Five Years Later, Erica Licht and Nikhil Raghuveera Bid Farewell to Untying Knots

Over the past five years, the climate and conversation around racial justice has shifted, with the movement gaining widespread visibility, facing intense backlash, and continuing today through everyday work and urgent action in communities across the country. Against that changing landscape, Nikhil Raghuveera and Erica Licht’s Untying Knots podcast has been a steady presence. Since 2020, the co-hosts have explored how people and institutions are untying the knots of systemic oppression — and tying new ones grounded in accountability and equity.

Licht, research projects director at the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability (IARA) Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center, and Raghuveera, a fellow Harvard Kennedy School graduate, have produced more than 20 episodes spotlighting organizers, advocates, artists, and leaders working across sectors to build a more just future.

Now, as the podcast comes to a close, the hosts reflect on how the project began, how it has evolved, and what they hope listeners will carry forward.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

What was the inspiration behind launching Untying Knots five years ago—and why then?

Nikhil: Back in spring 2020, Erica and I were both graduate students at the Harvard Kennedy School. In a course with Professor Megan Ming Francis — to whom we want to extend a ton of gratitude — she prompted the class to “interrogate philanthropy from a unique angle” using a podcast.

Erica: We drew on my background in radio. A podcast, like radio, is a great medium to create a public-facing dialogue around a salient issue in the field of racial and social justice. Specifically, the first episode of Untying Knots looked at the question of what’s happening in philanthropy through the lens of two organizations: Haymarket People’s Fund and Boston Ujima Project. Each approached the process of funding the work for racial justice differently — through their models, through their histories, and through their mechanisms of impact investing and grassroots fundraising.

And where did the title Untying Knots come from?

Erica: This is one of those, “How did the Beatles become the Beatles?” questions [laughs]. I think we were talking about how we wanted a metaphor, and we were talking about systems of oppression and the stuck-ness there, the knottiness, and then I said, “Oh, what about Untying Knots?” But Nikhil, I feel like you brought in the string piece.

At the time, I got really excited and drew a logo on my iPad — our original logo. It was just — picture a third-grader’s rendition of a mic within a knotted rope. I was sheepishly proud of it at the time, and obviously what became our actual logo is much nicer, cleaner, and sharper, but it was always about illuminating the knot itself. What are the systems in U.S. society and globally that are tied up with each other and that keep people both literally and metaphorically tied up in oppression through intentional restricted access to everything from housing to food to education to the rights of families? And then we wanted to illuminate the people, organizations, and movements untying those knots. Who is tying new knots of solidarity, accountability, justice, and equity?

Over five years and 20+ episodes, you’ve welcomed an incredible range of guests, from grassroots organizers to cultural figures like Ava DuVernay. How did you approach guest selection and choose what subjects to feature?

Nikhil: When we first started, each episode was based around one theme and two guests, and then integrating the two case studies together. And over time, we evolved that approach to have one guest and a shorter, more direct interview format. After the first episode, we made an iterative list of different issues and topics that we thought we should cover at various points in time. We were thinking about all the different groups, strategies, and geographies that could be explored. And then, we’d think about those topics and ask: Who’s in our networks? How do those topics connect to prior episodes? How do they connect to future ones? And what are the conversations that we can curate as part of that?

Erica: Thinking about the utility of each episode through the lens of a case study — well, what does a good case study do? It has really rich context for the history and why and how this systemic issue came to be. It’s really clear on the points of intervention and actions taken by the organizing group, and then what the impact or effect of those were. So, one could say that this podcast has been a set of case studies from the field of leaders and people doing amazing work across sectors — electoral reform, philanthropy, Indigenous sovereignty, the environment, the arts, and more. And we’ve tried intentionally to feature Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian American and Pacific Islander leaders and organizations working across these sectors.

Looking back, do you have any favorite moments or episodes that stand out?

Nikhil: Mine is our first one on financial systems and thinking about how capital is distributed and allocated with the Boston Ujima Project’s Lucas Turner-Owens and the Haymarket People’s Fund’s Karla Nicholson. And that’s because it was very relevant to my prior and current work.

When we think about allocation of capital, how capital flows to different communities, who the decision makers are in capital allocation, and whether it’s done in an equitable manner or not — to me that was incredibly relevant, both in reconciling the past as well as rewriting a new future.

We finished it during COVID, in May 2020, and looking back, it’s such an important episode, which I’d say is even more relevant today. And I actually became friends with Lucas after that, which is pretty great, too.

Erica: There’s nothing like sitting next to Ava DuVernay. I was very fortunate to be able to do that. Speaking with Ava, her energy and — enthusiasm isn’t a strong enough word — her charisma and commitment to the craft and art of filmmaking is so remarkably clear, and so is the intentionality with which she operates within the landscape of media. So, it’s not just about making incredible films, which she does; it’s also about the art and craft of filmmaking, honoring the Black filmmakers who’ve come before her and shaped her work, as well as just pushing the industry as a whole to change, to be more inclusive and equitable. It was also very rare that we did an interview in person, so just to be sitting next to someone with that level of zest for their work was really remarkable.

Also, the second episode on voting rights in the South with Nse Ufot, who is someone I just admire incredibly, really stood out. She works with Stacey Abrams in Georgia, making sure that people have the tools and access to use their power to vote. And we were having that conversation at a time in which that access was directly under attack in the state primaries, so it was about critical response in real time.

Across episodes, were there common themes that surfaced, either in how guests approached their organizing work or in the challenges they faced?

