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

This week on Writer’s Voice, we look at two stories from history that illuminate the choices people face as they confront evil: collaborate or resist?

First, independent scholar Charles Dick joins us to discuss Unknown Enemy: The Hidden Nazi Force That Built the Third Reich — the first full account of Organisation Todt, the massive construction arm of the Nazi regime that operated across Europe with lethal brutality. His book reveals how ordinary engineers and builders became central participants in enslavement and murder — and how much of this history remained hidden for decades.

“If you’re told… your prisoners are subhuman, you’re more likely to work them to death.” — Charles Dick

Then, in Segment Two, biographer Carla Kaplan returns to Writer’s Voice to talk about Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford. Kaplan brings to life the incomparable “Decca” Mitford — aristocrat, Communist, civil-rights activist and bestselling muckraker.

“If she believed in something, she was unbending — and always willing to pay the price of her convictions.”  — Carla Kaplan

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Key Words: Unknown Enemy Charles Dick, Fritz Todt, Holocaust studies, Jessica Mitford biography, Troublemaker Carla Kaplan, The American Way of Death, muckraking journalism, civil rights history, Freedom Rides, Mitford sisters,Francesca Rheannon interview,

You Might Also Like: Carla Kaplan, MISS ANNE IN HARLEM, Andrew Nagorski, THE NAZI HUNTERS

Read the transcript

SEGMENT ONE — Charles Dick on Unknown Enemy

Historian Charles Dick exposes the full scope of Organisation Todt (OT) — the Nazi regime’s massive, understudied construction force. OT built the Autobahn, the massive North Atlantic coastal fortifications and Hitler’s underground weapons factories; oversaw millions of enslaved laborers; and carried out brutal operations across occupied Europe.

Despite its central role, OT escaped the scrutiny that fell on the SS and Wehrmacht — leaving its crimes obscured until now.

Dick explains how:

• Engineers, builders, and architects became perpetrators.
• Death rates in OT camps often equaled or exceeded those under the SS.
• The organization expanded across Europe into a continent-wide system of forced labor.
• OT leadership — including Fritz Todt and Albert Speer — held immense power and largely avoided justice.

He shares harrowing survivor accounts revealed in the book — from Ukraine, Alderney, Estonia, Stutthof, and the Kaufering/Dachau subcamps — stories long buried in archives.

SEGMENT TWO — Carla Kaplan on Troublemaker

Biographer Carla Kaplan returns to discuss Jessica Mitford — aristocrat-turned-revolutionary, Communist organizer, civil-rights witness, and author of the groundbreaking exposé The American Way of Death.

Kaplan traces Mitford’s transformation from an eccentric, cloistered, aristocratic childhood among the infamous Mitford sisters — including Nazi sympathizers Diana and Unity — to her self-invented life as a radical activist and bestselling writer in the U.S.

Kaplan shares:

• Mitford’s early sense of injustice.
• Her refusal to compromise with editors over The American Way of Death.
• Her experiences during the Freedom Rides — including witnessing John Lewis’s beating.
• Why she and her husband joined and later left the Communist Party.
• Her complicated relationship to feminism.
• Her deep belief in political loyalty, humor, and collective action.

Read An Excerpt

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

In this episode of Writer’s Voice, Francesca Rheannon speaks with Susana M. Morris, acclaimed scholar of Black feminist thought, about her new biography Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler.

Drawing on interviews, archival materials, and Butler’s own journals, Morris shows how Butler’s discipline, political analysis, and upbringing shaped some of the most influential speculative fiction of our time.

“Now there is such a plethora of Black folk… writing science fiction and fantasy. It’s really exciting. And we have Octavia to thank for it.”  — Susana Morris

The conversation covers Butler’s formative years; her neurodivergence and self-diagnosed dyslexia; her relationship with her mother; the creation of Kindred; and her prophetic insights into climate collapse, fascism, hierarchy, and the contradictions of American democracy.

Then, we air a clip from our 2012 interview with the late, great science fiction master, Ursula K. Le Guin.

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Key Words: Octavia Butler biography, Octavia Butler interview, Positive Obsession Susana Morris, Parable of the Sower prophecy, Black women writers, Afrofuturism, science fiction history, Black feminist literature, Francesca Rheannon interview,

You Might Also Like: Ursula K. Le Guin, THE UNREAL AND THE REAL, Cory Doctorow, THE LOST CAUSE.

Read the Transcript

Main Segment: Susana Morris

Main Segment — Susana M. Morris on Positive Obsession

Morris reveals how Octavia Butler’s childhood experiences—especially witnessing the humiliating treatment of her mother, a domestic worker—shaped her lifelong political and creative vision.

She explains Butler’s “positive obsession,” the relentless work ethic that drove her writing; her rigorous research process; her early awareness of environmental crisis; and her pattern recognition around racism, patriarchy, and authoritarianism.

Morris also situates Butler within the Black women’s literary renaissance alongside Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, Toni Cade Bambara, and others, while emphasizing Butler’s singular contributions to speculative fiction and Afrofuturism.

Key Topics

• Butler’s “positive obsession” and writing discipline
• Neurodivergence and self-diagnosed dyslexia
• Racism, patriarchy, and the politics embedded in Butler’s fiction
• The making of Kindred
• Butler’s prescient insights into climate crisis and authoritarianism
• Black women’s literary renaissance
• Afrofuturism, legacy, and influence on contemporary writers
• Speculative fiction as social and political critique
• Butler’s research methodology and fieldwork
• The human contradiction: intelligence vs. hierarchy

Read an Excerpt from Positive Obsession

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

In this, our 1,000th episode of Writer’s Voice, Francesca Rheannon interviews Julian Brave Noisecat about We Survived the Night, his memoir weaving Indigenous oral traditions, personal narrative, political history, and  environmental insight.

Noisecat explores Coyote stories, the legacy of residential schools, intergenerational trauma, mixed-race identity, the meaning of home, Indigenous political traditions, and the contemporary struggle for land, water, and cultural continuity.

“The text itself is a woven narrative that combines different elements of nonfiction to put these different kinds of truths and storytelling in conversation with each other.”

Through humor, grief, myth, and investigative rigor, Noisecat reframes Indigenous storytelling as nonfiction — a mode of truth that Western traditions have long dismissed. This conversation highlights the power of indigenous stories to resist erasure, illuminate political histories, and recover cultural knowledge.

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Key Words: Julian Brave Noisecat interview, We Survived the Night, Indigenous memoir, Coyote stories, residential schools history, Native American literature, intergenerational trauma, Indigenous resurgence, Salish culture, environmental justice Indigenous communities, land dispossession history,

You Might Also Like: Rebecca Nagle, BY THE FIRE WE CARRY, Tyson Yunkaporta, SAND TALK

Read the Transcript

[top image: carving by Ed Archie Noisecat]

SEGMENT SUMMARY

Francesca speaks with Julian Brave Noisecat about his memoir/history We Survived the Night, structured around a four-day fasting tradition and infused with the oral-literary lineage of Coyote stories. Noisecat discusses his father’s birth at a residential school, the silence around Indigenous trauma, his family’s weaving traditions, and how Coyote mythology offers a language for understanding survival, contradiction, and the men in his family.

He describes the interconnection between land and people in Salish languages; the role of urban Native communities in activism; the Indigenous resurgence of the late 20th century; traditional ecological knowledge; and political tensions over fisheries, pipelines, and Arctic development. He also reflects on the personal: alcoholism, relationships, mixed-race identity, and the role of his mother in keeping him connected to his community.

KEY TOPICS

• Indigenous oral traditions as nonfiction
• Coyote as ancestral, literary, and allegorical figure
• Residential schools, unmarked graves, cultural genocide
• Intergenerational trauma and family silence
• Mixed-race identity and kinship
• The meaning of home for Native people
• Indigenous political history and contemporary power
• Environmental stewardship and fisheries
• Colonization as an ongoing structure
• Survival, continuity, and cultural resurgence

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

This week on Writer’s Voice, Bruce Holsinger tells us about his new novel Culpability, a story about a family shattered by a self-driving car accident — and about the ethical and emotional consequences of artificial intelligence.

Holsinger, whose earlier novel The Displacements explored climate catastrophe, turns his sharp eye to the ways technology mirrors human flaws, illuminating our collective complicity in shaping the systems that govern us.

