Nothing Never Happens

Nothing Never Happens
  • 4.9 (26)
  • EDUCATION
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Nothing Never Happens is a journey into cutting-edge pedagogical theory and praxis, where co-hosts Tina Pippin and Lucia Hulsether connect with leading voices in radical teaching and learning. We engage a range of approaches — including but not limited to democratic, feminist, queer, decolonial, and abolitionist models.

  1. 11/01/2025

    Love Us Back: Queer Commitment After Institutional Betrayal

    What pedagogies arise from institutional betrayal? How can we do the work we love in contexts where harassment is endemic and administrative responses to it escalate the problem? What assumptions have normalized the expectation that our institutions cannot be spaces of love? In this episode, we welcome Dr. Jennifer Doyle to discuss all of these issues as they arise in her most recent book, Shadow of My Shadow (Duke University Press, 2024). This remarkable work develops from Doyle's own experience of being stalked by a student and unfurls into a bracing critique of the institutional administration of harassment cases--as well as the attachments that arise in their aftermath. This line of inquiry builds on Doyle's Campus Sex / Campus Security (Semiotexte, 2015), on how the bureaucratic management of sex on college campuses coincides with the militarization of campus police. Jennifer Doyle is a writer, arts and performance curator, sports analyst, and professor of English. She serves on the Board of Directors of Human Resources Los Angeles; her most recent co/curated exhibition is Sciencia Sexualis at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, LA (2024-2025). In addition to the books named above, Jennifer is the author of Hold It Against Me: Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art (Duke University Press, 2013) and Sex Objects: Art and the Dialectics of Desire (University of Minnesota Press, 2006). She is also the voice behind the beloved soccer blog From a Left Wing (2007-2013) and, now, The Sport Spectacle. Links to recommended stuff! Esme Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias (Graywolf, 2019) Barbara Johnson, "Muteness Envy" in The Barbara Johnson Reader (Duke UP, 2014) Francois Tosquelles, Psychotherapy and Materialism, English translation (ICI Berlin Press, 2024) Camille Robcis, Disalienation (University of Chicago Press 2021) Colm Toibin, The Magician (Scribner, 2022) Alexandra Horowitz, On Looking (Scribner, 2014) a href="https://bsky.app/profile/real-point-god.bsky.social" rel="noopener noreferrer"...

    1h 20m

  2. 07/31/2025

    Banking Methods: Education Finance for Radical Teachers

    What do advocates for educational justice need to know about school financing? What's the relationship between the critical pedagogy and the budget sheets that get passed around at school board meetings? What kinds of community organizing do we need to change how school financing works? In this episode, we welcome writer and organizer David I. Backer to discuss these questions and more. David is best known for his substack, Schooling in Socialist America, a public project in which he investigates (and educates his readers about) the ins and outs of school finance policy, with an emphasis on the politics of racial capitalism, climate change, and infrastructure. His forthcoming book, As Public as Possible: Radical Finance for America's Schools (The New Press, 2025), is a deep dive into these issues--and a positive vision of what can change. David has also published two other books. The first, Elements of Discussion, is a "practical-poetic" reflection emerging from his PhD dissertation on pedagogical theories of discussion. The second, Althusser and Education was praised by a reviewer as “the most comprehensive and nuanced reading of Althusser’s thinking in the English language.” Currently, David is an Associate Professor of Education Policy at Seton Hall University. Links to recommended stuff! WPRB - Princeton Public Radio (great music) China Mieville, The Scar (book) The Debt Collective (organizing collective) Nick Doox, The N-Word of God (book) Democracy Now daily podcast Behind the News with Doug Henwood (podcast) Beef and Dairy Network (podcast) EMEL (musician) Mustafa (musician) Astrid Sonne (musician) Episode Credits: Co-hosts and co-producers: Lucia Hulsether and Tina Pippin Editing and Production Manager: Aliyah Harris Intro Music: Lance Haugen and the Flying Penguins Outro Music: Akrasis

    59 min

  3. 03/24/2025

    Literacy and Liberation: Radical Schooling in the Black Freedom Movement

    What role did education play in the US civil rights movement? What did it look like for anti-racist organizers to build radical schooling and organizing spaces that could evade the harsh surveillance lights of white supremacy and Jim Crow? What lessons can we learn from them today? Our March 2025 episode features journalist Elaine Weiss, who speaks about her new book, Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools That Built the Civil Rights Movement, published by Simon and Schuster this month. Spell Freedom traces the educational program that was the underpinning of the civil rights movement and voter registration drives. The Citizenship Schools originated from workshops in the summer of 1954 at the Highlander Center, a labor and social justice training center, located on a mountain in Monteagle, TN, just after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. The heart of the book is Elaine’s vivid retelling the stories of the four main leaders of the citizenship school movement, Septima Clark, Bernice Robinson, Esau Jenkins, and one of the founders of the Highlander Center, Myles Horton. She traces the path from this mountain center to Charleston and the sea islands of South Carolina, all framed by the segregated and racist South and the leaders who rose up to organize and resist Jim Crow and create a new South. As is often said in southern movement building (from the World Social Forum in 2006), “another South is possible; another South is necessary,” and Spell Freedom connects the histories and voices of the movements that continue to be necessary today. Episode Credits: Co-hosts and co-producers: Lucia Hulsether and Tina Pippin Editing and Production Manager: Aliyah Harris Intro Music: Lance Haugen and the Flying Penguins Outro Music: "Plato's Republic" by Akrasis

