we talk with short story writer Bryan Washington about his first novel: Memorial. He calls it a “gay slacker dramedy” but it’s really much more than that.
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We spend the hour talking with Elisa Gabbert about her terrific collection of essays, THE UNREALITY OF MEMORY. It’s a contemplation of life in the pre-apocalypse, with profound and prophetic essays on the Internet age’s media-saturated disaster coverage and our addiction to viewing and discussing the world’s ills.
Then we end with the poem “Memory” by poet Lucille Clifton and remember her work.
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We talk with Les Leopold about his Uncle Walter’s remarkable diary of life as Jew in Nazi Germany, Defiant German—Defiant Jew: A Holocaust Memoir from Inside the Third Reich. Les Leopold had the diary translated and has added much context and commentary to the book.
Then, we talk with acclaimed crime novelist Anthony Horowitz about his newest murder mystery confection, Moonflower Murders. It’s the second in the Susan Ryeland series, following Magpie Murders.
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We talk with translator Stephen Snyder about his translation of Yoko Ozawa’s acclaimed novel The Memory Police. It’s an allegory for our age.
Then we hear from Marian Lindberg about her book, Scandal On Plum Island: A Commander Becomes The Accused. It tells the neglected story of Major Benjamin Koehler, a distinguished Army officer who was blind-sided by charges of homoerotic behavior in 1914.
We also preview our post-Election Day interview with legal scholar Lawrence Douglas, author of Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020. (Listen to the full interview here.)
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The US is facing a constitutional crisis as Donald Trump tries to stop the counting of millions of mail-in ballots that could tip the presidency to Joe Biden.
One person who predicted this very outcome is Amherst College legal scholar Lawrence Douglas. He’s the author of the recent book, Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020.
Writers Voice spoke with Douglas in September and Francesca called him up the day after Election Day for his reaction to the situation we find ourselves in, the very situation that was the topic of his book—and of an article he published November 4 in the Guardian, Don’t be fooled: the delays in the US election result mean our system is working.
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We spend the hour talking with political historian Thomas Frank about his ground-breaking book about Populism and anti-Populism, The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism.
It’s about the long history of elite distrust of pro-democracy working class/farmer political activism in the U.S. As Frank explains:
The People, No is the story of how much of our modern world we owe to our home-grown democratic movements for reform. It is also a cautionary note for our time, a warning against the pundits who tell us to fear the plain people, to keep to the path of centrist complacency, to let the experts handle our lives and our future.
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Is the Democratic Party doing enough to reach out to rural voters? We talk with Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party about her book, Harvest the Vote: How Democrats Can Win Again in Rural America. (Harper Collins, 2020).
Then, a powerful vision of creating a livable and just world for everyone. We talk with climate journalist Eric Holthaus about his book The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What’s Possible in the Age of Warming.
(Harper Collins, 2020).
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We talk with psychologist Katherine Kinzler about her book How You Say It: Why You Talk the Way You Do—And What It Says About You.
Then, we remember anthropologist and anarchist activist David Graeber. We play excerpts from our 2011 interview with him about his book Debt: The First 5000 Years. He died September 2.
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We talk with Matt Stoller about his book GOLIATH: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy.
Then we replay an excerpt from our interview last year with Thomas Frank about populism-real and fake. He’s got a new book out about it, The People, No.
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We talk with historian Douglas Boin about his fascinating biography, Alaric The Goth: An Outsider’s History of the Fall of Rome. It’s a cautionary tale about how xenophobia and anti-immigrant bigotry led to the Sack of Rome and the fall of the Roman Empire.
Then we hear from Jim Walsh of Food and Water Watch about legislation proposed by AOC to ban fracking.