“For all that we talk about the ethics of AI, the systems themselves are completely indifferent to our fates.” — Bruce Holsinger

Then Elizabeth George, the beloved creator of the Inspector Lynley series, talks about her new book A Slowly Dying Cause. It’s a masterful mystery that explores grief, obsession and moral reckoning. Set in Cornwall, it interlaces complex storylines around a suspicious death, a fractured family and the consequences of unresolved grief.

“The whole book is about grief — and letting go of grief.” — Elizabeth George

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Key Words: Bruce Holsinger, Elizabeth George, Culpability, A Slowly Dying Cause, AI ethics, mystery fiction, artificial intelligence novel, Inspector Lynley series 

You Might Also Like: Bruce Holsinger, THE DISPLACEMENTS, Elizabeth George, SOMETHING TO HIDE

Read The Transcript

Segment One: Bruce Holsinger

The alarms being raised about the potentially catastrophic consequences of AI are getting louder — from massive job losses to the extinction of civilization, if not the human race itself. Yet President Trump is considering an executive order that would severely restrict or ban regulation of AI by the states, after a similar attempt by Congressional Republicans was defeated earlier in the year.

Holsinger’s novel Culpability begins with a devastating car crash involving a self-driving vehicle. From that ordinary tragedy emerges a meditation on moral agency, responsibility, and family. Holsinger’s narrator, Noah Shaw, centers story around that of his wife Lorelai, a MacArthur-winning philosopher and AI ethicist whose research into “ethical artificial minds” collides with her own family’s pain.

The novel’s title reflects a central question: who is responsible when AI goes awry? As AI systems begin to make decisions once reserved for humans, Holsinger asks whether these systems can truly learn ethics — or only replicate our own flaws and biases.

The story intertwines the philosophical with the intimate, exploring drone warfare, chatbots as companions, and the alien moral landscape of machine learning. Ultimately, Holsinger insists that moral responsibility around the use of AI lies with us, no matter how powerful artificial intelligence becomes. 

We last spoke with Bruce Holzinger in 2022 about his climate change themed novel, The Displacements. His new novel spurs the reader to consider the ethical and emotional consequences of the use of AI by the deeply flawed human beings who shape it. 

Topics

AI ethics • Family and responsibility • The trolley problem • Moral philosophy in fiction • Drone warfare and automation • Chatbots and loneliness • Parenthood and fear • The black box of AI • Alignment problem • Culpability and human agency

Segment Two: Elizabeth George

In A Slowly Dying Cause, Elizabeth George brings Inspector Lynley and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers back in a story that begins far from London — in the rugged landscapes of Cornwall. The novel intertwines a murder investigation with a study of the consequences of obsessive love and unresolved grief.

As George explains, the title refers to a line from King Lear and reflects the struggle to let go of grief’s “cause.” The book’s dual narrative follows Michael, a tin miner whose secrets surface after his death, and Lynley and Havers, whose loyalty and differences continue to define one of the most beloved partnerships in crime fiction.

George also shares her meticulous creative process: building layered characters, tracking storylines with color-coded notes, and revising through multiple drafts until the intricate web of clues and emotions fully coheres.

Topics

Inspector Lynley series • Class and gender in crime fiction • Grief and redemption • Setting as character • Character-driven mysteries • Writing process and structure • Humor in dark fiction • Environmental themes (Cornish mining and lithium extraction)

Read A Sample

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

This week on Writer’s Voice, we turn our attention to the living world—and our place within it.

First, writer Adam Nicolson joins us to talk about his luminous new book, Bird School: A Beginner in the Wood. It’s the story of how he built a shed in his Sussex woods and spent two years learning from the birds who shared it with him. In the process, Nicolson discovered not just the intelligence of birds, but also a new way of seeing the world—a way that erases the hard line between humans and nature.

“To tend to the reality of the birds’ minds is to find yourself in a completely renewed world.” — Adam Nicholson

Then we replay an excerpt from my 2020 interview with Isabella Tree, author of Wilding: The Return of Nature. Nicolson counts her as a friend and fellow traveler in reimagining how we live with the natural world.

