Human Powered

For this special edition of Human Powered, we are sharing an episode of a series called Uprooted produced by our friends at Wisconsin Life and WPR.  In 1980, there was an exodus of Cubans who left their homes for the United States as part of the Mariel Boatlift. This includes almost 15,000 Cuban refugees who were sent to Fort McCoy in Sparta, Wisconsin.  Wisconsin Humanities awarded a grant to the...

For this special edition of Human Powered, we are sharing an episode of The People’s Recorder, a podcast series from Spark Media and funded in part with a grant from Wisconsin Humanities. The People’s Recorder tells stories about the Federal Writers’ Project, which was created by the Federal government as part of the New Deal during the Great Depression to provide jobs to out-of-work writers. The...

For this special edition of Human Powered, we are sharing an episode produced by our friends at The Community.  The Community is a multi-dimensional nonprofit based in Milwaukee. It connects and empowers people on all sides of the criminal legal system through its Pre-entry and Correcting the Narrative strategies. The Community has been awarded  Wisconsin Humanities grants for their work, and foun...

The right to vote is a core building block for our democracy. We are taught that our vote matters and that voting is integral to our communities and our country. In this final episode of Humanity Unlocked, we confront a fundamental issue: roughly 45,000 people ‘on papers’ in Wisconsin do not have the right to vote, even though they are no longer in prison. Jerome Dillard, Executive Director of EXP...

When James Price first learned how to bead, he was incarcerated at the Stanley Correctional Institution in Wisconsin. He had been told his whole life that he was not patient, but as he is tutored in beadwork by a group of Native American men, he discovers a history he wasn't taught in school. And, “bead by bead,” he also learns new things about himself.  Once he was released, James attended a...

People in prisons are cut off from their families, their communities, and in some cases their own feelings. Making art in prison — even with very few resources — can be a way to affirm your humanity in a place that is so often dehumanizing. So when the organizers of an exhibit of prison art put out a call for submissions, they were flooded with responses from incarcerated artists working without s...

Started in 1887 by three well-known convicts, The Prison Mirror is often considered the best prison newspaper in the United States. But it is just one of many. In the 1980s, Robert Taliaferro was a writer and editor for The Mirror, as it was called in those days. Shannon Ross is a writer who started The Community in 2014 when he was in prison. The newsletter, which he still edits today, reaches ha...

Some would say that storytelling is what makes us human. In this episode, we are going to hear some great stories.  We are heading to Oak Hill Correctional Facility, where the University of Wisconsin Odyssey Beyond Bars Project offers storytelling workshops each semester for incarcerated students who are in the English 101 course. This is UW-Madison’s first face-to-face credit-bearing course insid...

In the first episode of Human Powered 'Humanity Unlocked,' we are stepping out with the remarkable and singular Dasha Kelly Hamilton. Dasha wields words to make magic happen, whether on stage herself, in writing sessions like Prose & Cons, or while chatting with co-host and public historian Adam Carr. We'll drop into one of her workshops and talk with Josh and Fontaine, both stu...

Human Powered—the podcast from Wisconsin Humanities—is back for season 2. In these six episodes, we are talking with people who have been impacted by the justice system. With our hosts, Dasha Kelly Hamilton and Adam Carr, we are digging into the importance of the humanities as tools for searching for meaning and understanding. Dasha is 2021-22 Wisconsin Poet Laureate and a creative change agent wh...

This episode spotlights Tracey Robertson, a nonprofit leader and community organizer who was tired of hearing her neighbors repeat stereotypes she knew were not true. She figured that to change the narrative, people needed to be able to see each other more clearly, as complex individuals each with a story to share. In this episode, we learn about a project called Color-Brave that evolved from conv...

This episode starts with a meal around a fire, in a place where people have been cooking and eating for more than 5,000 years. Our hosts are Marvin Defoe and Edwina Buffalo-Reyes, members of the Red Cliff band of Lake Superior Ojibwe in Bayfield County. For the last three years, the Red Cliff Tribal Historic Preservation Office has been collaborating with two archaeologists helping excavate sites...

We all eat. But the foods we eat, and have access to, varies widely. In this episode, we meet some people who have been gardening in Green Bay's vibrant community garden program for years. They tell us why these gardens matter, what they grow, and how planting seeds impacts their lives in real ways. We also talk with some of the women who got the garden program started, figured out what makes...

*A head’s up that this episode contains discussion of sexual assault and human trafficking. If this doesn't feel like the right time to listen, we invite you to check out the resources below and hope you'll tune in next month for the next episode of Human Powered.* Maya Angelou once said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” Rachel Monaco-Wilcox understand...

The Driftless region of Wisconsin is no stranger to flooding. Its spectacular valleys and ridges were formed by the flow of rushing water over millions of years. But in recent memory, the floods are getting more intense, and happening more often—a combination that is having a profound impact on local people and communities. In this episode, we’ll hear stories from people who experienced the floodi...

Who are the experts in a city? In a neighborhood? In this episode, we meet a professor of architecture who has designed a ‘field school’ that encourages students to dig into these questions. We sit on front porches in some of Milwaukee’s most economically challenged neighborhoods to learn from residents that building community, and caring for a place, takes more than a hammer and nails. In this ep...

Human Powered is a new podcast about people making places better. In our first season, we are traveling around the state of Wisconsin to see how big ideas and everyday people are coming together for extraordinary change. In this preview, you'll hear from some of those people: Arijit Sen, Caroline Gottschalk Druschke, Rachel Monaco-Wilcox, and Tracey Robertson. The first episode drops on March...