In his book Should We Go Extinct Todd May takes an objective look at what we add to the community of life on the planet and what we destroy. This isn’t a call to end humanity as much as it’s a call to be better humans and citizens of Earth.

Raising girls has never been easy but in the age of social media it’s even harder. According to a 2024 study by the CDC over half of teen girls feel “persistently sad or hopeless.” 

In this episode of The Progressive Page Turner I talk with Jo-Ann Finkelstein about her book Sexism & Sensibility. She has over twenty years experience helping girls face toxic messages about beauty, sex and femininity and offers advice for parents trying to raise confident girls in a culture that often demeans them.  

The abortion ban in Texas included a bounty hunter clause that would allow vigilantes to enforce the law. This is the sort of alliance between private citizens and the state that allowed the reign of terror by the KKK to flourish. But blue states are not entirely without weapons in this war for the soul of the nation. In this episode I talk with David Noll, author of Vigilante Nation.

Billions of people all over the world use apps and websites. We have an unprecedented amount of information at our fingertips but it’s also allowed detailed dossiers to be collected on all of us. While most of the collected data is used for advertising there’s also the possibility of data being used for law enforcement and economic discrimination. In this episode of the Progressive Page Turner I talk to Tom Kemp, author of Containing Big Tech about who’s collecting our data, what they’re doing with it and how you can prevent surveillance. 

Social Media has become a battleground for psychological warfare. In this episode I talk with Annalee Newitz about how propaganda worked in the past and how both domestic and foreign agents are targeting voters in the US. 

In his book Psychedelics and the Coming Singularity David Jay Brown interviews people who look at the world in some very non-traditional ways. I talked to him about how we experience the world and why psychedelics like DMT might be the door to a new understanding of our minds and consciousness.

Robert Jensen is an emeritus professor in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin.  he taught graduate and undergraduate courses in media law, ethics, and politics. His latest book, It’s Debatable, defines his political and ethical positions and how he arrived at them. 

Do children need to be protected from their parent’s on-line activity? That’s the question at the heart of Erin Qiuinn-Kong’s debut novel Hate Follow. The story is fiction but the issues about child privacy and modern parenting are very real. 

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist who is not ready to give up on the future. Her book What if we got it right? Visions for the Future is filled with conversations, poetry and essays about the kind of world we could create. A world where we can all flourish.

In her book Rooted Brea Baker looks at how land theft from black and indigenous people has shaped not only the economic landscape but also the natural environment. Baker makes a case for reparations based on documented cases where stolen land robbed not only the historical people involved but also robbed their descendants of generational wealth.