For her most recent book, Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century (W.W. Norton & Co., coming Sept. 2017), she spent months living in a camper van, documenting itinerant Americans who gave up traditional housing and hit the road full time, enabling them to travel from job to job and carve out a place for themselves in our precarious economy. The project spanned three years and more than 15,000 miles of driving—from coast to coast and from Mexico to the Canadian border.

Jessica has been teaching at Columbia Journalism School since 2008. She has written for publications including Harper's Magazine, The Nation, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, The International Herald Tribune, The New York Times Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, O: The Oprah Magazine, Inc. Magazine, Reuters and CNNMoney.com, along with The Oregonian and The New York Observer — where she worked as a staff writer — and Fortune Small Business magazine, where she was a senior editor. Her long-form stories have won a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism and a Deadline Club Award.

Game developer Zoe Quinn has paid an unthinkably heavy price for being a strong, independent women in the gamer world, where men dominate and politics can be vicious. Her ex-boyfriend published a crazed blog post cobbled together from private information, half-truths, and outright fictions, along with a rallying cry to the online hordes to go after her. They answered in the form of a so-called movement known as #gamergate--they hacked her accounts; stole nude photos of her; harassed her family, friends, and colleagues; and threatened to rape and murder her. But instead of shrinking into silence as the online mobs wanted her to, she raised her voice and spoke out against this vicious online culture and for making the internet a safer place for everyone.

In the years since #gamergate, Quinn has helped thousands of people with her advocacy and online-abuse crisis resource Crash Override Network. From locking down victims' personal accounts to working with tech companies and lawmakers to inform policy, she has firsthand knowledge about every angle of online abuse, what powerful institutions are (and aren't) doing about it, and how we can protect our digital spaces and selves.

Quinn's new book Crash Override offers an up-close look inside the controversy, threats, and social and cultural battles that started in the far corners of the internet and have since permeated our online lives. Through her story--as target and as activist--Quinn provides a human look at the ways the internet impacts our lives and culture, along with practical advice for keeping yourself and others safe online.

From the Google memo to public statues to campus protests, accusations of quashed free-speech rights are flying. Is picketing a college speaker an effort to shut down discourse? How protected is an employee writing internal memos on company policy? If residents feel a memorial expresses their history, can the majority take that away? How do so many Americans mistake, say, moderation of comment sections as a breach of their First Amendment rights?

In Deep has pulled together a panel reflecting deep experience in activism, the courtroom, and the classroom to address these thorny questions. They are:

Jim Brosnahan of Morrison Foerster has been named among the top 30 trial lawyers in the US by the Legal 500 US. One of the most respected and recognized trial lawyers in the United States. Jim has been practicing trial and appellate law for over fifty years. He maintains an active practice of civil and criminal cases, very often cases that are going to trial or will be argued in Circuit Courts. He has tried, to conclusion, 150 cases. Among his many awards, he's been inducted into the California state bar's "Trial Lawyers Hall of Fame".

Deborah Rhode is a Professor of Law at Stanford, and the director of the university's Center on the Legal Profession. She's been recognized for her scholarship on legal ethics; she's received the Pro Bono Publico Award for her work on expanding public service opportunities in law schools, and the White House’s Champion of Change Award for a lifetime’s work in increasing access to justice. Dr. Rhode clerked with Thurgood Marshall and has published some thirty books.

Attorney and journalist Peter Scheer served for over a decade as Executive Director of the First Amendment Coalition, and founded law.com. He's argued cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and most of the federal courts of appeal. He was editor and publisher of The Recorder newspaper in San Francisco, publisher of Legal Times in Washington, DC, and CEO of legal information website law.com. Scheer has received both the Eugene S. Pulliam Award and James Madison Award for First Amendment advocacy. He focuses on First Amendment and freedom-of-information issues, particularly as they apply to privacy protection, intellectual property, national security, and information-control by government and private corporate interests.
 

