The Babblery RADIO-READY FILES

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In her work in the Second Wave feminist movement, historian Ruth Rosen experienced a lot of revelations about the lives of women. But once that time was past, she experienced a different type of revelation as male historians described the 70s as "a decade when nothing of importance happened." Ruth set out to research and chronicle the groundbreaking history that she had lived, and that mainstream media was in the...

NOTE: This audio is the broadcast version of this episode for radio stations only. Visit BABBLERY.com for the full podcast stream, more information, transcript, and links.

In this emotional and engaging interview, jazz violinist Nora Germain speaks of her drive to achieve in an industry shaken to the core by new technology. Without a traditional agent or label, she uses social media as her public relations firm. She talks about the importance of mentorship and collaboration between musicians, including her longtime collaboration with American roots musician Jon Batiste. And she explores the way her difficult childhood...

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When Barbara Winslow moved to Seattle with her husband in the late 60s, she was already a radical feminist. But when she joined up with other women in the struggle for their basic rights, she became an effective activist. In this conversation, we explore Barbara’s work, the importance of thinking local when fighting for civil rights, and her advice for the new generat...

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Artist, author, educator—Enid Baxter Ryce is on a roll. She's changed her careers on both sides: In her creative work, she is now publishing books rather than working with museums. As an educator, she is using her experience teaching students of all ages to train teachers on how to get students off their screens and back into the natural world.

These ch...

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Merle Hoffman opened one of America’s first legal abortion clinics in 1971—and she’s been fighting for our rights ever since. In this conversation, the founder of Choices Women’s Medical Center reflects on fifty-plus years on the front lines of the reproductive rights movement: what she’s learned, what she’s lost, and why she refuses to stop pushing that rock up the hill. Lis...

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Cindy Cohn’s new book, Privacy’s Defender, focuses on three legal cases that formed the basis for privacy and freedom of speech on the Internet. But it’s also a memoir of her work with the Internet Frontier Foundation, framing the issues raised by legal battles through personal choices and life events both mundane and momentous. In this unusual convers...

NOTE: This audio is the broadcast version of this episode for radio stations only. Visit BABBLERY.com for the full stream, more information, transcript, and links.

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Denise Miranda is New York State’s top civil rights official, the head of an agency that is charged with monitoring and promoting civil rights in the state. She’s also a proud native of the Bronx, daughter of Puerto Rican-born parents, and a mother. It’s an unusual time for Denise—a Black Latina—to be in charge of the part of the government s...

NOTE: The audio of this episode is the broadcast version of this episode for radio station use only. Visit BABBLERY.com for the full stream, more information, transcript, and links.

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About The Babblery:

The Babblery features conversations about who we are and how we got this way. Modern humans can seem like the ancients building the Biblical Tower of Babel, cursed by God/nature never to understand each other. As Visiting Translators at the Tower of Babble, our guests delve into their work, their research, and their...

NOTE: The audio of this episode is the broadcast version of this episode for radio stations only. Visit BABBLERY.com for the full stream, more information, transcript, and links.

Writer Joan Gelfand’s life so far has been bookended by what she refers to as “strange moments.” As a teenager, she left New York City for the allure of the Berkeley Women’s Movement, a time when lesbians were forming their own radical community and forging a new way for American women to live. Now Joan […]

NOTE: The audio of this episode is the broadcast version of this episode for radio stations only. Visit BABBLERY.com for the full stream, more information, transcript, and links.

In her childhood, filmmaker Alexandrine Benjamin experienced the struggles of life in Haiti, a country with a troubled past and present. She had to work hard for every step of her education and career. When it came to making her first short feature film, there was no question that she would depict Haiti with love, care, and a deep hope for its people. Her first short feature is N Ap Boule (“Through the Barricades”), which depicts a couple attempting to get to the hospital so that she can give birth. In our conversation, we talk about the film...

Sometimes all it takes to change lives is a simple question. One day at her piano lesson, LaDoris Cordell asked her teacher, Jodi Gandolfi, if there were any Black composers of concert music. Concert music is a more inclusive term for what many people know as "classical" music: art songs, symphonies, opera, chamber music. The canon of concert music is overwhelmingly white, or rather, it was.

LaDoris's question sparked curiosity in Jodi, whose investigations revealed a positive avalanche of materials, so they brought in Deanne Tucker to help out. Over 20 years after that simple question, t...

American women are so entrenched in our system of birth that it’s hard to see other possibilities, but doula Anne Wallen and the women she works with and trains are evangelical about how different it could be. In this conversation, Anne explores the ‘typical’ doctor-led birth, then describes the births she assists. The contrasts could not be more striking. Anne points out that the American way of birth is a process built on taking away women’s bodily autonomy.

