New Legacy Radio

 Today we will delve into the complex and often incongruent ways the United States works and why it doesn't. To what degree do we know how the country is supposed to work as voters and nonvoters in the upcoming US presidential election? What makes us care and not? William Cooper offers rich insight into the key drivers and less-examined ways of how the political landscape in the US has been shaped. His 2024 book, "How America Works...and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the US Political System" is an opportunity to make sense of the American political landscape. He will share historical implications of what we experience today, and which Constitutional provisions have guided the country in the best and worst ways.  William Cooper's work addresses what guides our political system alongside the embedded traditional central to America's story.  We will discern recent developments, that have led to and created a tumultuous political environment, ahead of the 2024 election, including the shifting role and influence of the Supreme Court. We will speak in-depth about the threat of extreme polarization, what this means for us right now, and what we might expect going forward. Tune in to gain more insight into the political workings of the American Experiment and what this means for you as we near Election Day 2024.   WILLIAM COOPER is an attorney, author, and national columnist. His writings have appeared in hundreds of publications globally including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Newsweek, CNN, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Daily News, Baltimore Sun, Dallas Morning News, Chicago Sun-Times, Toronto Star, Jerusalem Post, and Huffington Post. He lives in Northern California.

In our premiere episode, we will discuss the experience of being involuntarily childless in a pronatalist world, through personal experiences, and the need for change. Our guest for this episode is Hilary Fennell.   Hilary is an award-winning programme maker and journalist with extensive experience of working in television and radio as a series producer and director.  In her ground-breaking radio documentary, Childless, Hilary Fennell explores the realities and dynamics of being involuntarily childless in a child-centered society.   Her voice as a childless not by choice woman, is interwoven with the stories of six other women. Each of the women speak to their diverse journeys in coming to terms with living a life without children.   Currently, it is estimated that one in five women in Ireland will not have a child, by the time they reach age 45. It is further estimated that only 10% of these women are childless by choice (child free). Childless, focuses on the other 90% of women, who represent an often less represented group.    This group is often silenced by the taboo nature of this topic, which remains today, despite the number of women living without children, not by choice. Further, these statistics do not include other genders. A majority of countries primarily track the parental status of women only.   Societies have become obsessed with motherhood and the idealization of human reproduction, supported by pronatalist rhetoric, which is reinforced through policy, in the workplace and socially.   Hilary navigates the social, physical and emotional impact of childlessness throughout her documentary, with skillful artistry and a full heart, amidst the shadows of grief, a call for social change, and the lightness of learning to live a full and meaningful life.   Please join us to learn more about her incredible radio documentary, and the issues that matter most to those who are living without children, involuntarily.     Hilary Fennell is an award-winning programme maker and journalist with extensive experience of working in television and radio as a series producer and director. Her work runs the gamut from current affairs to arts and human interest and has been in competition at many festivals worldwide. Hilary has worked in both the Irish State Broadcaster RTÉ and the independent sector. As a journalist, she been interviewing and writing for various national media for over twenty years.  She is also a recognised fiction writer, recent prizes include The Sean O'Faolain Short Story Competition.  Hilary also lectures in Broadcast Production at the National Film School at IADT and does presenting and voiceover work.  She originally graduated from Trinity College Dublin with an honours law degree (LL.B, Bachelor in Laws) and qualified as a barrister from The Kings Inns Dublin (BL, Barrister-at-Law). See [email protected]

The United States incarcerates more people than any other industrial democracy in the world. Why is this the state of America, and what are the social, economic, and political costs? Today's guest is Kevin B. Smith, author of The Jailer's Reckoning: How Mass Incarceration is Damaging America. He will share in-depth perspectives from his research, ranging from the differential treatment of inmates to the extreme impact on individuals, communities, and states. In this landmark book, Kevin B. Smith explains that the United States became the world's biggest jailer because politicians wanted to do something about a very real problem with violent crime. That effort was accelerated by a variety of partisan and socio-demographic trends that started to significantly reshape the political environment in the 1980s and 1990s. How did serving time behind bars become a normalized social experience, affecting a majority of Americans directly or indirectly? Join us for this candid, revelatory discussion on the realities of incarceration in America.

What does it mean to tell the truth in America? How can truth be discovered through missing narratives and overlooked history? Whose narratives are accounted for and not, who is held accountable, in the face of foundational racial injustice and violence in the US? Today we will be in conversation with Aran Shetterly, author of Morningside: The 1979 Greensboro Massacre and the Struggle for an American City's Soul (Amistad, October 2024). Morningside delves deeply into the event and its immediate aftermath, delivering an intimate account of an overlooked chapter in American history and showing why the Greensboro Massacre is such an important and relevant case study in proximity to our present. Tune in live for this in-depth look at the legacy of the Greensboro Massacre, the Civil Rights to Human Rights movements, and what this means now.

