Russell Rowland is a Montana author, journalist, pod caster and radio personality. His radio program, 56 Counties, broadcasts on Yellowstone Public Radio. That’s also the title of one of his non-fiction books. His novels include In Open Spaces, The Watershed Years, High and Inside, Arbuckle, and Cold Country.
His latest book is a memoir, BE A MAN: RAISED IN THE SHADOW OF COWBOYS. In it he reflects on what it means to grow up in the West from boyhood to manhood, how he came to be a writer, and why he chose to return to his roots here in Montana after so many years away.
We spoke with him in our Beyond the Deep End studio on June 6, 2025.
Vali Nasr is the Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. His books include THE DISPENSABLE NATION: AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN RETREAT; THE SHIA REVIVAL: HOW CONFLICTS WITHIN ISLAM WILL SHAPE THE FUTURE, and (with Ali Gheissari) DEMOCRACY IN IRAN: HISTORY AND THE QUEST FOR LIBERTY.
His latest book, IRAN’S GRAND STRATEGY: A POLITICAL HISTORY, which was published by Princeton University Press in late May, 2025. We spoke with Professor Nasr from Brussels, Belgium via FaceTime .
We spoke with Professor Vali Nasr on Monday, June 9th, 2025. On Thursday, June 12, The International Atomic Energy Agency declared that Iran was not complying with its nuclear nonproliferation obligations, the first time the UN watchdog has passed a resolution against the country in 20 years. A few hours later, Israel launched what Defense Minister Israel Katz called “preemptive strikes” simultaneously in many places Iran, hitting both civilian and military targets. One remembers Supreme Leaders Khamenei’s skepticism of the value of diplomacy, when this happens as the talks in Vienna were happening.
Then, on June 21, 2025 the US military under orders of Donald Trump executed a night time bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites at Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz.
Yale University History Professor and Prize winning author, Greg Grandin, has published widely on US Foreign Policy, the Cold War, and Latin American politics in the Nation, New York Times, Harpers and the London Review of Books.
His books include: THE EMPIRE OF NECESSITY: SLAVERY, FREEDOM AND DECEPTION IN THE NEW WORLD; EMPIRE’S WORKSHOP: LATIN AMERICA, THE UNITED STATES, AND THE MAKING OF AN IMPERIAL REPUBLIC; FORDLANDIA: THE RISE AND FALL OF HENRY FORD’S FORGOTTEN JUNGLE CITY; THE END OF THE MYTH: FROM THE FRONTIER TO THE BORDER WALL IN THE MIND OF AMERICA, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
His latest book is AMERICA, AMÉRICA: A NEW HISTORY OF THE NEW WORLD, published by Penguin Press. We spoke with him on May 20, 2025.
University of Michigan Law Professor, Leah Litman teaches and writes on constitutional law, federal courts, and federal post-conviction review. Her research examines unidentified and implicit values that are used to structure the legal system, the federal courts, and the legal profession. With her fellow law professors, Kate Shaw and Melissa Murray, she co-hosts the popular podcast, Strict Scrutiny, providing in-depth and irreverent analysis of the Supreme Court – its cases, culture, and personalities.
Her book, LAWLESS: HOW THE SUPREME COURT RUNS ON CONSERVATIVE GRIEVANCE, FRINGE THEORIES, AND BAD VIBES, is published by Atria/One Signal Publishers. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse wrote this: “Lawless is a lively narration of how big special interests captured the Supreme Court and redeployed it to deliver on the least popular policy planks of the Republican Party. Litman ably documents the Court’s devolution, as it was yoked into service to a political party and a billionaire class.” We spoke with her on May 6, 2025.
Paul Pierson is the UC Berkeley John Gross Endowed Chair of Political Science. He was our guest in 2022 to comment on the midterm election and in 2020 when his book, co-authored with Jacob Hacker, LET THEM EAT TWEETS: HOW THE RIGHT RULES IN AN AGE OF EXTREME INEQUALITY, was published. They also collaborated on the books, WINNER TAKE ALL POLITICS; and AMERICAN AMNESIA: HOW THE WAR ON GOVERNMENT LED US TO FORGET WHAT MADE AMERICA PROSPER.
We were curious to learn what he was thinking of the first 90 days of the second Trump administration. We spoke with him first via Skype on April 21st, and when Skype refused to function half way through, he graciously agreed to another interview via FaceTime on April 22nd.
Susanne Mueller Redwood is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Montana State University. Her research focuses on the international dimensions of authoritarianism. She investigates the role that economic cooperation plays in the survival and breakdown of authoritarian regimes. Her work has analyzed the role of trade, central banking, and currency politics under dictatorship, and has been published in different outlets, including the Review of International Political Economy and Cambridge University Press.
The broadcast of this Forthright Radio program ended with an interview by The Kyiv Independent’s Chris York with U.S. historian and author, Marci Shore, who had announced that she — along with her husband, historian Timothy Snyder, and colleague Jason Stanley — would be leaving their posts at Yale University and moving to Canada to teach at the University of Toronto. It ended with John Lithgow‘s reading of Timothy Snyder‘s 20 Lessons on Tyranny. Due to copyright issues, we do not include them in this recording, however they can be accessed here:
Returning in our first segment, is Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in critical pedagogy and Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest at McMaster University, Henry Giroux.
