Writer's Voice With Francesca Rheannon

Malavika Kannan explores what it means to come of age amid climate crisis, political upheaval and changing sexual norms in Unprecedented Times. Then Lauren Acampora talks about The Animal Room, stories that use our relationships with animals to illuminate care, power, privilege and our relationships with one another.

What can ordinary people do when immigration enforcement comes to their community? Sonali Kolhatkar talks about Breaking ICE and the networks of mutual aid, documentation and collective action that have emerged across the country.

Looking at James Baldwin through the relationships that shaped his art: Nicholas Boggs joins me to talk about Baldwin: A Love Story. Then Brad Gooch explores Keith Haring’s mission to make art available to everybody.

James Crawford asks what happens when extraction becomes civilization’s operating system, and whether repair can offer another way forward. Then, for the 25th anniversary of 9/11, an excerpt from my 2009 interview with Max Page about why generations of Americans imagined New York’s destruction long before the Twin Towers fell.

Beth Pinsker and L. Annette Binder explore caring for aging parents, from the financial realities of elder care to Alzheimer’s, memory, love and loss.

Historian Joseph Kelly traces the prehistory of American fascism and the lie that white supremacy gives one group the right to dominate another.

What happens when a machine becomes our friend, therapist, lover, or sibling? Victoria Hetherington and Silvia Park explore AI companionship and the increasingly uncertain boundary between human and machine.

What can France’s Yellow Vests teach us about saving democracy? And how could Medicare for All reclaim healthcare from private profit? Ida Susser and Abdul El-Sayed join Writer’s Voice.

John Feffer’s SONGLANDS and Portia Elan’s HOMEBOUND imagine futures shaped by climate crisis, AI, and corporate power. We talk with both authors about why care, creativity, and collective action still matter.

Historian Ada Ferrer talks about Keeper of My Kin, her memoir of a Cuban family divided by revolution, migration, and exile. Then Writer’s Voice revisits a 2008 interview with journalist T.J. English about Havana Nocturne, the story of how the Mob took over Cuba and was stopped by the Cuban Revolution.

What happens when the promise of higher education no longer delivers economic security? New York Times reporter Noam Scheiber argues that millions of college graduates increasingly face the same insecurity that has long confronted traditional working-class Americans. In this conversation, he explains why workers from Starbucks baristas to Hollywood writers are embracing collective action, and why artificial intelligence may deepen that transformation.

What makes an ordinary person become a dissident? Gal Beckerman explores moral courage through figures like Alexei Navalny, Osip Mandelstam and Etty Hillesum. Then Buzzy Jackson revisits the story of Dutch Resistance fighter Hannie Schaft.

What if patriotism isn’t about claiming America is perfect, but helping it become better? This Independence Day on Writer’s Voice: John de Graaf on the true story behind America the Beautiful Stephanie Dray & Laura Kamoie on Abigail Adams in A Founding Mother

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform. Who gets to tell the story, and who gets erased? This week on Writer’s Voice, we talk with media scholar Robin Andersen about her book The Complicit Lens: U.S. Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza. Andersen’s argument is blunt: the American press didn’t … Continue reading U.S. Media’s Gaza Failure with Robin Andersen | Plus: Trans Youth and Anti-Trans Laws with Nico Lang →

For SEO, I’d make it shorter and keyword-rich: Alex Woodard discusses Ordinary Soil, a sweeping multigenerational novel about a Choctaw farming family in the Oklahoma Panhandle, exploring the deep connections between land, food, health, and identity. Then, in an encore interview, environmental journalist Carey Gillam talks about The Monsanto Papers and the landmark lawsuit in which groundskeeper Lee Johnson took on Monsanto and won.

Writer’s Voice talks with journalist Anand Gopal about his remarkable book Days of Love and Rage. It’s a deeply human story of the Syrian revolution, the democratic experiment in Manbij, the forces that undermined it, and what it can teach us about hope today.

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform. Episode Summary What if the story we tell about civilization is wrong? What if human history isn’t a steady march from “primitive” hunter-gatherers to ever more advanced societies, but something far messier, more inventive, and more fragile — a long experiment of adaptation, collapse, … Continue reading Lost Worlds: The Untold Story of Human Adaptation →

In this episode of Writer's Voice, Francesca speaks with Omar Zahzah, Palestinian-American scholar, activist, journalist, and author of Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital Settler Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle. Zahzah offers the first book-length analysis of how major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok, systematically suppress Palestinian content, and how that suppression is structurally connected to the financial, ideological, and political ties between Silicon Valley and the Israeli state.

This week on Writer’s Voice: Elizabeth Vartkessian discusses The Undeserving and the human realities behind America’s death penalty system. Plus an excerpt from my 2020 interview with Abdul El-Sayed on “the epidemic of insecurity” shaping American life.

This week on Writer's Voice: Tim Weed explores psychedelics, Mesoamerican mythology, and consciousness in The Gatepost. Farah Naz Rishi talks grief, siblings, humor, and a runaway cockatoo in The Flightless Birds of New Hope.