EPPiC Broadcast

This week, we talk with Patrick Garrison, founder and president of True Corrective, an education curriculum to help parents teach their children about America’s shared principles. Patrick explains what led him to found this curriculum program, including his background as a public school teacher. Plus, he explains how True Corrective can help parents reconnect with their children’s education. 

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This week, we talk with Dr. Roger Smith, a physician and pediatrician, and author of Parenting with Influence: Shifting Your Parenting Style as You and Your Child Grow. Roger gives a doctor’s perspective on how you as a parent can work best with your child’s pediatrician. Plus, he lays out some principles for how to stay connected with your children as they grow older and mature into adulthood. 

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This week, we talk with Hugh Phillips, a constitutional litigator at Liberty Counsel. Hugh has also served as a judicial law clerk for the Supreme Court of Alabama and he’s the author of a law review article entitled “Liberating Liberty: How the Glucksberg Test Can Solve the Supreme Court’s Confusing Jurisprudence on Parental Rights”. Hugh discusses his law review article and explains a path forward to consistently applying the strict scrutiny test to parental rights issues in our nation’s courts. 

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This week, we talk with former judge Ernestine Gray, who served for 35 years in the Orleans Parish Juvenile Court in Louisiana. During her tenure, the Orleans Juvenile Court went from what the New York Times described as “the worst juvenile court in the nation” to a model that other juvenile courts looked to for best practices. Ernestine tells us about her many years of striving to improve the child welfare system in her parish, and how she’s worked to improve the lives of the parents and children who came into her courtroom. 

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This week, we talk with Chelsea Sobolik, the Senior Director of Policy and Advocacy for Lifeline Children’s Services. Lifeline Children’s Services assists families with international adoption in all 50 states, each of the U.S. territories and U.S. citizens living abroad. Lifeline also serves women in unexpected pregnancies and families through domestic adoptions. 

Chelsea tells us about the mission of Lifeline and how the organization is working to help provide better solutions for adoption and foster care to parents and children. You can find out more about Chelsea and follow her work on her website. 

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This week, we talk with Jeremy Tate, founder of the Classic Learning Test. The Classic Learning Test, an alternative to the ACT and the SAT standardized tests, emphasizes classical texts and key threads of Western culture that have been neglected in mainstream American education.

 Jeremy breaks down the history of public education for us and explains why the CLT is needed. He also gives us his perspective on what’s missing from our public education and how we can improve our schools in the future. 

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This week, we talk with Robert Bortins, the CEO of Classical Conversations since 2012, and a member of the board of directors of Homeschool Now USA. Robert tells us how Classical Conversations went from a single homeschooling classroom in a basement to the world’s largest classical homeschooling organization. Robert explains the process and philosophy of classical education, which aims to prepare students for whatever they may face in life and give them the tools they need to learn anything. 

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This week, we talk with Timothy Sandefur, Vice President of Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute. Timothy is representing a mother in Arizona who found herself falsely accused of child neglect and placed on the state’s central child abuse registry in a court case that challenges the constitutionality of Arizona's child abuse registry. Today, Timothy breaks down the details of the case and argues for why exactly child abuse registries are unconstitutional. You can learn more about Timothy and his work here. 

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This week, we’re talking with Suzanne Nossel. Suzanne is the CEO of PEN America, a leading human rights and free expression organization, and she is author of Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All. Previously, Suzanne has served as Chief Operating Operator of Human Rights Watch and as Executive Director of Amnesty International USA. 

How do principles of free speech interact with parental rights, especially in issues of education? Suzanne shares her perspective on book bans in school libraries, including concerns of censorship and the chilling of free speech in education. Plus, Suzanne tells us about her book and her hope for a renewed respect for free speech in our public discourse. 

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Welcome back to the EPPiC Broadcast, season 6! We’re kicking off our season by talking with Ethan Demme, President and CEO of Demme Learning, and member of the Parental Rights Foundation Board. Ethan is also an elected member of the board of supervisors in East Lampeter Township (Pennsylvania).

As a foster and adoptive parent, Ethan explains how children are often brought into the foster care system and how we can better care for children in the system. Even though some children need to be removed from their parents for their safety, parents and children being reunited is the best outcome for most families that enter the child welfare system. However, many parents who lose their children find themselves without the support that they need to successfully work their case plans and get their children back, and in many states the child welfare system prioritizes the needs of the bureaucracy itself over the needs of parents and children. Ethan also tells us about reforms that would help the foster care system and improve outcomes for parents and children. 

Plus, Ethan tells us more about his curriculum company, Demme Learning, which provides learning curriculum to homeschool families, and his efforts as an elected official to help safeguard parental rights. 

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