Writer's Voice with Francesca Rheannon

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. Writer’s Voice — in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Rate us on your favorite podcast platform! It really helps others find our show. And like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice. Rabbi Michael Lerner Our nation is deeply divided politically. Many of us feel hopeless that the divide can ever be bridged. Yet it must, if we are to deal with the crises we face, from COVID19 to economic and racial inequality, to the climate emergency. Rabbi Michael Lerner says the cause is the “capitalist globalization of selfishness”. In his book Revolutionary Love, Lerner says we must replace it with a globalization of generosity, empathy, and environmental sanity. His strategy is for a new democratic socialism built on love, kindness, and compassion for one another. Rabbi Michael Lerner is the founder of Tikkun, an organization dedicated to the meaning of its name: to repair the world. It is organizing the Love and Justice Movement to promote revolutionary love. Writers Voice Best of 2020: Building Solidarity So, how can we build solidarity to tackle the society-wide and planet-wide problems we face? We explore that in excerpts from some of our favorite 2020 episodes. Should the fight against racism take precedence in the movement for social justice or the fight against class exploitation? It’s a point of controversy on the Left. Anti-racism activist Tim Wise weighed in on this controversy when Writer’s Voice interviewed him about his book Dispatches From The Race War. Building solidarity needs to happen not only across racial lines, but also across the rural/urban divide, as was pointed out by Jane Kleeb, when we talked with her about her book, Harvest the Vote. She says there is much to unite rural voters with urban and suburban voters—something, she says, the Democratic Party isn’t doing enough of. Our guest Abdul El Sayed told us building social solidarity is about creating a politics of empathy. We spoke with him about his book, Healing Politics. Finally, if we are to survive, we need not only solidarity with each other, but also with all the living beings we share the planet with. That’s what Australian writer and activist Tyson Yunkaporta told us when we spoke about his book Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The World. More Writers Voice Best of 2020 We aired many other wonderful interviews on WV in 2020. Here’s a sampling of some of our favorites [click on the links to hear the interviews]:

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. Writer’s Voice — in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Rate us on your favorite podcast platform! It really helps others find our show. And like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice. The Dead Are Arising Books and movies about Malcolm X abound. There’s the Autobiography of Malcolm X, of course, co-written with Alex Haley—and countless books followed. Denzel Washington played Malcolm X in Spike Lee’s movie about him and there was also a PBS documentary, Malcolm X: Make It Plain, among other films. But Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Les Payne’s new biography of Malcolm X, The Dead Are Arising, goes where none have gone before. With his daughter Tamara, who was his principal researcher and wrote a terrific introduction to the book, Les Payne delved deeply into Malcolm’s background and upbringing. He interviewed his family and many other sources who have never been tapped before. And the depth of research extended to cover the rest of Malcolm’s life—including a never-before detailed description of Malcolm’s meeting with the KKK. The Dead Are Arising not only gives a wealth of detail but also historical context to weave a rich tapestry of the life and times of one of the most important and influential figures in American history. Les Payne died in 2018. His daughter Tamara Payne brought his magnum opus to publication. Read An Excerpt from THE DEAD ARE ARISING  

