This month, the US District Court Judge William Conley issued a restraining order against the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa following a tribal decision to close walleye and musky fishing for non-tribal members on some of their lakes. To talk about this decision and the state of Wisconsin’s lawsuit against the tribe, host Esty Dinur is joined by three guests, Araia Breedlove, Gwen Leaffe Carr, Eric Chapman Sr.

The decision to restrict fishing on 19 of the tribe’s most heavily fished lakes was made by Lac du Flambeau fish hatchery managers. Breedlove calls this a conservation effort and says the fish hatchery determined that restrictions were necessary in order to steward the health of the fish in these waters. There is precedent for this effort; back in 2022, the tribe closed Flambeau Lake to everyone, and when the lake reopened to fishing three years later, the walleye had rebounded. Chapman also attests that the tribe retains the management authority of the lakes. 

They also discuss the long history of intergovernmental relations between the Lac du Flambeau tribe and other native nations with the state of Wisconsin, including the time of the “walleye wars.” Carr says that tribes have jurisdiction over fishing and hunting from their treaty rights. She says there has been problems in inter-governmental affairs in the state of Wisconsin, which could be mitigated by creating intergovernmental agreements and putting more native people in state government. 

Waabinookwe/Araia Breedlove is a proud member of the Waaswaaganing community and the Public Relations Director of the Lac du Flambeau Tribe. She studied at the University of Minnesota and graduated with a journalism degree.  

Eric Chapman Sr. is an enrolled member of the Waswaagoning Ojibwe, also known as the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, located in northern Wisconsin. Eric is retired after working for the Lac du Flambeau Tribe for 33 years in the natural resource field, first as project workman, then as a conservation warden and eventually as the chief conservation warden for 25 years. He has also held the positions of emergency management coordinator, climate resilience initiative project director and manoomin (wildrice) enhancement program manager. Eric has been privileged to serve his community as a Tribal Council Member for 12 years and formerly served as a representative to the Voigt Inter-Tribal Task Force with the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission. He is an active hunter, fisherman and gatherer of the four seasons, relying on practices handed down from generations, while acknowledging the gifts our spirit relatives offer.

Gwen Leaffe Carr is an Indigenous leader, strategist, speaker, and artist with more than three decades of experience in Tribal sovereignty, public policy, democratic participation, and intergovernmental relations. A citizen of the Cayuga Nation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and a member of the Heron Clan, she spent more than twenty years working closely with Tribal Nations, elected officials, and communities throughout Wisconsin. At the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, Gwen founded the first Office of Tribal Affairs,  developed the first statewide Tribal Partnership Agreement among the Governor, the Secretary of Transportation, and Wisconsin Tribal leaders — and helped establish the state’s first Tribal Historic Preservation policy, written by Tribal Historic Preservation Officers and embedded into DOT policy.

Gwen later served as Outreach and Oversight Specialist for the $2 billion US 41 transportation project in northeastern Wisconsin, recognized as one of the largest Native-designed, engineered, and constructed projects in the United States. Nationally, Gwen served in the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, authored the first White House Report on Urban Indians, and became the first National Political Director for American Indians at the Democratic National Committee, where she founded the Native

American Caucus and helped advance Tribal sovereignty in national political platforms. Gwen held a variety of political positions and she remains deeply connected to Wisconsin and its people and continues her work in Indigenous leadership, governance, storytelling, and the arts.

Featured image of a fishing landing along the Turtle-Flambeau Flowage via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0’).

The post Fishing Isn’t an Industry, It’s a Lifeway appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

AI is on the top of people’s minds here in Wisconsin, where hyperscale data centers are altering the physical environment and the power grid. But on today’s show, WORT’s News Director Nate Carlin focuses on the emotional damage caused by AI use with Etienne Brisson, the CEO of the Human Line Project, the world’s first nonprofit dedicated to documenting and addressing AI-induced psychological harm.

The Human Line Project collects stories from people whose use of AI led to what’s called “AI psychosis,” partners with research institutions to study the phenomena, and provides support for folks to process their experiences. Brisson discusses the trends he’s seen, like folks coming to believe that their chatbot is sentient or a god. No one is truly invulnerable to this because our brains are wired to give emotion–to anthropomorphize–what we can’t understand. The moral of the story for Brisson is that you can’t trust AI: it’s built to predict and say what you want to hear. Instead, we all have to practice critical thinking.

They also discuss how AI is related to other problems in modern life like loneliness and echo chambers, and what AI companies are doing in response to AI psychosis. In October 2025, OpenAI revealed that 560,000 users were discussing manic or psychotic ideas weekly on their platform, ChatGPT, and more and more doctors are reporting patients with symptoms of AI psychosis. If you have a friend or family member who has developed an unhealthy relationship with AI, Brisson says the best approach is to listen, empathize, agree, and partner up (LEAP). 

Featured image of an AI chatbot via Pexels.

The post If The AI Says Its Sentient, Don’t Listen appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Latin American families choose to migrate to the US for a better life, but they face arduous journeys and too often stigma, violence, and separation from their children when they arrive in the US. On today’s show, host Ali Muldrow is in conversation with Dr. Gabrielle Oliveira about her new book, Now We Are Here: Family Migration, Children’s Education, and Dreams for a Better Life. 

Oliveira’s book shows how education is these families’ “currency of love”—the reason they uproot their lives and risk dangerous crossings, detention, family separation—and now the terror of ICE crackdowns.  Now We Are Here focuses on family separation at the US-Mexico border, but Oliveira says these families are worried anew, this time about being detained by ICE rather than deported at the border. 

She says that current immigration policy is designed to discourage people from entering the US by destabilizing the family unit. There was a time when even some Republicans opposed cruel immigration policies, but Oliveira observes that now there’s “an appetite to become more restricted,” following Steven Miler’s vision of the country. Even during the first Trump presidency the narrative that immigrants were hardworking, productive members of society could be heard, but that message has now dissolved.

Instead, Oliveira says that we need to see the wellbeing of children as our north star. If we acknowledged that the bond between parent and child should not be broken, could we have immigration policies that honor that? They also talk about the experience of immigrant children in the education system, how adults can better listen to children, and the ripple effects of family separation. 

Gabrielle Oliveira is Jorge Paulo Lemann Associate Professor of Education and Brazil Studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Featured image of the cover of Now We Are Here: Family Migration, Children’s Education, and Dreams for a Better Life.

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Healthcare in the US depends on immigrant doctors, but these physicians face a paradox: they’re celebrated as essential but are subjected to intense scrutiny and bias. On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon is in conversation with historian Dr. Eram Alam, about the history of migrant physicians and how they fill roles in rural areas neglected by American-born doctors. 

They talk about Alam’s book, The Care of Foreigners: How Immigrant Physicians Changed US Healthcare, which is available from Johns Hopkins University Press. She says the only universal experiences in this world are birth, death, and illness. But people’s experiences of these events are conditioned by their wealth, location, and race. In her book, she uncovers how race influences migrant doctors’ clinical interactions.

Alam studied the wave of South Asian physicians from India and Pakistan and later waves of Filipino and Nigerian doctors. These physicians were recruited to work in the US following the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, a time of Cold War fear and a desire by the US to create strong political ties. But when these doctors arrived, their expertise and knowledge was met with skepticism. Many of these elite doctors also faced a kind of shell-shock when they were placed in rural communities that didn’t look like the vision of America they were sold. 

They also discuss the chaotic immigration policies coming from the Trump administration and the looming physician shortages that will result from places like Nigeria being put on a banned country list. The Trump administration’s rules on HB1 visas–which now cost $100,000–will make it unattainable for rural hospitals to sponsor foreign-born physicians, leading to downstream effects that Alam says will be born by people who are already vulnerable. 

Eram Alam is an associate professor in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. She specializes in the history of medicine, with a particular emphasis on globalization, race, migration, and health during the twentieth century.

Featured image of the cover of The Care of Foreigners: How Immigrant Physicians Changed US Healthcare. 

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On April 30, the US House of Representatives passed its version of the Farm Bill. If it makes it through the Senate, it will be the first comprehensive farm bill since 2018. On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes is joined by journalist Lisa Held to talk about what’s in the farm bill, the controversy it sparked, and what it could mean for the US food system.

A farm bill is an omnibus bill that dictates how the government spends money on food and agriculture and determines what crops are grown, who has access to food, and so much more. Held says that it matters to everyone, because everyone eats. The biggest item in the farm bill is SNAP, which makes up 75% of the bill. Other big cuts to to commodity supports (like payments to row-crop farmers growing corn, soy, or wheat), crop insurance, and conservation. 

Held says that SNAP benefits are at the heart of the farm bill. It’s the nation’s largest food aid program, serving 48 million people who receive about $6/day per household. The Trump administration has already made cuts to SNAP benefits by expanding work requirements, eliminating benefits for refugees, and more. States are saying that their budgets can’t fill in the gaps created by federal cuts. 

They also discuss the removal of the “pesticide immunity shield” from the current version, the downsizing of USDA county offices, the first ever state farm bill in Pennsylvania, and the MAHA movement’s influence on food policy. Held says that Washington insiders aren’t confident that the Senate version of the farm bill will pass, leaving Congress to work on piecemeal appropriations to keep many food and agriculture programs running. 

Lisa Held is the senior staff reporter and contributing editor at Civil Eats, where she leads daily news coverage of federal food and agriculture policy and regularly reports on-the-ground feature stories on the American food system. Since 2015, she has reported on food and agriculture with an eye toward sustainability, equality, and health, and her stories have appeared in publications including The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Mother Jones. She is based in Baltimore.

Featured image of a tractor spraying a field with pesticide via Flickr (CC BY 2.0). 

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Combining scientific study with lived experience, David George Haskell’s latest book, How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries, tells the story of the adaptability and cooperative nature of flowering plants. He joins host Esty Dinur to discuss how flowers are not only pretty but powerful.

Around 200 million years ago when flowering plants emerged, they changed the ecology of the world, shaping human agriculture and whole dynasties of creatures like bees and butterflies. Haskell describes how flowers learned to build attractive structures to gain diligent pollinators and how they reinvented botanical motherhood. Primarily, they transformed the world through cooperation with insects, grazing animals, fungi, bacteria, and other plants. When they struggled, they reached out to others. Now, flowering plants face new struggles from climate change and all its effects. 

They also discuss the mosaic of plants and non-human life in the Driftless, the importance of soil, seagrass meadows in the ocean, and how nectar is nature’s drug cocktail. Haskell also connects plants’ struggles against erosion, land conservation, pollution, etc. with human struggles for liberation and civil rights. At the end of the day, humans can learn how to cultivate symbiosis, not exploitation, from flowering plants. 

David George Haskell is a writer and biologist acclaimed for his lyrical explorations of the living world. His most recent book, How Flowers Made our World, explores the creative powers of flowering plants. Haskell is a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.

Featured image of the cover of How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries.

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Last week, The Center for Black Excellence and Culture held its grand opening, and a crowd of around 1,500 people showed up to tour the space and celebrate. On today’s show, host Enjoyiana Nururdin speaks with Ms. Lilada Gee, the co-founder of the Center about the planning, implementation, and legacy of this space that is “by and for the Black community.”

Gee says that there’s no space like the Center in Madison or in the world, as she heard from the consulting firm they worked with. Built in between two Trump presidencies, the Center represents the dedication of Black Madisonians to creating a legacy and honoring local Black history. Much of the early fundraising was done by the Black community, particularly Black women like Frances Huntly-Cooper, Kirbie Mack, and Kesha Bozeman. Gee says she’s proud that the Center will elevate “Black brilliance, innovation, and creativity.” 

There are considerable racial disparities for Black Madisonians, which is why Gee and the other leaders of the Center wanted to create a space where people could find hope, make intergenerational connections, and honor the many ethnicities within the Black diaspora. Gee painted a mural for and designed the Black Women’s Wing. And she says that the center will be a place where the Black community can create their own legacies. 

The Center will open to the public starting July 1, when folks can start participating in events and workshops.

Lilada Gee is an artist, muralist, healer, preacher, author and international inspirational speaker and podcast host. Drawing upon her experiences as a survivor of both childhood sexual abuse and domestic violence, Lilada founded the non-profit organization—Defending Black Girlhood—that specializes in advocating for Black girls being safe in their homes, schools and communities to live, learn and be loved. Via her Black Woman Heal Collective, she has sparked an international healing movement throughout the African Diaspora that empowers Black women to create safe places for themselves and Black girls to heal. Lilada is a life-long Madison, Wisconsin resident and mother of two awesome adult children–Alexandra and Christian.

Featured image of the exterior of The Center for Black Excellence and culture courtesy of Brian Standing/WORT.

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Young people are too often victims of our broken criminal justice system. 1 in 14 US children either has or has had a parent behind bars. Our friends at the PATHfinders and POPS Club are doing the vital work of supporting these youth, including publishing their poetry. Today host Ali Muldrow is in conversation with Victor Trillo Jr., Amy Friedman, and one of the youth poets, Darrione, about their 11th anthology, A Secret Chord: Poetry, Stories & Art.

A Secret Chord features creative works by 60 teens impacted by incarceration, detention, and deportation. Darrione is one of those teens. She learned to see herself as a writer through the club and the mentorship of Victor. She says she’s come to see that her writing can connect with others and she plans to publish her own book one day. Darrione reads from her poem, “My Skin,” which is full of heartbreak and triumph in the tradition of Patricia Smith.

They talk about how this anthology stands out from previous versions and how it centers music and visual art. Friedman says she’s constantly reminded of young people’s honesty and courage in their writing. And Trillo has committed himself to being the mentor that he didn’t have when he was young and his father was incarcerated.

Victor Trillo Jr. is a founding team member of The PATHfinder Club and works as the Program Manager for The PATHfinder and POPS the Club, employing his deep understanding of the impact of incarceration on individuals, first as the son of a man who was in prison throughout Victor’s childhood, and later incarcerated himself. He is a powerful advocate for children of the incarcerated.

Amy Friedman is an author, editor, and criminal justice activist, who founded POPS the Club in 2013, as an inclusive space for youth who have been stigmatized and silenced by their experiences with the criminal justice system. Having been previously married to a man who was in prison, Amy’s stepdaughters inspired her to find a way to support youth in ways that her girls never were. 

Featured image of the cover of A Secret Chord: Poetry, Stories & Art.

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On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon is in conversation with Araceli Esparza about her new book, Healing from Racial Discrimination! ¿Ahora Que? Now, What? Esparza says that freeing your voice is an action, but it takes healing to get there. She offers advice on how to address discrimination in the workplace when EEOC and HR offices too often protect the company instead of vulnerable employees.

Esparza writes about how she turned to traditional Latin American healing methods like making altars and reports on the rituals she practiced in order to find healing and her authentic self. She also describes the sense of rejection she felt when her allies didn’t show up, and how exhausting it can be to be a woman of color in the nonprofit world. They also discuss what it means to stand up and end the silence about racial discrimination at a time when Latinx folks are being abducted by the Trump administration. 

Araceli Esparza is a first-generation Chicana writer, speaker, and community organizer based in Madison, Wisconsin. She is the founder and Executive Director of Midwest Mujeres, a nonprofit focused on storytelling, leadership, and economic empowerment for Latina and Black women. Through her work, Araceli has helped hundreds of women use storytelling as a tool for healing, visibility, and professional growth.

She is also a published poet, podcast host, and public speaker whose work explores identity, survival, womanhood, racial justice, and the power of community. Araceli is the author of the upcoming book I Don’t Have a Home to Go Back To: Seven Strategies for Navigating Healing from Homelessness as a Latina, a deeply personal and reflective work about resilience, belonging, and healing from generational hardship.

Her work has been featured through Wisconsin community media, storytelling events, and leadership spaces across the Midwest. Araceli believes that when we tell the story that sets us free, we can help set others free too.

Featured image of the cover of Healing from Racial Discrimination! ¿Ahora Que? Now, What?

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Madison’s beloved Olbrich Botanical Gardens welcomed almost 400,000 visitors last year. However, it was designed to handle less than half of that amount. This year, the Gardens with the partnership of Madison’s Parks Division embarked on a master planning process to ensure the future of the Gardens including expanding its physical space as well as services. To talk about this process, Douglas Haynes hosts a roundtable discussion with Hilary Gerstein, Eric Knepp, and Tanya Zastrow.

The Olbrich Botanical Gardens benefit humans and non-humans in the area alike through conservation projects, special events, and more. Zastrow talks about the rusty patch bumblebees, chipmunks, and Sherman the turkey who call the park home.

The Gardens are managed through a public-private partnership, between the Olbrich Botanical Society and the City of Madison Parks division. Knepp describes the history of the Gardens, from the construction of the Bolz Conservatory in 1991 to the 2009 expansion across Starkweather Creek. He says that people choose the garden for its beauty and tranquility, but also its affordability. Zastrow discusses the master planning process that will be the “roadmap for the future” as the Gardens nears its 75th year.

Gerstein describes the work of the Friends of Olbrich Park, who plan native plantings like a new bur oak and service berry tree to trash pick ups. The Friends group is trying to get information about the master plan into the hands of community members.

On May 20, a final framework of the new master plan will be presented to the public. You can learn more here.

Hilary Gerstein is Vice President of Friends of Olbrich Park.

Eric Knepp is the City of Madison Parks Superintendent. He has worked at the City of Madison since 2006.

Tanya Zastrow has worked as Executive Director of Olbrich Botanical Gardens since 2022.

Featured image of the Bolz Conservatory at the Olbrich Botanical Gardens via Wikimedia Commons.

The post The Good Problems Facing Olbrich Gardens appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Though Operation Metro Surge has officially ended, the Trump administration continues to abduct people from the Twin Cities. Three people were also taken from Madison this week, and Salah Sarsour, the president of Wisconsin’s largest mosque, was detained on April 3 and remains in ICE detention. In response, host Esty Dinur is in conversation with two organizers with Workers’ Solidary Circle–Kip Hedges and Cal Robinette–about the lessons other communities can learn from ICE resistance in the Twin Cities.  

Reflecting on the last few months, Hedges says that they’ve achieved a “partial victory” against the Trump regime and its immigration policies. The victory is partial because racial profiling, police brutality, and the effects of living under occupation continue. Robinette says that the rapid response infrastructure is changing as the number of abductions decrease, but hyper-local organizing is still the focus of the resistance. 

There is still work to do. Robinette describes the impending eviction crisis and how Minneapolis is attempting to build a $38 million “cop city” for training police and other first responders. They also discuss the role of labor unions like IBEW and teachers unions in organizing resistance. 

Kip Hedges is a long time working class organizer, who worked for 30 years as a baggage handler for Delta Air Lines. He is a retired member of the Machinists Union and member of Workers’ Solidarity Circle and DSA.

Cal Robinette is a member of the IBEW and helped get an anti ICE resolution passed in his local. He is also a member of Workers’ Solidarity Circle.

Featured image from an anti-ice protest from January 2026 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0). 

The post Lessons from Minneapolis Anti-ICE Organizers appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

For decades the Christian Right has worked to “Christianize” the federal government, arm Israel, eliminate reproductive and civil rights, and they seem to be succeeding. On today’s show, Sara Gabler speaks with journalist Josiah Hesse about what it’s like to grow up inside an Evangelical world and then leave it. Hesse writes about his experience in his new book, On Fire for God: Fear, Shame, Poverty, and the Making of the Christian Right – a Personal History.

They discuss how Hesse’s training as a journalist informed his writing of the memoir, including how he approached interviewing friends and family members with curiosity. He says that he’s proud that the book has been marketed as “one part Educated, one part rebuttal to Hillbilly Elegy” because he wanted to convey the emotional world of growing up inside an extremist religious group as Tara Westover did but also counteract the blaming of people in poverty that J.D. Vance’s book participated in. 

Hesse describes the overwhelming sense of fear and shame that he learned from his religious upbringing and how it has taken even longer to unlearn. Evangelicals have built an entire culture industry to make sure that their flocks don’t have to leave the fold–from schools to Christian radio and rock music, and more. He shares his pathway out of this world and how the ideology of rugged individualism keeps people trapped.

Josiah Hesse, author of On Fire for God, Runner’s High and the Carnality series, is a freelance journalist out of Denver, Colorado, covering everything from politics, science, and crime, to art, pop culture, and evangelical culture and theology. A regular contributor to The Guardian and Vice, his work has appeared in Esquire, Newsweek, Men’s Health, and Politico, among other publications.

Featured image of the cover of On Fire for God.

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On today’s edition of “Ali’s Book Club,” we celebrate the publication of Baker’s Dozen by Dasha Kelly, a book that grapples with mortality, grief, and desire. Kelly says that her characters, like the lead character named Shay in Baker’s Dozen, find her on purpose and then she “quilts” them into the story. 

Baker’s Dozen is haunted from beginning to end with the loss of Shay who takes her own life. Kelly says that it’s in moments of loss that people become the most empathetic, whether that loss is from death, a breakup, or the disintegration of a friendship. The other characters in the novel process their loss and what it means to be left behind all the while trying to destigmatize death and suicide.

Their conversation weaves through the ways that people experience grief, loss, and their own mortality. Muldrow asks, “would you rather know or not know when the end of your life will come?” Kelly says that we’re “all energy” and that parts of our loved ones and ancestors remain with us when they’re gone and how this shapes her writing. They also discuss the afterlife, the cosmos, ancestors, and how funerals can be the best celebrations. 

Baker’s Dozen is on sale June 4. 

Dasha Kelly is a writer, performance artist and creative change agent. She has authored award-winning poetry, essays and fiction. She is a mainstage storyteller and host with The Moth, an alum of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam,  Poet Laureate Emerita for both the City of Milwaukee and the State of Wisconsin and a National Laureate Fellow with the American Academy of Poets. In 2024, Dasha was named a Living Legacy Honoree by the licensing agency for the legendary poet Gwendolyn Brooks. A skilled engagement practitioner and instructor, Dasha has facilitated initiatives in Botswana, Mauritius and Beirut as an Arts Envoy for the U.S. Embassy. Her nationally-touring stage show, Makin’ Cake, serves audiences a unique conversation on race, class and equity. Her documentary film of the same title premiered this spring. Her nonprofit literary arts organization, Still Waters Collective, recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. Dasha’s recent releases are a poetry anthology, A Line Meant (Jaded Ibis Press), a 10th anniversary reprint of Almost Crimson (Traitmarker Books), and a new novel, Baker’s Dozen (Jaded Ibis).

Featured image of the cover of Baker’s Dozen. 

The post Writer Dasha Kelly Quilts a Story of Mortality appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon is in conversation with April Kigeya and Linda Ketcham about their struggles doing anti-oppression work in majority white spaces. They focus on their work in the Madison chapter of the Rotary Club, an international service club, and the insidious forms of racism and sexism they faced there.

They joined Rotary because it is a good place to network, meet business leaders in the community, fundraise, and connect with members of the public. After joining, Pellebon and Kigeya say they were immediately met with racism and sexism. They describe the dominant white, male, and wealthy space as unwelcoming and culturally uninterested in repairing harm. They discuss a particular incident where a member used a racial slur and how the institutional response was to focus on damage control and protecting the reputation of the organization rather than accountability. They all worked on the organization’s DEI committee, but Pellebon and Kigeya found that trying to work for change within the organization came at too high a cost. 

Linda Ketcham is the Executive Director of JustDane.

April Kigeya is a mother of four children and former Vice Chair of the Dane County Board. In 2020 April was named one of Wisconsin’s most influential Black leaders and was the first person of color to serve on the Middleton Police Commission, where she served as the Co-Chair from 2021-2022. She is currently attending Edgewood college where is a PhD candidate in Business Administration. She is also the author of Couch Confessions: The Chronicles of a Black Woman in Therapy.

Dana Pellebon serves as the Executive Director of RCC Sexual Violence Resource Center, in Dane County and coordinates community partnerships for county-wide sexual assault victim services through the Sexual Assault Response Team, the Commission on Sensitive Crimes, and the Domestic Violence and Sexual Violence Coordinated Community Response Team. She is also a theatre professional and former Dane County Board supervisor.

Featured image via Pexels.

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There’s no shortage of bad climate news: unprecedented heat, US cities running out of water, the potential collapse of the Gulf Stream, etc. The compounding effects of the climate crisis are leaving people overwhelmed and disempowered. But on today’s show host Douglas Haynes focuses on how to cope with climate anxiety. He’s joined by climate therapist, Leslie Davenport, who is a leader in the field of climate-aware therapy. 

Climate therapy is an emerging specialization that came about because more and more people were showing up to therapy distressed about the climate crisis. Davenport says that climate-aware therapy starts with validating feelings of anger, fear, or grief. She says these are normal, even healthy, reactions because we’re wired to care about and pay attention to destructive systems. Unlike the focus of conventional therapy, climate anxiety isn’t a personal problem in need of traditional diagnosis and it also unique because it may not resolve in the way that other anxieties can resolve.

Davenport says there’s a broad range of applications of climate therapy. She has worked with schools to adapt curriculum on emotional resiliency and has helped climate advocates and disaster response groups. Emotional resilience is typically understood as how quickly a person can get back to their baseline, but with the climate crisis, there’s no going back to a past baseline. Instead, Davenport defines emotional resiliency as “building the capacity to remain grounded, clear-minded, open-hearted, and empathetic in the face of increasing stress.”

They also discuss “guerilla therapy,” how to take on climate advocacy in your sphere of influence, and Davenport’s advice column on Grist. Her readers ask her about how to talk to their friends about the climate crisis without judgement, how to address their feelings of guilt around traveling, and how to plan for their future when it feels like there is no hope. She says that working for change doesn’t mean we have to be perfect because larger systems constrain us from living fully by our values. 

Leslie Davenport is a climate psychology educator, consultant, and therapist who brings audiences science, strategy, and heart to navigate eco-emotions for a more just world. She is the columnist for Grist, where she writes the advice column “Ask A Climate Therapist.” Leslie leads the Climate Psychology Certification program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and her latest book, Transforming Climate Anxiety: A Workbook for Courage, Clarity, and Collective Action, comes out in August.

Featured image via Wikimedia Commons (CC0 1.0). 

The post Can We Normalize Climate Anxiety? appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Esty Dinur is in conversation with Jennifer Loewenstein who joins us from Beirut, Lebanon. She calls the city a mosaic of cultures, faiths, artistic pursuits, and political ideals. However, they’re facing serious threats as Israel encroaches further into the south of the country. 

Loewenstein says that Israel is turning Southern Lebanon into a “dead zone” through domicide (destroying 60,000 homes), ecocide (by deploying white phosphorus, glyphosates, and unexploded ordinance), and ethnic cleansing (through the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people). These are some of the same tactics that Israel used to obliterate Rafah. Loewenstein calls this the “Gazafication” of Lebanon through attacks on infrastructure, healthcare, educational institutions, and the targeting of journalists. 

She says that it’s incorrect to say that Hezbollah is an arm of Iran because it is a uniquely Lebanese organization that grew out of Israeli occupation, massacre, and destruction of the 1982 siege of Beirut.  Israel is using Hezbollah as a pretext for their attacks on Lebanon, but Loewenstein says that Israel would still be attacking Lebanon regardless because they want the land up to the Litani River. 

Loewenstein says that there’s no ceasefire in Lebanon because there hasn’t been a single minute without an Israeli attack in the last few weeks. They also discuss the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, the sects who make up the Lebanese government, and the relationship between Zionism and fascism. 

Jennifer Loewenstein is a human-rights activist,  the co-founder of the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, professor of modern Middle Eastern History, and currently special correspondent for KPFA, WBAI, and WORT.

Featured image of the Beirut skyline via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

The post Israel Is Turning Southern Lebanon into a Dead Zone appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Allen Ruff is in conversation with scholar David McNally about his latest article, “US Imperialism: Projecting Strength to Cover Up Weakness.” After weeks of war with Iran, he says that the US is in a dangerous position because Iran has exposed the limits of US power. Trump may have found ousting Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela a quick measure, but the situation in Iran is far more complex.

McNally analyzes how China–the largest creditor in the world–is deeply involved in Iran and Venezuela through oil resources and more. We’re seeing what McNally calls the “commodity super cycle” where prices are at sustained high prices, not the traditional boom and bust of market change. This stems from Trump’s tariffs and China’s retaliation of restricting rare earth minerals used in high-level technologies from weapons to automobiles. 

McNally says that though the US and Israel have a “convergence of interests,” Israel isn’t dictating US policy. The US’s interests are global and strategic, whereas Israel is focused on its relationship to the Middle East. McNally wants people to understand that a simple change in the presidency will not change the larger political economy that is at stake. 

They also discuss the relationship between the US and Canada, Trump’s relationship with Putin and European powers, and more. McNally says that we need to grasp what is unique in this moment so that we can foster sustained anti-war mobilizing. 

David McNally is a radical socialist activist and award-winning scholar. Authoring over 60 research manuscripts, eight books, and countless public lectures and articles, he currently holds the Cullen Distinguished Professorship of History & Business at the University of Houston, after moving from Toronto, where he taught and organized at York University for over thirty years.

Featured image of an Iranian oil field via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).

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Over 60 million households in the US use services like Amazon Echo, Google Nest, Ring, etc. Our devices routinely record our conversations and private activities. To talk about what it means to let these smart devices into our private lives, host Ali Muldrow is joined today by legal scholar Andrew Guthrie Ferguson. His new book, Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance asks the question: is digital surveillance truly protecting us or serving as a tool of authoritarianism?

Ferguson says that our smart devices shape our relationship to the government and the justice system. We don’t think about how the information our devices are collecting could be used against us, but the vast amount of information we are revealing with our smart devices is increasingly being used in criminal prosecutions, to both exonerate and convict.

There’s a tension here: a Google search could be used as evidence to catch a pedophile, but a Google search for abortion providers could be used against someone in a state where abortion care is illegal. People who attend No Kings rallies, organize against ICE in their communities, or who get pregnant in Texas are all vulnerable to their data being used against them.

Ferguson says that we’ve built a world full of data, but not one where there are any regulations on how that data is used. He discusses how data could be used to hold police accountable and the lack of political will to do so. There’s also little political will to hold wealthy and powerful people accountable for their crimes even when there is ample digital evidence, as with the Epstein files. 

He says that too often surveillance technologies are said to increase safety, but that we should be more careful about how we use them. For instance, school cameras are not a proxy for safety. 

Andrew Guthrie Ferguson is a Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School. A nationally recognized expert on predictive policing, facial recognition, video analytics, big data surveillance, the Internet of Things, juries, and the Fourth Amendment, he has written over 35 law review articles and book chapters on those and related topics. 

Featured image of the cover of Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance, available from NYU Press.

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On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon is in conversation with scholar Atinuke Adediran about her new book, Disclosureland: How Corporate Words Constrain Racial Progress. Professor Adediran studies the impact of corporations on social life, specifically how corporations apply the language of DEI. We saw a flurry of public statements from corporations following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. At that time, companies also pledged billions of dollars to Black causes. 

This wasn’t the first time that corporations made statements about racial equity. Adediran looked back to the Civil Rights period in the US when some of the largest companies in the country publicly announced they would hire more Black employees and desegregate their offices. Back then, the federal government got involved to try to hold companies accountable. But now, with the second Trump administration, we’re back to a pre-1950s world, says Adediran, with Trump rescinding Johnson’s executive order against racial discrimination in the workplace.

The reality is that companies haven’t delivered on their promises, then or now. Amazon, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and others very loudly proclaimed their commitment to Black communities. But when Adediran started looking at where their money was flowing, she found that corporations were more likely to pledge supply diversity or offer loans than to give grants to minority-owned or minority-serving businesses and non-profits. All the while, corporations were accumulating the reputational benefits that came from their public statements.

Adediran says that these corporate disclosures aren’t “cheap talk,” they’re defining how society thinks about racial equity. When companies create a narrative and then take it away without explanation or justification, as in the case of Target, then they’re sending the message that racial equity has been addressed or isn’t worth pursuing any more. It’s worse to make a statement and then walk it back than to have not made the statement at all, says Adediran. 

Professor Atinuke Adediran is an award winning scholar whose work sits at the intersection of corporate governance and business regulation. She teaches at Fordham University and is the author of Disclosureland: How Corporate Words Constrain Racial Progress (Cambridge University Press, 2026). Her scholarship has appeared in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed journals, including the California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Law and Social Inquiry, Northwestern Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and UCLA Law Review, and has been featured in outlets such as Bloomberg Law, Fortune, Marketplace, and The Wall Street Journal. Professor Adediran’s work has received awards and support from the Center for Racial Justice at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, the Ford Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation. In 2023, she received Fordham University’s Distinguished Research Award for Interdisciplinary Studies.

Featured image of the cover of Disclosureland.

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This year’s cohort of college graduates will face fewer student loan forgiveness options than previous cohorts. That’s because there’s been a sea change in debt forgiveness under the latest Trump administration. On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes is in conversation with education reporter Nadra Nittle about the broken student loan system in the US and her recent article for The 19th. 

Nittle writes that the changes to loan forgiveness programs will disproportionately affect women, especially those who are in undervalued caretaking fields like education and healthcare administration. Women currently hold two-thirds of the $1.7 trillion federal student loans, and Nittle tells the stories of several women struggling under the burden of their student loans. 

The Trump administration plans to end the SAVE Plan by July 1, start garnishing the wages of delinquent borrowers, and transfer the $1.7 trillion student loan portfolio from the Department of Education to the Treasury Department. Groups like the AFT are starting to advocate for better policies on student loans because many teachers aren’t earning enough to afford basic living expenses, let alone paying off their student loans. At a time when inflation, gas prices, and food prices are stretching people’s budgets thin, Nittle says that it’s getting harder and harder for borrowers to pay their loans back. 

Nittle also discusses how cuts to the federal workforce are affecting borrowers and how the Trump administration is using student loan forgiveness as an incentive for new ICE recruits. While ICE is terrorizing students and their families, teachers and other public servants are struggling to access the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, says Nittle. 

Nadra Nittle is the education reporter for The 19th. She has written for Vox, The Guardian, the History Channel website and more. She lives in Los Angeles.

Featured image of graduating college students in their cap and gowns via Wikimedia Commons (CC0 1.0).

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On today’s show, host Esty Dinur is in conversation with Kathy Kelly about her experience advocating peace in the Middle East. Kelly worked with Voices in the Wilderness in Iraq after the US’s “Shock and Awe” assault on the country. She says the main victims of violence and economic sanctions against Iraq were children, the elderly, and the poor. Kelly was disappointed by mainstream media for not covering the civilian losses, and she wants to see better reporting on the reality of war crimes.

Kelly sees a similar pattern with the more recent US attacks on Iran of warfare against civilians. There have been systematic attacks on journalists and healthcare workers in Gaza and elsewhere, two groups of people who are first-hand witnesses to the horrors of war and genocide. 

They also discuss student groups organizing around BDS and taking other nonviolent actions. Kelly also describes the schools in Afghanistan that she supported and how important it is to talk about Israel’s nuclear weapons. She finds hope in grassroots organizing around the world.

Kathy Kelly is board president of World BEYOND War. Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, she has coordinated an international network to assist young Afghans forced to flee their country after the Taliban takeover. With Voices in the Wilderness companions, from 1996 – 2003, she traveled 27 times to Iraq, defying the economic sanctions and remaining in Iraq throughout the Shock and Awe bombing. 

Featured image of Esty Dinur and Kathy Kelly courtesy of Sara Gabler/WORT. 

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The food system in the US is broken. And though the MAHA movement claims to be fixing it, the latest US dietary guidelines prioritize red meat and high-fat dairy products over real food. On today’s show, host Patty Peltekos speaks with Marion Nestle, author of What to Eat Now: The Indispensable Guide to Good Food, How to Find It, and Why It Matters. It’s a revision of her 2006 book, What to Eat that Nestle sought to update during the pandemic. She “rescued” the historical parts and replaced products that were no longer available. 

Nestle unpacks the latest US dietary guidelines and the new food pyramid put out by the Trump administration. She says that the recommendation to double your protein intake is strange because Americans already eat too much meat. For this administration, protein is synonymous with red meat. This is reflected in the revised (and inverted) food pyramid that puts meats and dairy products at the top. It’s about marketing, not science, says Nestle.

If the US government wanted to support people in making healthy food choices, it would make real food cheaper and more available, teach people how to cook real food, pay people more so they can afford real food, offer universal basic income, provide free school meals, and support agriculture that produces food for people instead of for animals or cars, says Nestle. 

They also talk about the rise of “ultra-processed foods,” foods that studies show induce people to eat more of them. Unlike other foods, these don’t look anything like the foods they came from and can only be created in an industrial setting. Nestle also describes how the rise of GLP-1 drugs is affecting people’s food consumption and how the food industry is responding to what they perceive as a threat to their profits. 

Marion Nestle is Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita, at New York University, in the department she chaired from 1988-2003 and from which she retired in September 2017. She is also Visiting Professor of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell. She holds honorary degrees from Transylvania University in Kentucky and the Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York.

Featured image of the cover of What to Eat Now by Marion Nestle.

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On today’s show, host Ali Muldrow is in conversation with historian Forest Isaac Jones about the strong connections between the Black Civil Rights Movement in the US and the Catholic Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland. His new book, Good Trouble: The Selma, Alabama and Derry, Northern Ireland Connection 1963-1972 traces the influence of the Montgomery to Selma march of 1965 on the Belfast to Derry march of 1969. 

Folks in the US might be surprised to learn how profoundly the Civil Rights Movement shaped the fight for liberation in Northern Ireland. Both movements were focused on voting rights and both groups faced state-sanctioned violence, says Jones. The mainstream media in both countries also struggled to frame the narrative about Civil Rights and often painted these movements as extremist, despite their commitment to nonviolence. 

They also talk about the role of religion in both movements, from the Black Baptist Church and Nation of Islam in the US and the Catholic church in Northern Ireland. Figures like Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis are well known in the US, and Jones shares stories of their counterparts–Eamonn McCann and Bernadette Devlin–in Northern Ireland. 

There’s a deep irony in that while the marchers in Northern Ireland took inspiration and tactics from the US Civil Rights Movement, the police did as well. Jones shares examples of the Duke Street Demonstration in Northern Ireland in 1968 where police used water cannons. Meanwhile, marchers were singing “We Shall Overcome.”

Forest Isaac Jones is an award-winning author of non-fiction and essays, specializing in the study of Irish History, the US Civil Rights Movement and Northern Ireland. His first nonfiction book, Good Trouble: The Selma, Alabama and Derry, Northern Ireland Connection 1963-1972 was released last year and is required reading for a course on Ireland at Macalester College in Minnesota.

Featured image of the cover of Good Trouble: The Selma, Alabama and Derry, Northern Ireland Connection 1963-1972.

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A century ago, 14% of agricultural land was owned by Black farmers, but now that’s down to less than 2%. On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon is in conversation with Ruthanna Hutton-Okpalaeke and Alex Lindenmeyer of Urban Triage about how their agriculture program is repairing people’s relationship with the land and supporting food security in Madison. 

They talk about how their organization is responding to cuts to the EPA and USDA and how their workshops on growing food and food businesses are taking off. Hutton-Okpalaeke says that working in agriculture doesn’t have to be based on exploitation; through Urban Triage’s programs, people can learn to grow culturally relevant foods for themselves and their neighbors and learn how to have sustainable careers in the field. She’s helped participants grow foods that they can’t find in grocery stores, like peanuts, different varieties of okra, Lagos spinach, and more. The produce they grow at their farm in Verona is shared by participants and at a free produce stand at the Urban Triage office. “We’re an agricultural state, we should have food security here,” says Hutton-Okpalaeke.

Urban Triage’s specialty crop program launched its new hemp product yesterday. Called Less Noise Wellness, it offers CBD and THCA gummies, balms, and flower, all organically grown and processed in Wisconsin. Lindenmeyer says they’ve worked for years to get to a point where they can generate revenue from their hemp crop, and it’s taken that long to build relationships with folks in the industry. Hutton-Okpalaeke says that their Hemp Specialty Crop Workgroup hopes to reverse how cannabis has often been a path to incarceration in the Black community. Lindenmeyer adds that Urban Triage is trying to address inequalities in the hemp industry and make sure that dollars feed back into local infrastructure and local farmers. 

Ruthanna Hutton-Okpalaeke is the dedicated Agriculture Program Manager at Urban Triage, where she expertly handles all facets of agricultural programming.

Alex Lindenmeyer is the Development Manager and a Board Member at Urban Triage.

Featured image of Alex Lindenmeyer, Dana Pellebon, and Ruthanna Hutton-Okpalaeke courtesy of Sara Gabler/WORT.

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In recognition of Earth Day, we take a sneak peek at the upcoming Wild & Scenic Film Festival put on by the River Alliance and the Barrymore Theatre. Douglas Haynes is in conversation with Charles Miller and Thomas Howes about two films that will be screening next Thursday, April 30.

Charles Miller is the Policy Director with Alabama Rivers Alliance, whose program, Southern Exposure Films, brings filmmakers to Alabama to raise awareness of the state’s environment. Miller talks about Hyperscaled, a short documentary about a community outside of Birmingham called Bessemer “at the bleeding edge” of data center development in the state. He says that though Alabama is the most aquatically diverse state, it has few legal protections for water and aquatic life. Residents of Bessemer are worried about the siting of a data center in their backyards and its potential to deplete groundwater. Miller says that it’s a film with lessons for how to grow resistance movements, and it starts with the local.

Tom Howes is the Program Manager for the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Natural Resources Department. He is also the narrator and actor in the film Gigiigemin Baaga’adoweyang, or “We are healed by stickball,” a film about the resurgence of stickball, or lacrosse, in Ojibwe communities. Howes discusses the history and cultural importance of stickball, a beloved game played in all seasons. He started playing stickball in 2017 and then learned how to make sticks out of ash trees. 

Featured image of stickball sticks via Picryl. 

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Today Esty talks with Professor Thomas Zeitzoff about his new book, No Option but Sabotage: The Radical Climate Movement and the Climate Crisis. Zeitzoff looks at the origin of the radical environmental movement, which started with the Earth First movement in 1980 inspired by writings of Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold and Edward Abbey. The movement began with the belief that the government was not doing enough to protect the wilderness. Their slogan was “No Compromise in Defense of Mother Earth,” which was popularized in the 1980s. 

The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) group formed as an offshoot of radical environmentalists who engaged in property destruction and arson, their goal was to bring media attention to their movement. This eventually led to the anti-WPT (Wireless Power Transfer) protests and the Battle of Seattle, anti-globalization protests in 1999. Though these groups denied the influence of unabomber Ted Kaczynski, he was deeply involved in the environmental movement and read the Earth First journal. 

These groups were labeled “eco terrorists,” but they laughed off the term. After 9/11, the term terrorism carried much more weight; the government cracked down on activist eco-terrorist groups, especially targeting Earth First and Animal Liberation Front (ALF) groups, in a period called the Green Scare. The groups had engaged in property damage, the worst of which was setting cars or buildings on fire, but the sentences were severe. The subsequent trials caused many people to leave the movements and began its eventual decline.

Zeitzoff says these problems are becoming more prevalent today, and we are seeing a resurgence of radical environmental groups. Zeitzoff maintains hope that as more people notice the effects of climate change, there will be an impetus for change that can’t be denied anymore.

Thomas Zeitzoff is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington DC. His research focuses on political violence, social media, and political psychology. His most recent book is No Option But Sabotage: The Radical Climate Movement and the Climate Crisis (Oxford 2026). His work has appeared in many of the leading political science journals, and he is also the author of Nasty Politics: The Logic of Insults, Threats, and Incitement (Oxford, 2023).

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Farmers Market Manager Jamie Bugel joined host Ali Muldrow to talk about the Dane County Farmers Market which returned to the square last Saturday. The market is the biggest producer-only farmers market in the United States, with nearly all vendors being primary producers, besides cheese, grains, and candy vendors. Vendors who sell secondary products, such as prepared food, or arts and crafts can be found on the street adjacent to the market and are organized by the city. There are over 200 vending businesses, nearly 75% of them being owned or co-owned women, and the outdoor market averages 20,000 visitors each week. Shoppers can expect well-known and loved vendors to be back at the market this summer. 

The wide-ranging conversation touched on difficult topics, such as food accessibility, food genetic diversity, and making a living as a farmer. Most farmers and producers at the market rely on a partner with an off-farm job. Bugle also addressed the misconception that shopping at the farmers market is more expensive than shopping at a grocery store; while grocery stores might have a shortage of eggs resulting in higher prices, vendors often have a plethora of eggs and other products at lower prices. Bugel says that there are actually quite a few folks who buy the majority of their food at the market, and the assortment of the food found at the market does make that a viable option.

The Farmers Market on Saturdays continues to provide Madison the space to support local farmers, eat fresh food, and run into friends. Those who are looking for a less crowded experience should avoid coming at 9:30-11:30am, peak hours at the market. Shoppers can also check out the Wednesday morning market 8:30am-1:15pm.

Jamie Bugel has been the Market Manager of the Dane County Farmers’ Market (DCFM) in Madison, Wisconsin since 2021. Before that she managed the Eastside Market and has been working in agriculture for over a decade, beginning by farming in Pennsylvania, then breeding perennial grain crops in Kansas which led her to obtain her MS from UW-Madison in agroecology with a focus on breeding vegetables for flavor. Jamie loves living in Madison with its plethora of amazing small businesses, bike ability and local farmers providing fresh, local and tasty food throughout the entire year.

Photo courtesy of Jamie Bugel and the Dane County Farmers’ Market

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Today, Douglas Haynes joins producer Kylie Compte and host Ami Eckard-Lee of Field Notes on Climate, premiering tonight on PBS. Field Notes on Climate is an educational video series which presents interviews and conversations with scientists, teachers, students, and local citizens making a positive impact on our environment. Although the show features scientists and climate experts, the focus is on youth activists, citizen scientists and local community members who are taking action on climate in Wisconsin and beyond.

The show strives to inspire young people to make a difference with actions which may start out as a fun hobby, but result in a long-term career and make a lasting difference. Show creators highlighted an example of this through a citizen science program called The Bumble Bee Brigade, where local citizens can track bumble bees and report this data to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. At the end of each episode, the show offers actions you can take on an individual level which can be scaled up to state or even nationwide influence, depending on your involvement and interest.

The 8 episodes in season one cover these topics, and four of those episodes are already available here. 

1. Sustainable Transportation
2. Water quality: The Yahara water shed, and Madison Lakes
3. Youth Activism
4. Soil Health
5. Pollinator Impact 
6. Wild Rice and Indigenous People
7. Landfills and Composting
8. Fast Fashion

Season 2 filming is already underway, with the first episode coming out in July. 

Kylie Compe is the science education producer at PBS Wisconsin Education and the lead producer on their new science series, Field Notes on Climate. She has always loved the outdoors, enjoying camping, hiking and gardening whenever possible. The opportunity to focus on environmental education in her career has been a dream come true.

Ami Eckard-Lee grew up in the countryside near Madison, Wisconsin, in an environmentally-conscious family, surrounded by animals, science, and encouragement to continue exploring. Her passions for filmmaking, performance, history, and the power of kindness have led her to becoming the creative director of a vintage aviation museum, performing as a clown on Coney Island, getting her pilots’ license, and most recently, hosting Field Notes on Climate.

Photo Courtesy of Kate Paape and WORT

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On today’s show, host Esty Dinur previews four films screening at the Wisconsin Film Festival: Celtic Utopia dir. by Dennis Harvey, Do You Love Me dir. by Lana Daher, Everybody to Kenmure Street dir. Felipe Bustos Sierra, and The Spies Among Us dir. Jamie Coughlin Silverman and Gabe Silverman.

Dennis Harvey is a filmmaker from Ireland, based in Sweden. With a cinema vérité approach and a particular sensitivity to the human, his work interrogates the political through the personal. He is a member of the European Film Academy, the Irish Film and Television Academy, and Noncitizen, a film collective which works to hand over the means of making films to migrants.

His film, Celtic Utopia will be screening tomorrow, Saturday, April 11 at 1:45 at the Barrymore Theatre. 

Lana Daher is a filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist based in Beirut, Lebanon. With a background in fine arts and graphic design as well as filmmaking, she has long been active in Beirut’s vibrant art and music scenes, working across sound, image, and archival practices. Her work is grounded in deep research and intuitive storytelling, exploring the space between documentary and fiction by bringing different time periods and emotional landscapes into dialogue.

Her film, Do You Love Me, plays today, April 10 at 1:45 at the UW Cinematheque and Wednesday, April 15 at 8:45 at Flix Brewhouse, Cinema 7. 

Felipe Bustos Sierra is a Chilean-Belgian film director, producer, and editor based in Scotland. His debut feature-length documentary, Nae Pasaran (2018), won the Best Feature award at the 2018 British Academy Scotland Awards, where Bustos Sierra was also nominated for Best Director. Bustos Sierra is also the founder and creative director of Debasers Filums, an independent film company based in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

His film, Everybody to Kenmure Street, will show on Wednesday, April 15 at 1pm at Flix Brewhouse, Cinema 8 and Thursday, April 16 at 5:30pm at Flix Brewhouse, Cinema 1 (rush only). 

Jamie Coughlin Silverman and Gabe Silverman are journalists turned filmmakers. The Spies Among Us premiered at SXSW and won the Best Documentary Award in Warsaw. It’s been called the most important film about the topic since the Oscar-winning film The Lives of Others. 

The Spies Among Us screens at the Bartell Theatre, Friday, April 10 at 8:30pm (rush only).

Featured image of full theatre.

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Ahead of Tax Day, host Bert Zipperer tackles gritty tax policy and the future of fair and progressive taxes. He’s joined by Jon Whiten of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), a non-profit, non-partisan tax policy organization. 

