A Public Affair

You know The Newlywed Game? The TV show from the 60s and 70s where three recently married couples competed against each other by answering personal questions about their spouses? Well, in honor of Valentine’s Day we bring you to a low-stakes version with WORT News Director Chali Pittman, A Public Affair Producer Jade Iseri-Ramos, and their respective husbands Dylan Brogan and Alex Iseri-Ramos.

Host Ali Muldrow also asks for advice as she prepares for her 10 year wedding anniversary. Happy (early) Valentine’s Day from WORT!

Jade and Alex Iseri-Ramos were married at Period Garden Park in Madison in October 2022. They were joined by about 30 close friends and family members.

Chali Pittman and Dylan Brogan had two weddings. They eloped during a Cribshitter concert in May 2023 and celebrated with family and friends in Madison in September 2023.

Cover Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

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Bob Lindmeier has been reporting the weather for the last 4 decades. You probably know him as the senior chief meteorologist at WKOW. About 7 years ago, he started talking about climate change on air. “It was not a comfortable subject for me initially,” he says. “For a lot of broadcast meteorologists,  it’s not an area in our expertise necessarily, we’re worried about the near term, the next seven days. Talking about climate science in the long term is a whole different animal,” he explains to host Sara Gabler. He joins A Public Affair alongside Sara’s second guest, Christopher Gloninger.

Chris was chief meteorologist at a station in Des Moines, where “the pushback because of the political divide was intense.” Chris left that job and wrote about the career change in an article titled, “I spoke about climate change as a TV meteorologist. Then came the death threat.” Bob and Chris join the program to talk about communicating climate science on broadcast television.

Resources mentioned during the program include: Climate Matters, Skeptical Science, and Climate Science.

Bob Lindmeier is the senior chief meteorologist at WKOW-TV where he has worked since 1989. Bob is a member of the American Meteorological Society Station Scientist Committee and has received the Wisconsin Silver Circle Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. He is a member of Citizen’s Climate Lobby, a non-profit and non-partisan organization focused on national policies to address solutions to climate change.

Christopher Gloninger is an atmospheric scientist, communications professional, and Certified Consulting Meteorologist. Christopher has worked in newsrooms across the US including Albany, New York; Saginaw, Michigan; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Boston, Massachusetts; and Des Moines, Iowa. Chris has earned three EMMYs, two NBC Gem awards, and two Wisconsin Broadcasters Association awards in recognition of his various news coverage throughout his career. Currently he serves as a Senior Scientist in Climate and Risk Communication at Woods Hole Group.

Image by Mabel Amber from Pixabay

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Dr. William Bronston was the chief medical officer of Building 76 at Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, NY, which housed 200 disabled children. His new book Public Hostage, Public Ransom: Ending Institutional America tells the story of the injustices he witnessed at Willowbrook. About the book he writes, “The book contains my lifetime understanding and the pursuit of, health and social justice. We must end the profit driven, corporatization of human caring with rightful, health care owned by the public.” Dr. Bronston joins Esty Dinur for the first half of the show to talk about the underbelly of institutionalization.

Then, we speak with local activist Tarah Stangler about her opposition to Fitchburg’s planned police facility. The new Police Services Facility is now projected to cost between $49.2 million. FreedomInc is also organizing against the facility. For more on this issue, check out reporting by WORT’s Faye Parks.

William Bronston is an American psychiatrist and activist and advocate for Medicare for All and citizens with disabilities. Bronston is known for his involvement in the deinstitutionalization of Willowbrook State School in the early 1970s. He is the coauthor of A History and Sociology of the Willowbrook State School and the filmmaker of “Willowbrook State School: Flagship Institution for the New York Department of Mental Hygiene.”

Tarah Stangler is a local Korean-American organizer who has been organizing across the midwest for almost the last decade. Although she organizes across issues, her main focus is on abolition and alternatives to policing. When she’s not organizing, she is either working as the Harm Reduction Services Director at OutReach LGBTQ+ Community Center or spending time in community.

