Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

In this episode of Writer’s Voice, Francesca Rheannon speaks with Andy Lee Roth of Project Censored about the State of the Free Press 2025, marking 50 years of tracking underreported stories.

“Censorship by proxy… corporate entities… are in effect doing the dirty work of the government.” 

Then, Michael Ellsberg discusses Truth and Consequence, a powerful collection of writings by his father, whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, exploring moral responsibility, war, and resistance.

“What do you do as an official when you realize that the policy that you are enacting is crazy or immoral or evil?”

Together, these conversations examine the forces shaping what we know—and what we don’t—and the landscape of moral choice in confronting injustice.

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Tags: free press 2025, media censorship, Project Censored, independent journalism, ICE surveillance, Meta censorship, climate crisis news coverage, Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers, media consolidation, Writer’s Voice podcast, literature podcast, interviews with writers, book author interviews, interviews with authors,

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Segment One: Andy Lee Roth — Project Censored, State of the Free Press 2025

Fifty years after its founding, Project Censored continues to document the most important underreported stories in U.S. media. Andy Lee Roth discusses how media consolidation, “censorship by proxy,” and algorithmic control are reshaping the information landscape.

He highlights key censored stories, including ICE surveillance of critics, Meta’s mass takedown of pro-Palestinian content, underreported police violence, and the climate crisis.

Roth also warns of growing threats to press freedom and emphasizes the vital role of independent journalism.

 Read A Sample

Segment Two: Michael Ellsberg — Truth and Consequence

Michael Ellsberg discusses Truth and Consequence, a posthumous collection of writings by Daniel Ellsberg, best known for releasing the Pentagon Papers.

The book explores Ellsberg’s central moral question: how ordinary people become complicit in massive harm—and how they can resist.

From nuclear war planning to Vietnam, Ellsberg’s writings challenge readers to confront the ethics of power, obedience, and dissent—and to embrace moral courage in the face of injustice.

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

In this episode of Writer’s Voice, two powerful voices explore the climate crisis from complementary perspectives.

Novelist Ellen Meeropol imagines communities navigating climate disruption in Sometimes an Island.

“The challenge is enormous. How do you dramatize doom?… You have to find a balance between the science and the story… the story can inspire action through empathy with the characters.”  

Then, environmental leader Judith Enck exposes the systemic forces behind plastic pollution—and what we can do about it—in The Problem with Plastic.

“This is a climate change issue. This is an environmental justice issue. This is an ocean issue… mostly, this is a health issue, because none of us should have microplastics in our bodies. But we all do.”  

Together, these conversations reveal both the human stories and structural realities shaping our environmental future.

Follow us on Bluesky @writersvoice.bsky.social and subscribe to our Substack. Or find us on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast.

Tags: climate fiction, climate change novels, plastic pollution, microplastics health effects, Ellen Meeropol, Judith Enck, Beyond Plastics, literature podcast, interviews with writers, book author interviews, interviews with authors, women authors interviews, 

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Segment One: Ellen Meeropol — Sometimes an Island

What does it take to imagine survival in a world shaped by climate disruption? Ellen Meeropol’s climate novel unfolds as a “mosaic” of interconnected lives shaped by migration, memory, and environmental upheaval.

Set against the backdrop of a worsening climate emergency, the book follows three communities—from an island in Maine to an off-the-grid cooperative—seeking new ways to live sustainably and collectively.

Meeropol explores the parallels between past migrations—like Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms—and present-day climate displacement. At the heart of the novel is a belief in storytelling as a force for empathy and transformation.

In our conversation, Meeropol explores:

Key Themes

• Climate migration and historical memory
• Community resilience and cooperation
• The role of storytelling in shaping action
• Multigenerational activism, especially elder leadership
• Balancing realism and hope in climate fiction

Listen to our other conversations with Ellen Meeropol.

