Across the Margin: The Podcast

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast features an interview with the backbone of the Asheville, North Carolina based hip-hop group Free Radio , emcees Austin Haynes and Johnny Reynolds. Free Radio was formed in 2012 by Haynes and Reynolds when they released their debut album, The Powers That Be . Fueled by Hayne’s beats that dig into everything from classic soul, rock, modern pop, and spa...

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast features an interview with Jacob M. Appel, one of the most prolific, accomplished, yet humble people in America. Appel is an author, poet, bioethicist, physician, lawyer and social critic best known for his short stories, his work as a playwright, and his writing in the fields of reproductive ethics, organ donation, neuroethics and euthanasia. He is t...

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast presents an interview with author and Associate Professor in the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice at the University of Chicago, William Sites. Sites’ first book, entitled Remaking New York: Primitive Globalization and the Politics of Urban Community, focused on the transformation of New York City during the final quarter of the...

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast introduces you to producer, writer, filmmaker, and media expert Jimmy Chairman. From 2006 until 2020 Chairman interviewed celebrities for a living. All told, he conducted over 10,000 interviews. On the red carpet night in and night out working for E! Entertainment — in the channel’s heyday — Chairman admirably picked the brains of the world's most fam...

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast celebrates, through an interview with director and playwright Daniel Goldstein, the release of the inspiring new musical Row , adapted from the moving memoir A Pearl in the Storm by Tori Murden McClure. Goldstein has directed over 100 plays and musicals worldwide, including work at major theaters across the United States and Asia. He was most recently...

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast presents an interview with Ed Vulliamy, former reporter for The Guardian and The Observer. He is the author of Amexica: War Along the Borderline and The War is Dead, Long Live the War — Bosnia: The Reckoning. His latest book Louder Than Bombs — part memoir, part reportage — is a story of music from the front lines. In Louder Than Bombs , Vulliamy offe...

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast presents an interview with entrepreneur, author, philanthropist, and prominent thought leader John Hope Bryant, in a thought-provoking episode which centers on Bryant’s latest book, Up From Nothing . Using the inspiring story of his own rise from humble beginnings, and that of his parents and grandparents, Up From Nothing sets out to display how...

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast presents an interview with musician, folk healer, ceremonialist, and scientist Jeff Firewalker Schmitt. Schmitt, along with renowned jazz musician John Medeski (of Medeski Martin & Wood), have formed a musical collaborative called Saint Disruption bringing together musicians, video artists, and visionaries to create music, art, and experiences tha...

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast presents an interview with Aaron Cohen, author of Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power . In Move On Up , Aaron tells the remarkable story of the explosion of soul music in Chicago. Together, soul music and black-owned businesses thrived and record producers and songwriters broadcasted optimism for black America’s future through thei...

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast presents an interview with Sanya N'Kanta , the Jamaican born and Charlotte-based musician who has made a name for himself with his genre-blurring style, bringing together rock, reggae, hip-hop, house music, and electro-pop. Sanya’s latest release, an EP entitled These Are The Days , is an ode to his lifelong love rock n 'roll. Common themes throughout...

In this episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast host Michael Shields explores an achievement in fiction writing, a tour de force of a novel heralded by critics as a “ modern classic ” and a “ spectacular invention ” entitled The Revisionaries . Penned by A.R. Moxon, who is featured in this episode, The Revisionaries is a wildly imaginative, masterfully rendered, and suspenseful tale that conjure...

This thought-provoking 100th episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast presents an interview with Oakland, California-based artist, writer, and educator, Jenny Odell. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times , New York Magazine , The Paris Review , The Believer , McSweeney's , and Sierra Magazine . Her visual work has been exhibited internationally, including as a mural on the side of a Goog...

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast presents an interview with Brooklyn-based filmmaker and activist Coffey . Formerly the fashion editor of the hip-hop magazine XXL and the founder of the Define New York Run Club, Coffey has risen to the times as one of the leaders behind the Running To Protest movement. Running to Protest is a campaign, founded with the help of activist Power Malu , t...

