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Today, on Earth Day, we explore the Living World—a reality where we are not merely on a planet, but are a moving part of its very metabolism. We travel from the High Sierras with Paul Hawken to the forests of Costa Rica with Thomas Crowther. Guided by Merlin Sheldrake and David George Haskell, we explore ecology, policy and music with guests Paula Pinho, Hans Bruyninckx, Bill Hare and Alice Schmidt. Alongside Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Tom Chi, Erland Cooper, Rebecca Tickell and Britt Wray, we ask what happens when we stop trying to dominate and start trying to collaborate with the Earth? (0:04) TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE Founder, First Voices Radio (2:05) PAUL HAWKEN Founder, Project Regeneration, Project Drawdown, Author (24:25) (4:57) THOMAS CROWTHER Founder, Restor, Co-chair UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (5:51) MERLIN SHELDRAKE Biologist, Author, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds (8:23) DAVID GEORGE HASKELL Biologist, Author, How Flowers Made Our World (10:43) HANS BRUYNINCKX Fmr. Director European Environment Agency (11:39) REBECCA TICKELL (Director, Kiss the Ground) Soil Health (26:27) (13:32) TOM CHI Founding Partner, At One Ventures, Author, Climate Capital (14:44) PAULA PINHO Chief Spokesperson, European Commission (16:08) BILL HARE Founder/CEO, Climate Analytics, Physicist (18:03) ALICE SCHMIDT Global Sustainability Advisor, Author (19:18) ERLAND COOPER (Composer) Earth as Collaborator (22:38) BRITT WRAY Author, Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod IG @creativeprocesspodcast

“Algorithms are deciding whether you are eligible for a loan, a job, an apartment or insurance. They determine what you see online, who reads your social media posts and who connects with you on dating apps. They may even decide whether you get arrested or go to jail. Your very life hangs in the balance of prophecies.” In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Carissa Véliz, an associate professor at the University of Oxford, about her new book,Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future—from Ancient Oracles to AI. Linking this work to her previous book, Privacy is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data, Véliz writes: “ surveillance and prediction are digital technology’s original sins.” In our wide-ranging discussion, we talk about how both massive and intrusive invasions of privacy at all levels of society and false claims to be able to predict the future erode democracy, are corrosive to ethics, and undermine people’s ability to think for themselves. Instead, we are conditioned to trust an unregulated band of “effective altruists” who claim to know better than we what kinds of lives we should prefer and the choices we should make. Véliz argues instead that we should embrace the uncertain to build resilience, to prepare for contingency but not be determined by what we cannot see, and to foster curiosity and imagination. EPISODE CHAPTERS (0:00) Digital Technology's Original Sins (2:34) How Books and Prophecies Choose Their Readers (5:50) The Link Between AI, Mass Surveillance, and Profit (8:46) Why Ethics Is the Hidden Foundation of Democracy (13:52) The Future Tense as a Tech Executive Power Play (16:20) Predictions as Speech Acts and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies (22:04) Artificial Intelligence as the Ultimate Bullshitter (26:38) Effective Altruism, Utilitarianism, and the Dangers of Infinity (35:10) Losing Connection to the Analog World and Critical Thinking (42:16) Family Stories and Absorbing the Shock of Life (46:56) Cultivating Bravery and Defying Tech’s Probabilistic Vision (49:19) Practical Advice for Everyday Life and Preparation Episode Website www.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.com Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social Instagram @speaking_out_of_place

Why does our economy treat environmental destruction as an inevitable side effect rather than a massive design flaw? How can shifting our focus from polarizing "talkers" to practical "builders" literally save the planet? We are repeatedly told that the climate crisis is too vast and volatile to solve, but what if the true obstacle is simply bad design? Tom Chi is a physicist, designer, inventor, and investor whose work has shaped everything from Google Glass and rapid prototyping at Google X to some of the most ambitious climate technologies being built today. He’s now the founding partner of At One Ventures, where he invests in deep-tech companies focused on a bold goal: a world where humanity is a net positive to nature. Tom’s new book, Climate Capital: Investing in the Tools for a Regenerative Future, reframes economics itself—not as a fixed law, but as a design discipline that can be reimagined to align with the physical realities of our planet. Drawing on science, systems thinking, and lessons from nature, the book offers a grounded, practical framework for moving beyond both climate doom and empty optimism—and toward real, regenerative solutions. Today’s conversation is about what Tom calls the 4Cs: Capital, Compassion, Climate, and Community—but also about agency, responsibility, and what becomes possible when we stop treating the future as something that happens to us and start designing it deliberately. 0:00) Build Integrity: Choosing Builders Over Talkers Why prioritizing those who physically create solutions over those who merely debate them is essential for systemic change (1:21) Overcoming Powerlessness Through Creativity, Critical Thinking, Community Compassion Utilizing a specific framework of portable skills to move from climate anxiety into meaningful, iterative action (2:22) Capital Misallocation: Taxing What We Want to See A critique of current tax structures that burden labor while under-taxing capital and failing to serve societal needs (3:47) The Volatility Gap: Why Average Temperatures Mislead Understanding why increasing climate volatility—rather than just average temperature rise—is the true driver of human distress (6:19) Economics As Design: Redesigning The Global Engine Moving beyond "physics envy" in economics to treat the global market as a discipline that can be redesigned for better outcomes (9:11) Depth Over Breadth: Reforming Education Through Experience (13:30) Local Resilience: How Cities Can Lead The Transformation Practical, block-by-block strategies for urban adaptation, from expanding tree canopies to improving household efficiency (16:33) AI and Robotics in Agriculture (19:12) Human-Centric AI: Flipping The Priority Of Automation (20:18) Thinking In Pictures: A Language Beyond Words Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod IG @creativeprocesspodcast

“In the book I spend a bunch of time basically teaching skills and teaching frameworks of thinking. Not to indoctrinate, it's not a framework like an ideology where you need to believe exactly these things. This is a lot more about how does one use their minds effectively to solve problems that have been solved before. Of course, I work on things that have to do with investment and climate and the future of the economy and automation. The main things I'm trying to teach in the book are skills around creativity, critical thinking, community compassion and frameworks around how to go and use that on problems that should be relatively portable to a bunch of problems that are meaningful to you. The way that education needs to change is that people need to actively be working on things that truly matter to them so that over time they end up being able to go make that difference.” Tom Chi is a physicist, designer, inventor, and investor whose work has shaped everything from Google Glass and rapid prototyping at Google X to some of the most ambitious climate technologies being built today. He’s now the founding partner of At One Ventures, where he invests in deep-tech companies focused on a bold goal: a world where humanity is a net positive to nature. Tom’s new book, Climate Capital: Investing in the Tools for a Regenerative Future, reframes economics itself—not as a fixed law, but as a design discipline that can be reimagined to align with the physical realities of our planet. Drawing on science, systems thinking, and lessons from nature, the book offers a grounded, practical framework for moving beyond both climate doom and empty optimism—and toward real, regenerative solutions. Today’s conversation is about what Tom calls the 4Cs: Capital, Compassion, Climate, and Community—but also about agency, responsibility, and what becomes possible when we stop treating the future as something that happens to us and start designing it deliberately. (0:00) Overcoming Powerlessness through Creativity, Critical Thinking, Community Compassion Why broad hopelessness about the future is a purposeful tactic to maintain the status quo (7:16) How average temperature metrics fail to communicate the true danger of extreme climate volatility. (11:54) Economics as Design (17:11) Multi-disciplinary Learning Centered on Real-World Impact (26:12) Local Resilience (31:15) Tax & Capital Misallocation (36:52) Build Integrity (45:32) AI and Robotics in Agriculture (51:08) The First Honeybee Vaccine (56:11) The Entropy Curve of Pollution (1:15:31) Human-Centric AI Flipping the priority of automation to serve the collective good rather than enriching a select few (1:20:59) Thinking in Pictures How learning to communicate and problem-solve without language fueled a career in deep tech invention Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Step into the deep time of the forest floor, where a single fallen leaf contains the history of the world, and invisible fungal networks hum with ancient conversations. Biologist and acclaimed author David George Haskell reveals a staggering truth: we are completely dependent on the botanical world, and our belief in strict human individuality is a biological illusion. Haskell has spent much of his life training himself to see the universal within the infinitesimally small. He's famously sat for a year in a single square meter of Tennessee's forest, a mandala experience that revealed the deep history of the world through a single fallen leaf. He's a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his books The Forest Unseen and Sounds Wild and Broken, and he received the John Burroughs Medal for The Songs of Trees. His work often focuses on what he calls the unwaged labor of the natural world, the complex biological communities that sustain our planet without a monetary ledger. And his latest book is How Flowers Made Our World. In it, he argues that we are essentially grass apes dependent on the ancient innovations of flowering plants for two-thirds of our daily calories. (0:00) How Flowers Made Our World (1:33) Networked Connection is the Foundation of Life (2:00) Contemplating the Small (4:07) Consciousness, Intelligence & Memory in the More-Than-Human-World (4:18) We Are Grass Apes (5:41) Memories of His Childhood in Paris & Wild Orchids (6:34) The Networked Intelligence of Forests (7:45) The Earth in Full Song (8:46) The Practice of Listening (10:11) Escaping the Screen: Real Connections in the Classroom (11:35) The True Cost of AI (12:11) Transforming Ourselves (14:23) Silence Without Expectation (15:32) A Sensory Legacy for the Future Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

