Asylum: Author Umberto Nicola Nicoletti, Introduction by Filippo Grandi Claudia Cragg speaks here with author, Umberto Nicola Nicoletti, about his fine-art book Asylum. We discusses the phenomenon of LGBTIQ+ refugees, asylum seekers, and those subject to discrimination in their home countries based on their gender or sexual orientation. More the 40 percent of the countries in the world today still impose prison sentences or the death penalty just for being LGBTIQ+. Asylum is an international pro...
Jun 11, 2023•33 min
@claudiacragg (DM Twitter) speaks here with Samuel J Redman @samueljredman about his new book, A Short History of Crisis and Resilience. The work, Professor Redman says, celebrates as he sees it the resilience of American - and it must be said many worldwide - cultural institutions in the face of nationl crises and challenges. On one afternoon in January 1865, a roaring fire swept through the Smithsonian Institution. Dazed soldiers and worried citizens could only watch as the flames engulfed the...
Aug 31, 2022•34 min
What better way to jump into 2022 than with a boost from a rebroadcast of our Maya Angelou interview? This month the US Mint will start shipping quarters featuring Angelou, the first black woman to ever grace the coin. The program was conceived in 2017 and was officially signed into law in 2020. Potential honorees were nominated by the public last year. A fitting tribute to a remarkable person and a remarkable talent. In May of 2013, the then News Director, Joel Edelstein, generously invited col...
Jan 06, 2022•22 min
, @TanjaHester is the author of (November 2021). Clear-eyed and practical, #WalletActivism helps angry, overwhelmed, and disillusioned consumers cut through the marketing lies of companies that have rebranded their problematic practices as “green,” “woke,” and “ethical” to learn how to use their financial power to fight back. Hester doesn’t offer easy solutions or simple answers. Instead, she helps readers (1) understand the complex, nuanced impact their financial decisions have on both people a...
Dec 09, 2021•40 min
(REPOST of June 2018 Interview with Dunya Mikhail) This week, a German court on Tuesday jailed a former Islamic State militant for life after convicting him of involvement in genocide and crimes against humanity over mass killings of minority Yazidis by IS in Syria and Iraq. It was the first genocide verdict against a member of the , an offshoot of al Qaeda that seized large swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014 before being ousted by US-backed counter-offensives, losing its last territorial redoubt...
Dec 02, 2021•38 min
Claudia Cragg (@claudiacragg) speaks here with Dr Leonard Rubinstein. @JohnsHopkins @bermaninstitute #CentreForPublicHealthAndHumanRights #CentreForHumanitarianHealth Bringing together extensive research, firsthand experience, and compelling personal stories, Perilous Medicine also offers a path forward, detailing the lessons the international community needs to learn to protect people already suffering in war and those on the front lines of health care in conflict-ridden places around the world...
Nov 11, 2021•26 min
Claudia Cragg (Twitter: @claudiacragg) talks to Celine-Marie Pascale @cmpascale about her new book, '' published by . For the majority of Americans, hard times have long been a way of life. Some work multiple low-wage jobs, others face the squeeze of stagnant wages and rising costs of living. Sociologist Celine-Marie Pascale talked with people across Appalachia, at the Standing Rock and Wind River reservations, and in the bustling city of Oakland, California. Their voices offer a wide range of e...
Oct 28, 2021•26 min
Claudia Cragg (@claudiacragg - Twitter) talks with Heather Hurwitz about her book, '." Despite cries of “We are the 99%,” signaling solidarity, certain groups were unwelcome or unable to participate. Moreover, problems with racism, sexism, and discrimination due to sexuality and class persisted within the movement. The protestors that comprised the #OccupyWallStreet movement came from diverse backgrounds. But how were these activists—who sought radical social change through many ideologies—able ...
Oct 14, 2021•29 min
"'I came to see the mountains as an outpouring of our modern lives,' Roy writes, 'of the endless chase for our desires to fill us.' Readers of Behind the Beautiful Forevers will be drawn to this harrowing portrait." — Publishers Weekly Claudia Cragg (@claudiacragg) speaks here with journalist Saumya Roy about her new non-fiction work, . All of Mumbai’s possessions and memories come to die at the Deonar garbage mountains. Towering at the outskirts of the city, the mountains are covered in a faint...
Sep 30, 2021•30 min
In this (reposted) interview, talks to Claudia Cragg @KGNU about 'Why Office Work is Bad for Us and Fixing Things Feels Good. This iconic also explores why some jobs offer fulfilment while others leave us frustrated. It answers the question as to why we so often think of our working selves as separate from our 'true' selves? Over the course of the twentieth century, Dr. Crawford argues that we have separated mental work from manual labour, replacing the workshop with either the office cubicle or...
