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

American fascism didn’t begin with Donald Trump, or even with the rise of fascism in Europe. Its roots reach deep into our own history.

America’s road to fascism began with a big lie about who counts as fully human. That’s what historian Joseph Kelly reveals in his book, The Biggest Lie: The Prehistory of American Fascism, 1818–1915. Kelly traces a long struggle between two visions of the country. One rests on the Declaration’s promise of equality. The other claims that people aren’t equal, that white people are superior to Black people and therefore have the right to dominate them.

We follow that ideology from the Missouri crisis through pseudoscientific racism, Indian removal, slavery and the violent overthrow of Reconstruction. Kelly explains how the Ku Klux Klan, the Red Shirts, Jim Crow and The Birth of a Nation used fear, myth and racialized sexual panic to defend white rule.

We also look at a road not taken, multiracial democracy and class-based political cooperation. Those possibilities were repeatedly attacked by elites who weaponized fears of replacement and Black political power.

Kelly connects domestic white supremacy to American empire in Cuba and the Philippines. He argues that fascism is a corruption of democracy, built when dissent is silenced, violence is celebrated and allegiance to the tribe and its leader replaces truth. That history, he says, can help us understand the battle over democracy today.

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

Love good coffee? Want to support Writer’s Voice? Head on over to Larry’s Coffee using this LINK, and you’ll earn $30 for the show!

You might also like: Aran Shetterly on The Greensboro Massacre, Paul Kix on the fight to end Jim Crow

Tags: Joseph Kelly, The Biggest Lie, American fascism, white supremacy, racism, slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, replacement theory, multiracial democracy

Read The Transcript

Joseph Kelly, THE BIGGEST LIE

Key topics:

• The conflict between equality and white supremacy
• The Missouri crisis and the defense of slavery
• Pseudoscientific racism
• Andrew Jackson and Indian removal
• The destruction of Reconstruction
• The Ku Klux Klan and the Red Shirts
• Racial and sexual panic
• Ida B. Wells and the truth about lynching
• American imperialism in Cuba and the Philippines
• The Birth of a Nation
• Fascism, political lies and loyalty to the leader

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

A machine that never judges us may also teach us to forget how human relationships work.

Writer’s Voice talks with Victoria Hetherington about The Friend Machine, her investigation into people who seek friendship, therapy and love from AI. We explore loneliness, simulated care, privacy, emotional dependence and the extraordinary power of the corporations building these systems.

“That’s probably my primary concern, that moral de-skilling might occur.” — Victoria Hetherington

Then, we revisit our 2025 conversation with Silvia Park about her sci-fi novel Luminous. Set in a reunified future Korea, the novel follows a family whose estranged siblings include two humans and a robot.

“What I really question is, if robots exist in this world, would they serve as an outlet or would they amplify our dark urges?” — Silvia Park

Together, these books grapple with salient questions arising from AI and monopoly corporate power. Can programmed affection become love? And what does how we treat A.I. entities say about ourselves?

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

Love good coffee? Want to support Writer’s Voice? Head on over to Larry’s Coffee using this LINK, and you’ll earn $30 for the show!

You might also like: Bruce Holsinger on AI’s Moral Dilemmas, Ray Nayler on AI and Autocracy

Tags: Victoria Hetherington, The Friend Machine, Silvia Park, Luminous, AI companions, artificial intelligence, AI friendship, AI therapy, sentient robots, AI ethics, AI privacy, Writer’s Voice

Read The Transcript

Victoria Hetherington, The Friend Machine

What happens when an AI companion becomes your closest friend, your therapist, or even your romantic partner?

Victoria Hetherington’s The Friend Machine: On the Trail of AI Companionship investigates why people form powerful emotional bonds with chatbots.

Hetherington finds that the real story isn’t whether AI is conscious. It’s why so many of us are ready to treat it as if it were.

In our conversation, We talk about loneliness, simulated care, AI therapy, privacy, and the risks of replacing difficult human relationships with frictionless digital ones. We also ask what guardrails are needed when a handful of enormously powerful companies control technologies that can learn our most intimate secrets.

