Ellie 2.0 - Am950 The Progressive Voice Of Minnesota

Another Live Show! The Big Interview is with Ellen Kennedy of World Without Genocide, a St. Paul nonprofit that works to educate about genocide and end it throughout the world. I then pivot to proposed legislation in Tennessee that would prohibit gender-affirming medical or therapeutic care for all minors in the state. I also highlight…

A Live Show! We begin with our featured idealist, NFL football coach Brian Flores who this week filed a class action lawsuit against the NFL and three teams alleging that he was racially discriminated against. Brian explained that he understood his entire future coaching career is at risk, but said he was doing it for…

We begin this week’s show talking about how there’s a push to ban books that make people “uncomfortable” or which contain “obscenity” (loosely defined as anything related to LGBTQ+ topics). Our featured idealists are four female Granbury, Texas high school students who bravely spoke out against their school’s efforts to review books for banning. The…

Our featured idealist is Muhammad Ali, whose resistance to the Vietnam war and advocacy for the rights of black Americans is often overlooked; make sure you listen to the clip of Ali taking on white college students at the end of the segment. The Big Interview is with Danna Nelson, a 25-year-old woman who is…

For this Live Show we begin with our featured idealist, Heather Abbott, a survivor of the April 2013 Boston Bombing. Heather lost her lower left leg in the incident and because health insurers provide only one minimally functioning prosthesis for amputees, Heather created a foundation to assist other amputees with their prosthetic needs. I then…

This week’s featured idealist is radio host Joe Madison, who started a hunger strike (subsisting on liquids only) on November 8, 2021, to advocate for a federal voting rights bill being signed by President Joe. The Big Interview is with Kelsey Waits, whose 8-year-old nonbinary child was outed by persons opposing Kelsey when she ran…

A Live Show! We begin with our featured idealist, bell hooks, who died this week. The author of Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism and 30 other books, hooks wrote about growing up in Jim Crow Kentucky and covered social theory, critiques of patriarchy, white supremacy and capitalism. My regret is that I…

Our featured idealist is Fred Guttenberg, the father to Jaime Guttenberg, who was one of the 17 people murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida on February 14, 2018. Fred has gone on to advocate again gun violence, and he’s worked to have Congress consider “Jaime’s Law” to require background checks for…

This week’s featured idealist is Norma McCorvey, “Jane Roe” in Roe v. Wade. While Norma’s role in securing abortion rights for women was certainly idealistic, Norma’s life—filled with poverty and exploitation—points to her simply attempting to survive the Human Condition. The Big Interview is with Patrick Coolican of the Minnesota Reformer, an online local journalism…

It’s episode number 200! Hooray! We celebrate with my producer, Brett Johnson, and me sharing clips from some of our favorite interviews, including that with Daryl Davis, a black musician who befriends Klu Klux Klan members, and John Blake, the CNN correspondent who talks about “radical integration” as a way to get people past their…

This week’s featured idealist is Boyan Slat, founder of The Ocean Cleanup who has envisioned and worked to rid the world’s oceans of plastic waste. And he’s succeeding–https://theoceancleanup.com/oceans/. The Big Interview is a reprise of my January 2021 interview of Dr. Keith Mayes who speaks about structural racism in MN and the U.S. In my…

We begin with me urging listeners to vote for incumbents on their local school boards in next week’s elections as a way to counter the conservative attacks on those boards. Then, it’s an expanded Big Interview with Sondra Samuels of the Northside Achievement Zone in Minneapolis—you won’t want to miss her exceptional discussion about systemic…

Another live show! This week’s featured idealist is Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist and two-time Pulitzer winner, who has announced his intention to explore running for governor in Oregon, his home state. I also discuss the dangerous (and increasingly common) talk of America falling into a civil war. From there, I discuss how…

This week is a live show! Our featured idealist is Frances Haugen, the Iowa-born-and-raised Facebook whistleblower. Then, in commemoration of National Coming Out Day (October 11), I talk about coming out as a transgender woman in May 2009. We also have a couple callers, to my delight! Hooray!

We begin with our featured idealist, Pauli Murray, who broke barriers as a trans/nonbinary human, feminist, civil rights activist, and someone way before her time. The Big Interview is with Art Cullen, editor of The Storm Lake Times in Storm Lake, Iowa, who talks about a documentary, Storm Lake, that details a small town that’s…

Our featured idealist is Dr. James Whitfield, a Colleyville TX high school principal (the first black high school principal) who in June 2020 wrote an impassioned letter to his school colleagues about the need to fight white supremacy; 14 months later, after only getting tremendous supportive responses to his letter, he was fired. Someone claimed…

I begin the show by sharing about how 9/11 changed my life twenty years ago—it was the day that I realized I would die a coward if I didn’t accept my true gender as female. The Big Interview was a return visit with Michael Rexford (who I first interviewed in November 2019); we talked about…

We begin this week’s show by featuring George McLaurin, who in 1948 at age 61 decided he would be the one to desegregate Oklahoma University, proving that idealism is ageless. The Big Interview is with Kevin Lindsey, Chief Executive Officer of the Minnesota Humanities Center, who talks about how—with wonderful imagination—the MHC is working to…

It’s a rare live show! We start out with the Big Interview featuring Marcus Pope with Youthprise, a Twin Cities youth empowerment and advocacy nonprofit, and Dan Haugen, a board member of Youthprise. Together, they talk about the value of mentoring and highlight their 20+ year relationship of mentoring to each other in a variety…