Novelist and essayist Arundhati Roy turns her critical eye to her home country of India in her latest collection of essays. Fieldnotes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers is published by Haymarket Books.
We called Sara Falconer, author of “Solidarity, Not Charity” (reprinted from Briarpatch in our March-April 2010) issue and asked her to talk a bit more the ethics of solidarity and what she discovered in post-Katrina New Orleans. To hear what she had to say, visit Utne.com/Solidarity.
In Jailing the American Dream, reprinted in our March-April 2010 issue, investigative reporter and policy analyst Tom Barry documents the collision of profits, poverty, and injustice in America’s borderland prisons. In this episode of the UtneCast,Barry talks about his quest and the obstacles along the way.
It used to be that Middle East reporting was the domain of newspaper and magazine correspondents. Joe Sacco changed all of that when his depictions of Palestinian life first appeared in comic book form in the early ’90s. Today his painstaking portraits of war are revered by comics freaks and journalists alike.
For his latest book, Footnotes in Gaza, Sacco traveled to Gaza to find eyewitnesses to an Israeli army massacre of Palestinians in 1956. To get the story, Sacco also had to confront the history being written minute by minute in Gaza.
He draws it all: the killings in 1956 and the violence happening there today. Any fan of Sacco’s work will not be surprised to find Sacco himself a character in the story as dodges bullets and struggles to parse fact from fiction.
In this episode of the UtneCast, Sacco talks about how he created his new book, which took him six years to complete.
Read an excerpt from Footnotes in Gaza.
Photo of Howard Zinn by Greg Federman.
On Sunday, December 13, the History Channel will air The People Speak, a documentary based on historian Howard Zinn’s book Voices of a People’s History, a collection of 200 documents and speeches that serve as the raw material to Zinn’s classic book A People’s History of the United States.
The People Speak features dramatic and musical performances by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Danny Glover, Josh Brolin, Marisa Tomei, Sandrah Oh, Matt Damon and more.
I asked Zinn to pick a speech he’d like to have performed for President Obama and who he’d pick to read it. He picked a piece read by David Strathairn and we’ve included a recording of the Strathairn reading here.
Music by the Bombay Sweets. Enjoy!
The University of California erupted in protest this week after its Board of Regents announced that student fees—the University’s equivalent of tuition—would be raised by 32 percent. Hundreds of students protested the fee hikes, according to the New York Times, some barricading themselves in university buildings, setting up tent cities on campus, and 12 UCLA students have been arrested.
The University of California’s move is simply the latest in a long-standing trend of disinvestment in higher education. For the latest episode of the UtneCast, I spoke with David Kirp, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and the author of the book Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education, to talk about how the compact between universities and state governments has broken down. The current recession is making the situation worse, but there is no guarantee that higher education will improve with the economy. In fact, the United States is in danger of losing out on the “education for all” philosophy that may be the most important economic driver in the world economy.
You can listen to that interview above, or subscribe to the UtneCast on iTunes.
Image by Chris Radcliff, licensed under Creative Commons.
You’d be forgiven for expecting little from a guy with a blog called Craphound, another called Boing Boing, and a penchant for distributing digital versions of his science fiction free of charge. The thing is, Cory Doctorow’s blogs are read by millions, and his traditional paper books have been distributed by some of the biggest publishing houses in America.
Commercial sales of Doctorow’s books, like his essay collection Content and his novel Little Brother, have not suffered from free electronic distribution. He’s simply reaching more readers, who often end up buying something he wrote. His free editions become raw material for other creative people, who have produced comic books, iPhone apps, and even translations (including one in Braille ).
Jeff Severns Guntzel talked to Utne visionary Cory Doctorow about his penchant for giving it all away and his passionate critique of any person or entity that attempts to quash creativity with copyright laws.
The music is courtesy of the Bombay Sweets and the Cold Readers.
Image by Paula Mariel Salischiker , licensed under Creative Commons.
Hello UtneCast listeners. The Utne Reader editorial staff is in the process of improving and rethinking what the UtneCast is, and what it could be. So we’re turning to our listeners, and including all of you in the process.
We’d like to know, what other podcasts do you listen to?
Send us an email at Survey@utne.com
Michael Franti has never been shy about his politics. The latest album by Franti and his band Spearhead, called All Rebel Rockers, mixes the songwriter’s progressive-minded lyrics with some of the best music of his career. It’s also been his most commercially successful album, showing that people are hungry for consciousness-raising music.
In the latest episode of the UtneCast, senior editor Keith Goetzman talks with Franti about recording All Rebel Rockers in Jamaica, Franti’s politics of inclusion, and his music’s role in rallying progressives.
You can listen to the interview above, or to subscribe to the UtneCast for free through iTunes, click here.
Every two weeks, the UtneCast brings you interviews with visionary thinkers, authors, artists, and activists who are working for a greener and kinder world. Plus reviews of new music and movies from independent artists and filmmakers.
