Poet Kevin Coval, NPR Weekend Edition’s Scott Simon, and WBEZ Chicago's Natalie Moore share stories and reflections on their home town of Chicago, from corner stores and food deserts on the city's South Side to the North Side's once-cursed Cubs.

Open Stacks is the official podcast of the Seminary Co-op Bookstores. This episode was produced by Kit Brennen.

Radical feminist lawyer and scholar Catharine MacKinnon's book "Butterfly Politics" argues that seemingly minor interventions in the legal realm can affect major social and cross-cultural transformations. MacKinnon discusses the butterfly effect through the lens of her pioneering work in helping shape and articulate sex discrimination law and the legal concept of sexual harassment as we know it. Kimberly Kay Hoang questions conventional narratives of power and victimhood in Vietnam's sex trade in "Dealing in Desire." Open Stacks is the official podcast of the Seminary Co-op Bookstores. This episode was produced by Kit Brennen.

What role does sickness play in health; irrationality in reason? And how does literature complicate and contribute to our understanding of a life well lived? Philosophers Jonathan Lear and Martha C. Nussbaum discuss Lear's book, Wisdom Won from Illness, which offers rich readings of some of contemporary literature's greatest practitioners, including J. M. Coetzee and Marilynne Robinson. We'll also hear from Michael Eric Dyson, author of Tears We Cannot Stop and The Black Presidency, on the 2016 Election and Obama's complicity in white racial indifference.

Open Stacks is the official podcast of the Seminary Co-op Bookstores. This episode was produced by Kit Brennen. Special thanks to Matt Teichman.