A Public Affair Douglas Haynes, Ali Muldrow, Carousel Bayrd, Allen Ruff, & Esty Dinur

Cap Times food editor and arts reporter Lindsay Christians, was on set as a diner and a dishwasher during the filming of season 21 of Top Chef . Now that the show is airing, she’s impressed with how well we come off on tv. “I’ve been talking a lot about the B roll of Madison and Milwaukee: just these beautiful like a drone shots coming into the city. It just it kind of made my heart swell the first time I saw it. I thought, ‘oh my god, it’s so beautiful.’ It’s just gorgeous,” she tells A Public Affair host Douglas Haynes.

This season of the hit reality television series is set at some of our own favorite restaurants and local landmarks. So far the chefs have been challenged to showcase Wisconsin hops, cheeses, and produce from the Dane County Farmers Market. We kick off today’s show with Top Chef producer Diana Schmedeman and co-executive producer Thi Nguyen about the process of scouting in Wisconsin and the work that goes on behind the scenes.

Then we turn to our in-studio guests Lindsay Christians and The Harvey House creative director and co-owner Shaina Papach. Shaina talks us about the experience of having an elimination challenge take place in her restaurant during the supper club episode. Lindsay is currently hosting a Top Chef companion podcast called “Corner Table: Top Chef Wisconsin.” You can learn more here and subscribe wherever you listen. 

Top Chef airs on Wednesdays at 8pm CT on Bravo and can be streamed on Peacock

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Today, journalist Jacob Kushner joins host Esty Dinur to talk about his forth coming book, Look Away: A True Story of Murders, Bombings, and a Far-Right Campaign to Rid Germany of Immigrants. The book, which comes out May 7th, explains how of a group of young, radicalized Germans carried out a shocking spree of white supremacist violence and uncovers the way their actions went uncheck by the German government and it’s citizens.

Jacob will be giving talks in Wisconsin in mid-May. On Tuesday May 14th at 6pm, he’ll be at A Room of One’s Own in Madison. On Thursday, May 16th at 6:30pm, he’ll be at Boswell Books in Milwaukee.



Jacob Kushner is a foreign correspondent who writes magazine and other longform articles from Africa, Germany, and the Caribbean. His writing has appeared in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Economist, National Geographic, The Atavist, The Nation, Foreign Policy and The Guardian. 

He is the author of China’s Congo Plan, which was favorably reviewed in the New York Review of Books. A Fulbright-Germany scholar and Logan Nonfiction Fellow, he was a finalist for the Livingston Award in International Reporting. He teaches and advises ambitious, young journalists at the Pulitzer Center, the Overseas Press Club, and several universities.

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A hundred years ago, Wisconsin’s U.S. Senator, Robert M. La Follette made his mark on national politics by running as an independent third party candidate for the White House. He captured a record breaking one-sixth of the popular vote. Historian Richard Drake joins host Allen Ruff to talk about “Fighting Bob” La Follette’s campaign and the legacy it left behind.



Drake is the author of author of The Education of an Anti-Imperialist: Robert La Follette and U.S. Expansion. He has a piece in the current edition of The Progressive Magazine titled “Lessons from the Progressive Campaign of 1924.”



He will speaking at 2pm on Thursday, April 25th as part of the Progressive Magazine’s 4-day long celebration of the 100th anniversary of La Follette’s campaign. A full breakdown of events can be found here.









Richard Drake is the Lucile Speer Research Chair in Politics and History at the University of Montana. In addition to his book on Bob La Follette, Drake is the author of Charles Austin Beard: The Return of the Master Historian of American Imperialism.



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Philip Berrigan, American peace activist and Catholic priest, is remembered as courageous example of nonviolent resistance. Beginning in 1968, Berrigan organized against war, systemic racism, materialism, destruction of the environment, and nuclear weapons. His unyielding stances led to imprisonment and excommunication from the Catholic church.

In the recently published  A Ministry of Risk: Philip Berrigan’s Writings on Peace and Nonviolence, editor Brad Wolf has compiled a collection of writings. Wolf asks readers to consider what insights Berrigan’s writings offer into the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the climate crisis, a fraying social safety net, and desperate refugees at our southern border.

Wolf joins A Public Affair host Bert Zipperer to discuss the life and legacy of Philip Berrigan as well as the intersection of faith and resistance.



Brad Wolf is executive director and co-founder of Peace Action Network of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. A former lawyer, prosecutor, professor and community college dean, he writes for various publications.



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A 2019 study found that Wisconsin is has one of the worst racial disparities for Black children in the US. How does that pan out for student’s living in Madison? Importantly, what is the actual experience for Black people who get their education at our schools?

Today we are spending the hour with a group of Black scholars who are working to expose a more complete history of Black Madisonians’ experiences in education. In that work, the Black Madison Voices Project aims to advance anti-racist curriculum, policies, and practices in our K-12 and higher-learning institutions. At the heart of the project are interviews with Black folks who went to school in Madison.

Five members of the group join host Ali Muldrow to discuss why they got involved and what they have learned from interviewees so far. 

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About our guests:

Dr. Maxine McKinney de Royston is an Associate Professor at UW-Madison in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction.  Her teaching and scholarship focus on developing and sustaining learning spaces that support the intellectual thriving and holistic well-being of Black students.

Ruby Bafu is a 6th year PhD candidate in Sociology studying students’ experiences in online learning spaces. 

Jalessa Bryant is a doctoral candidate in the Multicultural Education area of the Curriculum and Instruction Department at UW-Madison.

Dr. Aireale J. Rodgers is an Anna Julia Cooper Fellow and Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis department.

Yanika Davis is a second year Master of Public Health student at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.

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April is National Poetry Month and as we approach the end of the month, we turn to the poets in our community. Host Douglas Haynes is joined by former Wisconsin Poet Laureate Kimberly Blaeser, current Madison Poet Laureate Steven Espada Dawson, and current Wisconsin Poet Laureate Nicholas Gulig. We hear a poem from each and discuss poetry in community, the impact of a poet laureateship, and what it’s like to be, as Steven puts it, poetry’s cheerleaders.



Event mentioned during the show:



You can learn more and register for the event here.



Kimberly Blaeser, past Wisconsin Poet Laureate and founding director of In-Na-Po—Indigenous Nations Poets, is a writer, photographer, and scholar. She is the author of six poetry collections including Ancient Light, Copper Yearning, and the bilingual Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance. Blaeser edited Traces in Blood, Bone, and Stone: Contemporary Ojibwe Poetry and wrote the monograph Gerald Vizenor: Writing in the Oral Tradition. Her photographs, picto-poems, and ekphrastic pieces have appeared in exhibits such as “Visualizing Sovereignty,” and “No More Stolen Sisters.” An Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist, she is an enrolled member of White Earth Nation and grew up on the reservation. The 2024 Mackey Chair in Creative Writing at Beloit College and a Vassar College Tatlock Fellow, Blaeser is a Professor Emerita at UW–Milwaukee and an MFA faculty member for Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Her accolades include a Lifetime Achievement Award from Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. Blaeser splits her time between her home in rural Wisconsin and a water-access cabin near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota.

Steven Espada Dawson is a writer from East Los Angeles. The son of a Mexican immigrant, he received his MFA from Purdue University, where he studied under Kaveh Akbar, Marianne Boruch, Roxane Gay, Terese Marie Mailhot, and Donald Platt. He has served as a poetry editor for Sycamore Review and Copper Nickel. Recipient of a Pushcart Prize (XLVII), his recent poems have appeared in AGNI, Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review, POETRY, and Waxwing. He is a 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow and the ’22 – ’23 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Fellow in Poetry at UW–Madison’s Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, where he teaches creative writing. He is the Poet Laureate of Madison, WI.

Nicholas Gulig is a Thai American poet from Wisconsin. He is the author of Orient (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2018), winner of the 2017 CSU Poetry Center Open Book Competition; Book of Lake (CutBank, 2016); and North of Order (YesYes Books, 2015). In 2011, Gulig was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Bangkok. He is also a recipient of the Ruskin Art Club Poetry Award, the Black Warrior Review Poetry Prize, and the Grist’s ProForma Award. Gulig is an associate professor of languages and literatures at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and lives in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. In 2023, he was appointed poet laureate of Wisconsin through 2024. In 2023, Gulig received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.

Image by cromaconceptovisual from Pixabay

 

 

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