KPFA - Letters and Politics

Talking About Election Integrity & Young Voters

Part 1: Election Integrity Guest: Steven Rosenfeld is a senior writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent of  Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He is a national political reporter focusing on democracy issues. He is the author of The Georgia Way: How to Win Elections Part 2: Young Voters Guest: Marisa Moraza, senior campaign strategist with Power California.  https://powercalifornia.org/ The post Talking About Election Integrity & Young Voters appeared fir...

Nomi Prins: How The Financial Markets Abandoned The Economy

Guest: Nomi Prins is an economist, journalist, author, and former Wall Street executive. She is the author of many books including her latest Permanent Distortion: How the Financial Markets Abandoned the Real Economy Forever. The post Nomi Prins: How The Financial Markets Abandoned The Economy appeared first on KPFA.

The 1994 Midterm Election & The Rise of Partisan Warfare

Guest: Geoffrey Kabaservice (@RuleandRuin) is a historian of the Republican Party and the Director of Political Studies at the Niskanen Center and the author of a number of books, including Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party. The post The 1994 Midterm Election & The Rise of Partisan Warfare appeared first on KPFA.

The 1934 Midterm Election’s Transformative Influence on the New Deal Landscape

Guest: Jason Scott Smith is Professor of History at the University of New Mexico, where he teaches courses on modern American history, the Great Depression, and the history of infrastructure.  He is the author of Building New Deal Liberalism and A Concise History of the New Deal. The post The 1934 Midterm Election’s Transformative Influence on the New Deal Landscape appeared first on KPFA.

Brazil: Militarism, the Far-Right, and the Return of the Left with Lula

Guest: James N. Green is the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Professor of Latin American History and the author or co-author of several books on History of Brazil and Latin America, including his latest Brazil: Five Centuries of Change.  He is the Director of the Opening the Archives Project, the National Co-Coordinator of the US Network for Democracy in Brazil, and the President of the Board of Directors of the Washington Brazil Office. Photo credit: Wikimedia commons. The post Brazil: Militarism...

A History of Disability and Design

Guest: Bess Williamson is Associate Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the author of Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design.   The post A History of Disability and Design appeared first on KPFA.

Left Perspectives on the War in Ukraine: A Conversation with Richard Becker

Guest: Richard Becker is the Western Region Coordinator of the ANSWER – Act Now to Stop War & End Racism – Coalition, and the author of Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire, and The Myth of Democracy and the Rule of the Banks. He is also co-author of several books Storming the Gates: How the Russian Revolution Changed the World, Revolution Manifesto: Understanding Marx and Lenin’s Theory of Revolution. Feature photo: Noah Brooks on Wikimedia   The post Left Perspectives on the War in Ukrain...

Legal Murder: A Legacy of Jim Crow

Guest: Margaret A. Burnham is the founding director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University (crrj.org), she has been a staffer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a civil rights lawyer, a defense attorney, and a judge.  Professor Burnham was nominated by President Biden and confirmed by the US Senate to serve on the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board.  She is the author of the book By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioner...

A Preview of the 2022 Midterm Elections with John Nichols

Guest:  John Nichols is the national affairs correspondent for The Nation Magazine. He is the author of the book Coronavirus Criminals and Pandemic Profiteers:  Accountability for those who Caused the Crisis.  His latest piece in The Nation is Attorneys General Elections Take Center Stage Post-Roe: AG races across the country will determine whether local prosecutors are encouraged to bring charges in abortion cases or forced to comply with pre-Roe bans. The post A Preview of the 2022 Midterm...

Left Perspectives on the War in Ukraine: A Conversation with Ukrainian Opposition Leader Zakhar Popovych

Guest: Zakhar Popovych is a member of the Left Opposition in Ukraine. Photo credit: Wikimedia commons The post Left Perspectives on the War in Ukraine: A Conversation with Ukrainian Opposition Leader Zakhar Popovych appeared first on KPFA.

Left Perspectives on the War in Ukraine: A Conversation with Katrina vanden Heuvel

Guest: Katrina Vanden Heuvel is editorial director and publisher of The Nation and a columnist for The Washington Post.  She is the author of several books, including The Change I Believe In: Fighting for Progress in the Age of Obama, and co-author (with Stephen F. Cohen) of Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev’s Reformers.   She wrote in the Nation the piece The Cuban Missile Crisis Was 60 Years Ago, but It’s Urgently Relevant Today: That pivotal moment proves that de-escalation an...