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. Writer’s Voice — in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Rate us on your favorite podcast platform! It really helps others find our show. And like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice. Victoria Bond Zora Neale Hurston was one of the 20th centuries greatest American writers. Best known for her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, she was also an anthropologist and a filmmaker. But once, she was a young girl. And it’s Hurston’s childhood that forms the core of the Zora and Me trilogy, co-authored by Victoria Bond and T.R. Simon. They co-wrote the first novel in the series; Simon wrote the second novel, Zora and Me: The Cursed Ground; and Bond wrote the last, Zora and Me: The Summoner. In addition to being page-turning whodunits, the books each take up important themes illuminating Black life in America, the Jim Crow South, and the remarkable resilience of the residents of the first incorporation Black town in America, Eatonville, Florida, where Zora Neale Hurston grew up. We talk with Victoria Bond about the last book in the series, Zora and Me: The Summoner. Victoria Bond teaches first-year writing at John Jay College, The City University of New York. Zora and Me won the John Steptoe/Coretta Scott King Award for New Talent and was nominated for an Edgar Award in the category of Juvenile Fiction, among other honors. Irene Butter The ranks of Holocaust survivors—people who have a perspective on the lived horrors of fascism and xenophobia in Nazi dominated Europe—is thinning rapidly. One of them is Irene Butter, who turned 90 last week. Born in Germany, she fled with her family to the Netherlands, where they expected to be safe from Nazi persecution. That, of course, didn’t happen. When the Nazis occupied Holland, Irene Butter’s family: parents, brother and her, ended up shipped to the Nazi concentration camp Bergen Belsen. By January 1945, the family was struggling to survive. Irene, all of fourteen years old, took care of her ailing parents and starving kids in the camp, and even helped bring clothes to her Amsterdam neighbor Anna Frank, before her family was offered a singular chance for freedom. Irene’s first person memoir, Shores Beyond Shores, is an account of how the heart keeps its common humanity in the most inhumane and turbulent of times; her hard-earned lessons are a timeless inspiration. Since the late 80’s Irene Butter has been teaching students about the Holocaust. She is a co-founder of the Raoul Wallenberg Medal & Lecture series at the University of Michigan, and one of the founders of Zeitouna, an Arab/Jewish Women’s Dialogue group in Ann Arbor. Writer’s Voice Book Pick Ellen Cooney writes heartwarming and thought-provoking novels and stories that often feature dogs as a key part of the plot. Her latest novel is true to form. One Night, Two Souls is the story of a hospital chaplain who is joined one night by an unusual compa...

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. Writer’s Voice — in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Rate us on your favorite podcast platform! It really helps others find our show. And like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice. Tim Wise When Obama was elected, many white liberals thought we’d reached a “post-racial America.” Then came the white backlash and Trump. Then, the pandemic and an epidemic of police violence against Black people turned the searchlight on systemic racism and white privilege in America. While white supremacists threatened a race war, it became newly clear to many Americans that the war on Black people has been going on for a very long time. Tim Wise grew up as a privileged white person in the South. For the past quarter century, he’s been fighting in the trenches of the race war against racism. The great scholar Cornel West has called him, “A vanilla brother in the tradition of John Brown.” Wise’s new book Dispatches from the Race War is a collection of essays on racial flashpoints, white denial, racial violence, and the manipulation of fear in America today. One by one, it skewers the myths white people tell themselves about race. Tim Wise is the author of five books, including Under the Affluence and Dear White America. Mehrdad Azemun Listen to our full interview with Mehrdad Azemun here. 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? Mehrdad Azemun 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.

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.

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. Writer’s Voice — in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show. And like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice. Jess Walter In 1909 Spokane Washington was the setting for one of the most important civil rights battles in our history. But the fight wasn’t about racial justice. It was about free speech—specifically the right of workers to organize in the public sphere for labor rights. That free speech fight provides the setting for Jess Walter’s gripping new novel, The Cold Millions. It’s an intimate story of brotherhood, love, sacrifice, and betrayal set against the backdrop of an early twentieth-century America that eerily echoes our own time, with its chasm between rich and poor. The Cold Millions is a compulsive read, featuring an unforgettable cast of cops and tramps, suffragists and socialists, madams and murderers. Jess Walter is the author of nine books, including the bestselling novel The Beautiful Ruins. Read an excerpt from The Cold Millions Lara Vapnek Back in 2015, we talked with historian Lara Vapnek about her biography of the great labor organizer and champion of civil liberties, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.  We replay a long excerpt from that Writers Voice episode. Listen to the extended interview  