Victoria Hetherington is a journalist, broadcaster, and author whose work explores technology, intimacy, and what it means to be human in an AI-driven world.

Silvia Park, Luminous (re-air)

Set in a reunified Korea, Luminous follows a family with a unique dynamic: two human siblings and their robot brother Yo-Yo.

The novel explores complex relationships between humans and robots, examining questions of love, memory, and what constitutes consciousness.

Silvia Park Interview: Key Topics

• How AI and robotics shape a reunified Korea post-war
• The role of robots in family structures—caretakers, siblings, even romantic partners
• The central mystery of Yo-Yo, a robot who defies expectations and may possess a soul
• The ethical dilemmas of AI companionship and whether love can be programmed
• Morgan’s struggle with creating a robotic boyfriend who loves her—but is he real?
• Jun’s identity as a transgender war veteran and his struggle with his cybernetic body
• How society’s treatment of robots reflects historical patterns of oppression and dehumanization
• The dark undercurrent of ritualized violence against AI and its parallels to human history
• The philosophical question: If AI surpasses us in intelligence and empathy, what happens next?

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

What does it take to win back a democracy, and who is our government really supposed to serve?

This week on Writer’s Voice, I talk with anthropologist Ida Susser about her book, The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy. She tells the story of a movement in France that began with anger over a diesel tax and grew into a much deeper defense of public services, economic dignity, and democratic power.

“There is no other thing to do for democracy, but fight for your rights every single way and day that you can.” – Ida Susser

Then, following Abdul El Sayed’s victory in Michigan’s Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, we return to my 2021 conversation with him about the book he co-wrote, Medicare for All: A Citizen’s Guide. El-Sayed explains why American healthcare costs so much, how private insurance drives those costs higher, and how Medicare for All could cover everyone while giving the public real power over prices.

“Under Medicare for All, we would pay for the system far more progressively to cover everyone.” – Dr. Abdul El Sayed

Two movements, one fundamental question, can ordinary people reclaim the institutions meant to serve them?

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

Love good coffee? Want to support Writer’s Voice? Head on over to Larry’s Coffee using this LINK, and you’ll earn $30 for the show!

You may also like: Abdul El Sayed & Micah Johnson, MEDICARE FOR ALL: A Citizen’s Guide, Remembering The Revolutions of 2011

Tags: Ida Susser, Abdul El-Sayed, Yellow Vests, Medicare for All, Michigan Senate primary, democracy, healthcare reform, single-payer healthcare, neoliberalism, social movements, corporate power, Writer’s Voice

Read the Transcript

Ida Susser, The Yellow Vests

Democracy isn’t something we inherit once and keep forever. It has to be defended, rebuilt, and often reclaimed from those who’ve taken it away.

In her book, The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy, Ida Susser tells the thrilling story of how the Yellow Vest movement erupted in France in 2018, after the Macron government imposed a diesel tax that hit working people already struggling with disappearing hospitals, schools, transit, and public services.

But, as Susser explains, this wasn’t simply an anti-tax movement. On roundabouts and in public squares, people began talking across political divisions. They connected the end of the month with the end of the world, economic survival with the climate crisis.

Susser tells us what the Yellow Vests can teach us about solidarity, state violence, and the long struggle to protect democracy.

Ida Susser is a South African-born American anthropologist and Professor of Anthropology at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.

DOWNLOAD THE YELLOW VESTS FOR FREE

Abdul El Sayed on Medicare For All

On August 5, Abdul El-Sayed was declared the winner of Michigan’s Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate. He won it with a clear message: get money out of politics, put money in people’s pockets, and pass Medicare for All.

We take up the last demand as we return to an excerpt from my 2021 interview with El-Sayed and physician Micah Johnson about their book, Medicare for All: A Citizen’s Guide.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed explains why American healthcare costs so much, how a single public insurer could negotiate lower prices, and why paying for Medicare for All is ultimately a question of whose budget matters most.