Image from Public Hostage: Public Ransom Photo Gallery accessed via Minnesota Governor’s Council on Developmental Disability.

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With Israel’s horrific war of attrition against the entire population of Gaza showing no signs of ending, the US last Friday escalated its direct military involvement in the region as its war planes carried out air strikes on more than 85 targets at different locations in Syria and Iraq.

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Last month, the state senate passed a bill that would unlock $78 million dollars in federal funding to expand the state’s electric vehicle infrastructure. The bill, which has bipartisan support is pending in the assembly.

Emma Heins, a Policy Manager from the Electrification Coalition says that this effort comes down to charging stations. “That’s what people need to get where they’re going, and to feel confident that they can take their EV across the state and across the country,” she tells Carousel Bayrd. Emma says charging stations in Wisconsin are currently concentrated in cities and the goal is to spread access across the state to “make sure that rural drivers especially can reap these benefits, because if they’re driving longer distances they get more savings from having an EV.”

Carousel also talks with Tom Content from Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin (CUB) to talk through the bill, the realities of range anxiety for EV drivers, and the energy grid.

Tom Content is the Executive Director Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin  the state’s consumer advocate for residential and small business utility customers since 1979. Content directs CUB’s work to advocate for electric, natural gas and water utility customers at the Public Service Commission and at the Legislature, and its work to educate Wisconsinites about energy and utility issues.

Emma Heins is a Policy Manager for the Electrification Coalition, where she works on state advocacy in North Carolina, Wisconsin, and at the federal level. Her focus is on policy research and analysis to help policy makers create ambitious policy opportunities and strengthen the case for transportation electrification. Before joining the EC, Emma was a Science Policy Fellow for Clean Wisconsin working on EV policy research, and prior to that, she worked at a small research group conducting indoor air quality research.

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

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Many of us drive cars daily, but understanding how to buy a car and keep up with car maintenance can feel overwhelming–or straight up intimidating. From haggling for a car price you can afford to finding a mechanic you trust, the ins and outs of car ownership can often feel geared toward men and unapproachable to everyone else. Today’s guest, Chaya Milchtein, saw the gap in automotive education and made it her life’s mission to educate women and queer people about their cars. She joins host Jade Iseri-Ramos to give tips for how to get and keep a vehicle.

Chaya’s forthcoming book is Mechanic Shop Femme’s Guide to Car Ownership: Uncomplicating Cars for All of Us.

Chaya Milchtein is an automotive educator, influencer, and founder of Mechanic Shop Femme. She’s dedicated her career to educating the average car owner, not automotive enthusiasts, about their cars – a career she found and built after aging out of the foster care.

She’s taught her popular car classes at libraries, universities, non-profits, and businesses, including John Jay Criminal College, BMO Bank, and Vanderbilt University. Chaya has worked with national and international automotive brands, including CarMax, TireRack, iFixit, and Jerry. She has been featured in AARP, NPR’s Lifekit, Oprah Magazine, Car Talk, and The Chicago Tribune. She’s written for AAA’s Via Magazine, Parents Magazine, Shondaland, and PBS’s Next Avenue. Chaya lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with her wife, tortoise, and black cat

Photo by McKenna Patterson Photography courtesy of Chaya Milchtein

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It’s hard to feel secure in this world, no matter who you are.

There’s financial insecurity: it’s hard to find a good job and make ends meet. It’s hard to find an affordable place to live, much less buy a house.

There’s political insecurity: how safe are our democratic systems from authoritarianism and extremism?

And there’s existential insecurity: the feeling of being mortal, and of not knowing what the future holds.

Today’s guest argues that there’s another type of insecurity: manufactured insecurity. This type of insecurity, argues Astra Taylor, is manufactured by  capitalism, but it actually serves to undermine our ability to be more secure.

