Imagine a you’re sitting down with a group of strangers. Everyone is drinking coffee or tea and nibbling on a pastry. You’re all here to talk about death.

Accord to the Death Cafe website, “a Death Cafe is a group directed discussion of death with no agenda, objectives or themes. It is a discussion group rather than a grief support or counselling session.” On today’s show, we are joined by two Wisconsin Death Cafe leaders, Deirdre Jenkins and Karen Reppen. They speak on dying, supporting loved ones at the end of life, and lessons they have learned working so closely with death.

Deirdre Jenkins is a certified conscious dying coach and death doula. She hosts “Eau, Death!” death cafe in Eau Claire.

Karen Reppen is a hospice communications professional and volunteer. She leads a Madison death cafe and is a board member of the National End of Life Doula Alliance.

Photo by Andra C Taylor Jr on Unsplash

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How does one community come together and face this disrupted future? How do we create a more resilient mutual aid culture? How do we welcome those refugees who have to flee their homes? How do we just adapt? And how do we address the larger systemic issues?

This are the questions Chuck Collins sets out to explore in his newest book, Altar to an Erupting Sun. In his first novel, Collins tells the story of terminally ill Rae Kelliher and her shocking decision to take a “carbon baron” out with her.

Collins joins A Public Affair substitute host Norman Stockwell to talk about the book. Chuck Collins will be at A Room of One’s Own in Madison on Wednesday, August 9th at 6pm for an in person reading and book signing.

Chuck Collins is a campaigner and storyteller who has worked for decades on environmental and economic justice campaigns. He is the director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he co-edits Inequality.org.  He is co-founder of DivestInvest.org, a global movement to divest from fossil fuels and invest in climate solutions, and trustee of the Post Carbon Institute and Resilience.org. He lives with his family in southern Vermont. Author of several books on wealth inequality, including most recently The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions. Altar to an Erupting Sun is his debut novel.

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This weekend, there are two events happening in the movement to halt the Enbridge oil pipeline “Line 5.” On Saturday, August 5th the Ashland Community Rally & Flotilla will start at 8am in Ashland, WI. The group will gather at “Long Bridge” over Fish Creek on US-2 and paddle out onto the Fish Creek Sloughs at 9am.

A coordinating event will take place on Sunday in Superior, WI. The Community Water Festival: Defend the Sacred will consist of a march, flotilla, and community water festival on the Nemadji River. That event will kick off at 10am.

Activists Marc Rosenthal and Carl Sack join us ahead of the events to explain the massive oil pipeline project by the Enbridge Corporation and the growing resistance to put a stop to it.

Marc Rosenthal is a retired ER Nurse and activist with a decades-long history of international solidarity work. He has lived, worked and been involved with national liberation struggles in the Middle East, Africa and Central America and North America. He first worked as a water defender as an organizer for the Black Hills Alliance in 1979 and continues to do that work today.

Carl Sack is a cartographer, a socialist, and environmental activist from Duluth. He helped organize successful opposition to the proposed Penokee Mine on the northern Wisconsin headwaters of the Bad River Watershed.  He was also involved in the struggle to defend Indigenous treaty rights against the destruction wrought by the Enbridge Corporation’s Line 3 oil pipeline in Minnesota.

Another event, Water is Life Festival, will take place Friday, September 1-Monday, September 4 in Petoskey, MI.

Image from Communities United By Water.

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The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup is in full swing in Australia and New Zealand. The games are happening as Madison anticipates a pro women’s team. Today, we kick around the ball with Anna Goodrevich from the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport and Keith Tiemeyer from Forward Madison FC.

“The sport is a institution created by and for men, and women were never really included in that model. So women are constantly clashing up against what this model provides or doesn’t provide,” Anna says of the women playing at the highest level. “It’s always been an inherent given that if you’re a female athlete, and you’re playing on that high stage, there’s gonna be a political aspect to it, because you’re clashing against these dominant masculine systems that aren’t made for you.”

Anna and Keith join host Carousel Bayrd to talk about the games so far, the investment in women’s sports world-wide, and the future of women’s soccer in Madison.

