Across the Margin: The Podcast

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast looks back on the distressing events of January 6th, 2021 with an examination of the documentary Day of Rage, a film that culls thousands of hours of videos and audio from rioters and police body cams to tell the story of the Capitol insurrection. The product of a six-month New York Times investigation, Day of Rage provides the most complete picture to date of what happened — and why. To properly delve into this powerful documentary, this episode features an interview the senior producer of the New York Times Visual Investigations team who produced and co-directed Day of Rage, Malachy Browne. Browne was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2020 for international reporting for coverage of Russian culpability in crimes around the world, including the bombing of hospitals in Syria. He has has led investigations into the killing of Breonna Taylor and other Black Americans by police, the Las Vegas mass shooting, chemical weapons attacks in Syria, extra-judicial military shootings in Nigeria, and the killing of a young Palestinian medic along the Gaza-Israel border. In this episode host Michael Shields and Malachy Browne discuss a bevy of the shocking particulars of the January 6th insurrection that were featured in Day of Rage. They converse upon the massive effort in bringing the documentary to life, who exactly the rioters were as exposed in Day of Rage, the evidence present in the film that that the storming of the Capitol was assuredly premeditated, how the Capitol police were let down by their superiors on that fateful day, and so much more. Join in on an episode that pays tribute to a documentary that lays out plainly just how fragile democracy can be.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast features an interview with Lina Zeldovich, a writer and editor specializing in the journalism of solutions. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Smithsonian, Popular Science, Scientific American, Atlantic, and Newsweek, among many other popular outlets, and she has won awards from the Newswomen’s Club of New York, the Society of Professional Journalists Deadline Club, and the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Her first book, The Other Dark Matter: The Science and Business of Turning Waste Into Wealth and Heath, is the focus of this episode. Did you know that the average person produces about four hundred pounds of excrement a year (keep in mind, more than seven billion people live on this planet!). Because of the diseases it spreads, humankind has learned to distance themselves from our waste, but the long line of engineering marvels we’ve created to do so — from Roman sewage systems and medieval latrines to the immense, computerized treatment plants we use today — has also done considerable damage to the earth’s ecology. Now scientists tell us that we have been wasting our waste. When recycled correctly, this resource, cheap and widely available, can be converted into a sustainable energy source, act as an organic fertilizer, and provide effective medicinal therapy for antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection. In clear and engaging prose that draws on her extensive research and interviews, Lina Zeldovich documents the massive redistribution of nutrients and sanitation inequities across the globe. She profiles the pioneers of waste upcycling, from startups in African villages to innovators in American cities that convert sewage into fertilizer, biogas, crude oil, and even life-saving medicine. She breaks taboos surrounding sewage disposal and shows how hygienic waste repurposing can help battle Climate Change, reduce acid rain, and eliminate toxic algal blooms. Ultimately, she implores us to use our innate organic power for the greater good. In this episode host Michael Shields and Lina Zeldovich discuss the stigmas around human waste that has led it to being undervalued throughout history. They converse upon many invaluable uses of our organic matter, from fertilizer to biofuels and beyond. And they explore how sewage technologies and greening up fuel can help fight Climate Change. Grossly ambitious and rooted in scientific scholarship, The Other Dark Matter shows how human excrement can be a life-saving, money-making resource — if we make better use of it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast introduces you to American Gadlfy, a documentary that tells the story of how, a decade since his last campaign, 89-year-old former senator and 2008 presidential candidate Mike Gravel came out of retirement when a group of teenagers convinces him to run for president one last time. Through the senator’s official Twitter account, the four “Gravel teens” embark on an unlikely adventure to qualify him for the Democratic debates in order to advance an anti-war, anti-corruption, and direct democracy agenda in the 2020 presidential race. Working together, the young activists and the experienced politician confuse and amaze the generations between them. To properly delve into this powerful, inspiring documentary, this episode features an interview with the director of American Gadfly, Skye Wallin. For over a decade, Wallin has been deeply immersed in the worlds of documentary, journalism, and activism. He spent several years filming with scientists and activists at more than twenty water-related disasters across the United States. Wallin worked closely with Mark Ruffalo on this project, leading video and short documentary production for