What if the defining revolution of Earth's history wasn't led by animals or humans, but by flowers? Are we truly individuals, or are our bodies and minds just walking ecosystems? Our guest today is David George Haskell, a biologist who has spent much of his life training himself to see the universal within the infinitesimally small. He's famously sat for a year in a single square meter of Tennessee's forest, a mandala experience that revealed the deep history of the world through a single fallen leaf. He's a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his books The Forest Unseen and Sounds Wild and Broken, and he received the John Burroughs Medal for The Songs of Trees. His work often focuses on what he calls the unwaged labor of the natural world, the complex biological communities that sustain our planet without a monetary ledger. And his latest book is How Flowers Made Our World. In it, he argues that we are essentially grass apes dependent on the ancient innovations of flowering plants for two-thirds of our daily calories. (0:00) How Flowers Made Our World The incredible ancient history of flowers on Earth (4:56) Contemplating the Small Expanding our world by restricting our gaze (14:30) The Illusion of Individuality Why atomism is false and interconnectedness is the foundation of life (26:08) We Are Grass Apes The evolutionary origins of humans and our dietary dependence on grass (33:32) Memories of His Childhood in Paris & Wild Orchids (38:55) The Networked Intelligence of Forests How trees communicate and share resources beneath the soil (44:00) The Earth in Full Song Tracing the sonic history of our planet (51:08) The Practice of Listening Why tuning in to the natural world is crucial for our survival (1:01:21) Silence Without Expectation Sitting with nature without demanding progress or enlightenment (1:11:01) Transforming Ourselves Why personal change matters in the fight for the climate (1:15:20) Escaping the Screen Finding real human-to-human connection away from technology (1:16:16) The True Cost of AI The devastating impact of data centers on our fossil fuel consumption (1:23:18) A Sensory Legacy for the Future What we must preserve for the generations not yet born Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

How does the literature of a collective that shares neither one nation nor any one language function? What can the study of state violence in Latin America teach us about the dehumanization occurring in West Asia? And how do we imagine paths out of generations of violence to build new utopias? In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Serhat Tutkal and Hevin Karakurt to Speaking Out of Place. These two scholars engage in a broad discussion of Kurdish history, culture, politics, literature and language, with particular attention to issues of statelessness, identity, and violence. We talk about the current moment with regard to Turkey, Syria, Palestine, and the US-Israel war on Iran and beyond. We use as a starting poet Serhat’s remarkable essay, “Note from Non-People,” and then move to a discussion of his work on dehumanization. We end with imagining paths out of cycles of violence and dehumanization, and consider specifically the way we might imagine new sorts of utopias and vistas of life-affirmation. Hevin Karakurt is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at Stanford University, where she studies Kurdish literature across languages and territories. In this way, she works on the question of how a literature of a collective that shares neither one nation nor any one language might function. Before coming to Stanford, she worked as a researcher in the Swiss National Science Foundation funded research project “Half-Truths. Truth, Fiction, and Conspiracy in the ‘Post-Factual’ Age”, at the University of Basel. Serhat Tutkal is a Kurdish academic. He is a postdoctoral researcher funded by the Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation (Secihti) in Mexico. He has a PhD from Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Bogotá) with a dissertation on the legitimation and delegitimation of Colombian state violence. He mainly works on violence, racism, and dehumanization in West Asia and Latin America. (3:54) READING "NOTE FROM NON-PEOPLE" (8:00) DECODING STATELESSNESS The foundational aspects of Kurdish identity and existing outside the nation-state (17:00) THE STRUGGLE OF LANGUAGELESSNESS What it means to borrow languages when your native tongue is unrecognized. (31:00) DEHUMANIZATION & ACADEMIA'S ROLE Examining the legitimation of violence and the changing role of the university in critical thought (44:00) DATA RESEARCH & GEOPOLITICS Connecting data research on social media racism to current events in Turkey, Syria, Palestine, and Iran. (1:05:00) IMAGINING UTOPIAS Episode Website www.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.com Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social Instagram @speaking_out_of_place

