Shows
It's Not You, It's The MediaOn Media Gaslighting: When Celebrities Become Activists, When Activists Become CelebritiesBhakti, Suchitra and Madhuri tackle celebrity activism and activist celebrities: who gets heard, who gets shut down, whether it works, what are its limits and what we need to demand from our celebrities. Can they move the needle on important causes? Or are they too deeply entrenched in the capitalist ruling class?
2026-02-2251 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaOn Media Gaslighting: Bad Bunny, Olympics, Epstein & the Limits of American RevoltMadhuri Sastry, Suchitra Vijayan and Bhakti Shringarpure dissect the coverage of big spectacles like Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl and the protests against Winter Olympics, both of which have been deemed resistant and political. Uprisings in Minneapolis continue. Is the US at a tipping point and if so, what are the limits of American revolt? Will the media rise to this unprecedented moment as the anger of a public begins to burst at the seams? The Epstein Files continue their assault on our psyches but the mainstream media refuses analysis. Meanwhile starvation in Cuba, Sudan, Palestine reaches distressing...
2026-02-2150 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaOn Media Gaslighting: ICE, Epstein & Palestine AmnesiaThe podcast It’s Not You, It’s The Media returns after a hiatus. Hosts Bhakti Shringarpure, Suchitra Vijayan and Madhuri Sastry unpack the current saturated media moment as ICE violence reaches new levels, the Epstein files rock the boat everywhere, and Palestine is deliberately forgotten by the media.
2026-02-1955 min
Radical FuturesThe Ballot as Battleground: Featuring Anjali EnjetiToday, in the United States, the right to vote is more precarious and more contested than ever. “I have had front row seats to voter suppression,” writer, poll worker, activist and Georgia resident Anjali Enjeti tells me, referring to Shelby County v. Holder, a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 2022 that gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Enjeti explains that things have been going downhill ever since, because “states can now enact voter-suppressing laws and policies that erect tremendous barriers,” especially for Black, brown or Indigenous Democrat voters. Enjeti’s recent book, Ballot, is a history of voting...
2026-02-1149 min
Radical FuturesIs Satire Dead? Featuring Gado“Satire is dead. Long live satire,” Tanzanian political cartoonist Gado declares, laughing, as we sit down to discuss the role of satire, humor and cartoons in modern public discourse. Godfrey Mwampembwa - pen name “Gado” - is a prolific and prominent political cartoonist with a career that has spanned three decades.Gado’s talent for drawing, coupled with a voracious interest in the news, led him to cartooning at an early age. Studying architecture at the university in Dar-es-Salam did not quite hold his attention, and he landed a job at The Daily Nation, Kenya’s leading daily and on...
2026-02-0442 min
Radical FuturesUndoing Empire, One Story at a Time: Featuring Sunny SinghWriter, scholar, and educator Sunny Singh explains that everything she does “centers around finding ways to undo empire.” The world we have inherited is “an ongoing colonial project” and thus “the wars, the genocides that we're watching now, are still the same colonial wars.” Imperial powers have poured vast resources into usurping power through shaping narratives. “Before a single shot is fired, before a single grain of rice is confiscated as it happened in the Bengal famine; before a single package of aid is blocked, as is happening now in Gaza, there is a war of stories.” All of Singh’...
2025-10-3041 min
Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers hosted by Mark StevensJon Marcantoni & The Colorado Author Program at Tattered Cover Bookstore Oct 07, 2021Jon Marcantoni is the Local Author Coordinator at Tattered Cover as well as the founder of LCG Media, a publishing and multimedia company. He is the author of five books, including the award-winning Kings of 7th Avenue. His work has appeared in Latino Rebels, Warscapes, Across the Margin, PANK Magazine, The New Engagement, Minor Literatures, 3 AM, Label Me Latino, and he has been featured in the Huffington Post, Washington Post, El Nuevo Dia in Puerto Rico, The LA Times, and NPR's Frontera series.
On the podcast, Jon talks about the system he has set up to accept independently published books...
2025-07-2744 min
Weird Little GuysThere Is A Spectre Haunting New York CityThe right wing media is buzzing with accusations that the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City is a communist. They're calling for his removal from not only the ballot... but the also the country. This anticommunist panic isn't new. Sources:Drabble, John. “To Ensure Domestic Tranquility: The FBI, Cointelpro-White Hate and Political Discourse, 1964-1971.” Journal of American Studies, vol. 38, no. 2, 2004, pp. 297–328. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27557518. Horowitz, David Alan. “White Southerners’ Alienation and Civil Rights: The Response to Corporate Liberalism, 1956-1965.” The Journal of Southern History, vol. 54, no. 2, 1988, pp. 173–200. JSTOR, https://doi.or...
2025-07-0347 min
Radical FuturesLiterary Anthology Shifts the Narrative on Yemen: Featuring Rim Mugahed & Laura KasinofThe mythology of the city of Sana’a writes itself: nestled in a valley; the charming, crumbling architecture; the winding alleys; and a history and heritage older than time itself. As Yemen’s largest city and its capital, a literary anthology through the lens of Sana’a seems like a natural choice. The Book of Sana'a joins an illustrious list of city fiction anthologies published by Comma Press in the UK. Their series titled "Reading the City" now includes over 30 books. Yet, Yemen today is at a political crossroads and exalting Sana’a did not sit well with many...
2025-06-2642 min
Radical FuturesA Debut Novel Explores Anti-Blackness in Sudan: Featuring Reem GaafarWhen a little boy drowns in the Nile, a Sudanese village is forced to confront its racist past in Reem Gaafar’s debut novel A Mouth Full of Salt. Narrated through a choral protagonist, the novel weaves together the lives of villagers who are suddenly beset by a curse: the drowning is followed by another death, and cattle begin to contract a mysterious illness. The village is an allegory intended to reflect the broader history of Sudan. A Mouth Full of Salt moves across time, from the 1940s to the 1980s, allowing the reader to glimpse the tur...
