Tiny Spark

Journalist and author Eyal Press' book Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America examines the morally troubling jobs that are done in our name, and shines a light on the workers who do them. Press argues that these workers are hidden by the powerful in society who want to keep the violence of prisons, slaughterhouses, and battlefields out of the public eye.

As the federal government pours billions of dollars into private detention facilities, new research shows political donations from these for-profit companies are influencing policymakers to support legislation criminalizing undocumented immigrants. University of New Mexico associate professor Loren Collingwood talks about his findings, and emotionally shares why they matter.

‘There have been so many important critiques of the nude in art history,' writer and art curator Macushla Robinson tells us, and she's added her own critique in the form of an upcoming book project. Every Rape at the Met Museum digs into the way sexual violence has been publicly displayed and even artistically praised in exhibition and catalogues at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In this candid conversation, Robinson explains how the images of women on art museum walls, and the bodies of women in the art world today, are still subject to misogyny and sexual violence.

As the U.S. deals with a severe crisis with up to 600,000 people experiencing homelessness each night, we tour the Community First! village in Austin. This unique community was established to provide affordable, permanent housing for the chronically homeless in Central Texas. Why do the residents think it works? 

We speak to the authors of System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong, and How We Can Reboot. The trio of Stanford professors use a cross-disciplinary approach to critique technologists and the outsized power they wield in society. By weaving together philosophy, engineering and social science disciplines, the authors make a compelling case that we need ethics and an active democracy to ensure tech serves the public interest above shareholder's interests.

Broadway has returned after closing eighteen months ago. We speak to actors, writers and directors about what the break meant for their lives and work. One prepares to make his Broadway debut, another looks beyond the stage, and all tell us that they hope the future improves representation and equity in the theater.

In light of troubling events in Afghanistan, we speak to collaborating artists Chitra Ganesh and Mariam Ghani on threats to the country's archives, the ‘radical archivists' who have preserved them to date, and how this pair of artists practice radical archiving as way to confront and surface government erasures.

For Nora Kenworthy, GoFundMe is “the research topic that I can't escape.” She recently studied 175,000 GoFundMe campaigns from the COVID era and discovered nearly half didn't receive a single donation. We discuss the stark inequities around these platforms and ask whether crowdfunding can offer equitable relief during a complex public health disaster.

Are women and girls forgotten in crises and conflicts in Myanmar, Ethiopia and Afghanistan? We speak to women's rights activists about what drives them, and ask whether they feel women & girls are sidelined in these kinds of conflicts. TW: This podcast discusses sexual violence.

The Pillars fund, run by young Muslim philanthropists, has teamed up with academics and Hollywood actors to gather data proving what they've long suspected: Muslims are poorly represented on screen. Pillars' Arij Mikati and Kalia Abiade lay out the problem, and share their solutions to shift the narrative in order to pave a more inclusive path forward. NB: This podcast contains explicit language and words of a derogatory nature.

We speak to Dr. Sophia Yen, entrepreneur and outspoken advocate for women's reproductive health and empowerment. Dr. Yen founded a birth control startup to “just ship women birth control and keep shipping it until they tell us to stop.” She speaks frankly about sexual health, health justice, and the sexism she has experienced in her career. 

In his new book The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions, Chuck Collins unmasks how billionaires protect their wealth, power, and privilege.

Half a century ago, billionaire philanthropist Doris Duke funded universities to record Native American oral histories. Today, her foundation is supporting an effort to digitize the recordings and return them to the tribes. Alyce Sadongei is leading the project and says while it is meaningful, it also raises concerns about how archives are conceived and created in the first place.

The People's Kitchen Collective uses food and art to address racial and social justice issues. Co-founder Jocelyn Jackson talks to us about their large-scale meals, which offer time and nourishment for communities to heal.  

Food Rescue Hero gets volunteers to pick up excess food from restaurants and grocers and deliver it to people who need it. Founder and CEO Leah Lizarondo shares her journey creating a tech tool that says it has rescued some 50 million pounds of food.

Climate scientist Ndoni Mcunu and climate activist Evelyn Acham celebrate the African scientists and activists fighting for the planet. We speak to the pair about the difficulty of this work, and learn what inspires them to keep going.

Found in Translation, a Boston-based nonprofit, trains bilingual women as medical interpreters. In this podcast, founder Maria Vertkin and three graduates who speak Vietnamese, Cape Verdean Creole and Portuguese, explain why this life-changing work is so necessary.

Independent art curator Kelli Morgan shares personal, painful experiences of institutional racism and says it’s time to call out the art world’s toxic white supremacist culture.

Physician and anthropologist Eugene Richardson’s book ‘Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health’ critiques practices that perpetuate inequality. In this podcast, he argues that global health equity requires not just medicine, but reparations that undo Western colonial harms.  

A diverse group of women discuss the power of giving circles as a way to build community, democratize philanthropy, and support local grassroots organizations.

At the end of a year dominated by COVID-19, race, and social justice, three African feminists with ties to development tell us why they are exhausted and what needs to change.

