RL Stephens is an organizer in Chicago, founding editor of Orchestrated Pulse, and the A. Philip Randolph Fellow at Jacobin. His essay The Birthmark of Damnation: Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Black Body was published in May at Viewpoint Magazine and is the topic for this week’s Zero Books podcast.

It’s Wednesday, July 5th, 2017 and I’m Douglas Lain the publisher of Zero Books and the host of this podcast.

I want to remind you that Angela Nagle’s book and Joanna Demer’s book Anatomy of Thought-Fiction are both available through Amazon and other online vendors and encourage you to ask your favorite bookstore or library to carry Zero Books titles. Set some 200 years in the future, Demer’s Anatomy of Thought-Fiction treats a critique of the present, namely Demer’s own arguments about the connection between popular music, the collapse of liberal arts universities, and the current turn to the right as the McGuffin for a kind of meta science fiction.

If you enjoy this podcast consider joining the Zero Books Club. Zero Books Club members receive access to a Saturday podcast entitled Inside Zero Books which sometimes features the second half of conversations with Zero Squared guests and sometimes features conversations with Zero Books readers about the state of the left. Zero Books Club members are also invited to participate in youtube workshops with Zero Books authors and others.