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Art of Power

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They changed the world. So can you. Each week, award-winning journalist Aarti Shahani meets fascinating humans who've done big things. They answer two questions: (1) How does power work in the real world, anyway? (2) How has wielding power changed you?
The movement begins here.
Listen now. Let your volcano erupt.
48 Episodes
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Special: Shoes Off

Special: Shoes Off

2023-02-1743:57

WBEZ Chicago has a new podcast that we think Art of Power fans will enjoy. It's called Shoes Off: A Sexy Asians Podcast! It's a show celebrating badass Asians who are making a mark on pop culture and entertainment. Give it a listen!
His annual ‘Black List’ elevated films like ‘Juno,’ ‘Argo’ and ‘The King’s Speech.’ Now he wants to change how Hollywood finds its talent. Franklin Leonard tells Art of Power’s Aarti Shahani how his nerdy beginnings in Georgia set the precedent for his career as a revered film executive. He explains how creating his first 'Black List' broke an unwritten Hollywood rule, what show biz can learn from the NBA about finding the best talent, and the power of imagery in dismantling racism and asserting personhood.
Back in the 1960s – before Gloria Allred became one of America’s most prominent women’s rights attorneys – she says she was raped at gunpoint. She became pregnant and had a back-alley abortion that nearly killed her. “It did teach me a lesson,” Allred tells Art of Power host Aarti Shahani. “And the lesson is that abortion should be safe, legal, affordable and available.” In conversation with Shahani, Allred explains how that traumatic life event changed her worldview and preceded her decades-long career in civil rights law (10:20). She explains why she uses a cheeky sense of humor to get what she needs (4:30) and how she’s represented some of the most famed names in women’s rights, including “Jane Roe” of Roe v. Wade and O.J. Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson (14:35). Plus, Allred defends a long-standing practice she’s been criticized for: negotiating non-disclosure agreements (26:20).
She helped organize one of the largest labor movements in history, but her name is often left out of the narrative. As an organizer in the 1960s, Dolores Huerta says it was not always easy to assert her power. “As a woman, I had to do something about the way the women were being treated,” she told Art of Power’s Aarti Shahani. Huerta explains how she raised 11 children in voluntary poverty while leading a nationwide civil rights battle (01:45). She dissects the mechanics of the famous 1965 Delano grape boycott, including how she allied with some of America’s biggest leaders (13:50). And for the first time, she reveals how higher-ups within the organization handled an alleged case of what she calls “sexual coercion” less than gracefully (30:40).
Scott Budnick might be best known for producing The Hangover trilogy, one of the most successful R-rated comedy franchises ever. But making frat-boy comedies and spending years among ladder-climbers and clout-chasers in Hollywood left Budnick wanting. “I just felt empty inside,” he tells Art of Power’s Aarti Shahani. Budnick tells Shahani about the turn of events that led him to become one of California’s foremost advocates for criminal justice reform. He explains how he broke into the film industry — and then why he left it to found the non-profit Anti-Recidivism Coalition. And he describes his pivot back to creating films — including the 2019 Michael B. Jordan drama Just Mercy — through One Community, a production company with an explicitly political agenda.
'Queer Eye,' both the original version on Bravo and the newer Netflix reboot, is one of the most celebrated reality TV shows on the planet. But it was no sure thing. Creator David Collins tells Aarti Shahani the show's amazing creation story. He says God used him as a vessel to help gain cultural acceptance for the LGBTQ community. And he reflects on how others can do for their community what 'Queer Eye' has done for the LGBTQ+ movement. This episode was originally published on May 6, 2021.
Stacey Abrams is one of the highest profile democracy activists on the planet. She's also an entrepreneur, lawyer, novelist, and she nearly became the first Black woman to govern a state in the U.S. In conversation with Aarti Shahani, Abrams opens up about her inner wiring. She says she writes novels in order to live the adventurous lives she cannot, she explains why neither victory nor defeat are permanent, and she reflects on her 2018 election loss. "Crisis sometimes changes us, but more often it reveals us," she tells Shahani, "and my crisis was a revelatory moment." How does Stacey Abrams recover from heartache? “Slowly.” This episode was originally published on July 15, 2021.
First, a lovely update from Aarti. Then, Sal Khan, a man who challenged the education model we’ve been using for centuries. In so doing, he created the largest school in existence. Khan tells Art of Power host Aarti Shahani about the humble origins of Khan Academy, how he wanted to offer a world class education — like a Harvard or an Oxford — except online and free for everyone, and how he had the confidence to revolutionize education. This episode was originally published on May 20, 2021.
