Miriam Toews is a Canadian author, and Fight Night is her seventh novel. It tells the story of a grandmother, a pregnant mother, and her young daughter who find themselves living together as an intergenerational family while having to cope with life-changing situations.It reads as a comedy and a commentary. It feels hilarious and deeply moving.Owen Kelly suggests reasons why you should find a copy and add it to your holiday reading.

On episode 54 of A Culture of Possibility, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso interview author Jeff Chang, known for his books on cultural subjects including hip-hop, race and racism, and Asian Americans. In May, Jeff posted to his Substack an account of how the Defense Department had removed his book, Can't Stop Won't Stop: A Hip Hop History, written for young adults, from schools on US military bases around the world. The reasons given were Trump’s executive orders banning accounts of racism, gender and sexuality, and other such topics. Jeff joins us to tell the story and talk about what it means for the future of free expression and diversity.

In this episode Sophie Hope talks to artist, researcher and teacher Anthony Schrag about a symposium he organised on 9 May 2025 at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh.The symposium, entitled Getting it right/Getting it wrong: Socially Engaged Art and Ethics was supported by Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Sophie attended the symposium and in this discussion she and Anthony reflect on some of the discussions that they took part in during the event. They reflect on what ethics means to practitioners and their practice, and to assessors and onlookers.

On Episode 53 of A Culture of Possibility, “Money Changes Everything,” Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso talk about funding for community-based art and cultural democracy in light of the two previous episodes featuring funders from the UK and US. What’s happening? What does it all mean? Where can we go from here?

According to Wikipedia “Iain McGilchrist's 2009 work, The Master and His Emissary has sold over 200,000 copies worldwide. It sought to consolidate research in brain lateralisation and to insist on the individual and cultural importance of the bi-hemisphere structure of the brain”. McGilchrist suggests that “we have become entranced by the version of the world brought into being by the left hemisphere and forgotten the insights produced by the right”.His publishers persuaded him to write a very short book, Ways of Attending, which took the main arguments of his larger, more complex and more technical work, and rewrote them as an extended essay for interested lay-people.In this episode Owen Kelly looks at some of these arguments, quoting from Ways of Attending and McGilchrist’s other published extended essay, The Divided Brain.

This month we have the second Friday Number Five of 2025. At the end of January we started another irregular series of Radio Miaaw: podcasts of music issued under Creative Commons licences; a theme we last explored four years ago.This month we have a special and unexpected surprise. Moby and Little Walnut Productions have re-launched mobygratis with, their words “phenomenally expanded functionality and resources, making it the most robust iteration yet”.They go on to say that “With the addition of 300 previously unreleased tracks, mobygratis provides creators with a revolutionary platform for accessing restriction-free music. This collection is part of an anarchist experiment in creative freedom, allowing unprecedented access to high-quality compositions.Previously available only as stereo masters, mobygratis now offers hundreds of multitrack audio files. These high-resolution tracks invite collaboration by enabling creators to remix, customize, and fully adapt the music to their unique projects, fostering a spirit of shared creativity and innovation. Formats include stereo MP3, stereo WAV, and multitrack WAV - all completely free”.In this episode we dig deeper into #mobygratis, take a look at the contract you receive when you register and download one or more tracks, and listen to a not-quite-random selection from the tracks available. You can find full episode notes with links to all the music at miaaw.net.

We interviewed John Phillips about The Museum of Unrest on December 6, 2024, at the time it launched its second collection, Good Design. You can listen to that discussion again if you click here.Next month, in the middle of June 2025, the Museum of Unrest will launch its third collection, called Community Arts. This collection has been co-curated by John and Belinda Kidd, who has had a long and varied career in community arts, arts research, and evaluation. Currently her work focuses where it began: in Hackney, at Hoxton Hall and Four Corners centre for film and photography.In this episode Owen Kelly talks to John Phillips and Belinda Kidd about the way they have assembled the collection, the range of content in the collection, and where they hope their efforts might all lead, both online and offline.

In Episode 52, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso interview Lori Pourier, a citizen of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, who served as the President of the First Peoples Fund (FPF) between 1993-2024. Currently, Lori acts as the Founder and Senior Fellow of First Peoples Fund, which “supports the cultural, artistic and ancestral practices of American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian artists, families and communities, helping them to thrive, heal and carry forward Indigenous creative expression, teachings and lifeways.” By supporting artists and culture bearers, First Peoples Fund helps Native communities heal and thrive. Collectively, they approach their work with rootedness, intuition, listening, humility and deep relationships.In this episode we talk about FPF’s work, its history and context, and the challenges posed by the MAGA regime.