First up, be greeted by Cat Bradfield, WLRN's World News Coordinator who announces a music show project she is heading to count down the top 100 songs chosen by WLRN listeners just in time to celebrate ten years of WLRN's stellar podcast hitting the Femisphere.

Next, hear Cat deliver the world news with stories from the USA, Iran, Uganda, Australia and France.

After the world news, enjoy an excerpt of the song Gole goldune man by Simin Ghanem, an Iranian artist. The song means "You are my flower who has gone" and was chosen by our guest this month, Fariba Amini.

Next, stay tuned for an interview Lola did with Fariba, an Iranian-American journalist and freelance writer who discusses the strides and setbacks of the women of Iran and what American women can do to support them.

Finally, hear commentary from Lola about the nuanced nature of women's progress in Iran and her anti-war stance.

Thanks for tuning in to WLRN, feminist-powered community radio since 2016!

Wishing you a Happy Galentine's Day season, this episode is dedicated to a thorough look at the concept of feminist love with Esmée Streachailt and Jocelyn Crawley.

First up, hear Thistle deliver the podcast greeting before the world news segment with Cat Bradfield featuring stories from the Gambia, Chile, Indonesia and the United States.

Next, take a listen to the interview Jocelyn did with Ms. Esmée Streachailt of MedusaRising.org, a wonderful radical feminist organization that engages and inspires young women to join the movement. Esmée and Jocelyn explore patriarchal concepts of love in order to highlight the need for a radical feminist love that uproots and heals.

Finally, take a deep dive into the concept of feminist love with Jocelyn's commentary she leaves us with after the interview.

Stay tuned 'til the very end for Margaret's explanation of this month's cover art reprinted below.

From WLRN's resident graphic designer, Margaret:

"I started with the idea of light representing love. Light flowing out of our selves - connecting us. I found a photo of our sun I had captured which showed rays radiating out. I reused some silhouettes I had created for earlier editions, and arranged them to show women in a circle around the source of light, and love, holding hands. For the background I added a NASA image of stars that I altered with colors. Stars across the universe, like our sun, some with the potential for light and love. But it is our earth, and each other which constellates our reality. It is our sun which is the source of light that allows us to live, and to love. It is our selves which bring light and love to each other. Blessed be!"

Dive in to a refreshing newly inspired podcast as we collectively move forward into the new year!

First up, hear Cat Bradfield deliver the world news with a variety of stories from China, Iran, Brazil and other countries that demonstrate the systematic discrimination women face everywhere in all walks of life.

Next, WLRN member Lola Bessis takes the reigns this month offering up an interview she did with Cynthia Enloe about "feminist curiosity" and how to stay alert and active as we monitor and work to end male violence.

Lola delivers riveting commentary after the interview to complete this show focused on waking women up and taking ourselves seriously as political actors instead of pawns in men's games.

Thanks to the team at WLRN for their years of service to our feminist movement WLRN will celebrate ten years of being in your ears this year. Carry on!

Below, find Margaret's artist's statement about the artwork she designed for today's edition.

"For WLRN’s Edition 117 which focuses on Feminist Curiosity, I created the background by layering symbols of airplanes flying around the world - to suggest the global aspect of the issues.

Over that, I used a detail of a surrealist oil painting known as ’The Call’ (La llamada) by the Spanish-Mexican artist Remedios Varo. In her painting, there is a woman in the center with hair flowing up from her head like a flame. That woman has a curious demeanor - she is meant to represent someone awakening to truths. There are other women around her who seem more like they are blending into the sides of a cave like room. Some of them have their eyes open and some don’t.

Mixed together, the plane shapes become more like birds in relation to the women, or arrows. Grouped together they are like obstacles to overcome, to get past, to be able to see more clearly - what is going on."

Happy Winter holidays to all of our listeners! We hope you are warm and cozy as you listen to this, our 116th handcrafted, collectively created podcast.

In this month’s edition, Freda interviews Wendy Murphy, an experienced impact litigator working fiercely to gain equal protection for women under the law. Wendy has won numerous cases setting precedent and leading to changes in the law for women regarding sexual assault and protecting the constitutional and civil rights of victimized women and children.

To listen to Wendy Murphy bring her case to court on December 16th at 2pm Eastern time you can use the following website. It is possible to register two days in advance.

https://forms.mad.uscourts.gov/courtlist.html

You can read Wendy’s Constitutional Terrorism article that details the Equal Rights Amendment, its herstory, and its importance in more detail than she had time to provide in her interview here:

https://8fdaf192-a63f-4cc1-ba48-30c5727fb699.usrfiles.com/ugd/8fdaf1_b95d74efe47e437abcf29301af7a10b8.pdf

And here is a link to Wendy Murphy’s book Oh No He Didn’t: Brilliant Women and the Men Who Took Credit for Their Work. Her book includes a discussion about women’s inequality and ties to the problem of men taking credit for women’s work:

https://www.amazon.com/Didnt-Brilliant-Women-Credit-Their/dp/1947976478/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=7W5QB3UD3NSW&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.E2dmW1SmEINDuhKhtXPlPLZmNtT0WR6WnGCHuF4ZbtulZayM_NULVg_aD39TCnXEXwCILf_svyZ3MCbNtgyw9jeIEby5dUtQh8ra378hrnVn2Dg1JCB8Z2E_tJY0Q0fzrv-H97ahAYLOyqldRKD84wM52_YgBXTdw5tksAreiwRO9Epsg7uxHFMRuRJs7Zk5ZP2WfQwB2_FQy2St3ByK_A.uBD0ckSRUUzY_vegQwKtrJrseNHYSW_6AYsyEbNQMYU&dib_tag=se&keywords=oh+no+he+didnt&qid=1737175237&sprefix=oh+no+he+didnt%2Caps%2C83&sr=8-1#aw-udpv3-customer-reviews_feature_div

Wendy Murphy works with the organization EQUAL MEANS EQUAL, a national non-profit organization dedicated to the immediate publication, adoption and enforcement of the original Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution, which became enforceable federal law on January 27th of 2022. You can get involved here:

https://equalmeansequal.org/

You can hear Wendy speak more here:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6tnXAMpZsS8

Wendy referenced the feminist activism group FIST. Feminists in Struggle (“FIST”) is a national female-only radical feminist network, democratically run, and composed of individuals born female and affiliated female-only feminist organizations. You can find FIST here:

https://feministstruggle.org/

Thanks for staying tuned to WLRN, your feminist-community powered radio station in the Femisphere!

Edition 115 starts with Freda greeting the listener before handing the mic to Cat Bradfield for WLRN's World News segment featuring stories from France, Michigan, England, and Australia.

Enjoy the song "Like a Gift" by Samia Malek before hearing Thistle's commentary and snippets of audio from the FiLia conference ending in the song "Spinning & Weaving." Thistle's commentary is followed by Aurora's take, in which she examines the treatment of war at FiLia and encourages us to look more deeply at what causes conflict in the movement and not avoid it.

Stay tuned to the very end for Margaret's explanation of the cover image for the month and Lola's synopsis of the show coming out in December. Thanks, as always, for staying tuned to WLRN!

Artist's statement:

"To create the image for the 115th Edition of WLRN, I used a photo of Freda, aurora and Thistle taken at the FiLia conference. I also included a satellite image of Brighton. I took words from a couple of essays related to the conference and put them into a word cloud generator - playing with the colors and fonts.

Arranging everything, I made sure a few words were prominent, like FiLia, and solidarity. While mostly obscured, Zionism is situated over Gaza. Other words, such as biological, gender, research, influential, bodies, and war showed up more randomly.

I appreciate the texture of the words - and ideas. How they overlap visually and abstractly. How our point of views mingle as well as conflict."

Edition 114 of WLRN is here!

Aurora Linnea kicks things off before handing it over to Cat Bradfield for the world news segment, featuring updates from Afghanistan, Argentina, and South Korea.

Then, enjoy “Wishing Well” by Jamie Wyatt, followed by a powerful interview Thistle conducted with Brianna Pressley and Elizabeth Watson of WDI USA. Brianna (State Contact for Illinois) and Elizabeth (Minnesota) share how they connected with women in prison, what motivates their advocacy, and the critical work they’re doing to support incarcerated women.

Stick around ‘til the end for Sekhmet SheOwl’s no-nonsense commentary on the urgent issue of men being housed in women’s prisons—and why it needs to be front and center in feminist activism.

Thanks for listening to WLRN!

Today's edition starts off with a greeting from Thistle, our resident singer/songwriter and founder of WLRN before diving into our world news segment with Cat Bradfield.

After the news, hear Ani DiFranco's song, Atom, in its entirety to get an idea of the enormity of the problem and its root in male dominion and madness.

Next, stay tuned for an interview Thistle did with Professor Cynthia Enloe of Clark University about the global nature of the nuclear problem and the different responses, actions and solutions of governments and peace activists. Cynthia emphasizes the work of ICAN, the International Campaign to End Nuclear Weapons https://www.icanw.org/and the book Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy by Ray Acheson.

Then, hear riveting commentary delivered by aurora linnea in which she discusses the phallic nature of the Bomb and the absurdity that all of human history, culture and life could end in a moment of males punching in codes to blast off large penis-shaped bombs. Aurora explores the anit-nuclear movement led by feminists in the 1980s to show how women organized in the past and could do it again. She highlights the work of Dr. Helen Caldicott, among other inspirational anti-nukes feminists.