The Murder of Regina Martina Perez

Guest: Katherine Corcoran is a former Associated Press bureau chief for Mexico and Central America and is currently co-coordinator of MasterLAB, an investigative editor training program in Mexico City.  She is the author of In The Mouth Of The Wolf: A Murder, A Cover-up, and The True Cost Of Silencing The Press.   The post The Murder of Regina Martina Perez appeared first on KPFA.

Ukraine and the U.S. Military Budget & Peniel Joseph on Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century

Part I. Ukraine and the U.S. Military Budget Guest: William Hartung is an expert on national security/foreign policy  at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His work focuses on the arms industry and U.S. military budget.  He is the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (2011).   Part II. The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century Guest: Peniel E. Joseph is the Barbara Jordan Ch...

A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Guest: Serhii Plokhy is Mykhailo S. Hrushevs’kyi Professor of Ukrainian History and director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University.  He is the author of several books including, Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis (2021) and most recently, Atoms and Ashes: A Global History of Nuclear Disasters (2022). The post A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis appeared first on KPFA.

A History of Nuclear War with Peter Kuznick

Guest: Peter Kuznick is a professor of history and director of the award-winning Nuclear Studies Institute at American University.  He has written extensively about science and politics, nuclear history, and Cold War culture. He is the author of Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists as Political Activists in 1930s America (2019); the co-author of Rethinking the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with Akira Kimura; Rethinking Cold War Culture (2010) with James Gilbert; and of The Untold Hi...

Kai Bird on Robert Oppenheimer & Tactical Nuclear Weapons

Guest: Kai Bird is an award-winning historian and journalist. Executive Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography, he is the acclaimed author of biographies of John J. McCloy and of McGeorge and William Bundy. He won the Pulitzer Prize for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (co-authored with Martin J. Sherwin). His work includes critical writings on the Vietnam War, Hiroshima, nuclear weapons, the Cold War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the CIA.  He i...

KPFA Special – Bart Ehrman on Early Christian Texts & The Making of Hell

Guest: Bart D. Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has written or edited thirty-three books, including Misquoting Jesus, How Jesus Became God, The Triumph of Christianity, and Heaven and Hell.   The post KPFA Special – Bart Ehrman on Early Christian Texts & The Making of Hell appeared first on KPFA.

KPFA Special – The Corporate Origins of Colonialism: The East India Company

Guest: William Dalrymple is the author of The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire. The post KPFA Special – The Corporate Origins of Colonialism: The East India Company appeared first on KPFA.

KPFA Special – A Brief History of U.S. Imperialism with Noam Chomsky

Guest: Noam Chomsky is a world-renowned linguist and political activist and institute professor (emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and laureate professor of linguistics and chair in the program in environment and social justice at the University of Arizona. He, along with Vijay Prashad, is the author The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power. The post KPFA Special – A Brief History of U.S. Impe...

KPFA Special – A History of Democratic Socialism in Europe and the US

Guest: Gary Dorrien is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University. He is the author of a number of books including The New Abolition, Breaking White Supremacy,  Economy, Difference, Empire, Social Democracy in the Making: Political and Religious Roots of European Socialism; and his latest, American Democratic Socialism: History, Politics, Religion, and Theory. The post KPFA Special – A History of Democratic S...

KPFA Special: Reza Aslan on Howard Baskerville & The Persian Revolution of 1906

Guest: Reza Aslan is an internationally acclaimed writer, producer, and scholar of religions. He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Zealot, and editor of Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East.  His latest book is An American Martyr in Persia: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville. The post KPFA Special: Reza Aslan on Howard Baskerville & The Persian Revolution of 1906 appeared first on KPFA.

KPFA Special: The Inspiring Life of Henry David Thoreau

Guest: Laura Dassow Walls, author of the book Henry David Thoreau: A Life, a biography of the naturalist, inventor and activist. He left behind a monumental legacy in addition to his essay Civil Disobedience, a paean to human freedom. Two hundred years after his birth, Walls restores Henry David Thoreau to us in all his profound, inspiring complexity. The post KPFA Special: The Inspiring Life of Henry David Thoreau appeared first on KPFA.

KPFA Special: We The Elites: The Making of the US Constitution

Guest: Robert Ovetz is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at San José State University, US. He is the author of When Workers Shot Back: Class Conflict from 1877 to 1921, and the editor of Workers’ Inquiry and Global Class Struggle. His latest book is We the Elites:  Why the US Constitution Serves the Few. The post KPFA Special: We The Elites: The Making of the US Constitution appeared first on KPFA.

KPFA Special: Adam Hochschild: WWI, The Red Scare and The Threat to Democracy

Guest: Adam Hochschild is the author of eleven books, including the contemporary classics King Leopold’s Ghost and To End All Wars (both finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award), Spain in Our Hearts (a New York Times bestseller), and Bury the Chains (a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and PEN USA Literary Award). His latest is AMERICAN MIDNIGHT: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis.   The post KPFA S...

