April | 2024 | Forthright Radio

This edition of Forthright Radio features two university professors whose books were published this month by the University of CA Press.

First, we hear from University of California Riverside’s Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies Professor, Jade Sasser, about her latest book, CLIMATE ANXIETY AND THE KID QUESTION: Deciding Whether to Have Children in an Uncertain Future. Her award-winning 2018 book, On Infertile Ground: Population Control and Women’s Rights in the Era of Climate Change, analyzed the shifting role of environmentalists in shaping activism and international policy advocacy focused on population, reproductive rights, and reproductive justice. In CLIMATE ANXIETY AND THE KID QUESTION, she investigates the impacts of climate change, racial injustice, and other existential threats, on reproductive decisions.

In our second half, we welcome back George Washington University’s Herbert S. Hadley Professor of Social Welfare, Mark Rank, whose book THE RANDOM FACTOR: How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us, was published just this week. His research and teaching have focused on poverty, social welfare, economic inequality, and social policy.

Articles pertinent to this edition:

H.R.957 – Protecting Moms and Babies Against Climate Change Act 117th Congress (2021-2022)
H.R. 3302: Protecting Moms and Babies Against Climate Change Act 118th Congress https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/118/hr3302/summary

‘Children won’t be able to survive’: inter-American court to hear from climate victims https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/22/inter-american-court-climate-hearing-hear-from-victims-barbados

‘I am starting to panic about my child’s future’: climate scientists wary of starting families https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/10/climate-scientists-starting-families-children

The Far Right’s Campaign to Explode the Population https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/28/natalism-conference-austin-00150338

‘The Pressure Is Working’: Biden Weighs Climate Emergency Declaration https://www.commondreams.org/news/climate-change-national-emergency?utm_source=Common+Dreams&utm_campaign=b6968bca63-Top+News%3A+Thu.+4%2F18%2F24+w%2F+fundraiser&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-b6968bca63-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

Pediatricians say climate conversations should be part of any doctor’s visit https://grist.org/health/pediatricians-advised-talk-patients-parents-climate-change/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=weekly

GOP State AGs Ask EPA to ‘Eviscerate’ Crucial Environmental Justice Tool https://www.commondreams.org/news/gop-epa-title-vi?utm_source=Common+Dreams&utm_campaign=4bdd8521e2-Top+News%3A+Wed.+4%2F17%2F24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-37878a46b5-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

Sterilization Procedures Have Surged Among Young People Following “Dobbs” https://truthout.org/articles/sterilization-procedures-have-surged-among-young-people-post-dobbs/?utm_source=feedotter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=FO-04-15-2024&utm_content=httpstruthoutorgarticlessterilizationprocedureshavesurgedamongyoungpeoplepostdobbs&utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=e9461d45e9-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_04_15_08_50&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-e9461d45e9-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

‘I felt like a freak because I didn’t want children’ https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c72pnllv8nko

‘Catastrophic’: Biden Admin Approves Largest Offshore Oil Export Terminal https://www.commondreams.org/news/biden-offshore-oil-terminal?utm_source=Common+Dreams&utm_campaign=1180bb9681-Top+News%3A+Mon.+4%2F15%2F24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-37878a46b5-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

Guest column: Global warming presents more danger than guns https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/opinions/guest_columnists/guest-column-global-warming-presents-more-danger-than-guns/article_7f6d09de-f770-11ee-8032-1f184cd657b2.html

Cecil Williams, reverend who turned a church into a safe haven, dies aged 94 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/23/reverend-cecil-williams-san-francisco-california-dies-aged-94

‘A lot would have to go wrong for Biden to lose’: can Allan Lichtman predict the 2024 election? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/26/allan-lichtman-prediction-presidential-election

Randy Fertel is a writer and philanthropist dedicated to the arts, education, New Orleans, and the environment. His philanthropy includes as the President of the Fertel Foundation supporting a number of causes, including The New Orleans Edible Schoolyard, Artist Corps New Orleans, YAYA (that’s Young Artists, Young Aspirations), and The Ridenhour Prizes, which recognize and encourage those who persevere in acts of truth-telling that protect the public interest, promote social justice or illuminate a more just vision of society.

The prizes memorialize the spirit of Ron Ridenhour, the Vietnam veteran who wrote a letter to Congress and the Pentagon in 1969 describing the horrific events at My Lai, the infamous massacre of the Vietnam War, bringing the scandal to the attention of the American public and the world. Ridenhour went on to become an investigative journalist, and his extraordinary life and career exemplified the fearless truth-telling which the eponymous prizes now recognize. The 2024 recipients are Emma  Pildes and Tia Lessin for their documentary film, The Janes; Congressman Jamie Raskin received The Courage Prize; and The Truth Telling Prize went to Dawn Wooten, the nurse at the Irwin County Detention Center Immigration Facility in Georgia, who filed a whistleblower complaint in September 2020 after being demoted for raising concerns about inadequate medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic and non-consensual gynecological procedures performed on women in detention. Her claims have been verified by a Senate subcommittee, ICE records, and independent medical experts. If it were not for her disclosures, women in immigrant detention would still be at risk of undergoing unnecessary, non-consensual surgeries there. However, Ms. Wooten, a single mother of five, faces ongoing retaliation.

Additionally, The Fertel Foundation organized Dutch Dialogues. South Louisiana, like the Netherlands, must adapt to the threats inherent to living in a subsiding delta. The Dutch Dialogues workshops brought together Dutch engineers, urban designers, landscape architects, city planners and soils/hydrology experts together with their Louisiana counterparts to explore whether Dutch approaches to water management, landscape architecture, flood protection and urban design were relevant to New Orleans as it recovered from Hurricane Katrina.

But More pertinent to this edition of Forthright Radio are his Improv Conferences NOLA, inspired by his life-long fascination with improvisation.
Randy Fertel’s earlier books include, A Taste for Chaos: The Art of Literary Improvisation and The Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steak: A New Orleans Family Memoir. His most recent book is WINGING IT: IMPROV’S POWER AND PERIL IN THE TIME OF TRUMP, just published by Spring Publications.

We spoke with him via Skype on April 9, 2024.

Articles & videos pertinent to this interview:

Inventing Improv: A Chicago Stories Special Documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQLIS1ZeNgw

‘The machine did it coldly’: Israel used AI to identify 37,000 Hamas targets https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes

What War by A.I. Actually Looks Like https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/10/opinion/war-ai-israel-gaza-ukraine.html

Daniel Kahneman, Who Plumbed the Psychology of Economics, Dies at 90 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/27/business/daniel-kahneman-dead.html

Blender/ The Spanish Inquisition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKcuVQ8dA7c