Coming to America, Then and Now
Season 2, Episode 7
With guests Erika Lee and Muzaffar A. Chishti and cohost Amanda Frost.
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Elizabeth Metzger’s disembodied voice
Episode 17: “She’s both the midwife and the provoker”
“Oh it is worth being dust,” writes Elizabeth Metzger, in her poem “Into Her Future.” She’s talking about a particular kind of dust, the kind that takes pleasure in its own dispersal and oblivion:
Elizabeth’s disembodied voice gleefully defies the physical boundaries of the living. Relieved of the obstruction of a ...
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Supreme Court
Season 2, Episode 6
This episode looks at two cases that the Supreme Court heard in March and April of this year: Noem v. Al Otro Lado and Trump v. Barbara. They’re significant cases that address very different aspects of immigration and citizenship.
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Immigration Detention
Season 2, Episode 5
Guests Mekela A. Goehring (Executive Director, Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network) and Laura P. Lunn (Director of Advocacy & Litigation, Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network) join the Unsettled hosts in a conversation about immigration detention in the second Trump administration. The administration has been greatly expanding detention facilities by buying ...
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Rights in the Era of ICE Raids
Season 2, Episode 4
In this episode, guest Lee Gelernt, Deputy Director of ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, joins the Unsettled hosts in discussing immigration enforcement in the United States from the perspective of civil liberties, assessing the broader implications of contemporary enforcement practices for constitutional rights and the rule of law.
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The Ostriches: Part VI
“By the flood of his dysregulation”
THE OSTRICHES: PART VI, APRES MOI LE DELUGE
Happy is the idiotin the privacy of dreamssequestered from the busynessof business, at home under cloudswith every peripatetic steplike a dog licking every handsniffing every crotchbefore fondling his ownfloating on a raft of melting ice
Unhappy is the tyrantin the publicity of powercaged by ...
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The Ostriches: Part V
“the padded paws in tactical gloves”
THE OSTRICHES: PART V, FORT SNELLING, MN
Our hair is full of the sand of cliché,but the ostrich does not hide her head.When the big cats and jackals dancethrough the dry grass, the ostrich liesflat on the horizon, a plumed moundon the definitive curve of the earth.The brown feathers hide among ...
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The Ostriches: Part IV
“Forty to a clockless cell”
THE OSTRICHES: PART IV, 26 FEDERAL PLAZA
Leonardo’s first inventions were machinesTo tear the bars off windows and openA prison from inside. He escaped the gibbetAnd the stake and wandered the marketBuying caged birds to set free. Every sketchAnd painting an endless draft for a pictureOf the mind in its movement, infinite.
He ...
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“I’m an Immigration Lawyer. Trump Is Shattering My Clients’ Lives.”
Season 2: Episode 3
Please note: This episode begins with a discussion of the events in Minneapolis, but was recorded prior to the January 24, 2026, shooting of Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis, MN.
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H-1B Visas
Season 2: Episode 2
David J. Bier, Director of Immigration Studies and the Selz Foundation Chair in Immigration Policy at the Cato Institute, joins Hiroshi Motomura and Cristina M. Rodriguez to discuss the implications of 2025 Executive Order on H-1B visas, what might be motivating that Executive Order, and the ins and outs of ...
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The Ostriches: Part III
“Here at our sea-bashed gates she gloats and stands”
THE OSTRICHES: PART III, THAT OLD COLONIC
So like the braised gullet of bleak shame,With plundering lips that glide on branded hands;Here at our sea-bashed gates she gloats and stands,A bronzy woman with a piece, whose flameIs an enfrissoned blighting, and her nameBreeder of Exiles. From her beaked handSpews world-wide hell—come, ...
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The Ostriches: Part II
THE OSTRICHES: PART II
But he though blind of sight,Despis'd and thought extinguish't quite,With inward eyes illuminatedHis fierie vertue rouz'dFrom under ashes into sudden flame,And as an ev'ning Dragon came,Assailant on the perched roosts …And though her body die, her fame survives,A secular bird ages of lives.
—Samson Agonistes
Captain Kirk: crisscross ...
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