Nigeria-born Chike Nwoffiah looked around at how American cinema depicted African people and culture, and saw almost nothing real or accurate. A filmmaker himself now living in America, he maintained ties with Nigeria and knew the creative power of film talent throughout Africa. Eight years ago he founded the Silicon Valley African Film Festival. It's more than a collection of live-action movies, animation, and documentaries - although it is all of that. It also incorporates celebrations of wider African culture, with a procession of flags, a fashion show, and an African marketplace. Angie and Chike will discuss his own work, perceptions of Africa in American, and the evolution of the festival and its audience. 
 

"This is the real story of the Trump administration -- not what Trump is tweeting but what his appointees are doing to undermine civil rights, economic security and the environment." - Rev. Jesse Jackson

John Nichols joins Angie Coiro for a special Thursday edition of In Deep, to probe what lies beneath the flashiest aspects of the Donald Trump regime. In his new book Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse: A Field Guide to the Most Dangerous People in America, Nichols details the rogue's gallery of alt-right hatemongers, crony capitalists, immigrant bashers, and climate-change deniers now running the American government. To survive the next four years, Nichols argues, we the people need to know whose hands are on the levers of power. And we need to know how to challenge their abuses. Sticking to the hard facts and unafraid to dig deep into the histories and ideologies of the people who make up Trump's inner circle, Nichols delivers a clear-eyed and complete guide to this wrecking-crew administration.

John Nichols is the national affairs writer for The Nation magazine and a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times. He is also the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin, and a cofounder of the media-reform group Free Press. A frequent commentator on American politics and media, he has appeared often on MSNBC, NPR, BBC and regularly lectures at major universities on presidential administrations and executive power. The author of ten books and has earned numerous awards for his investigative reports, including groundbreaking examinations (in collaboration with the Center for Media and Democracy) of the Koch brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council.

A deeply personal memoir calling for an end to the dark shaming of mental illness

Families are riddled with untold secrets. But Stephen Hinshaw never imagined that a profound secret was kept under lock and key for 18 years within his family―that his father’s mysterious absences, for months at a time, resulted from serious mental illness and involuntary hospitalizations. From the moment his father revealed the truth, during Hinshaw’s first spring break from college, he knew his life would change forever.

Hinshaw calls this revelation his “psychological birth.” After years of experiencing the ups and downs of his father’s illness without knowing it existed, Hinshaw began to piece together the silent, often terrifying history of his father’s life―in great contrast to his father’s presence and love during periods of wellness. This exploration led to larger discoveries about the family saga, to Hinshaw’s correctly diagnosing his father with bipolar disorder, and to his full-fledged career as a clinical and developmental psychologist and professor.

In Another Kind of Madness, Hinshaw explores the burden of living in a family “loaded” with mental illness and debunks the stigma behind it. He explains that in today’s society, mental health problems still receive utter castigation―too often resulting in the loss of fundamental rights, including the inability to vote or run for office or automatic relinquishment of child custody. Through a poignant and moving family narrative, interlaced with shocking facts about how America and the world still view mental health conditions well into in the 21st century, Another Kind of Madness is a passionate call to arms regarding the importance of destigmatizing mental illness.

STEPHEN HINSHAW is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the Vice-Chair of Psychology at UC San Francisco. Hinshaw is the author of The Mark of Shame: Stigma of Mental Illness and an Agenda for Change (Oxford, 2007), the first book in the U.S. on mental illness stigma. His research has been covered in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, among others. He lives in Berkeley, CA.

A contrarian perspective from a leading venture capitalist who contends that the future of advanced technological breakthroughs will come from college graduates who majored in the social sciences and humanities (the Fuzzies) as opposed to the more hardcore science concentrators (the Techies). Based on the author's extensive experience in evaluating and funding start-up companies, the book will feature dozens of timely case studies that will prove his point and will also be of great reassurance to liberal arts majors. 

Scott Hartley is a venture capitalist, has been an investment partner on Sand Hill Road, a Presidential Innovation Fellow at the White House, and worked at Google, Facebook, and Harvards Berkman Center. 