ITEP reports that people at the bottom of the economic spectrum pay the most when it comes to taxes. And in nearly all states, the top 1% of earners are taxed at the lowest rate. A recent analysis from ITEP finds that undocumented immigrants pay a considerable amount of taxes. Whiten says that states that invest in the child tax credit and earned income tax credit can help folks at the bottom of the economic ladder.

Whiten breaks down the differences between income, property, consumption, and corporate taxes. The 2017 and 2025 tax laws have made it so that companies like Tesla and Meta are paying little to no federal corporate income tax. And though a “flat tax” may sound fair, it’s a regressive form of taxation because “not everyone is in the same economic situation,” says Whiten.

Property taxes are the least abstract tax, you can see where your money is going, to schools or libraries, etc. But cutting property taxes would inevitably result in reductions to all kinds of public services. It’s possible to make property taxes more fair, like mansion taxes or tax credits like “circuit breakers.”

They also talk about how taxes help to build the common good. And we hear from callers about school referendums in Wisconsin, the attempt to pass a “circuit breaker” in Wisconsin, how the wealthy place a high demand on government services funded by taxes, the uses of debt, and more. 

Jon Whiten is the Deputy Director at ITEP. He helps guide ITEP’s overall strategy and approach to policy change, works to properly resource ITEP’s work, and leads ITEP’s work to shape the public debate around tax policy and ensure that policymakers, advocates, and other stakeholders are using ITEP’s data and analysis in order to make sound decisions.

Featured image of a protester holding a sign at a Tax Day rally in New York City in 2012 via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

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Yesterday at the polls, voters overwhelmingly supported Chris Taylor for Wisconsin Supreme Court. In Dane County, results are in for Dane County Circuit Court, thirteen competitive races for Dane County Board of Supervisors, two Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education seats, and three Madison Common Council alder races. That’s in addition to the numerous non-partisan races in towns and villages across Dane County, in which many union-backed candidates won their races.

To break down what voters decided in yesterday’s Spring Election, host Ali Muldrow is joined by four local labor leaders: Derek Wallace is the President of AFSCME- Dane County Employee Association Local 720. Kevin Gundlach is the President of the South Central Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. And Molly Grupe who is a teacher in Waunakee and the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) Region 6 PAC Chair. John Wedge is the Executive Director at WEAC Region 6.

Grupe says that she’s heartened by the election results, which are part of a larger national push to elect Democratic candidates. Gundlach says that of AFL-CIO’s 156 endorsements, only 20 candidates lost their races. It takes a ⅔ vote of members to get that AFL-CIO endorsement. Wallace also reports a very high win rate for AFSCME-endorsed candidates: 15 of 16 races. Union endorsements are building trust at a time when there’s a lot of political mistrust.

The election of Chris Taylor to the Supreme Court is exciting for these leaders because Act 10 is one step closer to being overturned. Wedge says that there’s now a reasonable majority on the Supreme Court who don’t want to strip unions of their power. If unions gained their power back, Grupe would like to see them advance DEI and inclusivity, smaller class sizes, more transparency on property tax bills, and all kinds of issues that go beyond salary negotiations.

They also talk about how unions can support their elected officials to be effective and hold them accountable to their campaign promises. They preview what might happen in the August Primary and November Midterm. 

Featured image of “I Voted” stickers via Pexels.

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Today is the Spring Election, and to celebrate the democratic process, host Dana Pellebon is in conversation with political scientist, Dr. Marion Orr, about Charles C. Diggs Jr. who Dr. Orr calls “the most consequential Black congressman.” 

Orr first learned about Michigan Congressman Diggs when he was an undergraduate student at Savannah State. Unfortunately, many people won’t encounter Diggs in their history books. So Orr set out to write the first biography of Diggs, whose legacy is “scattered across the Civil Rights movement and Black politics.” Orr’s book is called, House of Diggs: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Consequential Black Congressman. Charles C. Diggs Jr..

Orr says that Digg was “in the front seat” of every issue from the 1950s until he resigned from Congress in 1980: he was present at the trial of Emmett Till’s murderers, he founded the Congressional Black Caucus, participated in the Gary Convention of ‘72, and shaped the American anti-apartheid movement. 

Orr says that Congressman Diggs put himself at great risk to observe the trial of Emmett Till’s murderers. His presence in the Mississippi courtroom gave courage to the Black witnesses to come forward and testify against the two white killers. By attending the trial, Diggs sent the message that, though he was elected to represent Detroit, he would represent all Black Americans. Diggs was also the first congressperson to show a long-term interest in Africa and US-Africa policy and became the chair of the Subcommittee on Africa, says Orr.

They also talk about Digg’s fall from power after the FBI was tipped off to a payroll violation and how he sacrificed his relationship with his family to serve his elected role. Orr holds that Congressman Diggs should be remembered for his many accomplishments and his role in shaping the length and breadth of so many fights for justice.

Marion Orr is a political scientist and the inaugural Frederick Lippitt Professor of Public Policy at Brown University. An award-winning author, his publications include House of Diggs: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Consequential Black Congressman. Charles C. Diggs Jr.; Black Social Capital: The Politics of School Reform in Baltimore; and The Color of School Reform: Race, Politics, and the Challenge of Urban Education. He was awarded the Biographers International Organization’s Francis “Frank” Rollin Fellowship for his work on Congressman Diggs.

Featured image of the cover of House of Diggs: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Consequential Black Congressman. Charles C. Diggs Jr.

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This month, the Wisconsin Public Service Commission is expected to release price rates for hyperscale data center companies. The issue of who foots the bill for the energy use of these data centers is just one element of the growing concern over the flood of tech interest in building data centers in our state. To talk about hyperscale data center energy use and how regular consumers can hold tech companies accountable, host Douglas Haynes is in conversation with Tom Content of the Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin and local journalist, Chali Pittman, whose latest essay on data centers is available from Isthmus.

The term “data center” is broad and encompass the hyperscale projects undertaken by Meta, Microsoft, and other tech companies. But there are a number of smaller data centers around the state that many people might not know about, says Pittman. All require constant power and cooling, but no where near the scale of their hyperscale counterparts. 

Hyperscale data centers use more power and take up more land. Pittman and Content discuss how tech companies go about buying land and how Wisconsin legislators opened the door to new proposals when they created a tax incentive in the state budget. Content says that we need state-level guides and frameworks to address the issue of data centers and economic development.

Content’s organization wants to see the Public Service Commission set rules in a way that will protect all customers, not just the utility or tech companies. He says the CUB has seen utility bills increasing at a rate higher than inflation. They also talk about the importance of zoning and how local groups are successfully keeping hyperscale data centers out of their neighborhoods. 

Tom Content leads the Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin, the nonpartisan independent nonprofit that serves as the consumer advocate for utility customers in proceedings that affect what Wisconsinites pay for power as well as the path the state takes on its energy future. Tom is currently vice president of the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates. Before joining CUB 9 years ago, Tom was a journalist covering energy, utilities, and sustainability for more than 20 years at the Green Bay Press-Gazette and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Chali Pittman is a freelance journalist based in Madison. You can read her reporting on data centers in Wisconsin on Substack. 

Featured image of a Google data center in Iowa via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

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On today’s show, host Esty Dinur is in conversation with scholar Atef Said about the surprising similarities between Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and Donald Trump. Since Donald Trump was first elected, Said says that his students are noticing how authoritarianism is at work in the US, not just in other countries. 

Said says there are few ways that Trump and Sisi are similar: they both deploy “us/them” rhetoric, they hate the media, and they present themselves as strong men who can make their nations’ great again. But they came to power in very different circumstances. Trump was democratically elected while Sisi rose to power through a violent coup. Sisi, unlike Trump, has near absolute power, says Said, and he has imprisoned thousands of political dissenters and even engaged in systemic judicial killing.

They also discuss ICE’s extrajudicial killings of protestors and the lack of investigation and accountability into these murders. Just this week, ICE abducted Salah Sarsour, the President of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee and board member of American Muslims for Palestine. Said also talks about the development of democratic movements during Mubarak’s rule, the “No Kings” protests, and multiracial coalition building.

Said will be speaking at the Middle East Studies Annual Conference, on April 17, 2026.

Atef Said is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Illinois Chicago and a scholar of political and historical sociology. His latest book, Revolution Squared: Tahrir, Political Possibilities and Counterrevolution in Egypt (2024), analyzes the intersections of state power and social movements. Said’s work uncovers the transnational flow of political ideologies, revealing how the sociology of colonialism and empire continues to shape modern global politics.

Featured image of Donald Trump shaking hands with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah Al Sisi in 2017, via Flickr.

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Today, Allen Ruff speaks with Erik Gustafson, founder and executive director of Enabling Peace in Iraq Center to talk about some of the history as well as the latest developments in Iraq. Modern Iraq has undergone many years of devastating war, including the Iran/Iraq war of 1980-198 which was costly for both countries and included the use of chemical weapons, the 1991 Gulf War and the years of conflict following, in addition to the economic sanctions and air strikes 2003 US-lead invasion and the years of war which came after. Many unintended but foreseeable consequences resulted in decades of suffering in Iraq. 

Gustafson said that not all of Iraq is desert, and there are beautiful places that have suffered the environmental costs of ongoing war. After 2003, Iraq was no longer cut off from the rest of the world, and there is a desire to make systemic changes mirroring Dubai, and other Western countries. However, the prime minister, currently Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani, does not have the decision-making power to make needed reforms, answering to Tehran, not Baghdad. Weak government, Iranian backed militias, and constant war has led to unclear sovereignty. Nuclear weapons became an appealing strategy for Iraq to increase its sovereignty. Both Iran and the US have not helped Iraq become a sovereign state.

Gustafson noted that this war was started on a whim, and was not planned out. Trump didn’t build support prior to going to war. There were no clear objectives, no clearance from congress, and no feeling of being backed by the American people. Trump is attempting to clear out the nuclear weapons by launching ballistic missiles rather than undergoing weapon inspections. Gustafson said that other countries are observing the conflict and noting that they need to have nuclear weapons to survive modern warfare, or they will end up like Iraq. The US has (sought? Has it already happened?) to put Iraq back into the stone ages by attacking their power grids, which would severely impact the Iraq civilians. The Center for Civilian Protection, which is an organization established to reduce harm to citizens, previously there were hundreds employed, but under the Trump administration, there are only dozens still employed.

Erik Gustafson is the founder and executive director of Enabling Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC), a nonprofit organization focused on strengthening accountable governance, supporting human rights, and working with local partners to address the impacts of conflict and environmental stress in Iraq. He founded EPIC in 1998 after traveling to Iraq and witnessing firsthand the humanitarian toll of sanctions on ordinary civilians—an experience that has shaped his work ever since.

Featured image of Erik Gustafson by Sara Gabler/WORT.

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Next Tuesday, April 7 is the Spring Election in Wisconsin. On today’s show, host Ali Muldrow is in conversation with two local election officials: Madison City Clerk, Lydia McComas, and Dane County Clerk, Scott McDonell. They talk about absentee and early voting, voter turnout, and the vicious environment around elections created by the Trump administration.

McDonell says that Madison is the gold standard for early voting in the state. That’s because the city has made early voting available at libraries even at night and on the weekends. He says that this measure has increased voting by 3-4%, especially engaging the casual voters out there. He’s noticed an increase in-person early voting this year, closer to pre-pandemic levels.

McComas discusses the quick turnaround between the Spring Primary in February and the Spring Election in April and all the work that her office does to make this quick transition seamless. She says that no matter how you cast your ballot, it will be counted in Madison and that she’s working to rebuild trust after 193 ballots went uncounted in 2024. 

They reassure listeners that our local elections are safe and secure, despite the erosion of trust in voting that the Trump administration has fostered. And they talk about efforts to help students engaged in voting, how they have been threatened at their jobs, increasing access to voting for the elderly and eligible voters in Dane County jails, and the importance of showing gratitude to poll workers.

If you want to find your polling place, register to vote, or learn what’s on your ballot, go to myvote.wi.gov. 

Lydia McComas is Madison’s City Clerk. She graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in political science. She holds a graduate certificate in election administration from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Her previous role was as Voter Engagement Division Manager with Hennepin County in Minnesota.

Scott McDonell has served as the Dane County Clerk since he was first elected in 2013. In 2014, McDonell became the first clerk in Wisconsin to issue a same-sex marriage license, and he is the only clerk in the country to oversee two presidential recounts in 2016 and 2020.

Featured image of a polling sign courtesy of WORT.

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On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon is in conversation with Madison Common Council District 14 Candidates, Kate Blood and Noah Lieberman. District 14 encompasses parts of South Madison and is currently represented by Alder Isadore Knox Jr. The candidates speak about their priorities for their district, what they’d like to see in Madison, and how to reduce racial disparities in the city.

Next Tuesday, April 7 is Election Day. Find out what’s on your ballot here. 

Common Council District 14 Candidate: Kate Blood

Kate Blood says that she decided to run for office when a housing development was proposed in her neighborhood without the input of her Latinx neighbors. She supports restorative justice, restorative courts, and using diversion programs to keep people out of jails and prisons. Blood says that reducing racial disparities in Madison should start with supporting our students. That means reevaluating discipline formats using deescalation protocols. She says that fully funding the CARES program is a long-term investment in our community. 

Kate Blood worked for WHEDA and the DOA providing affordable housing around the state. She now works as a chaplain. 

Featured image: remix of a photo of Kate Blood with the Madison City Council district map by Sara Gabler/WORT.

Common Council District 14 Candidate: Noah Lieberman

Noah Lieberman is running for Common Council because local government is where community is put into practice, from parks and libraries to good roads and transportation. He wants to create home ownership opportunities for Black and Brown residents of his district to help address long-term racial disparities in the city. He also supports state-level changes to the minimum wage and wants to see the city build up tenants’ rights in order to stop predatory landlords who he says are an impediment to making the city affordable.

Noah Lieberman is a stay at home dad. He previously served as vice chair of the Dane County Democratic Party, helping to recruit and support progressive candidates around the county. He also served as chair of Madison’s Landlord Tenant Issues Committee.

Featured image: remix of a photo of Noah Lieberman with the Madison City Council district map by Sara Gabler/WORT.

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The Spring Primary election is next Tuesday and on today’s show, Sara Gabler is in conversation with Madison Metropolitan School District School Board Seat 7 Candidates, incumbent Nicki Vander Meulen and challenger Dana Colussi-Lynde. They speak about their priorities for the school district, how they would address opportunity gaps, safe learning environments, literacy rates, student enrollment in the district, and more.

School Board Seat 7 Candidate: Nicki Vander Meulen

Nicki Vander Meulen is seeking a fourth term on the school board. She says that Madison is a “property rich but tax poor district” and that the current state funding formula has created two separate school systems for public schools and charter schools. She would like greater transparency when it comes to funding and at the same time better compensation for veteran teachers so that their talents stay in the district. 

Serving students with disabilities is a top priority for Vander Meulen, who says that having the opportunity to attend public schools changed her life. She wants to see K-3rd grade classrooms capped at 23 students and more partnerships with community organizations who could provide tutoring to MMSD students. Equitable staff compensation, tutoring, keeping police out of schools, and addressing the culture of bullying would all contribute to reducing the opportunity gaps and declining enrollment in the district, Vander Muelen says.

Nicki Vander Meulen is a juvenile attorney and member of the Madison Board of Education. When Nicki was elected in 2017, she became the first openly autistic school board member in the United States.

Featured image of Nicki Vander Meulen.

School Board Seat 7 Candidate: Dana Colussi-Lynde

Dana Colussi-Lynde comes from a family of educators, and she’s running for school board because she’s concerned about the state of our democracy. She says her background in information technology has prepared her to address process improvement and assess the effectiveness of student technology use.  She points to the unfavorable data on student technology use and test scores and supports the “bell to bell” cell phone ban in the district. 

She is also concerned about the educational opportunity gap and would like to see partnerships with the Goodman Center, NAMI, and other organizations to support students’ wellbeing. She wants to see students graduating at their reading level and an increase in apprenticeship programs so students can be future-ready when they leave the school system.

Dana Colussi-Lynde was born in Madison and raised in the Madison area by two teachers before graduating from Madison West High School. She then went on to Madison College for a degree in Information Technology, leading to a 25-year career in IT leadership, analysis and process improvement. She was a board member of New Leaders Council, a progressive leadership organization, for two years following their institute in 2019. She has also volunteered for Courage Plus and Planned Parenthood along with canvassing for local and national political campaigns. She was recently endorsed by the Wisconsin State Journal, Dane Dems and Wisconsin Muslim Civic Alliance and designated as a Mental Health Now Candidate. The school board would be her first, but hopefully not her last, public service role.

Featured image of Dana Colussi-Lynde.

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On today’s show, host Esty Dinur is in conversation with four guests–Joe Bates, Matthew Borke, Rob Lee, and Gracie Waukechon–who are fighting against the reroute of the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline around the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa reservation in northern Wisconsin. Enbridge has begun construction on the reroute though the legal battle has not been fully resolved.

Joe Bates discusses how he uses his drone to observe the construction. He’s captured footage of the new easement where Enbridge plans to use horizontal directional drilling to install the new pipeline. Matthew Borke says that what we’re hearing from the Trump administration is a forked-tongue message. He encourages folks to stay informed about the legal proceedings. 

Gracie Waukechon says that this issue is personal. In light of the threat that the pipeline poses to the lands and waters of the region she says, “I feel as if my future has been taken away from me.” She’s also worried about the future of resistance in light of a contract that Ashland County officials signed last month for policing protests. 

Rob Lee talks about how Enbridge is starting to break ground on construction of the reroute, but it’s not a foregone conclusion that they will get final approval. He reminds listeners that the oil that passes through Line 5 passes from Canada and back to Canada, which should concern people across the political spectrum. 

Joe Bates is a Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa tribal elder and water protector. 

Matthew Borke was raised in southern Michigan and graduated as a Chef from Northern Michigan University’s Culinary Arts program. Matthew has been organizing for the complete shutdown of Enbridge Line 5 since 2017 locally, nationally, and internationally.

Rob Lee is a Senior Staff Attorney at Midwest Environmental Advocates. His work spans a wide range of environmental and public health issues. His areas of focus include PFAS contamination, oil pipelines, Clean Water Act compliance, wetlands and waterways, the Great Lakes, Wisconsin’s Public Trust Doctrine, hazardous substances, mining, and open government.

Gracie Waukechon/Meyāwāēw (May-yow-way) is a member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and a Menominee Descendant. She resides near the Menominee Reservation with her family. Gracie is a student at the College of Menominee Nation and interns at the Sustainable Development Institute.

Featured image of the proposed Line 5 reroute via the Wisconsin DNR.

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On today’s show, guest host Bert Zipperer is in conversation with scholar Gianni Cicali about the famous children’s play Pinocchio and how it speaks to the vital importance of the arts during times of national crisis, from the 1930s to today. Next month marks the 200th birthday of Pinocchio’s creator, Carlo Collodi.

They discuss the 1930s Federal Theater Project production of Pinocchio. The play was produced by Yasha Frank with the children theater division of the WPA. The program employed people who were unemployed during the Great Depression and offered low-cost tickets so more people could access the theater. The FTP production of Pinocchio played nationwide for two years and on Broadway until June 1939 when Congress and the House Unamerican Activities Committee killed the production.

Gianni Cicali is a specialist in the history of Italian theater (Renaissance, Baroque and 18th-century). He holds an Italian “laurea vecchio ordinamento” (M.A. equivalent) and doctoral degrees from both Italy (Università di Firenze) and Canada (University of Toronto). His interests focus on Italian theater, opera and culture from the 15th to the 18th century; Renaissance and Baroque religious theater; cinema; migrations to the Americas of Italian theater professionals (19th-century New Orleans).

Featured image: of a photo from the Federal Theatre Project’s production of Pinocchio via Library of Congress.

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There was once a time in the US when public banks were the norm; but now the financial landscape is dominated by large retail and commercial for-profit banks. On today’s show, guest host Zoe Sullivan is in conversation with Don Morgan and Oscar Perry Abello about the benefits of public banking for local communities and small and medium-sized businesses, especially when it comes to supporting communities that have historically been discriminated against and that may not have much collateral or credit history.

Morgan describes the services that the Bank of North Dakota provides, including novel ways of responding to natural disasters and other crises. For instance, they have a Farm Financial Stability Program for row-crop farmers who have been struggling due to extreme flooding, high input costs, and low commodity prices. 

Abello discusses how public banks support housing initiatives. He says that so much of construction lending is done by local and regional banks who are the institutions that people turn to when they want to build affordable housing or build on vacant lots. However, access to community banks is limited. Abello says there are 4,000 community banks out there, but only 3% of those banks are run by Black, Latinx, or Native American owners.

They also talk about how public banks would respond to a national banking crisis, crypto currency, address community needs quickly and nimbly, how they’re different from postal banking. Morgan says that “behind strong communities are strong community banks.” And Abello adds that “banking is too important to leave to the bankers.”

Don Morgan is the CEO of the Bank of North Dakota.

Oscar Perry Abello is a journalist covering alternative economic models and policies across the United States and the author of The Banks We Deserve. He is currently the senior economic justice correspondent for Next City, an independent, not-for-profit, online publication covering cities from the lens of social, racial, and environmental justice. 

Featured image of a piggy bank.

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On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon is in conversation with District Attorney Ismael Ozanne about his office and the new community court that will help reduce racial disparities and recidivism in Dane County. 

DA Ozanne has a long history in Madison, from playing soccer at UW-Madison to overseeing the report on racial disparities commissioned by Governor Doyle. He says that in a city with a growing population and growing law enforcement, there aren’t enough public defenders to represent the community. His office has 30 total prosecutors, but there should be 1 prosecutor for every 10,000 residents.

Many of these positions are funded by the state, but others like the Victim Witness Program and Crime Response Program are funded by the county. DA Ozanne discusses how these offices work together and how they will connect to a new initiative out of the Community Justice Council (CJC). The CJC was created in 2008 and now works to take criminal justice decisions out of the criminal courts. 

The CJC is composed of major criminal justice leaders and aims to make evidence-based improvements and expand restorative courts with the goal of slashing recidivism rates, like similar programs in New York City and Chicago did. However, laws in Wisconsin mean that community courts have to take place in a courthouse, not in a more relaxed community setting. The new community court will be led by Circuit Judge Nia Trammell.

District Attorney Ismael Ozanne is a lifelong resident of Madison, Wisconsin. He received his law degree from the UW Madison Law School in 1998 and was appointed as the Executive Assistant for the Department of Corrections (DOC), the largest cabinet agency in the state, by Governor Doyle in 2008. In 2010, he was appointed by Gov. Doyle to Dane County District Attorney and is the first African American District Attorney in Wisconsin’s history.

Featured image of District Attorney Ismael Ozanne.

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The Spring Election is two short weeks away and on today’s show, host Douglas Haynes is in conversation with Madison Metropolitan School District School Board Seat 6 Candidates, challenger Daniella Molle and incumbent Blair Mosner Feltham. They speak about their priorities for the school district, how they would address opportunity gaps, safe learning environments, public funding for schools, student enrollment in the district, and more. 

School Board Seat 6 Candidate: Daniella Molle

Danielle Molle’s educational journey began in public schools in Bulgaria before she attended public universities in the US. She has worked as an education researcher for 15 years with an emphasis on the needs of multilingual students. For the past five years, she has worked as a research partner to districts across the country that are changing their systems to advance equity in schools.

Molle says there hasn’t been someone on the School Board with a background in language development; and in a district where a quarter of the students are bilingual, the School Board needs to understand their experience. She is concerned about the adoption of new math and literacy curriculums and how they would address opportunity gaps. She also discusses her perspective on restorative justice practices and ballot referenda. 

Daniella Molle is an education researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has two children in the Madison schools, one at Hamilton Middle School and one at West High School. She volunteers weekly in a math classroom at Cherokee High School, and is a parent representative on the district’s Advanced Learning Advisory Committee. Professionally, she worked with Madison teachers for a decade as a researcher and as a teacher supervisor. 

Featured image of Daniella Molle.

School Board Seat 6 Candidate: Blair Mosner Feltham

Blair Mosner Feltham has been a teacher since 2010 and says you can’t produce curriculum unless you’ve been in the classroom. She wants to keep her seat on the School Board so she can see her vision of a stable future for the district in practice. She is the first Board member to run for reelection to Seat 6 in more than 10 years.

Mosner Feltham says the district needs collaboration with political leadership to address opportunity gaps. The school district provides transportation and food banks, but she wants to think bigger about how affordable housing and healthcare are other barriers that affect students’ opportunities. Recently, she worked with the School Board to pass a resolution to advance safe firearm storage. She also discusses student cell phone use and state funding formulas. 

Blair Mosner Feltham is a classroom teacher, a mom to two MMSD students, and has been serving on the MMSD Board of Education since 2023. She is the only serving Board member and the only candidate who is a public school teacher. Over the last 15 years, she has taught in public schools in 4 districts and two states, including for 7 years in MMSD, mostly at West High School, where she also served as a union rep for many years. 

Featured image of Blair Mosner Feltham.

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With so much carnage in the news cycle, it’s easy to overlook the wellbeing of the world’s rainforests like the Amazon, the “lungs of the planet.” On today’s show, host Esty Dinur is in conversation with Laurel Sutherlin of the Rainforest Action Network about the importance of protecting this precious resource from deforestation caused by industrial agriculture. 

Sutherlin says that the world’s rainforests are integral to global climate and the products that are being consumed in the US are destroying them. He wants more people to understand that deforestation is the second leading cause of the climate crisis and that’s being driven by industrial agriculture like palm oil plantations. This is also a human rights story, says Sutherlin, as rainforests around the world are home to Indigenous peoples.

The Rainforest Action Network works to hold the companies extracting resources and violating the human rights of Indigenous peoples accountable. Sutherlin says that the countries driving deforestation will often set up shell companies to shield themselves from accountability. 

From March 21-18, the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement is calling for a boycott of Chevron. Sutherlin says that Chevron is a “poster corporation” for the destruction of the rainforests. In Ecuador they left hundreds of open pit oil pools throughout the rainforest, polluting drinking water and food sources.

They also talk about the link between war and climate change, the shining examples of Indigenous leadership and climate activism, National Oreo Day in opposition to the Mondelēz International corporation, and the health of rainforests from Sumatra, to Borneo and the Congo. 

Laurel Sutherlin is the Director of Strategic Communications at Rainforest Action Network, where he has worked on international conservation and human rights campaigns for over 15 years. Laurel also sits on the board of Directors of a bioregional, forest protection group in Oregon called the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center (KSWild). He is a lifelong birder, naturalist and outdoor educator. He currently lives in Kingston, in the Hudson Valley of New York State, where he hosts a weekly live radio talk show program called Nature Nuggets.

Featured image of a palm oil plantation in Indonesia.

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On today’s show, host Allen Ruff is in conversation with Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive, an expert on US-Cuba relations. White House threats to Cuba are making the daily news, and just this week, President Trump said he plans on “taking Cuba in some form” and doing anything he wants with it. 

Kornbluh sketches the US’s long antagonism toward Cuba. He says the seeds of the current situation are in the early twentieth century, when the US “appropriated” Cuba’s war of independence against Spain and into a neocolonial relationship with Cuba with the Platt Amendment. Kornbluh reminds listeners that March 20 is the 10th anniversary of President Obama’s historic trip to Havana. 

Currently the crisis of the Cuban electrical grid is taking a humanitarian toll and the lack of fuel is impacting all areas of life on the island. Kornbluh says that Trump “needs to stop suffocating Cuba.” But Trump’s “imperious attitude” makes it hard for diplomacy to proceed. He effectively created what Kornbluh calls a “sphere of intimidation” in Latin America where other countries are concerned if they could be the President’s next target. 

Peter Kornbluh is a Senior Analyst at the National Security Archive. He currently directs the Archive’s Cuba and Chile Documentation Projects. He was co-director of the Iran-Contra documentation project and director of the Archive’s project on U.S. policy toward Nicaragua. From 1990-1999, he taught at Columbia University as an adjunct assistant professor of international and public affairs.

Featured image of the Cuban flag. 

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On today’s show, guest host Carlos Dávalos is in conversation with historian Jorell Meléndez-Badillo about Puerto Rico’s role in global pop culture, solidified by Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance. Meléndez-Badillo has worked with the artist on several projects, including the half-time show, and he shares what the public discourse around the world’s oldest colony means for the future of Puerto Rico Studies. 

Meléndez-Badillo says that Puerto Rico is the most important place in the world because of its relationship to the Atlantic, Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States. Bad Bunny’s performance showcased the vitality and complexity of the country and its “beautiful, deep, and profound culture,” says Meléndez-Badillo. He uses the term “nation” to refer to Puerto Rico, though this is a contentious term given Puerto Rico’s complicated legal relationship to the United States 

He describes the boom of cultural production coming from the Puerto Rican archipelago and diaspora: the salsa rhythms born in New York City, la plena and la bomba styles derived from Puerto Rico’s Afro-Caribbean legacy, to reggaeton which emerged in working class neighborhoods in Puerto Rico. Even the ocean and environment of the Caribbean has a musicality to it, says Meléndez-Badillo.

They also discuss Meléndez-Badillo’s process of collaboration with Bad Bunny, including on the historical vignettes he wrote for the artist’s concert residency. When dealing with complex, difficult topics like colonialism, Meléndez-Badillo says that it’s OK for people to feel uncomfortable and that history can help us understand what’s happening in Puerto Rico and in the US writ large. He wants to see a future where Puerto Rican studies thrives and provides a lens into issues like gentrification and labor.

Jorell Meléndez-Badillo is an associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean history, and the co-director of the Puerto Rican Studies Hub at UW-Madison.

Featured image of Jorell Meléndez-Badillo.

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On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes dives into a new book, Living Roots: The Promise of Perennial Foods, with its editors edited by Liz Carlisle and Aubrey Streit Krug. Perennials are plants that live for more than 1 year, like trees, bushes, and long grasses. We eat perennials when we eat tree nuts, tree fruits, and even some grass-fed meat. These plants are so important for ecosystem health because their roots go to work year-over-year. 

Carlisle says that our current food system is set up like fast fashion, to be cheap and wasteful. Currently, there’s a dominance of commodity crops like corn, soy, and wheat, that are hurriedly assembled into low-cost products through fossil-fuel intensive processes that produce a “stupefying” amount of waste. 

Carlisle and Streit Krug wanted to create a food system that is made to last, and that’s where perennials come in. From acorns and hollyleaf cherries found in California to the grasslands, plums, and roots of the Midwest, perennial foods have been shepherded by Indigenous nations. In the Living Roots collection of essays, you can learn about perennial grains like kernza, the hazelnuts and elderberries grown in the Midwest, and progress to developing a perennial rice in China. 

Carlisle describes other methods of growing food, like permaculture and regenerative and organic farming. She breaks down the theories behind these different methods and how perennials are apart of each of them. Streit Krug discusses how producers are trying to create change through these alternate visions of farming at the local and systemic levels. She asks, “when you see a grassland, do you see land to develop, or do you see food? 

They also discuss the largest food forest in Atlanta, Georgia, and the emotional connections to growing plants, and how their work flows against the tide of industrial agriculture. 

You can learn more about their work at an event tonight at Lake City Books. 

Liz Carlisle is an Associate Professor in the Environmental Studies Program at UC Santa Barbara, where she teaches courses on food and farming. Born and raised in Montana, she got hooked on agriculture while working as an aide to organic farmer and U.S. Senator Jon Tester, which led to a decade of research and writing collaborations with farmers in her home state. She has written three books about regenerative and organic farming: Lentil Underground, Grain by Grain, and Healing Grounds, and she is co-editor of the new edited collection Living Roots: The Promise of Perennial Foods. Prior to her career as a writer and academic, she spent several years touring rural America as a country singer.

Aubrey Streit Krug is a writer and researcher who investigates relationships among humans, plants, and places. She is the Director of the Perennial Cultures Lab at The Land Institute, where her team leads social and cultural research and educational efforts like civic science that feature learning with communities to help realize more just, diverse, and perennial grain agricultures. Her most recent project, co-edited with Liz Carlisle, is the essay collection Living Roots: The Promise of Perennial Foods. Aubrey grew up in rural Kansas, and her curiosity about grassland stories and plants led her to earn a PhD in English and Great Plains Studies. She loves rocky prairie hillsides and lives in Kansas.

Featured image of the cover of Living Roots.

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On today’s show, host Esty Dinur is in conversation with writer Hooman Majd about the escalating Israel-US war on Iran and how these countries are expanding the war to Lebanon, the Gulf States, and beyond. Majd describes the constant barrage of bombs on Tehran, how Israel is displacing Lebanese people, and that the death toll is growing. This week, Iranian leaders marched in the streets of Tehran projecting unity and defiance as the war reaches two weeks. 

Majd says there’s no sign that Israel or the US are going to end the war, and there’s no sign that Iran is going to surrender or negotiate a ceasefire. Despite Trump’s claims that he would pick the next leader of Iran, Iranian leadership appointed Mojtaba Khamenei as the country’s new Supreme Leader. 

They also discuss the restrictions on foreign journalists in Iran, how the attacks on Iran come on the heels of Trump’s assault on Venezuela, how fundamental religious figures are shaping the war, and the creation of a new refugee crisis in Lebanon and this crisis could spread to Iran if the US deploys ground troops.

Hooman Majd is an Iranian-American writer, and the author of three books on Iran, including the New York Times bestseller The Ayatollah Begs to Differ. His new book, a memoir, is Minister Without Portfolio: Memoir of a Reluctant Exile. Majd has also written for The New Yorker, GQ, Newsweek, The New York Times, The New Republic, Time, Vanity Fair, The Financial Times, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Politico, and Interview Magazine, among others. He is a contributor to NBC News. He has published short fiction in literary journals such as Guernica and The American Scholar. He lives in New York City.

Featured image of a protest against US war with Iran from 2020 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The post Analysis of the US-Israel War on Iran with Hooman Majd appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

The state of Wisconsin has a constitutional obligation to provide equal opportunity for a sound basic education and adequate and reasonably uniform funding of our public schools. But for decades, the state hasn’t provided sufficient funds to school districts or distributed those funds fairly. That’s why a group of five school districts have filed a lawsuit against the Wisconsin legislature–the topic of our show today. 

Guest host Bert Zipperer is in conversation with Jeff Mandell, Julie Underwood, and Heather DuBois Bourenane to break down the reasons for the lawsuit and how the state can better serve its 421 school districts. 

Shortfalls in state funding have left many school districts using ballot referenda to increase their spending limits. Mandell points out that referendums were once used for capital expenses but now are increasingly applied to operational costs. He says this isn’t how the system is designed to work. Bourenane calls it a “disequalizing way to fund public education,” that further divides the “haves from the have nots.” 

But you can’t talk about the school finance system without talking about vouchers, “because they suck so much money out of the landscape,” says Underwood. Mandell clarifies the lawsuit isn’t against voucher schools, but legislators need to reckon with the reality that the state is now funding voucher/independent schools to the tune of over $700 million a year. Some municipalities, like Green Bay and Eau Claire, have started to publish how much of residents’ property taxes go to voucher schools. 

Underwood says public education is at the heart of our democracy, and we need adequately-funded public schools to create an informed citizenry who can participate in public debate. 

Jeff Mandell is a co-founder of and General Counsel at Law Forward, a nonprofit law firm dedicated to protecting and strengthening democracy in Wisconsin. Jeff has nearly twenty years of experience in complex litigation and appellate advocacy, and is widely recognized as one of Wisconsin’s leading experts in constitutional litigation and election law.

Julie Underwood has focused her career on issues involving public school law and policy, as General Counsel for the National School Board Association and former Dean of the School of Education at UW-Madison.

Heather DuBois Bourenane is the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Public Education Network, a public education advocacy group that shares resources, ideas, and actions that support the public schools at the heart of our communities. Their annual Summer Summit will be held this year in Superior, Wisconsin.

Featured image of a child exploring library bookshelves via Rawpixel.

The post Meeting the Constitutional Obligation to Public School Students appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Ali Muldrow is in conversation with two of the editors of We Are Each Other’s Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities, Rachel Kuo and Jaimee A. Swift. They discuss the challenging, contemplative, and moving essays that chart the long history of Black and Asian women in coalition and how these communities have, at times, been pitted against each other.

The editors emphasize the intersection of disability justice and abolition in framing the collection to help readers analyze systems and relationships of power. Swift says that the book came about as she was watching Black women become the victims and survivors of COVID at the same time as anti-Asian hate crime was spiking around the country. Kuo says that the international solidarity movements of the 60s and 70s brought people together based on their shared relationship to power and shared analysis of US empire, capitalism, patriarchy, and racism, not especially their shared identity. Swift says “we need each other to challenge oppressive systems.” 

They also talk about the need for cop-free communities, coalition politics, the exhaustion of movement work, and how to build real joy without losing the seriousness of the fight. 

Rachel Kuo is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and cofounder of the Asian American Feminist Collective, which engages intersectional feminist politics grounded within Asian diasporic communities.

Jaimee A. Swift is the creator and executive director of Black Women Radicals, dedicated to uplifting and centering Black women and gender-expansive people’s radical activism in Africa and in the African diaspora.

Featured image of the cover of We Are Each Other’s Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities, available from Haymarket Books. 

The post Black and Asian Feminists Imagine A Better World Together appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, we’re flipping the script. Producer Sara Gabler interviews Monday host, Douglas Haynes, about his new book, Teaching Toward Slow Hope: Place-Based Learning in College and Beyond.  If you listen to this show regularly, you know that Haynes is a Professor of English and cares deeply about the state of higher education in Wisconsin and beyond. His book is an ode to the hopeful and resilient educational practices at work across the Midwest in places like UW-Madison, UW-Milwaukee, UW-Oshkosh, Northland College, and Kalamazoo Valley Community College. 

As college students experience rising rates of mental health disorders, food and financial insecurity, and eco-anxiety, some educators are turning to place-based learning to prepare students for a changing world. Whether through urban mapping projects, culinary and food share programs, or novel interdisciplinary outdoor learning cohorts, the classes Haynes’ profiles are prioritizing deep listening, reciprocity, collaboration, and embodied cognition. And they’re successful and popular. 

Haynes shares anecdotes from his research into the five place-based learning projects in the book and how they are changing students’ lives by reducing the separation between education and ordinary life, combining disciplines from the humanities to the sciences, centering Indigenous knowledges, and taking students emotional needs as seriously as their intellectual ones. Contrary to the extractive model of education which treats students like consumers and parades AI as the next horizon, place based learning is human-centered and teaches students the crucial skills of relationship building, resilience, and self-efficacy. 

Teaching Toward Slow Hope: Place-Based Learning in College and Beyond will be published tomorrow by Johns Hopkins University Press. 

Douglas Haynes teaches environmental humanities, creative nonfiction and poetry writing at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh. He’s also written a poetry collection called Last Word and a nonfiction exploration of inequality and the climate crisis called Every Day We Live Is the Future: Surviving in a City of Disasters, about two Nicaraguan families’ quests to reinvent their lives in Managua, one of the world’s most disaster-prone cities.

Featured image of the cover of Teaching Toward Slow Hope.

The post Healing the Crisis of Isolation in Higher Ed appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Esty Dinur is in conversation with writer and journalist Casey Michel about Greenland, kleptocracy, the Epstein files, and more. Michel says that “the preponderance of corruption is nothing like we’ve ever seen before” in the US. Though money has always shaped American politics, the scope and scale of what’s happening under the Trump regime is unprecedented. 

Michel has written multiple books about corruption in American politics, including American Kleptocracy, Foreign Agents, and the forthcoming United States of Oligarchy.

His reporting on Trump’s attempts to take over Greenland reveals a web of financial interests at play. Trump is being guided by the interests of wealthy donors and corporations who want to mine the “whole periodic table of elements” that are being blocked by environmental and labor regulations imposed by Greenland, Denmark, and the EU. He says that the financiers pulling the strings want to build a super power where there is no democracy, taxes, or any restrictions on their actions, and authoritarians like Trump are happy to help them.

Note: This pledge drive interview was edited to remove parts of the show dedicated to station fundraising. We thank our listeners for their generous support.

Casey Michel is an American writer and journalist who covers international corruption, dark money, and foreign influence for a range of outlets, including The New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and more. He has written multiple books on these topics, including “American Kleptocracy” and “Foreign Agents,” and his new book “United States of Oligarchy” will be released in August. He is currently sanctioned by the Russian regime for his work.

Featured image of the cover of Casey Michel’s book, American Kleptocracy.

The post On Kleptocrats, Plutocrats, and Lobbyists with Casey Michel appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, guest host Bert Zipperer is in conversation with Negin Owliaei, editor-in-chief of Truthout, about the war that the US and Israel launched on Iran last weekend. On Saturday, Owliaei woke up to dozens of text messages from her family in Tehran announcing the bombardment of their city. Since then, the US and Israel have killed more than 1,000 people across Iran and the Middle East, including 150 school children.

Owliaei says that she is frustrated by the public discourse about Iran and the way that the language of “preemptive strikes” and “imminent threats,” sanitizes war. She reminds listeners that there were signs that the US was gearing up for an attack on Iran and that it costs the nation $1 billion per day to wage this unjust and illegal war. She insists that “just because it’s started, doesn’t mean it needs to go on” and “every minute we can shorten this war is a success.” In her latest article for Truthout, she discusses the need for resistance and support for grassroots organizing like Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, Taxpayers Against Genocide, and No Tech for Apartheid.

They also discuss Nowruz (the Spring holiday in Iran), the history of the 1953 CIA-backed coup, the deportation of Iranians following the 12-day US-Israel war on Iran last summer, and the Women, Life, Freedom movement. She wants people to understand that everything that’s going on domestically has a foreign policy effect. Owliaei joined A Public Affair last summer to talk about the US and Israel’s 12-day war on Iran. 

Note: This pledge drive interview was edited to remove parts of the show dedicated to station fundraising. We thank our listeners for their generous support.

Negin Owliaei is Truthout’s editor-in-chief. An award-winning journalist, she previously worked at Al Jazeera’s flagship daily news podcast, The Take. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Featured image in celebration of Nowruz, or the beginning of spring by Hamed Saber on Flickr. 

The post US Leaders Are Cheerleaders for a War Machine appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

As part of our series on appetites, food and politics, and the need to snack during difficult times, host Ali Muldrow is in conversation with Jen Rubin and Jenny Pressman who spent the last two years on the hunt for the perfect bagel. They talk about their favorite cultural comfort food and their quest to find not just any bagel, but the Great Midwest Bagel, one that has been properly kneaded, fermented, boiled, and baked.

Rubin began this quest as a grief project after the loss of her mother, the cultural bearer in her family. The bagel holds a central place in New York Jewish communities, says Rubin, who grew up eating bagels while chatting, or kibitzing, with family and friends. Pressman joined Rubin in the search for bagels that were made like the ones they used to love back in New York City. 

Part food-travel, part archival research, and part personal family story, the Great Midwest Bagel Quest is a road trip story without the tragedy of Bonnie and Clyde or Thelma and Louise, just carbo-loading. Food is a manifestation of culture, and Rubin says the Quest has been a way to connect with her Jewish culture but untethered from Israel. Pressman says that their road trips around the Midwest were some of the funniest and seediest experiences she’s ever had. 

They also debate the role of capers in a bagel spread, how blueberry bagels don’t count as traditional bagels, the rise of chain bagel stores and “millenial-pandemic-bagel-bakers,” how people regularly injure themselves when cutting bagels, and the desire for a “cripsy exterior.”

Note: This pledge drive interview was edited to remove parts of the show dedicated to station fundraising. We thank our listeners for their generous support.

Jenny Pressman is a passionate community activist, fundraiser, and connector. Previously a lawyer and director of a charitable foundation, Jenny is now in her dream role as the Director of Development and Community Partnerships for the UW Odyssey Project, a jumpstart program in the humanities addressing multigenerational poverty through access to education. Jenny is a proud Jewish lesbian mother and the daughter of Holocaust survivors.

Jen Rubin produced the Moth StorySlam for ten years, is the author of We Are Staying: Ten Years in the Life of a Family, a Store and a Neighborhood and can be found on the Midwest Bagel Quest.

Featured image of fresh baked bagels with sesame seeds via Pexels. 

The post Road-Tripping for Bagels appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon is in conversation with Misty L. Heggeness about her new book, Swiftynomics: How Women Mastermind and Redefine Our Economy. Heggeness is a professional economist, and in her book she blends a data-driven approach to women’s work and gender analysis. She says that economics is a useful tool for understanding how people behave at a societal scale and in our homes.

Taylor Swift is Heggeness’s muse, helping Heggeness describe economic trends. For instance, the average income of a woman who lives in one of the cities where Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour stopped is only $30K-$40K. This tells us about the economic status of women today, especially when you break down salaries by profession. However, Heggeness insists that women have significant economic power–as consumers and in their homes. On average, women do an hour more economic work a day than men, says Heggeness.

Heggeness says that the field of economics is a male-dominated field and she wanted to write her book to center women, like her grandmother who was “the most efficient CEO of her household and garden” in the stories we tell about the economy. Taylor Swift becomes the stand in for the “modern” millennial woman who has greater educational attainment and is delaying marriage and having kids. Contrary to previous generations, folks today are getting married based on shared interests, rather than on building efficient households, says Heggeness. 

They also discuss how Kansas recently revoked the drivers licenses of trans women and men, how consumers boycotted Target after the company turned its back on DEI, and how too many people making policy decisions have “care privilege.” She wants to see more care givers voted into office. 

Note: This pledge drive interview was edited to remove parts of the show dedicated to station fundraising. We thank our listeners for their generous support.

Misty L. Heggeness is co-director of the Kansas Population Center, Associate Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at the University of Kansas, and former Principal Economist and Senior Advisor at the US Census Bureau. She is also creator of The Care Board, a dashboard of economic statistics built by and for caregivers that brings their economic contributions into the fold. Her new book Swiftynomics: How Women Mastermind and Redefine Our Economy merges three passions – economics, women’s rights, and, of course, Taylor Swift.

She has over a decade of experience leading high-profile research that informed decision-making within the U.S. federal government. Her research focuses on poverty & inequality, gender economics, and the high-skilled workforce, and has appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, TIME, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Economist, and Science.

Featured image of the cover of Swiftynomics: How Women Mastermind and Redefine Our Economy by Misty L. Heggeness.

The post Economic Empowerment, Babe appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes is in conversation with Lindsay Weinberg about her new book, Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age. It’s a timely book that gives a snapshot of how higher education is increasingly relying on digital student surveillance presumably to better prepare students for the digital economy. But the reality is that education technology or “ed tech” too often perpetuates austerity, structural racism, and the privatization of public universities under the guise of solving problems. 

Weinberg writes about predictive analytics that divert students to certain degree paths, data brokers, how student learning software tracks student activity and behavior, automated exam proctoring that uses facial recognition, and the rise of student wellness technologies. These measures are undertaken in the name of improving student success metrics and outcomes. But schools are cutting the proven and effective programs run by real people in order to usher in technology-based solutions. Ed tech is often marketed as a cost-saving solution, but these technologies are quite costly themselves. Weinberg’s research shows how ed tech and austerity go hand in hand. 

Students really aren’t aware of how their institutions are tracking them, even before they matriculate, says Weinberg. She traces how, in practice, FERPA actually enables public-private information sharing and says we need more transparency about student data and work. The rise of ed tech in higher education is possible because we’ve romanticized technology and students aren’t invited to the conversation. 

Weinberg also tracks the resistance to ed tech, from community organizing and policy efforts that seek to “turn back the clock” on digital technologies in education. She’s seen students successfully fight to get predatory technology off their campuses. Weinberg advocates slowing down to allow the time and space for democratic process and deliberation.

Note: This pledge drive interview was edited to remove parts of the show dedicated to station fundraising. We thank our listeners for their generous support.

Lindsay Weinberg is a clinical assistant professor and the Director of the Tech Justice Lab in the John Martinson Honors College at Purdue University.

Featured image of the cover of Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age by Lindsay Weinberg. 

The post In Search of Data, Schools Snoop on Their Students appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

With the threat of drilling in the arctic on the horizon in Trump 2.0, host Esty Dinur focuses today’s show on the urgent threat of climate change with climate journalist Dana Drugmand. They discuss where we stand with current environmental policy in the US and Drugmand’s reporting on climate change lawsuits that would hold corporations accountable.

Drugmand says that the Trump administration’s environmental policy changes have been “sweeping and unprecedented.” From the flurry of executive orders that Trump signed on his first day back in office to pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, the administration has changed policies and made new efforts to erase the science of climate change and attack clean energy projects. Most recently, the EPA rescinded the “endangerment finding” for greenhouse gasses, effectively eliminating the agency’s ability to regulate emissions. 

They also talk about the costliness of fossil fuels in comparison to clean energy, youth lawsuits like one in Wisconsin, and Drugmand’s reporting on a Paris climate lawsuit against the company Total that could set a new precedent internationally. 

Note: This pledge drive interview was edited to remove parts of the show dedicated to station fundraising. We thank our listeners for their generous support.

Dana Drugmand is an independent climate and environmental journalist with a specialization in reporting on climate accountability and justice, including covering the rapidly growing and evolving space of climate litigation. She has a Master’s degree in environmental law and policy from Vermont Law School and resides in western Massachusetts. Her reporting has appeared in outlets like Sierra magazine, Inside Climate News, The New Lede, and DeSmog, and she also publishes her work on two start-up publications Climate in the Courts, and a Substack newsletter called One Earth Now.

