This week we devote a big hunk of our show to airing tracks from Declan O'Rourke's 2017 concept album about the Great Hunger (1845-1852). After reading John O'Connor's "The Work Houses Of Ireland" in 2002, O'Rourke spent 15 years slowly turning O'Connor's and other's harrowing accounts of personal adversity into a song cycle. And just this past week, O'Rourke published his first novel: "The Pawnbroker's Reward," the story of a poor family in County Cork struggling through The Great Hunger.

Also on today's show: new music from ISHILA, Fialla, The McDades, Josh O'Keefe, Chatham County Line, and more.

Diana Jones' latest album, Song to a Refugee, is a collection of songs based on the narratives of people seeking asylum from violence and political retribution in their homelands. This morning we played "We Believe You," inspired by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's testimony of the dehumanizing consitions she encountered on the USA/Mexican border. The song features co-vocals from Steve Earle and Peggy Seeger, as well as Richard Thompson's unique guitar-stylings.

Also on today's show: new music from Reg Meuross, Jake Xerxes Fussell, Anais Mitchell, The Punch Brothers, Dave Nachmanoff, and more!

We're living in a labor shortage, and signs like this one in downtown Davis aren't hard to find. The pandemic is a huge part of the reason but other factors are also at work, such as childcare, more people working for themselves, the cushion provided by benefits and a high savings rate, and baby boomers retiring. And yet California has the highest unemployment rate of any state except Nevada.

Today's guest is Suzy Taherian, a lecturer in the Graduate School of Management at the University of California at Davis, and the chief financial officer of Xpansiv, an international company based in San Francisco. She describes conditions she and other CFOs are seeing as we talk about reasons for the labor shortage, including some you might not have heard yet; how employers are responding; how it might resolve; and how employees can take advantage of the opportunities it presents.