On Contact: The power of Classics

On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses the power of the classics, such as Sophocles’ play Philoctetes, to elucidate mass incarceration with Emily Allen-Hornblower and Marquis McCray. Emily Allen-Hornblower is a professor of Classics at Rutgers University and recipient of a Whiting Foundation grant to foster dialogues about the classics with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men and women. Marquis McCray is a social justice advocate and spent 28 years in prison. He studied the classics through the prison college program offered by Rutgers University.