“The United States has this mentality that if somebody is serving a prison sentence or if somebody is in jail, they somehow deserve whatever happens. Whether it is medical neglect, whether it is abuse by staff or the other incarcerated people, whether it is terrible food, whether it is not being able to communicate or see their family members and loved ones. What happened in 2020 is that being incarcerated became a possible death sentence. Because we saw that prison deaths jumped 77% compared to the previous year where there was not a pandemic in the United States.” In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with veteran journalist Victoria Law. She is the author of such books as Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women, Prison By Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms (co-authored with Maya Schenwar), and “Prisons Make Us Safer” and 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration. Today we talk about her new book, Corridors of Contagion: How the Pandemic Exposed the Cruelties of Incarceration. In this devastating study, Law shows how instead of focusing on care during the outbreak of COVID, prisons took the pandemic as an opportunity to amplify their inhumanity, cruelty, and violence. We hear how contagion spread through ventilation systems and through guards who spread viruses from outside to the prisoners, we learn how things like solitary confinement and strip searches only intensified their worse aspects, and how extractive communications systems preyed on those hungry for news from their loved ones. Law also tells us of the personal stories she was able to track that give a human dimension to the statistics of the pandemic, and also remarkable stories of self-sacrifice and solidarity, as prisoners gave each other the care and support so badly needed. We end by learning about organizations that are at the forefront of fighting for decarceration and restructuring of parole boards, and other actions to fight against the inhumane and cruel practices of the prison industrial complex. (0:00) Corridors of Contagion (2:21) Pre-Pandemic Prison Conditions Severely crowded and destabilizing environment of jails and prisons before COVID-19 (8:42) Global Releases vs. US Incarceration (12:44) The Horrors of Solitary Confinement An exploration of how isolation cells offer no protection from respiratory droplets or viruses (16:55) Punished for Seeking Safety (19:07) Dehumanization Through Video Visits (26:47) Extractive Electronic Messaging (33:43) Humanizing the Statistics (43:56) Solidarity Behind Bars (51:57) The Fight for Decarceration Episode Website www.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.com Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social Instagram @speaking_out_of_place

“By pretending like science is neutral or apolitical, we're really feeding a particular discourse which serves whatever political structures are in place right now, whatever status quo is in place right now. Science can never be apolitical because it's a human activity, it's practiced in society with others, with human and more-than-human beings.” In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Fernando Racimo, a leading scientist-activist, about his new book, Science in Resistance. This book gives a riveting account of the founding and growth of the international group Scientist Rebellion, in which now thousands of scientists from around the world have organized direct actions to draw attention to the climate crisis. Breaking through the censorship and silencing carried on by big fossil fuel companies and also scientific groups in and out of academia, which often collude with each other, members of SR have put their careers and their bodies on the line to raise public consciousness and to spur action. We talk about the connection between power and knowledge, between ecocide and genocide and the need to democratize education and research if we are going to have the kind of world we want to both live in and to pass on to other generations. (2:00) Moving to Direct Action (6:00) The Power of the Teach-In (10:00) The Climate Killjoy (11:00) The Myth of Scientific Neutrality (15:00) Fossil Fuel Complicity in Universities (23:00) Education for a World on Fire (30:00) Ecocide and Genocide (36:00) Learning from the Global South Racimo is a scientist-activist and the author of the new book Science in Resistance. He co-founded the Danish chapters of Scientist Rebellion and Academics for Palestine and works at the intersection of academia and social movement organizing. He earned his bachelor from Harvard and his PhD from UC Berkeley and is now an assoc. professor in ecology and evolution at the Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen. He has written articles and OpEds on the urgent need for scientists to join and support social movements fighting structures of oppression, as well as on strategies for transforming and democratizing academic institutions to serve positive socio-ecological needs. He teaches ecology and evolution, degrowth and socio-ecological justice, decolonizing global health and social movement theory and practice. Episode Site www.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.com Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social IG @speaking_out_of_place

