Public Intellectuals Radio: Recent Episodes

Public Intellectuals

Public Intellectuals magazine provides a platform for discourse on and between politics, economics, race, labor, socioeconomic class, popular culture, art, and literature.

It is a multi-media publishing council that updates daily on weekdays and produces an annual print edition year-in-review of the literary community.

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Public Intellectuals' Teka Lo speaks with Dr. Carl L. Hart. Dr. Hart is a psychologist and neuroscientist. He is a professor of psychology at Columbia University. Hart is known for his research in drug abuse and drug addiction. Hart is one of the first tenured African American professors of sciences at Columbia University. In this interview, we discuss his latest book, Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear.

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Public Intellectuals Teka Lo speaking with Monique Rodwell and attorney Cynthia Hardaway. Ms. Rodwell is the mother of Branden K. Rodwell, Justin Rodwell, Jaykil A. Rodwell, and Jasper D. Spivey, who were all detained after Branden and Justin had their Fourth Amendment Rights violated in Newark, New Jersey.

To donate please cashapp $MoniqueRodwell

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Transportation Alternatives is now part of UAW 2110, a Public Intellectuals speaks with Transporation Alternatives Dulcie Canton on unions, nonprofits, the Black & Latinx working class,  and labor.

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Public Intellectuals Radio speaks with Lakisha Watson-Moore founder of Empower Mississippi. Empower Mississippi is a diverse coalition of people looking to empower the residents of Mississippi by Getting Out The Vote (GOTV). Moore talks with PI Radio about her hopes, dreams, and future for Mississippi.

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Fourth-generation Mississippian and Cornell graduate Shawn Jackson is running for Mayor of Vicksburg. Vicksburg was the site for a critical battle in the Civil War. Mississippi’s 40 percent Black voting base passed Measure 2 in November 2020, possibly putting one of the final nails in the coffin of the 1890 Mississippi Plan. Currently, Vicksburg is a port city with historical roots, charms, and challenges.

Public Intellectuals Radio host Teka Lo interviews Shawn Jackson to find out her plans and visions for Vicksburg and Mississippi, the next Southern state that will flip Blue in 2024.

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Public Intellectuals Radio editor Teka Lo interviews The Yellow House Library founders, Chiwan Choi and Babatunde Babafemi. Choi is a poet, writer, and editor at Cultural Weekly and founder of Writ Large Press.  Babatunde Babafemi  (Femi) is a poet and writer based in Nigeria.  The Yellow House Library is a physical lending space and an electronic lending library in Bayelsa, Nigeria.

For a transcript of the interview please visit HERE.

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Public Intellectuals’ editor Teka Lo speaks with Dr. Cintli about Los Angeles Journalism, the Los Angeles Sheriff, Rubén Salazar, Biden/Harris, Alex Padilla, both houses of Congress voting to authorize the creation of the National Museum of the American Latino, and the Chicano, Native, and African American story that begins before the ships.

Roberto Cintli Rodríguez, Ph.D. (Dr. Cintli) is an associate professor in the Mexican American Studies Department at the University of Arizona. He is a longtime-award-winning journalist/columnist who received his Ph.D. in Mass Communications in 2008 at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is the author of Justice: A Question of Race, a book that chronicles his two police brutality trials, and the co-producer, with Patrisia Gonzales of “Amoxtli San Ce Tojuan,” a documentary on origins and migrations. His “Our Sacred Maíz is Our Mother” (University of Arizona Press, 2014) advances the thesis that Mexican/Central American peoples were not created in 1848 (war) or invasion (1519) but rather with the creation of Maíz some 7,000 years ago. He recently completed “Yolqui: A warrior summonsed from the spirit world” (University of Arizona Press, 2019) on violence against the Black-Brown-Indigenous communities of the United States.

In 2013, a major digitized collection was inaugurated by the University Arizona Libraries, based on a class he created: The History of Red-Brown Journalism.

