Historian Kelly Lytle Hernández tells the story of human caging in Los Angeles, from the Spanish Conquest to the mid-twentieth century, in her new book City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965.

Reporters should refrain from legitimating the criminalization of sex work.

Journalist @melissagira eviscerates a newspaper investigation that conflates sex work with trafficking. She examines how reporters unwittingly fall into a savior complex, which ends up criminalizing workers in the name of defending women's dignity.

Centrist business elites believe in an America that doesn't exist.

Centrist business elites believe in an America that doesn't exist. Two guests this episode: first, @mollyesque talks about her piece "On Safari in Trump's America" for The Atlantic. Her article follows the centrist organization Third Way on a “lis...

New research shows that police budgets and the real estate market rose side by side.

Why have the size of American police departments grown so dramatically in recent decades, even as crime rates have fallen? One factor may have been the growing centrality of real estate for urban economies,

What if American liberty weren't premised on empire and racism?

Aziz Rana discusses his pivotal book, The Two Faces of American Freedom. Rana overturns conventional accounts of American history, from settlement and Revolution to the Populists and the present day. In reality, settler-colonialism, empire,

Fighting sexual harassment is about workers' rights and gender justice.