Anna Goorevich is a doctoral student pursuing a PhD in Kinesiology/Sport Sociology at the University of Minnesota, where she also serves as a Research Assistant in the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport. Goorevich’s research interests revolve around the gendering of coaching and sport leadership, gender identity and sport participation, and menstruation and sport.

Keith Tiemeyer is the Director of Soccer Operations for Forward Madison FC.

Photo by Travel Nomades on Unsplash

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This fall, YMCA Madison is hosting a 3 day Racial Justice Summit. Race & Equity Director Gery Paredes Vasquez joins us briefly to talk about the upcoming summit and then we get into it with keynote speakers Autumn Brown and Susan Raffo. We discuss movement work, making space for rest, aging into the work, and so much more.

Autumn and Susan will be giving a collaborative keynote on the second day of YWCA Madison’s 2023 Racial Justice Summit. This year’s Summit will be offered Virtually on Oct. 3-4 and In Person on Oct. 5 at the Monona Terrace Convention Center in Madison, Wisconsin.

Tickets are available for all three days of the Summit, as well as just the virtual or in-person experiences. Ticket discounts are available for young adult and student groups. Learn More and Register at ywcamadison.org/racial-justice-summit

Autumn Brown is a mother, organizer, theologian, artist, and facilitator. She is currently on a year-long sabbatical.

Autumn is a facilitator with the Anti-Oppression Resource & Training Alliance (AORTA), a worker-owned cooperative devoted to strengthening movements for social justice and a solidarity economy through political education, training, and planning. Autumn co-hosts the podcast “How to Survive the End of the World” with her sister, adrienne maree brown.

Susan Raffo is a bodyworker, cultural worker and writer who focuses her work through the lens of healing justice. Her interest is in looking at all of the layers of resourcing needed to support community and movements. Alongside her own practice, Raffo has spent 12 years working with Cara Page on the Healing Histories Project, an abolitionist and anti-eugenics project working in solidarity with health and healing workers by disrupting abuses of the state. Susan is the author of a number of books including her latest title: Liberated to the Bone

Geraldine Paredes Vasquez is the Race & Gender Equity Director at YWCA in Madison.

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Earlier this month, the US Department of Agriculture issued a disaster declaration for 18 southern Wisconsin counties, including Dane County, due to unusually dry conditions. The extreme drought impacting our area has been a challenge for farmers, gardeners, and anyone trying to grow something!

On the last day of July, in the middle of the summer harvest, we open up the phonelines to all your gardening questions. Joining us with some answers are Lisa Johnson and Jennica Skoug. Lisa Johnson is a Horticulture Educator and UW Extension Dane County and Jennica Skoug runs Lansing Street Veggies at the Farley Center’s collaborative farm.  Jennica formerly Farm Manager of the Goodman Youth Farm on Madison’s East Side.

Photo by Elaine Casap on Unsplash

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Two weeks ago, a subcommittee of the US House of Representatives released its draft appropriations bill for the next fiscal year. Included in the bill is a proposal to zero out funding for public media, cutting all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes the bulk of its funding directly to more than 1,400 locally-owned public radio and television stations, including WORT.

The House’s plan would cut other services of public media, including funding for system interconnection – which is how many national programs are distributed – and for the Next Generation Warning System, which will help public media’s ability to deliver emergency alerts and other information to the public.

Yesterday, the relevant appropriations subcommittee of the US Senate released its own draft. That draft spending plan, which would continue to fund public media amidst thousands of other budget items, has public media advocates  resting a tad easier.

“We are grateful for the strong bipartisan support in the Senate that provides level funding for CPB. This essential funding ensures that public media’s educational and informational content and services are available for free to all Americans,” said  Patricia Harrison, President and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, in a statement yesterday.

But the move by the House threatens the future of the entire public and community media ecosystem. Roughly 12 percent of WORT’s annual budget is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and WORT – along with hundreds of other community and public radio stations – would be severely impacted by the loss in federal funding.

We’re joined today by two industry experts to outline the appropriations bills, the landscape of public media, and what could happen next.

Julian Wyllie is the public television reporter for Current, a nonprofit news source for public media professionals. His work has appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Governing Magazine, Politico and the Indianapolis Recorder. You can follow him on Twitter @JulianWyllie.

