The Chicago Connection: Black composers of the early 20th century
Early in the 20th century, in which has been named the Great Migration, millions of Black southerners moved North, looking for opportunity and an escape from Jim Crow. The vibrant….
Podcast: 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 own experiences to try to explain the bits they’ve learned about Earth’s most perplexing species. Though we all speak different languages, here at The Babblery we aim to promote understanding, one conversation at a time.
Not Forgotten Anymore: The African American Composer Initiative
Sometimes all it takes is one question to spur a revelation that inspires a movement. The African American Composer Initiative started with a question and has become a thriving nonprofit, discovering, performing, and recording underappreciated concert music by Black composers.
Minibabble: Blessed relief – two stories of birth
Interviewing a doula about natural childbirth was an intensely personal experience for Babblery host Suki Wessling. She’d planned on natural birth—twice. But the American system of birth isn’t set up….
Minibabble: The way of the doula
In praise of natural birth In this mini version of the full episode, “Trusting our Survival Mechanisms with Doula Anne Wallen,” we focus on doula Anne Wallen’s trust in the….
Trusting our Survival Mechanisms with Doula Anne Wallen
Anne Wallen now trains women in the art of the doula. How a teen mom evolved into a proponent of natural childbirth is a quietly stunning American love story.
Minibabble: Motherhood changes the environment
From Babblery host, Suki Wessling: On my radio show, the Babblery, I talk to women of all ages and backgrounds about their work and life experiences and how those experiences….
Finding Community in Environmental Justice with Shilpi Chhotray
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….
Minibabble: Mansplaining muzzles free speech
Like all citizens, women in the United States are guaranteed freedom of speech and academic freedom. But in practice, mansplaining and other unquestioned male dominant behaviors curtail women’s freedoms more….
Academic Freedom Under Fire with Scholar Bettina Aptheker
In a speech on academic freedom and the freedom of speech, feminist scholar Bettina Aptheker explores the parallels between her student years and early career and the growing suppression of freedoms in 2025.
Minibabble: Americans, vote with your eyeballs
This morning, a man shot up a Catholic mass full of children. Usually, I don’t write about current events that haven’t been resolved in any way. But as I listened….