After a brief publishing break, Africa Is a Country is back and proud to announce the launch of AIAC Talk! Premiering this Tuesday, and streaming every Tuesday thereafter, co-hosts Sean Jacobs and Will Shoki and a revolving cast of guests will take an hour-long look, from the left, at the most pressing issues facing the continent today.

Produced from Cape Town by Antoinette Engel, our first official episode streams this Tuesday, September 15th, at 12:00 EST and 18:00 SAST on Youtube, Twitter and Facebook.

If you want to download the show or listen to it on your podcast app, we are also happy to announce that as a reward for subscribing to our newly minted Patreon page, you can have access to the entire AIAC Talk archive and to a private RSS podcast feed, which will include all the shows from our pilot season.

The inaugural show coincides with the anniversary of a dark period in South African history, Black September, and yesterday, September 12th, marked the anniversary of the day that Biko, arguably most exciting leader of his time, was murdered by apartheid police in 1977. Biko’s ideas have continued to resonate long past his death, and have especially shaped the convictions of the new generation of activists emerging from #feesmustfall to #blacklivesmatter. So our first episode will focus on his legacy.

We will interview historian Dan Magaziner (from Yale University and an editorial board member of Africa Is a Country). Magaziner wrote the book, The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, 1968-1977. We will also be joined by two young South African activists and thinkers of the current generation to talk about what Biko means today: pan-Africanist historian Phethani Madzivhandila and University of Cape Town student activist Alex Hotz.