8 O'Clock Buzz

“In Trump, they saw someone who would be brutal to their enemies” — a description of the support given to Donald Trump by the white Christian nationalists, according to Bradley Onishi, author of the book “Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism — and What Comes Next”. Onishi says that the January 6th assault on the Capitol was the culmination of 60 years of efforts to restore the U. S. as a country built by White Christians, for White Christians.

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Today on the Tuesday 8 o’Clock Buzz, hosts Tara Wilhelmi and Breyon Sommerville spend the hour with Dr. Charles Taylor. He’s a prolific educator, author, filmmaker, and this year, the winner of the King Humanitarian Award. Learn more about Dr. Charles Taylor and his work at drcharlestaylor.com.

Other links: 

Leaders of Madison’s Black Renaissance is showing at Beloit Film Festival 2/26 and 3/4  and is available to stream on Vimeo

e-Books available from Dr. Taylor’s website and in print via Amazon.

Photo courtesy of guest. 

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WORT 89.9FM Madison · Madison Circus Space’s First Artist in Residence

In its circus heyday, Wisconsin routinely attracted circus performers from around the world.  Madison Circus Space seeks to revive that tradition with its new Circus Artist Residency program.  MCS’s first-ever artists in residency include: unicyclist, acrobat, juggler and classically-trained guitarist Kevin Flanagan and acrobat and foot-juggler Sierra Rhoades Nicholls, both from Ithaca, NY.

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WORT 89.9FM Madison · “I’m A Cop:” A Real Life Horror Comic

Johnny Damm has made a career of using classic pre-comics code comic book imagery to re-examine and re-imagine recent history and current events.  His previous works “Failure Biographies” and “The Science of Things Familiar” showcase obscure and forgotten historic heroes and villains in the style of lurid 1950’s horror comic books.  Damm’s latest work “I’m a Cop,” available directly from the author, uses the same style to illustrate actual quotes from police union leaders in Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities in response to the Black Lives Matter movement and calls for police reform.

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WORT 89.9FM Madison · Street Rebellion Beyond Violence And Nonviolence

In a 1966 interview on CBS, Martin Luther King, Jr. stated that a “riot is the language of the unheard.”  King went on to say, “And what is it that America has failed to hear?  It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.”  Seen as a paragon of nonviolent civil action, King’s perspective on the riots of the time was more nuanced than we are led to believe.  Since King’s time, a few academic studies appear to make the case that nonviolent protest is strategically more successful than violent action.  In his new book, “Street Rebellion,” Benjamin Case points out that reality, as usual, is far more complicated than we perceive. Benjamin Case is a longtime organizer with more than two decades in labor, political, and community work. He is a researcher at the Center for Work and Democracy, an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Sociology at UMass Amherst, and a fellow at the Resistance Studies Initiative.

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If you listened to the Friday Buzz when producer Beatrice Lawrence guest-hosted last month, you’re familiar with the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death and their recently-retired curator, Bruce Goldfarb. You may also remember that he revealed a connection between the Nutshells and our home state of Wisconsin: UW-Parkside's Winterim Death Scene Investigation seminar, whose final exam features an exclusive life-sized recreation of one of the morbid dioramas.

Beatrice decided to take Goldfarb up on his offer, and headed out to Kenosha to join him in seeing the one-of-a-kind piece of forensic science history—before it's shipped off the Glessner House museum in Chicago. She also talked to the students tasked with solving the crime, the members of the theater department who built the set, and the professor who made it all happen. In doing so, she got a look into the past, present, and future of death scene investigation.

Special thanks to Bruce Goldfarb, Dr. Janamarie Truesdell and the UW-Parkside theater department: Josh Christoffersen, J Lofty, Aria Johnson, and Bianca Gonzalez. Additional thanks to the students of CRJM490: Critical Thinking in Death Scene Investigation.

Photo courtesy of Beatrice Lawrence / WORT

The brand new hostility between members of the Republican party was on full display during the food fight that was the election of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy earlier this month. Charlie Sykes has in many ways predicted the bizarre political trajectory of conservatives in America; his most recent book is appropriately called, “How the Right Lost Its Mind.” He joins host Andy Moore to discuss the past, present and future of conservative politics on both the state and national scale.

Charlie Sykes is a Wisconsin-based political commentator and author. He is the founder and Editor-at-Large of The Bulwark.

Photo courtesy of Macmillan Publishers

Just this month internet observers discovered that CNET had quietly published dozens of articles generated entirely by artificial intelligence. The tech site acknowledged that it was true, but described the move as a mere experiment— apparently an experiment that revealed that AI journalism is about as watertight as human kind (that is, not entirely). Still, AI is here to stay and it’s only getting more sophisticated; it will inevitably change the world, if it hasn't already. On this edition of the Friday Buzz, host Andy Moore talks to Stanislaw Luberda—a content engineer, contractor for Apple and futurist—about the future of AI and its implications for life as we know it.

Stanislaw Luberda is a Madison-based content design engineer.

Photo courtesy of GDJ via Pixabay

An undemocratic obsession,

Bringing about voter suppression.

Maybe overturn an election;

Lies creating deception.

Bruce Murphy, editor, and columnist for Urban Milwaukee, speaks with Tony Castañeda, host of the Thursday edition of the 8 O’clock Buzz, about the GOP efforts to suppress minority voting in Milwaukee. This comes after Urban Milwaukee ran a commentary on Robert Spindell, a Republican member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, describing how he was gloating about efforts to convince Black and Hispanic voters to not participate in the 2020 elections.

Photo courtesy of Tom Barrett on Unsplash.

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On Sunday, January 22, the 50th anniversary of the landmark Roe v Wade decision, Madison will be home to the “Bigger Than Roe” Women’s March to commemorate that now-overturned legislation, and to energize voters in advance of our state’s upcoming February Supreme Court primary. Conservatives currently have a 4-3 majority on the court, so, should a pro-choice candidate prevail in April’s election, the state could see the current ban on abortion overturned. 8 O’Clock Buzz host Tony Castañeda welcomes Jay Becker and Patricia Wallin, Chicago-based organizers for Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, who discuss with Tony the ramifications of the overturning of Roe, the role of that decision in the November elections, and the importance of people continuing to show up at demonstrations, rallies and marches.

Photo courtesy of Gayatri Malhotran on Unsplash.

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