Episode Description
This week on In The Meanwhile, Nora and Marcus start with civic sunshine(yes, the Seattle Seahawks are Super Bowl champions), and end in the deep waters of power, protest, and historical memory.
From Ernest Jones' "spirit-forward" parade speech to a congressional hearing that felt like defiant incompetence colliding with diabolical intent, they unpack the Bondi–Epstein fallout, elite impunity, space lasers over El Paso (it was a balloon), charting the increasingly surreal cartography of America's institutional collapse.
They then sit down with Jelani Cobb, dean of Columbia Journalism School and author of Three or More Is a Riot, to trace the throughline from Trayvon Martin to George Floyd, from Ferguson to January 6, and from protest to backlash. Cobb breaks down how Black collective action gets reframed as threat, why property damage often outranks the value of Black life in public debate, and what it means to teach journalism as press freedoms erode.
It's a conversation about history as barometer, protest as democracy, and why, as Cobb reminds us, no fascist gets to drive us out of a country our ancestors built.
Read Jelani Cobb's Books:
Three or More is a Riot | To the Break of Dawn | The Substance of Hope
Mentioned in the episode:
Trayvon Martin and the Parameters of Hope | Quitting America | SPL Reading List |
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Read Nora and Marcus's Books:
Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare | Readying to Rise
Music: No Tears for a Wolf · Ahamefule J. Oluo · Okanomodé. Used with permission.
Logo by Nikki Barron.
Transcripts are machine-generated and imperfect.
Nora and Marcus's work on the podcast is separate from their professional roles and does not represent the views of their employers.
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