2025-06-1143 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaWhy Celebrity Algorithms are Destroying YouThe hosts take a critical look at the algorithms ruling our lives on social media and beyond, with a warning to divest from celebrity content and culture that permeates the news cycle, politics, and more. Whereas the early Facebook and Instagram eras were known for curated and bespoke feeds that were personally made for you, social media has largely become a commercialized landscape with scarily targeted ads and influencers promoting the next big thing in makeup, skincare, clothing, and more.These algorithms have an outsized influence on politics too, and the hosts discuss the ways social and...
2025-05-2539 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaThe Screen, the Stadium & the State: Bollywood Comes out to PlayThe hosts take a sharp, playful, and unflinching look at Bollywood’s obsession with sports films and the not-so-subtle nationalism embedded within them. From Lagaan to Chak De! India to 83, they explore why India’s sports biopic industry has exploded in the past 15 years, and how these films turn real-life athletic struggles into patriotic spectacles. What makes a sports movie so irresistible? Why does every underdog story end in a tear-jerking celebration of the nation? And how does Bollywood sanitize the harsh realities of caste, gender, and systemic neglect in Indian sports, replacing them with glossy, emotionally manipulative narratives?
2025-05-0531 min
Radical FuturesA Doctor Tells The Story of Gaza: Featuring Carol Mansour and Muna KhalidiThe feature-length documentary A State of Passion (2024) co-directed by Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi takes us deeper into the unfolding war on Gaza through the eyes of Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah. For almost two years, the extraordinary violence in Gaza has been broadcast live on our screens, even as those who strive to document it are being assassinated right in front of our eyes. Yet, the witnessing, documenting, archiving and narrating of the genocide of Palestinians continues, more and more from unlikely sources. Some of the most rigorous accounts of what is happening on the ground are coming from doctors...
2025-05-0239 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaIndian Cinema and Censorship: Featuring Anna M.M. VetticadThe hosts are joined by award-winning film critic and journalist Anna M.M. Vetticad for a conversation on the state of Indian cinema under Modi-era censorship. A veteran of over 30 years in journalism, Anna brings her incisive political analysis and deep knowledge of film culture to this episode — exposing how India’s cinematic landscape has become a battleground for ideology, identity, and power.The episode opens by locating cinema as a contested space — one long understood by right-wing regimes as a site of influence. Cinema’s ability to shape narratives and rewrite memory has been crucial to the rise...
2025-04-2343 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaVisa and Border Regimes: Featuring Tanvi MisraAs the crackdown on immigration and violent deportations explode across the US, Suchitra, Bhakti, and Madhuri are joined by journalist Tanvi Misra to peel back the bureaucratic spectacle of American border regimes. The conversation takes a deeper look at how legal status — once seen as a form of protection — is increasingly weaponised by the state to police dissent, particularly among immigrants and students engaged in pro-Palestinian activism. Green card holders and international students, once thought to be “safe” under the law, are now facing ideological screening, detention, and deportation — revealing how even legal status offers no true safeguard in a system bu...
2025-04-1048 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaIf Op-Eds Could KillThe hosts turn their lens on the insidious, galvanizing power of the opinion column. The hosts dissect how elite liberal media platforms like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and The Wall Street Journal have weaponized their op-ed pages to manufacture consent, launder imperialist narratives, and maintain the myth of expert credibility.The episode charts how op-ed writers and columnists such as Thomas Friedman, Nicholas Kristof, Maureen Dowd, and Paul Krugman have not only shaped public perspectives on issues but have actively steered foreign policy — often disastrously — through deeply polemical and emotionally manipulative writing. The...
2025-04-0333 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaRefaat Did Not Die, He Multiplied! Featuring Yousef AljamalThe hosts invite writer, editor, and translator Yousef Aljamal for a moving and intimate conversation that honours the life, work, and enduring legacy of the late Refaat Alareer — Palestinian writer, poet, professor, and beloved mentor assassinated by Israel in December 2023. Yousef was Refaat’s student, collaborator, and close friend. Yousef assembled and edited the book If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose by Refaat Alareer which was published early this year. He speaks with clarity, wit, and tenderness about the man whose imagination helped birth an army of writers out of besieged Gaza, including the powerful collection Gaza Writes Back...
2025-03-2643 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaThe War on Student ProtestThe podcasts takes on the alarming escalation of state repression against pro-Palestinian student protesters in the U.S. The episode unpacks how legal frameworks, university complicity, and media narratives have converged to criminalize dissent on campus. From ICE raids to administrative gag orders, they break down how universities have transformed into enforcement arms of the state, silencing student activists under the guise of “safety” and “neutrality.”They examine the weaponization of outdated laws like the McCarran Act, the use of AI-generated accusations to justify dismissals, and the absurd contradictions of free speech protections in the U.S.—where hate...
2025-03-1636 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaMake Indian American Women Brown AgainThe hosts take a sharp, witty, and incisive look at the identity crisis of Indian American women in the public eye. From Kamala Harris to Mindy Kaling to Usha Vance, the hosts ask: why is the dominant representation of the Indian American woman so adjacent to whiteness? Why does she either perform hyper-assimilation or lean into fetishised exoticism? In an era where South Asian identity is being flattened into elite, upper-caste, and Hindu-coded narratives, how do we reclaim a more expansive, authentic brown identity?The hosts dissect Mindy Kaling’s on-screen self-erasure, Usha Vance’s conservative alliances, and...
