Dividing Lines: What Are Borders and Why Do We Have Them?
[This show is an Encore of “Borders: What Are They Good For?” which premiered on May 29, 2024.] What are borders, and why do we have them? And how is violent border enforcement at the US-Mexico border connected to Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza? And what happens when borders cross living land and communities? We’ll dig into these questions in this week’s episode with the help of Heba Gowayed, sociology...
Time Crunch: Productivity Culture with Jenny Odell (Encore)
This show was originally published on February 21, 2024 and titled “Jenny Odell on Saving Time.” On this week’s episode, we take a critical look at productivity culture and the idea that time is money by speaking with Jenny Odell, acclaimed author of Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock and How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. We dig into the ideas behind Saving Time, which gives a...
We need affordable housing now!
We need affordable housing now! On today’s episode, we dive into stories that underscore the importance of affordable housing. We’ll examine what the recent Supreme Court ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson means for unhoused people who are living on the streets and how historical disinvestment in affordable and public housing has created our current homelessness wave. Then, we’ll hear about the fight to legalize and...
East Orosi’s Struggle for Clean Drinking Water
East Orosi hasn’t had safe drinking water in over 20 years. The water is full of nitrates, runoff from industrial agriculture, which is harmful to human health. The community has taken action to find a solution, from lobbying at the state capital to working with neighboring towns. And they may finally have one. New California laws, passed in the last five years, have opened up funding to build water infrastructure in small...
The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation
Caste—one of the oldest systems of exclusion in the world—is thriving. Despite the ban on Untouchability 70 years ago, caste impacts 1.9 billion people in the world. Every 15 minutes, a crime is perpetrated against a Dalit person. The average age of death for Dalit women is just 39. And the wreckages of caste are replicated here in the U.S., too—erupting online with rape and death threats, showing up at work, and forcing countless...
Disclose! Divest!: Behind the Fight Over College Endowments
As graduation approached this year, students around the country began protests after calls for divestment from Israel were initially ignored by university leadership. The campus encampments were met with physical violence and the mainstream press dismissed the students’ demands as naive and immature. But, it turns out that there’s a lot we should be asking about college endowments. We take a look at what an endowment is...