KPFA Special: Yanis Varoufakis on Inflation and the Economic Imbalances of the World

Guest: Yanis Varoufakis is the former finance minister of Greece, the co-founder of DiEM25 (Democracy in Europe Movement), and the author of several books including The Global Minotaur: America, Europe and the Future of the World Economy, Adults In the Room: My Battle with Europe’s Deep Establishment, Talking To My Daughter About the Economy: A Brief History of Capitalism, and his latest, Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present.   The post KPFA Special: Yanis Varoufakis on Infla...

KPFA Special: Josephine Baker: Anti-Fascist Spy

Guest: Damien Lewis is an award-winning writer who spent twenty years reporting from war, disaster, and conflict zones for the BBC and other global news organizations. He is the bestselling author of more than twenty books, many of which are being adapted into films or television series; his latest is  Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy. The post KPFA Special: Josephine Baker: Anti-Fascist Spy appeared first on KPFA.

KPFA Special: Chris Hedges on The Greatest Evil is War

Guest: Chris Hedges was a war correspondent for two decades in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans, fifteen of them with The New York Times, where he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.  He is the author of many books, including War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and his latest, The Greatest Evil is War.  He writes a column every Monday for ScheerPost and has a show, The Chris Hedges Report, on The Real News. You can find him at c...

The Firebombing of Tokyo and the Road to the Atomic Bomb

Guest: James M. Scott is the author of several books including Rampage, Target Tokyo, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and his latest is Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb.   The post The Firebombing of Tokyo and the Road to the Atomic Bomb appeared first on KPFA.

The Eviction of an Encampment

Guest: Talya Husbands-Hankin is an activist working at Wood St. encampment and the founder of Love and Justice in the Streets. Special thanks to reporters Lucy Kang from Making Contact and Ellie Prickett-Morgan from KPFA News Department for providing their work. Photo credit: Eviction at the Wood Street encampment on Monday, September 12, 2022 by Talya Husbands-Hankin. The post The Eviction of an Encampment appeared first on KPFA.

The Radical History of Asian Americans

Guest: Catherine Ceniza Choy is professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Empire of Care and Global Families and the co-editor of the anthology Gendering the Trans-Pacific World. And her latest Asian American Histories of the United States. The post The Radical History of Asian Americans appeared first on KPFA.

Before We Were Trans: A 3,500 Year History

Guest: Kit Heyam is a university lecturer, a queer history activist, and a trans awareness trainer and author of Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender. The post Before We Were Trans: A 3,500 Year History appeared first on KPFA.

The 2 Sides of Atticus Finch

Guest: Joseph Crespino, the Jimmy Carter professor of history at Emory University and author of Atticus Finch The Biography: Harper Lee, Her Father, and the Making of an American Icon. The post The 2 Sides of Atticus Finch appeared first on KPFA.

Combating Anti-Asian Hate & A Conversation on Originalism

Combating Anti-Asian Hate Guest: Annie Lee, Director of Policy for Chinese for Affirmative Action and member of The Stop AAPI Hate Coalition.   A Conversation on Originalism Guest: Erwin Chemerinsky is dean of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law and author of the forthcoming book Worse Than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism. The post Combating Anti-Asian Hate & A Conversation on Originalism appeared first on KPFA.

Dipo Faloyin on The Diversity of Africa

Guest: Dipo Faloyin (@DipoFaloyin) is a senior editor at VICE, where he focuses on race, culture, and identity around the world. He is the author of the book Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent. The post Dipo Faloyin on The Diversity of Africa appeared first on KPFA.

A History of Blindness: From Homer to Hellen Keller to Ray Charles

Guest:  M. Leona Godin is a writer, performer, and educator who is blind. She is the author of the book There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness.   Her writing has appeared in The New York Times; Playboy; O, The Oprah Magazine; and Catapult, where she writes the column “A Blind Writer’s Notebook.”  She was a 2019 Logan Nonfiction Fellow and has written and produced two theatrical productions: The Star of Happiness, based on Helen Keller’s time performing in vaudeville, a...

Heterodoxy: The Secret Club that Sparked the Feminist Movement

Guest: Joanna Scutts is a literary critic, historian, and author of The Extra Woman and her latest, Hotbed: Bohemian Greenwich Village and the Secret Club that Sparked Modern Feminism.  Her writing appear in several outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, and the Paris Review series Feminize Your Canon.     The post Heterodoxy: The Secret Club that Sparked the Feminist Movement appeared first on KPFA.