A Bay Area native, he moved to Palo Alto in 1993, where he attended elementary (Nixon), middle (Jordan), high school (Paly), and Stanford University.

Marion Barry, Maxine Waters, Eric Holder, and Johnnie Cochran are not names you would associate with the staggering incarceration rates plaguing black and minority communities across the country.

Yet, as James Forman, Jr. writes in his new book, Locking Up Our Own, it's undeniable that the urgency and good-intentioned politics of black leaders in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, as they sought to reduce crime and curb out-of-control drug addiction, has unspooled now, decades later, into a devastating tally of young men whose lives have been lost to the penal system.

Squarely in-line with the work of leading voices like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michelle Alexander, and Bryan Stevenson, Forman, Jr. looks beyond basic injustices and the racism latent in the American judicial system and shows the unfortunate history of how good ideas and urgent cries for help were unfairly resolved and have since deformed the reality of the American dream for multiple generations of black men.

Award-winning journalist Angie Coiro sits down with Forman, a professor at Yale Law School, for an hour-long interview live on-stage to discuss the impact black leaders have had on mass incarceration rates and the deleterious effects of punitive justice and the American reform system.

If National Governments can’t solve the climate crisis, then who will? Not Without Us follows seven grassroots activists from around the world to the 21st U.N. Climate Talks in Paris. The effects of climate change on their lives reveal what’s at stake if a strong agreement to limit carbon emissions is not reached. Yet, the landmark Paris Accords, signed by 192 nations, is nonbinding and fails to mention the main cause of global climate change: fossil fuels. How could this be?

Not Without Us connects the dots. Between the inability of the U.N. process to address climate change and Big Oil’s control over governments. Between the greatest economic inequality in the history of mankind and the oncoming climate disaster. Between a fossil fuel-driven economy and the 1% who control it.

Not Without Us demonstrates the importance of grassroots groups to empower mass movements to create the systemic change we need. Real change that comes not from top-down, but the bottom up, organized by social movements to harness the greatest force we have: humanity. 

It's a thorny proposition: the increasing reliance on America's ultra-rich for society's most urgent needs. Government funding of such basic services as education, health care, and arts are becoming more politically manipulated and constrained. Enter the 1%: the Zuckerbergs, Waltons, Gateses, the Buffets. All have opened their wallets for their preferred causes; all exercise control over what meets their personal criteria. On the one hand, their generosity has funded schools, clinics, journalism - an endless list of beneficial gifts to America. On the other hand, what are the hidden costs of shifting the public good into the hands of a small cadre of powerful individuals?

David Callahan's The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age is an inside look at the secretive world of elite philanthropists and how they're quietly wielding ever more power to shape American life for better and for worse. 

David Callahan is the founder and editor of the media site Inside Philanthropy, and co-founder of the national think tank Demos. His earlier books include The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead and Fortunes of Change: The Rise of the Liberal Rich and the Remaking America.

In 2002, Tabitha Soren began photographing minor league draft picks for the Oakland As. She followed them into and through the alternate reality of baseball: long bus rides, on-field injuries, friendships and marriages entered and exited, constant motion, and very hard work, often for very little return. Some, like Nick Swisher and Joe Blanton, have gone on to become well-known, respected, high-level players. Others moved out of baseball into selling insurance, coal mining, or other unexpected life paths. Some have wrestled poverty and even homelessness.


Along with Fantasy Life's multi-media debut, Angie and Tabitha will discuss her earlier work; her experiences as a woman in the intensely male baseball milieu; and her career transition from MTV News reporter to camera artist.

Tabitha Soren left a successful career in television in 1999 to start another one as a photographer. Her work is included in public collections such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Oakland Museum of California; Transformer Station, Cleveland, Ohio; Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco; New Orleans Museum of Art; Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Indiana; and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans. Her work has been featured in Dear Dave, McSweeneys, Vanity Fair, New York Times Magazine, Blink, Slate, New York, Sports Illustrated, California Sunday Magazine, and ESPN The Magazine. She is represented by the Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles.