All the episodes I've devoted to understanding civic responsibility, activism, and social justice—along with my favorite books on these topics.
Jul 10, 2026
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4 min read
The Women Who Raised Consciousness (Clara Bingham)
Listen now (55 mins) | "So one night, late night, I was working in February and I printed out the PDF of this and it went alphabetically. And the fourth name was Joan Bingham..."
Pulling the Thread by Elise Loehnen • Elise Loehnen
Choosing Wholeness Over Wokeness (Africa Brooke)
Listen now (56 mins) | “In writing my book, I wanted to bring it back to the self because being online allows us to have this inappropriate level of audacity. And I think audacity is a very..."
Seeing Each Other's Pain (Rabbi Sharon Brous)
Listen now (61 mins) | “How do we center the voices that traditionally and historically we know existed, but were only marginalized in the tradition? And that does feel like holy work..."
How to Change the World (Austin Channing Brown)
Listen now (59 mins) | “When you are quite literally told that you are not human. What option do you have? What’s the other option other than to overthrow the system that is telling..."
Solving the American Gun Crisis (Ryan Busse)
Listen now (54 min) | “The NRA and gun owners then signified, you know, the sort of comradery, responsibility, safety, sort of a bygone..."
Being a Good Enough Person (Dolly Chugh)
Listen now (52 mins) | “What I'm positing is, is an ability to grapple with contradiction. So that's the paradox mindset that Wendy Smith, Maryanne Lewis...
Building the House of Knowledge (Joy Harjo)
Listen now (51 min) | “Humanity is messy, each of us starts with ourselves, it's horribly messy and then multiply that times millions. And that's an incredible, lovely mess."
The Power of Girls (Mattie Kahn)
Listen now (56 mins) | "I think historically we have always seen that intergenerational partnership is the way that movements grow and expand and the way people feel resilient about what..."
The Most Dangerous Idea Ever Created (Ibram X. Kendi, PhD)
Listen now (47 mins) | "And that is the single most dangerous idea that humans, in my opinion, have ever created because it will continuously lead to political violence to genocide..."
Creating from (False) Fundamentals (Sarah Lewis, PhD)
Listen now (55 mins) | "The Caucasus was where Prometheus had been chained to a rock in eternal punishment for having stolen fire. Beauty, based on subjective categories such as lore and symmetry..."
How to End Zero-Sum Thinking (Heather McGhee)
Listen now (58 min) | “We must stop the siloed thinking that racism is great for white people and bad for people of color..."
Finding Fear in the Body (Resmaa Menakem)
Listen now (47 mins) | “Here's what I would say: peace will happen when people invest in cultivating peace as opposed to war. Peace will happen. And one thing I know, for me, I know peace, I know..."
Overriding Implicit Bias (Jessica Nordell)
Listen now (53 min) | “I mean, the idea that we're colorblind or, or gender blind or age blind or something, is ridiculous. I mean, we categorize those things..."
On Telling the Truth (Nell Irvin Painter)
Listen now (47 mins) | “But one thing the whole 'Karen' thing did, which I think was very good, was that it pointed out the existence of spaces Ostensibly open to everyone, but not, and then..."
Navigating Conflict (Amanda Ripley)
Listen now (55 min) | “Usually in high conflict, the conflict becomes the whole point. So you make a lot of mistakes and you can miss opportunities..."
Being Transcendent (Geena Rocero)
Listen now (63 mins) | “I believe certainly, I know now, after have going through this years and years of feeling ashamed of who I am, you know, internalizing the shame, how America sees trans..."
Calling In the Call-Out Culture (Loretta Ross)
Listen now (53 min) | “Do you want to continue to live out the patterns of your childhood? Or do you want to make different choices? Are you programmed or are you self-determining?..."
How to Talk to People You'd Rather Hate (Loretta J. Ross)
Listen now (52 mins) | "You start with the self and the calling in culture. Then you calibrate the size of the conflict because if somebody's just being awkward or irritating, is there actually..."
The Legacy of White Feminism (Kyla Schuller)
Listen now (61 min) | “There's a fantasy in argument, in Lean In, or Girlboss style corporate feminism that says, once you have women in charge of your company, then your company is feminist..."
The Best Strangers in the World (Ari Shapiro)
Listen now (59 mins) | “But I now think about how wonderful it is that some of these radio stories that meant a lot to me that might have otherwise just disappeared, now do have a longer life. And..."
On Reducing Harm & Savings Lives (Maia Szalavitz): ADDICTION
Listen now (59 mins) | “I think it's really important for, you know, people to realize that you can totally be an absolutely excellent parent of a traumatized child and the trauma had nothing..."
What We've Chosen to Forget (Baratunde Thurston)
Listen now (61 mins) | "There’s a thin line between feeling enhanced and improved versus feeling disconnected from my own self. Did I have a good night's sleep? I think so, my ring says no..."
Why Don’t We Believe Women? (Deborah Tuerkheimer)
Listen now (45 min) | “Outside the legal context, I'm urging readers and listeners in this case to think very deliberately about whether that high standard of proof..."
The Risk it Takes to Bloom (Raquel Willis)
Listen now (43 mins) | “Well, the interesting thing is, I guess some of this came from writing the book too, but all of those versions of me live inside of me, right? Even the kid that was..."
The Best Books About Civics & Social Justice
This is a wide and complex issue, and I will frankly never be done reading into how civilizations evolve (and equity fails).