Nikhil: One cross-cutting theme was the necessity of leaders being proximate to the local communities they serve. And it’s really salient, right? Because when we started the podcast, we were sitting at Harvard Kennedy School, which is not at all proximate to any of the communities on the frontlines of organizing. But that proximity was very relevant across almost every single case we featured of organizations and movements working for justice locally and nationally.

Another thing I saw was the intersectionality between a lot of the issues that our guests talked about. For example, our very first episode was on building racially just financial systems, and later on, we did an episode on Indigenous land rights. There is significant connectivity between the two, as both come down to fundamental questions of: Who has historically had power? Who has had control? How were these systems built? And most of all, what are the systems that need to be rebuilt or changed, and how are impacted communities themselves doing this work? And you see that across pretty much every episode.

Erica: Also, listen to community. Across the board, the people we talked to said, “listen to communities, listen to your community, listen to people.” And that was so evident in hearing Karla Nicholson, in our very first episode, talk about Haymarket People’s Fund’s work — that their institutional change process came out of listening to the needs of community and the needs of staff, especially Black, Indigenous, and people of color staff and grantees.

More recently, Christine Cordero, co-executive director of Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), talked about environmental justice organizing by Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in California, and it was the same thing: community itself, defining the environmental hazards and challenges they’re up against as well as what effective advocacy and policy should look like.

And I guess the meta level of that is our podcast. We’re listening. And we’re trying to amplify stories of what successful listening looks like to our listeners.

Have you found that working on the podcast has shaped your thinking or shifted your views?

Erica: Incredibly — period. I’ve enjoyed so much being in conversation with you, Nikhil, and it’s been so energizing.

We did the podcast through the pandemic, and then to now, which is hard to believe — and mind you, through the waves of massive societal support for Black Lives Matter and racial justice to this current time where it’s not just dwindling but there is an outright attack on this work and a withdrawal of resources. Through all of that, we’ve continued to have conversations with people doing the work, who are on the frontlines and actively thinking about these questions of dismantling systems and building new systems and/or structures. And we’re often speaking with an individual, but they’re representative of a much larger base, whether it’s the staff they work with, partner organizations, or the community. So, we’re talking to one person, but behind them is 500 or 5,000 people.

Nikhil: For me, Indigenous land rights and justice is a topic that, truthfully, I didn’t have as much knowledge on, and so having a few episodes focus on that, and through very in-depth conversations, was really helpful. Our third episode on current fights for Native land rights by the Mashpee Wampanoag, as well as the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations, was a 56-minute episode; I think it’s our longest one.

And also, we started this in 2020. It’s been five years, and the world has changed in many ways. And I think there are points when you can be really frustrated about what’s going on. But for us, every conversation we had was incredibly energizing because of who the people are and what they’re doing and how long they’ve been working on it. It’s not someone who’s just been like, “Oh, let me try this out for two weeks.” They’ve been at it for years, and it’s not just them alone. They have an entire support network. They have an organization. They have other people that they’re working alongside and with.

And you derive a lot of energy and inspiration from that because it’s folks who’ve been at this for a while and have no intention of quitting anytime soon. And so, even when you see things happen in the world and it feels easy to fall into despair, having some of those interviews and those conversations — every single time, I came out incredibly energized.

What do you hope listeners will take away from the podcast?

Erica: Someone recently told me, “This podcast has informed the way I approach my work and my social movement work especially. It’s a source of inspiration. Those of us doing work in the field don’t often have the ability to have critical inquiry and conversation in the context of institution building. And this podcast has allowed for that.” And this was a recent call I had with a colleague/friend, catching up about their movement work. We hadn’t talked in a number of years, and he was like, “I was so excited to catch up in general, and especially because I’m such a fan of your podcast.”

And I’ll just add one more. Another colleague in the field told me that every year, he has his students listen to the episode on Indigenous governance and land rights. He said, “I make sure that they listen to that because it’s so instructive and effective in shaping our conversation on the issue area and providing both context and a case study.”

For me, that speaks to it getting to the places that we hoped it would get to, in the ears of the people that we hoped would be reached.

Nikhil: When we first started, Erica and I asked, “How do you amplify and talk about organizations that may not always be front and center, that are doing really important work?” Many of these organizations you might not hear about on traditional media sources. So, that was really important.

As the podcast comes to a close, how are you feeling about the future of the kind of conversations you had on the show?

Erica: I hope that Untying Knots will live on in the physical archive of all the episodes on Spotify, Apple podcasts, and the Ash Center website, so that people can continue to benefit from this work! That’s the great thing: they’re certainly from a point in time, but their teachings and learnings are timeless.

And what do you see as Untying Knots’ contribution to that future and to the field in general?

Nikhil: These kinds of conversations don’t go away. I hope we’re only going to see them more and more. Where does Untying Knots fit into that? I think having it as a source of record is really valuable.

I don’t know how you felt about it, Erica, but for me it was actually an opportunity to have this body of work that I personally can go and reflect on. And media is really powerful, right? It can be written, it can be visual, it can be art, and it can be podcasts. And I think having records of these various organizations, this work, is really powerful and really important. It’s important for collective memory in terms of how to think about things that have been done in the past and what that means moving forward.

So, what comes next?

Erica: This is a collection of 20 really powerful stories, and I’m excited to continue experimenting with different types of media to capture other powerful and important stories. For myself, I’m especially interested in pursuing more personal family stories connected to these topics, and doing some of my own archival work within my family to document particular family members and the things that they worked on that similarly brought people together to build community a cross lines of difference.

Nikhil: I think the lessons are still valuable because it’s still relevant across so many other facets of what we do. Even though you might not be working on a specific issue that someone talks about on the podcast, there still is interconnectivity between that and other issues that we face on a day-to-day basis. In that way, among many, the impact of Untying Knots lives on.