This episode of Across The Margin : The Podcast features an interview with Leah C. Stokes, the Anton Vonk Associate Professor of Environmental Politics at the University of California. She researches Climate Change, renewable energy, and public opinion. In 2022 she was named to TIME100 Next and to Business Insider’s top 30 global leaders working toward Climate solutions. Her first book, Short Circuiting Policy, was named the Best Energy Book of 2020 by the American Energy Society, listed among The New York Times’ top five climate books of the year, and won three awards from the American Political Science Association. Her latest book — The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race To Protect Our Planet — is the focus of this episode. They were perhaps an unlikely trio: the professor Leah Stokes, the policy wonk Sonia Aggarwal in the White House, and the DC insider Adrian Deveny in the Senate, but together, they crafted the boldest climate legislation of our time, the Inflation Reduction Act. The Carbon Wave chronicles the turbulent path of their climate bill as it veered between breakthrough and collapse — from the hopeful beginnings of the Green New Deal in 2018, to the bill’s near-certain defeat by Senator Joe Manchin in the winter of 2021, to the surprise passage of the landmark legislation in August 2022. Interlacing personal narratives with stories from Congress, the White House, and outside activists, Leah shows how dogged perseverance and collective action can still bend the course of history. The book concludes with an update from the second Trump administration, explaining the parts of the bill that were — and were not — rolled back, and why we should remain hopeful that progress is still being made.

Grab a copy of The Carbon Wave here!

Listen to Leah C. Stoke’s podcast, A Matter of Degrees, here!

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This episode of Across The Margin : The Podcast features an interview with Yael Bridge, an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker. Her first feature, The Big Scary "S" Word, explores the history and resurgence of socialism in the United States. Previously she produced several documentaries including Saving Capitalism, starring former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, which was nominated for an Emmy Award. Her latest documentary, Who Moves America, is the focus of this episode. Set against one of the most consequential labor negotiations in recent U.S. history, Who Moves America offers an unprecedented inside look at the UPS Teamsters' contract campaign as workers grapple with the decision to accept a hard-won agreement or risk a historic strike that could reshape the American economy. As the world's largest package delivery company, UPS moves millions of packages across more than 200 countries and territories each day — and its workforce holds the power to bring that machine to a halt. Through intimate access and on-the-ground storytelling, Who Moves America reveals the human stories behind the single largest collective bargaining agreement in North America, and explores the power and complexity of collective action in modern America.

Learn more about Who Moves America here!

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This episode of Across The Margin : The Podcast features an interview with Samuel Miller McDonald, a writer and geographer focusing on human-ecology, theory, and history. He holds a doctorate from Brasenose College, University of Oxford and degrees from Yale University and College of the Atlantic. He has written essays and analysis for The Nation, The Guardian, The New Republic, Current Affairs, and elsewhere, and has contributed interviews to BBC Ideas, VICE News Tonight, and various radio and podcast programs. Progress — the focus of this episode — is his first book.

Progress is power. Narratives of progress, the stories we tell about whether a society is moving in the right or the wrong direction, are immensely potent. Progress has built cities, flattened mountains, charted the globe, delved the oceans and space, created wealth, opportunity, and remarkable innovation, and ushered in a new epoch unique in our planet’s 4.5-billion-year history. But the modern story of progress is also a very dangerous fiction. It shapes our sense of what progress means, and justifies what we will do to achieve it ― no matter the cost. We continue to subscribe to a set of myths, about dominion, growth, extraction, and expansion, that have fueled our success, but now threaten our — and all species’ — existence on a planet in crisis. In Progress, geographer Samuel Miller McDonald offers a radical new perspective on the myths upon which the modern world is built, illuminating its destructive lineage and suggesting an urgent alternative. Drawing on interdisciplinary research across anthropology, history, philosophy and geography, McDonald argues that if humanity is to thrive, then we must dismantle, reimagine, and create anew what progress means.

Grab a copy of Progress by Samuel Miller McDonald here.

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