Sean Kerrigan, author of "Bureaucratic Insanity: The American Bureaucrat’s Descent into Madness," says that civilization is about the concentration of power. We are at a point now in which bureaucracy has stripped our lives of meaning. We will talk about bureaucracy, collapse, and finding ways to resist.

I also speak with Daina Ramey Berry, associate professor of history and African and African Diaspora Studies, at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of "The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building Of A Nation."

The overarching theme this week is the commodification of human beings and how we can reclaim and assert our humanity and the humanity of others.