Segment Two: Judith Enck — The Problem with Plastic

Judith Enck argues that the global plastic crisis is not an accident—but a strategic shift by the fossil fuel industry. As demand for fossil fuels declines in energy and transportation, companies have turned to plastics as a new growth market.

Enck breaks down the myths of plastic recycling, the health impacts of plastic pollution, and the policy solutions needed to reduce plastic production and waste. She emphasizes local and state-level action as key leverage points for change.

Judith Enck was the Regional Administrator of Region 2 of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Enck is the founder of Beyond Plastics, a national organization that works on  the problem of plastic pollution,

Key Themes:

• Plastic as a fossil fuel “Plan B”
• The myth of widespread plastic recycling
• Health impacts of microplastics and toxic chemicals
• Environmental justice and “Cancer Alley”
• Policy solutions: reduction, reuse, refill, rethink

Learn more about the plastics crisis and solutions.

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Philip Schultz joins Writer’s Voice to discuss his new collection, Enormous Morning. Writing from the vantage point of his 80th year, Schultz reflects on aging, memory, family, regret—and the possibility of transcendence.

“Age has… given me a kind of love of my life and the lives of others that I always didn’t have.”

In this conversation, Schultz explores how perspective changes over time, how poetry can transform suffering into insight, and why creativity itself can be a source of resilience and even joy. He also reads several poems from the collection, including “Enormous Morning,” “Good News,” and “My Mistakes.”

The conversation moves from the personal to the political, as Schultz reflects on democracy, moral courage, and the ethical questions raised by our current moment.

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Tags: Philip Schultz, Enormous Morning, poetry interview, contemporary poetry, Writer’s Voice podcast, Pulitzer Prize poet, American poets interview.

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Episode Summary: Philip Schultz

Philip Schultz is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Failure and one of America’s most distinctive contemporary poets. His work has long explored the inner life—its doubts, contradictions, and longings—with a rare mix of emotional honesty, philosophical depth, and, often, surprising humor.

Now, in his new collection, Enormous Morning, Schultz writes from a new vantage point: his 80th year. These poems take on aging, memory, family, and mortality—but also something else: renewal. The possibility of gaining a new, more joyous perspective on life

The book opens with a walk through a cemetery—yet what emerges is not just a meditation on death, but a vivid sense of continuity. The past and present coexist. The living and the dead are in conversation. And throughout the collection, Schultz moves from the particulars of daily life—a movie, a memory, a friendship—into larger questions about meaning, suffering, and what it means to live ethically in a troubled world.

We talk about how age changes perception, how poetry can transform regret into something like forgiveness, and how creativity itself can be a form of resilience—even joy.

We also talk about the political dimension of the book—poems that grapple with democracy, moral courage, and the unsettling forces shaping our current moment. For Schultz, poetry is not an escape from reality—it’s a way of entering it more deeply, asking harder questions.

As he puts it, writing a poem can be a way of confronting even the most difficult truths—and finding, if not answers, then a kind of clarity, or even transcendence.

About the Poet

Philip Schultz is the founder and director of the Writers Studio in New York. He is the author of numerous poetry collections, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Failure, as well as The God of Loneliness: Selected and New Poems.

His work often explores personal history, family, and Jewish and immigrant experience, including his father’s struggles, which he addressed with striking honesty in Failure. He lives in East Hampton, New York, with his wife, sculptor Monica Banks.

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

In this episode of Writer’s Voice, Julia Cooke discusses Starry and Restless, her group biography of Rebecca West, Martha Gellhorn, and Emily “Mickey” Hahn—women journalists whose restless lives and innovative writing helped shape modern literary journalism, even as their contributions were later minimized.

“Women have been central to voice-driven narrative journalism for at least the last century and a half.”

Then, Iida Turpeinen explores extinction, empire, and the ethics of science in her novel Beasts of the Sea, beginning with the tragic story of the Steller’s sea cow and expanding into a meditation on memory, loss, and the human relationship to the natural world.