Featured image of a smokestack from the Zimmer Power Plant via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The post When Climate Change Goes to Court appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

The US is busy saber rattling all over the globe. On today’s show guest host Norm Stockwell checks in with two anti-war activists, Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright, about what they’re hearing on the ground in Venezuela and Cuba. 

Wright says that activists should be tired right now from the burnout of protesting in the streets and visiting their congressional representative’s offices. She says that it’s important to travel to places like Cuba and Venezuela to see what the US government is actually perpetuating and how Venezuelans are saying “we hope you can control your own government and how it acts internationally.” She also describes how Venezuelans are responding to the US kidnapping of their head of state and the purposeful bombing of their communications and energy facilities. 

They also discuss the situation in Cuba and Benjamin’s latest article about US sanctions. Benjamin has covered the US’s relationship with Iran and says that you don’t have to like the Iranian government to oppose a US invasion. Polls show there’s little support for such an action, but Israel continues to push for war with Iran. She describes how everyday people become the victims of US warfare.

Note: This pledge drive interview was edited to remove parts of the show dedicated to station fundraising. We thank our listeners for their generous support.

Medea Benjamin is a cofounder of both CODEPINK and the international human rights organization Global Exchange. She is the author of 11 books, including Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control, Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection, Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran and War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, coauthored with Nicolas J.S. Davies. Her most recent book, coauthored with David Swanson, is NATO: What You Need to Know. Benjamin has been an advocate for social justice for more than 30 years.

Ann Wright is a US Army/Army Reserves veteran, retired Colonel, and former US diplomat who resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. In December 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the co-author of the book Dissent: Voices of Conscience.

Featured image of protestors gathered in Times Square against the invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro by the U.S. via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

The post From Venezuela to Cuba with Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

The wait is almost over – the much anticipated Madison Public Market is scheduled to open in Late Spring. To learn about what folks can expect from the new space and all the art and food vendors it will house, host Ali Muldrow is joined by Keisha Harrison.

The Madison Public Market has been more than twenty years in the making. Harrison says it’s a true community investment and her goal has been to make sure that it represents the diversity of Madison. It will serve as a third space and complement (not compete with) the Dane County Farmer’s Market. Harrison discusses the balance of celebrating the local while welcoming new vendors and how the space will be transformed for private events and entertainment. 

There are three outdoor murals that are currently visible, Issis Macias and Rodrigo Carapia’s Axolotl & Alma, Tom Jones’s Elizah Leonard, and a piece by La Follette High School and Middleton High School students called And Still, She Blossoms. Get ready for Madison’s most Instagram-able location!

Keisha Harrison is the CEO of the Madison Public Market Foundation, tasked with creating a vibrant, community-centered space that connects commerce and culture. Previously, she led the historic Indianapolis City Market and spent over two decades in public libraries, shaping her commitment to access, equity, and community-centered design.

Featured image of the Madison Public Market.

The post Madison Public Market Will Celebrate the Local appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Ahead of the Big Share next week, host Dana Pellebon speaks with Cheri Dubiel of Community Shares of Wisconsin and Alex Lindenmeyer of Urban Triage. Community Shares is a member-based fundraising organization that you might be familiar with from workplace giving campaigns or the CHIP program at Willy St. Coop. They focus on supporting social justice and environmental causes. 

Urban Triage is a community organization that offers direct services like housing initiatives and urban agriculture. Their farm serves multi-generational Black and Brown folks, and the organic produce they grow is donated back to the community. Lindenmeyer describes Urban Triage’s upcoming art exhibit, Seen and Unseen, that will open at the Wisconsin State Capitol on March 3. This immersive, outdoor installation is designed to deepen community understanding of homelessness and the real pathways to housing stability, representing crisis response, case management, and long-term housing solutions.

They also discuss how federal funding cuts are affecting community organizations, especially those that are working to alleviate housing insecurity and follow housing-first principles. Youth are the largest group of folks at risk of becoming unhoused, and it’s estimated that 1400 kids in MMSD will experience homelessness this year.

Alex Lindenmeyer is a proud founding board member of Urban Triage and was just hired full-time this year as their Development Manager.

Cheri Dubiel has served as Executive Director of Community Shares since January, 2017. She has worked at Community Shares of Wisconsin for a combined total of 17 years, being hired first as Development Director. 

Featured image of artwork from the Seen and Unseen installation.

The post Seen and Unseen Installation Opens The Big Share appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

You’ve probably heard of a watershed or a foodshed, but have you heard of a fibershed? On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes unpacks the growing movement of farmers and fiber artists rebuilding Wisconsin’s wool and flax textile systems. He’s joined by Leslie Schroeder of the Midwest Linen Revival, Jane Hansen, a sheep farmer and Board Member of the Three Rivers FIbershed, and WORT’s Talk Producer, Sara Gabler, whose article about fibersheds is featured in this month’s Isthmus magazine.

Fibersheds focus on what can be readily grown within a particular bioregion. In the Upper Midwest, that’s not cotton or indigo, but wool and flax. These grassroots organizations nurture place-based relationships–between sheep, the soil, water systems, and the farmers and laborers who grow and process the raw materials into the quality yarns that fiber artists love. 

Going local is a choice that supports the environment and local farmers at a time when small family farms need as much backing and better crop opportunities as they can get. Hansen and Schroeder recommend mending the clothes that you already own and avoiding buying synthetic fabrics that shed microplastics. Schroeder says to start small, make one garment from locally sourced materials and it will become something you always cherish.

Hansen describes the work that goes into raising healthy sheep, including her pasture management practices and the process of prepping fleece to go to the fiber mill. She gets support from her fibershed and uses her farm to educate the public about the importance of locally grown textiles. 

Though there are several cottage mills in the state, Wisconsin lacks the infrastructure that would make it possible for sheep farmers to produce wool at a commercial scale. We don’t have any infrastructure for producing linen, the fiber that is derived from the flax plant. There’s a healthy demand for locally grown linen, says Schroeder, but you’d have to grow and prepare it yourself at the moment. Schroeder hopes to change that with her grant-funded work to source high-quality domestic seeds, purchase and import harvesting equipment, and site a multi-million dollar mill. 

You can learn more about wool and fibersheds by reading one of Schroeder’s recommended books (Vanishing Fleece, Women’s Work, or Fibershed) and find your local organization here.

Jane Hansen raises Coopworth sheep in Ogema, WI. She is a board member of the Three Rivers Fibershed, Northern Pines fibershed and Embrace (a domestic and sexual violence advocacy service provider in a 4 county region of Northern WI). She is also an active member of Wisconsin Farmers Union and host of a monthly Fiber Fun on the Farm event at her own farm.

Leslie Schroeder is the co-founder of Midwest Linen Revival, an organization dedicated to laying the groundwork for establishing flax for fiber as an agricultural crop in our region. She is co-curator of the Field to Frock festival, co-creator of two teenaged daughters, and sleeps outside whenever she can.

Featured image of the stages of flax production. Courtesy of Sara Gabler/WORT.

The post Local Fiber Movement Is Re-Stitching the Social Fabric appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Esty Dinur is in conversation with Kieran Knutson and Coleen Rowley about the ongoing presence of ICE and other federal agents in the Twin Cities. Knutson says that the assault on the people of Minneapolis and surrounding areas isn’t over even though some ICE activity has diminished following the announcement by border czar Tom Homan that Operation Metro Surge has concluded. He also discusses the vast network of rapid response groups, daily protests, mutual aid, and a new tenant’s union and other labor organizing that has galvanized the population. Knutson says that labor unions like his are helping their members find ways to participate in local organizing.

Rowley says that she’s optimistic about the role of US attorneys’ offices in standing up for the Constitution. She sees this as proof of how unlawful ICE and Homeland Security’s actions are. They also discuss the connection between what’s happening in the Twin Cities and Palestine, US empire and counter insurgency operations, how people build bridges to work in solidarity against ICE, how local law enforcement has provided cover for federal agents, and how industries where immigrants are employed are feeling real strain.

Kieran F. Knutson is the President of Communication Workers of America Local 7250. CWA Local 7250 is a non-profit membership labor union representing workers at AT&T mobility retail stores in Minnesota, and AT&T Legacy T in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, North & South Dakota.

Coleen Rowley is a retired FBI agent who served as Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel for the latter 13 years of her career, teaching constitutional law (i.e. criminal procedure) to FBI agents and other law enforcement. She disclosed some of the FBI’s pre 9-11 failures as part of the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry, then testified later to the Senate Judiciary Committee and as part of the lengthy, detailed Department of Justice Inspector General’s investigation of these same matters. She also publicly warned FBI Director Mueller in Feb 2003 that his wrongful support for President Bush’s illegal war on Iraq would prove counterproductive. Rowley was one of three whistleblowers selected as TIME Magazine’s 2002 Persons of the Year.

Featured image of law enforcement officers at the site of Renée Good’s murder via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

The post Minneapolis Stays Vigilant Against ICE appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Ali Muldrow is in conversation with Joanne Molinaro, aka The Korean Vegan. A former lawyer turned content creator and award-winning author with over 6 million followers, Molinaro sends a message of optimism and strategy that helps her followers feel like they can engage in informed political conversations.

Molinaro says that she’s followed her talents, using her power as a storyteller to make an impact in the world. She started The Korean Vegan in 2016 as a hobby but eventually left her law firm to become a full-time influencer. She’s a master of the bait and switch, melding videos about food with captions about what it’s like to be an immigrant in the US.

In addition to recipes, Muldrow and Molinaro discuss the echo chamber of social media, what her family thinks about her storytelling, and who she would and wouldn’t make dinner for (she’d cook JD Vance japchae). Molinaro says that we need to invest in institutions that aren’t online, like dinner parties, book clubs, picnics, etc.

Joanne Molinaro has over 6 million fans spread across her social media platforms. She is a New York Times best-selling author and James Beard Award winner. Her debut cookbook was selected as one of “The Best Cookbooks of 2021” by The New York Times and The New Yorker among others. Molinaro is a Korean American woman, born in Chicago, Illinois. After a single post of her making Korean braised potatoes for dinner (while her husband taught a piano lesson in the background) went viral, Molinaro shifted her attention to producing 60 second recipe videos, while telling stories about her family—immigrants from what is now known as North Korea.

Featured image of the cover of The Korean Vegan Cookbook.

The post News Served with a Side of Glass Noodles appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon is in conversation with Director Ilesa Duncan and cast of cullud wattah,  Jnae Thompson (Ainee), J’Nya Smith (Reesee), Jayda Smith (Plum), and Faerie Afi Mlatawou (Reese/Plum understudy).

It is 2016 and it has been 936 days and counting since Flint, Michigan, has had clean water. Third-generation General Motors employee Marion finds herself on the cusp of a promotion until her sister begins participating in protests accusing the company of poisoning the water. Forced to confront their past and weigh their limited options for the future, the family of Black women finds their tight-knit unit threatened by more than just the toxicity of the water. Written by UW-Madison and First Wave alumna Erika Dickerson-Despenza, this powerful play deconstructs the linear passage of time to ponder the choices we make for the sake of our survival. 

They discuss the ongoing Flint water crisis and break down a key refrain from the play, “there’s money in war, and there’s war in money.” They also talk about the actors’ relationship to their characters, their favorite moments in the play, and what it’s like to perform with an all-Black and femme-identified cast. 

cullud wattah is showing later this month at the UW Vilas Hall-Mitchell Theatre. Tickets are available here. 

Featured image of J’Nya Smith, Jayda Smith, Dana Pellebon, Faerie Afi Mlatawou, Ilesa Duncan, and Jnae Thompson.

The post A Roundtable with the Cast and Director of cullud wattah appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

In recognition of the urgency of the climate crisis, groups of young people around the country are taking their concerns to court. In places like Montana and Hawaiʻi, they’re winning lawsuits and forcing states to address greenhouse gas emissions and more. In late August, fifteen youth in Wisconsin filed a lawsuit against the Wisconsin Public Service Commission and the state legislature. To talk about their lawsuit and others like it, host Douglas Haynes is joined by two lawyers helping the youth bring their case to court, Tony Wilkin Gibart of Midwest Environmental Advocates and Joanna Zeigler of Our Children’s Trust. 

The youth plaintiffs are claiming their constitutional right to live in a world with a stable climate system and that climate change is threatening their rights to life, liberty, and happiness. They’ve been successful in Montana where the state constitution provides a right to health and safety. And in Hawaiʻi, the state has committed to decarbonizing transportation by 2045. In Wisconsin, the youth plaintiffs are claiming that the state is both supporting and fueling the climate crisis by approving fossil fuel power plants and preventing renewable energy projects. They say these actions by the state are infringing on their constitutional rights and the state is failing to preserve and protect the right to use and enjoy the waters of the state. 

Gibart tells the story of some of these plaintiffs, like Kaarina Dunn who experienced the major floods in the Driftless region a few years ago and Lucy Wright who grew up cross country skiing, but has seen the seasons cut short. Zeigler says that youth have a strong, intuitive moral compass and since they’re the ones who will be disproportionately impacted by climate change, it’s important to hear their voices. 

Tony Wilkin Gibart has led Midwest Environmental Advocates since 2019, guiding the organization’s legal, policy, and community-focused work to protect Wisconsin’s natural resources and strengthen environmental rights. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School and one of the attorneys representing the young plaintiffs in Dunn v WI PSC.

Joanna Zeigler joined Our Children’s Trust as a staff attorney in 2022. She primarily works on state cases filed by Our Children’s Trust, including Sagoonick v. State of Alaska II and Dunn v. Wisconsin Public Service Commission and is working to develop new cases in other states. Joanna is also working with the State of Hawaiʻi to implement the historic settlement agreement reached in Navahine v. Hawaiʻi Dept. of Transportation. Prior to joining Our Children’s Trust, Joanna worked at a Honolulu law firm as a litigation associate for over five years and she earned her JD with a certificate in environmental law from the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaiʻi.

Featured image of skiers in the American Birkebeiner, which has been cancelled several times in recent years due to warm weather, via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0). 

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On today’s show, host Esty Dinur is in conversation with Killian Clarke about his new book, Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed. He researches moments of democratic liberation brought about by mass struggle and why some succeed and others fail. Though he did not write about the US, he’s seen his research become surprising and tragically poignant in the second Trump presidency.

Clarke says that democratic backsliding like we’re seeing in the US, has happened in other democracies around the world. But elected leaders who systematically dismantle institutions of democracy and then install an authoritarian regime is far more common in young democracies than in places like the US. It’s shocking how quickly Trump and his team are succeeding. There are resonances between tyrants everywhere in how they cement their rule and gain popularity.

They also discuss comparisons between Trump and Hitler’s rise to power, political polarization in the US, Clarke’s research on Egypt, and the vulnerability of other unarmed revolutions. Clarke says that there are downsides to the prevalence of technology in today’s social movements and says that grassroots organizing is needed to sustain a movement. He recommends Zeynep Tufekci’s book, Twitter and Tear Gas and says it’s possible to pressure the Democratic Party to stand for something, like was done during the Civil Rights Movement. 

Killian Clarke is an Assistant Professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, affiliated with the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. His research examines revolution, protest, democratization, and authoritarianism with a regional focus on the Middle East. He is the author of Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed (Cambridge University Press, 2025), as well as peer-reviewed articles in the American Political Science Review, Annual Review of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, and World Politics.

Featured image of the cover of Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed, available from Cambridge University Press.

The post How to Make Tyrants and Cement Power appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

As the Justice Department releases new documents from the Epstein files, more and more high-profile and powerful men are being exposed as having ties to the financier, child sex offender, serial rapist, and sex trafficker. There are also serious concerns about how the files are being released and what information is or isn’t being redacted for the safety of the survivors. Today, host Ali Muldrow tackles this challenging topic with two guests, Prenicia Clifton, a Madison-based child advocate and founder of Seein’ is Believin’, and Grace Panetta, a journalist with The 19th.

Panetta joins us from Capitol Hill where Attorney General Pam Bondi is testifying about the Justice Department’s release of the Epstein files and where survivors are gathering to demand accountability. Panetta says that Democratic lawmakers are pressing Bondi about why survivors’ information wasn’t properly redacted and why some perpetrators’ names were. 

Clifton describes several problems with how the Epstein files are being handled. First, is the adultification and therefore re-victimization of the survivors when officials and the press fail to treat them as children, as minors, who cannot consent to their abuse. Another problem is that white supremacy and wealth underpin our justice system such that when Epstein was first convicted in 2009, he received a short sentence and after that his powerful allies maintained their ties.

Abuse happens when people have access, privacy, and control of others, says Clifton. She advises parents to have conversations with their children about consent and to know who their kids spend time with, including online. 

They also discuss the “tough on crime” rhetoric of the Trump administration in comparison to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwells’ crimes, the power dynamics between adults and children, and prioritizing abuse prevention in our communities by observing, interrupting, and creating policies to hold people accountable. 

Prenicia Clifton is the founder of Seein’ is Believin’ where she works to address the needs of youth, including mental health, life readiness, and suicide prevention. Her goal is to make a difference in the lives of 1 million kids through culturally infused programming, policy creation, and community advocacy. She is a certified Praesidium Youth Protection Guardian and a certified Youth Mental Health First Aid trainer.

Grace Panetta is a Washington, DC-based politics reporter at The 19th, a nonprofit independent newsroom covering the intersection of gender, politics and policy.

Featured image of Jeffrey Epstein’s private island via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

The post The World Won’t Crumble If We Hold Abusers Accountable appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes is in conversation with Chris Purdy, the Founder and CEO of the Chamberlain Network, an organization dedicated to mobilizing veterans to protect democratic values and institutions. They discuss the changing civilian-military relations in the second Trump presidency, the tradition of the military as an apolitical institution, and the militarization of ICE.

Purdy is himself a veteran and says his story is an American one: his family migrated to the US due to violence in Belfast and he joined the army to serve his country. He’s noticed that after their service ends, veterans often “don’t feel comfortable in their veteran-ness.” So he founded his organization with the goal of creating a non-partisan but political space for veterans to work for their communities. Purdy is concerned about the misuse of active duty forces through the Insurrection Act and he breaks down what the law says about when the military can be used for law enforcement. 

He says that because veterans are often credible members of their communities, they can be champions of democracy. Contrary to the way the Trump administration is “laundering military credibility for their agenda” The Chamberlain Network is organizing retired veterans, business and church leaders, and others to help their communities feel safe to vote during elections.

They also discuss Trump’s restructuring of military leadership, Purdy’s article about the misuse of the National Guard, how ICE is acting recklessly by enforcing a political agenda, and the longstanding practice of ICE and other law enforcement recruiting from the military and the “warrior class.” Purdy insists that active duty service members and veterans aren’t ICE, DHS, or other federal law enforcement agencies. 

Chris Purdy is the Founder and CEO of The Chamberlain Network, an organization dedicated to mobilizing veterans to protect democratic values and institutions. A former Combat Engineer in the Army National Guard and an Iraq War veteran, Chris also has extensive experience supporting immigrant communities, having previously led veterans’ initiatives at an international human rights organization. He also has a background in education, serving as a Special Education teacher and school administrator.

Featured image: photo of Chris Purdy courtesy of The Chamberlain Network.

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On today’s show, host Esty Dinur is joined by friend of the program, Norman Solomon, to discuss the status of the Democratic Party. His new book is The Blue Road to Trump Hell: How Corporate Democrats Paved the Way for Autocracy and it is available for free online.

Solomon says we need a stronger Democratic Party–a progressive Democratic Party–to stop fascism and prevent a Vance presidency. It’s not feasible to stop xenophobia and misogyny with neoliberal centrism, as with Biden and Harris’s campaigns, says Solomon. At the top, the Democratic Party is pro-military, pro-corporations. Too often, centrist Democrats work against progressives, as with NAFTA and the Crime Bill that  accelerated mass incarceration. Though Biden did some good work while in office, he ultimately folded when it came to the Build Back Better Act. Instead, we need strong Democratic leadership “that fights like hell for working people, children, the elderly, and the infirm.”

They also discuss how corporate paywalls keep information inaccessible to regular people, how RFK is “viciously anti-Palestinian” and anti-democratic, Bernie Sander’s success in calling out plutocracy and corporate greed, Mamdani’s success in New York City, and the status of the DHS budget.

Norman Solomon is a journalist, media critic, author and activist. He’s the National Director of RootsAction and the Executive Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.  His book War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine was published in 2023. In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews called the book “a powerful, necessary indictment of efforts to disguise the human toll of American foreign policy.” Norman’s dozen other books include War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.

Featured image of the cover of Norman Solomon’s most recent book, The Blue Road to Trump Hell: How Corporate Democrats Paved the Way for Autocracy.

The post Why We Need to Complain About Democrats appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Allen Ruff is joined by friend of the program, John Nichols, who is on the ground reporting from Minneapolis. He says that ICE is sowing a great deal of chaos; restaurants are empty and the atmosphere is tense. However, thousands are showing up to daily demonstrations creating a remarkable moment of dissent. 

They discuss Nichol’s latest article, co-written with Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, “The ‘Donroe’ Doctrine: Trump Unleashes the Dogs of War.” Nichols says that our contemporary struggles have deep roots in earlier moments of US imperialism. He calls the US’s aggression in Venezuela an act of war, not simply a police action as it has been described. The fact that Congress has not been given a say in these actions, effectively makes Trump a king. Unlike Trump’s first term in office, this time around he’s very focused on international affairs, from kidnapping foreign leaders to threatening to bomb nations and more, says Nichols. 

From Venezuela to Minneapolis, we’re seeing invasion abroad and at home, says Nichols. He sees hope in the number of folks, especially young people, who are talking about and engaging in general strikes. More and more people are dissatisfied with the Democratic Party and are looking for ways to counter a political system that is infused with money. They also discuss war tax resistance, mutual aid groups, and the role of religious leaders in political movements.

John Nichols is the executive editor of The Nation, and previously the magazine’s long-time national affairs correspondent. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than a dozen books on media, democracy, and American political history. His latest, cowritten with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New York Times bestseller It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.

Featured image of an anti-ICE protest sign from a January 2026 protest in Minneapolis via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

The post On the Ground in Minneapolis with John Nichols appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived in the Caribbean to find an Edenic scene that has since been mythologized. Today on A Public Affair, host Ali Muldrow is in conversation with Tao Leigh Goffe who charts this mythology in her new book, Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis. She writes about the legacy of slavery, indentured labor, and the forced toil of Chinese and enslaved Black people who mined the Caribbean islands for the benefit of European powers at the expense of the islands’ sacred ecologies. 

Goffe bridges climate justice and racial justice in order to meet the demands of the present, from the pandemic and the Global Black Lives Matter movement to celebrity environmentalists buying private islands and the everyday complicity of owning an iPhone. She interrogates the colonial imagination that leads people to fantasize about island spaces as secretive, private, or grounds for experimentation. And she wants to turn away from notions of property and ownership, making the main characters in her book the Caribbean islands themselves, marijuana buds, mongooses, rocks, and more. 

They also talk about who experiences the burden of climate change versus who is presented as environmental saviors, having reverence for land, plants, and animals, and the legacy of Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark. Goffe’s next project picks up with the theme of maternity and breastfeeding in the context of resource extraction and racialization. 

Tao Leigh Goffe is a London-born, Black British award-winning writer, theorist, and interdisciplinary artist who grew up between the UK and New York. Her research explores Black diasporic intellectual histories, political, and ecological life. She studied English literature at Princeton University before pursuing a PhD at Yale University. She lives and works in Manhattan where she is currently an Associate Professor at Hunter College, CUNY. Dr. Goffe has held academic positions and fellowships at Leiden University in the Netherlands and Princeton University in New Jersey. She is the author of Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis.

Featured image of the cover of Dark Laboratory, available from Vintage.

The post The Music of Caribbean Witness appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon is in conversation with SkyeGia Garcia and DaMontae January who work for OutReach LGBTQ+ Community Center. They discuss their work and the larger issue of housing in Dane County, especially for disenfranchised youth. 

OutReach works for the equity and quality of life for all LGBTQ+ people through community building, health and human services, and economic, social, and racial justice advocacy. Garcia and January work for the program, Everstrong, that provides resources for 17-24 year olds who are at risk of experiencing homelessness. January says that the program empowers young folks to find stable housing and jobs, sign up for insurance, and take on other adult responsibilities with confidence. Young people in the program should be given a second chance and they just want to be heard, says January.

In addition to the Everstrong program, they talk about OutReach’s food pantry, meditation sessions, and anti-colonial yoga classes where folks can “get back in touch with their sovereignty and autonomy,” says Garcia. She says that the LGBTQ+ community has a strong culture of taking care of people and has consistently led with compassion, empathy, and support. 

SkyeGia Garcia has been a community organizer since 2016. Her work has focused on anti-colonial awareness that connects to Indigenous struggles and liberation. SkyeGia currently works at OutReach LGBTQ+ Community Center for a project that focuses on youth empowerment and housing justice.

DaMontae January comes from a background of social work and counseling and has been working for housing justice since 2020. Currently January works as Program Director for EverStrong at OutReach LGBTQ+ Community Center and has been there since 2023.

Featured image: of DaMonte January, Dana Pellebon, and SkyeGia Garcia.

The post Everstrong Housing Program Sets Up Youth for Success appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes is in conversation with Jacob Hundt of Thoreau College in Viroqua and Grace Greenwald of the Springboard Foundation. They explore how the growing microcollege movement is becoming the antidote to the crisis in higher education. Contrary to the transactional, consumer-oriented nature of traditional education, microcolleges are place-based with small student bodies where students’ education includes manual labor and community building. 

Founded in 2015, Thoreau College offers immersive gap year programs, internships, and short courses for young adults that integrate academic studies, hands-on manual work, wilderness expeditions, arts and crafts, and engaged community life. Thoreau College is Wisconsin’s only microcollege, but there is a growing interest in this phenomena in the state. The school offers semester-length programs and admits around 8-15 students with several interns learning about teaching. It’s broad, holistic, and immersive, says Hundt.

Microcolleges offer accessible entry into higher education for students, says Greenwald. She’s seen the movement growing in two ways: there’s a growing interest in founding microcolleges around the country, particularly in rural areas and existing colleges are increasingly connecting with each other on issues like decision making. 

More and more, students are choosing not to go to college because they don’t see college as offering a path to a purposeful life. Greenwald says that microcolleges are great at engaging students in resilient relationships and offering them real opportunities to be responsible to each other and their communities. Students work on self-governance and communal living and conflict is a feature, not a bug, says Hundt.

Grace Greenwald is the Director of Research for the Springboard Foundation, which helps support the movement of microcolleges. She served on the early team building Outer Coast, a microcollege in the rural island community of Sitka, Alaska. 

Jacob Hundt is Executive Director of Thoreau College, a microcollege located in Viroqua, Wisconsin. In addition to his teaching and leadership roles, he is the host of the Microcollege Podcast, a key platform for documenting this growing movement. He lives on a 10 acre farm with his wife and 4 children.

Featured image of farmland in the Driftless region of Wisconsin via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).

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On the day of a national anti-ICE general strike, host Esty Dinur is in conversation with writer Sophie Lewis about her book, Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation. 

Lewis reckons with the white supremacy of bourgeois feminism but refuses to “be evicted from the house of feminism” because she doesn’t want to cede ground to TERFS, femonationalists, and other enemy feminisms. Meanwhile, Lewis wants to recover histories of anti-fascist, anti-colonial, insurgent, and undercommons feminism.

Dinur points to women like Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, Caroline Levitt, Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton, and even Kamala Harris who have supported wars all over the world, and wonders, “are these the women I’ve fought for?”

Lewis also discusses the right to pleasure within the gender liberation struggle, the mythology of feminist figures like Mary Wollstonecraft and May French Sheldon, “feminist misogyny,” and family liberation.

Sophie Lewis is a self described ex-academic, writer, left activist and adoptive Philadelphian (transplanted from Europe). She is the author of several books, including Full Surrogacy Now, Abolish the Family, Enemy Feminisms, and the forthcoming essay collection FEMMEPHILIA. Sophie’s essays also appear everywhere from the New York Times to n+1 and the London Review of Books. She teaches short courses on social philosophy and theory online at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, and you can find her newsletter at patreon.com/reproutopia or browse her archive at lasophielle.org/. Sophie is currently working on a book for Penguin, The Liberation of Children (2027).

Featured image of the cover of Enemy Feminisms, available from Haymarket Books. 

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Marking the first anniversary of Trump’s presidency, the White House released a statement, “365 Wins in 365 Days,” celebrating the success and prosperity that Donald Trump has brought to the nation. To reflect on Trump’s first year back in the White House, host Allen Ruff is joined by journalist Chris Walker, who says that the President has certainly transformed things but for the worse.

Walker says that he’s most concerned about the rising authoritarianism of the administration and how Republicans in Congress seem to be OK with this. We have limited checks in terms of the judiciary, and no checks in the legislature, says Walker. Additionally, Trump is increasingly transparent about his intentions of being a dictator and desire to cancel the midterm elections.

They also talk about the terror that ICE is bringing to Minneapolis, the general strike called by Rep. Jaime Raskin of Maryland, the resurgence of measles outbreaks under RFK, and Trump’s use of the term “environmental insurrectionists.” While it has been common in the past for elected officials to defend law enforcement, Walker notes that now ICE’s victims are being cast as “domestic terrorists” and described as “readying for a massacre” against DHS without any proof.

Chris Walker is a news writer at Truthout, based in Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on both national and local topics since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles analyzing the issues of the day and their impact on people. He can be found on most social media platforms under the handle @thatchriswalker.

Featured image of Donald Trump via Picryl.

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On this show, we’ve been reflecting on the last year of the Trump regime’s attacks on immigrants. Today, we’re focusing on how activists are protecting their communities and taking care of themselves. Host Ali Muldrow is joined by two disability activists, Dr. Sami Schalk and Martha Siravo, who discuss how they balance art with activism and how they maintain joy as we’re bombarded with tremendous tragedy around the country.

Siravo talks about her experiences in the adaptive arts space where she uses her wheelchair for adaptive ballet. Last fall, her aerial dance performance of “Defying Gravity” went viral on Tik Tok. 

Dr. Schalk says that she’s approaching activism differently since the police violently assaulted her while she was supporting UW Madison students protesting the genocide in Gaza. She says there are many ways she can use her resources and visibility without putting her body on the line. Right now is the time to prepare and care and bedazzle gifts for friends, she says.

They also talk about how to challenge assumptions about disabled peoples’ sexuality, how to create accessible spaces, and how they negotiate wanting to be joyous and find pleasure while also feeling overwhelmed by the injustice in the world. Dr. Schalk says that pleasure is a daily practice that happens alongside resistance and activism.

Dr. Sami Schalk is a full professor in the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies at UW-Madison. She is the author of many books, and her research focuses on disability, race, and gender in contemporary American literature and culture. She is also a working artist and has had her art displayed at the Ford Foundation Gallery in New York City and at Art + Literature Laboratory in Madison. 

Martha Siravo is a disability rights advocate and founder of Madtown Mamas and Disability Advocates. She’s a single mother, whose daughter is in the sixth grade.

Featured image of a bedazzled rose via Rawpixel.

The post Finding Joy Even When the World Demands Outrage appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon is joined by Dr. Jonathan Mathias Lassiter, author of the new book, How I Know White People are Crazy and Other Stories: Notes from a Frustrated Black Psychologist. Dr. Lassiter works in private psychotherapy practice and provides culturally relevant care for marginalized professionals. He is part of the mere 1% of Black male psychologists in the country. His memoir makes the case for better cultural representation in the therapy field and defines the theory of the “whiteness mindset.” 

Dr. Lassiter says that he’s always been curious about why people do the things they do, and this led him to pursue a career in education followed by a psychotherapy practice. He describes his upbringing and the isolation and microaggressions he experienced in his graduate studies and clinical settings. He noticed that though the clinics he worked in were serving Black and Latinx clients, the vast majority of the therapists were white. And while working in the VA hospital in Indianapolis, he was the only Black male therapist. At that time, he read Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark: Whiteness in the Literary Imagination and went on to write a corollary essay, “Whiteness in the Psychological Imagination,” that became the seed of his current book. 

In How I Know White People are Crazy and Other Stories, Dr. Lassiter uses diagnostic criteria to define “the whiteness mindset” as a way of thinking and being that values materialism, competition, and individualism, which all promote oppression. It’s a “distress producing phenomena” that hurts everyone and is making white people sick, he says.

They also discuss other concepts in psychology, like “post traumatic slave syndrome” and “black fatigue,” and how Christianity becomes a weapon, especially when it comes to sexuality. Dr. Lassiter says he wants marginalized people, the global majority, to understand that they’re not the problem. His future work will focus on the Afro-centric and Indigenous psychologies as pathways to better, more healthy futures.

Dr. Jonathan Mathias Lassiter is a licensed clinical psychologist in New York City specializing in culturally informed mental health care for Black, POC, and LGBTQ+ individuals and couples. With a passion to use his Ph.D.for the culture, he serves as a therapist, scientist, educator, author, mental health columnist, on-air mental health expert, and international public speaker. Dr. Lassiter has appeared in such outlets as NBC, PBS, Forbes, Huff Post, Radio NewZealand, SiriusXM, iHeart Radio, and more. Follow Dr. Lassiter on all social media platforms at @lassiterhealth.

Featured image of the cover of How I Know White People are Crazy and Other Stories: Notes from a Frustrated Black Psychologist. 

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On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes is joined in the studio by three representatives of Isthmus –Judith Davidoff, Linda Falkenstein, and Dean Robbins–who share their stories about Isthmus’s history and its arts and news coverage as the newspaper celebrates 50 years in the community.

Davidoff describes how Isthmus was founded back in 1976 covering the local arts scene before it expanded to become a local news outlet. Robbins says that the newspaper became a home for alternative voices, the quirky, the artsy, and the hard news that didn’t find a home elsewhere in Madison. In those years, Isthmus was the only outlet working consistently with freelance writers, and it quickly became known for its award-winning arts writing, says Davidoff.

Over the years, Davidoff says they’ve maintained their commitment to highlighting local voices, local events and news, and high-quality writing and editing. Their coverage of the Act 10 protests was a highlight of Robbins’ time at the magazine. Falkenstein says that when the magazine was located at 101 King St., the office had a “vitality” and energy that can’t be matched. 

They also discuss the current journalism landscape and how they choose to cover protests and breaking news with a limited staff. We also hear from callers who share their memories of reading Isthmus over the years.

Judith Davidoff is the editor and president of Isthmus Community Media. She led the transition of the paper to a nonprofit in 2021 and its relaunch as a print monthly. 

Linda Falkenstein is the associate editor at Isthmus. She started at Isthmus in 1999 as special sections editor.

Dean Robbins is a children’s book author and journalist who started as a freelance writer at Isthmus in 1983 and worked as the editor from 2009-2014. 

Featured image of Dean Robbins, Linda Falkenstein, Judith Davidoff, and Douglas Haynes courtesy of Sara Gabler/WORT. 

The post Reflecting on 50 Years of Publishing Isthmus Newspaper appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Today, host Esty Dinur is joined by Jennifer Loewenstein to debrief about the ongoing Israeli attacks on Palestine. They discuss what’s happening in Gaza and the status of the ceasefire and Gaza “Board of Peace.”

Loewenstein says that nothing has changed in Gaza since the ceasefire except the intensity of bombing, which has decreased, but not ceased. She describes the partitioning of Gaza into green and red “zones” and the “yellow line” that marks the line of Israeli occupation. Over two million Palestinians have been pushed into the “red zone” along the coast where they are living in non-winterized tents in conditions that Loewenstein calls “abject misery.” Meanwhile the Rafa crossing remains closed and Israel is planning concentration camps for Palestinians.

Loewenstein says that the ceasefire and the creation of the “Board of Peace” have been successful in keeping what’s happening in Gaza out of the news. She says that “it’s scandalous that no Palestinians are on the Board and after two years of genocide that what’s happening is a deeper entrenchment of the occupation.”

They also discuss the role of gangs in the “red zone,” the deliberate targeting of journalists, and the wiping out UNRWA. Loewenstein says that what’s happening in Gaza is an expression of Western imperialism and the expansion of Israeli hegemony around the Middle East.

Jennifer Loewenstein is an American activist, journalist, and founder of the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project. Her work has appeared in academic journals such as The Journal of Palestine Studies, and she is a regular contributor to the CounterPunch magazine.

Featured image of an aerial view of Israel’s destruction of Rafa via UNRWA on Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO).

The post It’s Still A Nightmare In Gaza appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Though Wisconsin hasn’t been faced with the major ICE raids as we’ve seen in LA, Chicago, and Minneapolis, there is growing concern that ICE will arrive in Wisconsin. Governor Evers said this week that the state is preparing for this inevitability. To talk about ICE raids and the larger context of anti-immigrant sentiment in the US, host Allen Ruff is joined by Armando Ibarra. 

Ibarra works with Voces de la Frontera, an organization with deep roots in Wisconsin. Founded in 1994, the organization responded to the displacement of people from NAFTA. Over the years Voces has helped more than 16,500 families create “family disruption plans” and has held “know your rights” sessions for more than 30,000 people across Wisconsin. Voces de la Frontera will be holding its annual assembly this weekend.

Ibarra also discusses the US as a land of immigrants in a land of anti-immigrants, from colonization,  Westward expansion, and the Chinese Exclusion Act, to the present. Ibarra says that the US is no longer pretending not to be an empire, as we’ve seen with the Trump  administration’s aggression in Latin America. 

They also discuss the Supreme Court ruling that legitimizes racial profiling, the reframing of protest as “domestic terrorism,” the rise of state-sanctioned violence against immigrants, and the 287(g) programs that deputize local law enforcement to act as immigration agents.

Voces organizes a 24-7 emergency ICE hotline at 1-800-427-0213.

Armando Ibarra is a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in the School for Workers. He’s the co-author of the award winning book, The Latino Question: Politics, Labouring Classes and the Next Left.

Featured image of the mural “Labor Solidarity has no Borders” (1992) by Mike Alewitz via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The post A Land of Immigrants or a Land of Anti-Immigrants? appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 47th president of the United States. In the past year, we’ve watched as Trump delivered on his campaign promises of “mass deportation now” with violent assaults on immigrant communities, most recently in our neighboring state of Minnesota. On today’s show, host Ali Muldrow is joined by scholar Sara McKinnon to talk about what has been predictable and surprising about the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement. 

McKinnon says that the scale and speed of what has been put in place is unprecedented, from deportation flights, detention, to ICE raids. We’ve seen that ICE activity in city centers has become more visible, public, and long lasting, with sometimes months-long occupations and tactics that challenge what is lawful. The rhetoric that justifies mass deportation relies on a message of crime and criminality that has been popular with Christian nationalists. On Trump’s first day in office, he limited the Refugee Resettlement Program from 125,000 recipients to 7,500, which will be available to white South Africans.

They also discuss the power and authority of ICE to kill at will, as with the killing of Renee Good earlier this month, the exponential growth of ICE forces and detention centers, and the racially motivated fear of immigrants that the Right cultivates.

Sara McKinnon is Professor of Rhetoric, Politics & Culture in the Department of Communication Arts, and Faculty Director of Latin American, Caribbean & Iberian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. McKinnon has published three books, including Gendered Asylum: Race and Violence in U.S. Law and Politics (University of Illinois Press, 2016), which examines the gender discourse that emerged in U.S. immigration and refugee law between the 1980 Refugee Act and 2014. Her current research explores the dynamics of human migration in Latin America and analyzes foreign policy relations and rhetoric in a transnational context. Additionally, she leads a collaborative project aimed at expanding legal information about US immigration and refugee programs, as well as legal counsel available to migrants across the Americas, helping them to explore options for safe migration and residence.

Featured image via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The post One Year of Immigration Enforcement on Steroids appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

This Thursday, January 22, is the 53rd anniversary of the passing of Roe v. Wade, which was overturned by the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022. On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon discusses abortion rights with two representatives from Free & Just, Veronica Ingham and Laurel Marcinkus. Free & Just is an organization working nationally to amplify the stories of everyday people and demonstrate the devastating consequences of abortion bans across the country.

Free & Just was founded after the Dobbs decision as more and more people across the country started telling their abortion stories. Ingham says that storytelling is the most effective way to build support for reproductive rights, as she saw in her work in Ohio where the majority of people voted to protect reproductive rights. Now, there are over 300 abortion storytellers across 49 states, including 30 in Wisconsin.

Marcinkus is one of those Wisconsin abortion storytellers. She shares her story of needing emergency medical care when she was pregnant with her daughter. Though her doctors recommended life-saving care, she had to wait hours before she could be induced. She lost her daughter and the situation further endangered her health. 

Marcinkus’s story is representative of what happens to pregnant people in the absence of Roe v. Wade. And there are more and more pregnant people dying who can’t get the care they need, as a recent ProPublica article exposes. In Wisconsin, there are two “medical waste” bills moving through the legislature that would criminalize people who miscarry and do not “catch” their miscarriage and return it to a physician. Nationally, there are similar bills being proposed.

They also discuss how the anti-abortion movement arose in response to the Civil Rights movement, how the Trump administration has effectively defunded Planned Parenthood through Medicaid cuts, and the misinformation about medical induced abortion. Even though there may be barriers to sharing abortion stories publicly, people can still find community by bravely sharing their experiences. 

Veronica Ingham is the Managing Director for Free & Just, overseeing the team focused on protecting and expanding reproductive freedom and rights nationwide. Before joining Free & Just, Veronica most recently led the historic abortion referendum in Ohio as campaign manager, where Ohioans voted overwhelmingly to enshrine reproductive rights in the state constitution.

Laurel Marcinkus is a Free & Just storyteller and advocate for reproductive freedom from Kenosha, WI. She’s a mom who was forced to wait hours for lifesaving medical care here in Wisconsin and now tells her story to spotlight the dangers of anti-abortion laws.

Featured image of stencil reading “Defend Roe v. Wade” via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).

The post The Abortion Stories Behind Every Anti-Abortion Law appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Esty Dinur is joined by Alfred W. McCoy to talk about his latest book, Cold War on Five Continents: A Global History of Empire and Espionage, available from Haymarket Books. His book offers an intimate portrait of both covert operatives and antiwar activists, thus humanizing a history often told in impersonal terms of nuclear arsenals or diplomatic ententes.

Turning away from the usual focus of the Moscow-Washington stalemate, McCoy looks at the regions of the world where the Cold War was actually fought, arguing that Southeast Asia experienced the worst of Cold War violence. From South Vietnam to the Middle East, to Africa and Latin America the major world powers fought surrogate wars amounting to 20 million deaths. 

McCoy describes how the US spread its military around the world and operated covertly in Afghanistan, Angola, and elsewhere. He says that the first success of “the man on the spot,” Kermit Roosevelt Jr., was in Iran where he helped to install the Shah in “a spectacularly successful exhibit of regime change.”

McCoy says that we’re currently seeing a “radical shift in US geopolitical posture” moving away from “an international system of law and commerce to becoming a regional hegemony” as seen in what McCoy calls Trump’s “tri-continental strategy.” Trump has decided to concentrate US power in the Americas, from Canada to Greenland and Venezuela. He says that Trump views oil and power as synonymous, but this is a miscalculation on Trump’s part. McCoy sees the era of oil as over and the next horizon is in renewables and will be dominated by China. 

Alfred W. McCoy holds the Harrington chair in history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since earning a history doctorate in 1977, his teaching and writing have focused on Southeast Asian history, modern empires, and the covert netherworld of syndicate crime and state security.

Featured image of the cover of Cold War on Five Continents: A Global History of Empire and Espionage, available from Haymarket Books.

The post From the Cold War to the Trump Regime’s Geopolitics with Alfred McCo... appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On December 14, hard-right candidate José Antonio Kast was elected as Chile’s president with over 58% of the vote. Kast built his campaign around the promise of expelling undocumented migrants and has been called the “Trump of Chile.” On today’s show, host Allen Ruff is joined by journalist Nyki Duda to talk about the political history of Chile and what led to the election of Kast.

Duda says that what makes Kast different from other far-right leaders like Trump or Bolsonaro, is that he developed his career within the institutional Right in Chile. His father was a member of the German Nazi Party who fled Europe to avoid accountability for his crimes. Kast’s father established himself within the landed gentry outside of Santiago and, with Kast’s brother, was involved in a series of murders around the 1973 coup. Kast’s other brother was one of the “Chicago boys” who implemented neoliberalism in Chile. Kast has never renounced his family’s crimes and is poised to be the most right-wing leader Chile has seen since the Pinochet dictatorship, says Duda.

There was a time in the 90s when Chile was seen as a model of democracy and economic growth in Latin America coming off the repressive regimes of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. But that dream has not come to pass. Duda describes the legacy of Pinochet-era “anti-terror” laws and attempts to rewrite the dictatorship-era constitution and the media misinformation campaign against the draft of a new constitution that would have created plurinational status for Indigenous tribes and introduced rights of the environment. 

Duda also discusses the 2019 student protests and the violent government backlash, including the case of Nicolás Piña. 

Nyki Duda is an editor at Al Jazeera digital and researcher at Lead Stories. As a freelance journalist, she covers migration, social movements and far-right politics. Her writing has appeared in Truthout, Jacobin, In These Times and more.

Featured image of José Antonio Kast from 2009 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0 CL).

The post The Run-up to the “Trump of Chile,” José Antonio Kast appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

At a time when it feels like our social fabric is being torn apart, today’s show is about the power of art to pull people back together. Host Ali Muldrow is in conversation with Issis Macias, Lesley Numbers, and Emily Popp about the current exhibit at Art + Literature Laboratory, Pulling Together: Work from Madison’s Roundhouse Studios.

Roundhouse Studio houses 47 artists, and each of their studios is like a little train car, “chugging down the track” to affordable and sustainable art careers, says Popp. Roundhouse Studios opened in January 2025 as a collaborative project between Arts + Literature Laboratory and Apex Property Management to address Madison’s critical shortage of affordable artist workspace. Popp says that the exhibit is a good display of the talent at Roundhouse, representing all different kinds of mediums.

Even though everyone has the capacity to be creative, there are financial barriers to being an artist and our economy and culture make it hard for everyone to pursue the arts. Our guests debunk the myths about art being a solo, frivolous activity, and praise the ways that their colleagues at Roundhouse root for each other.

They also talk about how motherhood is the inspiration for their artistic practices and why it’s so important to have studio space for their work. Numbers says that she first knew she was an artist when she was giving birth to her child. Macias says she turns to art for healing, and she embraces art as a refuge. She translates all kinds of emotions through vibrant colors and textures. They wind down the conversation by discussing the ways that their current political moment, including the killing of Renee Good last week by ICE, will impact their art. 

Issis Macias is a self-taught artist and daughter of Mexican immigrants whose work explores the emotional spectrum of human experience through vibrant, intuitive abstraction. Born in Los Angeles and now based in Madison, Wisconsin, she began painting during a transformative period of motherhood and career transition amid the pandemic. Working with acrylic and oil pastels, Macias draws upon memory, intuition, and shared emotion to create her dynamic, layered compositions. She was named the 2025 Latina Artist of the Year and received the 2024 Micaela Salinas Artist Fellowship, sponsored by Latinos Organizing for Understanding and Development. Macias was also a 2023–2025 Bridge Work artist at Arts + Literature Laboratory, a 2023 Forward Art Prize finalist through the Women Artists Forward Fund, and is an active member of the Madison Art Guild. Her work is held in private collections across the United States, Mexico, and Europe.

Lesley Anne Numbers is an artist, educator, mother and earth-tender, born and raised in Madison. She earned a B.S. in Art Education and an MFA in Printmaking, both from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her art practice is rooted in a sense of spirit, curiosity and love and her imagery is inspired by daily walks with her dogs, the living world, music, poetry and dreams. Currently, Lesley serves as Director of Youth Education at Arts + Literature Laboratory, creates art at Roundhouse Studio and helps run Polka! Press, a printmaking cooperative.

Emily Popp is a fashion and costume designer, teaching artist, performer, and creator of the small handmade fashion brand The Popp Town Mall. Her artistic practice centers on the repurposing and transformation of found and secondhand materials. Emily’s definition of fashion includes anything worn on the body. She considers fashion to be one of the most accessible art forms, a means of individual artistic and intimate expression shared daily.  Emily currently works as a costume designer for the University of Wisconsin Opera and as Director of Adult Education at Arts + Literature Laboratory. Emily holds a Master’s degree in Fashion and Textiles from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Post-Baccalaureate in Fashion from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 

Featured image from the Pulling Together exhibit, courtesy of Art + Literature Laboratory.

The post Mother Artists Unite! appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show host, Dana Pellebon is joined in the studio with long-time Madison leader, Anthony Cooper Sr. the CEO and Founder of Focused Interruption which provides community violence intervention and prevention in Dane County. Their work includes mentorship, trauma-informed care, and direct support to survivors of violence and individuals seeking a fresh start. 

Cooper discusses how his experience of incarceration paved the way for the work that he’s doing now with Focused Interruption and how he draws on his prior experience working for Nehemiah. He says that crisis intervention is important for everyone in the community, in addition to the victim and the perpetrator. 

With Focused Interruption, Cooper works to address gun violence in a preventative way, though much of their work includes working with perpetrators of violence, navigating law enforcement and investigations, and community needs. This means pointing out challenges and moving toward repair in situations where “trauma is stacked on top of violence,” says Cooper. Community members are partners in this work, in helping the folks at Focused Interruption identify situations before they escalate. 

They also discuss how important it is to show up in your community spaces in order to make a positive impact, what it would look like to have community rather than community policing, and how Focused Interruption takes care of its workers.

