Tag Archives: writing

Howard French THE SECOND EMANCIPATION: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide

Joining us once again is journalist, author and professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Howard French. He has been a decades long New York Times reporter, serving as its bureau chief for the Caribbean and Central America from 1990 to 1994, covering Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and other countries. He was one of the Times’ first black foreign correspondents, and from 1994 to 1998 he covered West and Central Africa, reporting on wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Central Africa, with particular attention to the fall of the longtime dictator of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko. From 1998 to 2008 he served as the Times bureau chief for Japan, Korea and Shanghai, from which experiences he wrote Everything Under the Heavens: How China’s Past Helps Shape its Push for Global Power; and China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa.

His latest book, THE SECOND EMANCIPATION: NKRUMAH, PAN-AFRICANISM, AND GLOBAL BLACKNESS AT HIGH TIDE, is being released on August 26, 2025 by Liveright. The link to our earlier interview when his book, BORN IN BLACKNESS: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War, was published is below.

His very well documented books are packed full of information and insights rarely seen outside the academic world. Best of all, his writing style is lucid, fluid and a pleasure to read.

We spoke with Howard French via FaceTime on August 19, 2025.

Links to articles, etc. pertinent to this interview:

The Man Who Saw the Future of Africa https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/opinion/africa-future-kwame-nkrumah.html

Mali’s junta arrests generals and French national over alleged coup plot https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/15/mali-junta-arrests-generals-and-french-national-over-suspected-coup-plot

Howard French BORN IN BLACKNESS: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War https://forthright.media/2022/12/22/howard-french-born-in-blackness-africa-africans-and-the-making-of-the-modern-world-1471-to-the-second-world-war/

Stuart Reid THE LUMUMBA PLOT: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination https://forthright.media/2023/12/08/stuart-reid-the-lumumba-plot-the-secret-history-of-the-cia-and-a-cold-war-assassination/

Adam Shatz THE REBEL’S CLINIC: THE REVOLUTIONARY LIVES OF FRANTZ FANON https://forthright.media/2024/03/12/adam-shatz-the-rebels-clinic-the-revolutionary-lives-of-frantz-fanon/

Birth of Ghana Lord Kitchener https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=057BmLQ9MfU&list=RD057BmLQ9MfU&start_radio=1

E.T. Mensah-Ghana Freedom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sivj_40ZaHc&list=RDSivj_40ZaHc&start_radio=1

Why Trump’s ‘anti-woke’ attack on the Smithsonian matters https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/27/why-trumps-attack-on-the-smithsonian-matters

The Guardian view on Africa and maps: drawn true, its scale and promise can’t be ignored https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/22/the-guardian-view-on-africa-and-maps-drawn-true-its-scale-and-promise-cant-be-ignored

Equal Earth • Political Wall Map https://equal-earth.com/equal-earth-projection.html

Arlie Russell Hochschild STOLEN PRIDE: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right

Arlie Russell Hochschild is University of California Berkeley Professor Emerita of Sociology. She is the author of many groundbreaking books, including THE SECOND SHIFT, WORKING FAMILIES AND THE REVOLUTION AT HOME; THE TIME BIND, WHEN WORK BECOMES HOME AND HOME BECOMES WORK; and her best selling book, STRANGERS IN THEIR OWN LAND, ANGER AND MOURNING ON THE AMERICAN RIGHT, was a National Book Award finalist. In addition to her many honorary degrees from Harvard, and European universities, She also received the Ulysses medal from University College, Dublin, and the Helmholtz Medal from the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. And if that weren’t enough, she was inducted into the California Hall of Fame in 2022.

Her most recent book is STOLEN PRIDE: LOSS, SHAME, AND THE RISE OF THE RIGHT, published by The New Press in September, 2024. In it she explores the question, what happens when a proud people in a hard-hit region suffers the deep loss of pride and are confronted with a powerful political appeal that makes it feel “stolen?” Dr. Hochschild, prompted by CA Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna, who was working with KY-5th District Republican Congressman, Hal Rodgers, went to Pikeville in the heart of Appalachia in his district, which is the whitest and second poorest in the United States. 30 years ago, it was in the political center, but in 2016 and 2020, Trump received 80% of the district’s vote.

