KPFA Creators & Guests

Sasha Lilley is an English-born radio host and editor of "Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult," published by PM Press. Lilley is a co-founder and host of the Pacifica Radio program Against the Grain.

Mary Brosnahan led the Coalition for the Homeless from 1989 to 2018. Her op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, the New York Daily News, Huffington Post and been featured on 60 Minutes, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, and CNBC. She has contributed to dozens of news reports on both WNYC and NPR. Her first book, "They Just Need to Get a Job: 15 Myths on Homelessness" was published in 2024.

Howard Botwinick is an American economist and emeritus faculty at SUNY Cortland. Dr. Botwinick is author of classic text Persistent Inequalities: Wage Disparity under Capitalist Competition (1993), which was re-released in 2018 by Haymarket.

Eric A. Stanley is Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. They are author of Atmospheres of Violence Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable (Duke University Press, 2021) and co-editor of Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (MIT Press 2017) and Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex (AK Press, 2015/11). In collaboration with Chris Vargas, they directed the films Homotopia (2006) and Criminal Queers (2019).

Steve Fraser is a historian, writer, and editor. He is the author of The Age of Acquiescence, Every Man a Speculator and Wall Street, among other books, and has written for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and The Nation. He lives in New York City.

Anne Gray Fischer is an assistant professor of women's history at University of Texas at Dallas, where her teaching and research focus on race, gender, and law enforcement in the twentieth-century US.

Eva Payne is the author of the book: "Empire of Purity: The History of Americans' Global War on Prostitution" (Princeton UP, 2024).

Arun Kundnani is an author and former editor of the journal Race & Class. He is an Open Society fellow and a scholar-in-residence at the New York Public Library.

Troy Vettese is an environmental historian, and Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute.

Dr. Josh Lauer is a historian who specializes in the history of consumer debt. Currently, he is a fellow in Digital Studies at the U.S. Library of Congress.Previously, Lauer was an Associate Professor of Media Studies at University of New Hampshire.Lauer's historical studies of communication technology, surveillance, and financial culture have appeared in Technology and Culture, and New Media & Society. He has published several book chapters, and his first book, "Creditworthy: A History of Consumer Surveillance and Financial Identity in America," was published in 2017. His second book, "Surveillance Capitalism in America," was published in 2021.Lauer received his B.A. in History from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, his M.L.I.S. in Archives and Special Collections from the University of Pittsburgh, and his Ph.D. in Communications from the University of Pennsylvania.

Leigh Claire La Berge is an assistant professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College, writer, and author of the book, Wages Against Artwork: Decommodified Labor and the Claims of Socially Engaged Art.

Ilan Pappé (Hebrew: אילן פפה) is an Israeli historian, political scientist, and former politician. He is a professor at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, Centre for Palestine Studies. Pappé ran for office for the Israeli political party Hadash in 1996 and '99. Pappé has written extensively on the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, including Ten Myths About Israel (2017), The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006). He left Israel in 2008 after being condemned in the Knesset and receiving several death threats. Pappé supports a one-state solution, advocating for a unitary state for both Palestinians and Israelis. As a critic of Israel he has called for an international boycott of Israeli academics.

Dr. Marjorie N. Feld is a professor of history at Babson College. Her teaching and research interests include U.S. social, labor, and gender history, along with the history of global human rights movements, food justice, and sustainability. She is a member of the Academic Advisory Councils of the Jewish Women's Archive and Jewish Voice for Peace.

Priya Satia is a historian, professor of International History at Stanford University, and author of the book Time's Monster.

Dr. Elena Conis is a writer and historian of medicine. Her work focuses on the history of medicine, public health, and the environment, with particular focuses on the history of vaccination, infectious diseases, and pesticides. Currently, she is an Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of California Berkeley.Previously, Conis was a professor of History at Emory University. She has also been a health columnist for the Los Angeles Times.Conis received her B.A. from Columbia University, her M.S. from the University of California Berkeley, and her Ph.D. from the University of California San Francisco.

Micah Alpaugh is an Associate Professor of History at University of Central Missouri.

Dr. Avgi Saketopoulou is a Greek-Cypriot psychoanalyst training at the NYU Post Doctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis.

Dr. Maya Wind is a scholar of Israeli expertise and militarism. Wind's first book, "Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom" (Verso 2024) argues that Israeli institutions of higher education are enlisted in Israel’s settler-colonial project.

Dacher Keltner is a Professor of Psychology at University of California, Berkeley, where he directs the Berkeley Social Interaction Lab. He is also the founder and faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center and host of the podcast The Science of Happiness.