Anthony Cooper Sr. is a dedicated and visionary leader, serving as the CEO and Founder of Focused Interruption, a pioneering organization specializing in community violence intervention and prevention in Dane County. His leadership is defined by a deep commitment to creating safer, more inclusive communities through innovative and compassionate approaches.

Featured image of Anthony Cooper Sr. and Dana Pellebon in the WORT studio.

The post Anthony Cooper Sr. Paves the Way for Local Violence Intervention appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Last week the federal government reduced the number of vaccines it recommends for children in the US from 17 to 11. The CDC made these changes without the approval from a federal panel. On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes takes a look at these changes and their implications for public health with two experts, Mary Hayney of the UW School of Pharmacy and Kia Kjensrud of Immunize Wisconsin. 

They break down the latest 6 changes to recommendations for the HPV, Hepatitis A, Rotavirus, RSV, flu and covid, and Meningococcal vaccines. The difference is that now the CDC doesn’t recommend these vaccines, they say “talk to your doctor about them” through a process known as “shared clinical decision-making.” From the point of a published vaccine schedule, the CDC’s new recommendations make it appear as if these vaccines are optional, says Hayney. And the changes imply that there hasn’t been shared clinical decision-making, though it is common practice already, says Kjenstrud. At the end of the day, there is no scientific basis for these changes and the majority of parents still want their children to be vaccinated, says Hayney.

For those who are skeptical about vaccines, Kjensrud says that vaccines are under strict scrutiny. More than 200 groups have joined the American Association of Pediatrics in calling for oversight for these changes. The rationale from the Trump administration is that these changes are in line with other countries like Denmark that recommend fewer childhood vaccines. Hayney says that there are significant demographic differences–in terms of size and diversity– between these countries to make it hard to compare. In addition, universal healthcare covers all citizens in Denmark.

They also discuss the trust that pediatricians build with the families they care for, how measles and the flu are deadly and preventable diseases, school attendance policies, the misconception that physicians are making money from these childhood vaccines, and how insurance policies will be affected by these new guidelines. 

Mary S. Hayney is a Distinguished Professor of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin School of Pharmacy and a Master of Public Health Program Faculty Member at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health/ Her research lab studies vaccine responses in immunocompromised individuals. She teaches immunology topics at the School of Pharmacy, including the immunization course for pharmacy students.

Kia Kjensrud has served as the executive director of the Wisconsin Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics since 2007. She is the interim director of Immunize Wisconsin, a statewide coalition supporting efforts around strengthening vaccination ecosystems at the local, regional, and statewide level.

Featured image of a child receiving a vaccine.

The post The CDC Endangers Public Health and Abandons Science appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On Wednesday, ICE agents in Minneapolis shot and killed Renee Nicole Good. Hours later, immigration officials raided a high school in the same city; and in Portland, ICE shot two additional civilians. In response, the Trump administration has been blaming the victims and promoting new expansive definitions of “terrorism” to silence dissent. To talk about this, host Esty Dinur is joined by independent journalist, Ken Klippenstein.

They unpack Trump’s recent national security directive which lists new identifiers of “terrorism” including expressing feelings that are anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, or anti-traditional family values (similar to this bill in Wisconsin). Klippenstein says that if you look at polling, these feelings are expressed by millions of voters. The effect of this directive is “bringing what was the global war on terror home,” by making enemies of American people. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s expanded these qualities of “terrorism” to include anti-Ice sentiment. 

Klippenstein says we have to understand that federal law enforcement has been instructed to view impeding ICE actions as terrorism, and there’s no precedent in the US for this. Trump and Bondi’s directives create a psychological environment in which ICE agents can view their fellow citizens as combatants. It’s a world based in fear, one that MAGA supporters have been primed to accept as the dominant narrative by the media. 

They also discuss the unpopularity of the Democratic Party and how top Democrats in Washington aren’t in touch with rank and file voters. Klippenstein says we should be skeptical of calls for impeachment of Kristi Noem and alarmed by Bondi’s directive to the FBI to offer cash bounties for “radicals.”

Ken Klippenstein is an American journalist who previously worked at The Intercept before announcing his decision to go independent, believing the move necessary in order to report critically on national security. Soon after going independent, Klippenstein published the JD Vance Dossier, a hacked document numerous major media organizations — the very ecosystem he just left — refused to publish. Before The Intercept, Klippenstein was The Nation magazine’s DC correspondent. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Featured image of a group in Minnesota protesting ICE in 2018 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

The post The Global War on Terror Comes Home appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Allen Ruff is joined by Stephen Zunes to talk about his recent article in The Progressive, “The Real Reason Trump Invaded Venezuela: It’s not drugs, democracy, or even oil. It’s power.” 

Following the US’s abduction of Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, Zunes breaks down the Trump administration’s motivations for seizing the state leader and Trump’s vision for the US in the Western Hemisphere. He says the Trump administration is telling a number of lies to justify their actions: calling Maduro a narco-terrorist despite that no fentanyl comes from Venezuela, that Maduro stole “our oil” despite Venezuela nationalizing its oil in the 1970s, and more. 

Zunes puts these lies in the context of international law, the Monroe Doctrine, Venezuelan opposition to Maduro, and the US military’s recent boat-bombing campaign. He says that the US will control all of the oil from Venezuela for the foreseeable future, but “Trump plans to take control of the oil personally and stash the cash in offshore accounts.”

Dr. Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he served as founding director of the program in Middle Eastern Studies.

Featured image of Nicolás Maduro at a meeting in Geneva in 2015 via Flickr. 

The post The Monroe Doctrine Rises Again in Venezuela appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

If you’re not hungry already, today’s show is bound to whet your appetite. Host Ali Muldrow speaks with local foodie, Lindsay Christians, about all the good eats of 2025. They talk about what bars, cafes, food carts, fast casual chains, and bakeries closed and opened in 2025, and what they’re looking forward to in 2026.

There’s a lot of promise on the horizon: from the opening of Ahan’s new companion bar across from their current location on Willy St., Ledger Coffee Roaster’s new location on Winnebago St., Baked Lab’s new brick and mortar in Atwood, and Hot & Spicy’s new, larger location next door to Viet Hoa Market. And Christians breaks down the desert spots–by desert variety, no less–that she’s looking forward to.

They also talk about food journalism, what goes into writing a food review, and why Christians avoids takeout food.

Lindsay Christians is the food and culture editor at The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. She is the author of two books, “Madison Chefs: Stories of Food, Farms and People” and “The Osteria Papavero Cookbook: Recipes from the Italian shack and beyond” with Francesco Mangano.

Featured image of a festive meal at a restaurant via Rawpixel.

The post Spicy in the Cinnamon Kind of Way appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Today is the deadline for candidate filings in the state of Wisconsin. To break down the races in this busy election year, host Dana Pellebon speaks with three powerhouse local journalists, Christina Lieffring, Enjoyiana Nururdin, and Faye Parks. 

There was a general sense of surprise and excitement at the number of contested races. Nururdin says that she’s noticed more people wanting to be active at the local level, including with the school board and Dane County Board. And Parks has noticed people getting engaged on topics like housing, school referendums, and other issues that affect their daily lives. Lieffring says that when things are going well, people tend to ignore local government, but things aren’t going well right now. 

Change is on the horizon in the city of Madison as a number of Common Council seats are up for grabs as the city adjusts to its new staggered terms. And in Dane County there are more unopposed races. Nururdin wants to see more debate and constituent feedback about Dane County Board positions, but this is challenging because newsrooms struggle to devote a lot of time and energy to smaller races, says Lieffring.

The Governor’s race may be the hottest line on the ballot with a large primary field of Democratic candidates but only two Republican contenders. Nururdin says that people want to see candidates who are active in the community, not just at press opportunities. And Lieffring wants to see the candidates go beyond political slogans. 

Christina Lieffring is Tone Madison’s Managing Editor, a free-wheelin’ freelancer, and lifelong Midwesterner.

Enjoyiana Nururdin is a Madisonian and the local government reporter at the Cap Times Newspaper where she covers the ins and outs of City Hall and politics in Dane County. A graduate of UW-Madison’s School of Journalism and Columbia University in New York, Enjoyiana brings experience covering homelessness, government transparency and uplifting community voices in her work.

Faye Parks is the Producer of WORT’s 6pm Local News.

Featured image of a person voting via Pexels.

The post Local Journalists Weigh-In on Upcoming 2026 Elections appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Corn, extreme heat and the military, and skiing are all subjects featured on Floodlight, an independent, nonpartisan newsroom that investigates the corporations and political interests stalling climate action. On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes speaks with Dee J. Hall, an award-winning Wisconsin journalist and Editor in Chief of Floodlight. Hall says that her work at Floodlight strives to be “locally relevant and nationally resonant.”

They talk about Floodlight’s mission, impact, and recent notable stories, including the essay, “Corn’s clean-energy promise is clashing with its climate footprint.” Currently 40% of corn grown in the US goes to producing ethanol for fuel. But researchers are finding that the continuous growth of corn for fuel has caused an explosion of nitrous oxide emissions in the upper Midwest that comes from the continuous application of nitrogen fertilizer. Hall says “we’ve traded one issue (carbon) for another (nitrogen).” 

Another Floodlight story on climate change’s impact on winter activities. 2025 was the third hottest year on record and the effect is being felt in people’s daily lives, including during ski season. In the next 25 years, projections suggest that ski seasons could shrink by another 3 months. 

Hall also speaks to the state of climate journalism today and the challenges of doing climate journalism during the second Trump administration. She says the administration often doesn’t respond to requests for comment, or when they do, their responses are disrespectful. They also discuss the importance of “official” perspectives, the distinction between “objectivity” and “fairness,” and how the rise of non-profit newsrooms is changing the face of journalism. 

Dee J. Hall is the Editor-in-Chief of Floodlight. Before joining Floodlight, Dee was the managing editor of Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit investigative news outlet based in Madison and Milwaukee that she co-founded with her husband, Andy. In her more than 40 years in journalism, Dee has won more than three dozen state, regional and national awards for her reporting. During her eight years as Wisconsin Watch’s managing editor, Dee edited and reported more than 70 award-winning projects. Dee previously reported for the Wisconsin State Journal and the Arizona Republic.

Featured image of the Granite Peak Ski area in Wisconsin via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

The post Climate Journalism Thrives In Nonprofit Newsrooms appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

In 2025, the state of Montana voted for Trump by nearly 20 points. But Montanan’s support for the president is waning because of the administration’s policies on public lands. To unpack the effects of DOGE cuts to public land agencies, host Esty Dinur is joined by journalist Cassidy Randall, author of a recent article, ‘I Didn’t Vote for This’: A Revolt Against DOGE Cuts, Deep in Trump Country. 

Randall says that the DOGE cuts that started last February are bad for public lands beyond the national parks. In Montana, people use public lands for recreation and public land agencies engage in wildfire mitigation and habitat restoration. Ranchers rely on grazing allotments because most ranches aren’t big enough to graze all their livestock. In Project 2025 there are plans to sell off and privatize private lands. Randall says that if you hollow out the agencies that manage them, it becomes an excuse to sell them off. “When we lose these places, they’re gone forever.”

Though Montana leans conservative, the people are pro-environment, and the right to a “clean and healthful environment” is written into the state’s constitution. And young people are winning climate lawsuits based on their constitutional rights. On top of the DOGE cuts, people in Montana are concerned about tariffs and the Trump administration’s relationship with Argentina. 

They also discuss how the ultra wealthy are turning to Montana as their playground, the crisis of rural hospitals in the state, and healthcare affordability. 

Cassidy Randall writes on adventure, environment, and the West. Her award-winning journalism has appeared in Rolling Stone, National Geographic, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Outside, and Men’s Journal, among others; and her latest book, Thirty Below, was named one of The Washington Post’s Noteworthy Books of the Month and won the Banff Mountain Grand Prize.

Featured image of a sign for the Pryor Mountain Range in Montana via the Bureau of Land Management on Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

The post The Fight for Public Lands Could Rewire Montana’s Politics appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, guest host Bert Zipperer speaks with dairy journalist Pete Hardin. They recap the big stories in the agricultural industry over 2025, in an extension of their coverage on their weekly feature on WORT, The Milkweed. 

Dairy and cheese production is quintessentially Wisconsin, since the time that settler farmers brought their herds to regenerate the land cleared of forests by an earlier generation of settlers. Hardin calls Wisconsin’s dairy industry the greatest non-extractive economic development of the state. Now, dairy is a $50-60 billion dollar industry, with celebrated small producers like Cedar Grove and large producers like BelGioioso. 

But the cheese market is terrible right now, says Hardin. Since 2024, prices have declined 30-35%. On top of declining gains for producers, immigrant farmworkers are being targeted by the Trump administration, despite the foundational role they play in the nation’s agricultural sector. The agricultural sector as a whole is struggling, from the ravages of the avian flu to the Trump administration’s tariffs that hit the soybean market hard. And then there are the lawsuits against Monsanto and Bayer, the producers of the carcinogenic herbicide called glyphosate or Roundup, that the Trump administration wants to overturn. In this market, Hardin says that he’s worried about hungry farmers and hungry consumers.

Featured image of the Old Country Cheese plant in Cashton, Wisconsin via Rawpixel. 

The post Hungry Farmers and Hungry Consumers appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

In 2025, a record $60 billion was invested in building AI data centers around the world, many of them in the US and Canada. Proposals for data centers are popping up across Wisconsin, in Mount Pleasant, Menominee, Beaver Dam, Dane County and beyond. These “hyperscale” complexes use anywhere between 5-50 megawatts of power and take up hundreds of acres of land. To talk about the growing opposition to AI data centers across the nation, host Douglas Haynes is joined by three guests: Michael Greif of Midwest Environmental Advocates, Mitch Jones of Food & Water Watch, and Ed Morganroth, Jr. of the group, No Data Center DeForest.

People are increasingly concerned about data centers’ energy and water consumption, land use, noise pollution, and e-waste as well as the societal impacts of AI products like deep fakes. To educate legislators about the growing opposition, Food & Water Watch organized a letter to Congress calling for the halt of construction of data centers. Jones says that the fight is happening in every state and their letter creates a national umbrella for these groups to unify their message. So far over 250 organizations have signed on. 

Many are concerned that the financial benefits of these data centers are flowing to Silicon Valley and out of local communities. And the public is largely being kept in the dark about how much electricity and water these data centers would eat up. This fall, Midwest Environmental Advocates took legal action to get the city of Racine to respond to Milwaukee Riverkeepers’s record recquest for the projected water consumption of a Mount Pleasant data center.  They were at first told that water use is a “trade secret.” To date, the public doesn’t know how much electricity will be used at the data center that Alliant Energy and Meta are building in Beaver Dam. Morganroth says that at a time when Wisconsin is losing agricultural land, his group would rather see new housing and job-creating business in his community rather than a data center.

Our guests also talk about the active role that electric companies are playing in the construction of data centers, the tax breaks that these companies are getting from the state of Wisconsin, and the AI bubble. 

Michael Greif is a Legal Fellow at Midwest Environmental Advocates, where his work has focused on legal pathways to safeguard Wisconsin’s air, water, and climate, including advocating for public disclosure of the water and energy use of hyperscale data centers. Michael is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law and lives in Madison.

Mitch Jones is the Managing Director of Policy and Litigation at Food & Water Watch. He has worked on federal policy for over 20 years. He leads the organization’s work on federal and state policy as well as their sibling organization’s political program.

Ed Morganroth, Jr. is a resident of DeForest, WI and member of the No Data Center DeForest group.

Featured image: aerial view of the Google Data Center in Council Bluffs, IA via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

The post Who Bears the True Cost of So-Called Artificial Intelligence? appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

In this archival show from January 1, 2001, A Public Affair host Esty Dinur speaks with Professor Avraham Balaban about the truth on growing up on a kibbutz.

The post From the Archives: Growing up on a Kibbutz appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On this special live Christmas Eve edition of A Public Affair, host Ali Muldrow is joined by Bianca Martin,  the host of the podcast, City Cast Madison. They’re leaning into the festive season with loved ones, uplifting non-traditional ways of celebrating, and swapping favorite winter movies, like The Chronicles of Narnia and The Family Stone. 

The winter is a time to hibernate and try out traveling wood fire saunas and other cozy spots in Madison. They also share recipes that they make for friends and discuss how to celebrate solo. We listen to Olivia Dean’s version of the classic “The Christmas Song” and Bianca sings Joni Mitchel’s “River.”

Featured image of Bianca Martin and Ali Muldrow.

The post Growing Our Hearts and Healing the Grinches appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Esty Dinur is joined by scholar Marc Becker to talk about the Trump Administration’s rapidly escalating attacks on Venezuela. He puts the strikes on boats allegedly trafficking drugs in the context of Venezuela’s oil economy and Latin American politics.

Venezuela is considered to have the world’s largest oil reserves which leads many mainstream news sources to call the country the wealthiest in Latin America. But Becker says that wealth is poorly distributed. Under the presidency of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela was successful at redistributing that oil wealth. However, the US has worked to remove Chavez and more recently Nicolás Maduro from power. Even the media circulates narratives that these left-wing leaders have “illegitimate” power.  

They also talk about how the US embargo has had a catastrophic effect on the Venezuelan economy, how the US might be gearing up for attacks on Cuba, Chinese policy in Latin and South America, and the Ineligibility of María Corina Machado in the recent Venezuelan elections. 

Marc Becker is professor of history at Truman State University. He studies the Latin American left with a particular interest in race, class, and gender within popular movements in the South American Andes. Among other works, he is the author of Contemporary Latin American Revolutions (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022); The CIA in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020); The FBI in Latin America: The Ecuador Files (Duke University Press, 2017); and Indians and Leftists in the Making of Ecuador’s Modern Indigenous Movements (Duke University Press, 2008. He has served on the executive committees and has been web editor of the Peace History Society (PHS) and Historians for Peace and Democracy (H-Pad). Becker is currently working on a project on Philip Agee and the CIA in Ecuador in the early 1960s.

Featured image of a mural outside a Venezuelan state-owned oil and gas company from 2009 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The post Oil Motivates US Attacks on Venezuela appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

More than 3,800 Starbucks baristas have joined a nationwide strike since mid-November. They’re demanding increased staffing, more predictable hours, and better wages. To talk about the exploitation of service workers like baristas, host Allen Ruff is joined by Annie McClanahan who says that the struggle of Starbucks workers to get a fair contract is very common across low-wage service work.

More than 80% of the nation’s workforce is in the service sector. It’s made up of doctors, lawyers, and restaurant workers, all united in the ways that their labor can’t be scaled up, automated, or outsourced. McClanahan describes how this sector also includes 75% of the folks earning minimum wage or sub-minimum wage, folks who are more likely to live below the poverty line and less likely to be protected from maximum hour or minimum wage protections. Because service work doesn’t produce a “product” in a classical sense and because this labor is often racialized and feminized, service work is excluded from labor reforms and regulations. 

McClanahan outlines a few ways that service workers become prey to “super-exploitation” – through intensifying and surveilling technologies and through the informalization of policies and contracts. The result is that service workers get stuck in what McClanahan calls “reproductive rifts” where people who deliver groceries can’t afford groceries, or people who provide childcare can’t afford their own childcare. 

McClanahan says that conceptualizations of capitalism that are tied to industrial manufacturing are complicated by the rise of the service sector, which requires a different relationship between wages and technology. They also talk about the outsized influence of the National Restaurant Association and the difference between gig work and the service industry, namely that gig workers aren’t paid hourly but through wage algorithms that are black boxed. Gig work draws on traditions of tipped work but adds to it forms of technological exploitation from wage algorithms and GPS systems, management by app, and the targeting of migrant workers for this kind of labor. 

Meanwhile, rank and file Starbucks workers are making demands. And McClanahan says that service workers are drawing on tactics of domestic worker unions that aren’t just about wages, but about rent control, mutual aid, and more. 

Annie McClanahan is an Associate Professor of English at University of California, Irvine. She writes about U.S. popular culture, political economy, and contemporary capitalism and is the author of Dead Pledges: Debt, Crisis, and 21st Century Culture. Her second book, Beneath the Wage: Tips, Tasks, and Gigs in the Age of Service Work, is forthcoming in 2026.

Featured image of Starbucks workers rally and march in 2022 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

The post From Tips to Gigs to the Picket Line appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

This week marks the 1-year anniversary of the shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison. Meanwhile the search for the Brown University shooter is ongoing. To talk about these events and the ongoing crisis of school shootings across the US, host Ali Muldrow is joined by Dr. David Riedman who tracks these shootings and the online communities that foster gun violence.

Dr. Riedman takes an evidence-driven approach to the study of school shootings. He’s tracked 3,400 shootings back to the 1960s, including 226 of which were deliberately planned. He says there are some common denominators when it comes to shootings: the vast majority are committed by a current or recently former student who has likely experienced abuse in their home, has easy access to a gun, and has shown signs of distress, like leaving weapons out, leaving out maps of their schools, and making shrines to previous school shooters. These realities may run counter to the desire to view school shooters as deranged, lone-wolf outsiders. Instead, Dr. Riedman calls the majority of school shootings “violent public suicides.”

They also talk about the stereotype that public and urban schools are more dangerous than private, rural, or suburban schools, even though the majority of school shootings occur in small suburban communities and rural schools. Dr. Riedman advises that parents be educated about past school shootings in order to spot signs that kids are becoming radicalized by online communities like the True Crime Community (TCC) and Groyper movement, led by white nationalist influencer, Nick Fuentes. Meanwhile young people in Wisconsin have been calling for better mental health resources and better gun storage laws.

Dr. David Riedman is the founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database and hosts the podcast Back to School Shootings.

Featured image of students from Des Moines Public Schools participating in the National School Walkout to end gun violence in 2018 by Phil Roeder on Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

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Currently, Wisconsin and Arkansas are the only two states that have not expanded healthcare coverage for new moms. On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon speaks with ProPublica reporter, Megan O’Matz, about her investigation into Robin Vos’s rejection of postpartum Medicaid expansion in Wisconsin. 

Even though there is bipartisan support in the Wisconsin legislature to expand Medicaid coverage for up to a year for low-income new moms, Robin Vos has blocked a bill that would do just that. O’Matz reports that Vos broke with other anti-abortion members of his party and that this decision is timed with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. She calls it hypocritical not to give new moms healthcare past two months and claim you’re “pro-life” because the early months after birth are a vulnerable period when parents often need ongoing medication and treatment. O’Matz also tracks the influence of business interests on Vos’s decision, including the Uihlein family’s financial contributions to the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee. 

They also talk about O’Matz’s most recent article on Sen. Ron Johnson’s support of a discredited Wisconsin doctor whose new book on chlorine dioxide–a bleaching agent used as a disinfectant and deodorizer–spreads misinformation. Sen. Johnson has written a blurb on the book’s dust jacket and has joined the doctor on panels on vaccine skepticism even though chlorine dioxide is not a drug or a medicine approved for therapeutic use. O’Matz says that we’re in a place where people don’t trust the CDC and that studies cited in Dr. Kory’s book are not scientifically rigorous.

O’Matz says that she got her start in Florida, where open records laws support journalists’ work of keeping elected officials accountable. However the newspaper industry has been contracting over the years due to influence from media conglomerates. She’s now with ProPublica, a nonprofit, independent newsroom that seeks to deliver a level of accountability to readers by reporting on how people with power use it. They rely on open records, data, and fact checking to foster reader trust.

Megan O’Matz is a ProPublica reporter covering issues in Wisconsin and throughout the Midwest. She has been with ProPublica since 2021 and writes about voting processes in Wisconsin, a swing state, as well as stories about family court, prosecutorial blunders and predatory lending. She has also worked at the South Florida Sun Sentinel. She and her colleagues were finalists for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for stories about widespread fraud in federal disaster aid programs after a series of devastating hurricanes. She also shared in the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the failures of school administrators and police officers in connection with the Parkland school shooting.

Featured image of a pregnant person holding their belly via Wikimedia Commons (CC0 1.0).

The post One Man Stalled Healthcare Expansion For New Moms appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

As WORT celebrates its 50th birthday this year, we’ve been reflecting on what the last half-century has meant to our community. But on today’s show, host Douglas Haynes asks, what will the next 50 years look like? He’s joined by the next generation of radio leaders, Olivia O’Callaghan and Daniel Stein from WSUM and Ted Hyngstrom from the Daily Cardinal who produces the weekly feature, Cardinal Call, on WORT.

Record numbers of UW Madison students are signing up to volunteer at WSUM, say O’Callahan and Stein. There’s interest from students wanting to play music on air and from listeners wanting to engage in digital content, like DJ spotlights and vinyl takeovers. Hyngstrom speculates that there’s such a demand for radio because it’s easy to consume, you can just put on your headphones and get music or news on demand.

There may be something to the generational generalizations about Gen Z-ers ditching the algorithm in favor of analog media, from cassettes to radio. O’Callahan says it’s rewarding to be a part of a medium with a long history. And Stein says that even if the medium is an old one, people are consuming radio content in very 21st century ways, by listening on apps, by setting reminders for their favorite shows, replaying favorite shows, and listening on the go. 

Stein says that “radio is a big market for people who are looking for an itch that’s not already being scratched.” Whereas AI is zapping people’s creativity, people tune into WSUM or WORT “because they want to hear something authentic.”

College Radio and community radio are shaping local culture, and that work excites these three students. Hyngstrom says that the work of “making something” motivates him, like an art form would. He’s driven to work on human-centered stories shaped by expert knowledge, like the Daily Cardinal’s recent AI issue. O’Callahan says that getting to know show hosts contributes to the intimacy of the listening experience of radio. She got connected to college radio as a way to meet people, and now she’s getting professional experience by applying classroom work in a real-world capacity. And from multimedia content to dynamic programming, our guests envision a bright and innovative future for radio.

Ted Hyngstrom is the producer of Cardinal Call, a collaboration between WORT and UW-Madison student newspaper “The Daily Cardinal.” As Podcast Director, he has overseen a comprehensive overhaul of how the Cardinal approaches audio journalism, working to integrate podcasting and audio journalism into the newsroom while simultaneously supporting multimedia storytelling. Academically, Ted is a sophomore Honors college student at UW-Madison studying Journalism and Political Science. Someday, he hopes to work as a local news multimedia journalist.

Olivia O’Callaghan is a junior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying journalism and sociology. She joined WSUM Student Radio her freshman year, and worked as a Traffic Director in 2024 before being elected to serve as Station Manager for the 2025 calendar year. She hosts a music show at 10pm on Wednesday nights called “Kitchen Sink.”

Daniel Stein is the Program Director at WSUM where he oversees the content broadcast on their FM and online signals, develops show schedules for nearly 200 active members, and enforces federal broadcast regulations.

Featured image of a soundboard at a college radio station via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The post College Students Say Radio Still Has a Lot to Offer appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Esty Dinur is joined by Ojibwe elder, Great Grandmother Mary Lyons, who recaps what happened at the United Nations Climate Conference of Parties (COP 30) in Belém, Brazil last month. The gathering of world leaders and representatives of international organizations happens every year to address the climate crisis. This year, over 50,000 people from 193 nations gathered with at least 5,000 Indigenous participants, who Lyons says were intentionally left out of decision making conversations. 

Though the conference was marketed as the Indigenous people’s COP, Lyons says that it was difficult for Indigenous leaders to get access to the badges that would give them access to the conferences meetings and negotiations. There was also a large military presence that Lyons says was so different from past events. Lyons and others were trying to send the message that there is great danger to the planet, but “we were met with closed ears.”

There were some good outcomes of the COP30, like the land tenure commitment, Brazil’s recognition of ten Indigenous territories, and the tropical forest forever facility. These will be good outcomes if they are acted upon. 

They also discuss the protection of waters of the Earth, the wealth of decision makers, and the lack of leadership on the climate emergency from the US federal government. Lyons says that she considers all children of the world her grandchildren and is concerned with the future of the whole planet and population.

Great Grandmother Mary Lyons is an Ojibwe elder from Minnesota. She is also an author, humanitarian worker, wisdomkeeper, knowledgeholder, recovery and culture speaker, UN Elder Observer, and spiritual guide.

Featured image of one of the buildings at the COP 30 in Belém, Brazil from UNclimatechange on Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

The post Indigenous Voices Speak Out at COP 30 appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

In the news this week, the President’s birthday was added to the list of free entry days at the National Parks, meanwhile Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth were removed from the list. On today’s show, host Allen Ruff is joined by activist and scholar Nicholas Powers to talk about the Trump administration’s attacks on Black history and his latest article for Truthout, “Black History Has the Power to Ignite Movements. That’s Why the Right Fears It.”

Powers says that the Trump Administration is waging attacks on Black history at three levels: the economic, the cultural, and through voting rights. The closed doors of the African American History Museum in DC are both a symbolic and material closing off of Black history and culture. And that’s added to the mass firings of more than 300,000 Black employees from their federal positions.

The Trump administration is also criminalizing the teaching of Black history in schools. Attacking school curriculum gives permission to conservative activists who are now rewarded for promoting greater and greater acts of racism. The softening or erasing of the historical reality of American slavery and racism creates what Powers calls “a cartoon image of the nation,” one in which the US is presented as a nation always living up to its values.

In Black history, Powers says, there is an opposing grand narrative to the American Dream, that of the American nightmare. He says we need a vision of “American realism” that is taught by Black history: that Black Americans belong here through their blood sweat and tears and that we’re all equal in the eyes of god. Moreover, Black history has a transformative effect, empowering people to see more clearly the strategies and tactics that Black people used to gain greater freedom. Powers previews that there’s another social movement, another wave, on its way to counter the reactionary work of the Right. When it arrives, we should add ourselves to it so that it becomes stronger. 

Nicholas Powers is the author of Thirst, a political vampire novel; The Ground Below Zero: 9/11 to Burning Man, New Orleans to Darfur, Haiti to Occupy Wall Street; and most recently, Black Psychedelic Revolution. He has been writing for Truthout since 2011. His article, “Killing the Future: The Theft of Black Life” in the Truthout anthology Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? coalesces his years of reporting on police brutality.

Featured image of the facade of the National Museum of African American History and Culture by Ron Cogswell via Flickr. 

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On today’s show, host Ali Muldrow speaks with Dionne Koller about her new book, More Than Play: How Law, Policy, and Politics Shape American Youth Sport. As a former athlete who signed her kids up for youth sports, Koller says she wrote the book to make the experience of youth sports more acceptable and accessible.

Koller says that physical and emotional abuse are issues across sports, not just in the high-profile abuses in women’s gymnastics. That’s because hierarchies fuel our current approach to youth sports, hierarchies like parent-child and coach-athlete relationships. In both instances, kids aren’t given rights. And this is a very American problem, as the US is the only nation not to sign on to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. 

Our youth sports culture has internalized the idea that being yelled at and playing through pain are good for “character development,” despite all data to the contrary. And kids are harmed when their parents and other adults get swept up in the positive and negative emotions that come from competitive play. Koller says that we’ve given sports sponsors and coaches both social and policy gatekeeping authority and there’s not enough regulation when it comes to youth sports. 

We should have some minimum safety standards for youth sports, like coach background checks and other health standards. She observes that legislators are trying really hard all of a sudden to keep trans girls out of youth sports; meanwhile these same legislators aren’t supporting the enforcement of Title IX regulations. 

And they also discuss the emphasis on winning at all costs, the rise of youth sports gambling and AAU sports, the nefarious history of the term “student-athlete,” and how overtraining kids leads to preventable injuries. Koller wants to imagine sports as an equalizer, as athleticism has been a vehicle for upward mobility in the Black community. She says there’s a lot more romance we can get out of youth sports, we just have to open doors and make youth sports more accessible. 

Dionne Koller is Director of the Center for Sport and the Law at the University of Baltimore, where she also serves as a law professor. In 2021, she was appointed to co-chair the Commission on the State of US Olympic and Paralympics. She also has served as chair and a member of the executive board for the Sports Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), is a member of the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s Administrative Review Panel, and serves on the editorial board for the International Sports Law Journal. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Koller was awarded the AALS 2024 award for significant contributions to the field of sports law.

Featured image of the cover of More Than Play by Dionne Koller. 

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On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon is joined by Dane County Human Services Director, John Schlueter, to help listeners understand the breadth of the largest department in our county. Schlueter is a long-time Madison resident whose service to the community began with volunteering at Centro Guadelupe and the Dane County Humane Society. After graduating with a degree in social work, he worked in human services and the Social Security Administration before taking his new position with Dane County. He says that he sees his new role as an opportunity to give back to the community and guide the department through challenges posed by the federal government.

This year, departments across Dane County faced structural deficits requiring reductions across the board. The Human Services budget looms at over $300 million and funds housing, mental health services, and so much more. Schlueter praises the work of the Needs Network and Sunshine Place and the spirit of volunteerism that they foster. 

However, the uncertainty created by funding cuts by the federal government is causing real problems for local leaders. It becomes difficult to anticipate or brace for changes, as with the recent back-and-forth over SNAP benefits. Schlueter is bracing for the new federal Medicaid requirements that will roll out in 2027, which he says will make it even more difficult for people to qualify for healthcare. Despite the hardships that so many across the county are facing, the Human Services Department is able to keep serving the diverse needs of its constituents because it is currently not required to strike DEI language from its programs.

John Schlueter is the recently appointed head of the Dane County Department of Human Services. He brings his experience running large organizations, commitment to volunteerism, and service to drive compassionate and responsive service delivery. Dane County Human Services provides a vast array of programs that help our community thrive from children living with disabilities, or those in foster care, to young people finding a way forward on the path to meet their own goals, to employee training, job support, and housing, and those working through behavioral health or substance abuse, to the residents at our county-run nursing home who have some of the most complex care needs for the aging population, and so much more. It takes the entire community to do this work in the best of times.  As we face challenges in the years to come, John invites the entire community to get involved, join him and the expert team, partners, and clients working daily toward a community where each person is thriving.

Featured image of the Dane County Human Services logo. 

The post What Does the County’s Human Services Department Do? appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes takes an inside look at innovative local efforts to teach young people through urban agriculture. Our guest is Brian Emerson of Rooted, a local nonprofit developing community connections through agriculture and food access. 

Emerson comes from a long line of growers and says a lot of gardening is about paying attention. When he moved to Madison he got a plot at the Eagle Heights community garden where he learned from the international students and their families about growing in all kinds of ways. He’s built a career around teaching others how to grow their own food for their families and for their communities. 

At the Madison School Farm, Emerson runs programs for local schools, primarily field trips at the farm. Students get a full sensory experience of the garden, help out with garden chores, and cook a meal together. He says that kids love working with soil and that this year he’s had a 90% success rate at getting kids to eat raw okra. They also gain valuable social-emotional skills from working together in the garden. He wants to partner with more school districts and create more opportunities and connect more small farms to grow food for schools.

Emerson also works at the Grow Academy, a juvenile facility part of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections. He shows the kids in the program about how to read a seed packet and troubleshoot common gardening issues in order to foster a sense of peace and personal agency. 

Brian Emerson is the Director of Urban Agriculture Education at Rooted. He is a native of Cedar Rapids and now is a Northside Madison resident. After graduating from the University of Iowa he worked with the USDA-NRCS on various mapping and watershed projects. Since 2004 he has been with the UW Madison trialing fruits, flowers, and veggies. Most recently, he served as Trial Manager for the Seed to Kitchen Collaborative in the Urban and Regional Food Systems program. In his free time, Brian works in his community coaching, teaching horticulture, and running a small urban farm.

Featured image of urban agriculture via Rawpixel.

The post Teaching Kids a Love of Growing Food, Even Okra appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, we’re broadcasting host Esty Dinur’s conversation with Kamau Franklin, recorded at the Socialism 2025 Conference. They discuss organizing against the militarized law enforcement training center called “Cop City” in Atlanta, the assault of and targeting of Black communities by police, how to respond to Trump’s agenda, and how the left can have diverse approaches to organizing.

Kamau Franklin (he/him) is the founder of Community Movement Builders. He’s been a dedicated community organizer for over thirty years. For 18 years, Kamau was a leading member of a national grassroots organization dedicated to the ideas of self-determination and the teachings of Malcolm X. He’s spearheaded organizing work in areas, including youth organizing, police misconduct, and developing sustainable urban communities. Kamau has coordinated community cop-watch programs, liberation schools for youth, electoral and policy campaigns, large-scale community gardens, organizing collectives and alternatives to incarceration programs. Kamau was an attorney for ten years in New York with his own practice in criminal, civil rights and transactional law. He now lives in Atlanta with his wife and two children.

Featured image of graffiti saying “Stop Cop City” in Atlanta via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The post “Cop City”: The Problem of Police Violence in Atlanta and Beyond appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Allen Ruff is joined by Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the independent nongovernmental National Security Archive. He discusses the historic 1975 expose of the CIA, “Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders,” a report made public fifty years ago by the special investigative US Senate Committee led by Idaho Senator Frank Church, the now little remembered “Church Committee.”

They discuss the report’s revelations, the unsuccessful attempts of the Gerald Ford administration to halt its circulation, the impact of its release, made timely now as the Trump administration speaks quite openly and candidly about overthrowing and murdering Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.

Kornbluh says that at the time of the Church Committee, the US was in a period of scandal. The nation was actively asking what the role of covert agencies should be in a democracy as people became more aware of the things that were being done with their tax dollars and in their name. This remains a question worth asking and a history worth remembering as there has been a covert operation scandal every five years since the Church Committee. 

Peter Kornbluh is a Senior Analyst at the National Security Archive. He currently directs the Archive’s Cuba and Chile Documentation Projects. He was co-director of the Iran-Contra documentation project and director of the Archive’s project on U.S. policy toward Nicaragua. From 1990-1999, he taught at Columbia University as an adjunct assistant professor of international and public affairs.

Featured image of Senator Frank Church who chaired the 1975 Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, known as the Church Committee via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Exploding Seashells and Poisoned Cigars: Assassination Plots of the CI... appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Wisconsin has the dubious distinction of having higher than national averages for youth incarceration and Black youth are ten times more likely to be incarcerated than their white peers. On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon is joined by Nell Bernstein, author of In Our Future We Are Free: The Dismantling of the Youth Prison to talk about the youth and families leading the charge to close youth prisons and end the dehumanization of incarceration. 

In the 90s, Bernstein was an editor at a San Francisco youth newspaper at the height of youth incarceration in the nation. She watched as young writers for the paper would get picked up by police and “chewed up by the system.” Though there’s been a 75% drop in youth incarceration since the 90s, youth prisons are the same as they were 30 years ago. Given euphemistic names like “Lincoln Hill School,” these facilities are bound by razor wire and the children incarcerated there sleep in cell blocks.

Bernstein calls these institutions the real source of recidivism because dehumanization goes hand in hand with incarceration. She gives examples of how a white community in Illinois fought to keep its youth prison open because they were financially profiting from it, and how in Louisiana, mothers successfully closed a youth prison where their children were being abused. Resistance has been led by those most impacted, like the tenacious youth who documented their conditions and sent letters to advocates who then successfully spread their stories such that California closed its youth prison network. Bernstein says that imprisoning children only happens when the system makes harm invisible and at the same time dehumanizes Black and Brown children.

Despite some resistance, Bernstein says that there’s growing interest across the country in charging children as adults, undoing decades of reform work and running counter to the science of the adolescent brain. She says that the key to ending the racial targeting of the justice system is to better resource Black and Brown communities. The vast majority of Americans have broken the law in some way when they were an adolescent, but most were “rehabilitated” by living in a community where their activities weren’t policed. She gives an example from California, where organizations like Young Women’s Freedom Center are using housing programs to successfully keep girls out of jail.

Nell Bernstein is the author of Burning Down the House, winner of the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award; All Alone in the World, a Newsweek Book of the Week; and In Our Future We Are Free (all published by The New Press). She is a former Soros Justice Media Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, and a winner of a White House Champion of Change award. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Glamour, Salon, Mother Jones, and other publications.

Featured image of the cover of In Our Future We Are Free by Nell Bernstein.

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In this prerecorded conversation from late July 2025, host Esty Dinur follows up with Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon who visited Madison last summer to report on his work in hospitals in Gaza. In this show, he speaks in more detail about Israel’s targeting of healthcare workers. He describes the difficulties of counting deaths in Gaza and tells the stories of other medical workers.

This interview contains mentions of torture and sexual abuse.

Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is a general, trauma, and critical care surgeon based in California. He is also a humanitarian surgeon, having worked most extensively in Palestine, but also in Ukraine, Haiti, Zimbabwe, and Burkina Faso. Dr. Sidhwa has written and spoken extensively about surgical humanitarian work, the United States’ role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the political consequences of medical relief work. He approaches the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a secular American and as a humanitarian physician.

Featured image of Dr. Feroze Sidhwa.

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Host Allen Ruff opens today’s program with a quotation from Mark Twain: “Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for–annually, not oftener–if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man’s side, consequently on the Lord’s side, consequently it was proper to thank the Lord for it.”

On this Thanksgiving Day edition of A Public Affair, Ruff is joined by our traditional Thanksgiving guest, Will Williams, to reflect on perennial issues like colonialism, militarism, and racism–issues that stretch from the Pequot Massacre to the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Ruff and Williams discuss the low-intensity war the US is now waging against Venezuela and the paramilitary role that ICE is now playing domestically. Williams reminds listeners that US imperialism is ongoing.

Will Williams is a Vietnam veteran, a local peace veteran activist, and a long time friend of the show.

The post Annual Fireside Chat with Will Williams appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, guest host Carlos Dávalos is in conversation with journalist Carlos Pérez Osorio, who sailed with the Global Sumud Flotilla as a journalist last summer. He joins us to talk about the successes and failures of their non-violent mission to open a humanitarian corridor to Gaza by sea.

Pérez Osorio reflects on the mission, saying that while the flotilla raised global awareness of what’s happening in Gaza, their objective of establishing a humanitarian corridor was a failure. They knew it would be difficult, but he and the others all believed they could get to Gaza and distribute aid. Then, after their long journey a ceasefire was announced. However Israel has violated that ceasefire hundreds of times.

The flotilla was made up of over 500 volunteers, and Pérez Osorio was on a boat with eight other people that departed from Barcelona, Spain. Their journey took around a month before they were intercepted by Israeli forces. But Pérez Osorio says the focus should be on Gaza, “People have to keep fighting.”

Carlos Pérez Osorio is a Mexican documentary filmmaker and photographer whose work focuses on justice, human rights, and stories of resilience. He has directed award-winning films such as Las 3 Muertes de Marisela Escobedo and the Emmy-nominated Los Tigres del Norte: Historias que Contar. His projects have taken him across Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia, and his work has appeared on platforms like Netflix, Prime Video, and Discovery.

Featured image of Ship to Gaza Norway vessel from 2018 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 1.0).

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On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon is joined by April Kigeya to swap tips about how to survive the stress of the holidays. Whether you’re hosting a large party at your home or visiting family or friends, you can still practice self care and set boundaries. 

They talk about one of the most common issues people face around a family meal: managing differences of opinion. Kigeya recommends avoiding people who stress you out, finding a buddy, and making the kids the focus of the conversation. Pellebon says you don’t have to treat every moment as a confrontation. She also recommends taking a deep breath, stepping outside, and blaming menopause. They both say that it’s important to take a break from social media at this time of year.

Kigeya says it’s easy to ignore your own needs when you’re wrapped up in caring for everyone else, especially for Black women. But she’s started being more vulnerable and honest about her mental health struggles with her friends and family. And in her new book, Couch Confessions: The Chronicles of a Black Woman in Therapy, she narrates her own journey in therapy. Both Pellebon and Kigeya recommend interviewing your therapist and telling your therapist what you want to get out of your time.

April Kigeya is a mother of four children and is the second Vice Chair of the Dane County Board. She has a passion for working with children and families, underrepresented communities, and those who can’t advocate for themselves. In 2020 April was named one of Wisconsin’s most influential Black leaders and was the first person of color to serve on the Middleton Police Commission, where she served as the Co-Chair from 2021-2022. She is currently attending Edgewood college where is a PhD candidate in Business Administration. She is also the author of Couch Confessions: The Chronicles of a Black Woman in Therapy.

Featured image of a broken Christmas ornament via Rawpixel.

The post April Kigeya Knows How to Survive the Holidays appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

The world around us plays a key role in our health, though “nature deficiency” isn’t a diagnosis that you’ll likely hear from your doctor. On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes is joined by journalist Phoebe Weston to talk about how the biodiversity crisis is happening in our own bodies and how efforts to reverse it are succeeding. 

Weston says the biodiversity crisis is made up of “lots of local losses stitched together into this global picture.” Noticing species that go missing, like the decline of migratory flycatchers and swallows in her hometown, is a way to see the local side of the global climate crisis. Weston also tracks the links between human health and biodiversity, from farming and meat consumption, urbanization, and bird migration. 

Weston also reports on “nature deficiency,” the idea that we’re not getting enough access to healthy nature. This results in a loss of the biodiversity of our microbiomes: the tiny bacteria, fungi, worms, etc. that live inside and on our bodies. She says we need to keep our “micro citizens” healthy. A program in Finland is trying to re-wild school yards to improve kids’ developmental and physical health through access to a more microdiverse environment.

They also discuss the “luxury effect” (the relationship between wealth and biodiversity), how cars are “ecosystem engineers,” and The Guardian’s “Age of Extinction” coverage.

You can learn more about local biodiversity loss at the Remembrance of Lost Species event on December 4. 

Phoebe Weston is an environment reporter at The Guardian focussing on global biodiversity loss – what is happening, why it matters, and what we can do about it.

Featured image: an illustration from The Birds of Illinois and Wisconsin (1909) via Flickr.

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Today on A Public Affair, we bring you a special feature produced by Matvei Mozhaev who tells the story of Brian Deschane, a Madisonian who experienced homelessness for three years.

Brian was bright, capable, and passionate about helping others. Yet, he struggled to find stable housing. On May 20th, 2025, Brian was offered permanent housing through the Coordinated Entry program run by Dane County. The news did not reach Brian. He passed away the day before, on May 19th. Brian was 41 years old. We hear from Brian’s loved ones, community leaders, and other unhoused folks who tell the story of Brian’s life and the challenges of accessing stable housing in our community.

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A war in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is well into its third year and has gained world attention as the RSF in October took control of el-Fasher in Darfur. Before this escalation, Sudan was already in the midst of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. To talk about the context of the war, host Allen Ruff is joined by freelance journalist Lital Khaikin. She says this is a resource war–of oil and gold–and that the continued marginalization of Darfur is key to understanding the conflict.

Khaikin clarifies that the language of “civil war” in Sudan does not accurately reflect the complex regional interests, militia activity, and profiteering at play. The current RSF occupation of el-Fasher consolidates the region under the control of the paramilitary. Nevertheless, both groups–the SAF and RSF –stand accused of war crimes, including genocide. Khaikin says that the war is against civilians and humanitarian aid is being actively impeded.

They also talk about how it is difficult to know accurate numbers of deaths, the closing of immigration programs for Sudanese refugees, horrendous acts of violence, including over 200 attacks on hospitals, and international coverage of the war.

Lital Khaikin is a freelance journalist and author based in Montreal writing on issues largely relating to human rights and conflict. Her journalism has appeared in numerous independent media outlets including The Progressive, Responsible Statecraft, Inkstick, Truthdig, and elsewhere. 

Featured image of a displaced woman in Darfur in 2011 via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

The post A War Against Civilians in Sudan appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

The longest federal government shutdown ended last week when eight Democratic Senators struck a deal with Republicans to re-open the government. Their deal did not include an extension of healthcare subsidies that the Democrats had been fighting for. To talk about what this means for folks on the healthcare marketplace and for the Democratic party, host Ali Muldrow is joined by political analyst and friend of the show, Angela Lang.

Lang says people really stepped up to support furloughed government employees and families who lost SNAP benefits during the shutdown. But mutual aid shouldn’t have to fill the gap when our tax dollars have already been allocated to support food assistance programs like SNAP. 

“What is the point of shutting down for over 40 days just to end up with nothing? If you’re going to take a stand for something, see it through,” says Lang. We’re in a really dystopian place if we’re pitting healthcare against food. Lang wants to hold Democrats accountable for the state we’re in, but says we also have to hold Republicans and billionaires accountable. She envisions a “big tent” democratic party that works to build a government that serves everyday people. 

Angela Lang was born and raised in the heart of Milwaukee. She has an extensive background in community organizing. Angela has served as both an organizer and State Council Director for the Service Employees International Union, working on such campaigns as the Fight for 15. Before joining BLOC’s team as Executive Director, Angela was the Political Director with For Our Future Wisconsin.

Featured image of a lock superimposed on the White House via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

The post A Uniquely Reckless Shutdown appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon speaks with the co-founders of Own It: Building Black Wealth, Tiffany Malone and Sara Alvarado. They discuss why home ownership is so important for Black families to build generational wealth and how their organization is creating a path for economic justice. 

Redlining blocked many Black families from home ownership by creating neighborhoods that were hazardous based on race. But redlining isn’t just something of the past. If you qualify for a first-time homeowner program, you might still face discrimination based on who the money is coming from, say Malone and Alvarado. They wanted to create opportunities for home ownership for Black families who have been deemed a “poor financial risk,” a kind of coded language for people who use down payment assistance. 

Their organization provides “down payment grants” of $19,000, an amount that falls within the gift tax limit. They use private sector funding so that communities can be the wealth that Black and brown families have been denied. So far they have helped 27 families close on homes, educated 400 people on financial literacy, and raised over a million dollars. From challenging the appraisal industry to advice on how to remove or redact racial housing covenants, Malone and Alvarez talk about how to support Black families for generations to come.