Today we will delve into the complex and often incongruent ways the United States works and why it doesn't. To what degree do we know how the country is supposed to work as voters and nonvoters in the upcoming US presidential election? What makes us care and not? William Cooper offers rich insight into the key drivers and less-examined ways of how the political landscape in the US has been shaped. His 2024 book, How America Works...and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the US Political System is an opportunity to make sense of the American political landscape. He will share historical implications of what we experience today, and which Constitutional provisions have guided the country in the best and worst ways. William Cooper's work addresses what guides our political system alongside the embedded traditional central to America's story. We will discern recent developments, that have led to and created a tumultuous political environment, ahead of the 2024 election, including the shifting role and influence of the Supreme Court. We will speak in-depth about the threat of extreme polarization, what this means for us right now, and what we might expect going forward. Tune in to gain more insight into the political workings of the American Experiment and what this means for you as we near Election Day 2024.

Implicit bias toward people who are unmarried and do not have children is pervasive throughout medical education, protocol, and practice. Models of healthcare based on a presumed family structure are neither inclusive nor safe when patients have different experiences and outcomes based on marital status. Healthcare access, hospital release requirements, post-procedure care, and treatment are designed for those with specific social and familial structures and relationships. The dangers posed throughout the medical field can leave patients to navigate on their own, amidst these unrecognized barriers. How does this impact the quality of healthcare an unmarried person receives? Today's guest is Joan DelFattore, a professor emerita at the University of Delaware. She has researched, written, and spoken widely on singlist bas in medical care. She will share how this bias can significantly affect cancer treatment and the ways medical authors justify the disparate treatment of married and unmarried cancer patients who are otherwise similar. We will discuss what can be done to reduce these adverse outcomes, and the urgent changes we need now. Tune in live to learn more about what you can do to create change amidst healthcare inequity impacting our demographic.

In several ways, akin to the growing collective demographic of people who don't have children, the overlooked value of voter relevance & influence is too often dismissed by dominant political narratives. Tune in for this timely conversation with Matthew Ferrence, author of I Hate It Here, Please Vote for Me: Essays on Rural Political Decay (West Virginia University Press, 2024). In 2020, Matthew Ferrence ran for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, in a deeply-red district, and lost quite badly. In his newest book, he reflects on this experience to explore how American political narratives refuse to recognize the existence and value of nonconservative rural Americans, and how losing offers insight into the political morass of our nation. In I Hate It Here, Please Vote for Me he offers a counter-narrative to stereotypes of monolithic rural American voters and emphasizes that the ways stories are told about rural America are a source for the bitter divide between Red America and Blue America. Tune in live or on-demand to learn more about the underpinnings of the US political landscape and the need to recognize overlooked nonconservative voters in rural America.

Reproductive healthcare remains a divisive issue in the United States, and once again, abortion is on the ballot in an election nearly one month away. In 2022, the Dobbs Decision took away the constitutional right to privacy and bodily autonomy and gave states increased rights to limit and even outlaw abortions. (Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Supreme Court Decision) The impact of this decision on women and girls resulted in forced births, preventable deaths, and legal prosecution for experiencing miscarriages and crossing state lines to seek necessary reproductive healthcare services. Due to the ever-present need for urgent response to these life-threatening and often life-ending policies, historical perspectives of women's reproductive healthcare may not always be at the forefront of the abortion debate. Today will learn from the life of a prominent 19th-century icon who offered reproductive healthcare services to women for forty years. Nicholas Syrett has written a brilliant portrayal of one of the most famous abortionists of this time in his book, "The Trials of Madame Restell: Nineteenth-Century America's Most Infamous Female Physician and the Campaign to Make Abortion a Crime" (The New Press 2023). Nicholas will share the profundity of her work amidst the scandals and consequences of the time. We will also discuss how this relates to the current state of women's reproductive rights.

Abortion on the ballot is not an unfamiliar phrase in the United States. This issue has been a polarizing one for US voters, and the threat of revoking women's reproductive rights. At the heart of this issue is the extraction and weaponization of a single issue. Women do not have full autonomy we do not have bodily autonomy. The hyper-focus on controlling the reproductive aspect of women's lives and bodies most poignantly reveals how women are valued and not. Fragmenting reproductive medical needs from healthcare, not only endangers those who want or need to have access to abortion, the impact is far-reaching. We have seen this time and again since the Dobbs decision, from medical patients being denied necessary procedures and medication, to girls who have been forced to give birth. Today we will discuss why the election matters, and why your vote must be counted. We will be in conversation with Karen Mulhauser, a powerful advocate for abortion rights and community organizer, and her colleague Lindy Shapiro, who is committed to engaging youth. They are working to ensure women's freedoms now and for future generations.

Today we will discuss self-identity in the context of not knowing one's birth origins. How do social and familial circumstances shape our identities when we enter the world, and throughout our lives? In particular, what is the potential impact of not knowing the origins of your DNA, and the person who embodies it? Nuclear families, parents, guardians, and other immediate people in a child's life, often well-intentioned have withheld knowledge of children's birth identities. While it is more common for this to be a matter of paternity, children who are adopted, whose parents have died, or who otherwise live not knowing the origins of their birth, may also not know the identity of who gave birth to them. What are the reasons for this, and how does this ultimately impact the self-identity of children and adults? David Tereshchuk, author of A Question of Paternity: My Life as an Unaffiliated Reporter, will share his insight and intimate experiences, seeking to find the identity of his father. His story is heartrending and one that will be deeply resonant for so many.