

AirGo
Damon Williams and Daniel Kisslinger
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/airgo/id1016530091
A podcast and radical media hub reshaping Chicago and beyond for the more liberatory and creative. Listen to longform humanizing conversations with artists, organizers, performers, comedians, scholars, and more who are reimagining Chicago and beyond toward liberation. Hosted by Damon Williams and Daniel Kisslinger.
A podcast and radical media hub reshaping Chicago and beyond for the more liberatory and creative. Listen to longform humanizing conversations with artists, organizers, performers, comedians, scholars, and more who are reimagining Chicago and beyond toward liberation. Hosted by Damon Williams and Daniel Kisslinger.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Dec 5, 2019 • 1h 25min
Ep 216 - Jenna Anast
Jenna Anast will change up your whole energy. Jenna is an actor, filmmaker, comedian, singer, and community builder. She's the Head of Community for Open TV, and is a member of the #LetUsBreathe Collective. We talk about growing up as an adopted Black kid, reconnecting with her birth mom, being a part of the amazing film Sorry to Bother You, and much more.
Learn more: https://www.journeyswithjenna.com/
Recorded 11/12/19 in Chicago
Music from this week's show:
Space Bump Alpha - MagicMusic

Nov 28, 2019 • 1h 14min
Ep 215 - #BYPSpotlight with Asha Ransby-Sporn
Black Youth Project has joined forces with AirGo for a year-long #BYPSpotlight series, featuring our favorite Black academics and activists. This month’s #BYPSpotlight episode features Asha Ransby-Sporn, an organizer, movement worker, and National Organizing Co-Chair for Black Youth Project-100. She also was one of the central organizers who pushed Columbia University to divest from private prisons over the past few years. We talk community organizing basics, what are some ways to bring people into the work, how we can begin to rethink our relationship to land, designing her hypothetical commune, and her relationship with her mom Barbara Ransby (who was the first #BYPSpotlight guest).
Show Notes:
BYP-100 - https://byp100.org/
Columbia Prison Divestment -https://www.columbiaspectator.com/the-eye/2018/04/24/asha-rosa-ransby-sporn-on-how-to-make-columbia-divest-from-private-prisons/
She Safe, We Safe: https://www.shesafewesafe.org/
NOTE: Please subscribe, rate, and review AirGo on your podcast app! Help Amplify this conversation with a tax-deductible donation to AirGo: http://airgoradio.com/donate
Recorded 11/22/19 in Chicago
Music from this week's show:
The Ludovico Technique - Tab Anitek

Nov 21, 2019 • 1h 25min
Ep 214 - Tiff Beatty
Tiff Beatty invites you into the circle. Tiff is the founder of Art is Bonfire, a seasonal open mic and cypher around a fire pit at Promontory Point in Hyde Park, and is the Programming Director of Chicago Humanities Festival, an event series bringing authors, thinkers, artists, and celebrities together in conversation around a central theme. The convo bounces between Tiff’s childhood in Washington State, her path to Chicago, building sacred space around the fire, transforming the humanities, and more.
Recorded 11/13/19 in Chicago
Music from this week's show:
ArtiChoke - Tab Anitek

Nov 14, 2019 • 1h 5min
Ep 213 - Third Coast International Audio Festival
Third Coast International Audio Festival is a nonprofit arts organization that celebrates the art and craft of narrative audio storytelling. Every year, radio-makers from around the world converge in Chicago for a conference that explores the medium, the radio industry, and the creative bounds yet to be explored. AirGo talked with a crew of Chicago producers about their experiences making radio in the city, relationship to the medium, and the stories they're trying to figure out how to tell.
Recorded 9/26-9/28/2019 in Chicago

Nov 7, 2019 • 1h 40min
Ep 212 - Frank Bergh
Frank Bergh is as embodied as it gets. He's the founder of Beyond the Grid, a company that builds renewable energy microgrids in countries across the global south. He's also one of the founders of Emmaus House, a Catholic Worker community in North Lawndale, that has been instrumental in the work of the #LetUsBreathe Collective, and is the founder of Chicago's chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice, a national network of groups and individuals working to undermine white supremacy and to work toward racial justice. We talk about how his relationship to God and religion show up, how he found himself living in Lawndale, some lessons from working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and much more.
Recorded 10/29/19 in Chicago
Music from this week's show:
Summer Dreams - Ryan Little

Oct 31, 2019 • 1h 19min
Ep 211 - Monica Cosby
Monica Cosby is an organizer, activist, and mother who was incarcerated for 20 years in the state of Illinois. She now works for the Westside Justice Center, is the lead organizer of Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration, and is a wonderful and valuable spirit in the Chicago movement community. She talks about growing up in Uptown, the lessons about liberation and abolition she learned while inside, the transition after coming home, and a very special moment that makes Damon cry.
Recorded 10/23/19 in Chicago
Music from this week's show:
Well and Good - Podington Bear

Oct 24, 2019 • 1h 24min
Ep 210 - #BYPSpotlight with Janae Bonsu
Black Youth Project has joined forces with AirGo for a year-long #BYPSpotlight series, featuring our favorite Black academics and activists. This month’s #BYPSpotlight episode is with Janae Bonsu, an organizer and scholar whose work centers the intersection of structural and gender-based violence. She recently stepped away from her position as National Co-Director, National Public Policy Chair, and Chicago Chapter Co-Chair of BYP 100, a member-based organization of 18 to 35 year old Black activists whose mission is to achieve economic, social, political, and educational freedom and justice for all Black people through nonviolent direct action organizing, education, and advocacy. She talks about learning stillness and finding peace, imagining new interventions when gender violence needs to be addressed, her cheese game, and much more.
Check out the whole #BYPSpotlight here: http://blackyouthproject.com/byp-x-airgo/
Music from this week's episode:
Mirror, Mirror - Diamond Ortiz

Oct 22, 2019 • 16min
Cottage Groove #10
Kiss dusts off the turntables and brings y'all a new addition to his Cottage Groove DJ Mix series, with all kinds of goodness for you to vibe to.
Music in this mix:
Still Rude - @lulubeyene
Jon Cena - Sho Madjozi
Amnesia - Bas feat. Ari Lennox & KIDDOMINANT
Passionfruit - Drake
Education - Freddie Gibbs x Madlib feat. Yasiin Bey
M'Baku Shit - Benjamin Earl Turner
XO Tour Lif3 - Brasstracks
DHL - Frank Ocean

Oct 17, 2019 • 1h 6min
Ep 209 - Black Social Culture Map
The studio gets a lil' crowded this week, as a squad of collaborators behind the Chicago Black Social Culture Map, an interactive digital map documenting Chicago's Black social culture from the Great Migration through the end of the 20th century from blues to house. This project has evolved from the dance floor, to the internet, and now to event spaces across the city for conversations about how Black people in Chicago have created vibrancy, innovation, and joy in rooms across the city.
You can check out the map here: https://www.honeypotperformance.org/chgpblksocialculturemap
Recorded 10/8/19 in Chicago
Music from this week's show:
House Music Anthem - Frankie Knuckles
Your Love - Jamie Principle

Oct 10, 2019 • 1h 12min
Ep 208 - AirGo Live with Akenya and Page May
On the third AirGo Live episode, Damon and Daniel get everyone talking about how we can communicate in conflict with love. Plus a performance and conversation with musician and composer Akenya, and organizer and Assata’s Daughters founder Page May. And a special small furry guest joins us as well!
Recorded 9/26/19 in Chicago
Music from this week's show:
Apache - Incredible Bongo Band
Tribe - Bas