2025-03-0737 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaWhy The Media Gets Incarceration WrongThe hosts take on the media’s failure to accurately depict incarceration, tracing how language, imagery, and selective storytelling reinforce carceral logic. From Gaza to Guantanamo, they examine how imprisonment narratives are shaped by what is shown — and, more crucially, what is omitted. The hosts dissect how terms like prisoner, detainee, and hostage are selectively deployed to justify systemic violence, and how the very framing of incarceration distorts public perception.The discussion moves beyond conventional notions of imprisonment, arguing that entire societies — Palestinians in Gaza, Kashmiris under curfew, and detainees in refugee camps — are subjected to incarceration beyond p...
2025-02-2529 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaWhy The Media Gets Migration WrongSuchitra, Bhakti, and Madhuri dissect the persistent failures of media coverage on migration, exposing how mainstream outlets reinforce state narratives rather than challenging them. From the selective sympathy extended to Ukrainian refugees to the criminalization of Black and Brown migrants, the hosts examine how race, class, and geopolitical interests shape reporting. They trace the media’s historical complicity in dehumanizing migrants and explore the political incentives behind the language of “legal” and “illegal” migration.This episode unpacks the realities of forced deportations, ICE raids, and the bipartisan commitment to border enforcement, revealing how liberal and conservative media alike obsc...
2025-02-1439 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaIs India Developing a Fascist Aesthetic?Suchitra, Bhakti, and Madhuri look at how India’s cultural landscape has become deeply intertwined with right-wing ideology. From Bollywood’s hyper-masculine action heroes to the aggressive iconography of Hindu gods, from the spectacle of nationalist weddings to the militarization of everyday imagery, the episode unpacks how aesthetics shape political obedience. The hosts trace how authoritarian regimes have historically used visual culture — sculpted bodies, rigid pageantry, and hyper-masculinity — to manufacture patriotic obedience. In India, these elements have been absorbed into entertainment, fashion, and religion, reinforcing a Hindutva-dominated visual order.Bollywood has played a major role in this shift, m...
2025-02-0629 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaIs Your Social Media Activism Working?Suchitra, Bhakti, and Madhuri take a step back from the incessant noise of social media to dissect what all that posting really leads to. Is your social media activism actually making a difference? From the early days of Twitter-fueled revolutions to the performative hashtag activism that followed, the hosts trace the history of online organizing and examine its transformation in the wake of Palestine’s genocide. At a time when mainstream media has fully aligned with state narratives, Instagram and TikTok have become essential sources for alternative reporting — while simultaneously being controlled by billionaires with vested interests in suppressing diss...
2025-01-3146 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaHow Will The Media Do Trump 2.0?Suchitra, Bhakti, and Madhuri look into the crystal ball to offer up some forecasts about how the media will respond to a second Trump presidency. Reflecting on his first term, the hosts remember liberal media’s relentless obsession with his persona, his life, his tweets and his gaffes, all of which overshadowed policy critique and normalized him and his politics through repetition and over-exposure. They predict that the same media preoccupation with his personality, his wife and his kids will return but this time with an added element of Trump’s current “bromance” with tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff...
2025-01-2140 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaWhy The Media Won't Call It GenocideSuchitra, Bhakti, and Madhuri tackle the harrowing question: why won’t the media call what is happening in Palestine a genocide? Through incisive analysis, the hosts unravel the complicity of international law and media institutions in denying and obfuscating the reality of genocide, exposing the colonial frameworks that govern both. They discuss the ICC’s delayed and inadequate response, the ICJ’s groundbreaking yet overlooked ruling, and the broader power structures that perpetuate injustice. This episode draws connections between systemic impunity, media narratives, and the global silence surrounding the atrocities in Gaza.The conversation also interrogates why the me...
2025-01-1635 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaThe Indians Are Coming!Suchitra, Bhakti and Madhuri start off the new year with a focus on the crop of Indian Americans who support Donald Trump, MAGA and have emerged as shamelessly racist and anti-migrant despite their own immigrant background. A recent feud between Trump, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy over the topic of H1-B visas and who gets to migrate into the US tech empire brought out all the racist rhetoric into the open. The hosts go over the parade of conservative Indians of Hindu and upper-caste backgrounds (Vivek Ramaswamy, Sriram Krishnan, Kash Patel) that have risen to power in recent ye...
2025-01-0848 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaWhen the Media Tries to be WokeSuchitra, Bhakti, and Madhuri ask what happens when the media tries to be woke. Turns out, it all becomes very cringe. The episode unpacks performative wokeness in mainstream media, and exposes how the term woke – rooted in Black resistance – has been stripped of its radical origins and become a marketing tool. The word woke originates in abolitionist and Black liberation movements but today it has become adopted, diluted, and misused in mainstream culture. The media uses woke language and terms for signaling progressiveness while avoiding substantive engagement with systemic injustices. The hosts explore how the media co-opts wokeness by usin...
2024-12-0638 min
BookRisingHamza Koudri: On Family, Dance and Anti-colonial Revenge in 1930s AlgeriaWriter Hamza Koudri joins host Bhakti Shringarpure from Algiers to talk about his debut novel Sand Roses. A historical novel about the semi-nomadic Ouled Nail group in Algeria, it focuses on the women who are trained as dancers—but are also forced into sex work by the community at an early age. The novel follows twin sisters, dancers Salima and Fahima, who eke out a living in the town of Bousaada at the height of French colonialism, and inadvertently find themselves at the center of the violence of the French army. Koudri belongs to a small but growing community of...
2024-12-0142 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaAnd the Prize goes to…Warmongers!Suchitra, Bhakti, and Madhuri examine a year of prize scandals, immoral literary institutions and inappropriate red carpet galas. They ask why the genocide in Gaza has not been a red line for many prestigious literary institutions who have insisted on going about business as usual. They look at how literary institutions, prize committees, cultural events and writers themselves are complicit in perpetuating imperialist power structures and silencing dissenting voices. They highlight the ways in which these institutions, through both overt actions and subtle inactions, reveal their allegiance to oppressive systems. They break down the controversies that have rocked prominent...