“We’ve grown up with a picture-postcard idea of beauty—neat edges, canalized rivers, everything controlled. We’re just beginning to understand that it’s not sustainable.” — Isabella Tree

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Key Words: Adam Nicolson, Bird School, birds, ecology, wildlife observation, biodiversity, Writer’s Voice podcast, Isabella Tree, Wilding, Knepp Estate, rewilding, biodiversity, habitat restoration,

You Might Also Like: Isabella Tree (full interview), The Minds and Lives of Animals with Joe Shute and Brandon Keim

Read The Transcript

Segment One: Adam Nicholson

Adam Nicolson’s Bird School began with a dead raven on a Cretan roadside—and a realization that he’d been “blind and deaf” to the birds that lived around him. Determined to learn, he built an octagonal hide on his farm, complete with nest boxes in its walls, and spent two years quietly sharing space with birds, bats, and dormice.

Through that experience, Nicolson came to see birds not as objects of study but as fellow beings whose lives mirror our own in complexity, deceit, love, and song. He challenges the cultural notion that humans are separate from nature, proposing instead what he calls “fuzziness”—a recognition of the continuous flow between ourselves and the living world.

The conversation ranges from the intelligence of birdsong and the ethics of bird feeding to the return of ravens after a century’s absence, signaling the restoration of ecological wholeness.

Topics

Bird observation • Human–nature connection • Philosophy of nature • Birdsong and intelligence • Cultural ecology • Fuzziness and “the severing” • Intermediate disturbance hypothesis • Repair vs. rewilding • Language and perception • Ethical bird feeding

Segment Two: Isabella Tree

In this archival segment, Wilding author Isabella Tree describes how she and her husband transformed their intensively farmed estate at Knepp Estate into a thriving ecosystem by letting natural processes take over. Using free-roaming herbivores to mimic the ecological roles of extinct megafauna, they discovered how “scrub”—once dismissed as wasteland—is a keystone habitat supporting birds, insects, and mammals.

Tree reflects on how cultural aesthetics of control blinded us to true ecological beauty, and how witnessing the return of nightingales and other wildlife changed even her skeptical neighbors’ minds.

Topics

Rewilding • Ecological restoration • Biodiversity • Thorny scrub habitats • Changing aesthetics of nature • Farmland transformation • Wildlife revival

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

In our first segment, comic artist Ben Passmore takes us on a time-bending, darkly funny journey through more than a century of Black resistance in his graphic history Black Arms to Hold You Up. It’s a story of struggle, rebellion, and what liberation really means when the fight never ends.

“We’re in a life-or-death struggle, and I think we need to accept that.” — Ben Passmore

Then, science journalist David Baron joins us to talk about The Martians — the true story of how turn-of-the-(last)-century America fell in love with the idea of life on Mars. From telescopes to tabloid headlines, Baron shows how our dreams of other worlds reveal who we really are.

“It was a time of great unrest… and so the idea that maybe Earth was clearly turning out not to be a very perfect place — and that maybe there was a better civilization on the planet next door — really captured the public’s imagination.” — David Baron

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Key Words: Writer’s Voice, Francesca Rheannon, Ben Passmore, David Baron, Black Arms to Hold You Up, The Martians, graphic novels, civil rights, alien craze, Black resistance, Mars, Percival Lowell, H.G. Wells, podcast author interview,

You Might Also Like: Tamara Payne on Les Payne’s THE DEAD ARE ARISING, Aaron Robertson, THE BLACK UTOPIANS.

Read The Transcript

Segment One: Ben Passmore

In his groundbreaking graphic history Black Arms to Hold You Up, Ben Passmore reimagines the past century of Black liberation struggles through his distinctive art and narrative voice.

From the tragedy of Philando Castile to the heroism and contradictions of figures like Robert F. Williams and Assata Shakur, Passmore explores how movements evolve — and how humor, art, and honesty sustain resistance across generations.

Key Topics:

• Black resistance from 1900 to 2020
• The tension between nonviolence and armed self-defense
• COINTELPRO, internal contradictions, and misleadership
• Preserving Black history amid state erasure
• Hope, exhaustion, and the spiritual dimensions of liberation

Read An Excerpt

Segment Two: David Baron

Segment Summary:
In The Martians, journalist David Baron revisits the early 1900s, when Americans — including scientists, inventors, and the press — became convinced that life on Mars had been discovered.

At the center of this cultural fever was wealthy astronomer Percival Lowell, whose theory of Martian canals captivated the public and launched both a scientific controversy and a literary genre. Baron traces how imagination, media, and science merged in a story that still shapes our fascination with Mars — and ourselves.