The Life and Times of Mikhail Gorbachev

Guest: Ronald Suny is the William H. Sewell Jr. Distinguished University Professor of History and Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. He is the author of several books including, Red Flag Wounded: Stalinism and the Fate of the Soviet Experiment, Stalin: Passage to Revolution, and They Can Live in the Desert But Nowhere Else: A History of the Armenian Genocide. Photo credit: RIA Novosti archive, image #359290 / Yuryi Abramochkin / CC-BY-SA 3.0 The post The Life and T...

An Anatomy of a Marine Die-off in the SF Bay & At Home on an Unruly Planet

Part I. An Anatomy of a Marine Die-off at the San Francisco Bay. Guest: Damon Tighe (@damontighe) is a Naturalist who documents wildlife in Lake Merritt. Part II. At Home on an Unruly Planet: Finding Refuge on a Changed Earth Guest: Madeline Ostrander is a freelance environmental journalist based in Seattle and the author of At Home on an Unruly Planet: Finding Refuge on a Changed Earth.  Her her latest article in the Nation Magazine is In the Era of Climate Migration, What Will “Home” Mean?...

The Diversity of Perception in the Animal Kingdom and How Humans Force Creatures Into an Alien World

Guest: Ed Yong is a Pulitzer Prize–winning science writer on the staff of The Atlantic. He is is the author of I Contain Multitudes, and his latest An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us. The post The Diversity of Perception in the Animal Kingdom and How Humans Force Creatures Into an Alien World appeared first on KPFA.

Karl Marx’s Final Years

Guest: Marcello Musto is the author of The Last Years of Karl Marx.  He is also a Professor of Sociological Theory at York University where he is the founding director of the Laboratory for Alternative Theories. The post Karl Marx’s Final Years appeared first on KPFA.

Robin D. G. Kelley: A History of Black Radicalism

Guest: Robin D. G. Kelley is Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA.  He is author or co-editor of numerous award-winning books including Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (The Free Press, 2009); Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Beacon Press, 1997); Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (The Free Press, 1994), and Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Beacon ...

Understanding QAnon and the Conspiracy Theory of Everything

Guest: Mike Rothschild is a journalist and author of The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything.     The post Understanding QAnon and the Conspiracy Theory of Everything appeared first on KPFA.

The Future of Liz Cheney, the GOP, and the Wyoming Primaries

Guests Rone Tempest was a longtime national and foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. In 2004 he was part of a team of reporters to win the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the massive wildfires in Southern California. He is one of the co-founders of WyoFile, an independent, public-interest news service in Wyoming. His latest piece on this issue is Does Liz Cheney have a path to victory? John Nichols is the Washington Correspondent for the Nation Magazine.  He is the author of severa...

Putin: A Biography

Guest: Philip Short has written several definitive biographies including Mao: A Life and Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare. He latest biography is called Putin. The post Putin: A Biography appeared first on KPFA.

The Life and Times of Walter F. White & The Inflation Reduction Act

Part I. The Inflation Reduction Act Guest: Robert Pollin is Distinguished University Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.   He is author of several books including his latest, Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet, co-authored with Noam Chomsky.   Part II. White Lies: The Double Life of Walter F. White and America’s Darkest Secret Guest: A.J. Baim...

The Unprecedented FBI Search Warrant on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago

Guests Marcy Wheeler is an independent journalist specializing in national security and civil liberties. Her writings can be found at emptywheel.net John Nichols is national affairs correspondent for The Nation Magazine.   Image feature: Wikimedia Commons The post The Unprecedented FBI Search Warrant on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago appeared first on KPFA.

Berkeley’s People’s Park & A History of Taiwan and China

An Update on People’s Park & A History of Taiwan and China

Part I. People’s Park  Guest: Harvey Smith is a public historian, educator, and part of the People’s Park Historic District Advocacy Group. He is also the author of Berkeley and the New Deal. Part II. A History of Taiwan and China Guest: Valerie Hansen is the Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale University, where she teaches Chinese and world history.  She is the author of The Silk Road: A New History and The Open Empire, her latest is The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the Wor...

Letters and Politics – August 4, 2022

The Assassination of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Guantanamo, and the Failure of the War on Terror

Guest: Moustafa Bayoumi is a writer, journalist, and a professor at Brooklyn College.  He is the author of How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America, and a co-editor of The Edward Said Reader.  His latest piece in the Nation is Journey to Guantánamo: A Week in America’s Notorious Penal Colony. Feature image: Cover image (July 25/August 1 edition) of The Nation magazine. Courtesy of The Nation. The post The Assassination of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Guantanamo, and the Failure...