2024-11-3036 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaIslamophobia in the MediaSuchitra, Bhakti, and Madhuri embark on a detailed breakdown of Islamophobia, dissecting its historical roots, modern manifestations, and the critical role the media plays in perpetuating anti-Muslim sentiment. They examine how Islamophobia has evolved from colonial narratives into a sophisticated mechanism of systemic hatred, embedded in global power structures. The episode traces the etymology and history of the term “Islamophobia,” highlighting how it fails to capture the full extent of the deliberate dehumanization faced by Muslims worldwide. The hosts delve into the media’s complicity in spreading stereotypes, from conflating Muslim identities with terrorism to sensationalized portrayals of Muslim women...
2024-11-2243 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaThe Media's Blame GamesSuchitra, Bhakti, and Madhuri discuss narratives of blame in the aftermath of the loss of Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party in the 2024 US elections. Donald Trump’s win sent shockwaves through liberal media who have been uncritically championing a candidate who played to the center and styled herself as a conservative rather than connecting with her progressive base. Within hours of exit polls, the blame games began on social media and in mainstream outlets. The episode works through the main groups being falsely blamed: progressives, Latinos, Muslims, Black men, misogyny, third-party candidates such as Jill Stein, and President Bi...
2024-11-1141 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaWe Told You SoSuchitra, Bhakti and Madhuri declare “We Told You So” in light of the disastrous defeat of Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party in the 2024 US elections. By "we," the hosts refer to the loyal constituency of people who definitely did not want to see Donald Trump in power. These very people have been offering feedback to the Kamala Harris campaign and calling out mainstream media’s uncritical approach to her candidacy. Coverage of the Harris campaign in newspapers and on television has only been uncritically adoring, and it has since become clear that those with influence in the media do not...
2024-11-0932 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaIf Book Reviews Could KillSuchitra, Bhakti and Madhuri analyze the genre of "book reviews" and the ways in which they are instrumental in shaping opinion on writers, literature, ideas, and culture, more broadly. Book reviews are an extremely vital part of all newspapers and media outlets but the undergirding questions is who gets reviewed and who gets ignored? Book reviews have moved away from tackling ideas, and have instead become publicity and marketing tools for big, corporate publishers. The discussion focuses on the explicit anti-intellectualism of book reviews. There is a complete disregard for challenging the mainstream narratives and there is an obsession w...
2024-10-2645 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaThe Media's War on ChildrenSuchitra, Bhakti, and Madhuri delve into the media's problematic portrayal of children, particularly in conflict zones. The episode asks: who gets to be a “child” in mainstream media? The coverage of children over the years reveals two broad themes: 1) the process of “un-childing” and 2) tendency towards saviorism that can produce troubling representations of children’s bodies, especially girls. It addresses how language and representation shape perceptions of childhood, the impact of state policies on Black, brown, and Muslim children, as well as, the contradictions in society's view of innocence. The conversation also highlights the role of the media in normalizin...
2024-10-1842 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaWorst Headlines in a Year of Livestreamed GenocideSuchitra, Bhakti and Madhuri analyze shocking, biased and racist headlines from mainstream newspapers from the past year with a focus on Palestine, Lebanon and Iran. They discuss the importance and impact of headlines historically but also in a world defined by ever-diminishing attention spans, and where news is mainly read on smartphones. The media appears to have an active investment in war, the ongoing genocide in Palestine, and in American imperialism, broadly. The hosts tackle three broad trends how headlines were written in the last year: the use of passive voice, the fabrication of a both-sides perspective, and an u...
2024-10-1849 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaUnethical Reporting on Sexual ViolenceIn this episode Suchitra, Bhakti, and Madhuri delve into the unethical reporting on sexual violence, particularly in the context of the ongoing genocide perpetrated by Israel on Gaza. The hosts discuss the trends of hyper-reporting and zero reporting, the ethics of how victims are portrayed, and the media's role in fabricating narratives that serve political agendas. They highlight the systemic violence faced by Palestinian prisoners and the contrasting media treatment of different victims, the apathetic conditions of reporting on sexual violence in Indian news media, thereby, emphasizing the need for ethical journalism that prioritizes truth over salaciousness and sensationalism.
2024-09-2743 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaFawning over KamalaSuchitra Vijayan, Bhakti Shringarpure and Madhuri Sastry dissect the media's coverage of Kamala Harris, focusing on the Democratic National Convention and the presidential debate. Coverage of Harris has focused on the portrayal of her as a youthful 'brat', excessive focus on aesthetics, and the lack of critical analysis in mainstream media. They explore the implications of her political identity, the gaslighting from the media, and the ongoing issues of racism in migration policies. The conversation culminates in a critique of the superficiality of political discourse and the need for accountability in journalism.Key-takeaways: The media's coverage o...
2024-09-1846 min
It's Not You, It's The MediaAbout the podcastAre you questioning your reality? Do you feel gaslighted? It's not you, it's the media. Tune in each week. It's Not You, It's the Media. A podcast by the Polis Project. https://www.thepolisproject.com/Hosts:Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, photographer and activist. She is the founder and Executive Director of The Polis Project. For her first book, The Midnight's Border: A People's History of India, Suchitra traveled across the 9000-mile Indian border. A barrister by training, she previously worked for the United Nations war crimes tribunals in Yugoslavia and...
2024-09-1000 min
BookRisingIn Love and War: Collective Memory and the SelfIn Love and War: Collective Memory and the Self is our fifth conversation in a series centering the Warscapes anthology Insurgent Feminisms: Writing War (Daraja Press). Featuring Samina Najmi, Ubah Cristina Ali Farah, Beverly Parayno and Veruska Cantelli.Writing about war is often synonymous with writing about memory. Erasing narratives, stories and collective memory is the explicit agenda and the inevitable outcome of any war. And thus, writers counter, resist and seize back memory and along the way, shape the historical accounts of places and people that have experienced violence and trauma. The discussion explores the task...