    57 min

  4. 02/18/2025

    Beyond/Against/Within Education: Radical Pedagogy as Radical Study

    What is education for? What modes of study become possible beyond the frameworks of formal schools and universities? How does radical studying fit into the work of grassroots liberation work? As we enter the new year, educator, writer, and organizer Eli Meyerhoff brings us back to foundational questions about radical pedagogy. His book Beyond Education: Radical Studying for Another World rejects narrow, romanticized, disciplinary modes of education. It elaborates the concept of “modes of study” — which cracks open possibilities for how we might learn, teach, transform, and organize together. He is one of the co-collaborators on Abolition University and Cops Off Campus Research Project. Recently Eli has written important critiques of the "Antisemitism 101" trainings held by universities in response to Palestine liberation and anti-Zionist organizers. Currently, Eli currently works at Duke University at the John Hope Franklin Center Humanities Lab. He has previously worked as an adjunct instructor at the University of Minnesota and at Duke. He earned a PhD in Political Science, with a political theory focus, from the University of Minnesota in 2013.  Episode Credits: Co-hosts and co-producers: Lucia Hulsether and Tina Pippin Editing and Production Manager: Aliyah Harris Intro Music: Lance Haugen and the Flying Penguins Outro Music: "Plato's Republic" by Akrasis

    56 min
  5. Practicing Pedagogies of Resistance and Liberation: The Critical Study of Zionism

    11/18/2024

    Practicing Pedagogies of Resistance and Liberation: The Critical Study of Zionism

    This podcast is a dual release between Nothing Never Happens and The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism’s “Unpacking Zionism” podcast. * * * * * How have the norms of mainstream educational institutions shaped how teachers and students can study and talk about Zionism? What does it mean to study Zionism critically? What does the current moment -- fourteen months into an ongoing genocide of Palestinians, when global solidarity movements persist in the face of extreme repression -- require of radical pedagogues? What knowledge, tools, and legacies of struggle should we turn to for guidance? In this dual-release episode, Tina and Lucia interview two founding collective members of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism (ICSZ), Dr. Emmaia Gelman and Dr. Yulia Gilich. The Institute examines the political and ideological work of Zionist institutions within and beyond their direct advocacy for Israel. Our conversation includes the genesis of ICSZ and its interventions into institutional norms around the study of Zionism, the creation of their No IHRA Toolkit (in response to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism), the weaponization of antisemitism through definitions and other repressive means, and examples of creative and critical pedagogies investigating Zionism in higher education classes.  More about our guests: Emmaia Gelman has taught at NYU and Sarah Lawrence College. She researches the history of ideas about race, queerness, safety, and rights, and their production as political levers in the realm of hate crimes policy, surveillance, anti-terror measures, and war. Emmaia is at work on a critical history of the Anti-Defamation League (1913-1990). She is the co-chair of the American Studies Association Caucus on Academic and Community Activism, and a longtime activist in New York City on Palestine, policing, antiracism, and queer issues. Yulia Gilich is a media artist, theorist, and community organizer. They are a founding collective member of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. They received their PhD in Film & Digital Media from the University of California, Santa Cruz where they are currently a lecturer teaching courses at the intersection of critical race and media studies. CREDITS Co-produced with the "Unpacking Zionism" podcast team -- thanks especially to Emmaia and Yulia for your back-end editing work! Co-hosts: Tina Pippin and Lucia Hulsether Editor and audio engineer: Aliyah Harris Summer 2024 Intern: Ella Stuccio Theme music by Lance Haugen and Aviva and the Flying Penguins Outro music is "Unnervous" by Akrasis Support Nothing Never Happens on Patreon!

