Emma hosts Emily Flitter, finance reporter for the New York Times, to discuss her recent book The White Wall: How Big Finance Bankrupts Black America. First, Emma discusses this morning’s news of President Biden announcing that WNBA star Brittney Griner has been released from Russian custody. Then, Emily joins and speaks about the current NYTimes Guild walk outs and […]

Sam and Emma host Dale Kretz, visiting assistant professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, to discuss his recent book Administering Freedom: The State of Emancipation after the Freedmen’s Bureau. First, Sam and Emma dive into updates on the US’ sanctions on Venezuela, Elon Musk’s targeting of left voices on Twitter, the collapse of Manchin’s […]

Happy Indigenous People’s Day! Sam and Emma host Claudio Saunt, professor of American History at the University of Georgia, to discuss his book Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory. Sam and Emma first run through updates on Russia’s response to the bombing of the Crimean bridge and more news from this […]

Sam hosts Kris Manjapra, history professor at Tufts University, to discuss his recent book Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation, on how exploitation and racial caste systems that are buoyed by the lasting legacies of emancipations. Professor Manjapra begins by discussing what his idea of the “ghost line” entails, […]

Sam and Emma host Kellie Carter Jackson, Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Wellesley College, to discuss her recent book Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence, using the influence of Black leaders to explore the growth of the abolitionist movement from moral suasion to an understanding that intrinsic rights cannot be granted. Professor […]

Sam and Emma host Jonathan Levy, professor of History at the University of Chicago, to discuss his recent book Ages of American Capitalism: A History of the United States. Sam and Emma begin by discussing the newly passed defense policy bill and debt limit increase in the House, which includes a huge weapons sale to Saudi Arabia, […]

Sam and Emma host historian Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, to discuss her recent book Not A “Nation Of Immigrants”: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, And A History Of Erasure And Exclusion, on the settler-colonial roots of the US and the impossibility of obscuring them, no matter how much liberals push the “melting pot” ideology. They start off with the […]

Sam and Emma host Ada Ferrer, Professor of History and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University, to discuss her recent book Cuba: An American History, on how the constant pressure of American Imperialism has threatened the people and territory since its independence. They jump off from this question of why she dubs her work “An American […]

Emma hosts Tom Zoellner, Professor at Chapman University and political editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books, to discuss his recent book “Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire,” on the Jamaican rebellion of 1831 and the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. Professor Zoellner situates us between […]

Emma hosts Van Gosse, Professor and Associate Chair of History at Franklin & Marshall University, to discuss his recent book “The First Reconstruction: Black Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War,” on the political role of Black folks before their constitutional emancipation, and how their pre-Civil War work has been erased over […]