“They had no idea that species can go extinct.”

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Tags: women journalists, literary journalism history, Rebecca West, Martha Gellhorn, Emily Hahn, Julia Cooke interview, Beasts of the Sea novel, Iida Turpeinen interview, extinction history, Steller sea cow, women in science history, Writer’s Voice podcast

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Segment One: Julia Cooke – Starry and Restless

Julia Cooke reexamines the legacy of three pioneering women journalists—Rebecca West, Martha Gellhorn, and Emily Hahn—arguing that women were not peripheral but central to the development of literary journalism.

Cooke explores how constraints placed on women—barred from war fronts, dismissed as “sob sisters”—actually pushed them to innovate, expanding the scope of reporting to include domestic life, civilian experience, and overlooked voices. Their work challenged conventional ideas of objectivity, incorporating first-person perspective and a broader understanding of who counts as a subject.

The conversation also traces the tension between ambition and domestic life, the role of restlessness as both personal drive and cultural force, and the ways these writers navigated financial, professional, and social barriers.

Read An Excerpt

Segment Two: Iida Turpeinen – Beasts of the Sea

Iida Turpeinen discusses her novel centered on the Steller’s sea cow, a massive Arctic animal driven to extinction within decades of its discovery in the 18th century.

The novel begins with a museum skeleton—an entry point into questions of memory, loss, and scientific history. Turpeinen examines how imperial expansion, scientific inquiry, and extraction were deeply intertwined, and how early naturalists lacked even the concept of extinction.

She also introduces overlooked figures like Hilda Olsson, a 19th-century scientific illustrator whose work—once erased—has been rediscovered. Through her story, the novel contrasts modes of seeing: possession versus attention, extraction versus care.

At its heart, Beasts of the Sea is an elegy—and a call to remember the many species lost without notice.

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

On this episode of Writer’s Voice, we talk with novelist Justin C. Key about The Hospital at the End of the World, a gripping speculative story that explores the ethical and human stakes of AI in medicine.

“Technology is best when it’s a tool wielded by humans.”

Then, memory champion Nelson Dellis joins us to talk about Everyday Genius—and how ordinary people can train their minds for sharper memory, deeper focus, and far-reaching intuition.

“I never had a good memory growing up. It was something that I was inspired to change and learned all about it and really started to work on it about 15 years ago. And my mind has been different ever since.” 

Two conversations that explore what the human mind can do — and what AI never will.

Read or Listen to A Sample from The Hospital At The End of the World

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Read The Transcript

Tags: AI ethics, AI in medicine, speculative fiction AI, human vs machine intelligence, physician patient relationship, memory techniques, memory palace, cognitive training, intuition, remote viewing, Writer’s Voice podcast, Nelson Dellis, Justin C. Key,

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Segment One: Justin C. Key

What happens when artificial intelligence becomes more than a tool—and starts making decisions for us?

In this episode of Writer’s Voice, Justin C. Key’s gripping novel imagines a world where AI controls medicine, exposing the ethical and human stakes of technological dependence.

The Hospital At The End of the World is a speculative novel set in a near-future America where an AI corporation controls not only medicine but society at large. The story follows a young medical student forced to flee New York for a human-centered hospital in New Orleans—the last city resisting AI dominance.

Key explores the tension between machine efficiency and human intuition, the risks of technological dependency, and the political forces shaping how technology is used.

Segment Two: Nelson Dellis

What if the reason you forget things has nothing to do with your memory — and everything to do with how you retrieve information?

Nelson Dellis, six-time USA Memory Champion and author of Everyday Genius, joins Writer’s Voice to explain how ordinary people can develop extraordinary mental skills.

Dellis — who grew up with no exceptional memory — began studying memory techniques 15 years ago and transformed his mind entirely.