In our second segment is Michael Klare, who is a Five Colleges professor emeritus of Peace and World Security Studies, whose department is located at Hampshire College. He is currently the secretary for the Arms Control Association board of directors, and a senior visiting fellow working on emerging technologies—such as lethal autonomous weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles—and how arms control strategies can mitigate their adverse impacts.
We spoke with Henry Giroux on March 24, 2025 from his home in Hamilton, Ontario, and Michael Klare on March 25th from his in Washington, D.C. Our conversation with Michael Klare begins at 25:05.
What a week! When we interviewed Michael Klare, the news of the Signal Group Chat had just broken. Since then, more has come to light. We were able to report that against the wishes of the government of Greenland, Usha Vance, Michael Waltz (he of the inclusion of the Atlantic’s Editor in Chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, in the infamous group chat) and Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, would be coming, whether Greenland wanted them to or not. Then, Vice President JD Vance announced he didn’t want “Usha to have all the fun,” so he would be coming, too. Then, the Prime Minister of Denmark condemned Trump’s escalated rhetoric. Now, The visit by the Americans is to be limited to the US Military Base in Northern Greenland. That’s as of the afternoon of March 27th. Who knows what will have happened by airtime on March 28th? Word has it that Greenlanders have created red MAGA caps – Make America Go Away.
We ended the program with the news from the talented Marsh Family, who turn current events into parodic art. They are a British mom, dad, 2 brothers and 2 sisters. We shared “You Were Not Supposed to Message It Through”and “I Put Up Tariffs.” Although we were not able to include them in the audio, due to copyright/royalty issues, the links to them are included below.
Articles and videos pertinent to this edition of Forthright Radio:
This edition of Forthright Radio is in two segments. In the first part, award-winning author, Lydia Reeder, discusses her latest book, THE CURE FOR WOMEN: DR. MARY PUTNAM JACOBI AND THE CHALLENGE TO VICTORIAN MEDICINE THAT CHANGED WOMEN’S LIVES FOREVER, published by St. Martin’s Press. It explores the pseudoscience that ties women’s health issues to their reproductive biology, and highlights the women doctors, scientists and suffragists, particularly Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, who fought back against these attempts to control women’s bodies and lives. At the end of her book, she quotes Ely Van De Warker, who wrote, “A woman’s ovaries belong to the Commonwealth; she is merely their custodian.”
We spoke with Lydia Reeder via Skype on March 7th, 2025.
Mary Putnam Kennedy
Then, in our second segment, we speak with Pagan Kennedy about her latest book, THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE RAPE KIT: A TRUE CRIME STORY. Our interview with Pagan begins at 25:50.
Dana Frank, Professor Emerita of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is a longtime historian of labor, women, and social movements in the US and beyond. For many years she has worked on human rights and US policy in Honduras. She has been an expert witness testifying in the US Congress, The House of Commons in The Canadian Parliament, as well as the CA Legislature.
Among her seven books are Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism; The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup; and, with Robin D.G. Kelly and Howard Zinn, Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls and the Fighting Spirit of Labor’s Last Century.
Her work has been published in diverse outlets ranging from the New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, to Labor Notes, The Nation, The Baffler, The Jacobin, The Progressive, to Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, to mention just a few, as well as in many scholarly publications.
Her latest book is WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THE GREAT DEPRESSION? STORIES OF ORDINARY PEOPLE & COLLECTIVE ACTION IN HARD TIMES, published by Beacon Press.
We spoke with her on February 24, 2025, the third anniversary of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, via Skype from her home in Santa Cruz, CA.
Cory Doctorow is a multiple awards winning author, blogger, critic and activist. He has co-founded an open software company, been the European Affairs Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and he helped establish their Open Rights Group. When he left the blog site, Boing Boing after 19 years of co-ownership, MetaFilter called it “the equivalent of the Beatles breaking up for the blog world.” He metablogs currently at pluralistic.net. Cory Doctorow popularized the term “metacrap” and created the neologism, “enshitification,” which the FCC does not allow us to use on the air, which we replaced with “enpoopification,” defined as “the process of degradation of an online environment caused by greed.” He is a prolific author in many genres, fiction and nonfiction. His nonfiction books include: THE INTERNET CON: HOW TO SEIZE THE MEANS OF COMPUTATON; CHOKEPOINT CAPITALISM: HOW BIG TECH AND BIG CONTENT CAPTURED CREATIVE LABOR MARKETS AND HOW WE’LL WIN THEM BACK (written with Rebecca Giblin); and HOW TO DESTROY SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM.
His most recent fiction books include THE LOST CAUSE, A NOVEL OF TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION IN OUR POLARIZED FUTURE, which has been described as “A solarpunk, hopepunk novel of the climate emergency, endorsed by Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, Rebecca Solnit and Kim Stanley Robinson.” The first of his Martin Hench books, RED TEAM BLUES, which actually features Mendocino County in a small but crucial role, was published in 2023. This was followed by Bezzle, and the third book, which will be published on February 18, 2025, PICKS AND SHOVELS. We spoke with him about it via Skype on February 11, 2025.
Wired Portrait of Cody Doctorow above by Julia Galdo and Cody Cloud (JUCO) 5
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