In today’s episode we're briefly gorgeous, or possibly briefly monstrous. We're pretty sure both are true.

What we are sure of is that Ocean Vuong's magnificent novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is just that; gorgeous and painful, heart fulfilling and heart breaking.

Poet Ocean Vuong's debut novel is ostensibly a letter from the narrator, Little Dog, to his mother, Rose. Our narrator is a young man in his 20s. As a Vietnamese American, Little Dog writes of war, abuse, first love, exploration of language and the struggles of coming of age.

Listen as our host Aubrey Hicks discusses the novel with Liz Falletta, Jeff Jenkins, Stacy Patterson, and David Sloane.

Read along with us! Next month we’re reading Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes by Tamin Ansary.

Join the conversation about each episode on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Or email us at [email protected].

In today’s episode we’re thinking about racism, sexism, misogynoir, and the journalism. We're reading Trailblazer, a memoir by journalist giant Dorothy Butler Gilliam.

Gilliam shattered the barriers of race and gender as the first black female reporter at The Washington Post. She had to transform the way the Post viewed what was worthy of space on the pages, leaving a trail for more journalists to follow.

Listen as Professor Lisa Schweitzer discusses the book with Caroline Bhalla, Brettany Shannon, and Donnajean Ward.

Read along with us! Next month we’re reading Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes by Tamin Ansary.

Join the conversation about each episode on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Or email us at [email protected].

An interview with author of Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works, Rucker C. Johnson. (Follow Rucker on Twitter: @ProfRucker)

Rucker stopped by USC for a conversation with the Gary Painter, Director of the Sol Price Center for Social Innovation. While on campus, Rucker was also gracious enough to spend some time with our Executive Director, Aubrey Hicks. The conversation covers the goals behind the book and the hopeful idea that we can provide good education for our children given what we've learned in the 65 years since the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Read along with us! For December, we’re reading Trailblazer by Dorothy Butler Gilliam and in January we're reading On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong.

Join the conversation about each episode on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Or email us at [email protected].

In today’s episode we’re thinking about the patriarchy, and Mona Eltahawy’s tools for women and girls. Tools to take down the premise by which prevents so many women from living full human lives. The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls is a memoir, a manifesto, and a toolkit for women to retrain themselves to take up space in the world. To live fully, and without guilt for that humanness. 

Listen as Professor Nicole Esparza, Marisa Turesky, and Aubrey Hicks delve into the book.

@nicolephd, @AubreyHi, @mturesky, @BedrosianCenter

Read along with us! Next month we're reading Trailblazer by Dorothy Butler Gilliam.

Join the conversation about each episode on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Or email us at [email protected].

For today's episode, we're thinking about the many books we've discussed over the years.

After 70+ book discussions, we thought it was about time we did a look back at our favorite discussions, the surprises, the let downs, and what we hope for the future.

@drschweitzer, @AubreyHi, @BedrosianCenter

Read along with us! Next month we're reading The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahaay.

Join the conversation about each episode on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Or email us at [email protected].

Host Lisa Schweitzer is joined by Aubrey L. Hicks, Susan Lindau, and Joan Miller to discuss Victor LaValle's The Devil in Silver.

Pepper is a big man. He's accused of a crime that he doesn't see himself in. He's dropped suddenly, into a budget-strapped mental institution in Queens, New York called New Hyde. He's not mentally ill, but that doesn't seem to matter - the police don't want to work unpaid overtime to process him and the hospital machine doesn't want to refuse.

72 hours turns into a month and then more. In the darkness of his room, he's visited by a terrifying creature with the body of an old man and the head of a bison who nearly kills him before being hustled away by the hospital staff. It isn't a delusion. The other patients confirm that a hungry devil roams the hallways when the sun goes down. Pepper makes friends with three other inmates and plans to fight back: Dorry, an elderly schizophrenic who's been on the ward for decades; Coffee (Kofi), an African immigrant with severe OCD; and Loochie, a bipolar teenage girl.

What's real? Who is the very real monster and how do we fight it? How do we treat people unwanted by mainstream society? How do we know if we are experiencing reality?

Read along with us! Next month we're reading The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahaay.

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Another bonus episode!

Host Lisa discusses Professor Liz Falletta's book, By-Right, By-Design: Housing Development Versus Housing Design in Los Angeles. Falletta looks to help practitioners move beyond housing production as a zero sum game towards the more polyvalent solutions that will be required as LA densifies.

Read along with us! We're reading Victor LaValle's The Devil in Silver for Spooktober.

Let us know what you think of the book & our podcasts on Facebook or Twitter.

Join the conversation about each episode on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Or email us at [email protected].

The Undercommons is a series of essays exploring contemporary political thought from an inside/outside the commons perspective. Our guest today contends that under all the theory, the book is about friendship and the many ways in which friendship and conversation can be study. That study is love.

Exploring issues of race, politics, the university, study, poetry, and ultimately ... friendship. Listen as two friends explore the book and what it means to be against and for the university.

Featuring Aubrey Hicks and Chris Finley.

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You've heard that gerrymandering can be bad for representation.

Jonathan A. Rodden wants to take you further back in time to the beginnings of what has become a problem of representation, to the time that the Democrats were aligning with labor and Republicans were moving further from urban spaces. Today in certain states, the historic shift still reveals itself in geographic voting, leading to a mismatch between vote share and seat share.

Host Lisa Schweitzer discusses Why Cities Lose by Jonthan Rodden with Nicolas Duquette, Jeffery A. Jenkins, and Pamela Clouser McCann.

Does the book discover the "deep roots of the urban-rural political divide?" Is this a problem we can fix?

Today's book: The Line Becomes a River by Francisco Cantú.

The southern border between Mexico and the U.S. can be a violent place. Yet isn't as easily defined as it seems.There are places where the border is permeable, invisible. The border is a construct, and the racialized rhetoric of The Border combined with two decades of militarization have wreaked havoc on the people and the land.

Cantú becomes a border patrol agent to understand the realities on the ground ... but the complicity he feels drives him away. Can he escape the border, or does that mirage move with him?

Host Lisa Schweitzer is joined by Juan De Lara, Jaime Lopez, and Aubrey Hicks for a far ranging discussion of borders, metaphors, and life in between.

Join the conversation about each episode on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Or email us at [email protected].