In this week’s episode of Art of Power, host Aarti Shahani sits down with Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-Mo.), a former Black Lives Matter activist who lost two elections before finally winning Missouri’s 1st congressional seat in 2020. Rep. Bush tells Shahani about her early exposure to politics (12:36), the adversities she endured in her early life — including eviction, homelessness and rape (19:12), the 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson that pushed her to seek public office (4:00), and why she didn’t quit after two lopsided electoral defeats (32:45).
In this week’s episode of Art of Power, host Aarti Shahani sits down with Indra Nooyi, who became the first woman and immigrant to head a Fortune 50 company when she was named CEO of PepsiCo in 2006. Nooyi and host Aarti Shahani discuss her unusual family – where the men pushed her to be more ambitious. Aarti asks Nooyi how she manages to stay so light-hearted when people cut her down at work. (It’s something she does over and over again.) Her answer? It’s not what Aarti expected. Indra Nooyi’s book, My Life In Full, has a provocative passage. Describing the times she’s been invited into rooms with the most influential people on the planet, she writes: “The titans of industry, politics and economics, talked about advancing the world through finance, technology, and flying to Mars. Family – the actual messy, delightful, difficult and treasured core of how most of us live – was fringe. This disconnect has profound consequences…In a prosperous marketplace, we need all women to have the choice to work in paid jobs outside the home and for our social and economic infrastructure to entirely support that choice.” (emphasis added) Aarti dissects that call to action with her. It sounds like the call of a feminist or labor leader. Nooyi posits her argument is simple economics. “If you think like an economist, not a feminist, then you say you want the best resources available, which means that men and women, the best talent, have to be in the service of the economy,” Nooyi says. “And that requires some social support. … If you don't provide them a support structure, and then lament about the great resignation, it's crazy.”
In this week’s episode of Art of Power, host Aarti Shahani sits down with the woman who helped build Ukraine’s fledgling democracy. Daria Kaleniuk is the executive director of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center. She has spent a decade building sweeping anti-corruption infrastructure, much to Russia’s chagrin. As Vladimir Putin invades her home, you may have seen her calling out U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson in a recent press conference that went viral. In our conversation, Kaleniuk questions the value of her life’s work: “We are being executed by Russia for fighting corruption and building rule of law,” she tells Shahani. “Those allies which helped us…are betraying us. They are not providing means to protect our democracy.” To understand the war in Ukraine, you need to understand her story: where she grew up, the uprising that shaped her, and the threat that she poses to Vladimir Putin. We discuss her early childhood in the post–Soviet state (1:43), her protest work during the Maidan Revolution (7:00), Putin’s recent speech that cited the organizations she helped create as a pretext for his invasion (27:37), and her call to action for Western governments (32:02). Editor’s note: This interview was recorded on Monday, March 7, 2022. It provides vital context for understanding Russia's attack on Ukraine, but does not reflect the latest developments on the ground.
Jameela Jamil has been revered and despised as the internet’s loudest anti-fat-shaming activist, a social media Candyman out to get the diet industry. But whatever the public opinion, she couldn't care less. In this week’s episode of Art of Power, host Aarti Shahani sits down with the premiere social media activist of a generation. We discuss her unexpected career launch in the U.K. (1:40), a life-threatening discovery that shook her into upending her life (2:41), her unfiltered social media battle with entertainment giants (7:17), her decades-long battle with depression and suicide (18:20), the origin story of her media company, I Weigh (30:09), how her Brown girl identity has shaped her career trajectory (38:51) and her deadly phobia of bees (0:00). “I will die fighting the f***ing diet industry,” she says. If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (En Español: 1-888-628-9454; Deaf and Hard of Hearing: 1-800-799-4889) or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.
Audrey Tang is a genius, a hacktivist, and a software engineer who protested Taiwan’s government during the 2014 Sunflower Movement – and then became an insider, as the first nonbinary and openly transgender cabinet member in the world. Tang and host Aarti Shahani talk about Taiwan’s COVID-19 “miracle”; the platform they helped create to democratize Taiwan’s fragile democracy; a rare childhood heart condition and Taoist meditation; and how their personal identity is a metaphor for the way they publicly lead.