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Public Intellectuals' editor Teka Lo and contributor Jack O'Kent give a preview of our January WEB DuBois "Black Reconstruction." We discuss, race, Reconstruction, Marxism, class struggle, white nationalism, poor whites, and more.

For more information go to our Public Intellectuals.

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Teka Lo and John Kawakami discuss Generation X, politics, race, and more on this episode of Public Intellectuals Radio. 

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Public Intellectuals’ editor Teka Lo in conversation with Debt Collective's Dr. Richelle Brooks.

Dr. Richelle Brooks is the co-founder of the Los Angeles chapter of The Debt Collective, founder of ReTHINK It, an organization dedicated to addressing antiblackness through education and mutual aid, a full-time educator, and a single momma of two children. As a first-generation college graduate, formerly houseless person, and formerly incarcerated individual, she has learned to navigate many of the most oppressive and racist systems and institutions, and has made it her life-work to help others do the same, while simultaneously working to dismantle these systems that perpetuate inequities.

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Public Intellectuals’ editor Teka Lo and contributor Jack O’Kent discuss Lovecraft Country's final episode. Misha Green told us who she was, so we should have known how it was going to end. We're happy, but of course, like any Monday morning quarterback, we have some comments. 

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Public Intellectuals editor Teka Lo and contributor Jack O’Kent discuss Lovecraft Country, Episode 9 “Rewind 1921”

*“Where is your fire? I say where is your fire?

Can't you smell it coming out of our past?

The fire of living...not dying

The fire of loving...not killing

The fire of Blackness...not gangster shadows.

Where is our beautiful fire that gave light

to the world?

The fire of pyramids;

The fire that burned through the holes of

slaveships and made us breathe.”*

Sonia Sanchez

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Public Intellectuals' editor Teka Lo and contributor Jack O’Kent discuss Lovecraft Country, Episode 8 “Jiga-Bobo."  

It is a Cruel Summer. 

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Some of the lowest-paid non-tenured parttime faculty at universities are experiencing hard times. The excuse for cuts currently is COVID-19. In this episode, Public Intellectuals Radio podcast host, Teka Lo speaks with two part-time lecturers in the Rutgers Writing Program and elected union executive board representatives, Howie Swerdloff and Karen Thompson, regarding cuts to the New Brunswick campus.

To support the writing program and other non-tenured faculty in their fight for their jobs at Rutgers, follow them on social media for the next steps:

Twitter: @ruaaup_ptl, Instagram: @ruaaup_ptl, and Facebook: Rutgers PTLFC

Quote from Dr. Holloway senate address obtained from Rutgers Today.

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Public Intellectuals editor Teka Lo talks to Brooklyn resident and activist Dulcie Canton about the election, wrong ballots, and options.

Board of Elections is asking every New Yorker who received the envelopes with the wrong name to contact them via Twitter, email, or 1-866-868-3692.

Also, you can vote early from October 24 to November 1.

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Public Intellectuals editor Teka Lo and freelance writer Jack O'Kent discuss Lovecraft Country, Episode 7  "I am.” 

I Come to you as the myth, because that’s what black people are—myths.-Sun Ra

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Public Intellectuals editor Teka Lo and freelance writer Jack O’Kent discuss the medium essay by Indi Samarajiva “How life goes on, surrounded by death,” dystopian nightmare futures, alternatives to violence, brutal capitalism, and suffering, maybe we don’t have to walk through the desert for 40 years to get to paradise, maybe some dead old white guys are wrong.

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Public Intellectuals' editor Teka Lo speaks with longtime organizer  and bicycle goddess Dulcie Canton of Transportation Alternatives. Canton coordinated the unionization of her nonprofit workplace. We talk to her about why she did it, how she did it, and how you can unionize your workplace too!

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Public Intellectuals editor Teka Lo and freelance writer Jack O'Kent discuss Lovecraft Country, "Episode 6 Meet Me In Daegu." A tale of tails, because some of the same people who are good are also bad.

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Dr. Julian Agyeman on placemaking, a good idea that is often turned into greenlining, what's greenlining, redlining with kale and a tan.