For The Holidays, Become a 'Wallet Activist' with Tanja Hester

Claudia Cragg @claudiacragg speaks here with @Anne_S_Kim about those millions of young people Kim considers 'Abandoned'.  Anne Kim is a writer based in northern Virginia and the author of . She was special projects editor at the in 2013 and senior writer from 2015 to 2018. Americans under the age of 25 grab headlines when they launch flashy startups or become activists for social change. However, as Washington Monthly Anne Kim shows, both in this discussion and her book, the success of such leaders masks an alarming reality ill-served by current public policy: “In 2017, as many as 4.5 million young people” ages 16-24 were neither in school nor working. Social scientists call them “disconnected youth” (or, in Europe, s, for “not in employment, education, or training”), and many of them have aged out of foster care or spent time in prison and lack the support of trusted adults. A vice president of the , Kim shows clearly how their plight tends to result from years of systemic failures.

27 Feb 202035min

Claudia Cragg (@claudiacragg) speaks here with Frederic Martel (@martelf) for the new paperback publication of his latest book, In The Closet of The Vatican. Pope Francis declared that "behind rigidity there is always something hidden, in many cases a double life." These are the disturbing words that the Pope himself has used to unlock the “closet.” In the new paperback edition of this New York Times bestseller,(Bloomsbury Continuum; 9781472966186; paperback now out), author and renowned French journalist Frédéric Martel reveals new events that have occurred since the original text’s publication.  In the Closet of the Vatican provides a shocking and detailed account of the abuse and malpractice—sexual, political and financial—in the Catholic Church. Now in a revised translation and with updated material, this brilliant piece of investigative writing is based on four years’ authoritative research, including extensive interviews with those in power.

20 Feb 202032min

Soulful jazz singer Billie Holliday is remembered these days for her unique sound, troubled personal history, and a catalogue that includes such resonant songs as and Claudia Cragg, @claudiacragg, speaks here with about the surprising ways in which Holiday and her music were also strongly shaped by religion. is not a new biography of the jazz legend, nor does the book come up with many new findings about the life of the much-studied singer or the thoroughly documented jazz milieu she inhabited. Rather, the book offers a subtle recontextualization of Holiday’s life. It presents a vivid portrait of an iconic jazz artist not known for piety or ties to organized religion. Fessenden does investigate in greater detail than previous books the influence of Holiday’s Catholic upbringing, in particular her two stints at the . Mixing elements of biography with the history of race and American music, she will explore the multiple religious influences on Holiday’s life and sound, including her time spent as a child in a Baltimore convent, the echoes of black Southern churches in the blues she heard in brothels, the secular riffs on ancestral faith in the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, and the Jewish songwriting culture of Tin Pan Alley. Growing out of Fessenden’s most recent publication, Religion Around Billie Holiday (Penn State UP, 2018), the lecture aims to illuminate the power and durability of religion in the making of an American musical icon. Tracy Fessenden holds the Steve and Margaret Forster Professorship in Comparative Mythology at Arizona State University, where she is a member of the faculty of Religious Studies. She is a scholar of American religion and the secular who focuses on literature and the arts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  In addition to Religion Around Billie Holiday, Fessenden is the author of Culture and Redemption: Religion, the Secular, and American Literature (Princeton UP, 2007) and co-editor of The Puritan Origins of American Sex: Religion, Sexuality, and American Literature (Routledge, 2001), and Religion, the Secular, and the Politics of Sexual Difference (Columbia UP, 2013). She is Editor of Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation and General Editor of the North American Religions series at New York University Press.

13 Feb 202038min

(At the end of this interview, Cleo Z. reads s poem, ''. To learn more or contact Cleo Z., please DM @claudiacragg) Claudia Cragg @claudiacragg speaks here with #MichaelKorda about his new book, #. It is a legendary editor's unflinching love song about his radiant wife, #MargaretMogford, and her battle with cancer.  Born in London, Michael Korda is the son of English actress Gertrude Musgrove, and the Hungarian artist and film production designer . He is the nephew of film magnate  and brother , both film directors.Korda grew up in England but received part of his education in France where his father had worked with film director  Michael Korda is Editor-in-Chief  for where he ruled for 48 years. Among the many books Korda has written personally are Charmed Lives, the story of his father and his two uncles, and the novel , which is a  about his aunt, actress , which was later adapted into a television miniseries. His mother, Gertrude Musgrove was an actress known for The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), The Fugitive (1939) and The Girl from Maxim's (1933). Korda said he felt that Charmed Lives was the book he was born to write, "as if I had been observing and storing up memories with just that purpose in mind for years.  But it was a warm April in when Korda, normally a fearless horsewoman, dropped her horsewhip while she was riding. Such a mild slip was easy to ignore, but when other troubling symptoms accumulated, she confided to her husband, "Michael, I think something serious is wrong with me."  Within a few rapid weeks, the fiercely independent, former fashion model was diagnosed with brain cancer, while Michael, once reliant on her steeliness, became her caregiver, deciphering bewildering medical reports and packing her beloved toiletries for the hospital.  An operation performed by a renowned surgeon allowed Margaret to ride her favorite competition horse Logan go Bragh a few more times, but Margaret's tumors quickly returned - leaving her to grapple with the reality of impending death. In rapturous prose, Korda, a modern-day Orpheus, braids her heroic story with heartrending details of their final year together.  Passing, a tender memoir, is a testament to the transcendent possibilities of love.

