Culture work, held close and thought through.
AirGo moves slowly enough for ideas to breathe. Its conversations with poets, rappers, filmmakers, educators, and movement builders turn Chicago music, abolition, mutual aid, and political imagination into lived stories.
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AirGo is a long-running conversation show about culture, movement work, and the people trying to build a freer world from the ground they actually stand on. Chicago is its home base and emotional reference point. The show keeps returning to artists, organizers, performers, educators, and makers who treat creativity as part of political life rather than an escape from it. Its rhythm is patient. Damon and Kiss often begin with familiar warmth, a little ribbing, or a check-in, then let the guest carry the room into deeper territory. That looseness matters because the conversations are rarely abstract for long. A discussion of Heavy Crownz's Trench Baby Turned Farmer becomes a meditation on neighborhood options, respect, soil, growth, and the inner life of a song. A talk with aja monet moves through poetry, Black surrealist tradition, organizing, mentorship, and the strange specificity of place. Dean Spade's episode turns love, sex, shame, agency, and movement ethics into questions people can actually sit with. Sarah Oberholtzer's visit uses We Call Each Other to ask how narrative can make life beyond carceral systems feel imaginable. Renzell's episode looks back at Chicago's hip-hop renaissance through the work of building rooms, connecting artists, mixing records, and founding Studio Shapes. Bill Ayers returns as an educator, professor, author, and thought partner. A check-in episode with Damon and Kiss makes space for ICE in Chicago, mayoral politics, abolitionist skepticism, friendship, and basketball in the same conversational current. AirGo's strength is not speed or hot takes. It is trust. The show listens for the ethical stakes inside a career, a project, a block, a campaign, or a relationship, then keeps asking until the human shape of the work comes forward.
Made for: AirGo is for listeners drawn to longform conversations where Black art, Chicago music, abolitionist politics, and movement relationships are treated with care. It especially fits people who like reflective talk that can be funny without dodging serious stakes.
What sets it apart: The show stands apart by letting local specificity carry the politics: studios, neighborhoods, albums, films, friendships, campaigns, and organizing containers all become part of the analysis. Its intimacy gives guests room to be precise, unfinished, and fully human.
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/airgo/id1016530091 Since 2015, a podcast reshaping culture for the more liberatory and creative. Listen to longform humanizing conversations with artists, organizers, performers, comedians, scholars, and more who are reimagining Chicago and beyond toward liberation. Hosted by Damon A. Williams and Daniel Kisslinger.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
AirGo connects artists' creative decisions to Chicago, community work, and the political commitments surrounding the music.
AirGo treats music as work made inside political commitments and neighborhood life. Damon A. Williams and Daniel Kisslinger give artists room to explain both the choices in their work and the experiences behind them.
AirGo puts abolition, poetry, and Chicago rap at one table, then saves you a seat.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Aja Monet's path is traced through Chicago teaching, organizing, mentors, place, and her Grammy-nominated 2023 project.
Aja Monet is the center here, and the discussion moves through Chicago teaching, Black liberatory organizing, mentors, and the creative and movement homes that shaped her.
A precise debut-album conversation where rap technique, neighborhood survival, and real growth stay closely linked.
Heavy Crowns' debut album, Trench Baby Turn Farmer, gives Ergo a focused route into survival, self-examination, community work, and the more literal labor of putting hands in soil.
Dean Spade turns mutual aid, conflict, and sex positive choice into a conversation about how to love in a fucked up world.
Dean Spade comes across in a recorded conversation that moves through mutual aid, conflict, and the question of how to love in a fucked up world. The hosts also frame a new book and podcast as a way to think about stronger relationships and, maybe, a little fun.
A conversation about abolition, neighbors, fear, and the work story can do.
This hour with Sarah Oberholtzer, known here as Sarah O., gives We Call Each Other a steady, human center. It is strongest when it stays with neighbors, fear, and the hard question of imagining life without a militarized officer on the street.
AirGo weighs movement accountability, mayoral proximity, mental health, and basketball in one steady check-in.
AirGo returns with a reflective check-in that moves from privilege and mental health into the pressure movements place on elected officials, then eases out through basketball.
A clear, searching conversation on bail fund work, urgent need, and abolitionist strategy.
A guest from the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund brings the pressure point of abolitionist organizing into focus: immediate aid can change the terms of someone's day while still raising hard questions about the direction of the work.
Aja Monet connects poetry, movement work, mentorship, and the places that taught her how to keep changing.
Aja Monet's conversation with AirGo follows the making of an artist through the places, people, and political homes that shaped her. The episode moves easily between Afro-surrealist poetry, Black liberatory organizing, Chicago mentorship, and memories of Yonkers, while the hosts…
Danish news through international eyes.
Cocktails, culture, politics, and ruined comforts.
Gnostic myth for a very strange present.
Hosts Damon Williams and Daniel Kisslinger interview Grammy-nominated Afro-surrealist poet and organizer Aja Monet.
This episode of One Million Experiments features Candace McKinley from the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund.
This episode features a live 2019 interview with multi-genre artist Akenye and organizer Paige May, recorded in Chicago, discussing Akenye's eclectic music and local collaborations.
This bonus episode from 'How to Survive the End of the World' explores bell hooks's critique of falling in love versus choosing to love, examining how this distinction helps protect and liberate the heart.
Aja Monet sits with the hosts.
Heavy Crowns sits with Damon and Kiss in Ergo's Goose Island studios to discuss his debut album "Trench Baby Turn Farmer" and says life is "preparing" him while he tries to "serve" the world.
Dean Spade joins the show virtually.
This episode features an interview with Renzell, a foundational figure in Chicago's hip hop renaissance, discussing his role as a mentor, engineer, and founder of StudioShapes in shaping artists like No Name, Saba, Mick Jenkins, and Chance the Rapper.
This episode features an interview with Bill Ayers, a legendary leftist educator and activist, discussing his thoughts on liberation, movement building, and his legacy.
Ergo, Kiss, and Damon welcome Sarah Oberholzer, known as Sarah O., and introduce We Call Each Other as a short film series.
The hosts begin by checking in with each other after time away from the microphone.
This episode features an extended interview with poet Danez Smith and organizer Kandace Montgomery in Minneapolis, discussing community-based safety alternatives without police and prisons as part of the One Million Experiments project.
This episode features an interview with Zohran Kwame Mamdani, discussing his role in reshaping Chicago's culture for equity and creativity during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on community responses and care.
This episode promotes Hazel Seeds, an environmental justice listening club centered around the award-winning podcast docuseries about Hazel Johnson, the mother of environmental justice.