Black women are up to four times more likely to die during pregnancy in the US than white women. We dig into the racist structures behind this and speak to a pair of powerful women working to fix it.

Working in a field where one in four women experience sexual harassment, nonprofit fundraisers Liz LeClair and Heather Hill describe the personal and professional costs of sexual abuse and explain why frontline fundraisers need more protection from donors.

Tania Culver-Humphrey's father, co-founder of Mercy Corps, abused her when she was a child. A year after going public, she charts the journey from “institutional betrayal” to being embraced by employees as a brave whistleblower. Content warning: This podcast contains descriptions of child sexual abuse. 

Award-winning Zambian writer Namwali Serpell digs into publishing’s problems with race and colonialism, as well as the enduring legacy of white saviorism in literature.

Three generations of Black women in Baltimore share their perspectives on the significance of today’s protests, reflecting on what has - and has not - changed in the past fifty years.

Education expert Diane Ravitch documents the corrupting influence of major philanthropists in “school reform” efforts and celebrates the educators who resist.

With nursing homes leading as COVID-19 hotspots, frontline nurses speak to us about unsafe working conditions and reject the notion that they are “heroes.”

Having led the CDC during the deadly H1N1 influenza pandemic, Dr. Richard Besser, president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, shares the lessons he learned as we deal with COVID-19.

Nonprofit leaders share their hopes and fears about the challenges facing their organizations during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.

Writer and blogger Vu Le describes how the COVID-19 crisis is overwhelming nonprofit leaders and why it should cause philanthropy to rethink its funding practices.

Nonprofit workers do it for the cause, but they also want to pay their bills. Artist Samantha Fein explains why she feels that the nonprofit art world is broken, and says that if it doesn’t change the art world could implode.

How are Black women redefining what it means to be philanthropists? We sit down with four leaders in philanthropy and impact investing to discuss how their race and gender affect and inspire their work. 

We meet the people involved in grassroots movements to culturally and economically empower the Oglala Lakota Nation living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, one of the most impoverished and neglected regions in the country.

Criminal defense lawyer Abbe Smith is often asked how she defends people accused of committing terrible crimes. Hear her moving reply, and learn why she believes the guilty deserve a spirited defense.

Innocence Project attorneys and law students in Texas take on an enormous pile of cases every year, tackling legal and moral challenges as they work to free the wrongfully convicted from prison.

Pastor and activist, Rev. Mariama White-Hammond describes how her experience of racial and economic injustice led her to fight for the planet as a whole and explains why it is time to “live differently.”

Two climate change advocates discuss the need to understand the destruction of the environment through a racial lens, and the promising and powerful future of inclusive climate action.

We speak with multimillionaire Nick Hanauer, who calls on the nation’s wealthiest to pay more tax and for all of us to pay more attention to righting the economy’s systemic wrongs.

Appalling conditions in the ‘Jungle’ migrant camp in France drew people from across Europe to help. A volunteer shares her experience and explains how rising anti-immigrant policies are turning ordinary citizens into humanitarians.

We explore ways to decrease wealth inequality in the US with economist Darrick Hamilton who proposes giving every newborn thousands of dollars in a ‘baby bond’ account which they can access when they turn 18.

As inequality grows, we look at look at ideas for narrowing the economic gap between the races, from reparations to raising the minimum wage.

Using fiery Instagram posts, and uncomfortable tweets, the social media campaign No White Saviors challenges white people to examine race, power, and their own roles when attempting to 'help' in communities and countries not their own. Its co-founders explain why their motto is: "If you’re not uncomfortable, you’re not listening."

Is it possible for charity to worsen the lives of those they purport to help? We investigate how a global surge in one form of “voluntourism” exploits vulnerable children and contributes to child trafficking

We explore nonprofits’ propensity to create “survivor porn” and the ways in which the sector trades in “parading trauma".

Megan Ming Francis explains how philanthropists—even well-intentioned ones—can “capture” the social movements they fund and, in doing so, steer grassroots organizations and activists away from their original missions.

On International Women’s Day, we speak to the founders of #VisibleWikiWomen about their efforts to decolonize the Internet, and to “make all of the wonderful women in the world visible” on one of the world’s most popular websites: Wikipedia.

The co-directors of GrantAdvisor, a Yelp-like site that rates the nation's charitable foundations, describe how fears of retribution in the field inspired them to launch the platform, and why honest dialogue between nonprofits and foundations can help make philanthropy better.

Whether vocally critiquing the sector on his blog Nonprofit AF, or working to develop leaders of color at his nonprofit in Seattle, Vu Le’s frustrations fuel his drive to make the industry do better.

Hoping to diversify the next generation of doctors and deal with a drastic decrease in the number of primary care physicians in the US, New York University is now offering free tuition to its medical school students. But will it work? And is free tuition enough to choose primary care over higher paying specialties?

In their new book, Outbreak Culture: The Ebola Crisis and the Next Epidemic, Dr. Pardis Sabeti and journalist Lara Salahi argue that epidemics don’t just spread deadly diseases, they can also breed a toxic culture among those who are helping.