My guest is the author of a post I read on Substack last May that was so interesting and provocative I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

Sarah Hartman-Caverly is a reference and instruction librarian with Penn State University Libraries. Her academic interests are privacy, intellectual freedom, and human autonomy. She co-moderates the Heterodox Libraries community of Heterodox Academy and contributes to its newsletter, Heterodoxy in the Stacks, which is where I discovered her writing.

As soon as she started talking, I was so taken with her talent as a communicator that I abandoned my list of questions so I could focus on keeping up! The result is not super linear, but it felt to me like two shots in the arm —one for energy and one for courage— which happened to be exactly what I needed right now. Let me know what you think!

Links:

Purple-Haired People Eaters, an essay published 5/29/25 by Sarah Hartman-Caverly

Heterodoxy in the Stacks, a Substack about intellectual freedom, library neutrality, and libraries in democracy

Sarah’s analysis of Q-Anon, Truth Always Wins: Dispatches from the Culture War

Credits:

Theme music by William A. Ferguson

UnMuted logo art by Anne Gibbons

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