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.

LISTEN online HERE— iTunes podcastHERE
SANDA TSING LOH talks about her “year of raging hormones”–and about middle-aged women, America’s largest demographic group.  She’s an award-winning author, a contributing editor of The Atlantic, and host of “The Loh Down on Science,” heard on the radio weekly by four million people. Her new book is The Madwoman in the Volvo.  Sandra will be reading and signing Thurs May 1 in Pasadena, ticket info HERE.

Also: LA’s sky-high rents – and what to do about them:  HAROLD MEYERSON has some ideas.  Harold writes a column for the Washington Post op-ed page, he’s editor-at-large for The American Prospect, and he wrote about rents in LA for the LA Times.

Plus: PETER VAN BUREN is the State Department whistleblower who wrote We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People.  After the State Dept. fired him, he got the only job he could find as an ex-whistleblower.  We’ll talk to him about “Life in the New American Minimum-Wage Economy” – he wrote about it for TomDispatch.com.

LISTEN online HERE— iTunes podcast HERE
Hipsters, jazzmen, underground poets, artists in garrets – Bohemians all, and they are the subject of a wonderful new graphic book by PAUL BUHLE and an all-star cast of comic artists: Bohemians.
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Also: OLIVER SACKS, the legendary neurologist and New Yorker writer, on tripping in Topanga in the ’60s–his book Hallucinations is out now in paperback.
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Plus: black musical anthems – songs of solidarity and citizenship, from “Lift Every Voice” to “Young, Gifted and Black.”  We’ll listen to some music–including Kim Weston, Paul Robeson and Nina Simone–and talk about it with SHANA REDMOND —she teaches American studies at USC, and her new book is Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora.

LISTEN online HERE— iTunes podcast HERE
The sad and gripping facts of our moment on earth: how climate change is bringing the most devastating loss of species diversity since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.  ELIZABETH KOLBERT of The New Yorker has the facts; her new book is THE SIXTH EXTINCTION.
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Also: the man who discovered global warming: actor/activist MIKE FARRELL will explain.  He’ll star in  “Dr. Keeling’s Curve”,  at Cal Tech on Earth Day,  Apr 22 at 8pm.  Ticket info HERE.
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Plus: Life and death in a storm-ravaged hospital in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina: SHERI FINK of the New York Times tells that harrowing story in her book FIVE DAYS AT MEMORIAL.  She won the NBCC Nonfiction prize, the LA Times Current Interest prize, and the Ridenhour Prize awarded by The Nation Institute.