Finally, dive into the song Jezebel that Thistle wrote and recorded over 20 years ago about women's simultaneous bondage and resistance to the patriarchal nuclear age.

The cover art this month was created by Margaret who brings us this artist's statement:

"To create the image for Edition 113, The Nuclear Threat, I used a photo of the ‘Fat Man’, the 21 kiloton implosion-type plutonium bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, along with an image of a woman with atomic bomb injuries, an image of Nagasaki after the explosion, and an atomic bomb plume. I added red colors to the Nagasaki image, and magenta to the bomb plume. We see the woman from the back - over laid with blues and purples - and with the ruins of Nagasaki bleeding through her body. She is facing the destruction, the effects, but we can’t see her expression.

The Fat Man bomb sits nestled next to the woman, taking up space, like the space that the nuclear war threat occupies in our society and our sensibilities."

Thanks for staying tuned to feminist-powered community radio, WLRN.

Welcome to the 112th edition of WLRN's monthly handcrafted and collectively created podcast! This month features four Dianic Priestesses who speak with Thistle about the Red Tent they set up at National Women's Music Festival (NWMF) in Madison, WI every year.

Harvest Brown is an ordained Dianic Priestess of the Red Tent. She and her Red Tent clan have set up and worked within the Red Tent space at NWMF for ten years.

Holin Blackmoon is a Dianic High Priestess and Land Witch. She has been reading the cards for over 50 years. She is happiest among plants and animals, especially her beloved hens.

Rain Foster is an ordained priestess, practicing in the Dianic tradition for 24 years. She is a member of the Red Tent clan in Madison, WI, offering sacred, women born women-only spaces.

FireHawk is an ordained priestess of transformation and transition in the Dianic tradition. She has been a practitioner of wicca for over 30 years and a steward of mother earth and her creatures great and small since she was a small child.

To learn more about the National Women's Music Festival, visit this link: https://nwmf.info/

The World News segment is brought to you by Cat Bradfield and our show is produced with tender love and care by Ann Castile. WLRN commentary this month is by Freda Bear. Thanks for tuning in to WLRN!

July 3rd, 2025 MADISON -- First up, be greeted by WLRN's founder, Thistle Pettersen before she hands the baton to WLRN's newest member, Ms. Cat Bradfield, who delivers the world news segment.

After enjoying Tracy Chapman's song "The Promise", hear Arianne of LGB Alliance USA speak with Thistle about Pride 2025 just before Arianne hopped into the woods for a RadFem summer camp in the Pacific Northwest this June and July.

Then, hear a rendition of aurora linnea's first piece she turned in to WLRN in 2021 that April Neault loved so much, she made into this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiJGYYpXhWo

After the reading of aurora's essay entitled "Pride: Corporate Patriarchy's Celebration in the Streets", we end our show by thanking our guest, Arianne of LGB Alliance USA, and signing off.

This month's artwork is by WLRN's graphic designer and artist, Margaret Moss.

Edition 111 Artist's Statement :

"I started the featured image with an oil sketch Berthe Morisot created in 1885. The drawing/painting she made is a self-portrait that includes a portrait of her daughter. All loosely rendered.

I kept the background of Berthe Morisot’s oil sketch, and I digitally sketched an image of our guest Arianne of LGB Alliance USA, and Tracy Chapman, whose song, ‘The Promise’ is included in this month’s podcast.

I included purple and green because I especially like those colors - and I appreciate that they have a connection to (British) suffragists.

I enjoyed interacting with Berthe Morisot’s artwork. Even though she created her painting in 1885, it has a modern feel. I expect that Morisot had a greater influence on Modern Art than she is given credit for.

I appreciate women such as Berthe Morisot, all the suffragists, Arianne, and Tracy Chapman for their contributions to our culture. And I appreciate WLRN for lifting up women so their voices can be heard more widely."

First up, hear Thistle greet the listener with an appeal for support to get the team at WLRN over to England this Fall for the FiLia conference. Learn more here: https://wlrnmedia.com/2025/03/28/filia/.

Next, stay tuned for WLRN's world news segment written and delivered by aurora linnea in which she features stories from the UK, France, Mexico and the USA.

The world news is followed by the song "Goodbye Mississippi" by Jess Hawk Oakenstar, a song suggested by our guest this month, Dianne Post. It's a beautiful and sad song with heart-felt lyrics about a mother and daughter trying to escape male violence.

Following the song, hear the interview Thistle did with Ms. Dianne Post about the male bias present in the law in the United States and what feminist women need to do to combat it.

Finally, stay tuned for the replaying of Sekhmet's brilliant commentary about female sexuality in the face of the commercial sex industry that seeks to exploit it for male gain.

Thanks for tuning in to feminist community powered radio, WLRN! #prostitution #DiannePost #WLRN