The Leftscape
the shape of progressive conversation
Episodes
September 4, 2024 • 69 mins
Wendy Sheridan and Robin Renée are back after summer break for the 2024 Season 2 of The Leftscape! Featured guest Jonah Minkoff-Zern (he/him) is the co-director of Public Citizen’s Democracy Campaign. He has organized nationwide mobilizations to challenge ongoing threats to democracy from former President Donald Trump and his allies, coordinated grassroots activities to pass federal voting rights and democracy reforms, and mobilize...
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July 3, 2024 • 78 mins
Hal Robins is known for his radio broadcasts and public performances, as well as for his participation in the Church of the SubGenius (as Dr. Howland Owll, Master of Church Secrets). He has worked in film and television and is a poet and playwright. Robins is also a fine artist and cartoonist. In this featured conversation with Rev. Andrew Genus, he shares his wit and insight into the world of the SubGenius, the current political s...
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June 21, 2024 • 81 mins
Co-hosts Robin Renée and Wendy Sheridan discuss the enormous and detailed Project 2025, a collection of policy proposals created by The Heritage Foundation to reshape the United States government in the image of current-day far right conservativism. It seeks to mandate conservative Christian values, dismantle many social programs and government departments, and to provide ready-made policy positions and personnel for the next Repub...
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June 7, 2024 • 74 mins
Ray Katz is a web developer—one of Philadelphia's first. He has many hobbies including collecting artifacts related to the history of space flight and animation. His passion and most pressing endeavor, however, is to find effective ways of dealing with climate change. To that end, he has created a new and unique movement, The Saners. He is also the host of the 5 Minutes to Save the Earth podcast. Don't miss his inspired thoughts on...
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May 23, 2024 • 67 mins
When Abby Driscoll, a senior at Fort Defiance High School in Verona, VA had a piece placed in a school art show, she likely didn't expect the drama that ensued. Listener Tony Rogers of Fairfax, VA sent the story to The Leftscape via X/Twitter to spark conversation between co-hosts Robin Renée and Wendy Sheridan. This featured discussion ranges from thoughts on the artwork, "But Not Enough to Save You," to serious concerns about ...
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May 8, 2024 • 78 mins
David Michael Jamison is the Assistant Professor of History at Edward Waters University in Jacksonville, Florida and the former Visiting Assistant Professor of Black World Studies at Miami University–Middletown in Middletown, Ohio. He previously worked as a special-education teacher, first with the New York Board of Education and then with the Los Angeles Unified School District. He is the Education and Programs Chair of the Jackso...
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April 25, 2024 • 62 mins
Meet Protest Singer Michael Naphys
Michael Naphys is a singer/songwriter from South Jersey. Music has always been a big part of his life, and he has some musical releases including his first original album, Coming Out of my Shell, that we'll learn about in this conversation. Michael performs live acoustic sets in Southern New Jersey including at Whims Brewing in Atco where co-host Robin Renée was lucky enough to catch his set not l...
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April 13, 2024 • 76 mins
Kyle Schickner has been a bisexual activist for the past 30 years. His company, FenceSitter Films makes films that tell the stories of women, people of color, and the LGBTQ communities. Kyle was our guest back in November 2021 on Leftscape Episode 113 when we talked about his film, A White Man Walks Into a Barbershop, a documentary of his cross country road trip focused on having down-to-earth conversations about race and racism. N...
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March 28, 2024 • 79 mins
David "Daxe" Axelrod is a holistic economist, currently teaching at Montclair State University. He developed and teaches the course "Economics of Time, Mind, and Spirit." He has also produced over a dozen albums of original music. Creativity, resources, aspirations, limitations, the problems with capitalism and what a society without it might look like all weave into his conversation with co-host Wendy Sheridan. The answers to all ...
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March 14, 2024 • 92 mins
Lieve Monnens was born in Belgium in the 1960s. She had a musical awakening when she was eleven years old through listening to her dad's records by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Beach Boys. She became interested in going to live shows, then later took internships with radio and record companies which led to several jobs in the music industry. In 1990, Lieve moved to England and began working at Factory Records in Manches...