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. Writer’s Voice — in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Rate us on your favorite podcast platform! It really helps others find our show. And like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice. Bryan Washington Bryan Washington’s short stories and essays have garnered a lot of acclaim from the literary world. The Houston writer’s work has appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, the Paris Review, Grant and many other prestigious venues. Now he’s come out with his first novel, Memorial, and it is a wonderful read—the story of two young gay men who grapple with issues of commitment to each other, coming to terms with their families of origin and the barriers of class and culture. Bryan Washington calls it a “gay slacker dramedy” but that’s too limiting. It’s a story that is in many ways about family, the ties that bind and the ties that break. And in that, it touches deeply on matters of the hearten matter who you are. Memorial is a Time “Book of the Year” and has been nominated for several awards. Bryan Washington was named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 winner and the recipient of an O. Henry Award, among other honors. Read two excerpts from Memorial Nicole Krauss What does it mean to be a man? Or a woman in relationship to men? Or just a human being navigating the contradictory dictates of gender and humanity? Those are questions my guest Nicole Krauss explores in her acclaimed collection of stories, To Be A Man. Set in our contemporary moment, and moving across the globe from Switzerland, Japan, and New York City to Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, and South America, the stories in To Be a Man feature male characters as fathers, lovers, friends, children, seducers, and even a lost husband who may never have been a husband at all. They also feature women who strive to free themselves from the dependency on men so often decreed for them to win lives of greater self-determination. This is Nicole Krauss’ first book of short stories. She is also the author of four novels, including Forest Dark, — a finalist for the National Book Award — and The History of Love, which won the Saroyan Prize for International Literature. Read the title story “To Be A Man”

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. Writer’s Voice — in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Rate us on your favorite podcast platform! It really helps others find our show. And like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio or find us on Twitter @WritersVoice. Elisa Gabbert We stare at our phones. We keep multiple tabs open. Our chats and conversations are full of the phrase “Did you see?” The feeling that we’re living in the worst of times seems to be intensifying, alongside a desire to know precisely how bad things have gotten—and each new catastrophe distracts us from the last. In her new collection, The Unreality of Memory & Other Essays, acclaimed poet and essayist Elisa Gabbert brings together provocative essays on disaster culture, climate anxiety, and our mounting collective sense of doom. Gabbert explores our obsessions with disasters past and future, from the sinking of the Titanic to Chernobyl, from witch hunts to the plague. Her deeply researched, prophetic meditations question how the world will end—if indeed it will—and why we can’t stop fantasizing about it. The Unreality of Memory offers a hauntingly perceptive analysis of our new ways of being and a means of reconciling ourselves to this unreal new world. In addition to The Unreality of Memory & Other Essays, Elisa Gabbert is the author of four other collections of poetry, essays, and criticism, including The Word Pretty and The Self Unstable. She writes a regular poetry column for the New York Times, and her work has appeared in Harper’s, The New Yorker and many other venues. Read an excerpt from THE UNREALITY OF MEMORY The Poem “Memory” by Lucille Clifton  

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. Writer’s Voice — in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Rate us on your favorite podcast platform! It really helps others find our show. And like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Les Leopold Eighty-two years ago this week, the end stage of Germany’s pre-war Jewish community began. On the night of November 10-11, The Nazis carried out a pogrom that ransacked and destroyed thousands of German homes, synagogues and shops. It was called Kristallnacht (“Crystal Night”) after the shards of broken glass that littered the streets. 30,000 Jewish men were taken away to concentration camps, among them my guest Les Leopold’s uncle Walter, who spent several months in Buchenwald before being miraculously released. Dr. Walter Leopold was a self-declared “revolutionary Jew” who kept a remarkable diary all through the years of living first in hiding and then under an assumed identity until the end of the War. Against all odds, he, his wife and his young daughter managed to survive as he fought in any way he could against Fascism. He died when his American nephew Les Leopold was only three. But like his uncle Walter, Les Leopold is a fighter against injustice. Writers Voice listeners know him from the multiple times we’ve interviewed him about his books on income inequality, including The Looting of America and Runaway Inequality, as well as his terrific biography of labor leader Tony Mazzocchi. Les Leopold turned the book Runaway Inequality into an ongoing project that trains tens of thousands of trade unionists about predatory capitalism and how to fight it. When he discovered his uncle’s diary, he was struck by its relevance to today. He knew he had to bring it to American readers. Hence the memoir, Defiant German—Defiant Jew. Anthony Horowitz. Anthony Horowitz is one of the world’s bestselling authors of crime fiction. He’s been a guest on Writer’s Voice multiple times. The byzantine twists and turns of his plots  provide much grist for guessing and the myriad references hidden in the text to other masters of the genre, like Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, are always a delight to read. We spoke with him in 2017 about The Magpie Murders, which featured literary agent Susan Ryeland as the sleuth who finds her clues in a novel within the novel, written by her client Alan Conway and featuring another sleuth, Atticus Pünd. Now,

