Ellie 2.0 - Am950 The Progressive Voice Of Minnesota

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…

Ranae Lenor Hanson is the author of the new book Watershed: Attending to Body and Earth in Distress and she speaks with Ellie about the rural and urban cultural and political divides in Minnesota.  

Ann Hopkins is Ellie’s Featured Idealist profile this week; Ellie talks about the rural/urban divide in Minnesota with Northern Minnesota-based author Ranae Lenor Hanson in the Big Interview.

Ellie’s featured idealist is seminarian and activist Jonathan Daniels; Ellie’s Big Interview is an encore presentation of her August 2020 conversation with author Michael Fosberg; Ellie has a lot of updates for us in her C-block this week.

Ida B. Wells is Ellie’s featured idealist, the Big Interview is with Jennifer Halpus, parent of a transgender student who filed suit against the Anoka-Hennepin school district for discrimination; Ellie speaks about her recent advocacy.

With this being Pride Weekend in the Twin Cities, our theme is “Pride and Puppies.” We begin by highlighting the recent executive order of Governor Walz that directs health insurers in MN to attest that they don’t provide coverage for conversion therapy—the practice of trying to counsel LGBTQ youth to suppress their sexual or gender…

It’s an Ellie’s Talking Head Show! We start with our featured idealist, Lauren Underwood, a second-term congresswoman who represents Illinois’s 14th District who at 32 was the youngest black woman ever elected to Congress. Her political trajectory was unusual—she started as an RN focusing on health care policy but became politically motivated when the ACA…

This week’s featured idealist is the late Robert Katzmann, a judge who President Clinton appointed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1999. Judge Katzmann used his imagination and position to innovatively increase legal access, and as well, he gave diverse students a glimpse of how their lives can be different. The Big Interview…

To commemorate today’s first-ever federal Juneteenth holiday, I talk about Opal Lee, a 94-year-old idealist who began pushing for federal recognition of June 19, 1865 (the date when federal troops ended slavery in Texas) when she was 89. The Big Interview is with Torrie Allen, executive director of Arts Midwest, which just received an $8…

David Edgerton Jr fills in for Ellie on today’s show!