In feminist scholar Dr. Bettina Aptheker’s early years, she found herself front and center in the 1960s controversy over free speech. As a young academic, she found herself mired in a legal dispute over freedom of association. And throughout her career, she has been able to push boundaries due to academic freedom. Recently Bettina gave […]

Dr. Eve V. Clark has spent a career in academia pursuing one seemingly simple question: How do children learn to talk? The theory in vogue at the beginning of her career was advanced by Noam Chomsky, whose theory of Universal Grammar was all the rage amongst linguists. As a woman outnumbered by men, Eve pursued […]

On April 5, 2025 Dr. Heather Ford stood at the steps of the Santa Cruz County Building, joining other scientists around the United States to protest the Trump Administration’s witch hunt against his imagined “woke science agenda.” Since World War II, the US has seen a broadly bipartisan support for the federal funding of science, […]

Why are you proud to be American? In these interviews at an Independence Day parade on Coastal California, residents talk about reaching for their pride at a time when our political landscape is so fraught.

with Joanne Foster and Patrice Vecchione What is creativity, how can we nurture it, and what can it do for us? In this conversation we speak about creativity from two directions: Dr. Joanne Foster researches and writes about creativity in education, and Patrice Vecchione teaches and practices creativity in her writing and visual art. Interviewed […]

Sharon Sewell-Fairman’s path to become CEO and President of New York City-based nonprofit Women Creating Change was hardly set at birth. She started life in a rural area of Jamaica, her only advantage being her family’s emphasis on the importance of education. Sharon pins her success on the support of women: her grandmother and mother […]

Carol Fisher Saller moved from her career as an editor to a writer of children’s books not knowing that she was witnessing the end of an era. Her first books were published by traditional, mainstream publishers who were running their businesses the way they had been run for decades. Then Carol, along with many other […]

On-the-street interviews by Suki Wessling: On April 5, 2025, people across the United States took to the streets for rallies branded “Hands Off.” I particularly appreciated that theme once I arrived at our local rally in Santa Cruz, CA. Why? Because we’ve got to stop this us and them thing. All of us depend on […]

Brooke Berman is a first-time film director. She’s also a middle-aged woman, a mom, and a wife with a full writing career under her belt. In this conversation, we explore how she got to the point of directing her film, Ramona at Midlife, and what she learned in the process. Brooke’s film is not autobiographical, […]

A special edition of the Babblery in recognition of Black History Month. I was ambivalent about going anywhere on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, this year otherwise known as Inauguration Day. It seemed like the two events were canceling each other out in my brain, creating a longing for pure nothingness. But a path to […]