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.) Writer’s Voice — in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Rate us on your favorite podcast platform! It really helps others find our show. And like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Stephen Snyder On an unnamed island, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses. Most of the inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few able to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten. When a young writer discovers that her editor is in danger, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards, and together they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past. That’s the premise of the powerful and provocative novel by Yoko Ozawa, The Memory Police. A Finalist for the International Booker Prize and the National Book Award, the Memory Police is a haunting Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance and the trauma of loss. We speak with Ozawa’s award-winning translator Stephen Snyder. He is professor of Japanese Studies at Middlebury College and the Center for the Art of Translation. Read an excerpt from Yoko Ozawa’s The Memory Police Marian Lindberg Just over a hundred years ago, ideas about masculinity were undergoing a change. Threatened by the women’s suffrage movement, immigration and the new field of psychology, the American notion of what it means to be a man became fixated on projecting strength, scorning vulnerability and, of course, strict heterosexuality. That’s the context Marian Lindberg sets for her exploration of a scandal that embroiled the military garrison on New York’s Plum Island in 1914. Major Benjamin Koehler was accused of being gay and groping subordinates while commander of Fort Terry–a remote coastal defense post in eastern Long Island Sound. Was it a set up? Was he even gay? And what light does the scandal shine on American society? Those are questions Lindberg examines in her book Scandal on Plum Island. One reviewer called it “social justice meets true-life suspense. “ Marian Lindberg is Conservation and Communications Specialist with The Nature Conservancy in East Hampton, Long Island. She is also the author of The End of the Rainy Season.

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.

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. Writer’s Voice — in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Rate us on iTunes,  Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts! It really helps others find our show. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice Radio or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Thomas Frank There are only a few days left before the most consequential election in American history. Will democracy come to an end if Trump wins? Many fear so, with reason. But democracy has been under attack since long before Trump started trying to dismantle it entirely. After he was elected in 2016, there were many pundits who questioned the value of democracy, scorning Trump as a “populist,” because supposedly the non-college educated white working class masses put him in office. In fact, Trump voters were better off than most Americans, with an average income of $70,000 (about $20,000 over median income at the time.) In a counterintuitive twist, somehow democracy was accused of leading to populism, and populism was decried as autocratic, illiberal, and, above all, stupid. But our guest Thomas Frank says that the pundits, academics and Democratic elite who attack populism have got the term all wrong–and they are heirs to a tradition that’s been getting it wrong since the Populist Party became a force in 19th century America. In fact, the Populists fought for expanding the vote to women; they rejected xenophobia against immigrants; and they built alliances between Black and white workers and farmers. And, far from being stupid, they pushed for policies that succeeding generations adopted as fundamental and needed reforms. In his book The People, No, Frank takes the reader through the history of populism and its opponents from the beginning down to today. The lesson he draws is that the real story of populism is the story of American democracy itself. Thomas Frank is the author of nine books, including Listen Liberal, which we spoke with him about in 2017. READ AN EXCERPT FROM THE PEOPLE, NO CHECK OUT THOMAS FRANK’S GALLERY OF ANTI-POPULISM ART  

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). Writer’s Voice — in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004. Rate us on iTunes,  Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts! It really helps others find our show. Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Jane Kleeb The Democratic Party used to be big in America’s rural heartland. Wisconsin was once a bastion of progressivism, and Democrats were regularly elected to Congress from midwestern and other rural regions. But lately, The Democratic Party has lost an entire generation of rural voters. By focusing the majority of their message and resources on urban and coastal voters, Democrats have sacrificed entire regions of the country where, as our guest Jane Kleeb says, there is more common ground and shared values than what appears on the surface. In her book Harvest the Vote, Kleeb makes a powerful argument for why Democrats shouldn’t ignore rural America. On issues from climate change to health care, and education to corporate overreach, Kleeb shows that by paying attention to the voices and needs of rural voters, the Democratic Party can bring them back to the Blue fold — and improve its own responsiveness to the needs of ordinary people. Jane Kleeb is the chair of Nebraska’s Democratic Party and founder of Bold Nebraska, an organization that has built a powerful coalition of Native tribes, farmers and ranchers to oppose the Keystone XL Pipeline. Read an excerpt from Harvest The Vote Eric Holthaus There are a lot of books that, rightly, warn us about the dire state of the climate and the uninhabitable Earth we are hurtling toward. But there aren’t so many that show us what the Earth could be like if we use what we already know to reverse the effects of climate change over the next three decades. That’s what climate journalist and meteorologist Eric Holthaus does in his visionary new book, The Future Earth. He invites us to imagine how we can reverse the effects of climate change in our own lifetime. Holthaus also encourages us to enter a deeper relationship with the earth as stewards and to re-affirm our commitment to one another in our shared humanity. It’s all part of the same shift in consciousness and action we will need to survive and thrive. Eric Holthaus has written for the Wall Street Journal, Slate, Grist, and The Correspondent, where he currently covers the climate crisis. Read an excerpt from The Future Earth  

