Pushkin.

It's hard to read the news these days without asking yourself, how did we get here?

Fiasco is a history podcast for the co-creators of Slow Burn.

In our first season, Bush v. Gore, we examine an unmistakable turning point in American politics, the 2000 election, which resulted in a high-stakes stalemate, ended with one of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history. So if you're trying to make sense at the present moment, check out Fiasco, Bush v. Gore. Listen on theHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

From Pushkin Industries, this is Deep Background, the show where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.

I'm Noah Feldman. Today's conversation on Deep Background grew out of an extraordinary

new book that I read as part of a project of working my way through a whole pile of recent

books of memoirs and nonfiction essays. The book is called Unfollow Me, Essays on Complicity.

And it's by a remarkable intellectual called Jill Louise Busby.

Jill had worked for years in the nonprofit sector,

focusing on diversity and inclusion.

When she uploaded a short and powerful video, in which she called out white liberal progressives

and the corporate nonprofit machine in which she had been a participant.

The video went viral, and it helped turn her into an Instagram influencer using the screen name Jill is Black.

In the years that followed, Jill became a widely recognized figure on social media,

commenting on issues of race and identity.

In the book, what Jill does is she turns the very same sharp knife of her incisive analysis and criticism onto herself.

The result is a book of searing honesty and genuine self-reflection

about the phenomena of power, identity, and race that are occurring in real time today,

and what happens when, through her own

success, she starts to confront the possibilities of a role of power in an infrastructure

that she has been deeply committed to criticize it. I'm thrilled that Jill agreed to come

...