2024-06-211h 05
BookRisingPoetry of WitnessPoetry of Witness is our fourth conversation in a series centering the Warscapes anthology Insurgent Feminisms: Writing War (Daraja Press). Featuring Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, Jehan Bseiso and Meg Arenberg. What is the poet’s role in the event of the erasure of an entire people? Even as we deem certain acts of violence as “unspeakable” and “indescribable”? As the refrain “no words left” rings in our ears, many of us find ourselves seeking solace or sense from poetic language. Poetry and poets have long been understood (and also wilfully misunderstood) for the ability to deploy resistance to silence and...
2024-06-111h 13
BookRisingWounds of War: Narrating Health and HealingWounds of War: Narrating Health and Healing is the third conversation in a series centering the Warscapes anthology Insurgent Feminisms: Writing War (Daraja Press). Featuring Zahra Moloo, Valerie Gruhn and Danielle Villasana. War brings the experiences and stories of health, health workers and emergency medicine into sharp focus. When one speaks about the horrors of war, it is primarily a reference to the vulnerability of bodies that are being deliberately targeted for harm irrespective of whether these are civilians or military personnel. Legal frameworks exist to protect health workers and hospitals, and to prioritize the rights of...
2024-05-231h 05
BookRisingGaslighting as Method and Ways to Resist ItGaslighting as Method and Ways to Resist It is the second conversation in a series centering the Warscapes anthology Insurgent Feminisms: Writing War (Daraja Press). Featuring Suzy Salamy, Suchitra Vijayan and Bhakti Shringarpure. Gaslighting is a term used to describe the process by which a person is manipulated into questioning their own reality. Defined as a "conscious intent to brainwash," gaslighting is understood as occurring primarily in interpersonal situations of domestic abuse. Victims of gaslighting find themselves questioning their sense of reality as well as their memories; they experience high levels of anxiety and they may begin...
2024-05-051h 15
BookRisingUnlearning War in the ClassroomUnlearning War in the Classroom is our first conversation in a series centering the Warscapes anthology Insurgent Feminisms: Writing War (Daraja Press). Featuring Sherry Zane, Veruska Cantelli and Bhakti Shringarpure. Wars, conflict and histories of violence have been continually framed as binary narratives between winners and losers, nation and non-nations, and armies and non-armies. Additionally, in a saturated media landscape, violence and war is often represented as a form of entertainment and this generates a numbness about suffering, pain as well as the psychological and material costs of loss. Prevalent narratives of neutrality, both-sideism and objectivity can...
2024-04-211h 10
New Books in Islamic StudiesEsra Mirze Santesso, "Muslim Comics and Warscape Witnessing" (Ohio State UP, 2023)Recent decades have seen an unprecedented number of comics by and about Muslim people enter the global market. Now, Muslim Comics and Warscape Witnessing (Ohio State UP, 2023) offers the first major study of these works. Esra Mirze Santesso assesses Muslim comics to illustrate the multifaceted nature of seeing and representing daily lives within and outside of the homeland. Focusing on contemporary graphic narratives that are primarily but not exclusively from the Middle East--from blockbusters like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis to more local efforts such as Leila Abdelrazaq's Baddawi--Santesso explores why the graphic form has become a popular and useful medium for...
2024-04-0740 min
New Books in Literary StudiesEsra Mirze Santesso, "Muslim Comics and Warscape Witnessing" (Ohio State UP, 2023)Recent decades have seen an unprecedented number of comics by and about Muslim people enter the global market. Now, Muslim Comics and Warscape Witnessing (Ohio State UP, 2023) offers the first major study of these works. Esra Mirze Santesso assesses Muslim comics to illustrate the multifaceted nature of seeing and representing daily lives within and outside of the homeland. Focusing on contemporary graphic narratives that are primarily but not exclusively from the Middle East--from blockbusters like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis to more local efforts such as Leila Abdelrazaq's Baddawi--Santesso explores why the graphic form has become a popular and useful medium for...
2024-04-0740 min
New Books in Middle Eastern StudiesEsra Mirze Santesso, "Muslim Comics and Warscape Witnessing" (Ohio State UP, 2023)Recent decades have seen an unprecedented number of comics by and about Muslim people enter the global market. Now, Muslim Comics and Warscape Witnessing (Ohio State UP, 2023) offers the first major study of these works. Esra Mirze Santesso assesses Muslim comics to illustrate the multifaceted nature of seeing and representing daily lives within and outside of the homeland. Focusing on contemporary graphic narratives that are primarily but not exclusively from the Middle East--from blockbusters like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis to more local efforts such as Leila Abdelrazaq's Baddawi--Santesso explores why the graphic form has become a popular and useful medium for...
2024-04-0740 min
New Books in Comics and Graphic NovelsEsra Mirze Santesso, "Muslim Comics and Warscape Witnessing" (Ohio State UP, 2023)Recent decades have seen an unprecedented number of comics by and about Muslim people enter the global market. Now, Muslim Comics and Warscape Witnessing (Ohio State UP, 2023) offers the first major study of these works. Esra Mirze Santesso assesses Muslim comics to illustrate the multifaceted nature of seeing and representing daily lives within and outside of the homeland. Focusing on contemporary graphic narratives that are primarily but not exclusively from the Middle East--from blockbusters like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis to more local efforts such as Leila Abdelrazaq's Baddawi--Santesso explores why the graphic form has become a popular and useful medium for...