In this episode of Across The Margin : The Podcast, host Michael Shields interviews social psychologist, Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University, and the author of The Righteous Mind : Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religio n, Jonathan Haidt. The Righteous Mind , a book The New York Times Book Review called “a landmark contribution to humanity’s understanding of itself,...

In this episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast, host Michael Shields interviews Dr. Lynda Ulrich, the author of the book Happiness is an Option : Thriving (Instead of Surviving) In the Era of the Internet . Dr. Lynda Ulrich is the founder of Ever Widening Circles (EWC), a website whose aim is to prove that the world is a beautiful place, full of wonderment, discovery, and compassion. Within Eve...

This episode of Across The Margin : The Podcast serves as an introduction to Roots and Tings , the San Francisco Bay Area-based Revolutionary Culture Music collective. Roots and Tings comprises Quannum and Solesides co-founder, Grammy nominated MC, Lateef the Truth Speaker, acclaimed DJ and producer Jah Yzer, and the multi-talented musician and reggae artist Winstrong. Together, these dynamic arti...

In this episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast, host Michael Shields interviews Dr. Wolfgang Mack, who shares his vivid memories of living through one of the worst dictatorships in modern history. Dr. Wolfgang Mack knows what causes a country to slide into complete authoritarian control and chaos, and how legitimately elected leaders are able to grab power and gain control. A young boy when the...

Kareem Tabsch is an award-winning documentary filmmaker who believes in the power of film to enrich and change lives. His filmmaking focuses on documenting the oft-ignored parts of society, that which isn't always conventionally beautiful, widely accepted, or deemed normal. As a documentary filmmaker, Tabsch’s works have been official selections of Sundance, SXSW, True/False, Full Frame, HotDocs,...

In this episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast, host Michael Shields interviews Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College, Alex S. Vitale. Professor Vitale has spent the last thirty years writing about policing and consults with police departments and human rights organizations internationally. He is a frequent essayist, whose writings...

In this episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast, host Michael Shields shines a light on one of his passions: trees. In what amounts to a celebration of the wonders of nature, and specifically some the largest organisms on the planet, this episode honors trees, those majestic giants who benevolently provide humankind with oxygen, store carbon, stabilize the soil, provide shelter to the world's wi...

In this episode of Across The Margin : The Podcast, host Michael Shields converses with the author of the recently released book Words Whispered in Water: Why the Levees Broke in Hurricane Katrina , Sandy Rosenthal. Sandy is a civic activist and founder of Levees. Org , an organization dedicated to educating the American public about levee failures in New Orleans and increasingly around the countr...

In this episode of Across The Margin : The Podcast, host Michael Shields interviews prize-winning journalist and internationally recognized expert on corruption in government networks throughout the world, Sarah Chayes. Chayes has served as special assistant on corruption to Mike Mullen, former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as having advised David McKiernan and Stanley M...

In this episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast host Michael Shields converses with acclaimed music critic Steven Hyden. Hyden is the host of the podcast Celebration Rock wherein he converses with rock stars and the country’s biggest music writers about what’s happening in rock n’ roll. Additionally, he hosts the podcast Rivals , about the most fascinating feuds in music history, and he is one o...

In this episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast host Michael Shields converses with actor and writer Michael Imperioli. Imperioli is best known for his starring role as Christopher Moltisanti in the acclaimed HBO TV series The Sopranos , which earned him a Best Supporting Actor Emmy Award. He also wrote five episodes of the show and was co-screenwriter of the film Summer of Sam , directed by Spi...

In this episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast host Michael Shields converses with multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter, and drummer extraordinaire Eric Slick. Slick is best known as the drummer for Dr. Dog (performing on their albums Shame, Shame (2010), Be The Void (2012), B-Room (2013), The Psychedelic Swamp (2016) and Abandoned Mansion (2016)), but his solo work in the last half-decade...