For more details and transcript, visit the show page at Babblery.com.

About The Babblery:

...

Shilpi Chhotray is a storyteller with a purpose. An environmentalist from an early age, her perspective has developed and deepened during her career. Having found inspiration in the social justice movement, she and her production team are now embarking on a project to tell stories about environmental justice through "A People's Climate." The new podcast is hosted by The Nation Magazine and features interviews with many of the important figures in the movement.

"I have massive concerns with the conservation movement as it is because they're leaving the people part out of it and to be extremely...

From Suki Wessling:

Reporting from the October 18 No Kings Rally in Downtown Santa Cruz today, I heard a clear message: What’s happening in this country is not OK. People from all walks of life came together with a message of unity and hope. Although there was anger, there was a distinct lack of partisanship and hateful speech. Listen in to what locals had to say about the state of our democracy and the message they hope to send.

To learn more about future events, join your local Invisible’s mailing list.

S...

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 a speech about academic freedom and its role in American universities. The Babblery presents this speech interwoven with Bettina’s recollections of her life and career and her unshakable belief in the value of free expression.

Bettina’s experiences are mo...

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 her research doggedly, from Edinburgh where she made her first recordings, to Bing Nursery School at Stanford, where she solidified her findings. She also drew on her experiences as a mother, documenting her son's speech in over a thousand pages as he learned to...

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, which has yielded a financial return much greater than the stock market. But scientists today are reeling—in Heather's words, they're "devastated"—by cuts in US funding that are reverberating around the world.

Heather is a researcher in Paleoceanography, modeling long-ago climates by studying t...

Independence Day, 2025

Many Americans in coastal California approached Independence Day with trepidation this year. We see much of what we hold dear about our country being dismantled, our values for respecting all human life being ignored, our ability to have civil conversations with those we disagree with almost nonexistent.

But as host Suki Wessling prepared to go to our local parade, dubbed “The World’s Shortest Parade” because it runs the length of the tiny coastal village of Aptos, she realized that we could still be proud of our country. In fact, she realized that we hav...

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 separately, Joanne and Patrice speak on the same topics through the lens each has developed in her own life and work.

Visit The Babblery's show page for links and more information.

About The Babblery:

The Babblery...

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 first, and then mentors who helped and encouraged her along the way.

In this interview, we discuss Sharon's path and the work she now does. We talk about the ways that women can become engaged in their communities, and the ways we...

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 writers, saw the industry change around her. She is now an “indie author” and trying to rebalance her career in a new publishing world.

Visit The Babblery for further episode details.

About The Babblery:

The Babblery features conver...

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 a stable, effective federal government, and right now, just a tiny percentage of us are going to benefit from what's being done at the federal level. Although, I have to admit, I can hardly think of who will actually benefit. I mean, the financial...

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, but it's deeply personal. Her main character navigates reigniting her friendship with two other midlife women writers, repairing her marriage, and taking control again of her story and her writing. The film is not unique in how it puts a middle-aged woman's...

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 pure nothingness not forthcoming, I dragged myself out to the annual march in Santa Cruz.

I don't usually do purely local episodes for The Babblery, and this one is as pure and local as it can get...

"It's really kind of transcendental, this way that a group can come together to bring meaning to sound through our bodies."

Composer Anne Hege practices a rarefied profession. Not only does she compose "New Music" (which non-fans might think of as "modern classical"), but she composes Avant Garde music. And not only does she compose opera, but she scores them for laptop instruments.

You may be confused. But not for long!

I approached Anne hoping that she'd be able to use words as a conduit to help listeners understand what she does and why she...

After a long career at CBS as a TV and online content producer, Stephanie Jacobs and her wife came west for a warmer climate, good wine, and proximity to family. She initially connected to the Babblery to speak about her career and her broad experience in American politics, but this conversation took an unexpected turn. Politics, in Stephanie's case, became deeply personal when she decided to define the California girl that she needed to be.

Although we do start by speaking about the recent election, this conversation is not an election post-mortem. Stephanie's career started in radio...

In this conversation, host Suki Wessling speaks with writer, researcher, designer and entrepreneur Brenda Laurel about how girls play and what that means for women and game designers. We talk about the relationship between theater and gaming, and how the gaming world grew to change the way children live and develop. We talk about the importance of teaching. But most of all, we talk about what it means to be a creator in this world, someone who asks others to entrust their minds to our work.

Visit the Babblery for more information and links.

About...

"Every time I danced,  I thought about the gratitude I had to move my body when simultaneously my mother was bound to a wheelchair. It shifted my perspective on the gift of life."