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

Can science fiction help us imagine a way through climate crisis, runaway corporate power, and the rise of AI?

This week, we talk with John Feffer about Songlands and Portia Elan about Homebound, two speculative novels that ask how we can make a livable future in an age of crisis.

Songlands, the final novel in Feffer’s Splinterlands trilogy, takes us into a climate-ravaged world where nations have fractured and a biotech corporation holds enormous power. Yet poetry, collective action, and a conscious, caring AI offer another way forward.

“Love is an important kind of operating system, if you will, to define one’s relations with the world.” — John Feffer

Portia Elan’s Homebound travels across 600 years, connecting a queer coder in 1985 with a smuggler in 2585. Their stories come together through grief, a mysterious video game, found family, and the moral choices that shape history.

“[AI] is a reflection of the values of the creators. I’m afraid of the human choices, not so much of the LLM choices.” — Portia Elan

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

Love good coffee? Want to support Writer’s Voice? Head on over to Larry’s Coffee using this LINK, and you’ll earn $30 for the show!

[Episode 1036]

Read The Transcript

Segment One, John Feffer on Songlands

John Feffer’s Songlands is the third novel in his Splinterlands trilogy. It takes place in a climate-ravaged future, where the all-powerful CRISPR Corporation offers survival only to a privileged few.

A reluctant poet, Aurora, becomes part of the struggle against it, aided by Karen, the first conscious AI — an AI with a conscience. Writer’s Voice talks with Feffer about climate justice, dangerous feedback loops, geoengineering, corporate oligarchy, and our tendency to project human drives for domination onto AI. We also explore poetry as a force for political resistance, and why we still need to create in the middle of catastrophe.

Segment Two, Portia Elan on Homebound

Portia Elan’s Homebound spans 600 years, linking Bex, a queer coder grieving her uncle in 1985, with Yeshiko, a smuggler fighting to preserve her independence in 2585.

Between them lies a mysterious video game, generations of stories, and Haya, a conscious automaton created to care for damaged ecosystems. I talk with Portia about transforming grief through creativity, finding home in chosen family, and the values humans build into technology.

We explore how stories invite the reader to participate, why everyday kindness matters, and what it means to choose hope as a moral action rather than a comforting feeling.

Read an excerpt from Homebound

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

The Cuban Revolution transformed a nation. It also ended the Mob’s dream of turning Havana into the center of a global criminal empire. And it divided families.

Writer’s Voice talks with Cuban American historian Ada Ferrer about her memoir, Keeper of My Kin. When Ferrer was ten months old, her mother carried her out of Cuba without saying goodbye to Ferrer’s nine-year-old half-brother, Poli. The separation was supposed to be temporary. It lasted seventeen years.

“We tend to think that history happens up here or something, but all these historical events, their geopolitical decisions, they reverberate in individual lives, at the heart of families, in these really intimate spaces, in the space between people, family members who are separated, right?” — Ada Ferrer

Then Writer’s Voice returns to a 2008 interview with journalist T.J. English about Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and Then Lost It to the Revolution. English describes how Meyer Lansky and other American mobsters allied themselves with dictator Fulgencio Batista, turning Havana into a glittering marketplace of casinos, nightclubs, prostitution, political corruption, and corporate profit.

“In that period, Havana became a kind of a paradise, a mobster’s paradise.” — T.J.English

The Mob hoped Cuba would become the base of a multinational empire. Instead, its exploitation of the island became a powerful symbol for the revolution that swept Batista and the gangsters from power.

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

Love good coffee? Want to support Writer’s Voice? Head on over to Larry’s Coffee using this LINK, and you’ll earn $30 for the show!