Ruffalo’s organization Water Defense for three years. Wallin's work helped to expose multiple water pollution scandals that had been covered up, including EXXON's poisoning of Lake Conway in Arkansas and millions of organic crops being watered with oil-contaminated water sold to farmers by Chevron, the latter of which resulted in front page coverage in the Los Angeles Times. His latest effort, American Gadlfy, isn’t simply a documentary about an underdog trying to win an election. It's about how the next generation understands democracy, engages in politics and influences ordinary people with passion, humor and honesty. So tune in to learn all about this rousing political adventure  on this latest episode of Across the Margin: The Podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast features an interview with Jake Poller, the author of Aldous Huxley, which is the focus of this episode, and also Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality. Poller edited the essay collection Altered Consciousness in the Twentieth Century and his articles have appeared in the Aldous Huxley Annual, the D.H. Lawrence Review, Aries, Literature and Theology and International Journal for the Study of New Religions. His research focuses on the intersection of alternative spirituality, Western esotericism, philosophy and psychoanalysis with twentieth-century literature and culture. Aldous Huxley was one of the twentieth century’s most prescient thinkers. Poller’s biography, named after the philosopher, is a rich and lucid account that charts the different phases of Huxley’s career, from the early satirist who depicted the glamorous despair of the postwar generation, to the committed pacifist of the 1930s, the spiritual seeker of the 1940s, the psychedelic sage of the 1950s — who affirmed the spiritual potential of mescaline and LSD — to the New Age prophet that defined his later years. While Huxley is still best known as the author of Brave New World, Jake Poller argues that it is The Perennial Philosophy, The Doors of Perception, and Island — Huxley’s blueprint for a utopian society — that have had the most cultural impact. Huxley’s influence was vast. We see it today in the ever increasing appetite for spiritual experiences, meditation retreats, ayahuasca holidays, the multi-billion dollar “shroom boom,” the popularity of yoga, tai-chi and other mind-body practices, and the rise of spiritual communities and centers. Now more than ever, Poller points out so vividly in his book, the work of Aldous Huxley leads the way. In this episode host Michael Shields and Jake Poller discuss what compelled Huxley to seek out transcendent experiences and how psychedelics changed his life and worldview. They explore what his novel Island means to his legacy and why his bounteous, insightful essays deserve a much wider readership, and much, much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast presents an interview with Keith Wailoo, Henry Putnam University Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University. His books include Dying in the City of the Blues, How Cancer Crossed the Color Line, and Pain: A Political History. Along with Dr. Anthony Fauci and others, Wailoo won the prestigious 2021 Dan David Prize which supports outstanding contributions to the study of history and other disciplines that shed light on the human past. Wailoo is also the author of Pushing Cool: Big Tobacco, Racial Marketing, and the Untold Story of the Menthol Cigarette which is the focus of this episode. In Pushing Cool, he tells the intricate and poignant story of menthol cigarettes for the first time. Wailoo pulls back the curtain to reveal the hidden persuaders who shaped menthol buying habits and racial markets across America: the world of tobacco marketers, consultants, psychologists, and social scientists, as well as Black lawmakers and civic groups including the NAACP. Today most Black smokers buy menthol cigarettes, and calls to prohibit their circulation hinge on a history of the industry’s targeted racial marketing. In 2009, when Congress banned flavored cigarettes as criminal enticements to encourage youth smoking, menthol cigarettes were also slated to be banned. Through a detailed study of internal tobacco industry documents, Wailoo exposes why they weren’t and how they remain so popular with Black smokers today. Spanning a century, Pushing Cool reveals how the twin deceptions of health and Black affinity for menthol were crafted — and how the industry’s disturbingly powerful narrative has endured to this day. In this episode host Michael Shields and Keith Wailoo discuss exactly why menthol cigarettes were “pushed” so vigorously upon Black urban communities and assess how increased governmental restriction on cigarette advertisements actually heightened this push. They explore the lies about the health benefits of menthols used to market the cigarettes, point out a plethora of surprising public figures who have consistently pushed back against a ban on menthols, examine the link in the fight to ban menthol cigarettes to e-cigarettes, and much, much more.