Good listening: check out "Intersection" in case it disappears ...

Last week the young billionaire owner of the New Republic, Chris Hughes, announced he was putting the venerable magazine up for sale. Apparently losing millions on opinion journalism is not much fun for a Facebook founder.

A little over a year ago, Hughes' changes to the magazine sparked mass departures by long time writers and editors. Good riddance, I thought. I considered the old magazine a nest of snotty entitled white men who claimed to be "liberal" but seldom saw a U.S. military adventure they did not love, who uncritically championed Zionists' right to expropriate Palestinians, and who happily published defamation of poor people, treating propaganda as social science. From my vantage point, the new regime was a big improvement, often interesting. New writers Suzy Khimm, Jeet Heer and Brian Beutler are a distinct upgrade on policy and politics.

And best of all was bringing in Jamil Smith from the Melissa Harris-Perry show and giving him a podcast called Intersection. The show absolutely lives up to its billing:

Every two weeks, senior editor Jamil Smith will discuss and debate issues surrounding race, gender, and all the ways we identify ourselves and one another. We hope the conversations with everyday folks, activists, politicians, and you, too can help us all understand identity a lot better.

Recent shows have highlighted body image issues, the police murder of Tamir Rice in Smith's hometown, the conflicted identities of Black Republicans, and pop culture critic Janet Mock on being a very different transgender role model than Caitlin Jenner.

Let's hope the sale of the New Republic doesn't kill off this extraordinarily vibrant media project. You can sample or subscribe for free at iTunes.