A Public Affair

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. 

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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.

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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). 

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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).

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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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