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Victor Pickard: Fox News’ Republican Propaganda Machine Tests Limits of Free Speech; Tracy Carluccio: After Recent Train Derailments, Biden, Congress Must Implement New Safety Standards, Worker Protections; Sarah Rawlins: ‘Scrap the Cap’ to Save Social Security From Benefit Cuts; Bob Nixon: This Week’s Under-reported News Summary.

“I wanna see feisty disabled people change the world.” So declared disability rights activist Judy Heumann, who died last weekend at age 75. As a child with polio, Heumann was denied entry to kindergarten on grounds that her wheelchair was a fire hazard. Later, she was denied a teachers license for reasons no more elevated. She sued, won and became the first teacher in New York to use a wheelchair. Media love those kinds of breakthroughs. Here’s hoping they’ll extend their interest such barriers in 2023. We talk with Kim Knackstedt, senior fellow at the Century Foundation and director of the Disability Economic Justice Collaborative. Also: You will have heard that the US is experiencing “blowout job growth,” and unemployment is at a “historic low,” with gains extending even to historically marginalized Black people. Algernon Austin from the Center for Economic Policy and Research will help us understand how employment data can obscure even as it reveals. …

Special for International Women’s Month 2023
, based on a radical 1993 talk by Dr. Riffat Hassan. She is a Muslim theologian from Pakistan who opposes the Islamic view of the inferiority of women. She says that since anti women legislation and custom are enacted in the name of theology, it is necessary to study the Koran and investigate the source. This required courage since challenging traditional interpretation of the Koran can be a capital offense. On the other hand we are all familiar with the claim that Islam has given women more rights than any other religious tradition. And Riffat Hassan decided to deal with that contradiction. You will hear the door slamming as disgusted males leave the room!

If you tend to get annoyed when you hear pundits criticize politicians for “politicizing” an inherently political issue, then this week’s show may be right up your alley. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to John Stoehr, frequent guest of the show and editor of independent news outlet, The Editorial Board as we examine some of his recent thought-provoking pieces on race, equity and inclusion. We delve into the political nature of “depoliticizing” the fight for racial equity, look at the Right’s obsession with “woke-ism” and what it really means, and talk about some of the people who have been publicly shunned and commercially shut-down lately, from Roald Dahl to Scott Adams, and what this says about free speech and the marketplace.

Nora Barrows-Friedman of Electronic Intifada speaks with Lara Sheehi, assistant professor of clinical psychology at George Washington University, Washington DC, who has been at the center of recent Israel lobby attacks. Sheehi is joined by her lawyer, Abed Ayoub. But first... In recent years a number of academic organizations and campus groups have endorsed the BDS movement, often leading to backlash from pro-Israel organizations. State authorities in New York recently opened a probe into the City University of New York (CUNY). The complaint that sparked the investigation alleges that Zionist and Jewish students are being discriminated against because the faculty at CUNY Law School unanimously voted to endorse BDS. … In December 2013, the American Studies Association (ASA) voted on a resolution honoring Palestinian civil society’s call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Over 66% of members endorsed the measure. ASA is defending itself from a lawsuit for this. …

Ralph welcomes back the pioneering journalist Dahr Jamail, to discuss his work “We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth” about what we can learn from indigenous people who have survived incredible disruptions to the climate to their families and to their way of life.

Origin myths are deeply embedded in our media culture and shape everything from tech companies to public policy. In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, Julian Zelizer, a Princeton history professor and co-editor of Myth America, explains how these myths have been weaponized by some to advance their agendas. He details how layers of myth can obscure actual events, leading to a distorted understanding of history and, as a result, shaping bad policy going forward. Zelizer highlights a multitude of erroneous but widely held notions, including, for example, that Native Americans have not made significant contributions to American history, that the Southern border is a porous gateway for dangerous immigrants, that socialism is an imported ideology, that the New Deal and Great Society programs were unsuccessful, that voter fraud is a common occurrence, and that feminism seeks to dismantle the American family. ...

This week on Talk World Radio, we’re discussing the war in Yemen with Isaac Evans-Frantz, the executive director of Action Corps, a grassroots humanitarian advocacy organization that co-leads a nationwide coalition to end U.S. complicity in the Saudi war on Yemen. Action Corps provided support to activists in over 12 U.S. cities who organized Yemen war protests the first week of March. See https://actioncorps.org .