He talks about the break, selects protest songs from Pink Floyd, Sam Cooke and more, his admiration for David Bowie and why it took him a minute to become a Bruce Springsteen fan on this week's show. 

He elaborates on the significance of the song both culturally and in his work. "Right after George Floyd was killed and I was in Los Angeles at the protest I saw several people holding up signs with lyrics from 'What's Going On' on them. That song and that record, to me, are the pinnacle of human achievement musically," he says.

So how does it influence his own work? "Everything about that record is what I aspire to be with music. I feel like that record haunts my dreams," he says. "That record, in my mind, is untouchable. So I'm always looking to it as the cornerstone of the building I'm trying to build. "

From feminism to her favorite New Orleans foods, DiFranco covers a wide range of subjects in this hour-long talk that also touches on Billie Eilish, writing a play and much more. 

"Robert Mapplethorpe was using art and beauty and photographs to try to get people around him to understand him and specifically even if 90 percent of the photos were of flowers some of them were about very graphic sexual things from Robert Mapplethorpe expressing a sexual side of himself and that is what 'WAP' is doing," Berninger explains on this week's People Have The Power. 

It's just one of the many amazing insights from Berninger in this fascinating conversation.  

"I'm drawing on whatever Neil Young has said, or Bill Withers. or Joni Mitchell from a kind of humanity perspective. It's so resonant to me, I'm influenced forever by this and then it falls out in a unique new way in songs of mine," he says. 

He takes Baltin deep inside the songwriting of the new album, why he didn't want to write boy meets girl songs, the song of social change and justice, as he calls them, that served as the benchmark for this album, and more. 

He also talks about the musicians he still gets excited meeting and his favorite lyricists. 

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"My favorite protest songs are the ones that basically say just exactly what's happening or what happened. That's the most heartbreaking stuff with any art, like a traumatizing movie based on true events or something. All they really do is lay out the facts of what happened and it's just so heartbreaking," she says. 

Talking about Solange's "Don't Touch My Hair," he says, "Someone put into words this really weird niche thing about how my hair is like people find it this weird, strange thing and someone is protesting, 'Don't mess with it.' It really resonated with me. So I've got to put that as my personal protest song." 

They also discuss her new album, 'Give The Drummer Some,' protest songs from the likes of Bob Marley, John Coltrane and John Lennon and more and the importance of protests in history.

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"It's very liberating especially to write one, but also to sing a song you know is gonna piss some people off," she says laughing. "I sort of get a secret thrill out of pushing people's buttons like that. Like the Trump-supporter type people."

And she talks about the importance of protest songs. "I'm wiser now, older and wiser. But I still have that same kind of excitement, I still get that same feeling when I go out, I'm singing these songs and everybody is standing up at the end of the night. That feeling of unity. That's what these songs represent to me. Cause I spent a lot of time at protests when I was younger playing my guitar and singing some of these songs. That feeling that comes over you when you feel like we're all of like minds and everybody is singing together. There is nothing like that. It's a great feeling." 

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"I was draft age and I could feel the draft , let me tell you. And I was listening to this song over and over and it gave me the courage to go down to the draft board and act crazy. And I got a 1Y. Then the protest movement, thank god, monkey wrenched the whole system, So much so , 1Y means they look up in a year, and that's really important. We, the people, stopped the Vietnam War. This song did that for me." 

For instance in choosing Ocean Colour Scene's "Profit In Peace," Natalie Maines says, "Songs I was a huge fan of and was really drawn to, especially as a teenager and then beyond, were songs with a point of view and a lot of time some defiance. Or a lot of times just peace and love. I considered myself Lubbock's very own hippie (laughs). Definitely I think that's one way speaking out and having a point of view got in my core."

And in picking U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday," Martie Maguire said, "I'm a big U2 fan, it's one of my first concerts, So "Sunday Bloody Sunday" is on my list about the troubles in Ireland, Northern Ireland, and we all have very close family who still live in Ireland."

 Speaking of the courage of M.I.A. in selecting her "Bad Girls," Emily Strayer says, "[She's a ] total badass chick fighting for female empowerment. And it's different when you're in the States and you're doing it than when you're driving around Saudi Arabia when you're not allowed to drive in the desert. She recorded that in 2012 and women couldn't drive until 2018, so it was a huge statement."

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