Sep 16, 2021•22 min
Claudia Cragg (Twitter: @claudiacragg) speaks here with William Sargent about his book, , now out in a newly revised edtion. Surviving almost unmolested for 300 million years, the horseshoe crab is now the object of an intense legal and ethical struggle involving marine biologists, environmentalists, US government officials, biotechnologists, and international corporations. The source of this friction is the discovery 25 years ago that the blood of these ancient creatures serves as the basis for...
Sep 02, 2021•25 min
Claudia Cragg @claudiacragg speaks with Robin Broad and 's John Cavanagh, authors of In a time when countless communities are resisting powerful corporations: from Flint, Michigan to the Standing Rock Reservation, from Didipio in the Philippines to the Gualcarque River in Honduras, The Water Defenders presents the inspirational story of a community that took on an international mining corporation at seemingly insurmountable odds and won not one but two historic victories. In the early 2000s, man...
Aug 19, 2021•49 min
No apologies. She is always just delightful. Claudia Cragg @claudiacragg speaks here with Joanne Greenberg (born September 24, 1932 in ) is an American who published some of her work under the of Hannah Green. She was a professor of anthropology at the and a volunteer . Greenberg is best known for the semi-autobiographical bestselling novel (1964). It was adapted into a 1977 and a 2004 of the same name. She received the Harry and Ethel Daroff Memorial Fiction Award as well as the for Fiction in ...
Aug 12, 2021•17 min
UPDATE: For those who want to help Haiti, M.J. suggests there are two options for two different solid organizations. Ayiti Community Trust and Fokal. and ************************************************************** Claudia Cragg (@claudiacragg) speaks here with M.J. Fièvre, 9@MJ_Fievre), a -born writer and educator who has lived in since 2002. Her latest book is '. “This book is a celebration, an affirmation, a history text, a little bit of memoir, and an exuberant prayer for the prosperity of...
Aug 06, 2021•40 min
In the US, several states are making strong moves to ban medical treatment for transgender youth. The laws are intended to prohibit doctors from providing gender confirming hormone therapy, puberty blockers or gender-confirmation surgeries or from referring patients to other health care providers. Claudia Cragg (Twitter: @claudiacragg) speaks here for @KGNU with stef shuster (Twitter: @stefshuster). shuster is an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University in Lyman Briggs College and the De...
Jul 22, 2021•42 min
Claudia Cragg @claudiacragg speaks here with Filipina American filmmaker, Maria Diane Ventura (Instagram @mariadianeventura) whose new film is streaming on Amazon Prime from today, 15 July 2021. The movie, written and directed by music producer and artist manager Ventura, is a tale of friendship between two young men who leave their German hometown for a freer life in majestic Barcelona, where fate and choices threaten their once unbreakable bond. It is a multi-cultural production from Europe, A...
Jul 15, 2021•39 min
Claudia Cragg @claudiacragg (comments, suggestions, ratings welcome) speaks here with staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of , , and . Americas, says Packer, is"...trapped in two countries. Each one is split by two narratives—Smart and Just on one side, Free and Real on the other. Neither separation nor conquest is a tenable future. The tensions within each country will persist even as the cold civil war between them rages on.
Jul 08, 2021•38 min
Claudia Cragg @claudiacragg, speaks here with former Cleveland Mayor Dennis J. Kucinich (1977 – 1979). Twitter: @Dennis_Kucinich In his new book, Kucinich gives an unprecedented, fully documented insider’s account of his battle against a shadow city government which allegedly engaged in corporate espionage, sabotage, price-fixing, cut-throat competition, anti-trust activities, organized crime, and wholesale fraud. That is, until Kucinich, then America’s youngest big-city mayor at age 31, fought ...
Jul 01, 2021•24 min
Claudia Cragg speaks to former Congressman Dan Glickman, @DanRGlickman, about his new book from the University Press of Kansas, Secretary Glickman (he held the post of Agricultural Secretary in the Clinton administration) tells his story of a classical family background, religious heritage, and “Midwestern-nice” roots, and how it led to a long and successful career in public office. Now at almost 77 and newly retired from the Aspen Institute, Dan is known throughout Washington as one of the most...
Jun 24, 2021•22 min
After 16 months on the front lines of the COVID war in New York at Mount Sinai, Dr Schachter @MountSinaiNYC does not focus on exhaustion or trauma, but rather the possibilities that have come with dealing with such wide-scale and going medical trauma. Dr. Schachter is currently the Maurice Hexter Professor of Pulmonary and Community Medicine and Medical Director of Pulmonary Rehabilitation at Mount Sinai Medical Center. He has established and directs the Mount Sinai Pulmonary Rehabilitation prog...
Jun 17, 2021•31 min
Jonathan Cappelli is a true champion for affordable housing in the Denver metro area. An experienced urban planning, real estate, and community development professional, Cappelli is focused on finding ways to bring equitable and sustainable development to communities across Colorado. N.B. In this interview, Mr. Cappelli focused on Denver and, he says, neglected to mention "". People living in Boulder, they can call them too. The is a coalition of 16 Metro-Denver nonprofits that build homes for m...
Jun 03, 2021•32 min
Claudia Cragg speaks with Denver Post columnist, on the difficulties of trying to rent .
May 27, 2021•25 min
Claudia Cragg speaks here with Mother Jones' senior editor @MichaelMechanic (Michael Mechanic) who offers a harsh wake-up call for the millions of American dreamers who still believe that winning the lottery—or just simply having obscene wealth—will change their lives for the better. The author ushers readers past the velvet rope to reveal the lifestyles of the ultrawealthy and the ever more expensive ventures they have to indulge in to not only keep themselves amused, but to outdo their wealthy...
May 13, 2021•27 min
Claudia Cragg (@claudiacragg - all comments, reviews, suggestions welcome) speaks here for @KGNU #ItsTheEconomy with Guyana-born Donnel Baird, founder of BlocPower, This is a startup that markets, finances and installs solar and #green #energyefficiency technology to help houses of worship, non-profits, small businesses and multifamily projects to slash their energy costs. Baird spent three years as a community organizer in Brooklyn and one year as a voter contact director for Obama For America....
May 06, 2021•26 min
If you watched Sunday evening's 2021 Oscars and learned of British actor, 's, stunning and accolade-winning performance and have not gone on to watch '', maybe you should ask yourself why? If you have, you will have learned that it is an American biographical drama about the betrayal of Fred Hampton (played by Daniel Kaluuya), chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party in late-1960s Chicago, at the hands of William O'Neal (played by Lakeith Stanfield), an FBI informant. Watching...
Apr 29, 2021•26 min
is to declare the under the Ottoman Empire a "genocide", risking a potential fracture with Turkey but fulfilling a campaign pledge. This pledge was to, at long last, use the word to describe the horrendous mass killings after a series of his predecessors stopped short. Two sources have today, Thursday 22nd April, 2020, said that President Biden will make the declaration as part of an official statement this Saturday. There are many people all over the world who have worked solidly towards this m...
Apr 22, 2021•31 min
Claudia Cragg @claudiacragg speaks here for @KGNU with . A native of St. Paul, Minnesota, Yessne’s parents were active in the Progressive movement of the 1940s and 50s, earning them the enmity of their neighbors during the "" hysteria and causing them to remove both her and her brother from the St. Paul public school system, never to return. Twelve years later, she emerged from the University of Minnesota’s law school politically primed by classmates whose parents included the mayor of Minneapol...
Apr 15, 2021•39 min
Claudia Cragg @claudiacragg speaks here for @KGNU (Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, ) for #ItsTheEconomy with , senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies. There, he directs the Program on . Collins latest book is He has written a number of other books including '99 to 1: How Wealth Inequality is Wrecking the World and What We Can Do About It', and 'Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality', 'Bringing Wealth Home', and 'Committing to the Common Good'. He h...
Apr 08, 2021•28 min
Claudia Cragg @claudiacragg speaks here with @ErikJClarke about the implications for Denver, Colorado and the nation from President Biden's new infrastructure plan to fulfill his campaign promise to “rebuild the backbone of America”. The expansive proposal, called the American Jobs Plan, intends to build 20,000 miles of roads and highways and to repair the 10 most economically significant bridges in the country among a sprawling list of other projects that Biden said would confront the climate c...
Apr 01, 2021•26 min
If COVID19 has shown us anything at all, it must be that growth at any price is not an option going forward. '' is an opportunity to ensure that growth is of the most productive and valuable kind to ALL members of our society, not just for the all too many CEOs who prize above all the growth of their stock price and their pay packet. This has to change. Claudia Cragg (@claudiacragg on Twitter, comments/suggestions welcome) speaks here with Rob Dietz who brings a fresh perspective to the discussi...
Mar 25, 2021•32 min