Chris Barcelos on Beginning from Educated Hope

It's the beginning of a new year and normally that would mean a flurry of ambitious new projects, goals, and plans to achieve them both. But ten months into the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us are hesitant to begin new things right now, given the degree of uncertainty shaping our world and our daily lives. In episode 125, host Cathy Hannabach interviews sexuality studies and public health scholar Chris Barcelos. Chris uses José Esteban Muñoz's concept of educated hope to illustrate how we can begin activist, artistic, and academic projects now that feed our long-term vision for a better world—even in the middle of a pandemic. In the conversation, Chris and Cathy chat about pivoting socially engaged research to fit new circumstances, creative ways to launch a book during a pandemic, the reason it's so important to foreground reproductive justice in public health campaigns, and why beginning with access intimacy and critical messiness is how Chris imagines otherwise. Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/125-chris-barcelos