Sara Alvarado is a writer, entrepreneur, and unapologetic advocate for racial justice in real estate who believes the key to handling challenges in life and business is to show up authentic, bold, and vulnerable, always ready for fun. Sara is the co-founder & director of Own It: Building Black Wealth, a groundbreaking initiative to increase generational wealth in Black and brown communities through homeownership. She published the memoir Dreaming in Spanish and the Racial Justice Toolkit for Real Estate Professionals. Sara was a real estate broker for 20 years, and her husband, Carlos, now leads their team, Alvarado Group, at Compass.

Tiffany Malone is a real estate consultant, affordable housing advocate, a change agent for racial justice in the real estate industry, and a loud voice for building generational wealth for Black families. Tiffany works with buyer and seller clients in the greater Madison WI area as a licensed Realtor at Alvarado Real Estate Group and is one of the co-creators of OWN IT: Building Black Wealth, an innovative local initiative that is changing the game when it comes to educating and creating access to funds for Black and Brown families to build wealth through real estate and homeownership.

Featured image of Dana Pellebon, Tiffany Malone, and Sara Alvarado courtesy of Sara Gabler/WORT.

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On today’s show, guest host Juliana Bennett speaks with Native leader Art Shegonee about his life and activism. At a time when nationalism and the colonizer narrative are flourishing, especially around the Thanksgiving holiday, it’s important to center Native voices and experiences. 

Shegonee shares stories from his early childhood and years of dancing. Separated from his family at a very young age and put into foster care, Shegonee faced racism as a child growing up in a white foster family. This was before the Indian Child Welfare Act and it took Shegonee years to reconnect with his siblings. 

Shegonee also talks about what it means to be Native in a settler society, his work organizing for treaty rights, the land back movement and the recent transfer of land back to Lac du Flambeau tribe, and the change Shegonee wants to see. He likes to open his public talks by saying, “Welcome to My Country.” 

Art Shegonee is an Indigenous cultural educator, traditional dancer, and peacemaker from Wisconsin, belonging to the Menominee and Potawatomi tribes. He co-founded the Call for Peace Drum & Dance Company in 1990, alongside his wife Dawn. And has dedicated his life’s work to uplifting Indigenous people across the state.

Featured image Art Shegonee from his organization, Call For Peace.

The post “Welcome to My Country,” says Native Activist Art Shegonee appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show host Allen Ruff speaks with brian bean about their timely new book, Their End is our Beginning: Cops, Capitalism, and Abolition. As police forces act with impunity against civilians and immigrants, bean’s book is an argument for getting rid of the institution of police and replacing it with community-focused services.

bean argues that the police can’t be reformed because they are a violent institution that serves the class interests of the elite. bean wants people to understand the connection between the police and the system of capitalism. They describe how crime is both defined and enforced based on elite interests. For instance, world-threatening pollution, internment camps, and war are legal, whereas vagrancy and informal economies are considered illegal. 

Finding better, more effective, and safe solutions to social problems will help us arrive at a more just world in which democracy and equality are valued, says bean. They envision a classless, stateless society, where people have democratic control over their lives instead of society’s resources going to a few.

bean will give a reading at A Room of One’s Own on Tuesday, November 18.

brian bean is a Chicago-based socialist organizer, writer, and agitator originally from North Carolina. They are one of the founding editors of Rampant magazine. Their work has been published in Truthout, Jacobin, Tempest, Spectre, Red Flag, New Politics, Socialist Worker, International Viewpoint, and more. They coedited and contributed to the book Palestine: A Socialist Introduction, and wrote Their End is Our Beginning: Cops, Capitalism, and Abolition, both from Haymarket Books.

Featured image of brian bean’s book, Their End Is Our Beginning: Cops, Capitalism, and Abolition by Haymarket Books.

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This week President Trump pardoned a group of Wisconsin Republicans who worked to overturn the results of the 2020 election by casting fake Electoral College votes. The pardons were symbolic, but the issue of the public’s faith in election results remains. Today host Ali Muldrow is joined by Madison’s new City Clerk, Lydia McComas, to talk about her role in making sure our local elections are accurate and secure.

McComas says that she’s excited to be in Madison because we have high voter registration and voter turnout here. She steps into this role after a 2024 controversy in which her predecessor mishandled ballots. That incident put a dent in voters’ confidence, but McComas says her office has put in place some new processes that will come into play in February’s primary elections and is working to rebuild trust. Because of the larger issue of so-called voter fraud in the country, McComas says that election administrators have to be transparent with the public and not make mistakes. 

Madison voters will have two opportunities to cast their votes next Spring: the primary on February 17 and the general election on April 7. They also talk about the challenges of implementing electronic poll books, voter suppression in Wisconsin through voter ID requirements, how to serve all residents including incarcerated folks, and the other responsibilities of the city clerk’s office.

Lydia McComas graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in political science. She holds a graduate certificate in election administration from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Her previous role was as Voter Engagement Division Manager with Hennepin County in Minnesota.

Featured image of Lydia McComas.

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Today we’re talking about the artform of burlesque and how BIPOC performers are advocating for diversity in the local burlesque scene. Host Dana Pellebon was a member of the first burlesque troupe in Madison and her guest today is fellow Black burlesque performer and producer, Cocoa Pearlesque. 

Burlesque performance taught Cocoa to learn to love herself, and now she’s asking members of the burlesque community to be accountable for making the scene more diverse and inclusive. The burlesque scene trends white and cis-gender and upholds white beauty and body standards. On top of a lack of representation on stage, Cocoa says that audiences are majority white. She wants to change that through her productions, Heritage & Emotion: A Burlesque Journey Through Black History at Crucible and her national movement, the Diversity Burlesque Boycott of 2026. They’re asking for people to invest money and energy in Black performers and shows, among other demands.

They also talk about safety and accountability, the work of getting ready for a show, the joy of putting together a costume, fixing costume malfunctions, and so much more.

Cocoa Pearlesque is a trailblazer in the burlesque world. Originally from St. Louis, she is now a prominent figure in Chicago, where she spearheads the Cocoa Pearlesque Presents productions. As one of the first BIPOC producers in Chicago, she’s committed to promoting diversity and empowerment, ensuring that her stages are inclusive of all backgrounds and identities. Beyond her successful ventures in the performing arts, Cocoa flourishes as a photographer through Loving Oneself Photography, showcasing her talent in numerous esteemed publications. But her true passion lies in mentorship and education, as she dedicates herself to motivating others and sharing her love for the captivating world of burlesque. A mother of two beloved sons, Cocoa’s drive is fueled by her desire to set a positive example for the next generation, teaching them to live authentically and embrace respect and love for all.

Featured image of Cocoa Pearlesque, courtesy of Cocoa Pearlesque.

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About 42 million people relied on federal food aid last year. That includes about 700,000 Wisconsin residents. Last month the Trump administration announced that it would not fund SNAP benefits starting in November because of the government shutdown. Though Congress voted to reopen the government and though a federal appeals court ordered the Trump administration to release SNAP funds, there’s much uncertainty about what is going to happen and when.

To talk about food insecurity and the status of SNAP funding, host Douglas Haynes is joined by two local food pantry leaders and a national expert on nutrition and public policy. Helen Osborn-Senatus is the Director of Operations for The River Food Pantry and she says they’ve seen a 27% increase from October in the number of people accessing their pantry. Tracy Burton is the Food Pantry Director at the Badger Prairie Needs Network, and they’ve seen 40% more people clients than last year and double the number of new families registering. She says the people they serve are confused and frustrated in what is an already a difficult time in terms of food and rent prices in Dane County. 

At the end of the day, food pantries are a safety net, and they can’t replace SNAP benefits. Dr. Lindsey Haynes-Maslow says that SNAP is the most successful and biggest food security program in the US because it lifts people out of hunger and “the rollercoaster of poverty.” She discusses how food insecurity intersects with other issues like chronic disease. Even if SNAP benefits are restored, says Dr. Haynes-Maslow, the program has been dramatically changed by provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill that expand work requirements, minimize the amount of funds issued to recipients, and shift the administrative cost of running the program to individual states. 

Tracy Burton is originally from Oregon, Wisconsin but left the state after graduating from the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point. As a Sales and Marketing Executive for both tech firms and direct to consumer companies, Tracy lived throughout the US. After retiring in 2019, Tracy moved back home to the Madison area. She started volunteering at Badger Prairie Needs Network in 2020 and took on the role as the Director of the Food Pantry in the fall of 2022 as the pantry was transitioning back from pandemic curbside service to a choice shopping model. Tracy also serves on BPNN’s Board of Directors.

Lindsey Haynes-Maslow is a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill in the Department of Health Policy and Management. She is an expert on the intersection between public health and nutrition, as well as the impact of government policies and programs on health behaviors. She has over 20 years of experience working with non-profit, private, and public organizations that focus on diet-related chronic disease prevention for low-income, rural, and communities of color.

Helen Osborn-Senatus is the Director of Operations for The River Food Pantry. She earned her undergraduate degree from UW and then her Master’s in Social Work from Florida State University, and has worked in social services for the past 15 years. She has been with The River for six years, serving clients and supporting staff and volunteers in their work.

Featured image of a box of food via the USDA Flickr. 

The post SNAP Whiplash and the Rollercoaster of Poverty appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On November 7,1995 – 30 years ago today– Esty Dinur hosted A Public Affair for the first time. Over her 30-year career, her show has been known for its critical perspective, focus on resistance, and fresh voices. That’s what host Carlos Dávalos celebrates today by swapping seats with Esty Dinur and asking her about her tenure on WORT.

Esty says that her listeners remain very important to her and that the topics that she was covering 30 years ago are still the topics she covers today. Her mission has always been to bring information that is not widely available to the air waves and give voice to the voiceless. 

She reflects on her shows over the years, including her second program with Welfare Warriors, covering international issues in Nigeria, Peru, and elsewhere, and with guests like Noam Chomsky.

And we hear from callers who share their stories about Esty over the years. WORT collected some of Esty’s shows over the years for her 25th anniversary, and you can listen to them here.

The post Celebrating 30 Years of Esty Dinur appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Nearly a million incarcerated people nationwide rely on rural hospitals for healthcare. But following massive cuts to Medicaid by Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, rural hospitals, largely dependent on federal subsidies, will be forced to scale back their services or close. This will diminish the access to life-saving healthcare for rural communities, including the incarcerated people in those communities. 

We’re joined by Emily Widra of the Prison Policy Initiative for the first half of the show to talk about the cascading effects of the disinvestment in rural healthcare. She describes how people in prisons and jails use rural hospitals for emergency care, x-rays and diagnostics, and more. There were existing problems with the healthcare delivery systems in prisons and jails, including delays and the difficulties of transporting people for care. Widra says that too many people die in prison from preventable conditions and that the ways prisons are used to manage increasingly poor, sick, and neglected people ultimately punishes them.

In the second-half of the show, we’re joined by local organizer and advocate, James Morgan of Madison Organizing in Strength, Equity, and Solidarity (MOSES). He talks about his experiences inside and outside carceral institutions and the work he does to educate people about the flaws in the criminal justice system. Morgan describes how the language we use to talk about incarceration has changed over time, from “rehabilitation” to “reform.” He calls the criminal justice system a “system of retribution.” MOSES also discusses how MOSES is advocating for accountability and transparency in the new Dane County Human Services budget. 

James Morgan is employed as the Community Organizer for MOSES. James represents MOSES on a local, state and national level attending conferences, training and Organizer events. He is responsible for assisting with General Membership Meetings, Fundraising, Recruitment of Congregations and Individuals, Membership Trainings-Education, and Media Messaging.

Emily Widra is a Senior Research Analyst at the Prison Policy Initiative and is the organization’s expert on health and safety issues behind bars. She is the author of several briefings on Medicare and Medicaid for people involved in the criminal legal system.

Featured image of a hospital corridor via Rawpixel.

The post When Rural Hospitals Close, Incarcerated People Lose Healthcare appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Ali Muldrow speaks with poet Sasha Debevec-McKenney about her collection Joy Is My Middle Name. Muldrow calls the collection loving, tender, and hilarious. 

Growing up in Connecticut, Debevec-McKenney developed a fascination with the US presidents from a young age. She dove into the study of American history as a path to self-discovery. Now, it’s her goal of visiting all 40 of the deceased presidents’ graves. Debevec-McKenney and Muldrow challenge the hagiography of presidents, focusing on LBJ and civil rights legislation.

They also talk about the work of being a writer, how poetry is legally fiction, finding new and better reasons to cry, service work, and taking a moment to enjoy talking about politics on the day after significant elections across the country. Debevec-McKenney also reads her poetry and recommends the writing of Diane Seuss.

Sasha Debevec-McKenney’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, New York Review of Books, and Yale Review. She was the 2020–2021 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin and a 2023-2025 Creative Writing Fellow at Emory University. She was born in Hartford, Connecticut.

Featured image of the cover of Joy Is My Middle Name by Sasha Debevec-McKenney.

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On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon celebrates the magic of theater with Dr. Erica Halverson who has dedicated her career to studying how people learn in and through the arts.

Dr. Halverson runs the Whoopensocker, an in-school artist residency program that teaches self-expression through writing, improvisation, and performance to 3rd and 4th graders in Madison. The program’s name means “something extraordinary of its kind.” The program transforms the experience of education for students who may not feel like school is for them and culminates with a sketch comedy and vaudeville show.

Her podcast, Arts Educators Save the World, makes the academic study of arts education more accessible to educators and artists. The show features successful artists and their mentors who talk about how art changed their lives. They also talk about culturally relevant and culturally sustaining pedagogy and how schools struggle to incorporate kids as assets.

Dr. Erica Rosenfeld Halverson is the chair of Theatre & Drama within the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, following a distinguished tenure as professor and chair in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. She is the author of How the Arts Can Save Education: Transforming Teaching, Learning, and Instruction, and runs the Whoopensocker, an artist-in-residence program working in Madison Public Schools.

Featured image of Dr. Erica Halverson’s book, How the Arts Can Save Education: Transforming Teaching, Learning, and Instruction.

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In May 2026 the UW-Platteville campus at Baraboo will close its doors. It’s the 13th UW branch campus to close since 2023. On the show today, we’re joined by Wisconsin State Representative Karen DeSanto to talk about how this closure will impact the constituents of her district and by Neil Kraus who discusses the flawed messaging the UW System is sending about enrollment, its budget, and the need for AI and tech in education. 

Rep. DeSanto says that the Baraboo campus closure has been in the works since 2013 when the state cut funding for two-year campuses. In the years since, campus consolidation, tuition freezes, and more have made the closing of two-year schools appear inevitable, but this closure does not reflect the value of public higher education to the state of Wisconsin. Rep. DeSanto stands by the value of schools like Baraboo for rural and first-generation students and says that the students and faculty of Baraboo are devastated by this decision. 

In the second-half of the hour, we’re joined by Neil Kraus who says that the UW System has created a narrative about declining enrollment and budget shortfalls that doesn’t account for the reality that the System has created these conditions by not funding schools and by spending too much money on non-instructional expenses, like expensive technologies and consultant fees. Kraus says that most Wisconsinites are actually aligned on the need for in-person instruction but that the UW System seems bent on compelling rural and low income and working class students to accept online education as the appropriate form of education for them. 

Representative Karen DeSanto is a first-term democrat from Baraboo.

Neil Kraus is a professor of political science at UW-River Falls and Vice President for Higher Education for AFT-Wisconsin. He is also the author of The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and the Education Reform Movement.

Featured image of the UW Platteville-Baraboo Sauk County campus and buildings via Wikimedia Commons (CC0 1.0).

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Ahmed Abu Artema is a Palestinian writer and human rights activist. He joins host Esty Dinur from exile to talk about the situation in Gaza right now. He discusses life in Gaza before and after October 7, 2023 and the Israeli propaganda that makes possible the ongoing genocide.

Abu Artema says that the Israeli propaganda machine is trying to portray the October 7 attack as the start of the Israeli-Hamas conflict, but the Israeli blockade of Gaza had already been in place. He discusses the non-violent Great March of Return of 2018 that gathered 100,000 peaceful participants who were met with Israeli violence. Abu Artema says that Israel created the environment that led to October 7 by closing all the doors for Palestinians, many of whom came to believe that they couldn’t achieve anything with non-violence after the Israeli attacks on the Great March of Return.

They also discuss what Abu Artema calls Israel’s strategy to eliminate Palestinians, the arrest and torture of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the ceasefire, and the colonial mindset that dehumanizes Palestinians. Abu Artema has written about his decision to leave Gaza for the Middle East Eye.

Ahmed Abu Artema was born in Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip to a family of refugees from Al-Ramla Village in what became Israel. He initiated the Great March of Return in 2018, and spoke with Esty Dinur on this show about that event and peace plans in the Middle East.

Featured image of Ahmed Abu Artema.

The post “We Are Here” Says Palestinian Activist Ahmed Abu Artema appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

As of this week, the Trump regime has ordered at least eight strikes on small vessels in the Caribbean and off the Pacific coast of Columbia amounting to at least 57 extrajudicial killings. Trump claims these strikes are necessary but has offered no evidence that those killed were involved in drug trafficking. Today, host Allen Ruff speaks with Latin American expert, Rodrigo Acuña, about the context for these attacks and his latest article for Truthout. 

Acuña takes us back to the era of Hugo Cháves in Venezuela, whose presidency challenged elites and clashed with US foreign policy. He also compares this moment in the first Trump presidency. 

Meanwhile the US military has expanded its presence in the Caribbean and the CIA has ramped up activity in Venezuela. Acuña says that all this build up is a sign that the Trump administration wants to overthrow the presidency of Nicolás Maduro and replace it with a government that will support the US. He calls this yet another instance of the US engaging in regime change. At the end of the day, these efforts are not in the interest of the US populace who should resist them, says Acuña.

Dr. Rodrigo Acuña is a Spanish teacher, an expert on Latin American politics, and film maker. In 2013, after having been awarded an Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) by the Federal Government of Australia, he completed a PhD on Venezuelan foreign policy at Macquarie University. Together with journalist Nicolas Ford, he independently released his first documentary, Venezuela: The Cost of Challenging an Empire. 

Featured image of US Navy and Coast Guard ships along with Armada Republica de Columbia ship sailing in formation in the Caribbean Sea as part of a multi-national exercise in 2003 from the National Archives via Picryl.

The post The Long History and Dangerous Prospect of US Interference in Venezuel... appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, guest host Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford speaks with trans advocate, Josie Caballero. Across the country, there are more trans candidates running for office than ever, and these candidates are more viable than ever, says Caballero. These candidates include trans veterans who are continuing their path of federal service even after the Trump administration’s transgender ban. Caballero is one of these candidates, running to represent the 1.1 million people of Montgomery County, Maryland, an area that borders DC where roughly 40,000 people have been laid off from their federal jobs.

They talk about the courage it takes for trans individuals to run for elected office, putting themselves even more in the spotlight in a hostile political climate. But Caballero adds that trans acceptance is popular across the nation. She says that trans issues are being used by the Right to distract from the government shutdown, the Epstein files, and the demolition of the White House East Wing. Caballero reminds listeners to check in on your trans friends and family and be public about your support for trans individuals.

Their conversation also addresses the need for community support and mutual aid in light of SNAP benefits ending. Community support is the antidote to the desperation and hunger being fomented by the Trump regime. Caballero also supports the unmasking of federal immigration agents, the funding of public education, and champions the courage of other trans leaders.

Josie Caballero is a former nuclear power operator, deploying four times to hostile waters aboard the USS Ronald Reagan. She has proudly served within the Democratic Party as a presidential national delegate, a founding member of the DNC Trans Advisory Committee, and also was recently appointed to serve on the Maryland Commission of LGBTQIA+ Affairs. She is also the Director of Voting and Elections with Advocates for Trans Equality and President of the Transgender American Veterans Association. Caballero is running Montgomery County Council at-large.

Featured image: photo of Josie Caballero.

The post Trans Leaders Support Community Amidst Political Chaos appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

In the last week of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, host Dana Pellebon speaks with Virginia Gittens Escudero, the Executive Director of UNIDOS. She shares the history of her anti-violence work and the role that UNIDOS plays in breaking barriers for Latinx survivors of domestic violence in Dane County through direct services and community education. 

They talk about the legal programs that are available to survivors in Dane County, like the support groups at UNIDOS and legal advocates at DAIS who support survivors navigate legal systems. UNIDOS serves the needs of the Latinx community through culturally specific approaches to SA and DV. They provide space for survivors to share their experiences in their language of choice and share information about topics like mandatory arrest, restraining orders and Visa eligibility on La Movida radio. 

They also talk about the Victims of Crime Act, flaws in the immigration system, human and labor trafficking, and misunderstandings about domestic violence. 

If you need help, you’re not alone. You can call UNIDOS La Red at 1-800 510-9195, reach out to DAIS by text at (608) 420-4638, or call Freedom, Inc at (608) 716-7324.

Virginia Gittens Escudero is the Executive Director at UNIDOS, a non-profit organization in Madison that provides advocacy, support, referral, and information to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking who identify as Latinx. Virginia Gittens has dedicated over a decade to serving survivors of domestic abuse and empowering individuals to rebuild their lives with dignity and hope. Through her leadership and community work, she has helped organizations strengthen their victim-centered, trauma-informed, and culturally responsive approaches. 

Before joining UNIDOS, Virginia worked for approximately seven years at the Legal Advocacy Program at Domestic Abuse Intervention Services, where she provided legal advocacy, support, and court accompaniment to victims of domestic violence in Dane County. During her time at DAIS, she worked on initiatives that advocated for effective responses to victims of domestic violence in Dane County, including the DAIS Court Watch Program, the Restraining Order Clinic, and the Dane County Courthouse. Virginia is a member of the Wisconsin Governor’s Council on Domestic Violence.

Featured image of Virginia Escudero and Dana Pellebon courtesy of Sara Gabler/WORT.

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On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes speaks with Nicole Foy, a reporter with ProPublica, about her recent reporting on ICE sweeps and the growing number of US citizens who are being detained by federal immigration agents. Her story on the abuses these citizens face while federal custody spurred Congressional democrats to announce a joint-investigation last week.

Foy found that more than 170 citizens (a likely undercount) have been detained by immigration agents, 50 of whom were detained because of questions about their citizenship. But the other 130 and more people were detained after protests on accusations of assaulting officers, impeding arrests, and other instances in which their citizenship was not in question. These folks were also detained violently, pulled from their cars, tased, and even shot. 

To obtain this count, Foy looked through news reports in English and Spanish, videos on social media, court reports, and she talked to people involved and other journalists. The scale of the issue shows that the abuses by federal agents are nationwide, not linked to a handful of protests. Her investigation also counters the idea put forward by Justice Brett Kavanaugh that if you’re a citizen, interaction with immigration agents is easy and straightforward.

They also discuss how these ICE raids are causing people to feel terrorized in their own neighborhoods. The lack of transparency and accountability are hallmarks of a secret police force, say other ProPublica reporters. The Trump administration has not been forthcoming when approached for information, which makes citizens filming altercations with federal immigration agents even more important for journalists, says Foy.

Nicole Foy is ProPublica’s Ancil Payne Fellow, reporting on immigration and labor. Before joining ProPublica, she was an enterprise and investigative reporter across the West, focusing on immigrants, Latino communities, farmworkers and inequality. She previously worked for CalMatters, the Austin American-Statesman, the Idaho Statesman, the Idaho Press and the Orange County Register.

Featured image of an ICE agent via Picryl.

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For the last 20 years, Rob Hopkins has organized community-led, bottom-up solutions to the climate crisis, from creating community energy companies to food systems. He joins host Esty Dinur to talk about his latest book, How to Fall in Love with the Future: A Time Traveller’s Guide to Changing the World, that draws on his career of community-based work and asks, what would our activism look like if we had a longing for the future?

Hopkins says that there’s so much to fight for and to demand that our governments do to serve their people. But we need counternarratives to the dominating stories of climate collapse and extinction that put forward the idea that in the future, we’ve won. Hopkins takes his cue from artists and activists like Black Quantum Futurism and adrienne marie brown.

Cultivating imagination and a longing for the future requires new skills in activists’ toolbox. And Hopkins recommends looking to poets like Robert Desnos, street artists, songwriters, and scriptwriters for inspiration who can help us heal from the collective assault on our imaginations. Imagination, for Hopkins, is not a luxury, but a necessity in our darkest moments. 

You can sign up for Hopkins’ newsletter and stream his album, Field recordings from the Future. 

Rob Hopkins is the co-founder of Transition Network and Transition Town Totnes. He is the author of several books, including The Transition Handbook, From What Is to What If, and How to Fall in Love with the Future. An Ashoka Fellow, Hopkins has spoken at TED Global and several TEDx events, and he appeared in the French film phenomenon Demain. He holds a PhD from the University of Plymouth, as well as 2 honoris causas. Hopkins is a director of Totnes Community Development Society, and he runs ‘Imagination Catalyst’ trainings for a wide range of organizations, including Balenciaga and Patagonia. He hosted the podcast From What If to What Next. In November 2022, he was made an Honorary Citizen of Liège, Belgium, by the mayor of the city.

Featured image: cover of How to Fall in Love with the Future: A Time Traveller’s Guide to Changing the World by Rob Hopkins. 

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On today’s show, host Allen Ruff speaks with friend of the program, Mouin Rabbani, about the tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and where it might lead. According to the Government Media Office in Gaza, Israeli forces have violated the terms of the ceasefire at least 80 times, killing dozens of Palestinians since the ceasefire was announced on October 10.

Rabbani describes the first stage of the ceasefire, which includes the exchange of captives, surge of humanitarian aid, partial withdrawal of Israel forces from the Gaza Strip, and the cessation of hostilities. He says that Israel has violated all these terms and the exchange has been partial. Hamas has released all remaining living Israeli hostages and has begun returning the bodies of deceased hostages. Israel says that it will not proceed to stage two of the ceasefire until Hamas releases all of the bodies, but refuses to allow access to the heavy equipment necessary to unearth the bodies from the rubble in Gaza. The US is pushing for advancing to the second stage, which would include discussions of governance. Rabbani says that nowhere in the agreements is accountability addressed.

They also discuss Israel’s promotion of inter-Palestinian conflict, the reason the ceasefire was organized  in response to Israel’s bombing of Qatar, Tony Blair’s role in the ceasefire, and how the genocide in Gaza is leading to increased violence in the West Bank. Rabbani says that decades of dehumanization of Palestinians means that they aren’t depicted as hostages or victims of genocide.

Mouin Rabbani is an expert on Palestinian affairs, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the contemporary Middle East. He’s currently a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies. Rabbani is co-editor of the e-magazine Jadaliyya and a Contributing Editor to the Middle East Report. He’s written widely and provided expert analysis to a variety of international and US national press, including Al-Jazeera, The Nation, and Democracy Now!.

Featured image of a 2024 Stop the Genocide protest in Helsinki, Finland via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

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The term “equity” is used a lot in discussions about education; but despite the initiatives that aim to improve educational disparities, there aren’t a lot of equitable solutions produced, say today’s two guests, Decoteau J. Irby and Ann M. Ishimaru editors of Doing the Work of Equity Leadership for Justice and Systems Change. Their new book champions the vital work equity in P-12 education and those folks who are leading the way.

Amidst generalized attacks on public education and direct attacks on DEI by the federal government, making a case for equity seems more complicated than ever. Dr. Ishimaru says that it remains important to correct the ways that equity initiatives can do better to address where disparities are actually coming from. 

Dr. Irby discusses how to create systems change in a field that is dominated by white instructors who carry resistance to change. The authors in the collection document strong resistance to change by white instructors but say that doing the work of equity needs to move past trying to convince white teachers to love Black or LGBTQ children. Instead, educators can prioritize expanding access to advanced placement tests and making sure that all students have the chance to take the SAT, for example.

They also discuss the struggles they faced in their research, like not getting approval to speak with educators in certain districts in the Bible Belt, and how the idea that integration is synonymous with equity in education remains a pernicious assumption. Dr. Ishimaru says that we don’t have to think about equity in education as a zero-sum game, we can discuss student identity and academic achievement in tandem.

Dr. Ann M. Ishimaru is an award-winning scholar, writer, educator and the Killinger Endowed Chair and Professor of Educational Foundations, Leadership and Policy at the University of Washington College of Education. Through her work, she cultivates the leadership and solidarities of educators, organizational leaders and racially minoritized youth, families and communities to realize more transformative futures. In addition to many peer-reviewed articles in top-tier educational research journals, she is also the author of Just Schools: Building Equitable Collaborations with Families and Communities (Teachers College Press, 2020)

Decoteau J. Irby is a father, author, artist, and educator who works each and every day to advance education equity and justice for Black and Brown children and youth in community spaces, schools and districts, and higher education. His core philosophy is that when you improve learning conditions and opportunities through providing abundant resources and affirming support, children and young people’s aspirations, efforts, and high level academic performance will follow. A professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, he teaches in the College of Education’s top-ranked Urban Education Leadership program, co-directs the UIC Center for Urban Education Leadership, and leads the Brothers Teaching Initiative. He organizes Bronzeville’s Juneteenth Youth Baseball and Softball Tournament, tends community gardens, and advocates for vibrant public spaces on Chicago’s South Side. A self-taught guitarist, songwriter, and occasional performer, he has released three music projects under the name Decoteau Black, exploring Black love, struggle, and liberation.

Featured image of Doing the Work of Equity Leadership for Justice and Systems Change edited by Decoteau J. Irby and Ann M. Ishimaru.

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For folks with histories of trauma, mainstream parenting advice may not feel relevant. On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon speaks with Dr. Robyn Koslowitz about her new book, Post-Traumatic Parenting: Break the Cycle, Become the Parent You Always Wanted to Be. They talk about how the experience of parenting can be an opportunity to break cycles of trauma, heal, and identify your core values for yourself and your kids. 

Dr. K came to her research from personal experience; as a survivor of childhood trauma, she didn’t want to let the things that damaged her in turn damage her children. But before 9/11 and TikTok, parenting advice didn’t say anything about dealing with a parent’s trauma. Even since, much of the normative parenting advice out there isn’t relevant for people who didn’t have a normative childhood. She wanted not only to understand what was happening to herself when she had flashbacks, for example, but how to communicate with her children about what was happening. 

As Dr. K developed her clinical practice, she wanted to share her experiences with other parents and take away the shame that comes from being a post-traumatic parent. She says that parenting is a chance for people to address their traumas and learn about their kids and themselves. In her book, she lays out a typology of different kinds of post-traumatic parents, from the perfectionist post-traumatic parent, to the disengaged parent, and even those parents who are living in survival mode. She says that breaking these modes can help people build stronger relationships with their kids. 

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz is a clinical child and family psychologist, and author of Post-Traumatic Parenting: Break the Cycle, Become the Parent You Always Wanted to Be. A sought-after speaker, consultant, and media contributor, Dr. Koslowitz has appeared on Fox, CNN, NPR, and more. Her Post-Traumatic Parenting podcast and Targeted Parenting blog on Psychology Today have reached wide audiences, with over 1 million reads. She is a licensed clinical psychologist, practicing in New Jersey, where she and her associates treat children, adolescents and families using a trauma informed approach. Dr. Koslowitz is a leading expert on cycle-breaking parenting, and is a post-traumatic parent herself.

Featured image: the cover of Dr. Robyn Koslowitz’s book, Post-Traumatic Parenting: Break the Cycle, Become the Parent You Always Wanted to Be. 

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Across the country, there are more than 5 million paid caregivers and more than 50 million unpaid folks who care for their family members and friends. Yet the US faces a crisis in caregiving that includes a shortage of paid workers to meet the growing need and unpaid caregivers are feeling burned out. A recent PBS documentary, screened at UW-Madison, explores the challenges and joys of this work.

To talk about caregiving, aging, and community support, host Douglas Haynes is joined by four guests, Dr. Sue Wenker and Dr. Jennifer Timm from the UW Madison Center of Interprofessional Practice and Education and Jennifer Fischer and Kayla Olson from the Aging and Disability Resource Center of Dane County.

They talk about the rapidly aging US population and the time, resources, and skills needed to care for them. Care work occurs across the life spectrum, and now the “sandwich generation” is feeling the pressure of caring for young children and their aging parents. The guests recommend caregivers find respite whether they are are paid or unpaid and whether they identify as caregivers or not. They discuss the National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers and share resources for families, like ADRC’s list of questions to ask someone you’re looking to hire to be a caregiver and the Healthy Aging Initiative. 

Jennifer Fischer is the manager of the Aging and Disability Resource Center.

Kayla Olson is a Dementia Care Specialist at the Dane County Aging and Disability Resource Center. 

Dr. Jennifer Timm is the director of the Center for Interpersonal Practice and Education.

Dr. Sue Wenker is a researcher and co-coordinator of the Healthy Aging Initiative.

Featured image of a person standing behind a wheelchair via rawpixel.

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Today, Host Esty Dinur speaks with cultural anthropologist and professor Greta Uehling about her book Decolonizing Ukraine: the Indigenous People of Crimea and Pathways to Freedom.

Tatars, the indigenous people of Crimea, made up 90% of the population of Crimea. Their language was the primary language spoken there until 1783, when they were subject to atrocities similar to the indigenous peoples of America; being removed from their land, dissolving their culture, and broken agreements. During World War II, the Third Reich took control of Crimea. When Soviets gained control again in 1944, they executed a previously conceived plan to round up all the tatars and deport them to Siberia and Central Asia. This lasted until 1991 when the Soviet Union disintegrated and the tatars rejoined Ukraine until the Russian occupation in 2014. 

Crimea’s peninsula sticks out to the black sea, which is more like an island than a peninsula; its isthmus is only a few kilometers wide, making it an isolated area. Crimea was a desirable location for Russia due to its warm ports – in contrast to Russia’s ports, which would often freeze in the Winter –  and it was a strategic location due to its proximity to Turkey, just 144 miles away on the Black sea. In 2019, the bridge to Russia to the east was subjected to multiple attacks, compromising its integrity.

Uehling mentions that modern warfare is hybrid. In addition to conventional military tactics like missiles and tanks, the people of Crimea now face misinformation, election interference and cyber attacks. A final component of warfare is psychological manipulation, which disrupts previously harmonious relationships, creates tension in families, difficulties in romantic relationships, and friendships. This is especially the case in children receiving a Russian “patriotic education,” creating conflicts in families, which Russians are doing to Ukrainian children today. The war is destroying the physical infrastructure in Ukraine in addition to the emotional infrastructure, and the latter is much harder to rebuild.

Recording artist of Crimean Tatar ancestry Jamala won the Eurovision Song contest in 2016 for her song 1944, which mourned Stalin’s deportation of her people. Ukrainians resonated with this feeling of being silenced in history and their struggle under the Soviet Union. Uehling says that The Crimean people redefined their national identity, building on cultural characteristics and incorporating the shared values of democracy, anti-corruption, and transparency. The song helped them come together in solidarity.and exemplifies courage in the face of fear. 

Greta Uehling is a cultural anthropologist who works at the intersection of Indigenous and Eastern European Studies. She is a Teaching Professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she teaches for the Program in International and Comparative Studies and is Associate Faculty of the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies. Uehling is the author of three books: Beyond Memory: The Deportation and Return of the Crimean Tatars (Palgrave 2004), Everyday War: The Conflict over Donbas, Ukraine (Cornell University Press 2023), and Decolonizing Ukraine: The Indigenous People of Crimea and Pathways to Freedom (Rowman & Littlefield 2025). Throughout her career, Uehling has served as a consultant to organizations working in the fields of international migration, human rights, and human trafficking, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

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Journalist Anna Lekas Miller joins Allen Ruff to talk about her recent article in the Progressive “Iced Out” which examines the effects of the new ICE immigration policies, along with her book Love Across Borders, which explores the human stories and the consequences of couples with mixed citizenships falling in love.

Miller criticizes the current ICE raids occurring under the Trump administration, specifically the alliteration in the names of the detainment centers, like Alligator Alcatraz in Florida, Speedway Slammer, located near Indianapolis, and Cornhusker Clink in Nebraska. The nicknames seem to be attractive to American citizens, and may be part of the mental disconnect that allows people to participate in reporting undocumented immigrants.

Miller highlights the myth that you can easily get married to receive a green card and become an American citizen; in some cases, such as if a person was previously deported, they are ineligible to receive citizenship. She says that immigration laws affect the daily lives of many American families, those with immigrant parents, spouses, or children who fear their family will not be able to come home at the end of the day. There is additional anxiety about suddenly becoming a single parent household, and the economic impact on individual families. Miller’s work centers around humanizing the immigration debate, which boils down to people wanting the ordinary American dream and trying to keep families together.

Anna Lekas Miller is a writer and journalist who covers stories of the ways that conflict and migration shape the lives of people around the world. She is the author of the book Love Across Borders, which tells the stories of couples and families around the world who have stood up to unjust immigration policies to be together and won the 2024 Arab American Book Award. She is currently working on her first novel and you can keep up with her writing on her Substack, which is also called Love Across Borders.

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While you can still get an abortion in Wisconsin, there are just two clinics left in the state, both located in Milwaukee. Susan Rinkunas and Garnet Henderson are co-founders of the independent reproductive rights and justice publication, Autonomy News. They join Ali Mudrow today in a wide-ranging conversation about the changing landscape of abortion rights across the world, including personhood, socioeconomic factors, and access to healthcare.

The guests discuss a 2017 decision under Scott Walker, when Wisconsin did not accept the full expansion of Medicaid, and how Wisconsin and Arkansas are the only two states that have not extended medicaid for the first year post-partum.

The conversation also examines the impacts of race and age on the decision to receive an abortion. Black women in Wisconsin are three times more likely to die during childbirth and experience preterm births. Additionally, they say abortion is a children’s issue that should be paired with age appropriate sex education in school including appropriate contact, boundaries, and consent, starting younger than people think.

Susan Rinkunas is an independent journalist covering abortion, reproductive health, and politics. She is a co-founder of Autonomy News, a contributing writer at Jezebel, and a contributing editor at The New Republic. Her reporting has appeared in the Guardian, Slate, The Nation, Mother Jones, and more.

Garnet Henderson is an award-winning investigative reporter specializing in abortion access, anti-rights disinformation, and other intersections of health, policy, and culture. She is the co-founder of Autonomy News, the first worker-owned reproductive justice news outlet in the U.S. Her work has been published in The Nation, ELLE, Cosmopolitan, Scientific American, Marie Claire, Guardian US, WIRED, and more. She is also the creator of ACCESS: A Podcast About Abortion, and a four-time grantee and fellow of the International Women’s Media Foundation.

Photo by Chicago Business through Creative Commons

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To mark Domestic Violence Awareness Month, Host Dana Pellebon spoke with novelist Helen Winslow Black about her novel ‘Seven Blackbirds.’ Black discusses how each person’s experience of domestic violence is unique, and how factors like community support, independent funds, and anonymous hotlines can make a huge difference in outcomes. The show also touches on how the legal system can act as an extension of abuse, giving perpetrators an opportunity to re-insert themselves in survivor’s lives and usually fail to provide actual justice.

Helen Winslow Black is novelist based out of Illinois. Her debut novel ‘Seven Blackbirds’ is available through independent booksellers, and has a sequel ‘Songs My Mother Taught Me.’ Her books focus on the familial relationships between women, and the path toward healing.

Image courtesy of Helen Winslow Black

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Today we were joined by two guests, Dexter Patterson and Scott Spoolman who discussed the books they will present at the Wisconsin Book Festival. In the first half of the show, Bird expert and science communicator Dexter Patterson discussed his new field guide Birds of the Great Lakes. The field guide is a small companion book which features just over 150 birds found in Wisconsin throughout the year.

Patterson is known as the Wisco Birder on social media where he shares his passion for birds and the natural world with people all over the state and beyond. Patterson emphasized that the birding community should be just as diverse as the birds they find. He hopes that sharing his bird joy with others will make birding more accessible to everyone, and just paying attention to the natural world will “open windows to wonder” for more people. Dexter will be presenting his book at the Madison Central Library on Oct 26 at 10:30am.

Scott Spoolman will be presenting his book Wisconsin State Parks: Extraordinary Stories of Geology and Natural History at the Wisconsin Historical Society on October 25th, celebrating the 125th anniversary of the Wisconsin State Park system at the Wisconsin Book Festival. Wisconsin State Parks combines historical and geographical information with concrete goals for hiking for state park enthusiasts. The book introduces each of its over 120 state parks with a story of its formation and ends with practical trail guides at each location.

On today’s show, Spoolman detailed the geological formation of Wisconsin, the rifts, catastrophic glacial flooding along with the basalt carving and erosion that formed the canyons, like the St Croix River Valley. He also highlighted Wisconsin’s driftless area (which was once an ocean) formed by the erosion of wind and flowing water. The driftless area erosion can be seen at Governor Dodge state park, the western half of Devils Lake and Tower Hill State Park among others.

Dexter Patterson: Known on social media as the Wisco Birder, Dexter Patterson is dedicated to making birdwatching welcoming for all. His energetic “You Ready? Let’s Go!” videos, featuring him finding various bird species, have amassed millions of views and captivated Instagram followers. As an educator, science communicator, and co-founder of the BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin, Dexter aims to prove that birding is for everyone, promoting inclusivity and connecting people with the beauty of nature. 

Scott Spoolman is a science writer who has focused on the environmental sciences, especially those stories of natural science and the environment related to Wisconsin and surrounding states. He grew up in northern Wisconsin and earned a master’s degree in journalism with an emphasis on science reporting. He has coauthored several editions of a series of environmental science textbooks. His recently published books are Wisconsin Waters: the Ancient History of Lakes, Rivers, and Waterfalls, the award-winning Wisconsin State Parks: Extraordinary Stories of Geology and Natural History, both published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, and Wisconsin Rocks: A Guide to Geologic Sites in the Badger State, published by Mountain Press Publishing Co.

Photo by Joshua Mayer

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On the show today, long time-host Esty Dinur celebrates 30 years on A Public Affair. We flip the script and instead of Esty sitting in the host chair, she sits in the guest’s seat to be interviewed about her time on the air by Norman Stockwell. She says her driving motivation has always been to focus on issues that aren’t covered by mainstream media and to cover issues from the perspective of the folks most impacted. 

In 1984, Dinur arrived in Madison with a love of short-wave radio having listened to Radio Moscow, Radio Havana Cuba, FMLN, the BBC as well as Australian and German stations. She would transcribe these news shows and publish them in a newsletter that she distributed in Madison. And Esty got her start at WORT by calling in to share what she heard on other radio programs with WORT listeners. She had her first feature during the Gulf War, and WORT would tape her shows and send them through the mail to Radio for Peace International in San Jose, Costa Rica.

In 1995, Esty hosted her first show on A Public Affair, a show with Joel Beinin on the assassination of P.M. Rabin. In the years since she’s spoken with such esteemed guests as Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness, Earth First! and IWW activist Judi Bari on her bombing and trial, novelist Richard Powers, Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News, Vojislav Stojkovic on the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War, Noam Chomsky, and so many more!

You can listen to Esty’s shows on our website and listen to a roundup of her first 25 years at the station here. 

Featured image of Esty Dinur and Norm Stockwell via Sara Gabler/WORT.

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On today’s show, host Allen Ruff is joined by award winning historian, Greg Grandin to talk about his new book, America, América: A New History of the New World. Grandin’s book tells the story of the Americas plural, and how the creation of concepts like humanity, sovereignty, abolition, and emancipation grew out of European conquest of the Western Hemisphere. 

The book’s thesis is represented in its two word title, America, América. Grandin focuses on the period between Spanish conquest and the Monroe Doctrine and how the US came to understand itself as a nation in relation to the rest of the Western Hemisphere, not just to Europe. Grandin and Ruff discuss the ways that different colonial powers rationalized colonization and how this period gave rise to what Grandin calls the “liberal international order.” 

Grandin describes how he wrote his new book in the time between the two Trump presidencies and how Trump threatens the liberal international order. He says that the problems that the US faces can’t be solved by asserting power over Latin America.

Note: This pledge drive interview was edited to remove parts of the show dedicated to station fundraising. We thank our listeners for their generous support.

Greg Grandin is the author of The End of the Myth, which won the Pulitzer Prize; The Empire of Necessity, which won both the Bancroft and Beveridge prizes in American history; Fordlandia, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and a number of other widely acclaimed books. He is the Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History at Yale University.

Featured image of the cover of Greg Grandin’s book, America, América: A New History of the New World  via Penguin Press.

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We’re in week two of the government shutdown and the first week of Planned Parenthood not providing abortion care in Wisconsin, and WORT is no longer broadcasting the BBC. To make sense of the dramatic changes in our nation and in our backyard, host Ali Muldrow is joined by friend of the show, Lisa Graves. They discuss the role that Project 2025 is playing in Trump’s second presidency and how it’s no surprise that the Trump administration has been implementing Project 2025 from day one. 

Graves says that the Trump administration is more than halfway through implementing Project 2025. That includes making good on his campaign promise of “mass deportations” which we’re seeing play out in Chicago this week. These are violent times, and Project 2025 fuels the violence with its perspective on incarceration, detention, deportation, and changes to “consent decrees.”

They also talk about how the destruction of the federal workforce and attacks on the free press are impacting regular people. Nevertheless, Graves says she is heartened by the ways folks are rejecting Trump’s authoritarianism, from the dance parties in Portland, governors who push back, and the ongoing No Kings protests.

Note: This pledge drive interview was edited to remove parts of the show dedicated to station fundraising. We thank our listeners for their generous support.

Lisa Graves is the executive director of True North Research, a national investigative watchdog group. She is also the board president of the Center for Media and Democracy.

Featured image of the cover of Project 2025 via Wikipedia.

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On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon speaks with Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the largest free thought organization in the nation. Gaylor and her mother got involved in the fight for women’s rights and abortion rights in the 60s and quickly saw that the organized response to abortion was from religious groups. She says that she realized that religion should not be allowed to influence laws about women or anything else. 

Gaylor’s organization works to keep religion out of the government. They offer free advice and write complaint letters. Their team of legal staff has pursued over 100 lawsuits and are currently taking on laws that force schools to display the 10 Commandments in Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. She says it’s been a good year, legally, because they’ve been winning these lawsuits. 

When Gaylor started out, she and her mother were demonized on national television. But there’s a growing number of Americans who do not identify as religious, leading Gaylor to say that it’s a good time to be non-religious. 

They also discuss the history of white Christian nationalism in the US, the psychological harm of rapture theology for young people, the intensification of Christian nationalism within the military, and how to get involved in free thought organizations. Gaylor says she sees too many people putting dogma over humanity. 

Note: This pledge drive interview was edited to remove parts of the show dedicated to station fundraising. We thank our listeners for their generous support.

Annie Laurie Gaylor is the Co-President and the Co-Founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Served as the editor of Free Thought Today, and author of multiple books on women and religion.

Featured image of a billboard that says “Imagine No Religion” by the Freedom From Religion Foundation via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

The post There’s No True Democracy Without Separation of State and Church appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Host Douglas Haynes regularly features ecology and environment stories on this program, stories that you may not hear often in other media. Today we continue that theme, highlighting grassroots climate leaders and the work of independent media organizations like Grist. Our guests are Jess Stahl, the Project Director of the Grist 50 and Deneine Christa Powell, one of the leaders featured on the list working toward community-based climate solutions. 

Grist is a nonprofit independent media company covering the climate. Their work focuses on climate impacts and solutions. The Grist 50 is a reader-nominated list of leaders who are making change in their communities across the US.

Powell says that as words like equity, sustainability, and climate are under attack from the federal government, we have to change how we approach advocating for climate solutions. She likes to remind people what life would look like without sustainability. Our communities would lose not only recycling and composting, but local food systems and green infrastructure. She says that sustainability isn’t a luxury, it’s the quiet infrastructure that makes life possible, sustainable, and equitable. 

They discuss the importance of independent media, the need to keep showing up for city council meetings and talking to your sustainability officers, and how messaging about clean air and clean water resonates with folks in urban and rural areas. 

Note: This pledge drive interview was edited to remove parts of the show dedicated to station fundraising. We thank our listeners for their generous support.

Deneine Christa Powell is the CEO of the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, or USDN — a community of professionals working on sustainability at the municipal level across the U.S. and Canada. She also served as the leader of the grassroots nonprofit, Groundwork Milwaukee.

Jessica Stahl is the Executive Editor of Strategic Initiatives at Grist. She is also the Project Director of the Grist 50. 

Featured image of a bioswale for stormwater management in Milwaukee via Aaron Volkening on Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

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On this strange Wednesday, the first day of the federal government shutdown, host Ali Muldrow looks to poetry and two local poets for respite and guidance. We’re joined by Madison poet laureate Steven Espada Dawson and Madison youth poet laureate Octavia Ikard. They talk about the role of poetry in self-expression and healing but also in response to political life.

Dawson says he’s still figuring out what it means to be a poet laureate, but he takes seriously the work of using writing to put reality into perspective. He reads the sonnet, “A River Is A Body Running,” from his collection, Late to the Search Party, a book about his mother and his brother who grappled with addiction. Dawson says that poetry helps him reach into the past and think about it differently. Writing about family can be challenging, but Dawson says that “the shadow of addiction is larger than the individual.”

Ikard describes what it’s like to be a writer at a time in life when you’re still figuring out who you are. They say that it takes honesty to investigate parts of yourself. They take inspiration from their elders, the Black women in the rural South who didn’t have access to writing poetry as such, but who were poets in their own lives.

They also talk about privilege and politicized identities, how art responds to and drives political life, the idea of selfishness and self-expression, how formal poetry can bring order to chaos.

Steven Espada Dawson is the author of Late to the Search Party (Scribner, 2025). From East Los Angeles and the son of a Mexican immigrant, he has received fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Foundation, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. His poems appear in many journals and anthologies. He has taught creative writing at universities, libraries, and prisons across the country and lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where he serves as poet laureate.

Octavia Ikard is a creative writing major and First Wave scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They are also the city’s current youth poet laureate. They got their start in spoken word clubs, and they write about moving far away from family and their experience as a young Black poet.

Featured image: photo of Steven Espada Dawson, Octavia Ikard, and Ali Muldrow courtesy of Sara Gabler/WORT.

The post Local Poet Laureates Save Our Wednesday appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

The new Bartillion Men’s Shelter in Madison will include an art installation created by mosaic artist, Laurel True. She joins host Dana Pellebon to discuss the process of designing this installation and her career of community-based projects and creative placemaking.

True says that she enjoys working on projects that bring art to populations that don’t typically have access to public art, like in shelters. She took feedback from community members, staff, and over 40 men’s shelter clients to make sure the installation would reflect the feelings they want the artwork to evoke and what messages they want it to send. They expressed a desire for art that reflects nature, hope, care, and possibility. One man asked for the installation to “make me fell like I can make it.”

True tells Pellebon about her work as an educator through the Institute of Mosaic Art in Oakland, California and the Global Mosaic Project. True taught her first mosaic class at the Wil-Mar Neighborhood Center in Madison and installed some of her earliest pieces at cafes along Willy Street.

True also describes how art fits into difficult spaces, drawing on her community work in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. There, she and her students transformed Jacmel into a city of mosaics. Across her projects, True explores creative expression and wellbeing, finding that mosaics can have soothing and therapeutic effects. 

Laurel True is a multi-disciplinary artist, educator and arts advocate. She has been exploring the intersection of creative expression and well-being for over thirty years. Her company, True Mosaics Studio, specializes in creative placemaking, public art and architectural mosaics. Through her professional studio and teaching practice, True has created hundreds of murals and sculptural forms in public spaces. Her work can be found in parks, hospitals, social centers, transit systems, and in commercial and residential spaces the US, Haiti, Latin America, Africa, and Europe

Featured image of one of Laurel True’s mosaics, courtesy of the artist.

The post Creative Placemaking Through Mosaics at the New Men’s Shelter appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Last week in New York City, tens of thousands of people gathered for Climate Week, which was observed here in Wisconsin with a march at the state capitol. Despite the Trump administration’s anti-science and pro fossil fuel agenda, many people remain committed to the fight against ecological disaster. On today’s show, climate scientist Kate Marvel takes up this fight, saying that the knowledge that climate change isn’t a mystery helps her stay grounded and motivated so she can focus on solutions.

Marvel tells host Douglas Haynes about her new book, Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet. She reminds listeners that while humans are unpredictable, it is not human nature to be selfish. Instead, she looks to times when people have come together to fight ecological problems, like the killing of whales, the Clean Air Act, and the ozone hole. 

Marvel breaks down how climate models work to study Earth systems and theorize what might happen to the planet if humans took different actions. She describes climate models as toy planets that live on computers. A key insight of Marvel’s book is that emotions are key to who we think about and understand climate change. She says there’s no conflict between getting the facts right and having feelings about them, feelings like awe and wonder, fear and anxiety, as well as hope and love.

Kate Marvel is a climate scientist and one of the premier science communicators working today. A former cosmologist, Marvel received a PhD in theoretical physics from Cambridge University. She led the “Climate Trends” chapter in the U.S. Fifth National Climate Assessment, has given a TED Talk, appeared on Meet the Press and The Ezra Klein Show, and testified before the U.S. Congress. She has written for Scientific American, Nautilus magazine, and the On Being Project. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Featured image of Kate Marvel’s new book, Human Nature, published by Harper Collins.

The post Facts and Feelings are Both Needed to Fight Climate Change appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

A proposed bill getting bipartisan support in Wisconsin would require state agencies to follow the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism. Our guest today, Raz Segal, tells host Esty Dinur that this definition is not only vague but actually produces antisemitism contrary to its stated goal.

The IHRA working definition of antisemitism conflates criticism of Israel and its policies with antisemitism. It imagines there is one way to be a Jew and so it can be used to targeting anti-Zionist Jews or Jews who criticize Israel. The definition offers 11 examples of antisemitism, the majority of which focus on Israel and not on Jews. Segal says that the goal of the definition is to shield Israel from criticism.

They also discuss why the US government would be interested in regulating free speech about a foreign country. Segal says that if we came to terms with the atrocities that Israel is waging against Palestinians, we would have to face settler colonialism. Then, we’d have to face that settler colonialism is a reality in the US as well, says Segal. He argues that we don’t need the IHRA definition because there are already protections against discrimination and singling out antisemitism contributes to Israel and Holocaust exceptionalism. You can read more about the how the IHRA working definition threatens free speech here.

Dr. Raz Segal is Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Endowed Professor in the Study of Modern Genocide at Stockton University, where he also serves as the director of the Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies and founding coordinator of the Refugee Studies Initiative.

Featured image of a Jews for Peace rally in LA via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0).

The post A New Definition of Antisemitism Will Be Used Against Jews Too appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Allen Ruff is joined by friend of the program, Henry Giroux, who reflects on the state of US politics in the aftermath of the murder of Charlie Kirk. Earlier this month, Giroux wrote an article arguing that Kirk’s assassination is “a symptom of a national political culture in crisis.” This is a crisis of democracy, culture, politics, and social responsibility. 

Giroux says that Kirk’s murder is a terrible thing, and it is symptomatic of fascism. As the president and other elected officials mourn his death and even celebrate it, they’re also at work institutionalizing violence at every level of society.

Giroux and Ruff also discuss the role of corporate and legacy media in stoking the flames of political violence at a moment that Giroux calls “the death rattle of democracy.” It’s particularly alarming that the Trump administration is working to erase the history of Black resistance and the history of slavery. This form of scholasticide is ushering in a resurgence of the Confederacy.

Giroux concludes by reminding listeners that hope is a way to imagine a democracy that actually works for everyone.

Henry Giroux is an internationally renowned writer and cultural critic who has authored or co-authored over 65 books. He is McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest and the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy.

Featured image: illustration of Henry Giroux by Jared Rodriguez / Truthout via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

The post We’re Living on the Raw Edge of Violence appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Dana Pellebon discusses the history of maroonage in the Black diaspora with Amari Johnson, author of the new book, Under a Black Star: The Maroon Impulse in New Orleans. 

Maroons were enslaved Africans in the Americas who escaped the plantation system to make their own way. Johnson was inspired by the maroon communities of Jamaica and Brazil but also wanted to understand what happened to the “maroon impulse” after chattel slavery ended. He found contemporary resonances in the Algiers parish of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. 

Johnson moved to New Orleans in 2009, just 5 years after Katrina destroyed 118 of the city’s 126 public schools. Those public schools were notoriously replaced by charter schools. In response, he and a few colleagues founded the Black Star Cafe, which economically supported a homeschool collective in Algiers. At the cafe, folks debated ideas, held fairs, and educated children in culturally sensitive ways. Algiers is a community with a long history of maroonage. There, on the fringes of the plantation system, the maroons built a community for their families over miles of often watery terrain. 

Amari Johnson is an independent scholar, musician, and filmmaker based in Philadelphia.

Featured image of the cover of Under a Black Star.

The post The Maroon Tradition Endures After Katrina appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

The beloved Madison autumn exhibit GLEAM is an annual evening art and light exhibit at Olbrich Gardens in September and October. This year, there are 16 artists with exhibits scattered throughout the gardens, offering the community an opportunity to walk through the gardens after the sun goes down. The exhibit runs Wednesdays through Saturdays 7:30-10:30 until October 25th. Today we are joined with two of the creators of GLEAM: Missy Jeanne, the Public Programs Manager at Olbrich Gardens, and Ben Smith, the Director of Operations at the University Center at UW-Whitewater.

The exhibit attracts community members all over Madison, highlighting nature, art, and the beauty of the gardens at night. GLEAM is an immersive experience which is designed to foster a sense of wonder and play. This year, the theme is Reflection: reflecting a language of love for the natural world. 

Jeanne and Smith noted that certain plants and trees at Olbrich Gardens which might not stand out during the day often pop out at night when everything else is dark. Gleam highlights plants, trees and nighttime pollinators that are often missed during the day. This gives people a chance to follow their curiosity and return another time to discover more about that plant. 

Attendance and interest in Botanical Gardens across the country has been at a steady increase since the pandemic. Attendance at GLEAM alone rose from 18,000 to 30,000 since 2020. The conversation stressed the importance of accessibility to these spaces, and how spending time in nature is becoming a higher priority for everyone. Jeanne credits this increased interest to people taking time to enjoy the little things during a time when everything else can feel like a big thing.

Missy Jeanne has served as the Public Programs Manager at Olbrich Botanical Gardens for the past 16 years. In this role, she designs and implements innovative programs and exhibits that connect visitors to the Gardens through visual and performing arts. Collaborating across departments and with community partners, Missy fosters creative engagement and inclusivity in public programming. She is a co-creator of GLEAM, Olbrich’s annual exhibit featuring large-scale light installations throughout the outdoor gardens and Bolz Conservatory.

Ben Smith is the Director of Operations at the University Center, UW-Whitewater, bringing 28 years of experience in audio, video, and lighting technology engineering and construction management. His transition to higher education operations reflects a passion for creating dynamic and engaging environments that support student life and campus events. A seasoned lighting designer and video projection artist, Ben has contributed to major productions including the 2010 Winter Olympic Ceremonies and NBC’s Tonight Show, as well as public art installations like Madison’s Olbrich Gardens Gleam exhibition.

Photo courtesy of Kate Paape.

The post GLEAM Art Exhibit Celebrates its 10th Anniversary at Olbrich Gardens appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, we’re joined by author and scholar Dr. Sagashus T. Levingston who talks about her new book, A Pot to Piss In. She tells host Ali Muldrow about economic shame and the power of homeownership for her “little disheveled band of humans.”

Dr. Levingston wrote her first book, Infamous Mothers, while in graduate school researching feminism, motherhood studies, and rhetoric. She wanted to write a dissertation on the teen moms, recovering women, single moms, and/or divorces, who are “infamous mothers,” but the source material didn’t exist. She had to create it and to create a space for Black women outside of respectability politics to see themselves as heroes.

She says a core principle of her work is that mothering isn’t martyrdom. Research shows that women are more dissatisfied as wives, partners, and mothers when they take traditional roles out of pressure or expectation versus women who choose their own roles. These women who reject convention are less likely to resent their children or partners and are more likely to raise children who know how to fulfill their dreams. 

They also talk about the chapter in the book called “The Orgasm Project” and how it became an exploration of pleasure, fulfillment, and sacrifice. And they pull the curtain back on what it means to shift your parenting when you transition from being a renter to a first-time home owner. Enjoy the call outs to Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Erykah Badu, James Baldwin, and more. 

Dr. Sagashus T. Levingston was Born in Chicago and raised in Bronzeville. She is a mother of six, a scholar, and the founder of Infamous Mothers, LLC. She is the author of several books including Infamous Mothers and A Pot to P*ss In as well as journal articles that have been featured in Forbes, Essence, BRAVA, Demeter Press, and more. She serves as Chair of the Board at End Abuse Wisconsin and sits on the Board of Directors at Doyenne.

Featured image of Dr. Sagashus Levingston from Infamous Mothers.

The post Mothering Doesn’t Equal Martyrdom appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

We simply do not have enough affordable housing in Madison and Dane County. This is a topic we cover regularly on A Public Affair. As both the city and the county prepare their upcoming budgets, the issue of how to address housing, especially for unhoused folks, is front and center. On today’s program, host Dana Pellebon speaks with Alder Davy Mayer and Supervisor Heidi Wegleitner. They talk about the different ways that the city and the county have supported and can support the Dairy Drive community, especially as the winter approaches.

The Dairy Drive community was set up by the City of Madison in response to the closure of temporary encampments that were sanctioned in places like Reindahl Park. The unhoused folks who lived in these temporary encampments were experiencing exacerbated health risks due to COVID. So the city opened Dairy Drive to house and provide on-site support. It has been seen as a successful bridge solution, says Wegleitner.

Now, the Dairy Drive campground is in jeopardy of closure as federal COVID funds run out and the city and country are unable to fill the funding gap. Mayer says that this program is important and meaningful enough to continue financially supporting, but elected officials differ on how to do that. There is a Madison Common Council meeting tonight, where the Council will take up a measure sponsored by Alder Mayer to fund the community.

Not investing in projects like Dairy Drive have financial costs, including the costs that come from criminalizing homelessness, says Wegleitner. Meanwhile, the unhoused population is growing, and the amount of beds proposed in the new men’s shelter won’t be able to meet the needs when it opens its doors. They also talk about tax credit housing, housing as a human right, and the process of getting into emergency and permanent housing. But the bigger issue remains, how do we get people into housing when there isn’t enough housing?

Alder Davy Mayer was elected to the Madison Common Council on April 1st, 2025. He comes to the Common Council with 15+ years of experience developing, managing, and coordinating high-value projects and websites in the technology, research, education, and financial sectors. He currently serves as the Web Operations Manager at the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center. Mayer graduated with a B.S. in Art and Graphic Design and an M.F.A. in Fine Arts.

Supervisor Heidi Wegleitner represents the near east side of Madison and works for Legal Action of Wisconsin. For the past ten years she has worked as a public interest attorney representing low income tenants in eviction cases and subsidized housing disputes. She has served on the Boards of Tenant Resource Center, the Public Interest Law Section of the State Bar of Wisconsin, the Madison chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, and the Emerson East Neighborhood Association.

Featured image of the Dairy Drive community courtesy of Madison Street Medicine.

The post The Future of Dairy Drive Could Be Decided Tonight appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

As the fall term kicks off, we’re ready to get a unique perspective on the value of a college education with the editor of the Washington Monthly which just released its 20th anniversary college ranking issue. Paul Glastris tells host Douglas Hayes that he and his team rank schools on what the schools do for the country and hope to change how families, policy makers, and higher education officials imagine the purpose of a college degree. 

Higher education excellence is not catering to the wealthy, but meeting the needs of the average student, says Glastris. Whereas the US News and World report uses a set of metrics based on school exclusivity, wealth, and prestige, the Washington Monthly ranks schools on upward mobility, research, and service. Glastris says that these qualities are what most Americans want out of a college education. 

They discuss the purpose of rankings, the highest rated school (Berea College in Kentucky), the media’s overreporting on elite universities, the erosion of free speech on college campuses, and the status of vocational education. Glastris says that the highest rated schools are in states like Texas, Florida, and California where the schools have a political commitment to keeping tuition low for in-state students of modest means and have highly centralized governance structures. These schools are good at keeping costs down but their centralized structures can be used opportunistically by politicians, like Ron DeSantis is doing in Florida.

Paul Glastris is the editor in chief of the Washington Monthly with extensive media experience as a commentator and author. He worked as a correspondent and editor at the US News and World Report before joining President Clinton’s staff as a special assistant and senior speechwriter. Paul also co-founded the President’s “DC Reads This Summer” program, which placed over 1,000 federal employees as volunteer reading tutors in Washington, DC public schools. 

Featured image of Berea College, the top school on the Washington Monthly’s 2025 ranking. Image via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0). 

The post A Successful College Should Not Look Like A Country Club appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

From the murder of Charlie Kirk to the fatal shooting at a Colorado high school this week, political violence is front and center in the news and today’s conversation. In this two-part show, host Esty Dinur discusses the state of the US with Leader Stacey Abrams and reflects on the life of the peacemaker U Thant with his grandson Thant Myint-U. 

Stacey Abrams says that “violence has become a tool of communication for too many” and in this “faltering democracy” we need to reject the use of violence toward political ends. Her recent work shines light on the rise of autocracy in the US, by naming the 10 steps that lead to authoritarianism. Those steps include the normalization of violence, the expansion of executive power, and attacks on the media. Abrams also shares her 10 Steps to Freedom and Power which you can learn more about on her website. 

Our second guest, Thant Myint-U grew up knowing that his grandfather, U Thant, served as the Secretary-General of the UN. In Myint-U’s new book, he uncovers his grandfather’s peacemaking legacy. When U Thant was almost 40, he made a major career change from being a small-town school teacher in Burma to becoming an ambassador and then the leader of the United Nations. 

As the world came out of an age of empire, young nations had hope that the world could be better and were full of faith in the UN, says Myint-U. But that is not the case today. He discusses how Congo was a litmus test for independence, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and what role the UN could take in the years to come, saying “ we can’t throw away the only global body of peace.”

Stacey Abrams is a New York Times bestselling author, business owner and political leader whose innovative approach has continued to break barriers and support transformational progress. A prolific author, she has written award-winning political thrillers, children’s books, romantic suspense novels, and non-fiction books. She previously served as Minority Leader in the Georgia House of Representatives, and she was the first Black woman to become the gubernatorial nominee for a major party in United States history. Abrams has launched multiple nonprofit organizations devoted to democracy protection, voting rights, tackling policy issues and building a more equitable future. She is also a serial entrepreneur and business advisor. In 2020, Abrams founded Sage Works Productions, Inc., a media company dedicated to leveraging the power of storytelling to craft creative solutions and engage. 

Thant Myint-U is an acclaimed historian, author, and former diplomat, educated at Harvard, Johns Hopkins SAIS, and Cambridge University, where he earned his PhD in History. A veteran of three UN peacekeeping missions in Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia, he also served in senior roles at the UN Secretariat in New York, including as Chief of the Policy Planning Unit in the Department of Political Affairs. He has been a visiting fellow at Harvard, Cambridge, and leading international institutes, and has advised the Myanmar government, the Myanmar Peace Center, and global organizations on peace processes, humanitarian issues, and development. He is the author of four books. 

Featured image: of “LIBERACIÓN A TRAVÉS DEL CONOCIMIENTO” (LIBERATION THROUGH KNOWLEDGE) by Aurelio Diaz Tekpankalli via UCCS Kraemer Family Library (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

The post Stacey Abrams and Thant Myint-U on How to Build Peace appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

In the US, Albert Einstein isn’t well known for his views on socialism. But in 1949, he wrote a salient essay for the inaugural issue of the Monthly Review called “Why Socialism.” Today’s guest, John Bellamy Foster, tells host Allen Ruff about Einstein’s essay and his legacy as a socialist.

Einstein’s essay was written in defiance of the McCarthy era. And Foster says that’s timely to return to this article on its 75th anniversary in the context of the MAGA movement and neofascism in the US that is causing many people to feel a similar sense of despair as at the time Monthly Review’s beginning.

Foster describes Einstein’s commitment to socialism as something that went hand in hand with his commitment to science. He adds that Einstein was committed to many progressive causes including opposition nuclear weapons and critiquing Zionism. Foster says that Einstein believed we need socialism because we can only develop as “social individuals.”

John Bellamy Foster is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon. He has published numerous critiques of capitalism, written about ecosocialism and Marxist theory, and is the editor of the independent socialist magazine, Monthly Review. 

Featured image of a photo of Albert Einstein via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 DE).

The post The Smartest Man Ever was a Socialist appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On October 6th, 1978, the Argentine junta kidnapped Patricia Roisinblit. She was a young medical student and activist, and she was eight-months pregnant. After she was abducted, she gave birth to her son, and was never heard from again. Journalist Haley Cohen Gilliland wrote a book about the intrepid grandmothers who took great risk to fight to find their missing daughters and grandchildren in the face of the brutal dictatorship that destroyed all records of these political disappearances. She joins host Ali Muldrow to talk about A Flower Traveled In My Blood and discuss the lessons we can still learn from these unrelenting women.

Cohen Gilliland learned about the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo while working in Argentina. At the time there was only one book in English on the subject. Human rights groups estimate about 30,000 people were disappeared, and Cohen Gilliland says that it’s a testament to the success of the military government in disappearing people and covering it up that we don’t have concrete numbers. She describes her reporting process and the importance of narrative nonfiction in communicating dark moments in history with honesty and humanity. 

Despite the real risk to their lives, the abuelas–women without money, power, or a platform–recognized that they could successfully stand up to a brutal dictatorship and demand truth and demand their stolen grandchildren. They rewrote international law and pioneered genetic testing to do so. But they didn’t all find happy reunions with their grandchildren who had been raised in military and police families. 

Cohen Gilliland also reflects on how this dark time in Argentine history is a warning for the US today. As unidentified ICE officers abduct people off the streets and Trump orders the military takeover of Washington D.C., there are reasons we should be alarmed at the authoritarian erosion of civil liberties. 

Haley Cohen Gilliland is a journalist and the director of the Yale Journalism Initiative. She previously worked at The Economist for seven years, four of which were spent in Buenos Aires as the paper’s Argentina correspondent. Following her time at The Economist, she has focused on narrative nonfiction—bringing history and current events to life through fact-based storytelling. She has published long-form feature articles in The New York Times, National Geographic, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Vanity Fair, among other publications.

Featured image of the cover of A Flower Traveled In My Blood.

The post The Indomitable Spirit of Argentinian Grandmothers appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show we highlight the joy of reading with Rowan Childs of the Madison Reading Project. Host Dana Pellebon wanted to focus her premier show as the new host of Tuesday’s A Public Affair around literacy and feature an organization that’s working to get new and engaging books to kids in Dane County. 

Childs says that she started the Madison Reading Project after realizing that her son was learning how to read but not how to love reading. At that time the Race to Equity report was also released, showing what many people already knew: that Black kids were falling behind in education in Madison. After a 3 month pilot program to get new books to kids at the Salvation Army, Childs says she knew there was a need to create a permanent program. And now the Madison Reading Project has been going for 11 years.

The Madison Reading project serves more than over 12,000 kids in a year, getting them more than 140K books last year with diverse main characters that represent them. Their main fundraiser is a fashion show in which participants make dresses out of paper, like the garment on the cover of July’s Umoja Magazine that features legendary Black women in Madison. Childs also shares the challenges of book censorship and attacks on DEI. She also celebrates coming Banned Books week by highlighting one of the books from her childhood, The Rabbit’s Wedding, in which a black and a white rabbit get married. 

Rowan Childs is the founder and co-executive director of the Madison Reading Project. Previously, she worked for the Village of Mount Horeb and was recently named to InBusiness’s Power 100 list. 

Featured image of Rowan Childs and Dana Pellebon in the WORT studio. Photo courtesy of Sara Gabler/WORT.

The post Getting Joyful Books in the Hands of Kids appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Learning about your local environment is a great way to feel more at home. That’s the message that Madison Public Library’s latest Naturalist in Residence Andrea Debbink wants folks to understand.  Debbink tells host Douglas Haynes about her love of black walnut trees and Starkweather Creek, recommends children’s nature books, and advises listeners on how to get to know your local birds. 

The Naturalist in Residence program is an inventive and creative approach to connecting residents of Dane County with the diverse ecologies of the county. Debbink themed her residency as “At Home in Nature.” That focus came from her passion for city wildlife and city nature. Growing up in suburban Minneapolis and now living in suburban Madison, Debbink has learned to notice and appreciate the biodiversity in populated areas. She says the easiest way to feel more at home in your local environment is to learn the names of local plants and birds. 

Debbink is the author of many books, including the new Urban Trails: Madison and the Wild World Handbook, a book about environmental stewardship and nature exploration for middle-grade readers. You can find Debbink’s books and her reading list that includes field guides and poetry at the Madison Public Library.

Andrea Debbink is a writer and suburban naturalist who has called Madison home for more than two decades. A former magazine editor, she now writes books for children and adults. Although Andrea writes across genres, her books nearly always include the themes of nature exploration and environmental stewardship. Her upbringing in the Minneapolis suburbs taught her to seek nature in unexpected places and her more recent training as a Wisconsin Master Naturalist have fueled Andrea’s enthusiasm for connecting people to nature in her community, especially parts of it that are underappreciated or overlooked.

Featured image of a bee on a thistle flower, a native plant to Wisconsin. Photo by Greg Emmerich on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

The post Do you know the birds in your backyard? appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Esty Dinur is joined by Norma Wong to talk about her new book, When No Thing Works. Wong says that it’s not true that nothing works, but it is true that there are many things that aren’t working. She wants people practice what she calls “collective acceleration” to counteract how everything is moving faster and faster toward devolution. This could look like envisioning better forms of governance (not governments), learning from the knowledge of Indigenous peoples, and creating circles of mutuality and support.

Wong reflects on Hawaii’s early response to the COVID pandemic, in which the people of the islands overwhelming supported mask mandates and social distancing because they understood that strict safety measures were good for their communities. She says that the strong sense of liberty–of people doing whatever they want whenever they want–in the American psyche runs contrary to the needs of people living with and supporting each other.

Wong also tells listeners about a 100 hours of science livestream that started after the Trump administration fired scientists from the NOAA and other agencies. She advises that people do small things to create a better world rather than fighting everything that you are ideologically opposed to.

Norma Wong, a life-long resident of Hawaiʻi, is a descendant of Native Hawaiians and Hakka Chinese immigrants. She has decades of experience in organizing, policy, strategy, and politics in Hawaiʻi, particularly in the area of Native Hawaiian issues, serving in the Hawaii State Legislature and as a policy lead and negotiator for Governor John Waiheʻe, Hawaiʻi’s first Native governor. Norma began her spiritual practice at the same time as her political life unfolded. These days, it is the intertwined application of Zen practice and an Indigenous worldview that Norma brings to provoke practical inquiry and redirect work. She is a thought partner, a strategist, and a teacher.

Featured image of the cover of Norma Wong’s book, When No Thing Works.

The post Collective Acceleration Counteracts Modernity appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Today we welcome Oswaldo Zavala back to the show. He speaks with guest host Carlos Dávalos about the myth of drug cartels, the US’s military occupation of Mexico, and his study of the Latin American author, Roberto Bolaño.

Zavala says that we need to reassess the US’s entire national security agenda. That includes rejecting the language of “cartels” and the “War on Drugs,” as Zavala does in his book, Drug Cartels Do Not Exist.  He says that drug cartels don’t exist as mafia-like organizations, but are embedded in the military and policing of the US itself. Zavala comments on Seth Harp’s new book, saying that it productively dislocates cartels from a mythology of organizations operating south of the border, to entities operating within the heart of military institutions. 

Zavala also analyses how resource extraction and national security are linked. He says there’s not enough discussion of how militarized Mexico has become as US energy companies seek access to Mexico’s natural resources like oil.

Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño picks up the themes of the drug trade and violence in his novels. Zavala says that unlike other authors of the Latin American Boom era who depicted the region as “magical” and epic, Bolaño focuses on dispossession, marginality, migration, and exile. He is attuned to the failures of neoliberal governments across the continent. Zalvala says that Bolaño humanizes the people caught up in the drug trade and shows how the drug trade isn’t something to be eradicated with state violence.

Oswaldo Zavala is a journalist and professor of contemporary Latin American literature and culture at the College of Staten Island and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His books include La modernidad insufrible and Drug Cartels Do Not Exist. Narcotrafficking in US and Mexican Culture. 

Featured image: a remix of a photo of Oswaldo Zavala, the cover of Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666, and the cover of the Spanish-language version of Zavala’s book, Los cárteles no exiten (Sara Gabler/WORT).

The post How the Drug Trade Relies on the US Military appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Ali Muldrow welcomes Steven Olikara back to WORT to talk about building narratives with the power to unify the US political terrain. Olikara has roots in Wisconsin and ran for Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2022. He is now working to reinvent political media through storytelling.

Olikara says that music is a good metaphor for how to engage in the political sphere. He says we should be like jazz musicians because they’re expert listeners, skilled improvisers, and actively engaged in call and response. In the face of the fear, hostility, and dysfunction that the federal government is sowing, Olikara advocates for listening to people with different views (when it’s safe to do so) and finding ways to connect with people across differences, like with music. 

Steven Olikara is a nationally recognized changemaker working at the intersection of media, politics, and culture. He is the CEO of Bridge Entertainment Labs (BEL), an organization leveraging the power of entertainment to help transform America’s deep divisions. He also founded Future Caucus (formerly Millennial Action Project), the largest cross-partisan network of young elected officials in the United States. Steven currently serves as Senior Fellow for Political Transformation at the USC Schwarzenegger Institute. A frequent political commentator on national and Wisconsin media, he has been a leading voice for bridging divides and renewing American democracy. In 2022, he made history as the first South Asian candidate for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin, earning national recognition for his unifying approach to politics. His story is featured in the documentary film The Reunited States (Amazon Prime and PBS), and he is the co-author of JFK: The Last Speech. A proud Wisconsin native and former radio DJ, Steven is a Truman Scholar and has been honored as a Forbes 30 Under 30 leader and a World Economic Forum Global Shaper.

Featured image of Ali Muldrow and Steven Olikara in conversation.

The post Reinventing Political Media Through Storytelling appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

When we talk about public education, we’re talking about the heart of democracy, says today’s guest Heather DuBois Bourenane, the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Public Education Network. She tells guest host Bert Zipperer that we need to start funding public education right in the state of Wisconsin, and that could change today if there was the political will to do so. She wants to restore public schools as sites of joy and welcoming, where the promise of democracy can be fulfilled. 

Wisconsin has a constitutional obligation to public education, but more and more state money is being funneled into voucher schools and that’s because current state law allows for school funding to be allocated to voucher schools before public schools. The Wisconsin Public Education Network is working to make voucher funding transparent to taxpayers. 

DuBois Bourenane says that in the past 15 years, public education funding has reached crisis levels. This year kids are going back to school with less state aid than they received the previous year; and this is the 18th year in a row this has happened. The way the state has made up for funding shortfalls is through local ballot referendums (over 400 in the last two years), but too many communities can’t raise taxes to address state shortfalls.

Heather DuBois Bourenane is passionate about ensuring our public schools are places of joy for all students. She is a proud public school parent, a founding member of Support Sun Prairie Schools and the Sun Prairie Action Resource Coalition, and an active member of many state and national partnerships and committees. She taught college English and literature, and worked in K-12 outreach at UW-Madison before devoting herself full time to putting our Network vision and values into action. She also serves as Executive Director of the Wisconsin Public Education Action Fund.

Featured image of the logo of the Wisconsin Public Education Network.

The post Public Education is the Beating Heart of Democracy appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Farmworker Justice estimates that 45% of farm workers are undocumented immigrants, and these workers, along with other immigrant farm workers, make up the backbone of our food system. Yet the Trump administration is cracking down on immigrant laborers, resulting in 1.2 million immigrants leaving the labor force this year. Our two guests today, Alba Velasquez and Darin Von Ruden are experts in the US food system, and they tell host Douglas Haynes that they’re concerned about the rising fear they see in immigrant communities in California and Wisconsin. 

As a new wave of ICE raids rocks Los Angeles and southern California, Velasquez says that immigrant parents are afraid to let their kids walk to school, afraid to go to the grocery store, and even afraid to go to work in local restaurants and farms. Von Ruden has also noticed the growing sense of fear in Wisconsin’s dairy industry, and says that fear of detention or deportation is driving workers to stay home. Wisconsin’s small dairy farms aren’t in a position to absorb the losses when workers don’t show up. Both notice the rippling effects of ICE raids on the mental health of workers and their communities to the entire food system.

The repression of immigrants is magnified by the cuts to federal food programs like SNAP, making hunger a growing concern for the very workers who grow the US’s food. Now, 23,000 non citizens are losing access to these benefits. Just last week, a Monroe cheesemaker was bought out by a company that will use the error-ridden E-Verify system to confirm the immigration status of its employees. In response, dozens of workers walked out in protest of what this could mean for immigrant workers.

Velasquez and Von Ruden share their advice for supporting immigrant workers, like supporting policy changes that keep more family farms in operation and creating pathways to citizenship for immigrant workers that aren’t tied to employment. 

Alba Velasquez leads the Los Angeles Food Policy Council (LAFPC) as the Executive Director, bringing a robust background in program leadership and food justice advocacy. Joining LAFPC in 2017, she has significantly contributed to the growth and impact of the Healthy Neighborhood Market Network program and has played a pivotal role in strategic partnership development. Alba served as the Interim Executive Director and led the team through a leadership shift in 2020. Prior to LAFPC, Alba managed key initiatives at the National Health Foundation and contributed to urban agriculture research at UCLA. Holding a BA in Sociology from UC Santa Barbara and a Master’s in Urban Regional Planning from UCLA, her expertise is grounded in her personal experiences as a Salvadoran refugee and community advocate, driving her commitment to creating equitable and sustainable food systems.

Wisconsin Farmers Union President Darin Von Ruden has served as the organization’s District 5 director since 2008, representing Crawford, Grant, Green, Iowa, Lafayette, Richland, Rock, and Vernon counties. He also leads the WFU Foundation Board of Directors, the WFU Service Association, and serves as secretary on the National Farmers Union Board of Directors. Von Ruden and his wife, JoAnn, live in Westby. In the last several years, Von Ruden transitioned the farm to the fourth generation, when son Brett purchased the machinery and 50-cow dairy herd.

Featured image of a small family farm in Wisconsin. 

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Listeners kept the phones ringing today during our open line show. Host Esty Dinur heard from callers concerned about vaccines and public health as well as the political health of the democratic party. 

In May, RFK told the CDC to stop recommending COVID vaccines for infants and pregnant women, despite the advice of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists who continue to recommend the vaccine since vaccine safety during pregnancy is well established. 

Esty also reflects on the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, an event that she calls a harbinger of the willingness of the state to sacrifice the poor and people of color. Other topics of the day included the actions of Democratic governors and building infrastructure for community care. 

Featured image of a vintage telephone via Joe Haupt on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

The post Open Line with Esty Dinur appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, we hear from journalist Nyki Duda who draws a line from anti-immigrant movements of the 1920s to the present. Her recent articles include “My Family Was Almost ‘Repatriated’ to Mexico in the 1930s. I See It Happening Again” and an account of how Chicago fights for its sanctuary city status. 

Duda’s family migrated from Mexico to the Rust Belt where they found work in steel mills. She describes how they and other Mexican and Mexican Americans were targets of racism and xenophobia and were nearly deported after a 1919 steel strike. She tells host Allen Ruff that the phrase “repatriation movement” makes it seem like the relocation of immigrants was voluntary, when in fact it was and is not. Duda shares the parallels she sees between the “repatriation movement” and the present, including the option for “self-deportation” that is now a feature of the new CBPOne app. She calls this a symptom of the US’s plans to make its borders less permeable to the very migrant labor that the economy relies on.

Duda describes the church-based sanctuary movement of the 1980s that grew out of a tradition of liberation theology from Latin America. More recently sanctuary cities are being targeted by the Trump administration. When ICE showed up at Chicago schools, teachers started organizing to protect their students and to educate families about their rights. The Chicago Teachers’ Union has developed a bargaining for common good strategy that includes advocating for fair wages and for protecting their students against ICE. For Duda, this is just another example of how migrant communities and labor organizing are intrinsically connected. 

Nyki Duda is an editor at Al Jazeera digital and researcher at Lead Stories. As a freelance journalist, she covers migration, social movements and far-right politics. Her writing has appeared in Truthout, Jacobin, In These Times and more.

Featured image of strike leader addressing a crowd of steel workers in Gary, Indiana in 1919 via the Library of Congress.

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Kate Duffy believes in the power of everyday voices and that the best political conversations often start around a kitchen table (or in the carpool line). If you’re a mom on social media, you might know Kate from her Instagram profile, @motherhoodforgood. She joins host Ali Muldrow today to talk about parenting and women in democratic politics, like Catelin Drey who just won her Senate race in Iowa Senate this week.

Duffy started her Instagram account when she saw an opportunity to encourage other millennial moms to be more active in politics. Moms would often tell her, “I don’t do politics.” But they just need someone to draw the line from policy to their kitchen tables and show them how important being active in local elections can be. Duffy says that local elections are the perfect place to make an impact because local issues are the ones that have the greatest effect on our personal lives.

She tells Muldrow about how she uses her role as a parent to find common ground, including with conservative moms. However, the Right has been mobilizing moms for a long time, from Phyllis Schlafly to Moms4Liberty. Conservatives want women to stay in their “proper” role in the home, but they also financial back groups of politically active women as long as they support their ideological ends. 

Duffy and Muldrow also discuss Taylor Swift, gun violence, the Wisconsin governor’s race, and more. 

Kate Duffy is a digital strategist, content creator, and mom who founded Motherhood for Good to help women and moms step into their power. Through storytelling, community-building, and advocacy, she creates spaces where complex policy issues feel personal and actionable. Drawing on her background in corporate marketing, she also helps candidates and organizations master storytelling and digital strategy in the modern media landscape. Born and raised in Wisconsin, she now lives just outside Milwaukee with her husband and two young kids.

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A Public Affair has been a steady voice in WORT’s talk programming for over 30 years. As the station celebrates its 50th year on the air, we wanted to remember some conversations our team has brought you. Today we’re rebroadcasting a show from December of 1998 in which host Dan Jaffee interviews Susan Nossal, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Wisconsin, and Nancy Cole of the Union of Concerned Scientists. 

They talk about the politics of climate change and the Kyoto Accords. Though their conversation is from nearly 30 years ago, it feels painfully familiar. Cole describes the US’s commitment to reducing emissions, and how Congress is hostile to making good on that commitment. Though countries like the US are major contributors of greenhouse gas pollution, Cole says that actions to reduce emissions from other parts of the world put the US to shame.

In 1998, the scientific community had already reached the consensus that climate change is real and human caused. Nossal references the 1990 and 1995 IPPC reports. She also describes how climate change is being studied at UW Madison through observation, measuring, and modeling of the atmosphere. 

Featured image of a sign from a Canadian protest in 2007, demanding compliance with the Kyoto Accords via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

The post From the Archive: The Politics of Climate Change in 1998 appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Today, Sara Gabler speaks with renowned theologian and social ethicist, Gary Dorrien, about his new memoir, Over from Union Road: My Christian-Left-Intellectual Life. From his roots in rural Michigan to elite halls of Harvard and Columbia, Dorrien approaches lofty ideas with curiosity and grounds his scholarship in social activism. His memoir is an intellectual history of contemporary left-theology as much as it is a recounting of his life. 

Dorrien describes the long tradition of liberal theology, a tradition from the nineteenth century that values intellectual freedom and forges a third way between dogmatic orthodoxy and secular denialism. As Dorrien elaborates, liberal theology embraces the historical critical method and allows science to explain the world. In the twentieth century US liberal theology merged with the social gospel, a movement of Protestant Christians who believed it was their duty to address social problems like poverty and inequality. It was through progressivism that Dorrien argues these two movements achieved a union. 

They also discuss the differences between conservative and progressive evangelicalism, Dorrien’s organizing work with the DSA, and his books on the Black social gospel. He lists the top three intellectual influences on his life as Martin Luther King, Jr., Walter Rauschenbush, and James Cone.

Gary Dorrien is a theologian, ethicist, professor, priest, and author of over two dozen books, several of which have won the Choice Award from the American Library Association. He is also an activist with decades of work in progressive and labor movements. Dorrien is ordained in the Episcopal Church, and is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University.

Featured image of the cover of Over from Union Road by Gary Dorrien.

The post The Intellectual Roots of Social Gospel Christians appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

There’s so much chaos in the news and in many communities across the country. To discuss this week’s headlines, Esty Dinur is joined by writer and political analyst, Mary Geddry. They discuss how Trump’s authoritarian chaos is only spreading and how the privatization of healthcare, infrastructure, and all the services that are essential to everyday life, is the antithesis of democracy.

Geddry calls Trump’s deployment of troops to DC as a test run for greater federal expansion in blue states, an expansion that she previews will result in the arrest of all kinds of dissidents. As detention centers are being built across the country and ICE is offering $50K signing bonuses to new recruits, Dinur compares the situation to the gulag system in the Soviet Union. Geddry points to the massive amounts of money that private prison companies are making off detention centers, like “Alligator Alcatraz,” though that location has been ordered to shut down.

Geddry says that America’s democracy isn’t broken; it’s working just as a two-party system is meant to. That is, by it’s very nature, the two-party system is polarizing. She blames both parties for how we got to this point and says we need to organize and imagine a better system, one that could include rank-choice voting. 

Mary Geddry is a writer and political commentator whose work focuses on authoritarianism, economic inequality, and social justice. She has founded four community radio stations in Oregon, reflecting her long-standing commitment to grassroots media and public access to information. Mary also co-founded a local nonprofit dedicated to advancing the rights of nature and sustainability, underscoring her dedication to environmental justice. Her commentary has been featured in independent outlets and on her Substack, where she publishes daily political analysis with an eye toward uncovering corruption and amplifying voices for accountability and justice.

Featured image of the exterior of a detention center via Flickr.

The post Privatization Poisons Democracy appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

In July, American Muslims for Palestine released a report that surveys efforts to suppress Palestinian solidarity movements. On the show today, host Allen Ruff is joined by the author of the report, Halah Ahmad. She says that the repression of pro-Palestine student activists began before Trump took office but has only escalated since. The Trump administration is going after any immigrant students, regardless of their affiliation with these movements. The report shows that more than 1800 students across the country have had their visas or status revoked.

Attacks on immigrant students are followed up by attacks on institutions themselves. Ahmad describes how these cuts to research programs at colleges and universities are framed as fighting antisemitism. She says this framework has created a chilling effect on any critiques of the Israeli government. Ahmad  tracked how international students are now self-censoring and faculty are not putting on programs that they fear their universities would oppose. 

In addition to directly criminalizing student protest and undermining universities, Christian Zionist leaders in Trump’s circle are shepherding the country toward what they view as a holy war. This ideology was also at work during the Regan administration, but has found new purchase in US foreign policy following the US’s bombing of Iran earlier this summer.

Halah Ahmad is a Harvard and Cambridge trained independent researcher whose work spans domestic and international policy. She has conducted strategic policy research for government agencies and NGOs in Greece, Albania, Germany, Palestine, and the US. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Vox, The LA Times, The Hill, USA Today and other outlets.

Featured image of the Gaza solidarity encampment at UW-Madison in May 2024 (WORT).

The post Christian Right Leads Attacks on Student Activists appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Today host Ali Muldrow is joined by two guests with powerful voices in Madison: Myra McNair and Bianca Martin. In a world that wants women to be silent, or silent about certain topics, these three podcast hosts talk candidly about their careers, their triumphs, and how to make someone feel comfortable in a conversation. 

All describe being chastised for being “chatterboxes” in school, but they’ve turned that gift of gab into professional careers. And people tune into their shows because these hosts know how to draw out their guests with tenderness while also asking pointed questions. 

In their meta conversation about what makes a good interview, Muldrow, McNair, and Martin also shout out the teams that make their work possible, describe the curiosity and imagination they bring to their work, and discuss how they hold space for vulnerability. 

Myra McNair is the founder, owner, and visionary behind Anesis Therapy and host of the podcast Making Progress.

Bianca Martin is the host of the City Cast Madison podcast.

Featured image of Myra McNair, Ali Muldrow, and Bianca Martin courtesy of Myra McNair.

The post The Journey from Chatterbox to Podcast Host appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

A Public Affair has been a steady voice in WORT’s talk programming for over 30 years. As the station celebrates its 50th year on the air, we wanted to pause and harken back to some conversations our team has brought you. So on today’s show, we reflect on a past that may feel all too familiar, as host Margo Robb discusses the US’s bombing of Iraq in 1998 with Matt Rothschild and Erik Gustafson. 

Margo Robb is a former News Director at WORT, Erik Gustafson is a Gulf War veteran who works for the Enabling Peace in Iraq Center, and Matt Rothschild was an editor at the Progressive Magazine at the time. They discuss war propaganda, the University of Wisconsin’s investment in weapons manufacturers, and the harms that economic sanctions cause for Iraqi civilians. Gustafson calls for the delinking of economic sanctions from military intervention and the delinking of Sadam Hussein from the people of Iraq. Rothschild says “we need to get over the psyche of empire.” 

We want to give a big thanks to the WORT Archiving Team for digitizing this show.

Featured image: of a bomb damage assessment from December 21, 1998.

The post From the Archive: The US Bombs Iraq in 1998 appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Cruelty and selfishness feel endemic to US politics and mass media. But today’s guest, Nicole Karlis, offers a strong antidote to the cruelty and loneliness of modern life by championing acts of altruism. Her new book, Your Brain on Altruism, tells compelling stories and synthesis scientific research about the power–and health benefits–of helping others.

Karlis wants readers to know that self-care is more than fitness and individual consumption. Self-care can be serving others around us, and the scientific research backs up the idea that service to our communities decreases stress and improves our sense of belonging and purpose. In researching for her book, Karlis spoke with disaster recovery workers who say we’re stuck in “recovery mode.” That’s because in a capitalist society profit comes first and people get trapped in scarcity mindsets. In this context, we have to push for systemic change so that people can find relief and thrive together. 

Karlis’s book combines the importance of individual and societal transformation and inso doing avoids the pitfalls of the wellness industry and its message that individual consumption will heal you. Karlis says that altruism can serve as a catalyst for deeper connection and builds resilience. She tells host Douglas Haynes that we need to support caregivers so they avoid burnout and that day-to-day acts of kindness can reduce stress and loneliness.

Nicole Karlis is a health and science journalist. Her work has been published in Salon, The New York Times, Marie Claire, and The Bold Italic.

Featured image of the cover of Your Brain on Altruism from the University of California Press.

The post Altruism, the Antidote to Loneliness appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show host Esty Dinur is joined by Peter Hutchinson to tackle the overwhelming and slippery topic of neoliberalism and this ideology’s impact on everyday life. Hutchinson co-authored the book Invisible Doctrine, and is the filmmaker of the documentary of the same name. He says that he and his co-author, George Monbiot, wanted to make the inception, propagation, and policies of neoliberalism accessible to more audiences.

Hutchinson says that the “ugly, eerie, and soulless” aesthetic of the Invisible Doctrine film was intentional, meant to “deploy technology against capitalism.” They have gotten push-back about their use of AI in making the film, but defend it as a way of communicating and critiquing the way that neoliberalism makes people disconnected and atomized. The film is streaming everywhere except Amazon.

Hutchinson describes neoliberalism as “capitalism on steroids” and Donald Trump’s presidency as “neoliberalism on steroids.” He describes the history of how neoliberal thinking from the Austrian School of Economics to the University of Chicago gets us to neoliberal policies like the shifting of the tax code to favor the wealthy, deregulation and privatization, and more. What we’re seeing now is the wholesale deconstruction of the administrative state. Hutchinson is now working on solutions-driven documentary, and says “we will only endure if we cease to consent.” 

Transcript of full conversation between Esty Dinur and Peter Hutchinson.

Peter Hutchison is a filmmaker, New York Times bestselling author, educator, and activist based in Brooklyn. He produced and directed Requiem for the American Dream, an exploration of wealth inequality in America, featuring Noam Chomsky.

Featured image of Invisible Doctrine by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchinson. 

The post The Invisible Doctrine of Neoliberalism appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Last month the Trump administration ordered California to remove references to gender identity from its sex education curricula. Controlling access to inclusive education and policing gender and sexual expression are common moves of authoritarian governments around the world, and studies show a positive relationship between sex education and democracy. On today’s show, guest host Matvei Mozhaev speaks with Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan of Oh Joy Sex Toy about the importance of building a culture of communication, consent, and care through sex education.

Oh Joy Sex Toy is an online publisher and one of the largest and most diverse libraries for sex education in the world. They cover sex toy reviews, sex practices, birth control, STIs and much more. Moen and Nolan wanted to create content that discussed (and depicted) sexuality in a friendly and nonthreatening way. Over the years, they started inviting other comic artists of different sexualities, ethnicities, and life experiences to participate. 

They discuss the importance of comics in sex education, calling it a great medium for stories about human experience. Moen says that it’s getting harder to talk about sex and sex education given the growing attacks on gender identity and sexuality. A few years ago, Moen and Nolan published their first book, Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human (A Graphic Novel).

Featured image: of the cover of Moen and Nolan’s book, Let’s Talk About It. 

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Back in the 1930s and 40s when surfers in southern California first put wheels on wooden boards, there was no thought of skateboarding becoming a commercially-profitable sport, let alone an Olympic sport. On today’s show, guest host Andrew Thomas speaks with Joshua Heter and Josef Thomas Simpson about their edited collection, Skateboarding and Philosophy: Essays Concerning the Life of the Grind, and how the sport gets us to think philosophically about what we do with our bodies in space.

The skateboarder resists authority, antagonizes security guards, and scorns middle class values. And this figure has retained the reputation of being an “outsider” through the different iterations of street and park skating, says Heter. Skateboarding also reflects current political trends, from the targeting of young men by fascists or the display of resistance to genocide by the Gaza Skate Team. A year ago when far-right podcaster Tim Pool tried to buy a DIY skatepark in West Virginia, he was met with pushback from the local skate community. The Right has increasingly co-opted rebellion, says Heter, to which Simpson adds that it’s a time-tested propagandistic strategy to target youth.

They also discuss the feeling of flourishing that comes from overcoming risk, the creativity of new generations of skaters, and the ability to see the world differently that skaters have. Heter adds that if skateboarding didn’t require risk, it wouldn’t be worth doing. 

Heter and Simpson are philosophers and bring their interest explaining the mundane and the everyday to their love of skateboarding. One of the goals of thinking philosophically, says Simpson, is eliminating as many assumptions as possible in order to ask: What is a skate trick? Why do we do the things that we do? What separates this activity from other pursuits? What makes a person a skateboarder? All of this makes us human, says Simpson.

