Host Tom Zoellner sat down with professor William Wiggins to discuss the ongoing importance of African-American history within the larger context of US history. Professor Wiggins has written on numerous subjects dealing with revolutionary figures and movements in U.S. history. He has taught at the University of Connecticut, St. Olaf and Allegheny Colleges, Hampton University and Columbia University, where he also served as an Assistant Dean. 

“Time is a political resource. How time is distributed is a question of structures we find within a society. It’s structured by the economic system we have; it’s structured by gender, by race,” states journalist and author Teresa Bücker. In this conversation, Bücker describes her vision for a feminist and just approach to time. Her book on the topic, "Alle_Zeit. Eine Frage von Macht und Freiheit" was published in German in 2022. Bücker has been a regular contributor to Süddeutsche Zeitung, and is a sought after voice in conversations on politics, gender, and social change in Germany.

“I’ve been through war. I’ve witnessed the workings of genocide. I have gone to mass graves across the entire continent (…) We have to un-forget to get past the present fear.” In this episode, writer and journalist Roberto Lovato speaks about overcoming personal and collective trauma. Lovato's work has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Der Spiegel, and other national and international media outlets. In 2020, he published his first book, Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs and Revolutions in the Americas. Lovato is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and received a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.   

“Part of what has led the movement against fossil fuels is the increased number of people being confronted with the effects of oil drilling and fracking,” argues energy analyst and investigative journalist Antonia Juhasz. The Senior Researcher in the Environment and Human Rights Division at Human Rights Watch talks about how our dependency on fossil fuels impacts the environment, politics, social justice and human rights worldwide. What can be done to bring about a just transition to renewable energy more quickly? Juhasz regularly writes for outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian and National Geographic, and is the author of Black Tide: the Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill (2011), among others.

In an encore presentation, Adam Phillips joins Kate Wolf to discuss his two latest books, both published this year, On Wanting to Change and On Getting Better. The series looks at the very human impulse toward transformation, from religious and political conversion, and the conversion to family life from which one must ultimately emerge, to the aims and practices of psychoanalysis, along with more quotidian ideas of self-betterment. As always in his work, Phillips attends in these books to the aspects of ourselves that can be hardest to bear, and that can lead us to desire more rigid structures — intellectual or otherwise — or desire to be someone else, while also quietly petitioning for a more complex and thoughtful mode of change in which, as Socrates encouraged his pupils, we learn only to be ourselves. How might we get better, Phillips wonders, at talking about what it is to get better?

Also, Pankaj Mishra, author of Run and Hide, returns to recommend Josep Pla’s The Grey Notebook.

“I realized that everything I learned in terms of communication, creativity, strategy and planning at university can also be used for good...for the rights of people with disabilities,” states Raul Krauthausen. The inclusion activist and podcaster compares inclusion and accessibility laws in the US and Germany, and explains how Germany's reckoning with its fascist past still affects institutional structures today. Raul Krauthausen is the founder of a series of initiatives focusing on diversity and inclusion, among them SOZIALHELD*INNEN (Social heroes), which advises individuals and businesses on considering people with disabilities as a target group for their products and services. He is also the host of several podcasts. 

“Until we start thinking about what people’s lives are really like and not just shame them for how they vote, we’re not going to have a healthy democracy,” argues Sarah Jaffe. The labor journalist talks about working people's disillusionment with politics, and why seemingly incoherent protest movements shouldn't be disregarded. Does today’s labor shortage give workers bargaining power? Sarah Jaffe's book Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted and Alone was published in 2020 to wide acclaim.

"One of the things that is so fascinating about last night‘s midterm elections is how young people really showed up,” states Geraldo Cadava, professor of history and Latina and Latino studies at Northwestern University. In this episode, he gives his fresh take on the 2022 midterm elections and discusses the diversity of the Latino community in the U.S. along with the influence religion, race, and identity have on Latino voters. Geraldo Cadava is the author of The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity, from Nixon to Trump (2020), and Standing on Common Ground (2013). 

While politics can involve seemingly abstract decisions, “literature can remind us of the stakes at human level,” argues Boris Dralyuk.  In this episode, the translator, author and editor-in-chief of Los Angeles Review of Books talks about translators giving voice to the voiceless, and the raison d’etre of literary criticism in today's fragmented cultural landscape. Boris Dralyuk’s debut poetry collection My Hollywood and Other Poems came out in April 2022 on Paul Dry Books. 

“Some of the tension and voter suppression we are experiencing right now is not a result of us losing, it is a result of us winning,” states LaTosha Brown, community organizer and co-founder of Black Voters Matter. In this episode, she talks about the specific mechanics that suppress Black votes, the importance of activating Black voters, particularly in rural areas, and the power marginalized groups and young voters hold to change democracies. LaTosha Brown and Black Voters Matter have been credited for significant voter registration efforts in several elections, among them the 2020-21 U.S. Senate election in Georgia.