Today, we hear from writers Yann Martel, Carl Safina and David George Haskell on the practice of listening to the living world. Tom Chi discusses the dangerous volatility of a one-degree shift. Clayton Aldern explores how climate change alters brain health and behavior, while Ami Vitale,Osprey Orielle Lake and Martín Von Hildebrand remind us of the kinship we share with nature. Fred Pearce discusses 40 years as a journalist reporting on climate from around the world, while Richard Black of the environmental think tank Ember and Paula Pinho, European Commission’s Chief Spokesperson, talk about policy, hope and the radical empathy required to protect the planet for future generations. (0:00) Clayton Page Aldern – Finding awe and beauty in the world (0:40) David George Haskell – On consequences of humans tuning out the sounds of the living world (2:11) Yann Martel – How animals ask us to step out of our humanity (3:12) Carl Safina – The interior lives of non-human animals (5:08) Ami Vitale – Environmental collapse and human conflict (6:37) Martín von Hildebrand – Indigenous views of nature (8:00) Richard Black – Transition to clean energy vs. massive fossil fuel subsidies (10:01) Tom Chi – Climate destabilization (11:07) Paula Pinho – Europe’s vision for energy independence (14:04) Osprey Orielle Lake – Māori concept of "I am the river and the river is me” (16:08) Bill Hare – On limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees (17:19) Fred Pearce – Finding hope in nature’s resilience To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews. Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod @creativeprocesspodcast

“Storytelling, which is a very whole person kind of activity, is one that delivers all kinds of truths. It's on the factual ground of reality that we build our cathedrals and our castles that we live in. And those are not just made of facts. They're made of other kinds of truths that make the stories of who we are, the cities we live in, the languages we speak—these are made of fact and fiction together, and those are the stories that define our lives.” My guest today is Yann Martel,the internationally acclaimed author best known for his Booker Prize-winning Life of Pi and weaving philosophy, imagination, and profound human questions into unforgettable stories. His new novel, Son of Nobody, is a feat of literary imagination. Written in Homer-esque verses and layered with footnotes, the book draws us into the voice of a Greek storyteller while simultaneously mirroring our own present moment. It’s a work rich with history and intertextual echoes—ancient stories resurfacing in modern life, reminding us how deeply the past still speaks through us. At its heart, Son of Nobody isa meditation on life, death, grief, and the fragile ways our human vanity can cloud our search for meaning. Through myth, memory, and philosophical storytelling, Martel explores what it means to long for home, to wrestle with ambition, and to confront loss. It’s a deeply moving reflection on how ancient tales—told and retold across centuries—can still teach us compassion, humility, and perhaps the courage to recognize that we can be nobody and still matter. It’s a beautiful, sometimes haunting story about what we can learn from the past when it comes to homesickness, love, grief, and ambition—and about remembering to value what we have before the search for more blinds us to it. (0:00) Why is there human suffering? Why humanizing conflict is essential to understanding it (5:48) The Limits of Rationality & Magical Thinking Why pure logic fails to answer life's deepest philosophical questions (6:41) Education is Everything (8:59) Why War Needs Stories How individual narratives help us comprehend the true tragedy of conflict (9:44) Facts vs. Truth in Storytelling How psychological and emotional truths surpass factual accuracy (11:47) The Iliad vs. The Gospels (15:21) The Heroism of Translators (16:03) AI vs. Human Creativity (17:07) Animals as Ambassadors of the Wild (18:08) Art, Religion and Ways to Go Beyond Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod Insta @creativeprocesspodcast

