Br: A Political And Literary Podcast

At the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, the award-winning sociologist Arlie Hochschild talked to Harvard Kennedy School professor and academic dean Archon Fung for the paperback release of her bestselling book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right—a finalist for the National Book Award. This podcast features an edited excerpt of their conversation.

In February 2018, the Cambridge Public Library hosted a conversation between Harvard University professors Tommie Shelby, Brandon M. Terry, Elizabeth Hinton, and Cornel West. The occasion was the publication of two books, To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., published by Harvard University Press, and Fifty Years Since MLK, published by Boston Review. 2018 marks the fiftieth anniversary of MLK's death, and the conversation that night revolved around his fraught legacy and what activism today can learn from it. This podcast presents a small selection of Cornel West's remarks on MLK's politics, life, and dream.

The award-winning writer Tananarive Due reads her short story, “The Reformatory,” and interrogates the fraught legacies of slavery and mass incarceration in literature.

In this podcast, the award-winning writer Nalo Hopkinson reads her story, “Waving at Trains,” featured in Boston Review's 2017 literary issue, Global Dystopias. She also talks about the politics of dystopia, writing from the Global South, and why we must imagine black mermaids into being. You can order a copy of Global Dystopias here: https://bostonreview.net/forum-iv. Credits: KUCR Radio for hosting Nalo Hopkinson: http://kucr.org/ Author photo: David Findlay, 2016

"Policing as we know it must be abolished before it can be transformed." Vesla Weaver, a political scientist and professor at Johns Hopkins University, talks to Tracey Meares, a Yale law school professor, about policing as a public good in a time of police brutality. Drawing from Meares's recent essay in our new print issue, The President's House Is Empty, they articulate an emancipatory vision for policing that is not predicated on racism, but is instead a public good for all.

In a conversation with Archon Fung, Professor and Academic Dean at the Harvard Kennedy School, Bernie Sanders talks about his book 'Our Revolution,' how to resist the Trump regime, and the future of progressive politics. He says, "Our job, ultimately, is to be involved in the political process in every way possible."

“In time of crisis, we summon up our strength,” wrote poet Muriel Rukeyser. This collection gathers poems—from the eve of the twenty- first century to the month following Trump’s election—to mark a moment of political rupture, summoning the collective strength found in the languages of resistance and memory, subversion and declamation, struggle and hope. Poetry is a counterforce. We offer these poems to readers as Rukeyser did—“not walls, but human things, human faces.” “When freedom is in danger, when you are asked, in one faked way or another, a shabby admonition, to leave your own humanity which includes the humanity of all, the alarm is extra-ordinary, America. Don’t you think so? You must respond, America. You must speak out, you must write.” — U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, from the Foreword

In the third episode of A Political and Literary Podcast, Aziz Rana and John Bowen reflect on the prevailing climate of Islamophobia in the U.S. and Europe, anxieties about immigration, and the legal and political stakes of Trump's election for Muslim citizens and non-citizens alike.

Slavery is at the heart of any history of capitalism and human rights. It is the starting point for any conversation about justice today. Walter Johnson, Winthrop Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, talks about the notion of racial capitalism, Black Lives Matter, and the question of reparations under and after Trump.

In the inaugural episode of BR: A Political and Literary Podcast, Junot Díaz talks to Avni Majithia-Sejpal about critical dystopias, the rice and beans of literature, and a special literary issue on global dystopias. A call for submissions for this literary issue will be out soon.