The Progressive Page Turner

“Shift will involve sections of the world becoming uninhabitable, leading to mass migration as well as pain, suffering, and death around the world.”             Dana Fisher Saving Ourselves: From Climate shocks to Climate Action How bad will it get before meaningful action is taken on climate change? Join The Progressive Page Turner for a discussion with Dana Fisher on the current state of climate politics, civic engagement and activism.

Gareth Gore has been investigating the secretive Catholic sect, Opus Dei, for years. His interest in the organization started when a Spanish bank collapsed in the early 2000’s. As a financial reporter he followed the money and realized that something besides poor judgement had caused the failure. His book was condemned by the leadership of Opus Dei but Pope Leo XIV asked him to the Vatican for a private meeting in March 2026.  In this interview we talk about his book Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church.

Paul Johnson takes a look at the impact of economic inequalities in the US and the UK in his book Challenging Inequalities. 

In September of 2025 Marjorie Taylor Greene called for a national divorce arguing that Red and Blue states had so little in common it was time for them to part company.  She isn’t alone. There are secession movements on both the right and the left as polarization in the country is on the rise. But what would that entail? In his book The Disunited States Ryan D. Griffiths looks at how secession has played out in other countries and what it might look like in the United States.

There is an epidemic of loneliness in the United States. Alone, we watch the country slide away from democracy and toward dictatorship. We need to band together to fight for what had already been won.  Staying in it for the long run means learning how to get along with others. In his book Love in an F*ed- up World Dean Spade looks at how to build enduring private and public relationships for the work ahead.

What if we have it all wrong? We accept unemployment, inflation, low wages, lack of access to healthcare and education, periodic recessions, ecological collapse, food insecurity and endless wars as inevitable. The underlying belief in a market driven system is the bedrock of our economy. We’ve handed our lives and resources over to a mechanism that doesn’t value humans or their well-being. But humans created this system and humans can change it. In her book Escape From Capitalism Clara Mattei makes the case that we can build systems that serve people not the market. Her organization is the Forum for Real Economic Emancipation (freeforum.org).

The cost to our nation from militarized borders goes beyond the cost of enforcement. Both legal and undocumented migrants pay into our tax system. They boost the economy by spending money on the basics like food and rent. Many of our skilled workers in tech and medicine are immigrants. They also are the backbone of construction, agriculture and food services.  When we discourage people from entering or deport people already here we’re not safer, we’re poorer. John Washington takes a look at possible solutions in his book The Case for Open Borders.

When the Heritage Foundation published Project 2025 in 2023 the goals seemed so radical that many dismissed the threat as far-fetched. But as the Trump presidency steamrolls over accepted norms, court orders and public opinion much of that radical agenda is being implemented. In order to see where all this is leading one has to take a look at history and what life looked like for so many people in the past. In his book How We Win the Civil War Steve Phillips posits that the Confederacy never really surrendered and until we examine the past we can’t move forward into a better future. But he also maintains that the better future is realistically achievable. It’s all about mobilization.

For the first time in over a hundred years salmon are returning to historical spawning grounds in the Klamath River. After four hydroelectric dams were removed the river came back to life. Wild salmon, once on the brink of extinction have returned in astonishing numbers. More than just a regional victory, the dam removal from the Klamath River could be a blueprint for ecological restoration. I spoke with Amy Bowers Cordalis of the Yurok Nation about her book The Water Remembers: My Indigenous Family’s Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life.  

The only metric for our economic system is the growth of wealth. Who gets that wealth or how that growth impacts people’s lives and the planetary life support system is never part of the equation. This has created the insanity of a billionaire class who can destroy entire countries while basic needs are unmet for many people and the looming climate crisis is ignored. In this episode of The Progressive Page Turner I talked with Tim Jackson, author of The Care Economy about another way to view prosperity.