In this conversation, he breaks down the ancient method of the memory palace, explains why multitasking is a myth built on dopamine, offers practical tricks for anyone who fears numbers, and describes his unexpected encounter with a classified government program that trained psychics to gather Cold War intelligence.

His book, Everyday Genius, covers memory, focus, number sense, creativity, decision-making, and intuition — making the case that every one of us has an inner genius waiting to be developed.

Check Out Nelson Dellis’ YouTube Channel

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

This week on Writer’s Voice, two authors explore fascinating episodes from women’s history—stories of bold individuals who challenged the boundaries of power, speech, and social convention.

Journalist Eden Collinsworth discusses The Improbable Mrs. Woodhull, her biography of Victoria Woodhull—an astonishing figure who rose from poverty to become a stockbroker, newspaper publisher, and the first woman to run for President of the United States in 1872.

“I, like you and most Americans, knew nothing of her.”

Then novelist Shelley Noble joins us to talk about The Sisters of Book Row, a historical novel set in 1915 New York during Anthony Comstock’s aggressive crusade against books and information he deemed “obscene.” Noble’s story centers on three sisters running a bookstore in Manhattan’s famous Book Row, where booksellers faced censorship, raids, and the threat of imprisonment.

“My thing as an author is to find those little niches of people who actually make history that we should know about, but we very often don’t know about.”

Together, these conversations illuminate forgotten histories about the power of books and the struggle for women’s rights.

Read or Listen to A Sample from The Improbable Victoria Woodhull

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Read The Transcript on Substack

Tags: Victoria Woodhull, Eden Collinsworth, Shelley Noble, The Improbable Mrs. Woodhull, The Sisters of Book Row, Writer’s Voice podcast, women’s history,

Segment One: Victoria Woodhull: Radical Reformer – Eden Collinsworth

Victoria Woodhull was one of the most remarkable and controversial figures of the nineteenth century. Born into poverty with little formal education, she reinvented herself repeatedly—first as a spiritualist, then as a stockbroker on Wall Street, a newspaper publisher, and eventually the first woman to run for President of the United States.

Journalist Eden Collinsworth first encountered Woodhull’s story in an unlikely place: the archives of the British Museum. There she discovered the transcripts of a lawsuit Woodhull brought against the museum—a discovery that opened the door to a life story filled with audacity, ambition, and reinvention.

In this conversation, Collinsworth explores Woodhull’s complex legacy. Woodhull was a fierce advocate for women’s rights, labor reform, and what she called “free love,” arguing that women should have control over their own bodies and marriages. Her ideas shocked Victorian society and earned her both devoted supporters and bitter enemies.

Woodhull’s run for the presidency in 1872 was largely symbolic—women could not even vote at the time—but it made her a national sensation. Her life intersected with many of the major social movements of her era, from suffrage to spiritualism to the labor movement.

Collinsworth’s biography brings new attention to this extraordinary figure and examines why Woodhull’s story has largely been forgotten despite the boldness of her achievements.

Segment Two: The Sisters of Book Row – Shelley Noble

In her novel The Sisters of Book Row, Shelley Noble recreates a vanished literary world: Manhattan’s famous Book Row, a stretch of Fourth Avenue that once housed dozens of rare and secondhand bookstores.

The story takes place in 1915, when Anthony Comstock’s anti-obscenity crusade cast a long shadow over American publishing. Comstock, a powerful moral reformer and postal inspector, used federal law to seize and destroy books, artworks, and even information about women’s health.

Noble’s novel follows three sisters who inherit their father’s bookstore and struggle to keep the shop alive amid increasing censorship and social pressure. As the sisters navigate their own ambitions and secrets, they become entangled in the broader struggle over knowledge, books, and freedom of expression.

Drawing on the rich history of Book Row and the world of early twentieth-century bookselling, Noble portrays a vibrant community of merchants, collectors, and readers who believed deeply in the cultural importance of books.

The novel also touches on the underground circulation of information about women’s health during the era of the Comstock laws, connecting the story of censorship with the emerging fight for reproductive rights.