Key Topics:

• Percival Lowell and the Martian canals
• The role of yellow journalism and public imagination
• Nikola Tesla’s “signals from Mars”
• H.G. Wells and the birth of science fiction
• Science, myth, and belief in the modern age
• Lessons about imagination, evidence, and scientific humility

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

This episode of Writer’s Voice features two leading voices confronting the defining challenges of the 21st century — corporate monopolization and climate breakdown.

• Cory Doctorow, author of Enshittification, reveals the hidden mechanics behind the digital decay of our online platforms — how they move from serving users to exploiting them, and what systemic reforms, from antitrust enforcement to tech worker unions, can reverse the trend.
• Bill McKibben, author of Here Comes The Sun, shares an unexpectedly hopeful vision for the climate movement, documenting how plummeting solar and wind costs are reshaping economies worldwide and creating a moral turning point for civilization itself.

Together, these conversations show that both the digital and planetary crises share a root cause — the concentration of power — and that the path forward lies in collective action, technological democratization, and the reclaiming of our common future.

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Key Words: Cory Doctorow, enshittification, Big Tech, Amazon, Google, Facebook, antitrust, AI bubble, Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFA, digital rights, surveillance capitalism, Bill McKibben, Here Comes The Sun, climate change, renewable energy, solar power, wind energy, batteries, climate justice, energy transition, balcony solar, climate hope

You Might Also Like: Bill McKibben, OIL AND HONEY, Cory Doctorow, PICKS AND SHOVELS

READ THE TRANSCRIPT

Segment One: Cory Doctorow — “Enshittification”

Cory Doctorow unpacks the viral term he coined — enshittification — and the systemic forces that make once-beloved platforms like Amazon, Google, and Facebook “turn to crap.” He explains the three-stage process by which tech companies exploit users, businesses, and workers; how weakened antitrust enforcement and regulatory capture enabled the digital monopolies; and why true resistance requires organized collective action — not just individual boycotts.

“Publishers, users, advertisers — everyone’s getting it in the neck. That’s the third stage of enshittification.” — Cory Doctorow

He calls for stronger labor organizing among tech workers, international trade reforms that liberate users from proprietary tech restrictions, and a cultural shift away from “voting with our wallets” toward building movements for digital rights.

Topics

Digital monopolies • Platform decay • Antitrust • Monopsony • Labor rights in tech • AI hype cycle • Policy reform • Collective organizing • Electronic Frontier Foundation • Digital rights activism

Segment Two: Bill McKibben — “Here Comes The Sun”

Bill McKibben, one of the world’s most influential climate voices, returns with a message of hard-won optimism. In Here Comes The Sun, he argues that the falling cost of solar and wind power represents a “fresh chance for civilization.” For the first time, humanity has a scalable, affordable tool to curb the climate crisis.

“We’re seeing a faster energy transition than we’ve ever seen before with any fuel.” — Bill McKibben

McKibben outlines breakthrough examples — from California’s renewable tipping point to Pakistan’s citizen-led solar revolution — and explains how clean energy could decentralize power, undermine authoritarianism, and foster a more equitable world. He also warns that political backsliding under Trump threatens U.S. leadership and risks ceding economic primacy to China, even as global solar deployment accelerates.

Topics

Renewable energy revolution • Solar economics • Climate hope • Fossil fuel phase-out • Global energy transition • Geopolitics of solar • Just transition • Battery storage • Permitting reform • Third Act activism • Balcony solar • Citizen movements

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

In this episode of Writer’s Voice, we talk with Edward Wong, diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times and former Beijing bureau chief, about his new book At the Edge of Empire: A Family’s Reckoning with China.

Part memoir, part history, and part frontline reporting, the book traces Wong’s journey to uncover his father’s hidden past in Mao’s China, his family’s divided loyalties between Communist and American ideals, and what those personal histories reveal about China’s trajectory under Xi Jinping.

“I realized that much of my father’s experiences living in China under Mao sort of set the stage for the rule of the Communist Party later in the years I was witnessing it.” — Edward Wong

From the trauma of revolution and famine to the nationalism driving China’s global ambitions today, Wong shows us the direct line between Mao’s authoritarian rule and the tightening grip of Xi’s regime.

And he asks a question that resonates far beyond China: what does this story tell us about the dangers of authoritarianism in our own time?