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. Writer’s Voice — in depth progressive conversation with writers of all genres. On the air since 2004. Rate us on iTunes or whatever podcast app you use! Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Katherine Kinzler Race, class, and gender shape our social identities, and thus who we perceive as “like us” or “not like us”. But one overlooked factor can be even more powerful: the way we speak. As psychologist Katherine Kinzler reveals in her book, How You Say It, the way we talk is central to our social identity. We can change how we speak to some extent, but for the most part, we are forever marked by our native tongue—and are hardwired to prejudge others by theirs, often with serious consequences. Your accent alone can determine the economic opportunity or discrimination you encounter in life. Our linguistic differences present challenges, Kinzler shows, but they also can be a force for good. Humans can benefit from being exposed to multiple languages —a paradox that should inspire us to master this ancient source of tribalism, and rethink the role that speech plays in our society. Katherine Kinzler is professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, where she leads the Development of Social Cognition Laboratory. Read her article, below: Bias Against African American English Speakers Is A Pillar of Systemic Racism David Graeber When David Graeber died September 2, our schedule did not permit us to replay our 2011 interview with him. Now it does. Graeber was an anthropologist, an anarchist activist who was involved in the planning of Occupy Wall Street, and the author of several major books, the most famous of which is Debt: The First 5000 Years. We spoke with him in July of 2011, just weeks before Occupy Wall Street exploded at Zucotti Park in downtown Manhattan and then spread throughout the nation and the world. At a time when Trump & the GOP, after exploding the national debt with their tax cut for billionaires, are making noises about the need to rein in the debt by slashing or ending Social Security and Medicare, we thought it would be a good time to re-air an excerpt from that interview. Listen to the Entire Interview with David Graeber here

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. Writer’s Voice — in depth progressive conversation with writers of all genres. On the air since 2004. Rate us on iTunes or whatever podcast app you use! Like us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon or find us on twitter @WritersVoice. Matt Stoller Americans once had a coherent and clear understanding of political tyranny. A concentration of power, whether in the hands of a military dictator or a JP Morgan, was understood as autocratic and dangerous to individual liberty and democracy. This idea stretched back to the country’s founding. In the 1930s, people observed that the Great Depression was caused by financial concentration in the hands of a few whose misuse of their power induced a financial collapse. They drew on this tradition to craft the New Deal. Matt Stoller’s book Goliath looks at the struggles over monopoly power and democracy. He’s also the author of the blog Big, which examines monopoly in the news, covering topics from big Pharma and Big Tech to sports and podcasting. Listen to an except from GOLIATH Thomas Frank We hear a lot about populism these days, but, as discussed in our first segment, the populism that’s being roundly condemned as the ideology of the rightwing is a far cry from the original sense of the term that we know from American history. How did the name of such an important progressive movement get turned on its head by those who link it to right-wing racism and nationalism? Thomas Frank has been thinking about that for a long time. In 2018, he wrote a piece for the Guardian entitled “Forget Trump – populism is the cure, not the disease“, and has recently come out with a book about the topic, The People, No. (We hope to be talking with him about that book later in the season.) But we actually spoke with Frank more than a year ago about the topic, so, in light of our discussion with Matt Stoller, we decided to re-play part of that conversation with Thomas Frank.