[Episode 1035]

Tags: Keeper of My Kin, Ada Ferrer, T.J. English, Havana Nocturne, Cuban Revolution, Cuba, Cuban history, Cuban exile, Cuban immigration, Mariel boatlift, Mafia in Cuba, Meyer Lansky, Fulgencio Batista, Fidel Castro, Writer’s Voice, Francesca Rheannon,

Read The Transcript

Episode Topics

• The Cuban Revolution and family separation
• Cuban migration to the United States
• The Mariel boatlift
• Childhood abandonment and intergenerational trauma
• Letters as historical evidence
• Cuban exile communities
• Ordinary people as historical actorsThe United States embargo against Cuba
• Political repression and economic policy in Cuba
• Fulgencio Batista and political corruption
• Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, and Santo Trafficante
• Organized crime in pre-revolutionary Havana
• Casinos, nightclubs, prostitution, and tourism
• American corporate interests in Cuba
• Capitalism and organized crime
• The Mob’s role in fueling revolutionary opposition

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

Economic insecurity is reshaping America’s workforce. Will that bring college-educated and non-college educated workers together?

For decades, Americans were told that education was the pathway to the middle class. Get a degree, work hard, and professional success would follow. But that promise has weakened.

In Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class, New York Times reporter Noam Scheiber argues that millions of college graduates increasingly face the same insecurity that has long confronted blue-collar workers. They carry heavy student debt, struggle to find stable careers, and often discover that professional jobs offer less autonomy and dignity than previous generations enjoyed.

Writer’s Voice talks with Scheiber about the organizing drives at Starbucks, Apple, Amazon, and among Hollywood writers, along with the changing realities facing doctors, graduate students, and other professionals. He explains why so many workers who once imagined themselves as future managers or professionals are instead embracing unions and collective action.

The conversation explores how corporate restructuring, the aftermath of the Great Recession, streaming media, and artificial intelligence are reshaping work across industries. Scheiber argues that the traditional divide between college-educated and non-college-educated workers is narrowing as economic precarity spreads throughout the labor force.

The result, he suggests, may be a new politics of work, one in which people who once saw themselves as members of different social classes increasingly recognize common interests.

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

Love good coffee? Want to support Writer’s Voice? Head on over to Larry’s Coffee using this LINK, and you’ll earn $30 for the show!

Tags: Noam Scheiber, Mutiny, Starbucks Workers United, Amazon Labor Union, Apple union, Hollywood writers strike, college graduates, economic inequality, AI and work, worker organizing, precarity, corporate power, Writer’s Voice podcast

You might also like: Maria Adelmann on Adjunct Labor, Cory Doctorow on Big Tech’s “Enshittification”

Read the Transcript

Noam Scheiber, MUTINY: Key Topics

• – The emergence of the college-educated working class
• – Why college no longer guarantees economic security
• – Starbucks and the Red Cup union campaign
• – Amazon Labor Union and Chris Smalls
• – Apple workers and changing professional expectations
• – Hollywood writers, streaming, and AI
• – Worker dignity and professional autonomy
• – Growing worker consciousness across occupations
• – How AI could reshape labor politics

Read an Excerpt

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

What does courage demand when freedom is threatened?

This week on Writer’s Voice, two conversations ask one of the hardest questions any of us can face. What does it really mean to resist?

First, journalist Gal Beckerman joins Writer’s Voice to talk about his book How to Be a Dissident. Drawing on figures from Hannah Arendt to Alexei Navalny, Osip Mandelstam and Etty Hillesum, he argues that dissidents aren’t superheroes. They’re ordinary people who decide they can no longer live with inaction.

“I really have come to understand those choices as not only burdensome, but actually the substance from which a real meaningful life is made.”

Then Writer’s Voice revisits a conversation with novelist Buzzy Jackson about To Die Beautiful, her novel inspired by Dutch resistance fighter Hannie Schaft. Through Schaft’s story, Jackson explores how ordinary people become extraordinary when injustice closes in, and why even for any of us, small acts of courage matter.

“I really started to understand that a refugee crisis in a country is a little bit of like a canary in a coal mine.”

Two conversations, one enduring question. How do we prepare ourselves to choose courage when the moment arrives?

