Ro Skelton, "“Naow’s Boutique” (Fall, 2025)

AI, Algocracy, and Democracy's Challenging Road Ahead with Andrew Sorota

Like many people, I've been following the developments of AI, testing out new models and following the deluge of news stories about the fight for supremacy. Much has been written about the existential and economic risks posed by AI, but the political implications of superintelligent systems have often been sidelined. In the United States and elsewhere, AI companies steam ahead with little regulation or oversight. Meanwhile, politicians appear flatfooted and unsure about the best way to integrate AI into the government to make democracies stronger and more responsive to the needs and will of the people. AI will undeniably change how governments work, but how can we ensure that democracy and individual rights are safeguarded amidst the most transformative technological revolution in more than a century? Today I'm speaking with Andrew Sorota, Head of Research for the Office of Eric Schmidt. Andrew has written extensively about the relationship between democracy and artificial intelligence. His writing has appeared in outlets like the New York Times and Noema magazine. Andrew will dispel many myths about AI, where he looks to call bullshit on the idea that democracy is a system heading fast into the dustbin of history. Follow Andrew Sorota on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-sorota-490320179/] "This Is No Way to Rule a Country" [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/11/opinion/ai-democracy-government-authoritarianism.html] in the New York Times "Rescuing Democracy From The Quiet Rule Of AI" [https://www.noemamag.com/rescuing-democracy-from-the-quiet-rule-of-ai/?utm_source=noemalinkedin&utm_medium=noemasocial] in Noema Andrew Sorota is currently Head of Research for the Office of Eric Schmidt. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Laurie D. Graham, "Calling It Back to Me: Poems" (Random House, 2026)

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery interviews acclaimed poet Laurie D. Graham about her new book of poetry, Calling it Back to Me (McClelland & Stewart, 2026). A poet’s clear-eyed witnessing of familial history, this is the most personal collection yet from two-time Trillium Book Award finalist Laurie D. Graham. In these searching, spare, and resonant poems, Laurie D. Graham traces the story of her great-grandmothers’ lives before and after they left their homelands and settled on this continent, striving to understand how she came to be here and writing the act of colonization as it exists in her own family history. This collection’s fractured lines, time-weathered yet alive with detail, reflect a family’s knowledge broken by global immigration and memory loss, both individual and collective. The result is a courageous reckoning with the legacy of leaving home. With tender curiosity and a determination to bear unflinching witness, Calling It Back to Me: Poems [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780771023460] (Random House, 2026) asks: When language and memory are so tenuous, what is it that gets passed down between generations? LAURIE D. GRAHAM grew up in Treaty 6 Territory, near amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta), and she has lived in Nogojiwanong/Peterborough, in the Territory of the Mississauga Anishinaabeg, since 2018, where she is a poet, an editor, and the publisher of Brick magazine, a journal of literary non-fiction based in Toronto. Her first book, Rove, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for the best first book of poetry in Canada. Her second and third books, Settler Education and Fast Commute, were both nominated for Ontario’s Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Kristen Abbott Bennett, "Teaching Shakespeare's Theatre of the World" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Teaching Shakespeare's Theatre of the World [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781009111096] (Cambridge University Press, 2025) engages with one of Shakespeare's greatest thought-experiments: How does one navigate the 'theatre of the world'? It invites students to examine how Shakespeare challenges this metaphor's vertical hierarchies in response to shifting understandings of cosmological order. Teachers will find rich contextual frameworks for exploring how Shakespeare envisions 'worlds' as emerging from dynamic variables, raising urgent questions about how identity and justice are environmentally constructed. Focal plays include A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Hamlet, Henry V, The Merchant of Venice, and Othello. Each discussion features student centered 'Explorations'. These play-specific classroom activities can also be adapted across Shakespeare's corpus and tailored for both secondary and university-level students. These exercises encourage non-linear critical and creative thinking, inviting students to contemplate big ideas and generate new perspectives about the shared points of contact between Shakespeare's world and their own. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Ro Skelton, "“Naow’s Boutique” (Fall, 2025)

Ro Skelton speaks to Emily Everett about her essay “Naow’s Boutique,” which appears in The Common’s fall issue. The essay explores Ro’s time living and working in Dakar, where she formed a friendship in her neighborhood that eventually led to a sense of community, and then a community garden, and then a lifelong friendship. Ro also discusses how the essay fits into her focus as a writer – writing about gardening in unconventional spaces – and her memoir-in-progress on the subject, Easement. Ro Skelton is a writer and gardener from Scotland. She is currently working on her first book, Easement, a memoir about mental health, queer parenting, and radical acts of gardening. Her work has appeared in Four Way Review, Waxwing, New Ohio Review, and Ecotone. Previously a reporter in West Africa and a member of an ocean-going rescue crew, she now lives and gardens on the Isle of Mull. ­­Read the essay in The Common here [https://thecommononline.org/naows-boutique/]. Learn more about Ro and her work at here [https://www.roseskelton.co.uk/]. The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine at thecommononline.org [https://thecommononline.org/], and follow us on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/commonmag/], Bluesky [https://bsky.app/profile/commonmag.bsky.social], and Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/TheCommonMag]. Emily Everett [https://www.emily-everett.com/] is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. In 2025 her debut novel All That Life Can Afford was a Reese’s Book Club pick, and her work appeared in The New York Times Modern Love column. Previous publications include the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]

Stephen Spector, "God and the First Families: Parenting, Trauma, and Healing in the Book of Genesis" (Jewish Publication Society, 2026)

What if the book of Genesis is not only the story of humanity’s first family, but also the story of God learning how to parent? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with Stephen Spector to discuss his book God and the First Families: Parenting, Trauma, and Healing in the Book of Genesis [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780827616011] (Jewish Publication Society, 2026), a provocative reexamination of the Bible’s foundational stories through the lens of parenting. Drawing on both biblical interpretation and contemporary psychology, Spector explores how God’s relationship with the patriarchs and matriarchs evolves throughout Genesis. God begins as a demanding authority figure, shifts toward a more nurturing presence, returns briefly to authoritarianism in the binding of Isaac, and ultimately develops a style focused on fostering moral and emotional growth. Remarkably, Spector argues, Genesis anticipates parenting insights that psychologists would not articulate for thousands of years. Along the way, familiar stories take on new meaning. Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers—each narrative becomes a window into questions of favoritism, resilience, forgiveness, family conflict, and healing after trauma. By reading Genesis as a story about parenting and human development, Spector uncovers enduring wisdom about how families flourish, fracture, and find their way back to one another. Together, Spector and Katz explore what the Bible can teach about raising children, repairing relationships, and understanding the complex bond between love, authority, and growth. Stephen Spector is a professor of English emeritus at Stony Brook University. He is the author of Operation Solomon: The Daring Rescue of the Ethiopian Jews and Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism, among other volumes. Spector has taught the Bible to undergraduate and graduate students for fifty years. He has been a visiting scholar at Hebrew University and a senior research fellow at the National Humanities Center and the Wesleyan Center for Humanities.  Rabbi Marc Katz is the senior rabbi at Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, New Jersey. He is the author of The Heart of Loneliness: How Jewish Wisdom Can Help You Cope and Find Comfort, a National Jewish Book Award finalist and Yochanan’s Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices] Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network [https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network]