Ellie 2.0 - Am950 The Progressive Voice Of Minnesota

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!

We start out talking about the 1919 massacre of 200 black men, women and children in Elaine, Arkansas when white-color farmers/townspeople asserted Jim Crow power after black farmers sought to unionize in order obtain fair prices for their cotton crops. The Big Interview is with David Edgerton, Jr. of the DEJ Group, which provides diversity,…

We begin this week featuring Mercy for Animals (MFA), an international animal protection nonprofit that works to prevent cruelty to farmed animals, and which promotes compassionate food choices and policies. One of the ways that MFA operates is through investigations where people go undercover into factory farms or animal processing sites to document and record…

We have a rock star show this week! We being with the featured idealist: Liz Cheney—yes, I know, that Liz Cheney.  But there’s no getting around the fact that her brave stand against the former president and the Big Lie is about as idealistic as anyone can be. The Big Interview is huge—we have John…

To begin, I share about how conservative media has coined the phrase “Critical Race Theory” as a way to attack the efforts of many who seek to end  America’s problems with systemic racism. The Big Interview is with Julia Gay of the Coalition of Asian American Leaders. In my C-Block, I talk about a recent…