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Key Words: Edward Wong interview, At the Edge of Empire, Mao Zedong, Xi Jinping, Chinese authoritarianism, Uyghurs, Tibet, state capitalism, Chinese history, climate policy China, modern China politics, Chinese empire, Writer’s Voice podcast

You Might Also Like: Michael Klare on the Pentagon, China and Climate, Tessa Hulls, FEEDING GHOSTS

READ THE TRANSCRIPT

Episode Summary

journalist Edward Wong discusses his book At the Edge of Empire: A Family’s Reckoning with China. Through the intertwined histories of his father’s life in Mao’s army and his own decades reporting for The New York Times in China, Wong explores how personal and national histories mirror one another.

He examines the Communist Party’s consolidation of power under Mao, the enduring trauma of the Great Leap Forward, and the reemergence of authoritarian rule under Xi Jinping. From the battlefields of Korea to the surveillance states of today, Wong shows how China’s imperial ambitions—old and new—continue to shape its politics and the world order.

Key Topics

• Family and generational memory in modern Chinese history
• Mao’s revolution and the Great Leap Forward
• Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power and authoritarianism
• State capitalism and economic reform in China
• The Uyghur repression and imperial control of Xinjiang and Tibet
• China’s global ambitions and U.S.-China relations
• Climate change, coal dependency, and green innovation
• The resilience and adaptability of authoritarian regimes

LISTEN TO AN EXCERPT

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

In this episode of Writer’s Voice, we hear from two authors illuminating the human cost of broken systems — one through fiction, the other through investigative memoir.

In the first half of the show, we speak with Evanthia Bromiley about her haunting and lyrical debut novel Crown. It follows three days in the life of a single mother and her nine-year-old twins as they face eviction in the scorching landscape of the American Southwest — a meditation on poverty, love, and resilience in a society that too often looks away.

“Everything here finds a way to grow through what is broken.” — Evanthia Bromiley

Then, in the second half, we turn from fiction to fact with Judy Karofsky , whose book DisElderly Conduct: The Flawed Business of Assisted Living and Hospice exposes how an unregulated eldercare industry is failing our most vulnerable — the elderly and their families. She shares her own story of trying to find adequate care for her own mother as the latter entered her final years.

“Civilizations are judged by how we take care of the elderly. And right now, we are not doing a good job.” — Judy Karofsky

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Key Words: Evanthia Bromiley Crown, Judy Karovsky Diselderly Conduct, Writer’s Voice podcast, Francesca Rheannon interviews, fiction about poverty, homelessness in literature, assisted living crisis, hospice industry corruption, eldercare reform, private equity in healthcare

You Might Also Like: Fighting Ageism, Caring For Elders

READ THE TRANSCRIPT

Segment One: Evanthia Bromiley

Evanthia Bromiley’s novel Crown traces three days leading up to a young mother’s eviction in the desert Southwest. As Jude and her nine-year-old twins face homelessness, they cling to each other — and to the imagination that allows them to find beauty amid despair. Bromiley talks about poverty, motherhood, and how “the poetry of poverty” shapes the texture of her prose.

Key Topics

• Eviction and economic precarity
• The intersection of poverty and motherhood
• Writing authentically without sentimentality
• The use of structure and white space in fiction
• Finding beauty and hope amid hardship

Segment Two: Judy Karofsky

Author Judy Karofsky exposes the dark underbelly of the assisted living and hospice industry, drawing on her harrowing experience caring for her mother through six facilities.

Karofsky details systemic neglect, lack of regulation, and exploitation of immigrant workers in a for-profit eldercare system dominated by private equity. Her book is both a personal memoir and a call to action for reforming how America cares for its elders.

Key Topics

• The rise and privatization of assisted living
• The exploitation of immigrant caregivers
• Ageism and neglect in eldercare
• The lack of federal regulation and oversight
• The moral and civic duty to care for the elderly

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

Today, a gripping story of courage, faith, and friendship in one of the most dangerous countries on Earth. Ross Halperin joins us to talk about his extraordinary book Bear Witness: The Pursuit of Justice in a Violent Land. It’s the true story of two men — an American missionary and a Honduran teacher — who took on the gangs, corruption, and impunity that plague Honduras, one of the most violent nations in the world. Together, they built a radical experiment in justice that dared to succeed where governments failed.

