For today’s special end-of-year holiday edition, we present some highlights from interviews we’ve hosted this year featuring short segments from our entire lineup, Monday through Friday.

We start the hour with Monday host Patty Peltekos, who earlier this year interviewed tech journalist Kashmir Hill about her research for the award-winning piece “The House that Spied on Me.” She discusses what she learned from two big experiments: first, living with as many smart devices as possible, then cutting herself off entirely from the “big five” of Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple.

Next, we have a clip from Carousel Bayrd’s interview with Alissa Quart, author of the book Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America. It offers an important account of the economic hardship of everyday Americans trying to afford housing, healthcare, and the soaring costs of raising children. 

Continuing the theme of economic justice, Ali Muldrow did a show earlier this year about universal basic income. Her guest was Annie Lowrey, author of the book Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World.

One of our most-listened-to episodes this year was Allen Ruff’s interview with David McNally about zombie capitalism and the world post-2008.

For our last segment, we’re featuring Esty Dinur in conversation with Kelly Lytle Hernández, author of the book City of Inmates about the history of incarceration in Los Angeles. Eight months after we recorded this interview, Kelly Lytle Hernández was awarded a MacArthur “genius grant” for her work.

Thank you for listening and stay tuned in the new year!

Cover image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay