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"Sexism is something that exists because it has existed, does exist, and therefore feels inevitable that it will exist. Certain treatments of women and girls are rooted in inequity simply because those bodies are female. Sexism over time and across institutions sends repeated messages about who women are and where they belong, and constructs a palatable version of womanhood that is non-threatening." - Allison T. Butler

In Allison T. Butler's new book, The Judgement of Gender, Allison examines how women are both centered and silenced, and maligned in popular culture. She explores a generational legacy in which media harms women, and unpacks what it means when women are cast as “problematic.”

Allison uses grounded and critical media literacy to look at celebrity stories, and those thrust into the spotlight, with more nuance, including the infamously sensationalized coverage of Britney Spears, Anita Hill, and Monica Lewinsky.

Interview Guest:

Allison Butler is a Senior Lecturer, Associate Chair, and the Director of the Media Literacy Certificate Program in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she teaches courses on critical media literacy and representations of education in the media. Allison serves as the Vice President on the Media Freedom Foundation and co-run Mass Media Literacy, a grassroots organization that builds curriculum and trains teachers in critical media literacy across K-12 schools. She is the author of numerous articles and books on media literacy and is co-author of multiple practical resources for media literacy education. In addition, Allison previous book The Media and Me was the subject of her previous "Be Bold America!" interview on media literacy, visit: The Media and Me: A Guide to Media Literacy.

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"Be Bold America! ~ Aired May 15, 2026

With the 2026 midterm elections looming and democracy on the line, progressive attorney, activist, and author, Gary Lucks, presents in his new book We Are The People fiercely practical, street-level directions for Americans who want to engage beyond posting, protesting, or donating, to actually helping flip the House and Senate this November.

Drawing on postmortem data from Activate America, Lucks shows that grassroots volunteers shifted outcomes by 2-4% in battleground districts in 2024 and that Democrats need to flip just three seats in the House and four in the Senate to restore a legislative firewall against the current administration's agenda. Unlike many tomes on the current political situation, We Are the Power tells readers exactly how to close that gap.

Gary Lucks, JD, CPEA, is a progressive author, activist, and environmental attorney who has spent four decades at the intersection of law, policy, and sustainability. He is the founder of Progressive Action East Bay and Resistance Action East Bay Indivisible, two of California's most active grassroots political networks. Lucks is also the author of You Are Not Alone: Your Roadmap to Effective Political Action. More at garylucks.com.

Top Three Resources Shared in Podcast to Defend Democracy:

1) Hopium Chronicles (sign up for free)

2) Indivisible (look for a chapter near you)

3) Activate America (volunteer)

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The American Dream at its best is an ethical ideal and a moral compass. If respected and sustained, it can guide the United States through Trump 2.0. Anchored in the US Constitution, Saving the American Dream features meditations for dark times. Meditations are intentional acts of focused attention. They seek insight—a clear and deep understanding—about critical issues.

What, for example, is most important for the United States today? Are we Americans doing the best we can? How may inquiry about the American Dream advance the reflection and action needed now to support and defend the Constitution of the United States?

Saving the American Dream is a journey that goes where such questions

lead. Its fundamental premise is that individuals moved to communal action by warned awareness and committed resistance are indispensable to meet challenges that grow by the day. Guidance from reliable American writers—philosophers, historians, novelists, poets, essayists, religious thinkers—maps the way.”

Interview Guest:

John Roth, is the Edward J. Sexton professor emeritus of philosophy at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California. Dr. Roth was named the 1988 U. S. National Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Dr. Roth's expertise in Holocaust and genocide studies, as well as in philosophy, ethics, American studies, and religious studies, has been advanced by postdoctoral appointments as a Graves Fellow in the Humanities, a Fulbright Lecturer in American Studies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and a Fellow of the National Humanities Institute, Yale University.