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

Tags: How to Be a Dissident, Gal Beckerman interview, Writer’s Voice podcast, Hannie Schaft, To Die Beautiful, Dutch Resistance, World War II resistance, Alexei Navalny, Hannah Arendt, Osip Mandelstam, Etty Hillesum, Buzzy Jackson interview,

You might also like: Buzzy Jackson, TO DIE BEAUTIFUL, Robert Matzen, DUTCH GIRL

Love good coffee? Want to support Writer’s Voice? Head on over to Larry’s Coffee using this LINK, and you’ll earn $30 for the show!

Gal Beckerman, How to Be a Dissident

Gal Beckerman’s How to Be a Dissident begins with a question that many Americans are asking themselves today: What would I actually do if confronted with injustice? That question came to him in a recurring dream in which he faced an interrogator and had to decide whether to compromise or stand by his principles. The dream became the starting point for an exploration of the people throughout history who refused to surrender their moral agency.

Rather than treating dissidents as extraordinary heroes, Beckerman argues that they are ordinary people who develop habits of conscience long before history demands them. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s reflections on those who resisted Nazism, he suggests that the defining question is not ideological but deeply personal: “Can I live with myself?” That question links the lives of very different people across time and political systems.

The conversation explores Soviet poet Osip Mandelstam, who refused to deny a poem criticizing Stalin, even though it led to imprisonment and ultimately death in a labor camp. Beckerman discusses why truth telling became inseparable from Mandelstam’s identity as a poet, and how his wife preserved his work entirely through memory.

Beckerman also reflects on Alexei Navalny’s decision to return to Russia after surviving an assassination attempt. Navalny understood the likely consequences, yet believed he could not abandon the people whose freedom he defended. The discussion explores courage, martyrdom, humor as resistance, and the difficult relationship between hope and sacrifice.

One of the book’s most provocative ideas is Beckerman’s defense of what he calls “hopeful pessimism.” Rather than assuming history inevitably bends toward justice, he argues that recognizing the possibility of failure creates urgency and invites action. He illustrates this through the writings of Dutch Jewish diarist Etty Hillesum, whose remarkable spiritual outlook during the Holocaust demonstrated that dignity and compassion could survive even under the worst imaginable circumstances.

The interview concludes by exploring loyalty, community, protest, and the importance of creating spaces where people see one another publicly living according to shared values, such as neighborhood networks and No Kings demonstrations, and why the value of protest often lies less in immediate political victories than in helping people develop the habits of citizenship that sustain democracy over time. Ultimately, he argues that meaningful lives are built through countless moral choices, each one another brushstroke in the portrait of who we become.

READ THE TRANSCRIPT

Buzzy Jackson, TO DIE BEAUTIFUL

Writer’s Voice revisits a conversation with novelist Buzzy Jackson about To Die Beautiful, inspired by the life of Hannie Schaft, one of the Netherlands’ most celebrated resistance fighters during World War II.

Jackson begins by introducing Hannie as an ambitious nineteen-year-old law student whose dream was to become an international human rights lawyer. Quiet, studious, and protected by her parents after the death of her older sister, she seemed an unlikely resistance fighter. Yet the German occupation gradually transformed both her world and her sense of responsibility.

The interview explores Hannie’s friendship with two Jewish classmates, Sonia Frank and Phileen Polak, and how the slow tightening of anti-Jewish persecution forced ordinary Dutch citizens to confront impossible moral choices. Jackson describes fascism not as something that arrives all at once, but as a gradual erosion of everyday life until injustice becomes impossible to ignore.

Jackson also reflects on her own research into resistance, noting that many Dutch resistance fighters began simply by helping refugees and people in danger. She draws connections between those historical experiences and contemporary debates about refugees, human rights, and civic responsibility, arguing that humanitarian crises often warn of broader threats to democracy.

Finally, the discussion turns to the difficult moral landscape of occupied Holland. Jackson distinguishes committed collaborators, active resistance fighters, and the far larger number of ordinary citizens who occupied the space between them. She emphasizes that even modest acts of solidarity, refusing to report a hidden neighbor, quietly supplying ration cards, or publicly standing against injustice, can have profound consequences. Writing the novel ultimately inspired her own civic engagement, reinforcing her belief that meaningful resistance begins with ordinary people deciding to act.