 Kate Riley is Vice President of Government and Public Affairs at APTS, an industry group representing public television stations, where she liaises with Congress, federal departments and agencies, and state governments. Prior to joining APTS, she worked as Legislative Director for Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez.

How you can help: Congress will take August off, but will return in September to continue the appropriations process. In the meantime, we encourage you to contact your members of Congress and tell them you support public media funding. Protect My Public Media has made it easy to contact your member of Congress.

Photo: Made from Pixelcut, using source images from Protect My Public Media. 

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On July 7th, 2021, a group of men entered the Port-au-Prince home of Jovenel Moïse, the then president of Haiti. They killed him and in gravely injured his wife, First Lady Martine Moïse. Today’s guest has been following the investigation into the individuals charged in relation to the conspiracy.

In his recent op-ed for the New York Times, Jake Johnston writes, “The investigation … present[s] an opportunity not just to address a long legacy of impunity and injustice in Haiti but also to reset US-Haiti relations, which have long been subject to political interference and interventionism.”

Jake Johnston joins host Allen Ruff to discuss the investigation and the future of US-Haiti relations.

Jake Johnston is a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He has a B.A. in Economics from Boston University and an M.A. in Writing from Johns Hopkins University. At CEPR his research has focused predominantly on economic policy in Latin America, the International Monetary Fund and U.S. foreign policy. He is the lead author for CEPR’s Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch blog and his articles and op-eds have been published in outlets such as the New York Times, The Nation, The Intercept, Le Monde Diplomatique, Boston Review, and Al Jazeera. His book, Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti, is forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press.

Photo by Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores from Perú: Jovenel Moïse with Justin Trudeau in Lima, Peru (Date 14 April 2018, 14:16) https://www.flickr.com/photos/cancilleriadeperu/40563706515/ (used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license)

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In 2021, artist Rosy Petri was named the inaugural Artist in Residence at the bell hooks center in Berea, Kentucky. On her way to that position, Rosy took a solo road trip that took her one month and 14 hundred miles. Some of the photos she took on that trip are now a part of her solo show “America Altars.” 

American Altars is now at Arts + Literature Laboratory (ALL) in Madison through September 1st. In her own words, American Altars is Rosy’s “attempt at embodying a journey of cultural remembrance, ancestral grief, and the emotional reckoning required of Black people on the move in America of all generations from the post-insurrection perspective”

Rosy Petri joins A Public Affair along side Jim Kreul, the Public Programs Coordinator at ALL.

Rosy Petri is a mother, self-taught artist, and storyteller from Milwaukee. Her multidisciplinary works fuse fabric portraiture, multimedia storytelling, and illustration as an act of witness.

Jim Kreul is the Public Programs Coordinator at Arts + Lit Lab . He is also a video artist and curates the Mills Folly Microcinema film series.

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The power of fungi is a hot topic right now: from documentaries to books to a fictional post-apocalyptic world ravaged by a fungal outbreak. One international group is taking that heat unground to map and protect mycorrhizal fungi, a type of fungi that clings to roots and has a symbiotic relationship with plants. The Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN) is driving innovation in underground climate and biodiversity science.

Head of SPUN Underground Explorers program Dr. Adriana Corrales, and SPUN associates Dr. Nahuel Policelli and  Dr. Nourou S. Yorou join us to talk about soil as a living organism, the benefit fungi can play in climate change, and the threats facing mycorrhizal fungi.

Dr. Nahuel Policelli is a biologist based in Conicet, Argentina. He does research in microbial ecology, with a focus on mycorrhizal fungi and plants. Most of the projects in which he is involved study how belowground biota can facilitate or hinder plants invasion.  ecology.

Dr. Nourou S. Yorou is a Professor of Agronomy at University of Parakou, in Benin. His research is focused on tropical African mycorrhizal fungi and their interactions with green plants.

Dr. Adriana Corrales is the head of SPUN Underground Explorers program. She  is a forest ecologist with a joint position as an Assistant Professor at the Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá. Her research focuses on the ecology and taxonomy of tropical ectomycorrhizal associations, and shifts in fungal community composition caused by biotic and abiotic factors.

Featured photo: Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi with false color. Credit: Oyarte-Galvez (AMOLF). Used with permission from SPUN.

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