In Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Gay and Lesbian Left (University of California Press, 2016), Emily K. Hobson challenges conceptions of LGBTQ activism as single-issue analogous to but separate from other activist initiatives. Instead, Hobson uncovers the gay and lesbian left, whose activists saw sexual liberation as intertwined with chal ... Show More
Jan 24
Nick Romeo, "The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy" (PublicAffairs, 2024)
Winners Take All meets Nickel and Dimed: a provocative debunking of accepted wisdom, providing the pathway to a sustainable, survivable economy. Confronted by the terrifying trends of the early twenty-first century - widening inequality, environmental destruction, and the immiser ... Show More
32m 3s
Jan 23
Daisy Fancourt, "Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Save Lives" (Cornerstone Press, 2026)
Is culture good for you? In Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Save Lives (Cornerstone Press, 2026) Daisy Fancourt, a Professor of Psychobiology & Epidemiology and head of the Social Biobehavioural Research Group at University College London offers a comprehensive and compelli ... Show More
27m 17s
Jan 22
Michelle Henning, "A Dirty History of Photography: Chemistry, Fog, and Empire" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
In A Dirty History of Photography: Chemistry, Fog, and Empire (U Chicago Press, 2026), Professor Michelle Henning presents an environmental history of chemical photography through the lens of its deep connections to empire and industry. Dependent on the extractive practices of fo ... Show More
57m 21s
Jan 2024
Stephen M. Engel and Timothy S. Lyle, "Disrupting Dignity: Rethinking Power and Progress in LGBTQ Lives" (NYU Press, 2021)
Scholars Stephen Engel and Timothy Lyle have a new book that dives into the thinking around power, political and cultural progress, and the LGBTQ+ communities in the United States. This book is fascinating and important in examining not only policy developments around rights and ... Show More
58m 56s
Jun 2023
Gladys L. Mitchell-Walthour, "The Politics of Survival: Black Women Social Welfare Beneficiaries in Brazil and the United States" (Columbia UP, 2023)
Poor Black women who benefit from social welfare are marginalized in a number of ways by interlocking systemic racism, sexism, and classism. The media renders them invisible or casts them as racialized and undeserving "welfare queens" who exploit social safety nets. Even when Bla ... Show More
1h 30m
Jun 2021
The history of LGBTQ psychology from Stonewall to now, with Peter Hegarty, PhD
Over the past decades, the focus of LGBTQ activism has shifted and evolved, from the AIDS crisis in the 1980s to the fight for marriage equality to the focus on transgender rights today. Peter Hegarty, PhD, author of the book “A Recent History of Lesbian and Gay Psychology: From ... Show More
48m 37s
Mar 2023
Raina Lipsitz, "The Rise of a New Left: How Young Radicals Are Shaping the Future of American Politics" (Verso, 2022)
The mushrooming rolls of the Democratic Socialists of America, Marxist explainers in Teen Vogue, and the outsized impact of the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, all herald a new, youth-inflected radical politics.
The Rise of a New Left: How Youn ... Show More
37m 7s
Mar 2020
The fight against Poland’s ‘LGBT free zones’
New laws are being passed across Poland taking aim at the LGBT community. They’ve been called “LGBT free zones” as a shorthand. While they don’t necessarily mean that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are being thrown into prison, they are having a chilling effect on ... Show More
19m 38s
Jun 2016
Sarah Wald, “The Nature of California: Race, Citizenship, and Farming since the Dust Bowl” (U. of Washington Press, 2016)
The California farmlands have long served as a popular symbol of America’s natural abundance and endless opportunity. Yet, from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart to Helena Maria Viramontes’s Under the Feet of Jesus, many novels, pla ... Show More
58m 47s
Apr 2021
Fighting for 504
April 30, 1977. Nearly a month after entering San Francisco’s Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, a group of 150 demonstrators is going home. They’re singing, drinking champagne, and hugging the friends they’ve slept alongside for weeks on a cold office floor. Many of t ... Show More
27m 13s