READ THE TRANSCRIPT

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

Patriotism demands more than pride, it demands moral courage.

This Independence Day episode of Writer’s Voice explores two remarkable women who believed loving America meant challenging it to live up to its highest ideals.

First, filmmaker, author and activist John de Graaf discusses From Sea to Shining Sea, his documentary about Katharine Lee Bates, author of America the Beautiful. Far from writing a triumphal anthem, Bates created what de Graaf calls a patriotic prayer, a vision of a nation grounded in justice, equality, stewardship of the land, and compassion for all.

“She saw it as a country filled with flaws but with great promise that she wanted to reform.” — John de Graaf

Then novelists Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie talk about A Founding Mother, their richly researched novel told in the voice of Abigail Adams.

Drawing from her letters and historical record, they reveal a woman whose intelligence, independence, and moral clarity shaped both her family and the new republic. Abigail advocated for women’s rights, condemned slavery, built financial independence through her own business ventures, and understood that democracy depends on the participation of every generation.

Together, these conversations remind us that “a more perfect union” was never a description of America. It was, and remains, an aspiration. Katharine Lee Bates and Abigail Adams each understood that patriotism isn’t blind celebration. It’s the willingness to participate fully in the project to create an America that works for all, not just the one percent.

Watch From Sea To Shining Sea

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

Tags: America the Beautiful, Katharine Lee Bates, John de Graaf, From Sea to Shining Sea, Abigail Adams, Stephanie Dray, Laura Kamoie, A Founding Mother, American history podcast, Fourth of July, American Revolution, women founders, slavery, historical fiction, Writer’s Voice podcast

You might also like: Stewart Udall and The Politics of Beauty with John de Graaf, What’s An Economy For, Anyway?

Love good coffee? Want to support Writer’s Voice? Head on over to Larry’s Coffee using this LINK, and you’ll earn $30 for the show!

John de Graaf: From Sea To Shining Sea

John de Graaf explores the extraordinary life of Katharine Lee Bates, whose poem America the Beautiful was inspired not only by the grandeur of Pikes Peak but also by the poverty, environmental destruction, and inequality she witnessed across America. Bates believed love of country required moral courage, social reform, and stewardship of both democracy and the land. De Graaf explains why her vision feels remarkably contemporary more than a century later.

Read the transcript

Episode Topics

• Katharine Lee Bates
• America the Beautiful
• Patriotism versus nationalism
• Democracy as an ongoing project
• Abigail Adams
• The American founding
• Women’s rights
• Slavery and abolition
• Civic responsibility
• Environmental stewardship
• Historical fiction
• American history
• The Declaration of Independence
• Social reform
• Equality

Stephanie Dray & Laura Kamoie: A Founding Mother

Abigail Adams helped shape America long before women had political power.

Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie discuss their novel, which draws on more than a thousand surviving letters to recreate Abigail’s voice. They explore her partnership with John Adams, her call to “remember the ladies,” her opposition to slavery, her entrepreneurial spirit, and her belief that each generation must continue the work of building democracy. The conversation reveals Abigail Adams as both a founder and a visionary whose ideas remain deeply relevant today.

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

Who gets to tell the story, and who gets erased?

This week on Writer’s Voice, we talk with media scholar Robin Andersen about her book The Complicit Lens: U.S. Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza. Andersen’s argument is blunt: the American press didn’t just fail to report accurately on Gaza. Through what she calls “the complicit lens,” it helped make the genocide possible.

“It’s no small charge to say that establishment media is complicit in a genocide. And I do believe that they know what they’re doing. They know exactly what’s happening there.”

We discuss media framing, censorship, language, competing narratives about October 7, and why independent journalism has become increasingly important.

Then we revisit part of my 2025 conversation with journalist Nico Lang about American Teenager: How Trans Kids Are Surviving Hate and Finding Joy in a Turbulent Era. Lang traveled across the country to meet trans young people and their families, documenting not only the challenges posed by anti-trans legislation, but also the resilience, humor, and humanity that rarely make headlines.

