Podcasts for Understanding Where We Are Now

One of my goals for 2024 is go slowly and listen more. I like taking the bus into work because it helps me to slow down.

Sometimes, I listen to conversations on the bus and the way that Spanish gives way to English when the downtown bus crosses 96th Street. I like the bus because I see outside and if anything were to go wrong, I can get out and walk above ground, rather than be stuck in a tunnel if the train stops running. Sometimes, I listen to podcasts on the bus as I watch the city go by. I learn so much listening to these podcasts and it gives me so much hope that they exist. It’s the closest thing to real community media that’s left out there.

Here are three recent ones that I’ve listened to and have had a big impact on me. All have something to do with whiteness and/or settler colonialism:

• Scene on Radio. I’ve been listening to their new Season 6, “Echoes of a Coup,” which investigates the period when, in November 1898, an armed White supremacist mob—supported by most White elites in North Carolina violently attacked Black residents. It is history that is so very relevant for today. And, if you missed their earlier seasons, go back and listen to those, especially Season 2, “Seeing White.” I assign this season in my classes all the time because it is one of the best primers on critical whiteness studies in plain language. John Biewen is the host here, and he is a treasure. He also brings in lots of other voices, like Chenjerai Kumanyika, a journalist and professor who is one of the main interlocutors throughout the podcast. Each season builds on the earlier ones, something I’ve never heard another podcast do in quite the same way. In Season 5, “The Repair,” Biewen tackles climate collapse and brings in Amy Westervelt, a journalist who has been covering the environment for many years. In Episode 11 of that season, “Change Everything,” they weave together climate, reparations and settler colonialism in ways that I am still thinking about, and remind me of Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s book of the same name.
• If Books Could Kill. This is a delightfully snarky podcast about “the airport bestsellers that captured our hearts and ruined our minds.” The two co-hosts, Michael Hobbes (gay) and Peter Shamshiri (straight), have a good chemistry for their sharp critiques of crappy bestsellers. They are at their best when they are tackling what I think of as books that are part of the manosphere, like “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” or “Ben Shapiro’s Bootstrappy Plan to Solve Poverty.” They are truly excellent when Hobbes takes the lead and eviscerates the attacks on trans folks, especially trans kids, as in “The New York Time’s War on Trans Kids.” They miss the mark, as most liberals do, when they try to tackle whiteness, as in their most recent episode on DEI. They just don’t get why someone might put “try to be less white” on a slide as a point of discussion, but they can’t really articulate why so the usually smart critique devolves into the weak sauce of uncomfortable giggles, “like that’s so stupid, riiight?” (That tells me I have more work to do.) All that said, I will forever love these two for introducing me to the phrase, “bitch eatin’ crackers,” which cracks me up every time.
• Millennials are Destroying Capitalism. This one has given me so much in the last year. I can’t recall the first episode I listened to, but it might have been the one with Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba, talking about their book. Or, maybe it was the one with Boots Riley, who is an actual genius. I think it must have been earlier than that, because the interview they did with Fred Moten last November had a profound effect on me. I listened to that one driving around the hills of Western Mass when I was on that writing retreat. Or, perhaps it was the one about Stop Cop City or the one about NGOs in Kenya. The most recent episode features an interview with Leila Shomali (Palestinian) and Lara Kilani (Palestinian-American). They were discussing a recent piece they co-authored called, “Anti-Zionism as Decolonisation.” This conversation was, like all on this podcast, smart, helpful, and generative.

Take your time. Slow it down. Listen more.

Y’all be easy.