DSR's Words Matter

Our guest this week is a writer, lawyer, speaker and an advocate. Cassie Chambers grew up in Eastern Kentucky, graduated from Yale College, the Yale School of Public Health, the London School of Economics, and Harvard Law School, where she was president of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, a student-run law firm that represents low-income clients. Cassie received a Skadden Fellowship to return to Kent...

This week we welcome back historian and sociologist Harvey J. Kaye for Part 2 of our discussion of his important book FDR on Democracy: The Greatest Speeches and Writings of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Harvey J. Kaye is Professor Emeritus of Democracy and Justice Studies and Director of the Center for History and Social Change at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. An award-winning aut...

Jeanne Meserve looks into the mysterious directed-energy attacks on officials in Washington with Mark Zaid, lawyer for CIA and State Department victims. Then Ronen Bergman, author of a groundbreaking book on Israeli assassination operations, talks with Jeff Stein about the effect of Mossad’s hits on Iran’s nuclear scientists and uranium facilities. Last but hardly least, Jeanne talks at length wit...

This week we welcome historian and sociologist Harvey J. Kaye for Part 1 of our discussion of his important book FDR on Democracy: The Greatest Speeches and Writings of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Harvey J. Kaye is Professor Emeritus of Democracy and Justice Studies and Director of the Center for History and Social Change at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. An award-winning author a...

This week, in the debut edition of the SpyTalk podcast, co-host Jeff Stein talks to the Washington Post’s Joby Warrick about an extraordinary CIA operation in Syria, as told in his new book, Red Line. Jeff and co-host Jeanne Meserve also discuss the Biden administration’s recent expulsion of suspected Russian spies, then Jeanne talks with former NSA Director and Cyber Command chief Admiral Mike Ro...

Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale (January 5, 1928 – April 19, 2021) was a politician, statesman, diplomat, and lawyer who served as a U.S. senator from Minnesota from 1964 to 1976 and as the 42nd vice president of the United States from 1977 to 1981 under President Jimmy Carter.. In 1984 he was the Democratic Party's nominee for president of the united states. As a Senator, Mondale had been the pr...

On the one hand, America's vaccine roll out is making great progress. On the other, in the last week COVID cases are on the rise in 38 states. On the one hand, the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are working remarkably well. On the other hand, Astra Zeneca and perhaps Johnson and Johnson not so much. (Or maybe the government is over-reacting to a very tiny number of problem cases with the J&J vaccine....

The shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado happened 22 years ago this week. Katie gives a special Final Word to Laura Hall and Sarah Bush -- sisters who survived the shooting, and in 2019 ran the Boston Marathon together. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/words-matter. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/...

John Robert Lewis was a politician, statesman, and civil rights leader who served in the United States House of Representatives for Georgia's 5th congressional district from 1987 until his death in 2020. He was the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee from 1963 to 1966. Born near Troy, Alabama, on February 21, 1940, he the third of ten children of Willie Mae and Eddie Lewis.[2...

By this time during the presidency of the former guy, his national security advisor had been booted, the Muslim ban had been tried and Comey was days from getting fired. We also knew that the GOP was simply not going to do anything about even the worst things Trump was doing. So it's not too early to make some prognostications about about the political weather we can expect in the Biden Era. The b...

A charismatic Russian woman arrives in the US on a mission to improve relations between the two countries, and she soon makes some powerful friends. But who is Maria Butina? And who is she working for? As Maria gets closer to the rich and connected she also attracts the attention of the FBI. In the politically charged world of US-Russia relations, everyone has secrets and almost nothing is what it...

On April 3, 1968 the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis, Tennessee to lend his support, his help, and his leadership to the Memphis Sanitation Worker’s Strike. That February, Black sanitation workers had walked off the job because two of them had been crushed to death in a garbage compacting truck. There was already unrest and tension because the Black workers were paid poorly and trea...

Too much of world history is written by men about men for men. The result is that cultural biases of a male-centric world are reinforced. But another consequence is that the vitally important stories about heroic women who are shaping our communities an our futures go unnoticed. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, author of the Daughters of Kobani, is addressing this shortcoming with powerful books telling the...

A charismatic Russian woman arrives in the US on a mission to improve relations between the two countries, and she soon makes some powerful friends. But who is Maria Butina? And who is she working for? As Maria gets closer to the rich and connected she also attracts the attention of the FBI. In the politically charged world of US-Russia relations, everyone has secrets and almost nothing is what it...

A charismatic Russian woman arrives in the US on a mission to improve relations between the two countries, and she soon makes some powerful friends. But who is Maria Butina? And who is she working for? As Maria gets closer to the rich and connected she also attracts the attention of the FBI. In the politically charged world of US-Russia relations, everyone has secrets and almost nothing is what it...

A charismatic Russian woman arrives in the US on a mission to improve relations between the two countries, and she soon makes some powerful friends. But who is Maria Butina? And who is she working for? As Maria gets closer to the rich and connected she also attracts the attention of the FBI. In the politically charged world of US-Russia relations, everyone has secrets and almost nothing is what it...

Geraldine Ferraro was a politician, diplomat, attorney - and also a teacher, activist, author, and businesswoman. The daughter of an Italian immigrant, Geraldine lost her father when she was 8, and moved with her family to the South Bronx where her mother worked in the garment industry to support them. She was an outstanding student winning a full scholarship to college, and earning a degree in En...

Few decisions a government can make are more consequential than deciding when the use of force is warranted. In the US a debate has raged for decades about how much latitude a president should have in making such decisions and what role Congress should play. Legal contortionism has turned congressional authorizations for the use of force in one circumstance into blank permissions slips still cited...

Dr. Maya Angelou was a poet, professor, memoirist, actor, singer, author, educator and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and appeared in numerous plays, movies, and television shows over a 65 year career. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees In literary circles, Maya Angelou is best known for her s...

Dr. Angela Davis is an activist, philosopher, academic and author. Born in Birmingham, Alabama during World War II - she attended segregated black elementary and middle schools in the 1950s. Davis studied philosophy at Brandis University and did her graduate work in Germany with famed philosopher Herbert Marcuse. She would later say that: “Herbert Marcuse taught me that it was possible to be an ac...

This week, in honor of Women’s History Month, we wanted to pay tribute to one of the most consequential leaders in American History. Eleanor Roosevelt was the niece of the 26th President of the United States and the wife of the 32nd – but make no mistake, she was a political thinker, an international activist and a World Leader in her own right. Of her many achievements and successes, perhaps none...

Weren't we supposed to get a break from being angry at DC? At the political inanity? The recklessness? The law breaking with impunity? Sure its the same old people being inane and reckless and breaking the law but even with Democrats in charge in the White House and in both houses of Congress, progress is painfully hard to come by, setbacks are frequent, Republicans seem disciplined and Democrats...

As Black History Month ends and Women’s History Month begins, we wanted to honor a pioneer in the struggle for equal rights for both movements. Shirley Anita Chisholm was a politician, educator, activist, community organizer and author. Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1924, as a child during the Great Depression - while her parents struggled to make ends meet - young Shirley and her two sisters were...

When the 9/11 Commission was formed in the wake of the Al Qaeda attacks on the US, the current was united in grief and anger but politically polarized and it was very difficult to find a path forward that would be credible and an effective driver of reform. But the divisions of the early 2000s were nothing compared to what we have today and the problem is compounded by the active culpability one p...

He was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska- and he became one of the most celebrated, influential and misunderstood leaders of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s Malcolm X was a Muslim Minister and human rights activist - best known as a pioneer of the Black Nationalist Movement and as an apostle for self-respect and uncompromising resistance to white oppression. By the time he was assassin...