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February 29, 2024 • 95 mins
The Leftscape 2024 Season 1 begins with special guest, Robert Brooks Cohen! Cohen is a writer, content creator, and life coach living in Los Angeles. He spent seven seasons writing and producing for Law & Order: SVU, and in 2019, he created Two Bi Guys, a podcast about sexual fluidity, masculinity, and the gender spectrum. His first book, Bisexual Married Men: Stories of Relationships, Acceptance, and Authenticity, was published by...
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December 14, 2023 • 75 mins
When Jan Steckel was a guest on The Leftscape back in April of 2019, she read from her book of poetry, Like Flesh Covers Bone (Zeitgeist Press, 2018), which went on to win two Rainbow Awards. Her earlier poetry book, The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011), won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award. Jan Steckel's creative prose and poetry have appeared in Scholastic Magazine, Yale Medicine, Bellevue Literary Review, Canary, Assaracus, a...
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December 1, 2023 • 52 mins
John Oliver Mason is a freelance writer and has written for newspapers in the Philadelphia area for thirty years, covering such community-based events as town watches, school boards, community associations, Labor issues, and demonstrations. He has written for magazines and blogs as well and he is an advocate who specializes in writing about people in the community who are empowering themselves to make their communities better. He i...
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November 16, 2023 • 70 mins
Over the last five decades Scott Pearson has been a recording artist, a music producer, a TV soundtrack composer, an educator, an entrepreneur, a fine artist and painter, a social media and marketing consultant, and a tour guide for his adopted hometown of Utrecht near Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Leftscape co-host Robin Renée had the opportunity to work with Scott on some musical projects back in the mid 2000s, and was happy to h...
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November 1, 2023 • 64 mins
Michael A. Ventrella is an author and editor who has written novels, short stories, and nonfiction books including Big Stick, Terin Ostler and the Axes of Evil, and The Beatles on the Charts. Ventrella is also an attorney and has taught Constitutional Law at a number of institutions of higher learning. Just in time for elections and the upcoming holiday season, he speaks with Wendy about his helpful and humorous book, How to Argue ...
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October 20, 2023 • 62 mins
Missy Singer DuMars has had careers in Theatrical & Entertainment Lighting, Therapeutic Massage, and Business Coaching. She is now a farmer and the owner of Crown Hill Farm in Eden, NY. She is also the hostess of the Women in Food Podcast. With this eclectic life and experience, she has lots to talk about! Hear what she had to say about her journey into farming, empowering women in the food industry, and the habits and conventions ...
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October 4, 2023 • 75 mins
Teanna Byerts wants you to know that adventure is out there -- You just need some imagination! Byerts is an artist, writer, photographer, kayaker, horseman, and mermaid. She nerds out about science, science fiction, fantasy, superheroes, animation, and weird, early lifeforms. She has paddled in the wake of dolphins, trained actual wild mustangs, and lived with a small pride of mini panthers. She believes that storytellers and artis...
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September 20, 2023 • 66 mins
Janet Coburn writes about mental health on her award-winning blog, Bipolar Me. She draws her insights from direct experience, as she has lived with bipolar disorder for decades. Her book of valuable mental health information and personal stories, Bipolar Me, was published in 2018. Her collection of short essays, Bipolar Us, which appeared in 2020, includes chapters on work, family life, self-care and caregivers, society and stigma,...
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September 8, 2023 • 80 mins
Alice Leibowitz is a longtime activist and facilitator who provides support for progressives and changemakers to find hope and keep their sanity in the face of rising fascism and other global crises. Her coaching and facilitation firm, Conversations Against Fascism, provides love, power, creativity, and focus in response to the question, “How are we going to do what it takes to meet this moment in history?” Hear about her activism ...
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July 6, 2023 • 89 mins
Lisa Vandever is the co-founder and director of CineKink Film Festival, which is just entering its 20th anniversary season. A writer, producer and consultant in film and communications, Lisa was formerly the director of programming for a regional network of public television stations, worked as a development executive for two New York-based independent production companies, and she currently freelances with a wide range of organiza...
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