Megan Greenwell's new book, Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream , tells the story of four people whose lives were upended by private equity. This hour, we learn about the business of private equity, and how companies that many people don't understand play a big role in our lives. GUEST: Megan Greenwell: Freelance journalist and author of Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream . This episode was produced with help from interns Coco Cooley and I...
Jun 26, 2025•49 min
1963 changed the course of U.S. history. It included the assassinations of civil rights leader Medgar Evers and President John F. Kennedy. 1963 was also the year of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Martin Luther King gave his famous “I have a dream” speech that day. Future congressman John Lewis also spoke. This hour, we’re breaking down a pivotal year in the civil rights movement with Peniel E. Joseph. GUEST: Peniel E. Joseph: Professor of History; Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics an...
Jun 20, 2025•42 min
While many Black Americans have been celebrating Juneteenth since 1865, the holiday has often been overlooked by non-Black Americans. This hour, we look at the tradition of the holiday and recognize its importance as a time to learn more about Black history in the U.S. Alliah L. Agostini is a mom and children’s book author. Her books The Juneteenth Story: Celebrating the End of Slavery in the United States and The Juneteenth Cookbook teach the history and joy of Juneteenth. Distinguished Profess...
Jun 13, 2025•49 min
Historian Martha S. Jones was looking through a book one day when she found a section mentioning her grandfather. It referred to her grandfather as white. But in reality, her grandfather’s father was a free man of color, and his mother was born enslaved. This wasn’t the first time her family’s racial identity was questioned, so she started writing down her version of her family’s history. It's that history, and her family's relationship to racial identity, that she explores in her new book The T...
Jun 06, 2025•49 min
We hear a lot about politically engaged college students, but we don’t always hear about politically engaged high school students. This hour, we learn how high school students past and present have fought for change in their communities. We talk to two current students at University High School of Science and Engineering in Hartford about testifying before lawmakers to increase their access to transportation. We'll also hear about high school activism of the 1960s and 1970s, including how the FB...
May 29, 2025•49 min
It has been five years since a Minneapolis Police Officer murdered George Floyd and the massive protest movement that followed. This hour, we’re reflecting on what has and has not changed in those five years. We'll look at the protests in historical context to try to understand the ways they succeeded and failed. We’ll also talk about whether have been changes in the rate of police violence since 2020. GUESTS: Alvin Tillery Jr. : Professor of Political Science and Founding Director of the Center...
May 23, 2025•49 min
Student journalists have been in the spotlight in recent years. In 2024, amidst massive on-campus protests, people turned to student outlets like Columbia University’s WKCR for the most up to date reporting. But practicing journalism as a student comes with risks. Those risks have become even more clear in recent weeks. Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk was detained in March after the Trump administration revoked her visa. U.S. District Judge William Sessions ordered her release o...
May 16, 2025•49 min
April 30th marked 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War. The war looms large in U.S. culture— it’s been the subject of countless books and movies. These works have often focused on American soldiers, but not so much on the experiences of everyday Vietnamese people living through the war. Artist and writer Thi Bui ’s 2017 bestselling graphic memoir The Best We Could Do started as an attempt to change that. It tells her family’s story of living through the war and ultimately leaving her birth ...
May 09, 2025•48 min
We hear a lot of of debate around sex and sexuality from our political leaders these days. Proposed legislation in areas like reproductive rights and education are constantly in the news. And while that debate may seem intense today, it isn’t new. Americans have long argued over which kinds of sex are, and aren’t “acceptable.” You need to understand the past to understand the present, as the saying goes. And according to historian Rebecca L. Davis , there are a lot of misconceptions about the pa...
May 02, 2025•41 min
Oral history preserves the past by recording people’s real voices. It’s not just about recording the stories people tell. It’s also about the way they tell them. Oral history is about memory and humanity. It’s a form of history that anyone can be a part of. This hour, we’re talking to two Connecticut residents about the stories they have preserved through oral history. Author and educator Mary Romney-Schaab talks about her father's experience as a Black person imprisoned in a Nazi concentration ...