- Nicole Tetreault

In this wide-ranging interview, we explore how neuroscientist, author, and meditation teacher Nicole Tetreault managed to step across what was once a great divide. Nicole started her adult life studying neuroscience, hoping to understand the mechanism for her mother's Parkinson's and hopefully be part of discovering a cure. At the same time, Nicole's Catholic upbringing had instilled in her a de...

How do you talk to people you don’t agree with so that you can continue the conversation? Karin Tamerius was passionate about politics as a young person, but she also noticed that her arguments with family didn’t go anywhere. Eventually, Karin melded her early political career with training in psychiatry to create a method of conversation that helps people speak more constructively with people on the other side. For more details about this episode, visit the episode page on The Babblery.

About The Babblery:

Warning: This episode invokes “the G-word,” and by that we mean gifted. It’s the term used by educators, psychologists, and parents, despite the fact that everyone knows it evokes a whiff of elitism and implies that others have no gifts. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. In this episode, host Suki Wessling explores the real lives of gifted girls and women with seven gifted women who have devoted their lives to raising, educating and supporting gifted girls and women.

“We all have differences, and we all have gifts, but that’s different from saying eve...

"In the next six years, one of the biggest wealth transfers this country has ever seen is happening. And by 2030, women are going to control $30 trillion in this economy."

Janine Firpo

Many of us find trips to new places inspiring. For Janine Firpo, what started with a getaway led to a career change which evolved into a whole new way of living.

Firpo is the author of Activate Your Money: Invest to Grow Your Wealth and Build a Better World and co-founder of Invest for Better, a nonprofit that leads women to learn...

What happens when your children don't meet society's expectations for development and behavior?

Rebecca and Wendy agreed to an interview for last month's "Motherhood in the 21st Century" episode, but as soon as we began to talk, it was clear that their perspectives as mothers were worth exploring in more depth. We only used first names, because although their children are now young adults, these two moms are still engaged in helping their children navigate the world.

"What to Expect"-style books are very popular amongst moms, and for good reason. Most children follow relatively...

A deep connection to humanity

This month’s episode delves into a common refrain heard from young women contemplating motherhood: “It sounds so hard!”

According to the moms interviewed for The Babblery, it is hard, but it’s also an experience like no other, one that leads women to a sense of deep satisfaction. Listen to women, from new mothers to grandmothers, talk about the challenges and joys of “the toughest job.”

For more details, visit this episode on The Babblery website.

Radio stations: purchase this episode from PRX Exchange.

“When I saw my baby...

Jana Marcus

So what happens when a photographer, a mature woman herself, welcomes older women into her studio to get the full glamour treatment? In this episode, we explore how a session with Santa Cruz photographer Jana Marcus inspired and thrilled the women who took part. Even though beauty is supposed to be a superficial attribute, seeing themselves as beautiful, strong, and desirable had a deep and lasting effect on these women.

"When the photos were done, I just cried," says Kimberly Blake Nixon. "I couldn't believe how beautiful they look compared to how not very beautiful...

Ever wondered about the voices you hear on KSQD? You might tune in and hear an intriguing conversation about dreams and psychedeliccs on Saturday. Or maybe you were driving on a Monday at 5 and heard a deeply researched piece about local infrastructure. Or your political ideas were challenged by a deep conversation about an issue you hadn’t thought much about Mondays at 6. Or perhaps you heard KSQD’s own Sandy Stone talking about what it means to be a woman on another Monday at 6.

Check out this conversation by the four women who produced those programs: Kath...

“We need to get away from the violence in our speech and try to develop one filled with loving kindness, filled with compassion, filled with a vision of justice that's not vengeful.”

These are the words of Bettina Aptheker, noted feminist scholar who is often described as a “radical” feminist. In conversation about her life, Bettina has clearly had a radically different one from most of us. She was born to a well-known communist father, and grew up in a household filled with the leftist thinkers of their time. Her family was surveilled by the FBI and Bettina...

Umi is unusual in the field of herpetology, not only is she often the only woman in the room, but she is definitely the only woman in a headscarf. Over the years, many have suggested that she tell her story. But Umi realized that her story really wasn't all that unique. She joined with two herpetologist friends to gather the stories of fifty women herpetologists working around the world. And in the process, she created a network of support and friendship.

In this episode, we explore the lives of herpetologists with three women: Dr. Umilaela Arifin and...

Umi is unusual in the field of herpetology, not only is she often the only woman in the room, but she is definitely the only woman in a headscarf. Over the years, many have suggested that she tell her story. But Umi realized that her story really wasn’t all that unique. She joined with two […]