Useful Idiots: Ani DiFranco on New ‘Prison Music Project’

In this week’s episode of our Useful Idiots podcast, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by Ani DiFranco. The singer-songwriter shares how she turned the raps, poems, and songs of incarcerated writers into a collaborative album, Prison Music Project. 

“Should you listen to this record start to finish, I think at the end the feeling you come away with — I hope — is ‘wow.’ You relate,” says DiFranco. “You feel, ‘they’re just like me.'” The longtime activist hopes the album will humanize mass incarceration for listeners. “If we don’t have a loved one or a friend in prison, it’s easy to not really know what’s happening, that we have two million people locked in cages in the United States.”

Plus, Taibbi recalls his days as a professional basketball player in Mongolia.

You can find the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.