Apr 25, 2025•49 min
This hour, we are returning to conversations about the stories we see represented on the small screen. Elizabeth Ito is the creator of City of Ghosts and also worked on Adventure Time . She'll discuss using people's real voices in her work and covering topics like gentrification on a series that children watch. Bethonie Butler, author of Black TV: Five Decades of Groundbreaking Television from Soul Train to Black-ish and Beyond , talks to us about shows centering Black characters from 1968's Jul...
Apr 18, 2025•49 min
Legendary trumpeter Terence Blanchard is the first Black composer to have had an opera performed at the Metropolitan Opera. But, as he says, he isn't the first Black composer qualified to do so. This hour, we talk to musicians who are changing the face of opera by bringing new stories to the fore. GUESTS: Terence Blanchard : Executive Artistic Director at SF Jazz and Multiple Grammy Award-winning trumpeter and composer. He has performed as part of Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers and compose...
Apr 11, 2025•41 min
In March of 1924, more than 100 Black and white attendees were at a dinner party in downtown Manhattan. The party was organized by prominent thinkers Charles S. Johnson and Alain Locke and included people like W.E.B. DuBois. Their goal was to bring together Harlem’s young Black writers with white publishers to help the writers’ work find a national audience. The party was a success. So much so that it’s often considered the start of the period known as the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissa...
Apr 04, 2025•49 min
Historian Martha S. Jones was looking through a book one day when she found a section mentioning her grandfather. It referred to her grandfather as white. But in reality, her grandfather’s father was a free man of color, and his mother was born enslaved. This wasn’t the first time her family’s racial identity was questioned, so she started writing down her version of her family’s history. It's that history, and her family's relationship to racial identity, that she explores in her new book The T...
Mar 28, 2025•49 min
Five years ago, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Since that time, the world has changed dramatically, from the way we think about public health to the way we socialize to the way we watch movies. But those changes haven't had the same impact on everyone. This hour, we’re talking about COVID-19’s impact on existing inequities. We talk about the diverse experiences of disabled people over the last five years, and take a broader look at the history of health and ra...
Mar 21, 2025•49 min
This hour on Disrupted , we're challenging long-held assumptions about parents and caregivers. First, Angela Garbes, author of Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change , explains how care workers are undervalued. She touches on the way the early days of the pandemic spotlighted issues in caregiving and why the legacy of American colonialism in the Philippines influenced both her family history and the disproportionate number of Filipinx nurses who died from COVID. Then, UConn professor Kari A...
Mar 14, 2025•49 min
Bernadette Atuahene initially moved to Detroit, Michigan to study squatters rights. But she discovered a more urgent issue once there— that many Black residents were losing their homes. The reason was property tax foreclosure, and it came as a result of property taxes that were illegally inflated. It’s one of several racist housing policies that shapes who does or doesn’t have generational wealth in the U.S. This hour, we’re talking about government policies that impact the homes and neighborhoo...
Mar 07, 2025•49 min
Every February, the United States celebrates Black History Month. But this year, the celebration might feel a bit different. On January 31st, the Department of Defense announced it would no longer use official resources to celebrate cultural awareness months, including Black History Month, which began the following day. That announcement came after the Trump administration's rollback of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives within the federal government. This hour, we’re joined by a panel ...
Feb 28, 2025•49 min
Poet Reginald Dwayne Betts was part of a carjacking in a Virginia mall parking lot when he was 16 years old. He was charged as an adult and sentenced to 9 years in prison. Dwayne was released in 2005. Today, he’s a lawyer and award-winning poet. He’s also the founder and CEO of a nonprofit organization called Freedom Reads . It provides handcrafted bookcases full of brand new books to prisons. For Dwayne, and other incarcerated people, those books can be a lifeline— a connection to the rest of t...
Feb 21, 2025•49 min
When you think about love, what comes to mind? Maybe a movie like Love Actually or Love & Basketball . Maybe Dolly Parton or Whitney Houston singing "I Will Always Love You." Love shows up a lot in our pop culture— but what about in our politics? The relationships we build…the people we love…the way we treat each other…all of that can be political. This hour, we hear about the importance of love in political organizing and the way even our most intimate relationships can be political. GUESTS...
Feb 14, 2025•49 min
Brandon J. Dirden is an actor and director who has appeared in TV shows like The Americans and plays like the Tony Award-winning All The Way (he played Martin Luther King Jr. alongside Bryan Cranston as Lyndon B. Johnson). He's also a director — most recently of Yale Repertory Theatre’s production of Eden . The play takes place in 1920s Manhattan. It focuses on two families living in the same apartment building. Eustace Baylor comes from the south and falls in love with Anetta Barton. Anetta’s f...