“They didn’t want to be hypocrites. They didn’t want to be like these other gringos that come down here and live behind gates and have drivers and security guards. They wanted to live with and like the people they wanted to help.” — Ross Halperin

Then, we air a clip from our 2023 interview with Jeff Sharlet about his book The Undertow, which examines the spread of rightwing ideology among the masses and the new fascist movement it’s spurred.

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Key Words: Ross Halperin, Bear Witness, Kurt Ver Beek, Carlos Hernández, Association for a More Just Society, ASJ, Honduras violence, gang violence, U.S. drug policy, narco-trafficking, Jeff Sharlet, Christian nationalism, rightwing extremism

You Might Also Like: Talking the Trumpocene with Jeff Sharlet, Lauren Markham, The Far Away Brothers

READ THE TRANSCRIPT

Segment One: Ross Halperin

In Bear Witness: The Pursuit of Justice in a Violent Land, journalist Ross Halperin tells the astonishing true story of Kurt Ver Beek and Carlos Hernández, two men who risked everything to confront gang violence and systemic corruption in Honduras.

From the slums of Tegucigalpa to the halls of power, they waged an improbable crusade for justice, building a grassroots model for solving murders and restoring faith in law where impunity once reigned.

In this interview, Halperin shares how he stumbled upon this story, the moral dilemmas his subjects faced, and what their work reveals about courage, compassion, and the fragile hope for justice in a violent world.

Key Topics

• Gang violence and impunity in Honduras
• U.S. policies fueling Central American violence
• Grassroots justice and community policing
• Vigilantism and moral dilemmas in law enforcement
• Faith-based activism and moral courage
• The Association for a More Just Society (ASJ)
• Prison reform and human rights in Latin America
• Cross-cultural friendship and collaboration

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

Today, a remarkable conversation with Reality Winner, the NSA whistleblower who leaked proof of Russian interference in the 2016 election and paid for it with the harshest sentence ever imposed under the Espionage Act.

Reality Winner’s new memoir, I Am Not Your Enemy, tells the story of what led her to leak the document, the fallout from her arrest, and what her arrest tells us about our military-industrial complex — and our eroding democracy.

“Depending on where you are on the totem pole will determine how you fare once charged with a crime — or if you’re even charged with a crime in the first place.”

She speaks about how her punishment compared with the leniency shown to elites like Donald Trump and David Petraeus, and why the Espionage Act is uniquely unjust. Plus — an explosive revelation about why Winner believes The Intercept deliberately exposed her as their source.

“Everything that happened to me following the sending of the document to The Intercept was by design.”

We spend the hour with Reality Winner in a deeply revealing conversation you don’t want to miss.

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Key Words: Reality Winner, I Am Not Your Enemy, NSA whistleblower, The Intercept, Espionage Act, Russian election interference, whistleblower prosecution, Donald Trump classified documents, national security leaks, government secrecy

You Might Also Like: Daniel Ellsberg, THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE, James Risen, PAY ANY PRICE

READ THE TRANSCRIPT

Episode Summary

Reality Winner opens up about her motivations for joining the Air Force, her moral struggle with U.S. military policy, and the trauma of watching war unfold from the inside. She explains how, in a moment of fear and outrage, she leaked an NSA report proving Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In this interview, she delivers three explosive insights:

1. The Intercept’s betrayal: Winner claims the outlet didn’t just make mistakes, but deliberately exposed her to boost their own profile: “Everything that happened to me following the sending of the document to The Intercept was by design.”
2. Double standards in justice: She contrasts her four-year sentence with the impunity of elites like Donald Trump, Biden, or Petraeus for far graver breaches: “Depending on where you are on the totem pole will determine how you fare once charged with a crime — or if you’re even charged with a crime in the first place.”
3. The Espionage Act’s injustice: Winner highlights how the Act uniquely ignores both intent and impact: “It is one of the only laws in the entire United States judicial history that intent, criminal intent, does not need to be proven.”

She also describes her arrest, the FBI’s tactics, her harrowing time in prison, and her continuing journey of healing.

Key Topics

• NSA whistleblowing & Russian election interference
• The Intercept’s handling of leaks
• Double standards in national security prosecutions
• The Espionage Act and its lack of intent requirement
• Military culture and disillusionment from within
• Prison, resilience, and healing after incarceration

Read an Excerpt from I AM NOT YOUR ENEMY