The unacknowledged truth about the capitalistic machine we all live in is that it relies on our compliance. When companies freely exploit workers without effective restraint from the government there is still power in grass roots organizing. In their book Get on the Job and Organize: Standing up for a Better Workplace and a Better World Jaz Brisack…

How safe and effective are the drugs we take? Why do Americans pay more for prescription drugs than people in other high-income countries? Jerry Avorn, a researcher at Harvard Medical School, explains why ineffective, dangerous and overpriced drugs make it through the FDA approval process in his new book Rethinking Medications.…

In his new book Hope Dies Last Alan Weisman documents how people from all over the world are coping with our ecological predicament. The stories range from rewatering the marsh that might have been the Biblical garden of Eden to kelp farming, fusion reactors and other creative and imaginative ways to mitigate past destruction and navigate an uncert…

Before the 2024 election Russell Muirhead and his co-author Nancy RosenBlum predicted the destruction of the administrative state by Trump and his regime in their book 'Ungoverning'. In this episode we talk about how we got here and where we might be headed.

Locking people away for long periods of time seems like a tough but effective way to deal with crime but multiple studies have shown that states with draconian sentences have the same amount of crime as states with more lenient laws. Imprisoning just one person costs tens of thousands of dollars per year and there’s other costs. When parents are ta…

In the late 1970’s and early 80’s the New Deal era where the government regulated businesses and protected citizens from the excesses of capitalism was­ overturned by Neoliberalism the idea that the market, left to its own devices, would produce an optimal economic system. Neoliberalism was wildly successful at producing billionaires. Their incredi…

In his book Should We Go Extinct Todd May takes an objective look at what we add to the community of life on the planet and what we destroy. This isn’t a call to end humanity as much as it’s a call to be better humans and citizens of Earth.

Raising girls has never been easy but in the age of social media it’s even harder. According to a 2024 study by the CDC over half of teen girls feel “persistently sad or hopeless.” In this episode of The Progressive Page Turner I talk with Jo-Ann Finkelstein about her book Sexism & Sensibility. She has over twenty years experience helping girls fac…

The abortion ban in Texas included a bounty hunter clause that would allow vigilantes to enforce the law. This is the sort of alliance between private citizens and the state that allowed the reign of terror by the KKK to flourish. But blue states are not entirely without weapons in this war for the soul of the nation. In this episode I talk with Da…

Billions of people all over the world use apps and websites. We have an unprecedented amount of information at our fingertips but it’s also allowed detailed dossiers to be collected on all of us. While most of the collected data is used for advertising there’s also the possibility of data being used for law enforcement and economic discrimination. …

Social Media has become a battleground for psychological warfare. In this episode I talk with Annalee Newitz about how propaganda worked in the past and how both domestic and foreign agents are targeting voters in the US.

In his book Psychedelics and the Coming Singularity David Jay Brown interviews people who look at the world in some very non-traditional ways. I talked to him about how we experience the world and why psychedelics like DMT might be the door to a new understanding of our minds and consciousness.

Robert Jensen is an emeritus professor in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin. he taught graduate and undergraduate courses in media law, ethics, and politics. His latest book, It’s Debatable, defines his political and ethical positions and how he arrived at them.

Do children need to be protected from their parent’s on-line activity? That’s the question at the heart of Erin Qiuinn-Kong’s debut novel Hate Follow. The story is fiction but the issues about child privacy and modern parenting are very real.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist who is not ready to give up on the future. Her book What if we got it right? Visions for the Future is filled with conversations, poetry and essays about the kind of world we could create. A world where we can all flourish.