Why do ancient myths still hold the answers to our modern anxieties? When faced with inexplicable grief or the incomprehensible scale of modern war, where does rationality fail us? Can the stories of our past save our future? My guest today is Yann Martel, the internationally acclaimed author best known for his Booker Prize-winning Life of Pi and weaving philosophy, imagination, and profound human questions into unforgettable stories. His new novel, Son of Nobody, is a feat of literary imagination. Written in Homer-esque verses and layered with footnotes, the book draws us into the voice of a Greek storyteller while simultaneously mirroring our own present moment. It’s a work rich with history and intertextual echoes—ancient stories resurfacing in modern life, reminding us how deeply the past still speaks through us. At its heart, Son of Nobody is a meditation on life, death, grief, and the fragile ways our human vanity can cloud our search for meaning. Through myth, memory, and philosophical storytelling, Martel explores what it means to long for home, to wrestle with ambition, and to confront loss. It’s a deeply moving reflection on how ancient tales—told and retold across centuries—can still teach us compassion, humility, and perhaps the courage to recognize that we can be nobody and still matter. It’s a beautiful, sometimes haunting story about what we can learn from the past when it comes to homesickness, love, grief, and ambition—and about remembering to value what we have before the search for more blinds us to it. (0:00) Why is there human suffering? Why humanizing conflict is essential to understanding it (02:14) Introduction to Son of Nobody (04:20) The Limits of Rationality & Magical Thinking Why pure logic fails to answer life's deepest philosophical questions (09:48) Why Greek Myths Still Speak to Us The universal relevance of ancient stories (13:38) The Heroism of Translators (18:32) Facts vs. Truth in Storytelling How psychological and emotional truths surpass factual accuracy (21:23) Why War Needs Stories (24:38) Reflections on Iran and Modern Conflict (30:35) The Iliad vs. The Gospels (41:26) What Do You Do with the Sadness of Mortals? (45:52) How Life of Pi Changed Martel’s Spiritual Beliefs (51:58) AI vs. Human Creativity Episode Website www.creativeprocess.info/pod @creativeprocesspodcast

In the face of devastating state violence, the people of Iran continue to find new ways to resist. From a female marathon runner pacing her cell in prison, to an underground concert staged in defiance of the law, the fight for a free Iran is fought daily with bodies, art and solidarity. In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with journalist Fatemeh Jamalpour about her book, For the Sun After Long Nights, which she wrote with fellow journalist Nilo Tabrizy. In September 2022, the world learned of the murder of a young Kurdish woman in Iran, Mahsa Jina Amini. Her death, while a captive of the Iranian state, sparked the Woman, Life, Freedom protests. Fatemeh and Nilo’s book frames those protests in the deep tradition of Iranian women leading political movements for rights and freedom, that date back at least a century. They also provide incredibly detailed and moving accounts of the everyday lives of people in Iran who are part of a collective movement under the most oppressive and violent conditions imaginable. Fatemeh talks about the significance of the many ethnic minorities in Iran, the unique role of Gen Z in the protests, and the many ways that women’s bodies have become a powerful weapon in the fight for collective freedom, in places as diverse as prisons and illegal music concerts. Clearing up myths and lies about Iran and the resistance, this is an especially important episode of Speaking Out of Place. (0:00) A Century of Resistance Fatemeh discusses the deep historical roots of the Iranian women's movement (2:58) Becoming a voice for suppressed women (4:15) Sisterhood and Co-Authorship Meeting Niloufar Tabrizi and collaborating across borders (7:15) Interrogations and Writing Documenting state interrogation as an act of defiance and survival (12:45) The Diversity of Iran Highlighting the vital roles of Kurdish, Turkish, Arab, and Baluchi minorities in the struggle (16:15) Personal Freedom vs. Collective Liberation Why returning to a "broken country" was an act of profound love and solidarity (21:15) Gen Z Gamers in the Streets How young Iranians are using online strategy to fight security forces (26:15) Turning Grief into Resistance (29:15) Correcting Western Media Myths (31:15) The Body as a Weapon Women reclaiming their agency through public presence without a hijab (32:20) The Imaginary Concert The story of an illicit, breathtaking public performance in Iran (35:15) The Future of Iranian Journalism Episode Website www.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.com Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social @speaking_out_of_place