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast presents an interview with best-selling author Gloria Feldt, an acclaimed expert on women, power, and leadership. Feldt is co-founder and president of Take The Lead, whose mission reflects her life’s passion: to prepare, develop, inspire, and propel women to take their fair and equal share of leadership positions across all sectors. She is the author of five books. Her latest, Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics and How Women Will Take The Lead, examines how people can seize the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of massive disruption to build back stronger with women at the center of the recovery. Through the lens of women’s stories, Intentioning delivers a fresh set of leadership tools, skills, and concepts that help all women reach their own highest intentions, purposefully creating new norms, while guiding institutions to break through the remaining barriers to gender and racial parity for everyone’s good. Feldt is formerly president and CEO of the world’s largest reproductive health and advocacy organization, Planned Parenthood. She teaches “Women, Power, and Leadership” at Arizona State University and has been widely quoted and published, including by the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, The Daily Beast, Forbes, Fast Company, Time, Huffington Post, Glamour, Elle and Ms. She has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, the Today Show, Good Morning America and The Daily Show. In this episode host Michael Shields and Gloria Feldt examining exactly what the word "Intentioning" means while conversing upon how the disruption of the pandemic can lead to positive changes (if we #putwomenatthecenter). They talk about Feldt’s Nine Leadership Intentioning Tools, how men can be a part of the movement towards women’s parity, the difference between power “over” and power “to,” and much, much more! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast presents an interview with Amitav Ghosh, a novelist and essayist whose many books include the acclaimed Ibis Trilogy (Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire), Gun Island, Jungle Nama: A Story of the Sundarban, and The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. His latest book, The Nutmeg’s Curse (Parables For a Planet in Crisis), is a powerful work that traces our contemporary planetary crisis back to the discovery of the New World and the sea route to the Indian Ocean. The Nutmeg’s Curse argues that the dynamics of Climate Change today are rooted in a centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. At the center of Ghosh’s narrative is the now-ubiquitous spice nutmeg. The history of the nutmeg is one of conquest and exploitation — of both human life and the natural environment. In Ghosh’s hands, the story of the nutmeg becomes a parable for our environmental crisis, revealing the ways human history has always been entangled with earthly materials such as spices, tea, sugarcane, opium, and fossil fuels. Our crisis, he shows, is ultimately the result of a mechanistic view of the earth, where nature exists only as a resource for humans to use for our own ends, rather than a force of its own, full of agency and meaning. Writing against the backdrop of the global pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, Ghosh frames these historical stories in a way that connects our shared colonial histories with the deep inequality we see around us today. By interweaving discussions on everything from the global history of the oil trade to the migrant crisis and the animist spirituality of Indigenous communities around the world, The Nutmeg’s Curse offers a sharp critique of Western society and speaks to the profoundly remarkable ways in which human history is shaped by non-human forces. In this episode host Michael Shields and Amitav Ghosh discuss the history of the nutmeg, a spice whose narrative is tied to colonialism in ways that relate to today’s Climate Crisis and particularly fossil fuels. They discuss terraforming, a term known in science-fiction writing that relates to the ways in which colonizers, both in days of yore and today, reshape landscapes to meet their covetous ways. They converse on the power of storytelling in fighting Climate Change, those who see the Earth as an inert body, the future of vitalist politics, and much, much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast presents an interview with Stuart Blume, a professor emeritus of science and technology studies at the University of Amsterdam. Blume’s latest book, entitled Immunization: How Vaccines Became Controversial, is an important and extremely relevant-to-the-moment work that is the focus of this episode. At a time when vaccines are a vital tool in the fight against Covid-19 in all its various mutations, Blume’s hard-hitting book takes a longer historical perspective. It argues that globalization and cuts to healthcare have been eroding faith in the institutions producing and providing vaccines for more than thirty years. It tells the history of immunization from the work of early pioneers such as Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch through the eradication of smallpox in 1980, to the recent introduction of new kinds of genetically engineered vaccines. Immunization exposes the limits of public health authorities while suggesting how they can restore our confidence in the fight against infectious disease. In this episode host Michael Shields and guest Stuart Blume examine how vaccines protect the human body while also looking at how exactly viruses are “born” into human populations. They contemplate the dawn of vaccine hesitancy, converse about the corporations and politicians that are chiefly to blame for it, and champion the idea that while vaccine technologies are extraordinary tools, addressing the root causes of viruses is absolutely crucial in confronting urgent public health concerns. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast presents an interview with Chris Gibson and Andrew Warren. Chris is a professor of geography at the University of Wollongong, Australia while Andrew is a senior lecturer in economic geography at the same university. They are also the co-authors of The Guitar: Tracing The Grain Back To The Tree, a deeply insightful book which lies at the center of this episode.Guitars inspire cult-like devotion. An aficionado can tell you precisely when and where their favorite instrument was made, the wood it is made from, and that wood’s unique effect on the instrument’s sound. In The Guitar, Chris and Andrew follow that fascination around the globe as they trace guitars all the way back to their source tree. The authors visit guitar factories, port cities, log booms, remote sawmills, Indigenous lands, and distant rainforests, all on a quest for behind-the-scenes stories and insights into how guitars are made, where the much-cherished guitar timbers ultimately come from, and all the while introducing you to the people and skills that craft those timbers along the way.The authors interviewed hundreds of people to give readers a first-hand account of the ins-and-outs of production methods, timber milling, and forest custodianship in diverse corners of the world, including the Pacific Northwest, Madagascar, Spain, Brazil, Germany, Japan, China, Hawaii, and Australia. They unlock surprising insights into longer arcs of world history: on humanity’s exploitation of nature, colonialism, industrial capitalism, and cultural tensions. But the authors also strike a hopeful note, offering a parable of wider resonance — of the incredible but under-appreciated skill and care that goes into growing forests, felling trees, and milling timber in order to craft these enchanting musical instruments. The Guitar promises to resonate with anyone who has ever fallen in love with a guitar.In this episode host Michael Shields explores with Chris and Andrew the many compelling facets of their comprehensively researched book, including how tracing the roots of the guitar can teach profound insights about history and the human condition. Chris and Andrew pinpoint the exact origins of the modern guitar and examine how Climate Change is threatening the industry, as well as deforestation and irresponsible harvesting. They tip a hat to all the foresters and those in the guitar industry who are employing forest management techniques to preserve guitar wood for generations to come, and much, much more.Grab a copy of The Guitar: Tracing The Grain To The Tree here! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of Across The Margin: The Podcast presents an interview with Lizzie Johnson, a staff writer for the Washington Post. Previously, Johnson worked at the San Francisco Chronicle, where she reported on fifteen of the deadliest, largest, and most destructive blazes in modern California history, and covered over thirty communities impacted by wildfires. Recently she released a book entitled Paradise: One Town's Struggle To Survive An American Wildfire — the focus of this episode — which serves as the definitive first hand account of California’s Camp Fire, the nation’s deadliest wildfire in a century. Paradise is a riveting examination of what went wrong and how to avert future tragedies as the Climate Crisis unfolds.On November 8, 2018, the people of Paradise, California, awoke to a mottled gray sky and gusty winds. Soon the Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California’s history was upon them, consuming an acre a second. Less than two hours after the fire ignited, the town was engulfed in flames, the terrified residents trapped in their homes and cars. By the next morning, eighty-five people were dead. As a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, Lizzie Johnson was there as the town of Paradise burned. She saw the smoldering rubble of a historic covered bridge and the beloved Black Bear Diner and she stayed long afterward, visiting shelters, hotels, and makeshift camps. Drawing upon her years of on-the-ground reporting, and reams of public records, including 911 calls and testimony from a grand jury investigation, Johnson provides a minute-by-minute account of the Camp Fire, following residents and first responders as they fight to save themselves and their town. We see a young mother fleeing with her newborn; a school bus full of children in search of an escape route; and a group of paramedics, patients, and nurses trapped in a cul-de-sac, fending off the fire with rakes and hoses. In Paradise, Johnson documents this unfolding tragedy with empathy and nuance. But she also investigates the root causes, from runaway climate change to a deeply flawed alert system to Pacific Gas and Electric’s decades-long neglect of critical infrastructure. A cautionary tale for a new era of megafires, Paradise is the gripping story of a town wiped off the map and the determination of its people to rise again. In this episode, host Michael Shields and Lizzie Johnson explore how Climate Change has increased the intensity and size of wildfires throughout the world, how economic factors have increasingly swelled the population in the wildland-urban-interface, the challenges of evacuating the entirety of a town, forest management suppression miscalculations and the need for “controlled” burns, the emotional toll of reporting on tragedies, and much, much more.This episode concludes with a deeply affecting song by John-Michael Sun, a Camp Fire survivor. Listen to the entirety of the song here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.