Social Justice & Activism - The Creative Process - Activists, Environmental, Indigenous Groups, Artists and Writers Talk Diversity, Equity and inclusion

Why is there so much conflict over people, land, and resources? How can we rethink capitalism and land ownership to create a fairer, more equitable society? Audrea Lim is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer and journalist whose work focuses on land, energy, and the environment. Her writing has appeared in TheNew Yorker, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, the New York Times, the Guardian , the New Republic , a...

“The three ills of democracy that I propose to address with this method, which we've perfected over the last several decades. Democracy is supposed to make some connection with the "will of the people." But how can we estimate the will of the people when everyone is trying to manipulate it?” James S. Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University where...

“Deliberative democracy is itself, when properly done, a kind of democracy that can speak to the interests of a community. And we need that all over the world.” James S. Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University where he is Professor of Communication, Professor of Political Science (by courtesy), Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for In...

In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with activist and educator Jesse Hagopian about his new book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education . They talk about the assault on public education that takes the form of criminalizing the truth itself. They note both the powerful corporate forces behind this movement and what they are afraid of, and...

How has feminism changed in light of the way we live now? DEAN SPADE (Author of Love in a F*cked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up & Raise Hell Together ) on recognizing political conditions in personal relationships. MARILYN MINTER (Artist, Feminist) on sexual agency, beauty & her creative process. TEY MEADOW (Author of Trans Kids: Being Gendered in the Twenty-First Century )...

In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Sarah T. Roberts about the hidden humans behind Artificial Intelligence, which is reliant on executives and business managers to direct AI to promote their brand and low-level, out-sourced, and poorly paid content managers to slog through masses of images, words, and data before they get fed into the machine. T...

“We've lost over 70 percent, 73 percent, I think the latest data indicates, of wildlife and mammals in the last 50 years. That’s just shocking when you get that data, but then you ask, what can I do? What can I do? I wanted to move away from any guilt or compulsion because it doesn't work to talk to people that way. After 50 years of climate being in the news, in science, and in our schools, less...

“ We have 1.2 trillion carbon molecules in every cell. We have around 30 trillion cells, and that’s us. So carbon is really a flow that animates everything we love, enjoy, eat, and all plant life, all sea life—everything that's alive on this planet—is animated by the flow of carbon. “ Paul Hawken is a renowned environmentalist, entrepreneur, author, and activist committed to sustainability and tra...

In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu t talks with Professor Adrian Daub about the recent elections in Germany, where we saw a surge in votes for the Far Right AfD party, which is now the second most powerful party in the country.  They discuss the significance of this rise in popularity and the ways the elections reveal a number of shifts in German poli...

In this episode on the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor  David Palumbo-Liu talks with Evyn Le Espiritu Gandhi about two pathbreaking studies that create new ways of thinking about populations bound by complex and contradictory notions of loyalty and psychological investment. Based on meticulous archival research and oral histories amongst disparate populations in South Vietnam, Guam,...

In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Omar El Akkad about his new book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This . The title of the book comes from a tweet he posted three weeks after the bombardment of Gaza began. Since then, the tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times. Horrified at what has transpired since that moment, Omar...

In this episode on the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor  David Palumbo-Liu talks with Tao Leigh Goffe about her new, magisterial  Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis . Spanning many fields and disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences, the humanities, and the arts, Professor Goffe weaves together a historically rich a...

In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Professors Maha Nasser and Karam Dana. Dr. Nasser is the author of  Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World ; Professor Dana’s new book is entitled  To Stand with Palestine: Transnational Resistance and Political Evolution in the United States . Together, these two studies of...

“What I have done in my career is just try to assess who we are, what we are, why we are here, and how come we, as animals, are able to walk around and wear pants and dresses and talk on the internet, while the other animals are not. It's been my obsession since I was young. I think if I hadn't become a novelist, I might have been happy to be a naturalist or a field biologist. There is some kind o...

Why are we filled with so many contradictions? How does writing help us make sense of the absurdity and of the absurdity and chaos of the world?  T.C. Boyle is a novelist and short story writer based out of Santa Barbara, California. He has published 19 novels, such as The Road to Wellville and more than 150 short stories for publications like The New Yorker, as well as his many short story c...

In this episode of Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson on their new book, We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition . They talk about what inspired them to commission a wide range of amazing activists, artists, scholars, and organizers to write whatever came to their minds about the topic of parenting and abolition. The res...

In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Peter Beinart to discuss his new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza . We ask what led him to write this intense and intensely provocative book, which declares that Jews “need a new story” other than the current one. Beinart argues, Jews see themselves as innocent with regard to the genocide in Gaz...

“We always try to discuss things during the show, like unfair sentencing laws and how cops deal with them. Obviously, after the murder of George Floyd, we had some serious internal discussions about the show. I actually asked a few writers to give us a report card on how we had done in the first two seasons in terms of policing issues. I created the show in the shadow of the murder of Philando Cas...

How can we improve the way we train and recruit police officers? Can TV dramas serve as positive models for policing and help foster community? Alexi Hawley is the creator of ABC’s The Rookie, starring Nathan Fillion, and Netflix's The Recruit, an espionage drama starring Noah Centineo that, in season two, explores the legal defense tactic 'graymail'. The Rookie, now in its seventh...

“The position of the United States in the world, economically and politically, is the weakest it has been in my lifetime. I was born in the middle of the 20th century, so I have watched the rise of the American empire and the success of American capitalism in the second half of the 20th century. However, over the last 20 years, I have watched that turn into its opposite—a decline. The decline is v...

When capitalism stops serving the needs of the people, what can we do to create a fairer more equitable society? What can we learn from China's success and economic growth? Are we witnessing the decline of the American Empire and what comes next? Richard D. Wolff is the co-founder of  Democracy at Work  and host of their nationally syndicated show Economic Update. He was formerly pr...

“My mandate focuses on the protection of those trying to protect the planet. Protection of defenders is my main topic. When I'm speaking to states or companies, it's always related to cases of defenders facing threats, attacks, or penalization by companies or governments, like the recent case of Paul Watson (founder of Sea Shepherd) in Denmark… When I travel to places like Peru, Colombia, or Hondu...

Who Defends the Defenders? In many countries, the state response to peaceful environmental protest is increasingly to repress rather than to enable and protect those who wish to speak up for the environment. Michel Forst is a prominent human rights advocate and the UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Aarhus Convention. He previously served as the Special Rapporteur on H...

“Climate change is here. It's already causing devastation to the most vulnerable populations. We are living with an extractive mindset, where we are extracting one way out of the life system of the Earth. We need to change from that extractive mindset to a regenerative mindset. And we need to change from the North Star of economic growth to a vision of eco civilizations. Those are the two main pri...

Less than two weeks into the new year and the world’s wealthiest 1% have already used their fair share of the global carbon budget allocated for 2025. 2024 was hottest year on record. How can we change our extractive mindset to a regenerative mindset? How can we evolve our systems from economic growth to a vision of regenerative living and eco-civilization? Paul Shrivastava is Co-President of...