    1h 13m

  6. 10/01/2024

    No Separation: Religion, Race, and Moral Education in US Public Schools

    How has the intersection between religious and racial politics shaped the landscape of public education in the United States? How have communities, both past and present, historically resisted covert and overt white Christian supremacy in public education? What lessons can radical pedagogues draw from these movements today? Our September 2024 episode features Dr. Leslie Ribovich, a scholar of American religion, religion, and education. Her book, Without a Prayer: Religion and Race in New York City Public Schools (NYU Press, 2024), is illuminating reading for anyone seeking to understand the entangled histories — and surprising consequences and reverberations — of the simultaneous legal desegregation and legal secularization of public school classrooms. From the moral codes underwriting racist school discipline policies, to presumptive Protestant norms governing moral education programs, to grassroots community movements to build more equitable and just public education systems, Without a Prayer offers key context to understanding contemporary battles over the future of public education policy. Read an excerpt here. Leslie Ribovich is currently the Director of the Greenberg Center for Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, where she is also an Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Law and Public Policy. She is working on a second project about forms of moral and character education in modern U.S. history. CREDITS Co-hosts: Tina Pippin and Lucia Hulsether Editor, Audio Engineer, and composer of outro music: Aliyah Harris Summer 2024 Intern: Ella Stuccio Theme music by Lance Haugen and Aviva and the Flying Penguins Support us on Patreon!

    1h 8m

  7. 07/31/2024

    Humanizing Critical Pedagogy: The Promise of Community Colleges

    Sometimes theories of critical pedagogy can be quite abstract. What does it look like to front concrete practices in our approaches to this tradition? How do those practices change in the context of community colleges? What can radical community college educators teach us about radical teaching and learning broadly? Our July 2024 episode features three community college educators who co-edited the recent edited collection Humanizing Collectivist Critical Pedagogy: Teaching the Humanities in Community College and Beyond (Peter Lang 2024). This book is a must-read for teachers curious about the practical applications of critical pedagogy for crafting syllabi, building more democratic classroom structures, creating socially engaged classrooms, and fighting for more just and equitable educational systems.  Sujung Kim is an interdisciplinary scholar of critical pedagogy of higher education who is currently a research associate with the Futures Initiative and Humanities Alliance at CUNY Graduate Center. Leigh Garrison-Fetcher is a linguistics professor in the Education and Language Acquisition Department at LaGuardia Community College. Kaysi Holman is the Director of People and Culture at the California-based educational equity nonprofit 10,000 Degrees. Sujung, Leigh, and Kaysi met in the context of their shared work with the Mellon-funded CUNY Humanities Alliance—of which Kaysi was a key creator and leader—where they worked graduate teachers and faculty on creating social justice oriented classrooms. CREDITS Co-hosts: Tina Pippin and Lucia Hulsether Editor and Audio Engineer: Aliyah Harris Summer 2024 Intern: Ella Stuccio Theme music by Lance Haugen and Aviva and the Flying Penguins Outro Music: “hemlock hed” by Akrasis Support us on Patreon!

    1h 6m

  8. 06/30/2024

    Roots, Branches, Wings: On Feminist Theater of the Oppressed

    Feminist Theater of the Oppressed: What is it? How can its philosophies and methods transform our approaches to critical pedagogy? How does Feminist Theater of the Oppressed help us reflect on improvisation, experimentation, and power in our teaching and organizing contexts? Our June 2024 guest, Bárbara Santos, takes up these questions as a portal into discussion of how power shapes (and can be transformed in) our pedagogies. Barbára is an actress, performer, writer, and organizer. She is the artistic director and co-founder of KURINGA - Space for Theater of the Oppressed in Berlin, Germany. She is Founder of the Ma(g)dalena International Network, a collaborative of practitioners of Feminist Theater of the Oppressed based in Europe, Latin America, and Africa.  Bárbara’s work as a director, performer, organizer, and writer has been instrumental in disseminating Theater of the Oppressed globally, and elevating feminist critiques and methods within its praxis. Her books include Roots and Wings of Theater of the Oppressed (Portuguese 2016, Spanish 2017, Italian 2018, English 2019); Aesthetic Paths: Original Approaches on Theater of the Oppressed (Portuguese, 2018; English and Spanish forthcoming); and Theater of the Oppressed: Feminist Aesthetics for Political Poetics (Portuguese, 2019; English, 2023). The tree of Theater of the Oppressed—images, movement, sounds, words, play—comes to life throughout Barbára’s work and, in the process, honors women’s lives through dialogue and political action. * * * * CREDITS: Co-hosts: Lucia Hulsether and Tina Pippin Audio Production and Music: Aliyah Harris Intro Music: Lance Haugen and Aviva and the Flying Penguins

    1h 11m
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About

Nothing Never Happens is a journey into cutting-edge pedagogical theory and praxis, where co-hosts Tina Pippin and Lucia Hulsether connect with leading voices in radical teaching and learning. We engage a range of approaches — including but not limited to democratic, feminist, queer, decolonial, and abolitionist models.

Information

  • Creator
    Nothing Never Happens
  • Years Active
    2017 - 2025
  • Episodes
    99
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2025 Nothing Never Happens
  • Show Website
    Nothing Never Happens