Through the lives of ordinary people—booksellers, printers, activists—The Sisters of Book Row shows how cultural change often begins with individuals quietly resisting authority.

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

In this episode of Writer’s Voice, Francesca Rheannon speaks with bestselling author Jung Chang about her memoir Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself, and China, the long-awaited sequel to her landmark book Wild Swans.

Chang recounts how her parents — once devoted Communists — became disillusioned by famine, repression, and the violence of the Cultural Revolution. Their refusal to betray their beliefs shaped her own commitment to truth and integrity.

“My mother was made to kneel on broken glass… but she still refused to denounce my father.”  

She also reflects on her extraordinary journey from Mao’s isolated China to becoming one of the first Chinese students to study in Britain, and how that experience transformed her thinking.

“I must only follow the evidence and arrive at conclusions from the evidence gathered.”  

Finally, Chang discusses the resurgence of authoritarianism under Xi Jinping and why she still believes China’s people ultimately desire freedom.

Read A Sample from Fly, Wild Swans

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Read The Transcript on Substack

Tags: Jung Chang interview, Fly Wild Swans, Wild Swans author, Chinese history memoir, China under Xi Jinping, authoritarianism China, Writer’s Voice podcast

Segment: Jung Chang — Fly, Wild Swans

After Jung Chang wrote her first memoir, Wild Swans, she went on to write biographies of Mao Tse Tung and the last Empress of China. 

Now, 25 years after her first book, Chang returns with Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself, and China, continuing the story after she became one of the first Chinese students allowed to leave Communist China and study in the West.

Jung Chang recounts how her parents — once devoted Communists — became disillusioned by famine, repression, and the violence of the Cultural Revolution. She describes how her father’s protest against Mao’s policies led to brutal punishment — and how her mother refused to denounce him despite immense pressure. Their refusal to betray their beliefs shaped her own commitment to truth and integrity.

She also reflects on her extraordinary journey from Mao’s isolated China to becoming one of the first Chinese students to study in Britain, and how that experience transformed her thinking.

Finally, Chang tells us about the resurgence of authoritarianism under Xi Jinping and why she still believes China’s people ultimately want to be free.

In addition to her other books, Jung Chang is the author of Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister.

Key Topics

• Jung Chang’s memoir Fly, Wild Swans

• The legacy of Wild Swans

• Mao’s China and the Cultural Revolution

• Political courage and moral integrity

• The Great Chinese Famine

• Intellectual freedom and scholarship

• China under Xi Jinping

• Resistance to authoritarianism

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

In this episode of Writer’s Voice, Francesca Rheannon speaks with political philosopher Lea Ypi about Indignity: A Life Reimagined, a genre-blending work of memoir, history, and philosophical inquiry that explores dignity under authoritarian regimes.

“I think of [dignity] as a property that is really what makes us human.” — Lea Ypi

Then novelist Eleanor Shearer discusses Fireflies in Winter, a lyrical historical novel following Jamaican Maroons exiled to Nova Scotia after the Second Maroon War. Through the story of Cora, Agnes, and Thursday, Shearer examines freedom, queer love, grief, and the moral tension between survival and solidarity.

“You were only ever a kind of set of stolen papers away… from having your freedom snatched from you.” — Eleanor Shearer

Together, these conversations probe enduring questions:

• What is dignity?
• What does it mean to be free inside systems designed to deny freedom?
• How do we maintain moral agency when our survival is at stake?

Follow us on Bluesky @writersvoice.bsky.social and subscribe to our Substack. Or find us on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast.

Read The Transcript on Substack

Tags: Lea Ypi interview, Indignity book, Eleanor Shearer interview, Fireflies in Winter novel, Jamaican Maroons history, historical fiction about slavery, queer historical fiction, Writer’s Voice podcast.

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Segment One: Lea Ypi

A haunting honeymoon photograph of her grandmother — posted online by a stranger and met with accusations and insults — launches Lea Ypi into a philosophical and archival investigation.

Ypi’s grandmother lived through the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, fascism, communism, and neoliberal capitalism. The book asks: What does it cost to defend dignity when systems of power are dedicated to erase it?

Ypi explores:

• Dignity as a universal human capacity for moral agency
• The archive as an instrument of power
• Communist surveillance and modern surveillance capitalism
• Nationalism, fascism, and historical repetition
• The responsibility of art to “rescue dignity”

Read An Excerpt

Segment Two: Eleanor Shearer

Shearer brings to life the little-known history of Jamaican Maroons exiled to Nova Scotia in the 1790s.

Her protagonist Cora has never been enslaved — yet her freedom is deeply precarious. In Nova Scotia, she encounters Agnes, a formerly enslaved woman surviving in the forest, and Thursday, an indentured laborer whose freedom hangs by a thread.

Shearer explores:

• The ambiguity between legal freedom and lived freedom
• Indentureship and stolen contracts
• Queer love as resistance
• The moral collision between survival and solidarity
• Grief as a shaping force

Read or Listen to A Sample

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

Resistance Is the Story

When we tell the history of slavery, too often we tell it as a story of suffering relieved by benevolent reformers. But what if resistance — not submission — was the central thread all along?

This week on Writer’s Voice, we begin with historian Sudhir Hazareesingh, whose groundbreaking book Daring to Be Free reframes the history of Atlantic slavery as a history of rebellion: from African defense militias and shipboard revolts to maroon communities and the Haitian Revolution. He restores enslaved women and men to the center of their own liberation struggles — not as passive victims, but as strategists, spiritual leaders, and revolutionaries.

“From the very moment slave raiding parties are sent out… people begin to resist.” — Sudhir Hazareesingh

Then we revisit my 2012 conversation with novelist Jacqueline Sheehan about The Comet’s Tale, her powerful work of historical fiction about Sojourner Truth. Through Truth’s childhood in bondage, her spiritual awakening, and her emergence as a fearless abolitionist and women’s rights advocate, we explore resilience, moral courage, and the making of a revolutionary life.

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Tags: Sudhir Hazareesingh, Daring to Be Free, Atlantic slavery, slave resistance, Haitian Revolution, Solitude of Guadeloupe, maroon communities, Sojourner Truth, Jacqueline Sheehan, The Comet’s Tale, Abolition movement, Black history, Writers Voice podcast,

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Read The Transcript

Segment One: Sudhir Hazareesingh

There are many histories of the Atlantic slave trade. Few center the enslaved as agents of their own freedom.

In Daring to Be Free, Sudhir Hazareesingh challenges the myth that resistance was rare or exceptional. Instead, he shows that resistance was woven into the fabric of slavery from the very beginning.

Solitude and the Erased Women of Resistance

Hazareesingh opens with the story of Solitude of Guadeloupe — a freedom fighter who resisted Napoleon’s 1802 attempt to reinstate slavery and was executed while remaining defiant . Her story, erased for generations, symbolizes what he calls a “hidden history” of resistance.

For too long, he argues, histories focused on male leaders and major revolutions, especially Haiti. But enslaved resistance was constant — and women were central actors: strategists, healers, organizers, spiritual leaders .

Resistance Began in Africa

Hazareesingh emphasizes that rebellion did not begin in the Americas. It began in Africa itself.

From the moment slave raiders entered African villages, communities organized militias, fought capture, resisted transport, and even planned revolts while confined on the coast .

Shipboard insurrections were often planned before captives even boarded the ships. Resistance was integral to the system — not an exception to it.

Spiritual Traditions as Sources of Power

African religious traditions — including Obeah and Islam — fortified resistance movements . These spiritual systems preserved identity, offered psychological protection, and helped organize rebellion.

Under conditions of near-total domination, enslaved people carved out autonomous interior worlds — sustaining languages, faiths, and networks of solidarity .

Women as Network Builders

Women, often working inside plantation households, gathered intelligence and helped coordinate revolts . They maintained kinship networks that countered what one historian called slavery’s “social death.”

Hazareesingh discovered instead a story of social persistence: communities forming bonds across plantations, across ethnic lines, and even across racial boundaries.

Palmares and Cross-Boundary Alliances

One astonishing example: Palmares in 17th-century Brazil — a vast maroon society of thousands that developed political systems, agriculture, trade, and military defenses .

Palmares blended African and Indigenous military traditions and even attracted poor whites seeking more humane community .

Resistance was multiracial, transnational, and sustained.

Haiti: Rank-and-File Revolution

While Hazareesingh has written on Toussaint L’Ouverture, in this book he emphasizes rank-and-file insurgents .

The Haitian Revolution became a beacon of Black sovereignty — and a terror to slaveholding powers . News of the uprising spread rapidly via sailors and refugee networks .

Yet Haiti paid a devastating price: punitive indemnities imposed by France in 1825, U.S. intervention under Woodrow Wilson, and ongoing destabilization .

The Enslaved as the True Abolitionists

Hazareesingh challenges the narrative that white reformers abolished slavery. Most abolitionists advocated gradualism. The enslaved demanded — and fought for — immediate freedom .

Their revolts and persistent pressure forced political change.

Honoring Our Debts

In concluding, Hazareesingh calls for a “debt of memory” — telling the story truthfully — and for serious engagement with material reparations .

And he offers a lesson for today: unity, resilience, and moral courage in the face of authoritarianism .

Read An Excerpt

Segment Two: Jacqueline Sheehan

The Comet’s Tale — A Novel of Sojourner Truth

In our encore conversation from 2012, novelist Jacqueline Sheehan explores the inner life of Sojourner Truth.

Isabella’s Childhood in Bondage

Born Isabella Baumfree in Dutch New York, Sojourner Truth’s first language was Dutch .

Sheehan spent five years researching Truth’s early life, drawing from the dictated narrative recorded by Olive Gilbert in Massachusetts .

Her novel focuses intensely on childhood — the psychological resilience required to survive being treated as property and sold away from family .

The Power of Story

The title The Comet’s Tale comes from a fictionalized birth story told by Isabella’s mother — illustrating how oral tradition helped enslaved parents maintain connection with children sold away .

Storytelling becomes an act of survival.

Spiritual Seeking and Dangerous Faith

After gaining freedom, Isabella moved to New York City during a period of religious ferment .

She became involved in the cult of Matthias — a charismatic religious leader who manipulated followers and dictated their lives .

Later, after a profound spiritual epiphany, she renamed herself Sojourner Truth — believing God had called her to preach .

Though illiterate, she became a mesmerizing orator; newspaper accounts described the hair standing on listeners’ necks .

Florence, Massachusetts: Political Awakening

Truth eventually found community at the Northampton Association for Education and Industry — a utopian, abolitionist community based on equality of labor and one person, one vote .

There she interacted with Frederick Douglass and David Ruggles, and blended her spirituality with abolitionism and women’s rights activism .

She later supported Black soldiers during the Civil War and met Abraham Lincoln .

Resilience as Choice

Sheehan emphasizes Truth’s moral agency: despite enduring profound injustice, she chose not to live in hatred .

Her life illustrates that even under brutal conditions, individuals retain the capacity for courageous choice.

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

Episode Summary

Something feels wrong with our attention — and with reality itself.

In Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement, editors D. Graham Burnett, Alyssa Loh, and Peter Schmidt argue that this crisis is not about individual willpower. It’s about a multi-trillion-dollar industry built to monetize human attention.

They call it “human fracking.”

