Ear to the Pavement, since 2016

I host and produce Ear to the Pavement, a podcast about urban planning and politics. The show features interviews with people at the forefront of urban planning and political thought.

Ear to the Pavement is produced in association with Progressive City, a magazine of the Planner’s Network.

Episode 25

Deconstructing Feminism: Yasmin Nair on The Right to Sex

January 19, 2023

In episode 25, the third installment in our Deconstructing Feminism series, Allison and author and activist Yasmin Nair discuss The Right to Sex by Amia Srinivasan, situating it in relation to Kyla Schuller's The Trouble With White Women and Rafia Zakaria's Against White Feminism, books discussed in the series' previous two episodes. Throughout the discussion, Nair continually touches on issues of hierarchy and deference in the publishing world, arguing that an awareness of such dynamics is important in any feminist analysis.

Episode 24

Deconstructing Feminism: Yasmin Nair on White Feminism, Part 2

September 1, 2022

Episode 24 is part two of Allison's conversation with writer and activist Yasmin Nair, about White Feminism, and about two books on the topic: The Trouble With White Women by Kyla Schuller, and Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria. This episode zeroes in on these authors' treatment of the phenomenon of the White female Trump voter as a touchstone for contemporary intersectional feminist analysis. For more background on the history of Whiteness studies, see The Wages of Roediger by Cedric Johnson.

Episode 23

Deconstructing Feminism: Yasmin Nair on White Feminism, Part 1

August 10, 2022

Episode 23 is the first in a new series with writer and activist Yasmin Nair, about contemporary feminist books. We begin the series with an examination of two recent titles: The Trouble With White Women by Kyla Schuller, and Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria. While Schuller's and Zakaria's common call for the dismantling of White feminism is, as Nair states, "interesting and necessary," each of these books also contains its own distinct set of pitfalls, a closer analysis of which sheds light on the complicated and troubling issues arising at the intersection of modern-day American feminism, antiracism, academia, and publishing. For more background on the history of Whiteness studies, see The Wages of Roediger by Cedric Johnson.

Episode 22

Adolph Reed, Jr. on The South: Jim Crow and its Afterlives

April 7, 2022

In episode 22 of Ear to the Pavement - the first in a new series about the American South - Allison talks with Professor Adolph Reed, Jr. about his book, The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives, published in 2022 by Verso. In the book, Reed speaks as a member of the last generation with a living memory of the Jim Crow order, offering a corrective to our increasingly caricatured notions of what the order actually was. By weaving together his own personal stories of growing up under Jim Crow with his signature political analysis, Reed shows us that it was the stuff of ordinary, everyday life that held the system together.

Episode 21

The Death of the Composer as Social Critic: Marianna Ritchey on Composing Capital

February 10, 2022

The expectation of radical self-sufficiency is a hallmark of the neoliberal U.S. economy in the early 21st century, and the arts are no exception. The rise of the discourse and practice of "musical entrepreneurship" within the classical music field is a case in point. In episode 21 of Ear to the Pavement, Allison speaks with musicologist Marianna Ritchey about about her book, Composing Capital, which looks critically at the neoliberalization of musical labor, and the broader questions it raises about what art is for, who gets to produce it and under what conditions, and how the arts serve different political ideologies.

Episode 20

Mindy Thompson Fullilove on Main Street as a 21st-Century Machine for Living

October 22, 2021

In episode 20, Allison speaks with author and social psychiatrist Mindy Thompson Fullilove, about her book Main Street: How a City’s Heart Connects Us All. In it, Fullilove argues for a vision of Main Street - from large cities to rural farm towns - not as dead but as "machines for living" or "factories of invention" that not only build community but that can help us solve some of our biggest problems, like inequality, racism, and the climate crisis.

Episode 19

Deconstructing #MeToo: Jennifer Hirsch, Shamus Khan, and Lucy Crawford on Sexual Citizens

June 7, 2021

In episode 19, the fifth in a series about books related to #MeToo, Allison speaks with authors Jennifer Hirsch and Shamus Khan about Sexual Citizens (2020). It's a book that everyone seems to be talking about, and for good reason: Sexual Citizens offers us a profoundly liberating and at the same time pragmatic new roadmap for thinking about and addressing one of the most heated issues of our time, sexual assault on college campuses. Author Lacy Crawford, whose explosive 2020 memoir Notes on a Silencing chronicles her own campus sexual assault, also joins the conversation.

Episode 18

Deconstructing #MeToo: Yasmin Nair on Know My Name

December 31, 2020

In episode 18, the fourth in a series about books related to #MeToo, Allison talks again with author and activist Yasmin Nair, this time about Chanel Miller's 2019 memoir, Know My Name. The book is a blistering and tender account, from Miller's perspective, of her sexual assault by Stanford University student Brock Turner, and its harrowing aftermath in The People v. Turner case. Miller's writing is brilliant and deft, and manages to convey both her personal story as well as the mechanisms of the broken system that was supposed to bring justice. Allison and Yasmin examine how Know My Name resists a lot of the problematic issues that often beset so-called "survivor" narratives, and what the emergence of Miller's voice has meant for the larger politics of #MeToo.

Episode 17

The Antiracist Movement and the Class Question, with Bill Fletcher, Jr.

September 16, 2020

The tension between race and class that continues to bedevil the American left flared up recently when a talk that prominent scholar Adolph Reed was slated to give to the New York City chapter of DSA was cancelled. The skirmish created such a ripple it was covered by the New York Times. But what really lies beneath this dustup? Author and labor activist Bill Fletcher, Jr. reflects on how the left handles differences within its own ranks, whether the antiracist movement really has a class problem, the need for both allies and comrades (and the difference between the two), and what needs to change if the left is serious about building real power.

Episode 16

Deconstructing #MeToo: JoAnn Wypijewski on Sex, Power, and the Politics of Fear

August 22, 2020

In Episode 16, the third in a series about books related to #MeToo, Allison talks with NYC-based journalist JoAnn Wypijewski about her recent book, What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About #MeToo: Essays on Sex, Authority, & the Mess of Life, published by Verso. In this collection, spanning thirty years of reporting on scandals from Abu Ghraib to the Harvey Weinstein saga, Wypijewski reveals our tendency to flatten complex stories in pursuit of villains and victims, in the process forging a "poisoned solidarity" that actually undermines the possibility of true social justice.

Episode 15

Deconstructing #MeToo: Yasmin Nair on Catch And Kill

May 12, 2020

In Episode 15, the second in a series about books related to #MeToo, Allison talks again with Chicago-based writer, academic, and activist Yasmin Nair about Catch and Kill, Ronan Farrow's 2019 book reconstructing his efforts to report the Harvey Weinstein story. Nair brings her decades of experience at the intellectual intersection of gender and politics to Catch and Kill, which is at once a chronicle of the Weinstein scandal, a story about journalism itself, and an attempt by Farrow to redraw his own complicated family story. But what kind of a #MeToo narrative does this book weave, and, at the dawn of a new decade, are we standing triumphant in the movement's victories, or in its crumbling ruins?

Episode 14

Repurposing the Webs of Infection as Webs of Connection, with Mindy Thompson Fullilove

April 3, 2020

In Episode 14 of Ear to the Pavement, Allison talks with professor and author Mindy Thompson Fullilove about how her past work on public health crises such as 9/11 and the AIDS epidemic is informing her current thinking about the coronavirus pandemic, and why we need to "remember, respect, learn, and connect" in these difficult and frightening times.

Episode 13

Snake Emojis, South Carolina, and the State of the Sanders Campaign, with Bill FLetcher, Jr.

March 16, 2020

In Episode 13 of Ear to the Pavement, Allison talks with author and labor activist Bill Fletcher, Jr. about the Bernie Sanders campaign's victories and mistakes, why Sanders failed to win over black voters in the South, the Sanders-Warren rift, and where the progressive movement needs to go from here.

Episode 12

Deconstructing #MeToo: Yasmin Nair on She Said

February 19, 2020

Episode 11

How today’s politically ineffectual billionaire CEOs make the corporate elites of the 1950s look like moderate pragmatists.

August 15, 2019

Episode 10

It’s Not Just HQ2. Amazon has been stealing public money from the start

DECember 21, 2018

Episode 9

Corporate America Is Embracing Racial Equity. Should we Cheer Them on?

September 20, 2018

Episode 8

Living on 90 Percent Less Energy: Can We Do It for Climate Justice?

April 23, 2018

Episode 7

Everyday Radicals: What #TheResistance Can Learn From the League of Revolutionary Black Voters

November 16, 2017

Episode 6

Take Back the Land beat Bank of America. Here’s how they did it.

September 15, 2017

In episode six of Ear to the Pavement, housing organizer Rob Robinson recounts his journey from homelessness to the housing movement, and explains how Take Back the Land, an organization he co-founded, used radical organizing to successfully fight the corporate forces that helped create the foreclosure crisis. Robinson is currently a volunteer organizer with the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI), and is connected to housing and land movements in Europe, South Africa, and Brazil.

Episode 5

Do We Need a Breitbart of the Left?

May 2, 2017

Since Trump was elected, Left independent media outlets have been on the rise. Current Affairs Magazine is at the forefront of this movement. In episode five of Ear to the Pavement, Current Affairs founder and editor, Nathan J. Robinson, talks about the experiences that led him to start his own media organization, the importance for the Left of getting out of the elite media bubble and reaching a broad audience, and the crucial ingredients for building an effective progressive media.

Episode 4

The Urgency of Community Media in an Era of Noise

April 5, 2017

In episode four of Ear to the Pavement, documentary filmmaker and teacher Louis Massiah talks about the importance of using media to focus attention on the concerns and experiences of ordinary people. One of the country's most important and celebrated pioneers in the field of community media, Massiah is Founder and Executive Director of the Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia, a media arts center which has been around since 1982. The center's mission is to help communities in the Philadelphia area learn to make media both as a means of artistic expression, and as a tool for progressive social activism.

Episode 3

Revisiting Root Shock in an Age of Mass Displacement

February 22, 2017

As more and more people are displaced by gentrification, war, deportation, economic instability, and other forces, the concept of "Root Shock" is as relevant as ever. In episode three of Ear to the Pavement, psychiatrist, author, and scholar Mindy Thompson Fullilove revisits her classic book, Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It. Well before it was an accepted idea, Fullilove documented how people's ability — or lack thereof — to put down roots and shape their communities influences not only individual mental health, but society as a whole.

Episode 2

Inauguration Special, Unpacking Trump

January 23, 2017

In episode two of Ear to the Pavement, we present an extended interview with planning scholar, author, and activist Tom Angotti about his personal reaction to the rise of Donald Trump, how we got here, his biggest concerns, and how progressives might respond. This interview delves further into themes Tom covered in his November piece in Progressive City, Trump: What can progressive planners do?

Episode 1

The Brooklyn Wars

November 13, 2016

In episode one of Ear to the Pavement, Allison Lirish Dean speaks with New York City-based journalist and author Neil DeMause about gentrification and development in Brooklyn, and his new book, The Brooklyn Wars: The Stories Behind the Making of New York's Most Celebrated Borough.