26 year old Neo-Nazi, Matthew Heimbach, sought a permit for a white supremacist march to be held there on April 30, 2017. It turned out to be a trial run for the August Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, for which he was a core organizer. He is just one of the people she interviewed and followed, and whose character actually evolved in surprising ways. We spoke with Arlie Russell Hochschild from her home in Berkeley, CA via Skype on October 22, 2024.

In honoring the passing of Fernando Valenzuela, hero for Dodgers and Mexican baseball fans, who died on October 22, at age of 63, and whose team, the LA Dodgers face the New York Yankees in the first game of the World Series that evening, we ended this edition with beloved poet/publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s ode to Latino baseball, “Baseball Canto.”

Zoë Schlanger THE LIGHT EATERS: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth

Zoë Schlanger is an award winning environmental journalist and reporter with The Atlantic. Her book, THE LIGHT EATERS: HOW THE UNSEEN WORLD OF PLANT INTELLIGENCE OFFERS A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF LIFE ON EARTH, was published in May 2024 by Harper.

We are at a revolutionary moment in the field of botany, a veritable paradigm shift for those who pay attention to such things, and Zoë Schlanger chronicles the remapping of scientific frontiers, as one assumption after another is being proven not only to be false, but ignorant and arrogant. Along with the scientists she interviews, she explores questions such as do plants communicate with each other and even other species? Can they recognize and favor their own kin? Can they respond to visual and aural stimuli, store memories and learn? Are they conscious and intelligent? How is any of this possible lacking a brain? We asked about these and other questions when we spoke with her via Skype on June 24, 2024.

Articles pertinent to this interview:

‘Tiny Crime Fighters With Wings’: Bees Go to Work on a Virginia ‘Body Farm’ https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/21/science/body-donation-farm-virginia-death-scent.html

Scientists Find the Largest Known Genome Inside a Small Plant https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/31/science/largest-genome-fern-plant.html

Are animals conscious? How new research is changing minds https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cv223z15mpmo

Videos Show Ants Amputating Nest Mates’ Legs to Save Their Lives https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/science/ants-amputation-legs.html

A New Book About Plant Intelligence Highlights the Messiness of Scientific Change https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/a-new-book-about-plant-intelligence-highlights-the-messiness-of-scientific-change?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_Free_061224&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&utm_term=tny_daily_digest&bxid=63b1f92250183f0ae10c0ba9&cndid=72363063&hasha=84d21cdfe18d0cd11a658c9d53f6399e&hashb=06e188f77cae68a6da1a2a975a274177f3b8a307&hashc=00628266d9531298e9eb7ccaabcc24f623d796b2c5e9e46cfbdc3eb12203466e&esrc=&mbid=CRMNYR012019

When They Hear Plants Crying, Moths Make a Decision https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/science/moths-hearing-plant-sounds.html

Keith McCafferty

Part 1:

Part 2:

On July 18, 2017, award winning mystery and Field & Stream writer, Keith McCafferty, gave a lengthy interview, which is divided into two parts here, exploring the often lonely life of a writer – writing novels vs. magazine articles – as well as the ideas for his popular Sean Stranahan mystery series, the latest of which is COLD HEARTED RIVER.

Once again, Madison County, Montana Sheriff, Martha Ettinger, has a string of perplexing deaths – likely homicides – requiring her to pressure artist, and sometime investigator, Sean Stranahan to reluctantly get involved. This time with the added mystery of a trunk once lost or stolen from Ernest Hemingway seeming to be at the center of the deaths.

We began the interview with the psychological impacts of writing novels vs. Field & Stream articles, and his early years in Appalachian Ohio.