“They treat these kids like they’re like monsters and aliens rather than human beings who have the same kinds of human being experiences that they do.”

Both conversations ask a similar question: What happens when people are represented through narratives created by others rather than being allowed to tell their own stories? Whether it’s Palestinians documenting life under bombardment or trans teenagers fighting to define themselves in a hostile political climate, these interviews explore the establishment structures that keep the truth from the public — and how those who are being silenced are fighting back.

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

Tags: Gaza media coverage, U.S. media bias, Robin Andersen, Complicit Lens, Israel Palestine journalism, media censorship, Palestinian journalists, media criticism, FAIR media, trans youth, transgender teenagers, Nico Lang, American Teenager, Pride Month, anti-trans legislation, trans kids resilience, Writer’s Voice podcast

You might also like: Nico Lang, AMERICAN TEENAGER, Omar Zahzah, GAZA

Love good coffee? Want to support Writer’s Voice? Head on over to Larry’s Coffee using this LINK, and you’ll earn $30 for the show!

Segment One: Robin Andersen — Complicit Lens

Robin Andersen examines the editorial and structural forces that shaped U.S. media coverage of Gaza from October 7, 2023, onward.

She details the internal CNN memos directing journalists to avoid terms like “genocide,” “massacre,” and “refugee camp,” and describes how the New York Times followed similar editorial directives shaped by Israeli military talking points.

Andersen traces how two distinct realities emerged: the ground-level documentation by Palestinian journalists using cell phones and Arab-language press, and the highly constructed version published by U.S. establishment outlets.

She also examines atrocity propaganda surrounding October 7, the Hannibal Directive, competing narratives about systematic sexual violence, and the structural ties between corporate media boards, fossil fuel interests, and the military-industrial complex. Andersen’s conclusion: American media’s complicity in the Gaza genocide was not accidental. It was chosen.

Read An Excerpt

Segment Two: Nico Lang — American Teenager

Award-winning journalist Nico Lang (they/them) traveled to seven states to spend extended time with seven trans youth for their book American Teenager.

Lang discusses their approach to individual storytelling and why they refused to flatten their subjects into a single thesis, letting the particularity of each story carry the universal meaning.

The conversation covers gender dysphoria and non-binary identity, the devastating psychological toll of fighting anti-trans legislation as a teenager, and specific subjects including Micah, a Black gender-fluid teenager in West Virginia who shows up to the state legislature to oppose anti-trans bills and is told by a Republican lobbyist that it doesn’t matter how many kids protest.

Lang reflects on what it means to write about joy under those conditions.

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

The stories we tell can change how we live.

This week on Writer’s Voice, a novel about what happens when we lose our connection to the living systems that sustain us.

Songwriter and author Alex Woodard joins us to talk about Ordinary Soil, a multigenerational saga of a Choctaw farming family in the Oklahoma Panhandle that traces the intertwined health of land, food, and people across more than a century.

“The simplified message of this book is that you get out what you put in. And that goes for the dirt, that goes for your stomach, that goes for your mind, that goes for your spirit, that goes for everything.”

Then, we revisit our 2019 conversation conversation with environmental journalist Carey Gillam about her book The Monsanto Papers: Deadly Secrets, Corporate Corruption, and One Man’s Search for Justice. It’s about the groundbreaking case of school groundskeeper Lee Johnson—how he sued Monsanto and won.

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

Tags: Alex Woodard, Ordinary Soil, regenerative agriculture, soil health, glyphosate, Roundup, Indigenous farming, environmental fiction, Carey Gillam, Monsanto

You might also like: Exposing Hidden Agendas: Will Potter on Factory Farm Secrecy, Carey Gillam, WHITEWASH

Love good coffee? Want to support Writer’s Voice? Head on over to Larry’s Coffee using this LINK, and you’ll earn $30 for the show!

Alex Woodard, ORDINARY SOIL

Alex Woodard’s Ordinary Soil follows six generations of a Choctaw farming family living on the same Oklahoma Panhandle land from the late nineteenth century to the present. At its center is Jake, a struggling modern farmer whose physical and emotional health reflect the accumulated effects of generational trauma, environmental degradation, and the transformation of American agriculture.

In our conversation, Woodard discusses the novel’s roots in both family history and contemporary concerns about industrial agriculture. The book contrasts Indigenous farming traditions, particularly the “Three Sisters” method of planting corn, beans, and squash together, with the rise of chemical-intensive monoculture farming. Through the family’s story, Woodard explores how changes in the soil affect not only ecosystems but human health as well.

We also talk about glyphosate, gut health, regenerative agriculture, and the growing scientific understanding of epigenetics. The novel suggests that both physical and emotional trauma can accumulate across generations, shaping the lives of descendants long after the original wounds occurred. At the same time, Woodard emphasizes that healing is possible, for individuals, communities, and the land itself.

Listen to or Read a Sample from Ordinary Soil

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

Anand Gopal on Syria’s Lost Democratic Revolution

What really happened in Syria?

In this episode of Writer’s Voice, we talk with journalist Anand Gopal about his extraordinary book Days of Love and Rage. Drawing on years of reporting and hundreds of interviews, Gopal reconstructs the story of ordinary Syrians who rose up against dictatorship and attempted to build a democratic society in the city of Manbij during the Arab Spring.

“In these complex scenarios, you usually hear about devastation, not about acts of construction.”

We discuss the social contract that sustained the Assad regime for decades, the impact of neoliberal economic reforms and climate-driven drought, and the revolutionary awakening that swept through Syria in 2011. Gopal describes how citizens with no prior experience of democracy organized councils, newspapers, political assemblies, and public debates, creating a vibrant experiment in self-government under impossible conditions.

The conversation also explores the class divisions, economic crises, and political struggles that contributed to the rise of Islamist movements and eventually ISIS. Yet Gopal argues that the democratic experiment was real, meaningful, and not doomed to fail.

In the final part of our conversation, we examine hope, not as a feeling but as a practice, a willingness to remain open to possibility even in dark times.

Tags: Anand Gopal, Days of Love and Rage, Syria, Syrian Revolution, Arab Spring, Assad regime, Bashar al-Assad, ISIS, Middle East politics, Writer’s Voice Podcast

You Might Also Like: Remembering The Revolutions of 2011, Deborah Campbell, A DISAPPEARANCE IN DAMASCUS & Melissa Fleming, A HOPE MORE POWERFUL THAN THE SEA

Love good coffee? Want to support Writer’s Voice? Head on over to Larry’s Coffee using this LINK, and you’ll earn $30 for the show!

More on “Days of Love & Rage”

Anand Gopal’s Days of Love and Rage is a sweeping account of Syria’s revolution through the lives of ordinary people in Manbij and the Euphrates countryside.

Beginning with the agrarian world of Ibrahim Qasim and the village of Little Hyena, Gopal traces the transformation of Syrian society under the Ba’ath Party, the erosion of economic security through neoliberal reforms, and the environmental pressures that helped fuel the Arab Spring.

The conversation examines how Syrians who had lived for decades under dictatorship discovered collective political power through protest and democratic organizing. Gopal describes the emergence of the Revolutionary Council and Revolutionary Youth Movement, which attempted to govern Manbij through public participation, debate, elections, and accountability.

We also explore how economic inequality, class conflict, and insecurity opened space for Islamist movements and eventually ISIS. Finally, Gopal reflects on historical contingency, revolutionary tradition, and the meaning of hope in times of uncertainty.

Key Topics

• Syria before the Arab Spring
• The Assad regime and the Ba’ath Party
• Neoliberalism in the Middle East
• Climate change and drought in Syria
• The Arab Spring
• Democratic self-government in Manbij
• The Revolutionary Youth Movement
• Class conflict and political transformation
• The rise of Islamist movements
• ISIS and revolutionary collapse
• Historical contingency
• Revolutionary traditions
• Hope as political practice

Listen to or read an excerpt