On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses with Emily Allen-Hornblower and Marquis McCray the power of the classics, such as Sophocles’ play Philoctetes, to elucidate mass incarceration.

Emily Allen-Hornblower is a professor of Classics at Rutgers University and is the recipient of a Whiting Foundation grant to foster dialogues about the classics with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men and women.

Marquis McCray is a social justice advocate. He spent 28 years in prison, during which time he studied the classics through the prison college program offered by Rutgers University.