Feb 07, 2025•49 min
James Baldwin and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were two of the most influential thinkers of the Civil Rights Movement. This hour, we reflect on their legacies as we think about our present political moment. Kyle Bass wrote the play Citizen James, or the Young Man Without a Country , which will be performed in Hartford in February. It portrays a young James Baldwin at an inflection point in his life, before he became a renowned writer. And Randal Maurice Jelks is the Ruth N. Halls Prof...
Jan 31, 2025•42 min
This hour, we listen back to our episode about some of the ways that millennial and gen z politicians are making their mark on the U.S. Up first, Brandon Scott is the youngest mayor of Baltimore in more than 100 years. A new documentary film called The Body Politic , follows Mayor Scott during his first term in office, focusing on his campaign to reduce gun violence. We are joined by that film's director and producer, Gabriel Francis Paz Goodenough. Then, Layla Zaidane is President and CEO of Fu...
Jan 24, 2025•48 min
Martin Luther King Jr. Day is designated as a National Day of Service to encourage people to volunteer and improve their communities. But those communities' needs don’t end when the day of service ends. Here in Connecticut, people like Erik Clemons work year round to improve the communities they care about. Erik is the CEO of New Haven-based nonprofit Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology (ConnCAT), which offers job training and youth programs. He is also the CEO of Connecticut Community Ou...
Jan 17, 2025•49 min
In recent years, politicians across the U.S. have been debating what history should be taught in the classroom. Connecticut is no exception to these debates— a 2022 press conference announcing a planned Native Studies curriculum in Connecticut's public schools turned tense when questions around the specifics of the program came up. This hour, we’re talking to historians and educators to learn what it's like to teach and study the past in all its complexity in today's polarized political climate....
Jan 10, 2025•1 hr 8 min
The Disrupted team is welcoming the new year by choosing a couple of the episodes we loved from 2024. We have so many favorites that we couldn't reair all of them, but these are some of the ones that we wanted to listen back to. This week, host Khalilah-Brown Dean chose our interview with author Amy Tan. Amy is best known for popular novels like The Joy Luck Club and its 1993 film adaptation . The book and movie explore several mother-daughter relationships — some of which were shaped by Amy’s o...
Jan 03, 2025•49 min
The Disrupted team is welcoming the new year by choosing a couple of the episodes we loved from 2024. We have so many favorites that we couldn't reair all of them, but these are some of the ones that we wanted to listen back to. This week, producer Kevin Chang Barnum chose our interview with James Forman Jr. The United States imprisons more people than any other country in the world. And Black people bear the burdens of mass incarceration the most. In 2019, Connecticut was one of seven states wh...
Dec 27, 2024•49 min
In March of 1924, more than 100 Black and white attendees were at a dinner party in downtown Manhattan. The party was organized by prominent thinkers Charles S. Johnson and Alain Locke and included people like W.E.B. DuBois. Their goal was to bring together Harlem’s young Black writers with white publishers to help the writers’ work find a national audience. The party was a success. So much so that it’s often considered the start of the period known as the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissa...
Dec 20, 2024•49 min
We hear a lot of of debate around sex and sexuality from our political leaders these days. Proposed legislation in areas like reproductive rights and education are constantly in the news. And while that debate may seem intense today, it isn’t new. Americans have long argued over which kinds of sex are, and aren’t “acceptable.” You need to understand the past to understand the present, as the saying goes. And according to historian Rebecca L. Davis , there are a lot of misconceptions about the pa...
Dec 13, 2024•41 min
Poet Reginald Dwayne Betts was part of a carjacking in a Virginia mall parking lot when he was 16 years old. He was charged as an adult and sentenced to 9 years in prison. Dwayne was released in 2005. Today, he’s a lawyer and award-winning poet. He’s also the founder and CEO of a nonprofit organization called Freedom Reads . It provides handcrafted bookcases full of brand new books to prisons. For Dwayne, and other incarcerated people, those books can be a lifeline— a connection to the rest of t...
Dec 06, 2024•49 min
