Bedrosian Bookclub Podcast
An audio book club. Our geeks read and discuss new and classic works in the policy field – fictional and non. Social justice, tech, politics, policy … we cover it all and more. Let's think about what is at the heart of being a citizen in America. Sponsored by the USC Bedrosian Center http://bedrosian.usc.edu/ Check out our other podcasts at: http://bedrosian.usc.edu/podcasts/ Recorded at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy http://priceschool.usc.edu
Episodes
This is the last episode of the Bedrosian Bookclub in this incarnation, it's been a blast.
We discuss the importance of The 1619 Project, the book, the project, and it's impact on our political discourse. Why should we pay attention to history, how does the historical narrative of a country affect the way we face the future?
Aubrey Hicks is joined by Yesenia Hunter, LaVonna Lewis, Jen Bravo, and David Sloane in a conversation on th...
Three votes for Carribean Fragoza’s Eat the Mouth that Feeds You to be something every high school senior is exposed to. This debut collection of short stories is genius, this is late 20th early 21st century Southern California. This is Chicanx, this is Latinx, this is SoCal, this is women, this is body horror, magic realism all in 120 pages.
Ten stories about place and placemaking, about community and how we lift each other up, or...
Now, in the tail end of 2021, discourse about restorative justice and public safety lack imagination. We tend to “do what we’ve always done.”
NYU Historian Nicole Eustace brings us the story of the search for justice following the 1722 murder of a Native American man at the hands of two White men. Covered With Night is a detailed history of how the Pennyslvania colony leaders had to learn to restore the peace – or face war – with t...
Ostensibly, House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, is about a young man who finds a manuscript in a dead man’s apartment. This experimental novel, released in 2000, takes a cinematic approach to the novel – creating a novel experience in time and space.
The dead man, Zampano, was an elderly blind man writing an academic critique of The Navidson Record; a documentary about a family moving into a home in Virginia, which happens to b...
In Not a Nation of Immigrants, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz strives to look at the ever morphing population of the United States, to uncover the why and how of the mythology that pervades political discourse on American history.
In part, Dunbar-Ortiz recognizes that the looming problems of climate change, polarization, and authoritarianism cannot be fought ...
A "canceled" influencer. A lonely man looking for attention. White men adrift in hoards, no memory of the violence or good they've done. Enter The Atmosphere, a new retreat where men can detox from social media and learn to become human again. A cult.
This first novel from Alex McElroy is a doozy; capturing the manic craziness of the last decade, the sprint for the next cool thing, the quick turn from darling to pariah, the freneti...
The Brutish Museums by Dan Hicks is a necrography wherein each stolen item from Benin City is an ongoing event: each event a story of colonial violence told and retold through daily viewings by tourists and school children.
It is also a "calling in" for museum curators to work toward a future of restitution; a future of museums free of stolen objects, cultures, and histories.
Host Aubrey Hicks is joined by Jen Bravo, David Sloane, ...
This month we're thinking about history, collections, and stories. How do stories evolve over time, how do stories shape history, how do they make their way through time and space?
Carlos Ruiz Zafón's novel The Shadow of the Wind is one of the best-sellingist books of all time. A story within a story, young Daniel finds a novel, The Shadow of the Wind, in the mysterious Cemetery of Forgotten Books. This simple event begins a lifeti...
The Fact of a Body by *Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich is a true crime memoir. After encountering the child murderer Ricky Langley, Alexandria's desire to work as a lawyer to fight against the death penalty is up-ended. They spend several years investigating Ricky's story as a way to confront the story of their own child abuse. This is a deeply moving book, and a relatively easy read given the morose topic - a testament to the author'...
Polarization is at a high point, political violence surrounds us, joblessness, homelessness, the country's need to face the great wrongs of the past, and the specter of climate change hanging over all of this.
What if ...? What if we imagined a different future?
How can we rethink leadership for a new age? How can we relate to one another amidst cons...
Activists, scientists, most of us ... we know that the truth of the climate crisis is monumental. It's overwhelming the size, scope, interconnectedness of the problem.
All We Can Save asks us to rethink, reimagine, and co-create a possible future. It's easy to imagine the worst ... in this collection of essays and poems, the authors bring a unique clarity along with hope and optimism for solutions.
We might not save everything ... ...
Ostensibly, editor Gary Paul Nabhan's collection of friends' essays, The Nature of Desert Nature is about the desert.
Rather ... it's human nature that we encounter delving into this collection of essays. The writers reminisce on their own beingness as they encountering one specific desert: the Sonoran. The Sonoron is the desert covers vast area in the Southwest United States and Northwest Mexico. Most of the essays focus on Tucson...
Twilight of Democracy is a memoir. It is also a condemnation of the many intellectuals and opportunists who have not only given up on democracy, but given up on truth.
Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize winning author, recalls the last 20 years in Poland, Hungary, the United Kingdom, and briefly, the United States. What drew many of people she thought of as friends, staunch anti-Communist conservatives, toward authoritarianism? This is...
In direct contrast to the myth of the "American Dream," we live in a society in which factors outside of our control determine our fates. From skin color to zip code, only the lucky or exceptionally determined are able to break free of the invisible chains binding them to their caste.
In Isabel Wilkerson's latest book, Caste, the Hindu caste system in India is a mirror to reflect how this invisible stratification continues to lock ...
What does it mean to belong? What does it mean to be an individual, to have an identity? How does one become normal? Who gets to decide what is normal?
In One of Us, Alice Domurat Dreger uses stories of conjoined twins to help readers through questions of identity, othering, and belonging.
Aubrey Hicks is joined by Christine Beckman, Liz Falletta, and Lisa Schweitzer.
We're reading Caste by Isabel Wilkerson and Twilight of Democrac...
"The first time I can remember feeling truly powerless, I was three, and I was trapped sideways in a bucket in the garage."
The first line of Allie Brosh's latest illustrated memoir, Solutions and Other Problems, lets the audience know that we still can know what to expect her to say. Using short illustrated essays, stories of her life, Brosh walks us through a few important experiences. The absurdity, the childlike wonder, the lau...
In our new series on Community Impact we speak with Victoria Ciudad-Real, John Roberson III, Gary Painter, and Jeffery Wallace about findings from their collaborative project Accelerating Fair Chance Hiring among Los Angeles employers.
The project, in which the Price Center partnered with LeadersUp and the State of California Workforce Accelerator Fund, used an employer survey and co-design sessions with Angeleno employers to deter...
Octavia Butler's 1993 novel, Parable of the Sower, was listed as a New York Times bestseller for the first time in September 2020.
Parable is the story of a 15-year-old Black girl with plans to save civilization. Lauren was brought up in a small walled community in Southern California. America is in the middle of a heated election and facing deep ecological crisis, spreading disease, drug epidemics, sky-rocketing homelessness, and ...
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