2024-04-0740 min
Ohio State UP PodcastEsra Mirze Santesso, "Muslim Comics and Warscape Witnessing" (Ohio State UP, 2023)Recent decades have seen an unprecedented number of comics by and about Muslim people enter the global market. Now, Muslim Comics and Warscape Witnessing (Ohio State UP, 2023) offers the first major study of these works. Esra Mirze Santesso assesses Muslim comics to illustrate the multifaceted nature of seeing and representing daily lives within and outside of the homeland. Focusing on contemporary graphic narratives that are primarily but not exclusively from the Middle East--from blockbusters like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis to more local efforts such as Leila Abdelrazaq's Baddawi--Santesso explores why the graphic form has become a popular and useful medium for...
2024-04-0740 min
Green & Red: Podcasts for Scrappy RadicalsMedia Complicity in the Destruction of Palestine, with Professor Greg Shupak (G&R 257)In our latest, we talk with Prof. Greg Shupak (@gregshupak) about the media's coverage of Israel's bloody assault in Gaza. He's one of the best-informed and important scholars of the media and Israel, and he here discussed the way the media treats Israel-Palestine issues, how it perpetuates Israel's stories and lies, how journalists are being targeted by the IDF in Gaza, and how we can fight back.
bio//
Greg Shupak teaches Media Studies at the University of Guelph in Toronto. He's the author of "The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel & the Media." His fiction has appeared in a wide range...
2023-11-171h 24
The Nostalgia Test Podcast97. Nostalgia 101: 😂 All Things Comedy w/ Dr. Douglas C. MacLeodDan & Manny are joined by Dr. Douglas C. MacLeod, Associate Professor of Communications at SUNY College at Cobleskill in New York to open up a deep conversation about all things comedy. They get into comedy history, some of the early television sitcoms, how the American art of stand-up comedy is growing in many other parts of the world, how Dr. MacLeod uses comedy in his writing courses, and so much more. This episode is reference central! Get ready to take A LOT of notes! Let's start class!
This episode was recorded on July 25th, 2022.
A...
2023-10-051h 09
Champagne SharksCS 522: Decolonize Hipster w/ Gregory Pierrot pt 1
Today Trevor sits down with Gregory Pierott to discuss his newest book Decolonize Hipsters. Gregory Pierrot is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Connecticut at Stamford. Along with Decolonize Hipsters, he is also the author of, The Black Avenger in Atlantic Culture (UGA Press, 2019), and co-editor of An Anthology of Haitian Revolutionary Fictions (UVA Press, 2021). He is also a translator, and co-host of the Decolonize That! webcast series with Bhakti Shringarpure. His writing has appeared in Africa Is A Country, L.A. Review of Books, Libération, Public Books, Warscapes and scholarly journals such as The African A...
2023-04-2350 min
BookRisingHow To Write About War 2: Battleground BollywoodIndia is home to the world’s largest film industry that instrumentalizes soft power to generate all kinds of imperial fantasies and aspirations. It has historically been plagued by a pernicious nationalism wherein the othering, vilification and downright humiliation of religions, races, ethnicities and castes is normalized. A recent spate of blockbusters as well as several smaller films on streaming platforms have become cultural battlegrounds that work to manufacture an ideological consensus about violent interventions in Kashmir and other occupied regions, sustain hostilities with neighboring countries and foster malevolent forms of Hindu nationalism. Panelists:Azad Es...
2023-02-261h 03
BookRisingHow To Write About War 1: Reporting on UkraineAre you shocked and distressed about the way in which war and displacement is being represented, reported and talked about right now with the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Writers, journalists, activists, scholars, Bhakti Shringarpure, Nadifa Mohamed, Suchitra Vijayan and Billy Kahora think through this difficult topic. Recorded on March 25, 2022, they intervene in the moral and political crisis around the writing, reporting, representing and filming of war and all the extraordinary violence, plunder and displacement it perpetuates. Bhakti Shringarpure is a writer and educator who co-founded and edited Warscapes magazine for ten years before it transitioned into the...
2023-02-251h 03
BookRisingBreaking Down the 2022 Booker PrizeLiterature experts Bhakti Shringarpure and Ainehi Edoro discuss and dissect 2022's shortlisted Booker Prize novels in advance of the winner announcement for the world's most prestigious literary prize. The shortlist includes Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo (Zimbabwe), Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Ireland), Treacle Walker by Alan Garner (UK), The Trees by Percival Everett (USA), The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka (Sri Lanka) and Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout (USA). Ainehi Edoro is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she teaches and researches on African literature, political theory...
2022-10-141h 10
New Books in LiteratureBhaswati Ghosh, "Victory Colony, 1950" (Yoda Press, 2020)Victory Colony, 1950 (Yoda Press, 2020) by Bhaswati Ghosh is a story of resilience about East Pakistani refugees who were forced to leave their homes in East Pakistan because of their Hindu faith. After Amala’s parent are killed in the violence following the partition of India in 1947, she and her brother manage to survive until they reach Calcutta. Within moments of disembarking from their train, Amala loses Kartik, and comes close to being hauled off by groping policemen. She’s saved by several young volunteers who steer Amala away and into a refugee camp. Manas, a student and the volunteer leade...
2022-07-1226 min
New Books in Historical FictionBhaswati Ghosh, "Victory Colony, 1950" (Yoda Press, 2020)Victory Colony, 1950 (Yoda Press, 2020) by Bhaswati Ghosh is a story of resilience about East Pakistani refugees who were forced to leave their homes in East Pakistan because of their Hindu faith. After Amala’s parent are killed in the violence following the partition of India in 1947, she and her brother manage to survive until they reach Calcutta. Within moments of disembarking from their train, Amala loses Kartik, and comes close to being hauled off by groping policemen. She’s saved by several young volunteers who steer Amala away and into a refugee camp. Manas, a student and the volunteer leade...