“We're looking at a lot of bad things in American history that we should have been thinking about over the past 50 years. What McCarthyism did, what it targeted with regard to the academic community—and that's really what I know the best—is that during the late 1940s and early 1950s, the focus of political oppression was on people who once were, had previously been near or were affiliated with the American Communist Party. It was focused on individuals who had once been in or near the Communist Party and who were refusing to cooperate with the witch hunt. That was it. That was what McCarthyism did. Today, what we're seeing is an attack on everything.” In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with Ellen Schrecker, who has been referred to as “the dean of the anti-anti-Communist historians.” Well known for her classic studies of McCarthyism, today Schrecker explains how much worse Trump’s regime is than what we saw in the 1950s and 60s. A fierce defender of democracy, Ellen explains the central role education plays in creating a public culture and in maintaining democracy. Our conversation takes many paths, including an indictment of Capitalism, of the dominance of economistic thinking and values, of the ways university leaders are bending a knee to Trump. We talk about the value of the humanities, the importance of autonomous forms of education and mutual support such as we saw in the pro-Palestinian encampments, and one of the most remarkable differences between the days of McCarthyism—the phenomenon of mass protests like #NoKingsDay. (0:00) The Prequel To The Civil War The threats to education today compared to the 1950s (7:20) Democracy And Education (13:40) Capitalism And Anti-Science How corporate interests fund the suppression of climate science and universities (23:20) The Capitulation Of Leaders Why modern university administrators are giving in to authoritarian blackmail (33:40) The Loss Of Cultural Capital The targeted elimination of the humanities and the arts in higher education (39:20) Unprecedented Resistance Finding hope in modern student politicization and mass protests Episode Website www.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.com Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social Instagram @speaking_out_of_place

"I am a poet without language and an empath without root. I am overflowing in something I do not recognize... something like terror, but still not quite that." In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with poet, activist, and scholar Jamaica Osorio. Shortly after October 7, 2023, she began to write a series of astonishing poems about the war in Gaza and the genocide. Osorio graces us with readings of some of those poems, and engages in a rich, complex, and deeply moving discussion of what went into their composition. Throughout, we talk about the power of poetry to suspend time and allow us the space to contemplate the impossible. We talk about the nature of not knowing, of the inexpressible, and the ways certain poems can give us the strength, energy, and commitment to persist in working for the liberation of all peoples, even when dwelling in grief. Dr. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio is an Associate Professor of Indigenous and Native Hawaiian Politics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her award-winning poetry and activism were the subject of the Sundance Film Festival documentary This is the Way we Rise, and she is the author of Remembering our Intimacies: Moʻolelo, Aloha ʻĀina, and Ea, published by The University of Minnesota Press. She believes in the power of aloha ʻāina and collective action to pursue liberatory, abolitionist futures. (0:00) Intro (2:00) The Silence After October 7, Jamaica Osorio discusses the struggle to find language and the pressure to speak out (5:00) The Sounds of Empire in Hawaiʻi Connecting the military helicopters over Pālolo Valley to the skies of Gaza (7:00) Reading "For Palestine" (13:00) Lingering in the Inexpressible Why poetry must offer questions and suspensions rather than simple answers (18:00) Taking Risks and Earning Trust The vulnerability of sharing deeply personal, grief-stricken art with the public (24:30) Reading: "It's Time to Dance" A beautiful meditation on holding the joy of a child alongside the terror of a genocide (29:00) Children as Ancestors and Teachers How Osorio’s daughter teaches her to be fully present in both grief and joy (37:00) Reading: "Rafah Burns" A raw poem about parenthood, weeping with a newborn, and the global resonance of loss (42:00) Finding Connection in the Dark The shared emotional vocabulary of crying when the world becomes incomprehensible (44:00) ʻOnipaʻa: To Be Steadfast (46:00) The Ungovernable Belief in a Better World Why the organizers and poets will outlast the empires that try to dominate them Episode Website www.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.com Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social Insta @speaking_out_of_place