Insecurity, argues Astra Taylor, is the defining feature of our times. And acknowledging our shared insecurity can make us more collaborative, more curious, more empathetic, and look sideways to recognize potentially powerful commonalities.

Today, filmmaker, writer, and organizer Astra Taylor joins guest host Chali Pittman to unpack her work on insecurity, months after publishing a new series of public talks focused around the idea of insecurity. These talks were put on by the high-profile Canadian lecture series, the Massey Lectures, which invites thinkers and organizers to give high-profile talks each year (previous Lecturers include Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr,  Claude Lévi-Strauss, Doris Lessing, Noam Chomsky, and Margaret Atwood). 

As the 2023 Massey Lecturer, Astra Taylor’s talks, and a companion book, are titled “The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart.” You can listen to them for free at the CBC, and buy the companion book here. 

Her previous books include Remake the World: Essays, Reflections, Rebellions, Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone, and the American Book Award winner The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age. She regularly writes for major publications, has directed three documentaries — Zizek!, What is Democracy? and Examined Life.

Her work has appeared in many journals and magazines, including The New York Times, the Nation, the Intercept, the New Yorker, the New Republic, and so on. As an organizer, she was active in the Occupy Wall Street movement, and co-founded the Debt Collective, a debter’s union that’s had some success in pushing for student debt relief. She’s also toured with the band Neutral Milk Hotel. You can follow her on Twitter at @astradisastra.

Astra Taylor will give a virtual talk at the UW-Madison Havens Wright Center for Social Justice on Tuesday, February 13 from noon-1:30pm.

Photo by Nye Taylor

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 A 2022 Forward Analytics report found that at least 140,000 housing units need to be built by 2030 to keep up with demand. Here in Madison, we are facing an affordable housing crisis, even as new condos and apartments are popping up across the city. Justice Castañeda joins host Allen Ruff to explain the issue behind our current crisis.

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There’s a workers shortage in Wisconsin. According to a report by Forward Analytics, the state lost of net of 43 millennials in the last decade. That happened at the same time that many baby boomers began to retire.

On today’s show, sub host Yuri Raskin talks with Dale Knapp about the state of the labor market and what trends we are seeing in Wisconsin. They discuss the labor shortage, the cost of housing, advances in technology and much more.

Dale Knapp is the Director of Research and Analytics for the Wisconsin Counties Association. He publishes research and analysis on a variety of economic and public policy issues facing the State of Wisconsin. He leads Forward Analytics, a Wisconsin-based research organization that provides state and local policymakers with nonpartisan analysis of issues affecting the state.

Yuri Raskin is a news analyst, host of The Raskin Report on YouTube, and serves on the Rock County Board of Supervisors and news analyst,

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About 20% of people who have recovered from COVID-19 experience circulatory impairment, abnormal ventilatory pattern, or Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS) according to a 2021 study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

As the pandemic rages on, Ali Muldrow welcomes Eris Eady on the show. Eris has been living with Long COVID since the summer of 2020 and speaks to their experience living with the chronic illness and the challenges they faced during pregnancy.

Also on today’s A Public Affair is #MEAction’s Ben HsuBorger. He joins the show to talk about his experience living with an infection associated chronic illness for nearly two decades and the role of the disability rights movement in a “post” COVID world.

Eris Eady is a Black, Bisexual, Non-binary & Disabled consultant, advocate, artist and writer from Cleveland, Ohio. They have organized, facilitated, performed, presented, and curated collaborative spaces all over the country. Eris has worked in the nonprofit and advocacy sector for over 20 years. Known as the “Come Out Coach”, Eris equips individuals and organizations with the tools needed to foster identity and cultivate equitably inclusive practices.

Ben HsuBorger is an Advocacy Director for #MEAction, an movement that fights for recognition, education, and research for Myalgic encephalomyelitis or ME/CFS .

Photo by Isaac Quesada on Unsplash

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