Today I have the privilege and pleasure of speaking with Nicholas Mirzoeff and Priscilla Wathington about the genocide in Gaza, and how developing a new way of seeing and writing is demanded of us to address this historical moment. In the words of Silvia Federici, “Palestine is the World.” We take Nick’s recent book, To See in the Dark, and animate it by having Priscilla read from her poetry. Nick writes: “After a year of genocide, I think politics is now the meeting of the visibl...

Intimidation, repression, and punishment with regard to activism for Palestine has only increased over the past year. Today I speak with three campus organizers from Students for Justice in Palestine who remain determined and committed, even in the face of their university’s complicity with genocide. They come from both coasts of the United States—from the City University of New York and from San Jose State University. They explain what is happening on their campuses, and the ways in wh...

Today I am delighted to welcome activist and scholar Erin McElroy to the podcast. She is the author of a remarkable book, Silicon Valley Imperialism: Techno Fantasies in Postsocialist Times. At the center of this rich and provocative study is the Romanian city of Cluj, which has been dubbed the “Silicon Valley of Eastern Europe.” McElroy untangles this notion by going back to the socialist period, whose technological advances made Romania a particularly attractive site for foreign tech ...

Today I am honored to speak with Nilo Tabrizy, co-author of a remarkable and powerful book, For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran's Women-Led Uprising. This interview complements another episode I did with her collaborator, Fatemeh Jamalpour. Ms Tabrizy tells us about her work in Visual Forensics, which she used to complement Ms Jamalpour’s reporting on the ground. The two pieces together form a vivid account of the uprising, and the repression that preceded and followed it. ...

Today I am deeply honored to speak with journalist Fatemeh Jamalpour about her book, For the Sun After Long Nights, which she wrote with fellow journalist Nilo Tabrizy. In September 2022, the world learned of the murder of a young Kurdish woman in Iran, Mahsa Jina Amini. Her death, while a captive of the Iranian state, sparked the Woman, Life, Freedom protests. Fatemeh and Nilo’s book frames those protests in the deep tradition of Iranian women leading political movements for righ...

Today I am both excited and frightened to talk with Tamara Kneese and Xiaowei Wang, two individuals whose research, writing, and activism has for years insisted on the materiality of the technologies that have brought us things like artificial intelligence, the Cloud, data centers, and digital agriculture. They explain why and how these technologies clothe themselves in ethereal garb and notions of a frictionless, beneficent capitalism while diverting attention from the vast natural and...

Today I talk with Omar Zahzah about his new book, Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital/Settler Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle. This is an immensely informative study, which details the convergence of Zionism, Silicon Valley Big Tech, and the US political and governmental elites in what Zahzah calls the hegemonic form of Zionism. He shows how capitalist profit motives and Zionist settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing go hand in hand with attempt...

Today I talk with Omar Zahzah about his new book, Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital/Settler Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle. This is an immensely informative study, which details the convergence of Zionism, Silicon Valley Big Tech, and the US political and governmental elites in what Zahzah calls the hegemonic form of Zionism. He shows how capitalist profit motives and Zionist settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing go hand in hand with attempt...

Today I have the immense honor and privilege to speak with Ellen Schrecker, who has been referred to as “the dean of the anti-anti-Communist historians.” Well known for her classic studies of McCarthyism, today Schrecker explains how much worse Trump’s regime is than what we saw in the 1950s and 60s. A fierce defender of democracy, Ellen explains the central role education plays in creating a public culture and in maintaining democracy. Our conversation takes many paths, inc...

Today I am delighted to talk with Eunsong Kim about her stunning book, The Politics of Collecting: Race & the Aestheticization of Property. It is remarkable in its theoretical conceptualization, argument, and archival work. Kim argues that the beginnings of elite art collection in the United States coincided with the rise of the robber barons and the suppression of the labor movement. She connects this to Taylorism and the idea of scientific management, that further extenuated the rift be...

Today I am deeply honored to spend time with poet, activist, and scholar Jamaica Osorio. Shortly after October 7, 2023, she began to write a series of astonishing poems about the war in Gaza and the genocide. Osorio graces us with readings of some of those poems, and engages in a rich, complex, and deeply moving discussion of what went into their composition. Throughout, we talk about the power of poetry to suspend time and allow us the space to contemplate the impossible. We talk about...

In February, a New York assemblyman little known outside New York City was polling at 1% in his bid for mayor of NYC. This Tuesday, he became mayor-elect, after running a remarkable and inspiring campaign that drew 100,000 volunteers to knock on two million doors. Largely centering on making NYC affordable for everyone, Zohran Mamdani toppled a political dynasty by weaving together a broad constituency with his charisma, intelligence, compassion and energy. We talk to Liza Featherstone ...

Today I have the pleasure of talking with Dean Spade about his new book, Love in a Fucked-up World: how to build relationships, hook up, and raise hell together. This book builds on all of Dean’s previous books, and shares their commitment to finding ways to build better movements for better worlds. Like all of his work, Love in a Fucked Up World homes in on the obstacles we face not only from repressive states and destructive ideologies, but also from our own very human weaknesses and blinds...

In 2017, activist-scholar Robyn Maynard published her groundbreaking study, Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present. Today, I have the privilege of talking with her about the second edition of this study, which has just been published by Duke University Press. Robyn tells us what has happened since 2017 that compelled her to revise the book and add important new materials to address the challenges of the present. At the core of this new edition is a po...

Today I talk with Professor Nisrin Elamin about the situation in Sudan, where we find both a war between rival factions and these same factions continuing counter-revolutionary campaign against pro-democracy forces. We discuss how regional actors such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have contributed to the repression of democracy, and not only the ineffectiveness of NGOs and the United Nations in quelling the violence, but their roles in exacerbating it. In the midst of for...

How have young people in rural areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo invented new forms of radicalism in response to the impact of new flows of foreign investment and the inability of normal national and international politics to serve their needs and interests? Zachariah Mampilly explains how rural and urban spaces have seen a complex transit of peoples and funds that complicate politics, and emergent forms of radical activism have taken root and spread in many African countries. These f...

Today I have the pleasure of talking with Supriya Khandelwal and Koa Tran, two members of the South Bay Youth Changemakers, and one of its co-directors, Amulya Mandava. This Asian American organization, located at the heart of Silicon Valley, seeks to both challenge and expand the label, Asian American. The SBYC directs its energy into projects that go far beyond the stereotypes of wealth, acquisition, and status associated with its location, and focuses on empowerment and social justice.&nbs...

Today I have the honor and the pleasure of speaking with legal scholar Mary Anne Franks, about her book, Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment. As the title of the book indicates, this is a fearless and iconoclastic critique of the ways that the First Amendment has been interpreted and mobilized in ways that protect and extend racism, misogyny, religious fundamentalism, and corporate self-interest. Among other topics, we talk about Amber Heard case and the limitations ...

Today I am delighted to speak with primatologist Christine Webb about her new book, The Arrogant Ape: The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why it Matters. The title of the book itself is a concise and precise description of its two constituent halves. First, Webb tells us how science itself, from premodern times onward, has operated with an assumption it keeps reconfirming constantly--that humans are not only exceptional, but also superior to other forms of life. Webb convin...

Today I have the honor of speaking with longtime activist Silky Shah, Executive Director of the Detention Watch Network, about her new, and extremely important book, Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition. Shah provides a critical discussion about the intersection between detention, the prison industrial complex, and anti-immigrant racism. She explains how this relationship is hardly new, but stretches back at least to the Reagan presidency and through Clinton, Bush, Obama, and ...