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JUAN COLE has studied Muslim politics and history for 30 years, and now he says Iraq is “in its last throes” as Kurdistan prepares to declare independence and the Sunnis allied with ISIS consolidate their control.

Plus: 50 years ago, Mississippi Freedom Summer brought a thousand mostly white college students to the worst place in America; what happened that summer changed history.   MARSHALL GANZ dropped out of Harvard to go to Mississippi, where he found his “calling” as an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.  Then he spent 16 years organizing alongside Cesar Chavez.  He’s still working on community organizing, and he also teaches at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

Also: Also: A spiritual journey into the Himalayas: PICO IYER talks about Peter Mattheson’s exploration of suffering, impermanence, and beauty in his classic book The Snow Leopard – it’s out now in paperback.

LISTEN online HERE — iTunes podcast HERE
On the 50th anniversary of Mississippi Freedom Summer, we will revisit the project that brought a thousand mostly white students from the North to teach in Freedom Schools and work on voter registration – the summer that began with the murders, 50 years ago on June 21, of  Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.  DAVE DENNIS was there – he was head of CORE in Mississippi in the early 1960s, and he spoke at James Chaney’s funeral.

Plus: TOM HAYDEN on the climax of Mississippi Freedom Summer, when the Freedom Democratic Party challenged the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City in 1964.

And we will look at the movement in Mississippi today: JED OPPENHEIM will talk about the legacy left by Chokwe Lumumba, the radical mayor of Jackson who died in February—his movement was based on people’s assemblies and  “a solidarity economy.”  Jed is the Advocacy coordinary for the ACLU of Mississippi, and serves on the Jackson Public Schools Board, where he was appointed by Mayor Chokwe Lumumba.

LISTEN online HERE — iTunes podcast HERE
TOM FRANK reveals the three-decade scheme to raise tuition, bankrupt generations, and hypnotize the media.  Tom writes for Salon.com.

Plus: RICKY JAY is one of the world’s great sleight-of-hand artists, distinguished by the remarkable variety of his accomplishments as an author, actor, and historian.  In  Jay’s Journal of Anomalies he describes some of his favorite strange entertainments through the ages.

Also: What are your 54 favorite films?  We’ll ask KENNETH TURAN, film critic for the LA Times—his new book is Not to be Missed: 54 Favorites from a Lifetime of Film.  We’ll talk about “Kiss Me Deadly,” “Touch of Evil,” “Vertigo” — and Lars Von Trier’s “Five Obstructions.”

LISTEN online HERE — iTunes podcast HERE
“We kill people based on metadata,” a former head of the NSA told DAVID COLE.   Can the NSA be controlled?  David will comment — he teaches law at Georgetown, he’s legal affairs correspondent for The Nation and writes also for the New York Review.
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Plus: $1 Billion to restore the LA River: LEWIS MacADAMS, founder and president of Friends of the LA River, will explain the historic victory that was announced last week—11 miles of the concrete flood channel of the river will be ripped out, from Griffith Park to downtown.

Also: Maybe you heard: yesterday was primary election day in California. we’ll have our political postmortem with HAROLD MEYERSON of the American Prospect and the Washington Post.

LISTEN online HERE — iTunes podcast HERE
What goes wrong in conversations between men and women: REBECCA SOLNIT explains.  She writes for TomDispatch and Harper’s and the London Review of Books; her new book is Men Explain Things to Me.
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Also: The CIA has done many bad things, but it had one agent who might have brought some justice to the Palestinians: Robert Ames.   KAI BIRD, a Pulitzer-Prize winning author and contributing editor of The Nation,  talks about THE GOOD SPY: The Life and Death of Robert Ames.

Plus: China is the biggest story of the century : why does a government with more success lifting people out of poverty than any other civilization in history operate in such a repressive and dictatorial way?  EVAN OSNOS will explain – he’s been The New Yorker’s China correspondent, and his new book is Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China.

LISTEN online HERE — iTunes podcast HERE
“The most important study of inequality in the last 50 years,” and “the most influential work of economics of the century”: that’s Thomas Piketty’s book CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY.  TIMOTHY SHENK will explain—he wrote the cover story on Piketty in The Nation.  Piketty’s Capital is our featured thank-you gift in the KPFK fund drive—please call and pledge during the show 818-985-5735.

Plus: A secret history of the workplace: the office, and the cubicle, where 60 percent of Americans now work.  NIKIL SAVAL has that story—he’s an editor of n+1, and his new book is CUBED. “The very boringness of the office turns out to be what is most interesting”—Elif Batuman, author of The Possessed.