Emma G brings together culture & family from all over the world, including Persia, Fiji, New Zealand, Iowa, and more. Her music is likewise expansive, including seeds of operatic voice training with a rock music emphasis. And perhaps the most moving part is the amount of healing that is part of Emma's journey, both for herself and for the young people she's worked with, as a youth empowerment through songwriting coach. Emma started her life steeped in the trauma of hydrocephalus, meaning that she had some 10 brain surgeries over the years, and she's dealt with a whole lot of other trauma - physical, emotional, and sexual – meaning that she had to learn about her own healing and facing challenges, often through songwriting.
Jane Addams, founder of Hull Settlement House in Chicago, was a powerful inspiration and aid to the poor and downtrodden, like Nellie Wicks, who was great-grandmother to singer/songwriter Kristin Lems. Kristin was inspired to create a musical play about Jane Addams & Nellie called Saint Jane and the Wicked Wicks, a production that is both entertaining & educational about one of the most influential women in US history, recipient of the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize and co-founder of several organizations, including the NAACP & the ACLU. Kristin's play features wonderful historical & personal glimpses, and also a lot of excellent music.
Even when he is being serious, comedian, storyteller, and podcast host, Esteban Gast is hilarious. And for climate advocates looking for some hope, perhaps the sweetest spot in the climate change podcast scene right now is Esteban’s new show, Comedians Conquering Climate Change. Only 15 minutes each episode, he features fellow comedians who learn along with the listener. The show is made in collaboration with Generation180.
Comedians Conquering Climate Change is the funniest, friendliest, and shortest podcast addressing today’s critical climate and clean energy topics. Join comedian, writer, and teacher Esteban Gast as he enlists the help of fellow comedians to single-handedly save the planet.
Today is the second time we'll have Jim Phillips with us, and this is kind of a new-and-improved-music of Jim Phillips, with significant overlap of songs from the last time, but with dramatically enhanced versions of some of his tunes. Jim is a chemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, and in his spare moments he is Eau Claire's go-to bass guitarist for a wide assortment of bands and configurations of musicians.
Thom Hartmann's completely articulate voice & extensive knowledge & insights all combine to insure his place as the USA's #1 progressive talk show host. His more than 30 books are equally compelling, and today we talk with Thom about his latest, The Hidden one of the most articulate voices of progressive radio in the USA, and he's a compelling writer as well. His most recent book is The Hidden History of Big Brother In America: How the Death of Privacy and the Rise of Surveillance Threaten Us and Our Democracy and it combines history, current events, & clear-sighted analysis or the way forward.
Casting out the chest-beating & shade-throwing from the Bible with the skills & insights of a Jewish Trans Educator (Liam Hooper) and a Cantankerous Hermit-ish Mendicant Farmer (Don Durham) is an important goal of Bible Bash.
Ruth Wyand, of Kill Devil Hills, NC, is a wonderful songwriter and performer, with magic in her tunes and lyrics, though it was really her guitar work that first riveted our attention, complete with soul-captivating finger-picking and bottleneck slide flourishes. Though of a genre all her own, she channels elements of blues, jazz, & Americana - and much more. In addition to her own musical creations, she breathes new life and identity into the tunes of other musicians, making them all her own.
Past/Present Religious/Spiritual Influences: Catholic, Yoga, Meditation, Non-affiliated
Starting in high school, Doug Alan Wilcox has been in a variety of bands, including names like Black Jack, Logix, So What Band, and Friends, transitioning from pop/rock/dance (and much more) music to a solo performing singer/songwriter career around 2000. Doug's influences are far and wide, including Bob Dylan, Robert Frost, and Buddha's Minivan. He hails from Haggarstown, MD.
Past/present religious/spiritual influences: Lutheran, Unity, Non-affiliated
One of the issues we face in dealing with problems in the USA is the frequent divide between “the common folk” - rural, often farm folks - and the urban populace, often dismissed from the other side as “ivory tower intellectuals”. This is often far from the truth, and today's guest, Daniel O'Connell, raises up the lives of those scholars who have bridged the gap and used their knowledge to even out the economic & political turf in California's San Joaqin Valley, in his thesis-turned-book, In the Struggle: Scholars and the Fight Against Industrial Agribusiness In California.