2022-07-1225 min
Rev Left Radio[BEST OF] Critical Race Theory and Black Liberation w/ Zoé Samudzi[Originally released Oct 2017] Zoe Samudzi is a black feminist writer whose work has appeared in a number of spaces including The New Inquiry, Warscapes, Truthout, ROAR Magazine, Teen Vogue,BGD, Bitch Media, and Verso, among others. She is also a member of the 2017/18 Public Imagination cohort of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) Fellows Program, and she is a member of the Black Aesthetic, an Oakland-based group and film series exploring the multitudes and diversities of black imagination and creativity. She is presently a Sociology PhD student at the University of California, San Fr...
2022-04-121h 09
It's a ContinentKony 2012: Activism or Slacktivism?Around a decade ago, one of the first “viral” moments of the social media age took place. This involved American men launching a campaign to make Joseph Kony the most famous man in the world. Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) (which had existed for decades prior), had been indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. But was this a case of activism, slacktivism, or white saviourism on a global scale?Follow us on IG: itsacontinentpod and Twitter: itsacontinent. Pre-order It's a Continent (2022) on itsacontinent.com/book We're on Buy me a Co...
2022-03-2923 min
BookRisingMaaza Mengiste: African Literary Tourism is OverWriter and photographer Maaza Mengiste joined host Bhakti Shringarpure in the studio to discuss the expanding boundaries of African literature today. While the days of African literary tourism are behind us, there still remain significant challenges to overcome in Western publishing. Recent focus on literature from East Africa illustrates that the region's unique literary output often grapples with difficult histories of war and violence. Though Mengiste resides in the US, she continues to produce writing about her home country, Ethiopia, and offered carefully considered answers about what may constitute Ethiopian literature today. Maaza Mengiste is an Ethiopian-American...
2022-01-2844 min
Surviving Society ProductionsS3/E5 Whiteness, the Mediterranean & race at the edge of Europe (Antonia Dawes & Mario Badagliacca)Guest Hosts:
Antonia Lucia Dawes is an Anglo-Neapolitan writer and academic who works on questions of racism and militarisation. Her book, Race Talk: languages of racism and resistance in Neapolitan street markets, is about racism and multilingual communication. She is currently working on a new collaborative book project about the British military presence on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England.
Twitter: @AntoniaLucia
Mario Badagliacca is a freelance Sicilian photographer. He studied international relations and politics at the University 'L'Orientale' in Naples and photo-reportage and photojournalism in Rome. Along his photographic activity, he has always collaborated with non-profit organizations and NGOs involved...
2022-01-2541 min
e-flux podcastShimrit Lee on Decolonize MuseumsHallie Ayres talks with Shimrit Lee about her forthcoming book, Decolonize Museums. Shimrit Lee is a writer, educator, and curator based in Philadelphia. An interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of visual culture, performance, and critical security studies, Shimrit's research interests relate to the cultural production of security narratives in Israel and the US. She holds a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies from NYU, and currently teaches high school history as well as community-based adult education at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. Her book, Decolonize Museums, will be published as part of the series "Decolonize That" by...
2021-09-1558 min
Haymarket Books LivePoets Stand with Kashmir w/ Nate Marshall, Jamila Woods, Ahmer,Tommy Pico & moreJoin Stand with Kashmir and Haymarket Books for a collaborative event series uplifting the work of artists and activists fighting for self-determination and abolition in the face of police brutality, militarism, and settler-colonialism.
We will celebrate transnational and inter-movement resistance, exploring both the similarities between the different movements and the aspects that make each unique in its way. We will feature activists, artists and scholars from each movement to tell their story of resistance and resilience, and to strengthen solidarity across borders
Participants:
Ahmer is a prolific rapper and producer from Srinagar, Kashmir. Since a young age, Ahmer has been...
2021-04-141h 25
Radio Intifada by SWANA (South and West Asia and North Africa) Region RadioCrafting Care: Occupation, Militarization, & Mental Health with Dr. Saiba VarmaWe host Dr. Saiba Varma, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego and author of The Occupied Clinic: Militarism and Care in Kashmir, which we will be discussing with her. In the The Occupied Clinic, Saiba explores the psychological, ontological, and political entanglements between medicine and violence in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
Dr. Saiba Varma has been doing research and activism in Indian-controlled Kashmir, the site of a chronic, unresolved conflict, and one of the most militarized places on earth. Her research explores how long term militarization and violence destabilizes communities and individuals, as well...
2021-02-0126 min
The Poet SalonBill Carty reads Jennifer Chang's "Dorothy Wordsworth"Friends— last week, Bill Carty schooled us on clouds, clarity, and clowns. For this week's episode, Bill brought in Jennifer Chang's "Dorothy Wordsworth" to boot, scoot, n' boogie with. Enjoy!
Bill Carty is the author of Huge Cloudy (Octopus Books) and the chapbook Refugium. He holds degrees from Dartmouth College (BA) and University of North-Carolina-Wilmington (MFA), and he has received poetry fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Artist Trust, Hugo House, and Jack Straw. He was awarded the 2017 Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, and his poems have recently appeared in the Bo...
2020-02-0424 minThe Poet SalonBill Carty + Grecian Laurel 75Hello hello! This week we're thrilled to wax poetic about Brigit Pegeen Kelly—who is she? and why do poets love her so??—and to interview our dear friend Bill Carty about clouds, clarity, clowns, etc.
Bill Carty is the author of Huge Cloudy (Octopus Books) and the chapbook Refugium. He holds degrees from Dartmouth College (BA) and University of North-Carolina-Wilmington (MFA), and he has received poetry fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Artist Trust, Hugo House, and Jack Straw. He was awarded the 2017 Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, and his...
2020-01-2857 min
Nostalgia TrapMapping the Face of War w/ Bhakti ShringarpureBhakti Shringarpure is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Warscapes, an online magazine that features interviews, fiction, non-fiction, poetry and art from regions of conflict around the world. In this conversation, she talks about her youth in India, her work with poet Ammiel Alcalay in graduate school, and why Warscapes avoids the clickbait format of mainstream digital media. In discussing recent outrage about Israel's killing of civilians in Gaza, Shringarpure explains how the urgent tone of social media distorts our perceptions: "I think it's not a new moment. Those things, the brutality toward children, the right to maim...
