LISTEN online HERE — iTunes podcast HERE
“Peace may be the biggest threat to Hamas and to Israel’s leaders”: That’s what AMY WILENTZ says, she was The New Yorker’s Jerusalem correspondent, and is author of several award-winning books, including Martyrs’ Crossing, a novel set in Israel and the West Bank.  She’s written for the New York Times, Reuters and The Nation, and she teaches literary journalism at UC Irvine.

Plus: Remembering CHUCK BOWDEN: a fearless reporter and a fantastic writer who he died August 30 at age 69.   He saw before anyone else how Mexico’s drug war was coming to the borderlands, and he called America’s war on drugs “A wheel of pain that just keeps rolling.”  We spoke with him in February, 2003, just after he published Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder, Family.
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 Also: LAILA LALAMI has written an amazing novel, The Moor’s Account, a fictional memoir of the first black explorer of America—a Moroccan slave who arrived with a group of conquistadores in Florida in 1527. Laila was born and raised in Morocco and teaches creative writing at UC Riverside; her work has has won many awards and been translated into ten languages.
She will be speaking tonight/Wed at 7:30 at Skylight Books, 1818 N Vermont in LA.

LISTEN online HERE — iTunes podcast HERE
How the Supreme Court Protects Bad Cops: ERWIN CHEMERINSKY says the Court has created “often insurmountable obstacles” to justice for victims of police abuse. Erwin is founding dean of the law school at UC Irvine and wrote about bad cops for the New York Times op-ed page.

Also: despite the suffering and misery in Gaza, Syria, Egypt and elsewhere in the Mideast, JUAN COLE says, a new generation of Arab men and women are using innovative notions of personal rights to challenge the authoritarianism, corruption, and stagnation that had afflicted their societies. Juan’s new book, The New Arabs, offers a provocative and optimistic argument about the future of the Arab world.
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Plus: How the black community of Ferguson, Missouri have shed their fear and asserted their humanity in ways big and small, beautiful and ugly: GARY YOUNGE was an eyewitness. He writes for The Guardian and The Nation—and he will be talking about his book The Speech: The Story Behind Dr Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream at Esowon Books on Sept 9, next Tues, at 7pm –4327 Degnan Boulevard in Liemert Park.

LISTEN online HERE — iTunes podcast HERE
HAROLD MEYERSON says we need to do more than help low-wage workers – we need to “go after the one percent.”  Harold writes for the Washington Post op-ed page: HERE and HERE.

Plus: The surprising history of women’s movements – and what’s wrong with telling women to “Lean In” and be more confident: historian LINDA GORDON will explain.  Her new book is Feminism Unfinished—and she wrote about “The problem with ‘Lean In’” for the Huffington Post, HERE.

Also: RICHARD PRICE talks about Lush Life, his novel about contending social groups on the Lower East Side today—and the cops who police them.

LISTEN online HERE — iTunes podcast HERE
The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan: RICK PERLSTEIN has just written a dazzling new history of the seventies —  it’s “nonfiction with the sweep of an epic novel” (Stephen King).  Rick writes for The Nation, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and other mags — his new book is The Invisible Bridge.

Plus: This month is the 100th anniversary of the start of WWI--we’ll speak with historian ADAM HOCHSCHILD about his award-winning book To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918.  It’s about anti-war activists in Britain in WWI–they defied their governments, and their families, to say the war was wrong.  Adam is an award-winning writer and co-found of Mother Jones.  His book is out now in paperback.

Also: TOM HAYDEN talks about alternatives to the “long war” in Iraq that Hillary Clinton, and increasingly Barack Obama, have been advocating.  Tom writes for The Nation and other publications and heads The Democracy Project — info HERE.

LISTEN online HERE — iTunes podcast HERE
The folly of continuing the American war in Iraq: JOHN NICHOLS says Obama’s new bombing campaign there raises the very real danger of “US mission creep in Iraq and escalation into a larger conflict”  – when even Obama admits that “there’s no American military solution to the larger crisis in Iraq.”  John is Washington correspondent for The Nation.

LISTEN online HERE — iTunes podcast HERE
Today we feature one of Edward Snowden’s lawyers – JAMEEL JAFFER, he  heads the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, which houses the organization’s work on national security, free speech, privacy, human rights, and technology. He went to court to challenge the Patriot Act’s “national security letter” provision, the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, and the National Security Agency’s call-tracking program.  He’s the guy who won the release of the Bush administration’s “torture memos.”

Also: SUE HALPERN talks about Glenn Greenwald and his critics–she’s a regular contributor to The New York Review and editor of NYRB Lit–and she’s a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury.  She wrote about Greenwal’d book “No Place to Hide” for the New York Review: HERE.

LISTEN online HERE — iTunes podcast HERE
CHARLES COBB was a SNCC Field Secretary in Mississippi during Freedom Summer in 1964 – he’s also been a visiting professor at Brown University, and his reporting has won many awards.  His new book is This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns made the Civil Rights Movement Possible.

 Plus: The wonderful novelist JONATHAN LETHEM talks about Communists in Queens in the 1950s, Hippies in the Village the 1960s, and the Occupiers of two years ago – all in his novel Dissident Gardens—it’s out now in paperback.

Also: CHARLIE LEDUFF had a dream job as a reporter for the New York Times in LA—but he quit in 2007 to return to his home town of Detroit and work for the local paper there reporting on what was happening to that city.  His book is Detroit: An American Autopsy.

for the record: the 7/9 show on KPFK was preempted for “The People’s Game,” KPFK’s special World Cup coverage.

LISTEN online HERE — iTunes podcast HERE
The Supremes and the Hobby Lobby ruling on the “religious freedom” of  corporations: we’ll have comment from LAURENCE TRIBE, he’s taught constitutional law at Harvard for 40 years, and he argued Bush v. Gore at the Supreme Court.  His new book is UNCERTAIN JUSTICE: The Roberts Court and the Constitution.

Plus: Gay marriage is legal in more states every day.  Does that mean the LGBT equality movement is almost over?  REBECCA ISAACS says marriage equality “will not make our streets and our communities safe and free from violence. It will not make our military, our prisons, our immigration system, or our healthcare inclusive and just.”  Rebecca is executive director of the Equality Federation and writes for The Advocate.
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Also: LALO ALCARAZ is an artist, writer, and author of the comic La Cucaracha, the first nationally syndicated, politically themed Latino daily comic strip: now Lalo has a new book out—his third: A Most Imperfect Union, a “contrarian history of the US,” co-authored by Ilan Stavans.  Lalo also hosts KPFK’s “Pocho Hour of Power.”