An interview with Vivian Price, assistant professor of interdisciplinary studies at California State University, Dominguez Hills, and a co-producer of a documentary film called, “Harvest of Loneliness: The Bracero Program.” The film explores the trials faced by the migrants who participated in the Bracero Program, a guest-worker system run by the U.S. government between 1942 and 1964, and the interview with Price considers the legacy of the system and calls into question the wisdom of a new, expanded guest-worker program.
Nico Slate is an assistant professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University and the author of the book, “Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India.” Against a backdrop of a shared world defined by imperialism, racism, and economic inequality, Slate’s work explores the early 20th century movements against Jim Crow and British rule, demonstrating how the struggles shared ideas, rhetoric, and some key figures.
Robert W. McChesney, a professor of communication at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and host of the weekly radio program on WILL-AM 580, “Media Matters” from 2002 to 2012, discusses the 2012 presidential election, Super-PACs and political ads, as well as the press coverage of the Occupy Movement.
Professor Neil Maher discusses his book, "Nature’s New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement." The study explores how the CCC helped transform the conservationist tradition in the U.S. into what we can recognize today as the modern environmental movement. In the interview, Maher explains what “planning” looked like in the 1930s and discusses what a Green New Deal might look like today.
In "The Rise of the Tea Party: Political Discontent and Corporate Media in the Age of Obama," Anthony DiMaggio questions the widely-shared notion that the Tea Party constitutes a “mass movement,” and instead shows how media filters and political power have shaped the perceived size and power of the group. In the interview, DiMaggio also discusses the meaning of “propaganda,” the state of Tea Party in 2012, and the Occupy Movement.
Dave Zirin is the sports editor at The Nation magazine, and the author of a number of books, including "Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games We Love," and most recently, "The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment that Changed the World" (with John Carlos). In this interview, he discusses the public financing of stadiums, the NFL and NBA lockouts, and the Penn State scandal, among many other issues.
Colby College historian James R. Fleming discusses his book, "Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control." Fleming’s work traces the efforts of visionaries and charlatans since antiquity to manipulate weather and climate, including weather manipulation in classical mythology, 19th century attempts to make it rain, and British military undertakings to clear fog from airport runways during World War II. Fleming strongly cautions against proposals for “geoengineering” to mitigate climate change.
Historian David Kinkela discusses his book, “DDT and the American Century: Global Health, Environmental Politics, and the Pesticide that Changed the World.” Increasingly used as a “miracle” agricultural pesticide and malaria deterrent, DDT fell into disfavor after the publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” in 1962.
Historian Scott R. Nelson discusses what he calls “Occupy Chicago, 1894,” a grassroots movement of railroad workers led by Eugene V. Debs that spread from a Chicago strike to much of the country, with railroad workers and many others demanding significant changes in American labor relations.