2018-07-2556 minNostalgia TrapMapping the Face of War w/ Bhakti ShringarpureBhakti Shringarpure is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Warscapes, an online magazine that features interviews, fiction, non-fiction, poetry and art from regions of conflict around the world. In this conversation, she talks about her youth in India, her work with poet Ammiel Alcalay in graduate school, and why Warscapes avoids the clickbait format of mainstream digital media. In discussing recent outrage about Israel's killing of civilians in Gaza, Shringarpure explains how the urgent tone of social media distorts our perceptions: "I think it's not a new moment. Those things, the brutality toward children, the right to maim...
2018-07-2556 min
Talk World RadioTalk Nation Radio: Greg Shupak: Media Tells Wrong Story About PalestineGreg Shupak is the author of The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel, and the Media, which can be purchased on the website of OR Books. He has a PhD in Literary Studies and teaches Media Studies at the University of Guelph in Toronto. His fiction has appeared in a wide range of literary journals and he regularly writes analysis of politics and media for a variety of outlets including Electronic Intifada, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, In These Times, Jacobin, Literary Review of Canada, Middle East Eye, TeleSUR, This Magazine, and Warscapes.
2018-05-2929 minRev Left RadioBlack Feminism and Queer Theory w/ Zoe SamudziZoe Samudzi is a black feminist writer whose work has appeared in a number of spaces including The New Inquiry, Warscapes, Truthout, ROAR Magazine, Teen Vogue,BGD, Bitch Media, and Verso, among others. She is also a member of the 2017/18 Public Imagination cohort of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) Fellows Program, and she is a member of the Black Aesthetic, an Oakland-based group and film series exploring the multitudes and diversities of black imagination and creativity. She is presently a Sociology PhD student at the University of California, San Francisco in the Department of...
2017-11-271h 06Rev Left RadioCritical Race Theory and Black Liberation w/ Zoé SamudziZoe Samudzi is a black feminist writer whose work has appeared in a number of spaces including The New Inquiry, Warscapes, Truthout, ROAR Magazine, Teen Vogue, BGD, Bitch Media, and Verso, among others. She is also a member of the 2017/18 Public Imagination cohort of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) Fellows Program, and she is a member of the Black Aesthetic, an Oakland-based group and film series exploring the multitudes and diversities of black imagination and creativity. She is presently a Sociology PhD student at the University of California, San Francisco in the Department of...
2017-10-121h 08
Global Press PassportA Working TranslationGlobal Press stories are published in English, French and Spanish. As we prepare to start publishing in Sinhala and Nepali, the official languages of Sri Lanka and Nepal, later this month, we are taking a moment to reflect on why we publish our stories in multiple languages. The answer is rooted in our commitment to accountability, accuracy and human dignity.
In the third episode of the Global Press Passport, podcast host Kyana Moghadam invites guests to share their experiences with translation and interpretation, and to explain why words matter.
“A Working Translation” features Global Press Journal translators Rishi Khalsa and Saga...
2017-06-1500 minNostalgia TrapNostalgia Trap - Episode 55: Michael BuschMichael Busch is a senior editor at Warscapes, an online magazine that features writing, art, photography and other media from war-torn regions around the globe. Michael talks with me about his youth and world travels, his time studying international organized crime at the CUNY Graduate Center, and the values and ideas behind his work at Warscapes.
2017-02-121h 11Nostalgia TrapNostalgia Trap - Episode 55: Michael BuschMichael Busch is a senior editor at Warscapes, an online magazine that features writing, art, photography and other media from war-torn regions around the globe. Michael talks with me about his youth and world travels, his time studying international organized crime at the CUNY Graduate Center, and the values and ideas behind his work at Warscapes.
2017-02-121h 11
Unauthorized DisclosureEpisode 26: Fabio Andres Diaz PabonGuest Fabio Andres Diaz Pabon, a Colombian who is a research associate for the Department of Political and International Studies at Rhodes University in South Africa. He is also a contributor to Warscapes. Hosts Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola talk to Pabon about why Colombians, who voted, rejected a peace deal by a very slim margin. He addresses some of the points he made in a piece for Warscapes titled, "Uncertainty, Peace Agreements, and Public Participation in Colombia." Pabon also reacts to the decision to give Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos the Nobel Peace Prize. The co-hosts spend the latter...
2016-10-0954 min
Subject:CINEMASubject:CINEMA #353 - "Warscapes:Vietnam" Thanks for tuning in Subject:CINEMA, creeping closer and closer to starting our SEVENTH YEAR on the air! Yahoo! THIS WEEK:
We launch a new series inspecting how wars are portrayed on screen, starting with the war that our generation calls their own - it's "WARSCAPES: VIETNAM"This week's FETHIVAL TEN focuses on our picks from the Seattle International Film FestivalWe have a GREAT DVD GIVEAWAY to announce (see below)A Calendar updateA Rising Stars updatethe passing of two big names, one in music, the other in television productionand our review of the Japanese comedy I...
2012-05-292h 03
Subject:CINEMASubject:CINEMA #353 - "Warscapes:Vietnam" Thanks for tuning in Subject:CINEMA, creeping closer and closer to starting our SEVENTH YEAR on the air! Yahoo! THIS WEEK:
We launch a new series inspecting how wars are portrayed on screen, starting with the war that our generation calls their own - it's "WARSCAPES: VIETNAM"This week's FETHIVAL TEN focuses on our picks from the Seattle International Film FestivalWe have a GREAT DVD GIVEAWAY to announce (see below)A Calendar updateA Rising Stars updatethe passing of two big names, one in music, the other in television productionand our review of the Japanese comedy I...
2012-05-292h 03