“These phones are the final node in a… $7 to $14 trillion industry that’s all about maximizing the amount of time that we engage with these devices… capturing our attention and turning it into money. And we call that ‘human fracking.’” — Peter Schmidt

In this conversation, we explore how the commodification of attention reshapes nearly every aspect of our lives.

We talk about attention as relational and ethical — not just measurable. And we examine why reclaiming attention must be a collective political movement, not a private detox.

Then, we listen to an excerpt from our 2025 conversation with Cory Doctorow about his book Enshittifcation.

Follow us on Bluesky @writersvoice.bsky.social and subscribe to our Substack. Or find us on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast.

Tags: Attention Liberation Movement, Attensity book, D. Graham Burnett, Peter Schmidt, Alyssa Loh, human fracking, attention economy, digital capitalism, social media harm, attention activism, Cory Doctorow enshittification, attention sanctuaries, Writers Voice podcast

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Read The Transcript

Segment Summary

The Crisis of Attention

• Why attention is “the key question of our moment”
• The metaphor of “human fracking”
• The internal environmental crisis of the mind

Attention as World-Making

• Attention as relational and ethical
• Simone Weil and the spiritual dimensions of attention
• How degraded attention makes reality feel unreal

Movement, Not Detox

• Converting private shame into collective anger
• Why willpower isn’t enough
• Parallels to environmental and civil rights movements

Sanctuaries of Attention

• Study, organizing, sanctuary
• Libraries, classrooms, coffee shops, Sabbath
• Reimagining civic institutions as attention infrastructure

A Positive Vision

• Designing technologies for human flourishing
• What a liberated attentional world might feel like for the next generation

Listen to or Read a Sample from the book

Read the Poem: St. Francis and the Sow

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

Episode Summary:

Historian Andrew Burstein joins us to talk about his biography, Being Thomas Jefferson. It’s an intimate portrait that looks beyond the marble statue and into the emotional life of one of America’s most influential founders.

Burstein explores Jefferson as a political moralist, a lyrical writer, and as someone who imagined democracy while profiting from slavery, who preached equality while exercising enormous power over others, and as someone who believed passionately in the nation’s destiny while fearing the forces of centralized power that could tear it apart.

“The Jefferson that I write about in this book is a political moralist who converts knowledge into feeling.” — Andrew Burstein

We’ll talk about Jefferson’s psychological world, his relationship with Sally Hemings, his battles with Federalism, and how his inner life helped shape our nation and the ideals we’re struggling to protect today.

Then, we listen to an excerpt from our 2014 conversation with Danielle Allen about her book Our Declaration, A Reading Of The Declaration of Independence In Defense of Equality.

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Tags: Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Burstein, Being Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, slavery, Founding Fathers, Federalism, Jeffersonian democracy, American Revolution, Writer’s Voice, Danielle Allen, Declaration of Independence,

You Might Also Like: Danielle Allen, OUR DECLARATION, Sojourner Truth, Her Story & Meaning,

Read the Transcript

Andrew Burstein

Francesca Rheannon speaks with historian Andrew Burstein about Being Thomas Jefferson, a biography that examines Jefferson not just as a political figure, but as an emotional and psychological one.

Burstein describes Jefferson as “a political moralist who converts knowledge into feeling,” explaining how Jefferson’s seductive, lyrical writing helped forge America’s moral identity while masking deep personal fears and contradictions

The conversation explores Jefferson’s inner life, his need for control, his relationship with Sally Hemings, his rationalizations around slavery, and his enduring influence on American democracy. Burstein also traces Jefferson’s conflict with Federalism, his vision of an agrarian republic, and his belief that “the whole art of government is the art of being honest.”

It’s a candid discussion about legacy, race, power, self-deception, and what Jefferson’s emotional world still reveals about the United States today.

Andrew Burstein recently retired as Professor of History at Louisiana State University. In addition to Being Thomas Jefferson, He is the author of The Passions of Andrew Jackson, Jefferson’s Secrets, and several other books on early American politics and culture.