The Annual Sporte de WORT Skateboard Contest is happening on the last Sunday of this month, August 31, 8am-12pm at Madison Skatepark.

Joshua Heter is an associate professor of philosophy at Jefferson College in Hillsboro, Missouri. He has published a number of books on popular culture and philosophy.

Josef Thomas Simpson is an academic advisor at George Mason University. He has contributed to a number of popular culture and philosophy volumes.

Featured image of the cover of Skateboarding and Philosophy: Essays Concerning the Life of the Grind.

The post The Life of the Grind appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

The opaque realm of federal food and agriculture policy impacts all of us, from the farmers who grow our food to the folks who help get it to our tables. Today, host Douglas Haynes welcomes investigative reporter, Lisa Held, back to the show. She says that food policy is important all the time because it is never just one thing. It affects everything from rural communities and the environment to hunger, wellbeing, and immigration.

Held works for Civil Eats, an award winning news site that is dedicated to critical thinking about the American food system They produce the Food Policy Tracker that documents changes made by the president, federal agencies, and Congress. Held has been recently reporting on the cuts to the American food system brought on by the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which makes huge investments in ICE but cuts programs like SNAP. Not only will people become ineligible for SNAP benefits due to changes to the program, but the bill puts in motion a shift of responsibility from the federal government to the states.

These cuts are pernicious because they compound over time and hurt the most vulnerable. And conservative politicians, like Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, defend cuts to common sense programs like local farm to school programs like those in Wisconsin we covered on this show in April. The federal government is also cutting funds to any program with a DEI component, and Black and Indigenous owned farms are being targeted. Held and Haynes also discuss cuts to conservation programs and RFK’s backtracking on pesticide regulation. 

Lisa Held is Civil Eats’ senior staff reporter and contributing editor. Since 2015, she has reported on agriculture and the food system with an eye toward sustainability, equality, and health, and her stories have appeared in publications including The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Mother Jones. In the past, she covered health and wellness and was an editor at Well+Good. She is based in Baltimore and has a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of Journalism.

Featured image of school bulletin board featuring a farm to school event via Flickr (CC BY 2.0). 

The post Food Programs Scrounge While ICE Feasts appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

In the first part of today’s two-part show, host Esty Dinur speaks with Branko Marcetic who writes about the Epstein case and Project 2029 for Jacobin. He calls the current status of the Epstein files, “a political crisis of the president’s own making.” 

Marcetic updates listeners about the status of the sealed and unsealed Epstein documents, cautions against relying on the word of the self-interested Ghislaine Maxwell, and says that Trump must, at the very least, have been aware of Epstein’s relationship to underage women. Marcetic’s article about the Epstein files describes the role of judge Loretta Preska–who is also related to the Steven Donziger case–in sealing a lot of material that could point to who was working with or enabling Epstein, from individuals to financial institutions. 

In the second-half of the show, Dinur is joined by Aman Abhishek to talk about the murder of Awdah Hathaleen by an Israeli settler on July 28. Hathaleen was a teacher and civil resister who was shot while defending his community. Abhishek describes how after Hathaleen’s killing, the village of Umm al-Khair in Masafer Yatta was raided and civilians were arrested without warrants. Hathaleen was buried only yesterday. 

Abhishek describes the role of NGOs in Israeli occupation, how difficult it is to construct new buildings in the West Bank, how Palestinian farmers are blocked from accessing their own land, and how settlers destroy Palestinian property by cutting water pipes and breaking solar panels. He says that if listeners want to act in solidarity with Palestinians in the West Bank they can call their lawmakers and support sanctions against Israeli organizations. 

Aman Abhishek is a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his research is about nonviolent anti-occupation activism in Israel/Palestine. His writing on this topic has appeared in the Jewish Currents, Vashti, and The Wire, and it has been awarded by the American Jewish Press Association.

Branko Marcetic is a staff writer with Jacobin magazine.

Featured image of a drawing of the US capitol building by Craig Fildes on via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

The post Corruption Feeds Violence from Washington to the West Bank appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

We need a united, organized resistance to defend the land and human and non-human life, say today’s guests, Marc Rosenthal and Stephanie Spehar. They join host Allen Ruff to talk about their recent article, “Fighting Together for Life, Water, and Land: From Line 5 to Gaza.” 

More than a description of connection, their piece is a call to action that grew out of their activism with climate and social justice groups. Rosenthal says that their writing is grounded in their political organizing through the Extinction Rebellion, the DSA’s Ecosocialist Committee, and the International Solidarity Working Group, among others. As the US slips further into authoritarianism, Spehar says, it’s more important than ever for groups to be in solidarity. 

They discuss the key commonalities between Line 5 and Gaza in terms of water, militarization, and sovereignty. The fight against the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline is a fight for Indigenous sovereignty as well as an environmental and climate issue. Water is a crucial resource that is being denied to the people in Gaza and the West Bank. Who controls water, controls the population, says Ruff. Control of resources like water is central to colonial projects, and the commodification of water is central to capitalist projects, adds Rosenthal. These colonial and capitalist projects wouldn’t be possible without the oil-loving US military. Spehar and Rosenthal say that there are many other struggles around the world that could be added to this conversation. 

Marc Rosenthal is a retired emergency department nurse who has been engaged in international solidarity work and movements opposing war, colonialism, and imperialism for decades. He was a founding member of the Madison Arcatao Sister City Project, the U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities Network, the Stop Line 5 Cross Border Organizing Working Group, and the International Solidarity Working Group of 350. 

Stephanie Spehar is an anthropologist, educator, activist, and mother whose work focuses on sustainability, human-environment relationships, and climate justice. For over two decades she has done research and community-based work on primate ecology and conservation in Indonesia and Latin America, taught and published broadly in anthropology and environmental studies, and led multiple interdisciplinary research and education initiatives focused on understanding how both human and more-than-human life can thrive on our shared planet. She is a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and outgoing co-president of United Faculty and Staff of Oshkosh, a local of the American Federation of Teachers.

Featured image of Marc Rosenthal, Allen Ruff, and Stephanie Spehar courtesy of Sara Gabler/WORT.

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On the heels of the 35th anniversary of the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Disability Pride Month, guest host Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford hosts a roundtable on the intersection of race, gender, and disability with Nicki Vander Meulen and Dr. Sami Schalk. They talk about disability and education, evaluate how Madison is doing in terms of accessibility, and discuss how to find pleasure in life. 

Last month Congress passed the budget reconciliation bill which includes dramatic cuts to Medicaid. Vander Meulen says that she’s trying to channel her energy into writing to elected officials and building resistance. She organized a protest against the bill because disability can impact anyone at any time in their life. In response to how this bill will impact higher education, Schalk predicts that more and more disabled people will get pushed out of higher ed. And she reminds listeners that there are a disproportionate number of disabled people in marginalized communities because of historic oppressions. 

They also talk about finding community with other queer and disabled people in Madison. Schalk says that it took time to come into a disability identity and that she’s learned from other disabled people along the way, such as how to use a cordless heating pad to combat chronic pain. Vander Meulen describes times when she was discriminated against because of her disability or policed for not having a more apparent disability. 

One way that folks can fight for the rights of the disabled is to fight for a living wage. Schalk encourages people to ask “Who does this benefit?” when confronted with excuses for not paying people well or supporting social services. 

Dr. Sami Schalk is a professor of Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Her research focuses on race, gender & disability in contemporary American literature and culture. Dr. Schalk is the author of Bodyminds Reimagined: Disability, Race & Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction and Black Disability Politics, both available open access from Duke University Press. Her current project focuses on pleasure spaces for multiply marginalized people.

Nicki Vander Meulen is a juvenile attorney and member of the Madison Board of Education. When Nicki was elected in 2017, she became the first openly autistic school board member in the United States.

Featured image of the visually safe Disability Pride Flag via Wikimedia Commons (CC0 1.0).

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Fascism wouldn’t exist without young men promoting and spreading this far-right ideology. Today’s guest, Craig Johnson, tackles how to intervene before young men get swept up in the contemporary fascist movement. He joins guest host Christina Lieffring today to discuss his new book, How to Talk to Your Son about Fascism. 

Though people argue about the definition of fascism all the time, Johnson says that there are two major differences between fascism and mainstream conservatism: fascists don’t play by the rules and they don’t care about law or established norms. They also think that violence is good. While many political movements may find violence necessary at times, fascists go farther and believe that violence is good for the world. 

Johnson also says that fascism’s relationship to masculinity differentiates it from other political movements. Instead of being rooted in a text or specific ideology, fascists care about power, speed, dominance. They promote the falsehood that there are “alpha” and “beta” males, those who are natural born leaders and followers. And fascist leaders target young men because they need young men to do their dirty work, which includes perpetrating violence. They’ve gotten very good at using the internet as a tool to do this. 

To stop young men from succumbing to fascist messaging, Johnson says we have to break the silence and inoculate young men against fascism. This means talking about what fascism is and what it looks like, much like a parent or caretaker would talk to their kids about sex or drugs. It also means modeling how to treat women, nonbinary folks, and people of color. The greatest tool for addressing fascism with those you know and love is empathy because fascists are unprepared for empathy. 

Craig A. Johnson is an independent journalist and an academic who hosts the podcast Fifteen Minutes of Fascism.

Featured image of the cover of How to Talk to Your Son about Fascism.

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According to a new analysis from the ACLU of Wisconsin, 13 of Wisconsin’s 72 sheriff’s departments have signed cooperative agreements with federal immigration authorities. Under these agreements, they will help ICE identify and deport undocumented residents housed in local jails. Today’s guest, David Couper, predicts that up to 80% of Wisconsin sheriffs will eventually sign on. He joins host Esty Dinur to talk about ICE and democratic policing in Madison.

Couper says the city needs to continue fighting for “democratic policing,” a practice that includes being fair in the use of force, obeying the law while enforcing the law, and having a police force that looks like the community. When he was police chief in Madison, Couper worked to hire more women and people of color. In his experience, police in Madison are respected, but when people come to mistrust the police, the only way officers feel they can do their job is by using force. 

Just this week, Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett said his office would not cooperate with ICE. Couper says that if Madison were to start rounding up undocumented people, “it’s all over.” At that point, no undocumented person is safe. He adds that ICE are not police, and that a free society shouldn’t have masked law enforcement. 

Rev. David C. Couper is a retired police chief and Episcopal priest who has spent his life working for justice, peace, and reconciliation. He served as Chief of Police in Madison, Wisconsin, from 1972 to 1993, where he became nationally recognized for progressive reforms in policing, community engagement, and diversifying a white, male police department to one which boldly proclaimed, “Diversity is our strength!” After retiring from law enforcement, he attended seminary and was ordained in the Episcopal Church, serving congregations in Wisconsin for over three decades. For over a decade, Rev. Couper has written and spoken on issues of justice, police reform, and public ethics through his blog, improvingpolice.blog, and several books of poetry. 

Featured image of David Couper and Esty Dinur in front of the WORT station, courtesy of Sara Gabler/WORT.

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On July 4, Donald Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” into law. The 900+ page bill increases tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations while reducing healthcare and food assistance spending. Our guest today, Liz Pancotti points out a number of other, overlooked line-items in the bill, like the $325 million direct handout to Elon Musk and the elimination of a tax on firearms. She joins host Allen Ruff to talk about her recent article for Rolling Stone, “Trump’s Big Bill Will Make Americans Uninsured Again.”

What has been truly shocking to many is the fact that the bill will lead to tens of millions of Americans losing health insurance coverage. Pancotti says that there are two ways the bill does this; first by putting in place a work requirement for Medicaid recipients. This will affect roughly 10 million Americans, including 260,000 Wisconsinites who will lose Badger Care. The second way the bill makes cuts to healthcare is by raising premium costs for people on Affordable Care Act plans. 4.2 million Americans could become uninsured by 2024 as rates rise to unaffordable levels. On top of that, it’s likely that more than 350 hospitals and nearly 600 nursing homes will close, and this will disproportionately impact rural communities. 

They also discuss the irony that Trump was voted into office on the promise of ending inflation, but Pancotti says this bill is a “betrayal of Trump’s promise to lower costs.” Pancotti compares this bill to actions Trump took during his first term in office, analyzes how this bill will have macroeconomic effects, and explains how it will drive folks seeking student loans to the private market. Though many families will feel the impact of this bill immediately, some parts of the bill have staggered timelines to be implemented over a number of years, leaving room for the possibility to reverse course. 

Elizabeth Pancotti is the Managing Director of Policy and Advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative, a Washington-based non-profit think tank and progressive advocacy group specializing in research, analysis, and media commentary on economic issues. She was previously the Director of Special Initiatives at the Roosevelt Institute, where she led the think tank’s work on tax policy. Prior to Roosevelt, she was an advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), serving as the Labor Policy Director of the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and as a senior budget analyst on the Senate Budget Committee. During her time in the Senate, she led efforts to compel Howard Shultz to testify about union-busting at Starbucks and secure paid sick leave for rail workers and played a key role in industrial policy investments passed as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Featured image of a stamp on a $20 bill that says “Donald Trump Lives Here” via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0). 

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In April of this year La Crosse, Wisconsin elected its first Black, gay mayor. Mayor Shaundel Washington-Spivey joins host Ali Muldrow to talk about his journey to becoming Mayor and what he hopes to achieve while in office.

Mayor Washington-Spivey got his start working in public schools and shares what it was like to work in education during COVID. His background working with youth has influenced his approach to politics, saying that he understands why young people want to see change and see it quickly. He predicts more young people running for office in the next few years, and that’s because there are plenty of young people ready for leadership. 

Something that Mayor Washington-Spivey is working towards is making La Crosse more forward-thinking. That includes creating a stronger narrative about La Crosse’s identity, from its natural beauty to city life. He’s also working to educate the public about how city governance works. 

They also discuss the political landscape of Wisconsin and how Mayor Washington-Spivey grew to feel welcome in La Crosse. Muldrow says that running for an office that a Black or queer person has never held before, means running against a history that says, “you don’t belong.” Mayor Washington-Spivey describes his constituents who tell him how important it is for them to see a gay Black man running for, and being elected to, office. For that reason, he says it feels like he represents something bigger than himself. 

Shaundel Washington-Spivey served on the La Crosse School Board before being elected as Mayor. He is a member of Tony Evers’s Advisory Council on Equity and Inclusion, serves on multiple boards and advisory committees throughout the region, and is the Executive Director of Black Leaders Acquiring Collective Knowledge (B.L.A.C.K) which offers youth and community support programs.

Featured image: remix by Sara Gabler/WORT.

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Last week, Trump signed a bill to cut over $1.1 billion dollars of federal funding to the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB). The cuts were presented as attacks on NPR and WPR stations, but community radio stations are being painfully impacted by the cuts as well. Joining our show today is Jessie Dick, station manager for WXPR in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, Karl Halbeck, the manager of WOJB community radio on the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe reservation, and Nathan Moore, manager of WTJU in Virginia, and a board member of the National Federation of Community Broadcasting. 

The conversation centered around the importance of community radio for local communities. When a station covers local topics and invites local participation, it creates a sense of belonging and in the community, and in return the community cares deeply about it. In rural areas like the Northwoods of Wisconsin, community members without internet access rely on the radio for important information.

The guests addressed the importance of keeping community radio a space where everyone can participate in important conversations, even if a lack of funding would be an opportunity to operate without government censorship. We also heard from callers asking about how the funding cuts affect music licensing, online streaming and the cultural and political impacts of the federal cuts.

WORT will lose $113,000 in funding in the next year. Local radio stations depend on community support. If you are interested in helping, you can support your local radio station or adopt a radio station.

Jessie Dick joined WXPR in 2003 and has worn many hats over the years—including Marketing Director, Development Director, and Volunteer Coordinator—before being named CEO/General Manager in 2018. She’s proud to lead a station that’s deeply rooted in the Northwoods and powered by a passionate team of staff and volunteers. Jessie believes local public radio is essential for building informed, connected, and resilient communities, and she’s especially grateful for the listeners and supporters who make that work possible. 

Karl Halbeck is the general Manager of WOJB Woodland Community Radio on the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa reservation, the first Native American station east of the Mississippi River. WOJB serves a 100 mile radius around Hayward with National Public Radio programming, local programs, educational programs, community wide radio shows, school closings, and a myriad of other essential community programs.

Nathan Moore: Since 2011, he has worked as the General Manager at WTJU 91.1 FM at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He launched and serves as staff advisor for UVA’s student-run station WXTJ 100.1 FM. He has also launched the community podcast network Virginia Audio Collective and the nonprofit organization Virginia College Radio Alliance

Featured image: Courtesy of Indra Projects via Unsplash

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On today’s two-part show, we get updates on issues facing the Indigenous peoples of India and Kashmir. Host Esty Dinur is joined by advocates Lokita Singha and Apekshita Varshney to talk about the violence being done to the Adivasi people and their mineral rich lands and by anthropologist Ather Zia who discusses the state of colonialism in Kashmir.

The Adivasi people make up about two-thirds of the population of Bastar, India. They are one of the most ancient tribal populations and they follow communitarian and sustainable practices, says Singha. They live in a highlands region covered in forests, and these mineral-rich lands are coveted by corporations and the state. Increasingly, the state is using militarized intervention to help mining companies make inroads in this region. Those who resist are being repressed, arbitrarily detained, and the state is also enacting sexual violence or killing Adivasis. Varshney says it’s important to build international awareness to pressure the Indian government to stop these acts of violence. 

In the second half of the show, Zia discusses the ongoing colonialism in Kashmir, following a deadly attack on tourists earlier this year. Zia says that in this disputed region, colonialism never ended, and that though Kashmiris have experienced some autonomy from India, they have still been seeking their own self-determination since 1947. In 2019, India eliminated much of the territorial sovereignty that existed in Kashmir and now Zia says the region is experiencing “settler colonialism on steroids.” The region is being heaviliy militarized, the environment is being destryed, and those writers who speak out are being suppressed. Zia asks, “What kind of colonial modernity have we accepted as democracy?”

Lotika Singha is a founder-member of International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India (InSAF India), a collective of diasporic Indians from across the globe. InSAF India advocates for collective academic freedoms and building global solidarities with Indian and  international peoples’ movements for radical social, economic and ecological justice.

Apekshita Varshney is a campaigner with Ekō, a global corporate accountability organization.

Ather Zia is a political anthropologist, poet, short fiction writer, and columnist. She is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Gender Studies program at the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley. Ather is the author of Resisting Disappearances: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism in Kashmir. In addition, Ather is the founder and editor of Kashmir Lit and co-founder of the Critical Kashmir Studies Collective, an interdisciplinary network of scholars focused on the Kashmir region and is the co-editor of Cultural Anthropology.

Featured image of Adivasi women dancing via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

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The new detention center in the Florida Everglades is called “Alligator Alcatraz.” Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis worked with the federal government to create the tent-based camp that can hold a projected 3,000 detained migrants at the price tag of $450 million a year. Today, host Allen Ruff is joined by journalist Joan Walsh to talk about her recent piece in The Nation, “The Abominable Sadism of Alligator Auschwitz,” in which she draws the comparison between the new camp and the Holocaust. 

The goal of “Alligator Alcatraz” is not just confinement but suffering, says Walsh. This cruelty is embedded in the Trump administration from Kristi Noem who poses like a dominatrix in front of detained men to Stephen Miller who lurks behind the scenes to get his “ruthless” ideals put into action. 

The “Alligator Alcatraz” camp is being built near an airstrip that DeSantis says will be used to increase deportations to other counties, thereby taking a playbook from the War on Terror when people were removed with no trace. Walsh’s current reporting focuses on nannies who are staying home because they’re afraid of getting picked up by ICE. There’s reason for folks to be afraid as masked agents make arrests with no accountability. 

We also hear from callers who raise issues of racism fueling ICE raids and abductions and callers who ask what happens to people once they’re taken by ICE. With the passing of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” ICE has become the number one law enforcement agency in the country.  

Joan Walsh is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, a co-producer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show, and the author of What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America. Her new book (with Nick Hanauer and Donald Cohen) is Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power and Wealth In America. Walsh is an alumna of UW-Madison and was the Campus Editor at the Daily Cardinal.

Featured image of an ICE agent in uniform from the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service.

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Today, host Ali Muldrow is joined by comedian Andrew Wegleitner to talk about how comedy is more important than ever. Wegleitner has been doing stand up for 15 years and got his start right here in Madison, WI. He’s coming back to town to record his debut comedy special on August 3 at the Bur Oak as part of Madison Comedy Week.

Wegleitner talks about how he got his start in comedy, doing stand up at The Pub and Comedy on State. He says that Madison has a very welcoming scene for new comedians. Nevertheless it’s challenging to get a room of people to laugh and to make a living doing it. Wegleitner says that comedy needs risk taking and edge, even if it’s not overtly controversial. But these days the news can feel just as much like satire as it is our reality.

They also discuss the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on the heels of Colbert’s critique of Trump and the merger between Paramount and Skydance. There may be a worry that comedy will be tamed and contained by this political moment, but Wegleitner says that comedy offers us a chance to critique those in power. 

Andrew Wegleitner (10,000 Laughs Festival, Twin Cities Funniest Person finalist) has worked with numerous legendary comics including Louie Anderson, Mary Mack, and Todd Glass. He’s headlined prominent clubs in the Midwest and Colorado such as Sisyphus, The Cellar- Fargo, and Loonees Comedy Corner. He’s performed at such reputable theaters as Dudley Riggs, Paradise Center for the Arts, and The Orpheum in Hancock, MI.  He runs a production company, Co-Dependent Comedy, which regularly headlines some of the best talent in Denver, and his show is a perennial staple of Madison Comedy Week.

Featured image: a photo of Andrew Wegleitner.

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On today’s show, guest host Dana Pellebon breaks down a piece of legislation called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act with two immigration experts, Cecilia Gillhouse and Huma Ahsan. The SAVE Act would require that voters provide proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. The purpose of this law is to prevent undocumented immigrants from voting and eliminate voter fraud.

It is already against the law for non-citizens to vote in federal and state elections and voter fraud is rare. These facts lead our guests to discuss the ideological reasons why the GOP is putting forward the SAVE Act and how it would impact voting rights across the country. There are already steep penalties for non-authorized immigrants  who vote, including being barred from becoming a permanent resident and potential deportation, says Ahsan. 

The SAVE Act would create challenges for people who are qualified to vote but who would run into trouble providing the new required documentation. If passed, the SAVE Act would require voters to present “citizenship documentation” in the form of a birth certificate or certificate of naturalization. People who were born in other countries may have trouble returning to their countries of origin to get a birth certificate for a host of reasons, says Gillhouse, from the threat of political violence to financial burdens. The SAVE Act also poses challenges for trans folk, people who change their names when they get married, folks who are born in rural communities who may not have a birth certificate, adopted children, survivors of sexual abuse, and others.

Ahsan says that it can take years to get a copy of one’s certificate of naturalization because of the backlog in the system. The SAVE Act would provide no funds to make this process easier. The SAVE Act has passed in the House and is poised to be voted on in the Senate. 

Attorney Huma Ahsan is the founder of Madison Immigration Law. Her professional career spans general immigration law, representation of minority groups, and judicial experience. Born to immigrant parents and as a first-generation Indian American, Attorney Ahsan witnessed firsthand the effects of US immigration policies. 

Cecilia Gillhouse is an immigrant from Argentina and is the owner and Chief Operating Officer of MMG Law. She has two decades of experience providing services to victims and survivors of domestic violence and sexual abuse, working with the community and providing resources to Latino families in the state, formerly directing a statewide domestic violence organization and serving on several different boards of directors for an assortment of non-profit organizations serving victims and underrepresented populations.  

Featured image of a certificate of naturalization via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). 

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“No tragedy is too great to shrug away now,” amidst our “every growing tolerance for calamity and violence,” writes Omar El Akkad in his new New York Times bestseller, One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This. On today’s show, El Akkad joins host Douglas Haynes to talk about his new memoir, which weaves the personal essay with cultural critique in order to grapple with the US’s support of Israel’s slaughter and starvation of civilians in Gaza.

The purpose of literature is to bear witness, says El Akkad, especially at a time when the world wants to turn away from the genocide in Gaza. El Akkad says that there’s no version of his new book that could sidestep his own complicity in this violence. But witness is the “tamest” possible thing, says El Akkad, in light of the anger he’s seen in response to his book, and that for him, “genocide is an absolute line.”

El Akkad takes an urgent look at the ways the media and government use language to turn people away from human suffering. He shares his frustration at Western liberal values and institutions, including the media. He describes speaking to journalists who feel limited by their outlets’ policies on language related to genocide and says that we’ve inherited a “shadow vocabulary” from the Iraq War, terms like “detainees” and “asymmetrical warfare.” Standing behind the supposed value of “neutrality” has done irreparable damage to the state of journalism, says El Akkad.

They also discuss how to imagine a better world and find ways to foster solidarity and resistance. El Akkad says that boycotts and joy are actions that the state doesn’t have a monopoly on. 

Omar El Akkad is a journalist and author of the award-winning novels American War and What Strange Paradise. One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is his first book of nonfiction. 

Featured image: cover of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.

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On today’s show, guest host Grant Foster interviews Tom Lynch, the recently retired Director of Transportation for the City of Madison. They take a deep dive into transportation policies like Vision Zero, the history of Madison’s transportation department, and what could come next for the BRT line. 

Lynch served as Madison’s Director of Transportation for several decades. He describes how his job was created in the 80s, but due to some city drama, the role was empty for 30 years. Before he retired, Lynch gave a presentation to the Madison Common Council about the history of Madison’s transportation system, from the bid to make Madison the state capital to the introduction of the automobile in Dane County. He also discusses the city’s need for parking spaces and how important it is for cities to provide multiple different modes of transportation for its population, including sidewalks and bike paths. They also discuss the relationship between transportation policy and the culture at large. 

Featured image of a Madison Metro bus via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The post The Past and Future of Madison Transportation appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Recent cuts in state and federal budgets are leaving local food banks and food assistance organizations concerned about accelerating food insecurity. On today’s show, guest host Jonathan Pollack speaks with local non-profit leaders Michelle Orge of Second Harvest, Jackie Anderson of Feeding Wisconsin, and Ellen Carlson of WayForward Resources about food insecurity in Southwest Wisconsin.

The guests describe an uptick in people accessing their services. There’s been a 13% rise in people considered food insecure in Southwest Wisconsin, says Orge. She describes how Second Harvest responded during COVID, a time when they needed so much more food than they could get access to. Even more recently, the rising housing costs in the Madison area are driving people to food banks, says Carlson, because “rent eats first.”

Cuts to food assistance programs in the federal budget are alarming to these organizations. Around 700,000 people in Wisconsin are poised to lose SNAP benefits, called the FoodShare program in Wisconsin. As people lose access to programs like this, they will have to rely more on food banks, says Anderson. Added to food insecurity are issues of childcare and the closure of rural hospitals. “Hunger makes everything harder,” says Orge. 

Feeding Wisconsin is the statewide association of Feeding America food banks, which source, warehouse, and provide food to hundreds of food pantries and other agencies across Wisconsin. WayForward Resources is an organization that creates food security and housing stability through action and advocacy in the Madison, Wisconsin area. Second Harvest of Southern Wisconsin, is a Feeding Wisconsin-affiliated food bank that serves a 16-county area across Southwest Wisconsin.

Jackie Anderson is the Executive Director of Feeding Wisconsin. She has worked in the non-profit sector for more than 25 years supporting communities and families by providing opportunities to improve overall health, support young people, and contribute to a stronger, more cohesive community for all.  

Ellen Carlson is the Executive Director of WayForward Resources. Ellen has worked at WayForward in a variety of positions since 2002 and has been Executive Director since 2017. Under her leadership, WayForward has tripled in size in an effort to meet the ever increasing demand for food supports and housing stability services.

Michelle Orge is the Executive Director of Second Harvest of Southern Wisconsin. 

Featured image of a food pantry box via USDA on Flickr. 

The post Hunger Makes Everything Harder appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Since Governor Evers signed off on the new state budget, childcare advocates have voiced alarm at the lack of support for childcare in the budget. Though the state budget allocated over $360 million to help address the childcare crisis, the organization Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN) says that “we were asking for the bare minimum, and somehow we got less.” Less than one-third of the allocated funds will go directly to keep childcare providers operating, and this funding will only last for one year. 

This is a topic we’ve been following on this program, so on today’s show, we learn about how one state made an investment in universal childcare and changed its entire economy. In 1997 in the Canadian province of Quebec, lawmakers created a universal childcare system, charging only $7/day for up to 10 hours of care plus homemade, locally sourced meals, and so much more. Journalist Isabeau Doucet writes about this program and the overwhelmingly positive results of the universal childcare system in a recent article in The Guardian. 

Quebec’s universal childcare system helped balance the state’s budget and changed the lives of many of the lower-income families who get access to it by helping families get to work and be able to pay for housing, food, etc. That meant that families weren’t relying on other social services. The number of women and single parents in the workforce skyrocketed, and the child poverty rate in Quebec is now 44% lower than all the other provinces. Doucet says that the system more than pays for itself and is now being rolled out across Canada. 

Doucet says that in the US childcare isn’t treated as a public good but as a private matter for families to figure out on their own, and there are wide swaths of childcare deserts and high prices everywhere. Republicans in Wisconsin say we can’t afford to fund childcare. And though it was once a priority of the GOP to have a balanced budget, Doucet worries there are other ideological reasons keeping Republicans from getting behind universal childcare, namely their ideology of keeping women in the home and out of the workforce. 

Isabeau Doucet is a journalist and documentary producer based in the Bay Area.

Featured image: photo of a childcare center by Gautam Arora via Unsplash. 

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On today’s show host Esty Dinur speaks again with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson about the decline of the American empire. Wilkerson says that on both the global and domestic fronts, the nation is doing very badly. 

We’re less secure and safe than we’ve ever been in a general sense. In a national security sense, we’re doing better than ever, but there’s one major exception: nuclear weapons. The US has destroyed every nuclear treaty created during the Cold War and he worries about how the nation may deploy them again as it loses power on a global scale. Wilkerson says that the US made a grave mistake by getting involved in Ukraine and Iran and in so doing forcing Russia and China together.

Internally, the nation is also in deep trouble because since 9/11 we’ve surrendered a great many of our civil liberties, and thus our democracy. He says that 9/11 was used as an opening for anti-democratic legislation and we’re “paying the piper” because the billionaires behind Trump are taking advantage. Wilkerson says the technocrats are intent on their own security and would rather see a corporate board running the country than democracy. 

They also talk about the US’s involvement in proxy wars, how Christian nationalism helps the administration “sanctify” their actions, the situation in Gaza, ICE raids, and more. 

Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired US Army Colonel who worked for the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and, after retirement from the military, for the U.S. Secretary of State. He taught national security affairs for six years at the George Washington University and for 16 years at the College of William & Mary. Today, he’s affiliated with the Eisenhower Media Network.

Featured image: “A Thing Well Begun Is Half Done” by Victor Gillan from 1899, via Wikimedia Commons.

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On today’s show, host Allen Ruff speaks with longtime friend of the show Matt Rothschild who has been sounding the alarm about Trump since his first term as president. Recently he’s had speaking engagements across Dane County to talk about the dangers of MAGA and Trumpism. 

Rothschild says he can smell a fascist a mile away, and he’s frustrated by the willful minimization and normalization of Trump and MAGA. When mainstream media outlets say that Trump doesn’t have a worldview, Rothschild offers a correction: Trump has a worldview, and it’s a racist worldview. He’s started using the word “fascist” to describe Trump and his movement because Trump has a mass base, demonizes immigrants with his slogan “mass deportation now,” and promotes ultra nationalism. 

They also talk about Trump’s attacks on the pillars of civil society (like the judiciary, press, and universities), the funding of ICE, the masculinist appeal of Trumpism, and the need for continued action like the No Kings protests.

Matt Rothschild is the former executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and was previously the senior editor of the Progressive Magazine.

Featured image: photo of Matt Rothschild and Allen Ruff courtesy of Sara Gabler/WORT.

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In the early morning of July 3, Governor Evers signed the two-year Wisconsin state budget after months of debate about funding for education, childcare, and more. The next day, President Trump signed into law the Big Beautiful Bill, which guts Medicaid and will result in the transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest Americans. At the state and national levels, the quality of our healthcare, childcare, and education system is in jeopardy, and to break down how these budgets will impact folks in Wisconsin and across the country, host Ali Muldrow is joined by State Representative Francesca Hong and Angela Lang.

They talk about the impact of the budget, including its shortcomings. Lang says she’s disappointed with the new state budget because Gov. Evers vetoed the proposal to close the Green Bay prison. Meanwhile, Wisconsin spends more money on incarceration than anything else and it seems impossible to make cuts to the prison system. There’s not enough political will to do so, says Lang.

Rep. Hong says that the current budget compromised too much to Republicans and didn’t fund education as they should have. She says that we have to think of budgets as moral documents, documents that should be representative of the needs of Wisconsinites. But the current budget gives zero new dollars to education in the state, and this is a tragedy for democracy and a missed opportunity for the state budget to provide a level of protection from the Trump budget.

They also discuss the status of the Democratic party in the state, how race and racism affect voters, how to energize folks on the Left, including supporting Democratic leaders who are fighters. As Muldrow says, “We’re on this ship together, whether it’s sinking or floating.”

Francesca Hong is a mom, service industry worker, and community organizer. Elected in 2020, she is the first Asian American legislator in the Wisconsin State Legislature, representing the 76th Assembly District in Madison. She is an original author of the Economic Justice Bill of Rights and prioritizes progressive legislation, including universal school meals, paid leave for all, and fully funded public education.

Angela Lang was born and raised in the heart of Milwaukee. She has an extensive background in community organizing. Angela has served as both an organizer and State Council Director for the Service Employees International Union, working on such campaigns as the Fight for 15. Before joining BLOC’s team as Executive Director, Angela was the Political Director with For Our Future Wisconsin.

Featured image of a person holding up a sign at a rally in front of the Milwaukee Public School Administration in 2018 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

The post State and Federal Budget Debrief with Rep. Hong and Angela Lang appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

In a September 2024 presidential election debate, Kamala Harris said, “Tim Walz and I are both gun owners.” Nationally, democrats are becoming gun owners at a higher rate than conservatives. To talk about spiking demand for gun ownership and gun education, especially among queer-centered self-defense organizations, guest host Matvei Mozhaev is joined by Youtuber, Tacticool Girlfriend.

They talk about what self defense and protection mean within marginalized communities in the US. Tacticool says that US gun culture is too driven by consumption, and not driven enough by safety, including environmental safety, and suicide prevention. And US gun culture needs to do a better job of normalizing different gun owners who aren’t the typical cisgender, heterosexual male. But we also have to be careful to not sensationalize queer people with guns. 

Instead of leaning into the power fantasy of gun ownership, Tacticool says she leans into the realism of gun ownership. That means focusing on safety and education, as well as understanding that self-defense means a lot of other things, from pepper spray to martial arts, and other non-lethal options. Tacticool says that in most cases, firearms aren’t a good option for protecting marginalized communities and that there are other things we can do to protect people, like having more affordable housing, healthcare, food, mental health support, etc.

Tacticool says that people who favor gun control are not facing the fact that guns aren’t going away. And it’s ideologically inconsistent to say that private citizens shouldn’t own guns meanwhile the state, military, and police, are allowed guns without a second thought. 

Tacticool Girlfriend is a trans woman of Afghan descent. She curates a YouTube channel about self-defense.

Featured image of a person wearing gun safety equipment via Pexels.

The post Beyond Firearms: Reimagining the Defense of Marginalized Communities appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes is joined by philosopher and writer, John Sanbonmatsu to talk about his book, The Omnivore’s Deception: What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals, and Ourselves,  published last month from NYU Press. Sanbonmatsu says that there’s a better way to be on this planet than approaching animals with dominion and violence.

Sanbonmatsu felt compelled to write this book after studying the politics of the Left and reading works like Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, in which Singer says we have to take animal suffering into account. People don’t think of our animal-food system as political, but it is, says Sanbonmatsu. When the animal-food system comes up, it’s framed as the terrors of animal agriculture from an environmentalist lens. But we kill 80 billion land animals and three trillion marine animals every year, and there’s no way to do this killing nicely.

His book riffs on the title of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, but Sanbonmatsu says “you can’t have your meat and conscience too.” Pollan created an intellectual scaffolding for food movements that were already underway: new agrarianism and organic foods. While this “new meat renaissance” hasn’t made a dent in the scale of industrial animal agriculture, it has made the meat consumer feel “conscious.”

Sanbonmatsu takes listeners through the centuries of different responses to humans’ relationship with animal life, talks about how humans developed an ethical objection to killing and eating animals, and unpacks the language people use when they describe trying to eat ethically.

John Sanbonmatsu is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, MA. He is the editor of Critical Theory and Animal Liberation and author of The Postmodern Prince: Critical Theory, Left Strategy, and the Making of a New Political Subject.

Featured image: the cover of The Omnivore’s Deception, available from NYU Press.

The post You Can’t Have Your Meat and Your Conscience Too appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Norman Stockwell sits in for Allen Ruff today to debrief with Annelle Sheline of the Quincy Institute. They talk about Trump’s decision to bomb Iran and the history of the US’s intervention in the Middle East that got us here today. 

Sheline says Israel and the US’s bombing of Iran caught Iran off guard because Trump seemed to be engaged in good-faith negotiations. The diplomatic process broke down even though Tulsi Gabbard testified that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. 

Iran was enriching uranium for civilian purposes, something it can legally do through the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But Israel has developed nuclear weapons even though it has not signed the NPT. Sheline says that the US media has tried to emphasize that we should be afraid of Iran’s nuclear program and has used some of the same rhetoric from the Iraq War to do so.

That also breakdown Trump’s relationship to Netanyahu, how US aid and contractors are contributing to violence in Israel and Iran, and how the history of US in Iran has shaped Trump’s recent actions. Sheline says she is hopeful that a generational shift is happening as people watch what Israel and the US military and aid groups are doing in Gaza.

Annelle Sheline, PhD, is a research fellow in the Middle East program. She previously served as a Foreign Affairs Officer at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor’s Office of Near Eastern Affairs (DRL/NEA), before resigning in March 2024 in protest over the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israeli military operations in Gaza.

Featured image of US and Israeli flags via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The post Middle East Expert puts US Bombing of Iran in Perspective appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

This morning the Wisconsin Supreme Court ensured access to abortion care in the state by ruling that an 1849 law banning abortion cannot be enforced. This news comes on the heels of the three-year anniversary of the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the US Supreme and in the same week as the US Congress could vote to defund Planned Parenthood. To talk about the status of reproductive rights, host Ali Muldrow is joined by Analiese Eicher of Planned Parenthood, Wisconsin. 

Eicher says that people are feeling this as a victory of reproductive freedom and human dignity. But Planned Parenthood will continue to fight to make abortion care more accessible. 

The organization will face other challenges if Congress passes the Big Beautiful Bill, which would gut Medicaid and defund Planned Parenthood. The effect would be dramatic and terrible because federally qualified health centers could not replace Planned Parenthood. We’re seeing simultaneous attacks on reproductive rights and poverty as the GOP seeks to strip Medicaid funds. And this will reduce people’s ability to get cancer screenings, contraception, and more through BadgerCare. 

Analiese Eicher works for Planned Parenthood Wisconsin and has served on the Dane County Board of Supervisors since 2018.

Featured image of an abortion rights activist via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

The post A Win for Reproductive Freedom in Wisconsin appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Many people conflate the anti-communist Red Scare of post-World War II America with the Hollywood blacklists portrayed in movies and TV shows or, particularly in Wisconsin, with McCarthyism. Today, guest host Christina Lieffring speaks with Clay Risen about his new book, Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America, in which he shows that the movement was much bigger than one industry or one man. The Red Scare was the first time there was a large-scale conspiratorial fear of the federal government such that progressive ideas became un-American.

Risen says that far-left activism has deep roots in America, even before the founding of the American Communist Party. But the communist movement took off in the 1920s and grew to its height in the 30s and 40s. Though the socialist movement was more popular, the communists drew attention because of their connection to the Soviet Union. The movement found early engagement in the Midwest among agricultural and industrial workers, and by the 30s had broadened its base to folks in cities. 

At its core, the Red Scare was a response to two ideas circulating in America; the idea of a New America, built around strong governments and social supports, embodied in the New Deal, and an isolationist, Protestant nation with limited government. They also discuss key figures in this history, from big political figures like J. Edgar Hoover and Henry Wallace to everyday folk like the antifascist Helen Reid Bryan who got caught up on the Red Scare and labor leader Harry Bridges who signed an anti-communist oath and was still kicked out of his union. 

Clay Risen, a reporter and editor at The New York Times, is the author of The Crowded Hour, a New York Times Notable Book of 2019 and a finalist for the Gilder-Lehrman Prize in Military History. He is a member of the Society of American Historians and a fellow at the Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the author of two other acclaimed books on American history, A Nation on Fire and The Bill of the Century, as well as his most recent book on McCarthyism, Red Scare. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and two young children.

Featured image: the cover of Red Scare by Clay Risen. 

The post When progressive ideas about government became anti-American appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Last week huge swaths of North America experienced record high temperatures, and the Alaskan arctic is warming three times faster than the rest of the globe. To talk about the ways that climate change is affecting rural communities in Alaska, host Douglas Haynes is joined by ProPublica and KYUK journalist, Emily Schwing, about her recent article, “Newtok, Alaska, Was Supposed to Be a Model for Climate Relocation. Here’s How It Went Wrong.”

Schwing says that there are over 140 communities in Alaska like Newtok facing coastal erosion, permafrost deterioration, and the implosion of infrastructure. Now, part of the Newtok community has been relocated to Mertarvik, but this isn’t the first time the people of Newtok have moved, and each time it hasn’t been a choice. As the Trump administration continues to cut funding that could be used to address climate change impacts in these communities it will be harder and harder to respond to the urgency and complexity of the existential crisis we face. 

When Schwing first started reporting on the relocation of the Indigenous community of Newtok, she thought it would develop into a solutions journalism story, but quickly learned that the impacts of climate change, federal bureaucracy, and infrastructure collapse were having a direct impact on the people of Newtok. The folks who live in these communities deserve to keep their sense of place, their traditional livelihoods, and outsiders shouldn’t get to decide where they can live. 

Emily Schwing has covered lands and wildlife management, natural disasters, local government and Indigenous affairs extensively for public radio stations in Alaska and beyond since 2006. Schwing has worked all over the northernmost state from the Chukchi Sea coast to the Wrangell Narrows and from the Canadian border to the far reaches of the Aleutian Chain. Her work has been published by NPR, The Washington Post and High Country News, and she was part of The New York Times’ 2021 Pulitzer Prize-winning COVID-19 tracking team.

Featured image: photo of permafrost erosion in Alaska by Benjamin Jones, USGS via Flickr.

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On today’s show, host Carlos Dávalos speaks with scholar, Danny Parker, about her on-the-ground research on unhoused folks in Madison. Often we’re presented with a very top-down picture of civic infrastructure, but Parker reports from the front lines and focuses on the lived realities of the most vulnerable in our communities.

Parker’s early ethnographic work took place in Madison. She spent years sitting on sidewalks with unhoused people, eating and going to the hospital with them, and watching how the world responded to the people she was with. Based on her comparative analysis of Madison and rural Appalachia, she says that though things aren’t perfect in Madison, she’d rather be unhoused here because at least she would have a chance.

She says that Madison officials meet regularly with outreach organizations and that those organizations hire peer advocates to build trust with people living on the street who may trust a case worker. Sometimes these processes break down, but at least they exist and there is an expectation of dialogue. Parker adds that journalists should be paying attention to issues facing unhoused folks and when they do they should give them a voice, like a recent piece in Tone Madison. 

They also talk about systemic issues like the lack of affordable housing and the criminalization of poverty. On top of these issues is societal stigma, which Parker says she saw on a daily basis. While she was in Madison she would see her colleagues at UW-Madison pass by unhoused folks on the street and not even acknowledge them. Then at a committee meeting they would announce their support of “marginalized communities.” Parker wants this kind of hypocrisy to end. She says that “everyone is connected to everyone else, and we all get hungry.”

Danny Parker is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University. Her research examines the role communication ecologies play in the reproduction of poverty and the development of political identity. She is an ethnographer who chronicles the lived experiences of extremely impoverished rural and urban communities by living among them and documenting their everyday lives.

Featured image: a view of State Street via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

The post Addressing Housing from the Ground Up appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Political geographer and activist, Zoltán Grossman joins Allen Ruff to talk about the Israel-Iran-US war. They move beyond the mainstream media narratives and sanitized versions of history used to justify the US’s military engagement in the region. Grossman reminds listeners that 1953 was the beginning of the antagonism between the US and Iran and that the oil industry has always driven the US’s involvement in the Middle East.

Grossman also describes the development of anti-Muslim sentiment in the US, especially after 1979 and how this ideology has been used to sell the public on US military intervention, including it’s support of Iraq’s invasion of Iran. 

We also hear from callers who want to know more about the US’s history in the Middle East, how history is repeating itself, how recent events might ripple around the world, and more. Grossman says we have to be able to connect the wars abroad and the wars at home, from ICE raids to the US support of Israel.

Zoltán Grossman is a professor of geography and Native American and World Indigenous Peoples studies at The Evergreen State College. He is the author of several books, most recently Unlikely Alliances: Native Nations and White Communities Join to Defend Rural Lands (University of Washington Press, 2017).

Featured image of a petrochemical plant in Asaluyeh, Iran via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

The post This War is about Oil appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Young people are too often victims of our broken criminal justice system. 1 in 14 US children either has or has had a parent behind bars. And too often their teachers, administrators, guidance counselors, and even their own friends routinely overlook or stigmatize these young people as troubled, or trouble. 

To talk about the experiences of youth impacted by the justice system, host Ali Muldrow welcomes back to the show Victor Trillo Jr. and Amy Friedman, to talk about the collection, Home and Away.

They talk about the profound hopefulness of youth artists impacted by incarceration, deportation, and detention. Their organization, PATHfinder Network, publishes a book every year, but Friedman says she’s seeing more and more participants submitting work anonymously in response to an increasingly stressful and fearful political climate. Trillo says that poetry, stories, and art are the answer to the issues we’re facing today. 

Writing is a space where young people can put big emotions, and it’s a place where they can ground themselves. That kind of self-expression serves the youth. Friedman reminds listeners that when you lock someone up, you’re locking up a whole family and disrupting a whole ecosystem. But these poems, stories, and art, also speak to the conditions of being a teenager in 2025. Trillo says he keeps doing this work because it the spirit of optimism and resilience he sees in these youth is contagious.

Amy Friedman is an author, editor, and criminal justice activist, who founded POPS the Club in 2013, as an inclusive space for youth who have been stigmatized and silenced by their experiences with the criminal justice system. Having been previously married to a man who was in prison, Amy’s stepdaughters inspired her to find a way to support youth in ways that her girls never were.

Victor Trillo, Jr. is a founding team member of The PATHfinder Club and works as the Program Manager for The PATHfinder and POPS the Club, employing his deep understanding of the impact of incarceration on individuals, first as the son of a man who was in prison throughout Victor’s childhood, and later incarcerated himself. He is a powerful advocate for children of the incarcerated.

Featured image: the cover of Home and Away.

The post Lessons from Youth Poets appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Sara Gabler speaks with Stephen Zunes and Negin Owliaei about the rapidly developing situation in Iran. On June 13 Israel launched an unprovoked attack on Tehran and only days ago President Trump ordered the bombing of three locations in Iran. Even if (as of this morning) the nations have reached a possible ceasefire, Israel and the US’s escalation of force will have long consequences for Iranian civilians and so much more. 

Zunes describes the situation and how decades of US meddling in Iran got us here. He’s confident the ceasefire will hold, but reminds listeners that the US’s actions were unnecessary in the first place. Owliaei says that the US’s actions were never about nuclear proliferation and that no country is more closely surveilled in regards to developing nuclear capability than Iran. In fact, it’s the US and Israel who are the countries with the capacity to drop nuclear bombs. Both call the US’s bombing of Iran an act of US hegemony.

They also discuss the media’s role in manufacturing consent for the US’s attacks, from calling Israel’s attack’s “preemptive” and in “self-defense” and refusing to call them unprovoked. The mainstream media is also quiet about the civilian impacts of the US’s bombing and misrepresent the targets as only nuclear sites, when government buildings, media stations, and other locations with civilian people were targeted. Owliaei urges people to pay closer attention to the influence of Christian Zionism and religious rhetoric in the US. Her recent article for Truthout analyzes the potential (or lack thereof) for legal repercussions for Trump’s actions.

Dr. Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he served as founding director of the program in Middle Eastern Studies. 

Negin Owliaei is Truthout’s editor-in-chief. An award-winning journalist, she previously worked at Al Jazeera’s flagship daily news podcast, The Take. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Featured image: the skyline of Tehran via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The post The Ongoing Violence of US Empire appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.



Every two years, Wisconsin goes through a grueling budget setting process. Last week, the GOP-led Joint Finance Committee cancelled their meeting despite the looming June 30 deadline for the next state budget. To make sense of the situation, host Douglas Haynes is joined by two veteran journalists, Jessie Opoien and JR Ross. 

Issues like childcare and education are front and center for state lawmakers and for Wisconsin residents. Opoein says that spending for the UW System is a sticking point on both sides of the aisle. The proposed $87 million cut isn’t enough for some Republicans, but any cuts are a non-starter for Governor Evers.  Ross puts the budget process in the context of larger electoral politics. As politicians prepare for next year’s midterm elections, some are wondering how they can use the state budget to defend their seats. 