6 Feb 202029min

What if the real world isn’t 'REAL' but just some kind of computer program? Claudia Cragg (@claudiacragg) speaks here with @Rizstanford  As Virk () puts it, “The fundamental question raised by the is: Are we all actually characters living inside some kind of giant, massively multi-player online video game, a simulated reality that is so well rendered that we cannot distinguish it from ‘physical reality’?” These ideas may well have first been most discussed because of the films, but many people have been fascinated with the potential for far longer than video games have been around. suggests a similar concept, as do the teachings of Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism. Carl Jung,  Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, was interested in the while —who frequently imagined such situations in his fiction—firmly believed that the world was a simulation. Virk says the Simulation Hypothesis is not as far-fetched as it may seem. He explains computer science, humanity’s understanding of physics, and mystical traditions going back thousands of years all point to the idea that the world may not be as “real” as people think it is. “The goal of what we call science," he says, " is to understand the nature of reality. If we are in fact inside a video game, then science becomes a matter of ‘discovering’ the rules of this video game.” Virk demonstrates that what we call 'reality' is a harder concept to engage with than people admit.

30 Jan 202029min

Claudia Cragg speaks with Dr. Jennifer Neitzel of the  Their mission is to facilitate authentic engagement and relationships that empower communities to guide the work of systems change throughout the halls of learning nationwide.  Barriers to educational equity include disproportionate poverty. This type of poverty remains one of the most significant moral dilemmas that US society faces today. Labor, housing, and education laws, particularly during Jim Crow, primarily set-up a racial caste system. This system continues to make it very difficult for people of color to achieve upward mobility. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty (2016), 12% of White children are poor compared to 34% of Black children. Similarly, 17% of Black children live in deep poverty, while only 5% of White children experience the same living conditions. (Koball and Jiang 2018). Nearly two out of three children born into the bottom fifth of the income distribution remain in the bottom two-fifths of the income distribution as adults. (Isaacs, Sawhill, and Haskins 2009). Meaning, for a child born into poverty, there’s an excellent chance the child remains in poverty as an adult. Neitzel started her career in early childhood education over 20 years ago in the classroom where she taught young children with significant behavioral challenges in Pittsburgh, PA. After several years, she moved to Chapel Hill, NC, to begin her graduate studies at the University of North Carolina where she earned both her Master's and Doctorate degrees in early childhood education.

23 Jan 202024min

Today is the 127 anniversary of what many Hawaiians consider to be an "illegal occupation" of their lands.  On Jan. 17, 1893, Queen Lili`uokalani of the independent kingdom of Hawai`i was overthrown as she was arrested at gunpoint by U.S. Marines. Native Hawaiians say they are now fighting to stop the construction Thirty Meter Telescope on sacred Mauna Kea. As Patrick Wolfe theorized, "settler colonialism is a structure, not an event. The violence of colonialism — and the fight for Indigenous sovereignty — continue. " (visit ) #neweconomycoalition In this interview, Claudia Cragg (@ClaudiaCragg) speaks with Hawaiian journalist, AK Kelly (@KealaKelly)

18 Jan 202030min

As of production time, the 2020 Presidential Race has only 'Old White Men' contenders. We could debate why endlessly, but perhaps something deeper is at play? Claudia Cragg (@ClaudiaCragg) speaks here with , (@maxklau) who as a Harvard doctoral student was researching the topic of 'youth leadership'. Klau stumbled upon a provocative educational exercise, he says, that changed the course of his life. Klau is an author, leadership scholar, educated and Chief Program Officer @NewPoliticsAcad. To inquire about joining the New Politics Leadership Academy team, email . This is a a non-profit, Klau says, is dedicated to recruiting and developing military veterans and alumni of national service programs to seek political office. The education-focused AmeriCorps program that engages more than 3,000 young adults across 27 U.S. cities in a year of demanding, full-time citizen service. But, back to Klau's epiphany, on the last morning of a week-long residential youth leadership program focused on teaching about social justice, high-school aged participants gather before breakfast for what they think will be normal day. Instead, something unusual happens: They are told by the Program Directors to separate into groups: Whites, Asians, Jews, Latinos, LGBTG, Latinx, Black. They are instructed not to make eye contact with other groups or talk with other groups, and then they are told to go to breakfast: The White group goes in first, sits at a big table and gets double servings, and every group lower in the hierarchy gets less food and a smaller table. The Black group ends up sitting on the floor with almost nothing to eat. It’s called the Separation Exercise, and it’s an attempt to simulate a hierarchical, segregated, Jim Crow-style social system. Over the course of the morning, the participants begin to challenge these unjust norms, and events unfold that mirror events of the real-life civil rights movement in surprising ways. , it turns out, provides a remarkable opportunity to observe the unfolding of social change using the tools of empiricism and social science. Arguably, it also inhibits, nay interferes with, candidates who rise to the top of US Politics? Klau spent the next four years of his life engaged in rigorous research of three more of these Separation Exercises in a quest to discover what might be learned from observing the unfolding of multiple simulated civil rights movements. This book describes the personal journey that led to this effort, the ethical considerations surrounding this kind of study, the surprising findings that emerged from this inquiry, and the implications that all this has for matters of race and social change in the real world today. Klau's 'quest' is one best adopted sooner rather than later if true democracy is ever to be realized.

16 Jan 202026min