America’s air campaign against terrorism in the Middle East was one of the most precise in history, according to military officials and media reports at the time. But award-winning investigative journalist Azmat Khan did not believe what she read in the papers. So, she decided to find the truth for herself. She put her body on the line and crisscrossed war zones to figure out how America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were actually going. We discuss tricks of the trade: how Azmat shook off Iraqi officials who were on her tail, how she distinguished between ISIS fighters and civilians, and how she built relationships with her sources. We meet the most important source in her life, Basim Razzo, an Iraqi man who lost his family in a U.S. drone strike. He was labeled, incorrectly, as a member of ISIS. We also go to a place Azmat does not like to visit (at least not in public): her inner life. Living between war and peace takes a real emotional toll.
Google hired computer scientist Timnit Gebru to sniff out bias and other unethical practices in the company’s sprawling artificial intelligence work. After she drafted a paper that did just that, she says, the company moved to fire her. In this episode of Art of Power, Gebru walks host Aarti Shahani through the twists and turns of life that led her to Silicon Valley. A refugee from Ethiopia, she migrated to Massachusetts as a teen, and then headed to Stanford University (though her college guidance counselor didn’t think she was Stanford material). Gebru became a different kind of tech unicorn – a woman and an under-represented minority in the industry. Her departure from Google is one of the most high-profile exits that Big Tech has ever seen. She reflects on what her personal story means for a larger public that’s grappling with the unchecked power of a handful of companies. She also explains how she’s working to light little fires everywhere.
Allyson Felix used her legs to become the most decorated track athlete in American history, with more world titles than Usain Bolt and Carl Lewis. Though it wasn’t until her journey into motherhood that she found and used her voice. In this episode, host Aarti Shahani talks with Felix about her metamorphosis – from quiet superstar to unexpected activist. The daughter of a pastor and a teacher, she discusses her early years, when she avoided politics (and also happiness!). We dissect just how she found herself in the center of a massive battle over maternal rights … and why exactly she took on her corporate sponsor, the biggest name in footwear: Nike.
Nikole Hannah-Jones won the Pulitzer Prize for creating The 1619 Project, a series from The New York Times that reframes American history by placing the institution of slavery at the center of the national narrative. The project was released as a book this month. On this episode of WBEZ’s Art of Power podcast, Hannah-Jones tells host Aarti Shahani how she dreamt up the project while on sabbatical, what the backlash has taught her about how power works, and why journalism is not a neutral profession. “I want you to feel deeply disturbed and hopefully guilty by the time you finish my work so that then you will feel the desire to do something differently,” she said. We also trace her journey from dutiful education reporter at a small town newspaper to, well, firebrand.
The inaugural season of WBEZ’s Art of Power podcast comes to a close after nearly 30 episodes. In our season finale, Aarti asks listeners to take stock, internalize lessons learned and make a commitment: What am I doing — or going to do — to fix this broken world? We, the creators and listeners of Art of Power, are not just in the business of learning. We are in the business of learning in order to do. To help you, Aarti and her producers share their favorite power lessons. And she publicly shares a commitment she is making — one that may go very, very badly.
Tarana Burke created the “Me Too” movement 15 years before #MeToo went viral in the wake of the 2017 Harvey Weinstein scandal. On Art of Power, she tells host Aarti Shahani how she did it. Burke, author of the new memoir Unbound, said she had to fight with herself before she could even say the words “me too” out loud. She had to build a grassroots movement in the shadows, in defiance of movement leaders who wanted her to fight against racism, not gender violence and sexism. And she had to reclaim her movement after it appeared to be hijacked by the white Hollywood establishment. Overwhelmed by the visibility and attention of #MeToo, Burke said, “I really shrunk.” It took time to realize her only limits were the ones she put on herself. Though, she jokes, “that would have sounded like Kumbaya nonsense to me before.”
Margaret Cho, an elder stateswoman in comedy, began touring the stand up circuit as a teenager. She dropped out of school and, at age 23, launched the very first TV sitcom about an Asian-American family, All American Girl. The show bombed. And in the immediate aftermath, she looked in the mirror (literally) and blamed the failure on her inability to lose weight. Years later, she realized she was missing the historical context of the era and the “invisibility” that Asian-Americans were dealing with. Today, Cho is host of The Margaret Cho, a podcast on the EARIOS network, where she dedicated a season to discussing anti-Asian violence. Cho talks with Art of Power about her mistakes, including how she mistakenly looked up to a white male leader who was later convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the death of his wife. She also gives a mini-master class on what makes a joke funny (in case you wanted tips).
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