They also break down the state’s lingering COVID funds, how new tax brackets will (or won’t) impact regular folks take-home pay, the challenge of addressing Medicaid, and the state’s longstanding disinvestment in higher education.  If the current budget is vetoed by Governor Evers, the state will revert to the previous budget. 

Jessie Opoien covers state government and politics for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

JR Ross is the editor of WisPolitics.com, the state’s premier political news service. He’s been covering Wisconsin politics for more than 25 years.

Featured image: photo of the Wisconsin state capital via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0). 

The post State Budget Roundtable with Jessie Opoien and JR Ross appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Esty Dinur speaks with two guests about Israel’s actions against Palestinians and now Iran. First, we’re joined by scholar Elizabeth Minnich who explains her philosophical study of banality and her new book, The Evil of Banality: On the Life and Death Importance of Thinking.

Studying under Hannah Arendt, Minnich watched the public’s confused reception of Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil.” It was hard for people to accept that mundane actions could be monstrous. So Minnich strove to expand the definition of banality.

Now, Minnich defines banality as the ordinary with the life sucked out of it, and her book lays out the ways that banality enables evil. We’re seeing this in our society as law firms take hush money from Trump, and small things like careerism and greed add up to real harm. 

They also discuss the role of education in making people critical or hateful thinkers, Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, and “enclosure of thought.” 

Next, we’re joined by Sam Husseini to discuss Israel’s attacks on Iran, nuclear contamination risks, and how Trump’s actions regarding Israel are accelerating the establishment.

Sam Husseini is an independent journalist currently writing on Substack. He has written extensively about Palestine and international law, nuclear threats, and other issues.

Elizabeth Minnich received her doctorate from the New School under the direction of Hannah Arendt. Following twenty-five years as a Core Professor in the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the Union Institute, she now divides her time between Charlotte, NC, where she is professor of moral philosophy at Queens University, and Washington, DC, where she is a Senior Scholar at the Association of American Colleges and Universities. She is the author of Transforming Knowledge, Thought Work: Thinking, Action, and the Fate of the World, and co-author of The Fox in the Henhouse: How Privatization Threatens Democracy.

Featured image: a map of Israel and Iran via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 1.0).

The post How Banality Enables Evil appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Today’s show breaks down the recent events in LA, from the growing impunity of ICE and the National Guard to the increasing authoritarianism of the Trump administration. Host Allen Ruff is joined by Schuyler Mitchell to talk about her recent piece in Truthout. 

Mitchell describes witnessing 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in LA following the murder of George Floyd. At the time, the Governor and Mayor authorized the deployment of National Guard troops, and  these troops, along with local law enforcement, responded to peaceful protesters with force. Since then, the city has paid out more than $12 million in compensation for LAPD abuses, and there are tens of millions of dollars in liability claims still pending. Mitchell compares this moment to the recent deployment of federal troops to LA , and how law enforcement has violently responded to peaceful anti-ICE protests. 

She says that the media spectacle and the police’s militarized, aggressive force are only making violence against protesters worse. She’s noticed how mainstream media makes a spectacle out of the protests despite the fact that protest have been peaceful. She refuses to accept the Right’s framing of property damage as violence. They also discuss the showdown between Governor Newsom and Trump, the attacks on the press, the problem of phrases like “less legal,” and the language of Project Esther. 

Schuyler Mitchell is a Brooklyn-based journalist, originally from North Carolina. Her freelance reporting has appeared in The Intercept, The Baffler, Labor Notes, and she is currently a political columnist at Truthout.

Featured image of Black Lives Matter protest in Oakland in 2020 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0). 

The post Analyzing the LA protests with Truthout reporter Schuyler Mitchell appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Ali Muldrow celebrates Pride month with two guests in the studio: Alder Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford and Alder Sean O’Brian, who both serve Madison’s east side. They highlight the important work of LGBTQ+ leaders at a time when attacks on queer and trans folks are being promoted by the Trump administration. 

Muldrow opens the show by talking about how in this political climate, Pride feels full of conflicting emotions. It calls for people’s most exuberant selves, but there’s no crying in glitter. Martinez-Rutherford says there’s a lot of crying in Pride, and it’s possible to have tears and sparkle. 

O’Brian says that at a time when everything is on fire, it can feel tangible to work on the Common Council and meet the needs of his constituents. And Martinez-Rutherford feels gratitude to know that her constituents wanted her back in this role.

They also discuss what it’s like to be an elected official, what it means to balance meeting people where they’re at or pushing back, what people need from Democrats in office, the gravity of facing threats to their safety as anti-trans violence is on the rise, and why they love Madison.

Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford is a long time comedian and activist. Making history as the first openly transgender woman on the Madison, WI Common Council, her work centers around housing and advocating for the most vulnerable.

Sean O’Brien is the Policy and Advocacy Director at Fair Wisconsin, the state’s only LGBTQ+ civil rights and political advocacy organization. He was elected to his first term on the Common Council this Spring.

Featured image of Alder Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford, Alder Sean O’Brian, and Ali Muldrow. Image courtesy of Sara Gabler/WORT.

The post Adding Tears to the Sparkle of Pride appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, guest host Sabrina Madison speaks with two local leaders, Justice Castañeda and Rosa Thompson, about an issue that many folks overlook: the lack of teen-centered spaces in Dane County, especially for Black youth. They talk about what would be possible if youth were centered in the design and programming of public spaces. Because we close schools during the summer and community centers don’t stay open late, youth don’t have many places to go. What they need are spaces where they feel safe, that have robust programming, mentorship, and care for teens and their families. 

For Thompson, many youth spaces fail to serve the youth they have in mind because they don’t bring in youth and their families to co-create the spaces from the ground up. She says that youth want to be involved in the design of programs and centers so that they can feel ownership over them and want to take part.

Unfortunately many public spaces–like malls and schools–are places where Black youth are policed. They discuss how Black youth are overrepresented in arrests, citations, and juvenile court referrals. When Black and brown youth leave their neighborhoods, they’re at an increased risk of police interaction, says Castañeda. 

In Madison, youth of color live in “peripheralized enclaves of housing” which are far from their schools and from economic centers where they might go for recreation and work. A healthy neighborhood is a nascent organization, where people co-create their space, and supervise each other, says Castañeda. He proposes that more planning teams take into consideration the demographics of Madison’s public schools when making decisions about what the city needs.

Rosa Thompson is the Founder and Executive Director of Black Girl Magic Educational Services. Rosa is a proud product of Madison’s public schools and a graduate of Clark Atlanta University. She also earned her master’s at UW–Madison. Back in 2017, she co-created the Black Girl Magic Conference to celebrate Black girls across the county and bring them together to learn from each other. Through her work, Rosa’s created powerful spaces where Black girls can feel seen, be supported, and connect with Black women leaders in our community—all through programs rooted in identity, creativity, and joy.

Justice Castañeda is a Madison native and Executive Director of CommonWealth Development. Justice is a Marine Corps veteran, an educator, and a community development leader whose work focuses on the deep connections between housing, economic opportunity, and community violence—especially how those things impact young people who’ve experienced trauma. He earned his Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from UW–Madison, and his research is all about making our neighborhoods healthier, safer, and more equitable. Justice brings both lived experience and serious academic work to the table—with degrees from UC San Diego, Stanford, and MIT.

Featured image of State Street in the spring via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

The post Youth-Centered Spaces Are Missing in Madison appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

The Annual Nourishing Minds, Sustaining Futures Summit will take place this Wednesday, June 18. Now, in its third year, the program aims to foster food justice and food education in schools and is open to the public. Host Douglas Haynes speaks with three of the organizers–Allison Pfaff Harris, Sonya Sankaran, and Kathy Oker–about the event’s speakers, workshops, and the importance of environmental education. 

There’s a lack of equity in outdoor education and within outdoor spaces more generally, says Oker. She wants to help all people repair their relationship with the natural world, and that means changing the culture at local schools so that more administrators can help teachers get their students outside for class. Outdoor education can improve the quality of students’ overall education and foster the idea that the world is our classroom. In that light, nature ceases to be a cute add-on to education.

Sankaran says nature-based art projects awaken students sensory systems. She leads projects in ephemeral art, like weaving with milkweed and goldenrod. For Sankaran, art is just a different, non-verbal mode of learning and storytelling.

Pfaff Harris describes the history of how REAP developed a grant-funded program to support high-school educators and students. She says that farm-to-school can be practiced by schools, caregivers, and beyond. And in light of federal cuts to farm to school programs, she says it’s more important than ever to be making the connection between food and climate justice. 

Allison Pfaff Harris is the Farm to School Director at REAP Food Group.  

Sonya Sankaran is an artist, ecologist, and educator focused on the relationship between nature and health. 

Kathy Oker is a progressive educator who has worked at Wingra School for 25 years.

Featured image of the banner for the Nourishing Minds, Sustaining Futures Summit. 

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Today’s guests give an on-the-ground perspective on the ongoing ICE raids in Los Angeles. Bill Gallegos and Aquilina Soriano Versoza highlight the work of immigrant rights activists and protesters who have taken to the streets to oppose Trump’s sending of 200 National Guard soldiers and 700 Marines to LA. 

Soriano Versoza describes how the raids are being executed without warrants and how ICE is showing up in places where they know immigrants live and work and making arrests without probable cause. As of Wednesday, there were over 300 confirmed disappearances, and legal advocates are being denied requests to contact missing persons. That means that some people who have been abducted aren’t locatable. 

Gallegos says that none of this should catch us by surprise. Trump has been very clear about his goal to launch an ethnic cleansing campaign which has now taken the form of a domestic military campaign as troops with assault rifles enter LA and tanks fill the port. The message the administration is sending is bigger than undocumented immigrants, says Gallego. The message is “don’t stand up to this neofascist administration, or this could happen to you; better not try to organize a cooperative or push for honest history curriculum, you better step back.” Soriano Versoza adds that people in LA know that they’re being treated as the test case for how far the federal government can go in criminalizing immigrants. 

They also discuss the growing number of women leaders in the resistance movement, many of whom are also leading the labor movement, how the wealth of LA is built on the backs of black and brown communities who don’t get to share in the city’s wealth, and how the fight for immigrants’ rights overlaps with support for Palestinians. 

Bill Gallegos lives in Los Angeles and is a member of the Mexico Solidarity Project and a longtime Chicano Liberation and environmental justice activist.   He is the author of “The Historical and Political Significance of the US Annexation of Mexico’s Northern Territories”, and “The Sunbelt Strategy and Chicano Liberation”.

Aquilina Soriano Versoza is Executive Director of the Pilipino Workers Center of Southern California, a nonprofit serving and organizing the low-wage Pilipino immigrant community in Los Angeles. Aquilina is a leader in the domestic worker movement in California and nationally through policy, worker organizing, workforce development and worker-owned cooperative strategies. She is Board Chair of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, a fellow at Rutgers University for the Build the Base program of the Workplace Justice Lab, a member of the LA Rapid Response Network, a Commissioner on the LA County Commission for Women, and a co-founder of COURAGE/Vivid Life Homecare worker-owned cooperative agency.

Featured image of the skyline of Los Angeles via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The post LA Stands Up for Immigrants’ Rights appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s program, Allen Ruff speaks with friend of the show, Mouin Rabbani, about Yasser Abu Shabab, the continuing genocide in Gaza, the chaos created by US-backed aid organizations, and Israel’s military and political interventions in surrounding states like Syria, Yemen, and Iran.

Rabbani describes how the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a joint US-Israel project, is weaponizing aid in order to gain control over the distribution of supplies. The GHF’s former leader, Jake Wood, was an exorbitantly paid US mercenary and well known Christian Zionist, resigned last month saying the organization couldn’t meet humanitarian standards.

Meanwhile, this week Israel abducted European aid workers and activists on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Rabbani says that European leaders have been tepid in their response, and the media is too focused on criticizing the courageous activities instead of focusing on the issue of Israel’s actions. He adds that Israel’s international immunity is growing, and is a privilege granted by Israel’s international sponsors and allies who are providing Israel with diplomatic cover. 

Mouin Rabbani is an expert on Palestinian affairs, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the contemporary Middle East. He’s currently a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies. Rabbani is co-editor of the e-magazine Jadaliyya and a Contributing Editor to the Middle East Report. He’s written widely and provided expert analysis to a variety of international and US national press, including Al-Jazeera, The Nation, and Democracy Now!.

Featured image of humanitarian cargo being unloaded in Gaza via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

The post How Aid is Being Weaponized in Gaza appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Matvei Mozhaev speaks with Maria Foscarinis, a principal architect of the 1987 McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, the first major piece of federal legislation to address homelessness. They discuss her recent book, And Housing for All: The Fight to End Homelessness in America, which details the impact of homelessness on people’s lives and argues that ending homelessness in the US requires the recognition of housing as a basic human right. 

Foscarinis discusses the last four decades of the homeless crisis in the US. She started her career when Regan came to office, slashed housing services, and triggered the crisis of homelessness. Since then, the crisis has only worsened and homelessness has become more normalized. However, Foscarinis says that people are getting better at connecting homelessness with the crisis of affordable housing in the country. 

In her book, Foscarinis interweaves the stories of people experiencing homelessness with policy analysis, attempting to balance the personal narratives with the structural story of policy failures. Mozhaev introduces listeners to Brian Deschane who was offered housing the day after he passed away this Spring. Brian was one of over a thousand Madisonians currently experiencing homelessness. Over 50% of unhoused people in Dane County are people of color, with every 1 out of 100 Black people in Dane County currently homeless. Dane County has struggled to mitigate homelessness, with only a 5% per capita decrease since 2015.

Since the 2024 decision by the Supreme Court that cities can criminalize homelessness, over 150 anti-homeless bills passed across the country. In response to a decade of efforts to criminalize homelessness, Foscarinis describes the initiative called “Housing not Handcuffs” that fights against criminalization and for housing. And as cities also sidestep housing solutions for “sanctioned encampments” and “safe parking lots,” Foscarinis reminds listeners that everyone wants “a safe, decent, affordable home for everyone.”

Maria Foscarinis is a lawyer and principal architect for the 1987 McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, the first major federal legislation to address homelessness. In 1989, she founded the National Homelessness Law Center to help ensure that federal legislation would be properly implemented. 

Featured image of And Housing for All: The Fight to End Homelessness in America, published by Prometheus Books. 

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On today’s show, host Greg Michaud interviews Joe Grande, the Water Resources Manager at Madison Water Utility. They discuss what’s in Madison’s drinking water, how consumers can have confidence in their tap water and stop buying bottled water, and what Madison Water Utility does to determine if water is meeting standards, as is disclosed in the recent Annual Drinking Water Quality Report. 

Grande describes how Madisonians get their tap water, which typically is sourced from 1-3 of Madison’s 20 wells. To produce their annual report, the Utility samples roughly 27,000 times over the course of a year. Online, you can type in your address and learn more about your water.

Two contaminants that Madison Water Utility is tracking are sodium and PFAS. Grande says they’re seeing high levels of sodium, some of over 60 milligrams per liter, which is over 10 times the amount that would normally be found in groundwater. These higher levels are coming from road salt applications. Grade adds that a new PFAS removal system will come on line for well 15, meaning it will again be operational by the end of summer. 

Joe Grande is the Water Resources Manager for Madison Water Utility. He is responsible for determining if the water complies with drinking water standards before it leaves the Utility and reaches the user. 

Featured image of a water droplet via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

The post What’s in Madison’s Water? appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes unpacks the future of AI in the state of Wisconsin. He’s in conversation with Brett Korte who describes why big tech companies are looking to Wisconsin as the future home of their data centers. Wisconsin happens to be water rich, and these data centers require water. But Korte says that Great Lakes water is governed by compacts with lots of stakeholders, making water harder to access. Korte adds that data centers require rezoning, so there’s room for community action. Nevertheless, there’s been widespread support for these centers across the political spectrum. 

Lorena Jaume-Palasí adds a European perspective on the issue, saying that these projects require large-scale logistical support, usually taken up by governments. Jaume-Palasí notes that data centers can’t use wastewater or sea water. They need potable water for cooling and that the water ultimately is highly treated with chemicals and therefore difficult to recycle. She adds that tech companies haven’t been planning for global warming and that AI companies are not considering power and water as limited resources as they build out their next generation of software. 

They also discuss nuclear energy projects, natural gas plants, and Renewable Energy Credits; but even in a world of new and unique energy demands, utilities need to rethink their approaches to serving all the load that comes to them.

Brett Korte is a Staff Attorney at Clean Wisconsin. His work focuses on air, climate, and energy issues impacting Wisconsin’s communities and environment. He works closely with the organization’s policy, science, and communications experts to advocate for healthy air, climate mitigation, and a just transition to renewable energy.

Lorena Jaume-Palasí is the Founder and Executive Director of The Ethical Tech Society, a fact- and theory-based non-profit organisation focused on the social relevance of automation and digitisation processes. Her work centres on ethics and legal philosophy, particularly in the context of artificial intelligence.

Featured image of a data center from 2013 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The post AI Data Centers are Coming to Wisconsin appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, economist Richard D. Wolff joins host Esty Dinur to talk about the state of the American empire and the state of independent media. We’re also joined in the studio by Norman Stockwell who reiterates that funding independent media is as important as ever in light of potential cuts to the Corporation of Public Broadcasting. Wolff says that we’re living through the decline of the American Empire and that decline is gathering speed. He says that we can’t accept that what has happened to every other empire won’t happen here.

Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the New School University, New York City. Wolff is the co-founder of Democracy at Work and host of their nationally syndicated show “Economic Update.” His most recent book is Understanding Capitalism.

Featured image: photo of Richard D. Wolff from 2025 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).

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Today we turn the tables; Allen Ruff sits in the guest seat to talk about his life and times. Ruff has been hosting the show for over 20 years and logged over 1000 hours of tape over that time, many of which you can find on the WORT website. Guest host, Bert Zipperer, interviews Ruff about what brought him to Madison, how he developed his subversive analysis, and the early days of WORT. 

In this rare interview, Ruff opens up about how his youth amidst working class radicals in New Haven and later education at American University and UW-Madison developed his critical thinking. Ruff says he learned the intellectual tools to interrogate cold war liberalism from his PhD studies. He says that traveling the world, including to Israel, “stripped away” the myth of Israel as a nation by seeing the ethnic and class differences there. 

Ruff hitchhiked to Madison in January of 1974 and it was the coldest place he’d ever been. He immediately noticed a movement culture here, influenced by the Civil Rights, anti-war, and feminist movements. He found WORT and other local institutions to be paragons of how to build a new society.

We also hear from listeners who share their anecdotes about the station, memorable moments with Ruff, the history of Rainbow Bookstore, and more. Ruff says that he finds hope in friendship and comradeship, that “true community is a subversive thing” because under capitalism people are atomized into individual consumer parts. 

Featured image of Allen Ruff and Bert Zipperer in the WORT studio. Photo courtesy of Sara Gabler/WORT.

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On today’s show, guest host Yuri Rashkin is joined by independent journalist, Jonathan Fink. These two popular YouTubers of the Rashkin Report and the Silicon Curtain (respectively) break down the recent development in the war in Ukraine and champion the work of independent media on the increasingly politicized topic of Ukraine.

They discuss Ukraine’s recent drone strike on Russian aircraft and how the world is starting to see that Ukraine has more cards in its hands. Fink calls this an “inflection” moment because Ukraine is acting from a position of strength and innovation in destroying Russia’s tools of aggression.

Rashkin and Fink also discuss the environmental impacts of war on the land of Ukraine. From heavy metals, toxins, mines, and fiber optic cables, cleaning up the land will be an immense task. Rashkin describes that during a recent trip to Ukraine, he saw multiple signs warning people not to leave the road because there could be mines in the surrounding fields.

War is fought with artillery and with information. Rashkin and Fink elaborate on their efforts to “peddle truth,” as Fink says, in the face of the very profitable world of misinformation and lies common to corporate media. This leads them to unpack the narrative that Ukraine can’t make it without the US’s aid. Fink says we’d be better off aligning with the idea that Ukraine can and will win, and that he believes this is true after he observed everyday acts of resistance on a recent trip to the front lines, where he says “life is lived on the edge of freedom.”

Jonathan Fink is an independent journalist and the host of the Silicon Curtain podcast, a channel about propaganda, digital disinformation, politics, corruption, hybrid warfare, weaponized conspiracy theories, echo chambers, and digital dystopias.

Featured image of a wheat field in Ukraine via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The post Life Lived on the Edge of Freedom appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Sara Gabler speaks with sociologist Dr. Ruth Braunstein about money and morality. They discuss her new book, My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America, which was published on April 15, or Tax Day–an auspicious day that Braunstein calls an American “ritual.” 

Braunstein says that tax paying is the most significant way that everyday people interact with the federal government. And people invest a lot of symbolic value (in addition to material value) in the act of tax paying. Groups like war tax resisters and anti-abortion activists resist paying taxes because they understand the use of their tax dollars to be profane and out of line with their moral values. But the federal government has largely accommodated the concerns of the antiabortion activists.

They also talk about the idea of a “moral” budget and the long line of social justice advocates that have tried to push for the federal government to address inequality through its budgeting process. As DOGE under the leadership of Elon Musk has been slashing federal agencies and the Republican’s reconciliation bill is poised to deliver tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy, they also discuss where our tax dollars are being put to use these days. Meanwhile a new wave of war tax resisters like Taxpayers Against Genocide is growing in opposition to the US’s funding of genocide in Gaza.

Braunstein asks listeners to consider what services they’re proud that their tax dollars make possible, like public media, public schools, the National Weather Service, National Institutes of Health, libraries, and so much more. 

Ruth Braunstein is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut, where she leads the Meanings of Democracy Lab. Her new book, My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America, delves into how paying taxes became a moral battleground in public life. She’s also the host of When The Wolves Came: Evangelicals Resisting Extremism, a new documentary podcast spotlighting evangelical leaders who are resisting political extremism in their church and the country.

Featured image of the cover of My Tax Dollars, published by Princeton University Press.

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In Wisconsin we don’t have a shortage of beavers, despite over hunting and over trapping in the nineteenth century. But their resurgence isn’t without friction, especially as development encroaches on their environments. On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes is joined by journalist Bennet Goldstein whose recent reporting covers the ways that people are living with beavers and learning how to mitigate floods and drought from them.

Goldstein describes how human-built dams were constructed around Wisconsin in the early twentieth century to mitigate floods in the very hilly Driftless region. An increasing number of these earthen dams are failing. In lieu of federal funding support, local municipalities are stepping in and coming up with creative solutions to severe storm events, using beaver-inspired methods. 

Goldstein’s reporting brings to light the “symbiotic relationships” that are being developed, including mock beaver dams. This nature-based solution can keep water in the watershed, refill aquifers, and purify waterways, all of which is crucial for restoring watersheds. 

They also talk about urban beaver sightings and how “beaver believers” and wildlife management staff approach the relationship between humans and beavers. And they end the show talking about the importance of solutions journalism and the challenges of photographing beavers.

Bennet Goldstein reports on water and agriculture at Wisconsin Watch and serves on the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, a collaborative reporting network across the Basin. Before this, Goldstein was on the breaking news team at the Omaha World-Herald in Nebraska. He has spent most of his career at daily papers in Iowa, including the Dubuque Telegraph Herald.

Featured image of a beaver in the Wisconsin Mammals exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum in Milwaukee via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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On today’s show, host Esty Dinur is joined by two representatives from Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) to talk about the Point Beach Nuclear Reactor in Two Rivers, Wisconsin on Lake Michigan. Amy Schulz and Alfred Meyer discuss the potential relicensing of this power plant despite the reactor being past its lifespan and how to oppose this relicensing. 

Meyer is concerned that the regulatory studies done on nuclear plants don’t account for the effects of climate change on these reactors. Meanwhile the Trump administration last week issued four executive orders that would remove regulatory measures. Meyer says that the goal of the US’s current push for more nuclear energy is to compete with Russia and China, and nuclear power is being called an “essential enabler” of national security.

Schulz describes the effects of the Point Beach Plant on the surrounding environment, saying that the reactor takes in 950 million gallons of water a day from the lake and returns that water at a warmer temperature. Schulz worries that the rising lake temperatures from climate change in combination with the higher temperatures from the discharge will increase the growth of blue-green algae and other microorganisms. Meyer says that people around the site are also affected by radiation, and this hasn’t been sufficiently studied by the NRC. 

Amy Schulz is a retired Registered Nurse and has served as president of Physicians , Health Professionals and Concerned Citizens for Social Responsibility Wisconsin (PSR WI) for over 20 years.  In addition to her work with PSR WI., Amy volunteers with Journey Mental Health and with Luke House Community Meals program.

Alfred Meyer is a social activist who serves on the boards of directors of Physicians for Social Responsibility – Wisconsin (PSR-WI) and Physicians for Social Responsibility – New York (PSR-NY).  Mr. Meyer’s current focus is on how civilian nuclear power is an essential enabler of nuclear weapons and the nuclear navy with which to deliver them.  He has previously worked with non-governmental organizations to assist communities recovering from the Chernobyl and the Fukushima nuclear catastrophes. He co-authored a 2012 PSR/IPPNW critique of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) report on the health effects of the radioactive releases from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors. He also worked as Program Director for the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability in Washington, DC.

Featured image of the Point Beach Nuclear Plant from 1973 via Wikimedia Commons.

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On today’s show, host Allen Ruff speaks with three solidarity activists who recently returned from Cuba as part of a delegation to Santiago de Cuba called Levantate por Cuba. For decades, Cuba has been the target of a vindictive blockade, used as a punishment of the island’s people because they dared seize their own history and break free of neocolonialism from Washington DC and across the hemisphere. 

Jordan Muhammad is a recent graduate, activist, organizer, and substitute teacher based in Chicago. On the solidarity trip Muhammad spoke with many people representing the diversity of the community of La Magdalena, from a sports coach to a hairdresser and farmer. 

Neal Resnikoff is a longtime movement veteran with 70 years experience as an activist in New York City, Madison, and Chicago. He describes how he was a graduate student in Madison when Fidel Castro first rose to power and how he supported getting medical supplies and food into the country. Now, in addition to the blockade, Cubans face a lack of electricity, and electricity is rationed during the day.

Resnikoff and Muhammad discuss the anti-racist curriculum taught throughout Cuba, and how the country addresses systemic and ideological racism. They’re joined by Dr. Howard Ehrman, formerly Chicago Assistant Health Commissioner, and University of Illinois Assistant Professor of Family Medicine and Public Heath, who also describes the experience of participating in this year’s May Day parade. Ehrman says that though the Left has shrunk over the last 50 years, he’s seeing a resurgence in support for Cuba, and activists shifting to become younger and more racially and ethnically diverse. 

They also discuss how the Trump administration (and other US presidents) has addressed Cuba, how Cuba fared during the pandemic, and much more. 

Featured image: The Cuba State Capitol (El Capitolio) in Havana via WIkimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The post An Update from Cuba appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

A few weeks ago, host Ali Muldrow spoke with State Senator Kelda Roys about the housing crisis in Madison and Dane County. As the average price of a home has soared to nearly half a million dollars, the number of kids experiencing homelessness in the city is also growing. Today we’re picking up that theme with two guests from local homeless services agencies: Karla Thennes of Porchlight and Jen Ripp of Briarpatch Youth Services.

From her over thirty years at Porchlight, Thennes describes how accessible housing has decreased over the years and the number of people accessing the men’s shelter has exponentially increased. Among other services, Porchlight offers permanent and affordable units, and currently there’s a two year waiting period for applicants to get into their Brooks Street location. 

Ripp describes the challenges that LGBTQ youth face as they try to navigate transitioning into adulthood meanwhile trying to find stable housing. She also explains how she copes with serving this vulnerable population.

We also hear from callers with questions about public housing and federal funding cuts. And today’s guests demonstrate how housing insecurity is compounded by other vulnerabilities, like food insecurity, lack of access to healthcare, and the criminalization of being unhoused.

Karla Thennes is the Executive Director for Porchlight. She serves on the board of directors of Goodwill of South-Central Wisconsin and Downtown Madison, Inc., a member of the United Way of Dane County’s Affordable Housing Fund Committee, an active member of the Downtown Rotary, and the recipient of the Unsung Heroine Award from NAMI.

Jennifer Ripp is a Program Director  at Briarpatch Youth Services with 22 years of experience in the field Social Work, supporting youth and families. She specializes in supporting youth that have experienced involvement in the Youth Justice System and youth experiencing homelessness. Outside of work, she is passionate about community involvement and spending time with family and friends.

Featured image: a technical drawing of a social housing project via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). 

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 In 2023, wellness was a $6.3 trillion dollar industry, it’s also notoriously riddled with grifts and scams. As online  wellness influencers drive the anti vax movement, white Christian nationalists and the Make America Healthy Again movement are transforming body purity into body fascism. On today’s show, host Richelle Wilson is joined by journalist Amy Larocca to talk about the world of wellness and her new book, How to Be Well: Navigating Our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure at a Time.

Larocca started tracing the emergence of our current wellness movement when she noticed the marketing techniques used for luxury products were being used for health products. This was also at a time when healthcare was becoming less and less accessible. Women (especially) have been sold lotions and potions long before, which leads Larocca to say that the beauty standards haven’t changed but the methods and products being sold to them have. Our current wellness moment is only a veneer that covers up the same toxic world of weight loss and thinness. Even the shift to body positivity melted away with the emergence of Ozempic and “the opportunity to be thin on demand.” But it’s hard to escape the promises of “feeling better” and glowing up.

They also discuss the cruel ways that the wellness industry steps in to fill the gaps in mainstream healthcare that leaves so many women and chronically ill people behind. Wellness has also become a kind of secular gospel, expressed through ecstatic movement in CrossFit boxes and SoulCycle studios. And in the US the world of wellness is deeply enshrined in political life with the rise of MAHA. 

Amy Larocca is an award-winning American journalist. She spent 20 years working at New York magazine as both Fashion Director and Editor at Large. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Vogue, Town & Country and the London Review of Books, among others. She lives with her family in New York and North London.

Featured image: the cover of How to Be Well.

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On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes is joined by journalist Molly Parker to talk about the erosion of educational access in rural areas, the value of regional universities, and Parker’s recent article for ProPublica, “A University, a Rural Town and Their Fight to Survive Trump’s War on Higher Education.”

Parker describes her experience of going to college at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale and how this was an adventure for her as a young person from a rural environment. Schools like SIU are affordable and allow students to be closer to family. They also drive up economic growth, and as regional schools contract, so too do the small communities around them. Both students and surrounding communities benefit from arts programming and sports events. Parker says that schools like SIU are resources for curious students no matter how they rank in their high school class. 

Parker traces the threats that the Trump administration poses to higher education overall, including to international students, high-level research, and elimination of DEI programs and scholarships that will hurt many students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. She also describes how interrelated education is with other issues that she covers in her journalism.

Molly Parker is a ProPublica distinguished fellow, reporter for Capital News Illinois, and Assistant Professor of Journalism at Southern Illinois University.

Featured image: a postcard of SIU, Carbondale from 1910 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The post The Crises of Regional Colleges and Universities appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Esty Dinur is joined by two legal experts from Earthjustice–Andre Segura and Stefanie Tsosie–to talk about the Trump administration’s attacks on the environment. 

They discuss the reconciliation bill that was passed yesterday and what this billionaire’s bill will mean for the environment. Segura says that this bill is a huge giveaway to the oil and gas industry and will make it easier to drill and transport oil and gas, impacting ecosystems the world over. Increased drilling in the Alaskan Arctic, Gulf of Mexico, and beyond will further exacerbate the climate crisis. 

Tsosie says that this bill is just a continuation of what has been an ongoing onslaught on the environment, that includes issues of pipelines like Line 5 in Wisconsin. She debunks the myth that the US is experiencing an energy emergency–an argument commonly made by conservatives to support their drilling projects. Meanwhile the administration is cancelling clean energy projects left and right. Tsosie says that “you can’t put the oil back in the pipeline.”

Andre Segura is a Vice President of Litigation for Earthjustice and is based in Houston, Texas. Andre has been at the front lines of some of the most significant battles for civil rights and racial justice across the country. 

Stefanie Tsosie is a member of the Navajo Nation and a Senior Attorney in the Earthjustice Tribal Partnerships Program based in Seattle, WA.  Stefanie continues to litigate on behalf of tribal clients, most recently the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in their fight against the Line 5 Pipeline, and works to develop partnerships with tribal clients across the country.

Featured image by Simon Ingram via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

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On today’s show, social critic Henry Giroux discusses what he calls the “politics of cleansing,” the multi-pronged offensive currently being waged against civil liberties, dissent, and ultimately democracy by “American-style fascism.” He says that cleansing means to purify in the service of domination. And in his recent article in CounterPunch he seeks a language that is comprehensive enough to describe Trump’s assault on democracy. 

From religious fundamentalism, to educational repression, the imposition of ideological conformity, and attacks on DEI, we’re watching racial cleansing unfold. That’s coupled with the hollowing out of government and the revising of history.

Giroux says that over the years, the Right has learned to appropriate the language of the Left. Words like freedom, that were once emancipatory are now tools of oppression. Freedom becomes the freedom to control the economic system and the freedom to crush dissent. The Right uses the language of dehumanization and brutality, and they’re making a world where people are disappeared. In addition to direct action, we need to reinvigorate the power of civic responsibility and civic courage. 

Henry Giroux is an internationally renowned writer and cultural critic who has authored or co-authored over 65 books. He is McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest and the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy.

Featured image: illustration of Henry Giroux by Jared Rodriguez / Truthout via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

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Continuing our focus on the arts as an antidote in times of political turmoil, today we’re joined by local poet Nate Marshall to talk about his most recent collection, Finna. His poems consider the brevity and disposability of Black lives, question how gendered language is related to violence, and explore the vastness of Black vernacular.

Marshall and Muldrow discuss the weight of writing about challenging moments in history. He says he remains curious about power, language, and masculinity. But too often readers have been primed to expect racialized suffering in Black American literature. And readers too often get caught in the authorial fallacy, that the speaker of a poem is the author. Marshall cautions against flatting Black writing and Black experience. He talks about the human condition being layered, complex, and rich. Muldrow says that writers describe suffering so that the reader can see the launching pad for their resistance. 

They also talk about the labor of writing, their educational opportunities, and the role of the poet in times of political turmoil. Marshall says that his role doesn’t change according to the times because we’re always in a state of turmoil. Regardless, the role of the artist is to sing, he says. Marshall also reads from one of his new, unpublished poems. 

Nate Marshall is an award-winning author and editor from the South Side of Chicago. His most recent book, Finna, was recognized as one of the best books of 2020 by NPR and The New York Public Library. He is an assistant professor in the creative writing program at The University of Wisconsin and lives in Madison, WI with his wife, the writer Alison C. Rollins, and their very cute daughter.

Featured image: the cover of Finna.

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On today’s show we’re rebroadcasting an interview from 2019 in which outgoing News Director Chali Pittman interviewed Ada Deer, the late Native American social worker, activist, professor, lobbyist, and author. They talk about Deer’s life, work, and American Indian history. 

Deer grew up on the Menominee Reservation and graduated from UW–Madison with a degree in social work. She later taught courses that fused Indian history and social work. She also served as Assistant Secretary of the US Department of the Interior as the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and was the first woman to fill this position. In 1992, she was the first Native American woman to run for Congress in 1992 and also ran for Wisconsin Secretary of State.

Deer’s memoir, Making a Difference: My Fight for Native Rights and Social Justice, was published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2019. 

Featured image: cover of Ada Deer’s memoir, Making a Difference. 

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On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes speaks with Dr. Michelle Robinson about the Madison Forward Fund 2.0, which was recently unveiled by the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness. The guaranteed income program will focus on maternal-child health and support 42 families, each getting $500 a month for 12 months. This program builds off of the Madison Forward Fund that ran from 2022 to 2023. 

Robinson provides insightful context on the history of income inequality, the interacting realities of racial and gender-based inequity, and the fact that there is precedent for these kinds of programs in our existing public policy. 

Our economic system is designed to maintain structural unemployment in order to keep wages and inflation stable. But what is our collective responsibility to the folks who get left behind, asks Robinson. That’s where guaranteed income programs come in. GI programs are regular, unconditional cash payments made to a targeted group, usually the most economically vulnerable. Participants use the funds to buy groceries, pay off debt, and close rent gaps. These programs also acknowledge the domestic labor that happens outside of formal employment and the dignity of people who cannot work. 

Robinson frames the problem of income inequality as a matter of dignity. At a time when poverty and wealth disparities are growing, a smaller and smaller number of people are able to afford ends meet. In light of the nearly 60% of the US population who live at or near poverty including 21.5% of people in Dane County, we need social and economic policy that is rooted in freedom, dignity, and care, says Robinson. Farm subsidies, employment tax credits, and tax breaks to corporations are all examples of existing guaranteed income policies. The issue is who is perceived as deserving of economic support. 

Dr. Michelle Robinson serves as Chief Programs and Partnerships Officer at the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness. In this role, she leads the organization’s health equity leadership development, policy and advocacy, environmental justice, and maternal-child health initiatives. She also directs the Madison Forward Fund 2.0, a guaranteed income program, and oversees evaluation, measurement, and impact efforts across FFBWW’s portfolio. Dr. Robinson holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin. For over a decade, she has advanced research, policy, and advocacy on cash assistance programs, including guaranteed income, earned income tax credits, and child savings accounts.

Featured image: a graph of net personal wealth from the World Inequality Database via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). 

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On today’s show, host Esty Dinur speaks with three panelists taking part in a program next week to celebrate World Day for Cultural Diversity. Dr. Claudia Calderón, Avexnim Cojti, and Cherie Thunder are part of a panel called Let’s Get Growing: Seeds, Stories & Solidarity happening on May 21 from 5-7pm at Aubergine on Willy Street. 

As part of today’s roundtable, they talk about seed sovereignty, which is the right of people to use and exchange their own seeds in order to maintain the foodways and autonomy. This movement counters the billion-dollar global seed trade, the privatization of seeds as intellectual property, and the selective breeding of seeds by agricultural companies, says Calderón. She recommends a few books on these topics, Flourishing Kin and First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology.

Indigenous communities across the world advocate for seed sovereignty, says Cojti, because of the legacies of colonialism. Following the appropriation of land from Indigenous peoples, colonizers then imposed the commodification of that land as private property, explains Cojti. Her organization, Cultural Survival, resists this appropriation and commodification and supports the maintenance of common land and common agricultural practices. 

Seeds are significant to the cultural, spiritual, and ecological livelihoods of many Indigenous peoples. Thunder discusses the role of wild rice for the Menominee people and the history of harvesting and reseeding wild rice over the last two centuries. 

Dr. Claudia Irene Calderón is a Teaching Faculty, Department of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an affiliated professor at Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala. Dr. Calderón uses participatory approaches to facilitate agroecological transitions. With extensive transdisciplinary experience at the intersections between gender, indigeneity, health, and agroecology, she is committed to re-centering ancestral ways of knowing, bridging epistemological divides, and fostering respect for nature to nurture sustainable food systems.

Avexnim Cojti (Maya Kiche), Director of Programs at Cultural Survival. She is from Chuwila, Guatemala. She is the eldest of five sisters, a mom, a sociologist and a Maya calendar ancient knowledge keeper of her community. She has more than fifteen years of experience supporting Indigenous rights and community initiatives upholding community, self-determination and reciprocity with the land. She holds a degree in Indigenous Government Studies from the Institute of Indigenous Government, Vancouver, British Columbia. Her work with elders and a conviction on the right of Indigenous Peoples to traditional health systems takes her to pursue her PhD on Indigenous knowledge transfer about medicinal plants at the University of Toronto.

Cherie Thunder is Menominee, Potawatomi, English, German, Irish, and Swedish. She grew up on the Menominee Reservation in Northeast Wisconsin. Cherie is the Tribal Wild Rice Research Coordinator at the Menominee Department of Agriculture and Food Systems. Since she graduated from UW Madison in 2013 Cherie has worked with non-profit organizations in the Menominee Nation and she strives to create a better place for children to grow into good humans.

Featured image of wild rice via Flickr.

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On today’s show, host Allen Ruff speaks with Nancy J. Altman about the status of Social Security under the Trump administration. As the program enters its 90th year, Altman reflects on how it was created during the Great Depression but was meant to provide basic economic security (not dependent on wages) even in times of prosperity. Now, the program serves over 70 million people.  

Altman has written about how Elon Musk and DOGE are trying to undermine the program by appealing to an old playbook of lies and misinformation. Contrary to false claims that the program is riddled with fraud and inefficiency, Altman describes how over 99% of the program’s revenue is turned over to beneficiaries and how 99.7% of benefits are paid accurately and on time. But DOGE is creating the conditions for waste, fraud, and abuse as they cut staff and close field offices across the country. 

Altman says the American people aren’t polarized over Social Security. If anything, people agree that benefits should be expanded. Yet a small group of very wealthy people despise the system and they’re donating to politicians who are choosing the interests of their donors over the concerns of their constituents. Meanwhile, immigrants are paying into Social Security, and some will never be able to receive benefits. 

Nancy J. Altman has a fifty-year background in the areas of Social Security, Medicare, private pensions, and related programs. She is president of Social Security Works and chair of the Strengthen Social Security coalition.

Featured image: a Social Security card via Wikimedia Commons (CC0 1.0).

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Good luck trying to find an affordable apartment or buy a home in Madison these days. As the city keeps growing, so does the cost of housing. To talk about the situation we’re in and what local and state governments can do about it, host Ali Muldrow is joined by Senator Kelda Roys. 

They discuss the Ella Apartments and programs like the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority (WHEDA), zoning and accessory dwelling units, the very narrow pathways to home ownership, how hard it is for people to downsize and stay in their community, and whether Madison will go down the gentrification path. Senator Roys says that in the long term if we can’t solve housing, our communities are going to lose their vibrancy. “We’ve go to live together if we’re going to thrive,” she says.

While the average price of a home has soared to nearly half a million dollars, the number of kids experiencing homelessness in the city is also growing. The city can’t build new homes or apartments fast enough, and the cost and availability of building supplies is up in the air under Trump’s tariffs. So who will get to live here and how well? Senator Roys says these issues are tied to whether we advocate for a pluralistic society or a puritanical and authoritarian one. In the long run, Muldrow says it’s cheaper to help people rather than hurt them. 

State Senator Kelda Roys is a member of the Joint Committee on Finance. A leading voice in the state capitol for abortion rights, investment in child care, and full funding of our public schools so that everyone has the opportunity to build a better life and thrive. Kelda lives in Madison with her husband and three children and began her second term in the 26th State Senate District in January 2025.

Featured image: photo of Senator Kelda Roys.

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On today’s show, Alder Isadore Knox Jr. hosts a roundtable discussion on Black political leadership in Madison. He says that this is a unique time for this conversation given the reduction of Black elected officials on the Madison City Council, from 9 alders to 5 in the current term. He’s joined by Richard V. Brown Sr., Sheri Carter, and Amani Latimer Burris. They talk about their reasons for running for political office as well as their civic accomplishments.

Latimer Burris says that she’s proud of asking tough questions at Council meetings and she’s learned from the formative work of her parents. Carter says that she ran for office in order to change the perspective on South Madison. She’s proud of initiating the Commercial Ownership Assistance Program and renovating Penn Park. Brown says that for a time there weren’t many other Black leaders on the Common Council, and he’s proud of helping support other Black leaders get elected. 

They also talk about what the future holds, as Madison’s population grows and housing becomes even more unaffordable. As housing becomes increasingly more expensive, so does the cost of running a local political campaign, something that gives today’s guests pause for what it means to have everyday people in elected office. Carter says that without more Black members on the council, the city will suffer from less diversity of thought. Latimer Burris reminds listeners that a Black woman hadn’t been elected to the Common Council until 2015.

Ricard V. Brown Sr. is a former Dane County Board Supervisor and Personnel and Finance Chair as well as a mayoral candidate and County Treasurer candidate.

Sheri Carter is a former four-term alder and Council President as well as the first Black woman elected to the Common Council.

Amani Latimer Burris is a former Madison District 12 alder. 

Featured image: photo of today’s guest host, Isadore Knox Jr.

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Today’s show is rebroadcast of a show from April 28.

On April 17, a record breaking number of child care advocates marched on the Wisconsin state capital and sent a message to legislators that the state needs to invest $480 million in childcare. According to the Institute for Research on Poverty, without this investment, 1 in 4 childcare providers in the state could shut down.

To shed light on these changes, host Douglas Haynes is joined by Corrine Hendrickson and Ruth Schmidt, two child care professionals and advocates. Schmidt says that Wisconsin is one of six states that doesn’t put state money into childcare, the only support comes from federal block grants. To address this, advocates are asking for Governor Evers to make an investment in child care in the upcoming budget.

Schmidt says that free market principles don’t apply to childcare. And there’s a double standard when it comes to how industries are treated: manufacturers in Wisconsin are given a tax break and the state invests $2.5 billion annually in its prison system. But child care workers are underpaid and overworked. Hendrickson says that it’s possible to treat childcare workers this way because feminized labor is devalued in our society.

Unlike K-12 schools or higher education, child care isn’t run like a system. In many respects, it’s good that childcare isn’t run like a system because it allows childcare programs to be community and culturally responsive. But without a concerted investment, Hendrickson says she’ll have to raise her rates.

You can learn more about child care issues from Raising Wisconsin and A Day Without Childcare on May 12.

Corrine Hendrickson is a childcare provider in New Glarus. She is a co-founder of Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed, or WECAN, a grassroots advocacy organization aimed at increasing public investment in early childhood.

Ruth Schmidt is the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association.

Featured image of kids at daycare via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

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“We need Greenland for national security and even international security,” President Trump said during his first State of the Union of his second term. “One way or the other, we’re going to get it.”

That bold claim set off a new wave of awkward diplomacy, including surprise visits from Donald Trump Jr., and Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha.

Acquiring Greenland is not a new obsession.  Trump floated the idea in his first term. Numerous presidential administrations have floated the idea, at least privately. Even Truman made a secret offer to buy it after World War II, compelled by the island’s  geographical and strategic potential.

With Trump back in office and his allies pushing a revival of Manifest Destiny-style expansionism, the idea is back — and louder.  House Republicans have introduced the Make Greenland Great Again Act, aiming to authorize negotiations to purchase the island.

So what’s really going on here? Why Greenland?

Journalist Adam Federman has reported on the President’s call to buy (or take) the island.  He joins host Esty Dinur to help unpack the long and tangled relationship between the U.S. and Greenland — from Cold War military operations to today’s resource politics — to Greenland’s growing moves toward self-determination.

About the guest: 

Adam Federman is a reporting fellow with Type Investigations. He’s written widely on environmental policy, public lands, and corporate and police spying on environmental activists.  His first book, Fasting and Feasting: The Life of Visionary Food Writer Patience Gray (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2017), was a New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize in Biography.  Read more at his website, adamfederman.com, or on X.

Photo: Remixed image of a satellite composite image of Greenland, from the NASA Ames Research Center, under public domain license.

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On today’s show, host Allen Ruff is joined by David McNally to reflect on Donald Trump’s first 100-ish days in office. They try to make sense of Trumpists’ multi-pronged offensive on immigrants, trade, DEI, and so much more. McNally says that Trump relies on shock, awe, and fear, but even within this climate, there are cracks that can be exploited. 

While some are claiming that neoliberalism is over, McNally says that Trumpism is a natural outgrowth of neoliberalism that includes a weakening of organized labor and social movements and a celebration of big business. That’s on top of the Trump administration’s assault on the administrative and regulatory state. 

They also discuss the Right’s attacks on universities, the erosion of safety net programs, the demonology of Marxists and immigrants, and the philosophies of W.E.B. Du Bois.

David McNally is a radical socialist activist and award-winning scholar. Authoring over 60 research manuscripts, seven books, and countless public lectures and articles, he currently holds the Cullen Distinguished Professorship of History & Business at the University of Houston, having recently moved from Toronto, where he taught and organized at York University for over thirty years.

Featured image of David McNally via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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It’s a common refrain to hear that getting an education opens doors, even in a community like Madison with its huge achievement gap. But today on the show, host Ali Muldrow speaks with Dr. Eve L. Ewing, who argues that instead of creating equal opportunities, the American education system perpetuates inequality. Ewing is the author of Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children, in which she demonstrates how schools were designed to propagate the idea of white intellectual superiority.

Ewing asks a deceptively simple question, what are schools for? Though schools purport to create opportunities, they also serve an important ideological function: teaching students what it means to be a person, how to relate to others, and understand social roles. She says that you can’t understand the education system in this country without understanding what it means to Black and Native people. From segregation and achievement gaps to the phenomenon of land grab universities, our educational system is deeply inequitable. 

In describing the painful process of writing this book, Ewing says that “every time I hit the bottom, there was more.” Yet she challenges listeners to question what a “good” school is, to be wary of “opportunity hoarding,” and to research the Land Back Movement. 

Dr. Eve L. Ewing is a writer, scholar, and cultural organizer from Chicago. She is the award-winning author, most recently, of the New York Times and USA Today bestseller Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism, as well as the poetry collections Electric Arches and 1919, the nonfiction work Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side, and a novel for young readers, Maya and the Robot. She is the co-author (with Nate Marshall) of the play No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks. She has written several projects for Marvel Comics, most notably the Ironheart series and Black Panther, and is currently writing Exceptional X-Men. Ewing is an associate professor in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago.

Featured image: the cover of Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children. 

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