The Babblery

Denise Miranda is New York State's top civil rights official, the head of an agency that is charged with monitoring and promoting civil rights in the state. She's also a proud native of the Bronx, daughter of Puerto Rican-born parents, and a mother. On the Babblery, we discuss the passion for justice and rights for all that drives her work.

What happens when women's fight for long-delayed justice collides with our legal tenet of due process? In this Minibabble, host Suki Wessling speaks with retired judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell about the #MeToo movement and how she reacted when she heard some women insist that we should "believe all women."

Retired judge LaDoris Cordell is known for her groundbreaking career as a judge in Northern California and then her stint as Independent Police Auditor for the City of San Jose. Join us in a wide-ranging conversation, from a segregated childhood, an unusual education, and an unlikely acceptance to Stanford Law School, to retired judge, community activist, musician, artist, and grandmother.

An Audio Montage I walked around my local No Kings 2026 Rally and asked people to do dramatic readings of their signs. Some are more dramatic than others, but all....

What leads radical feminists to exclude transgender women from their gatherings? What happens whentrauma and expectations meet the need for community and acceptance? Every woman has a story. Listen to....

BABBLERY.com: Transgender icon Sandy Stone on TERF hatred, from the 1970s women's communities to today.

BABBLERY.com: Writer Joan Gelfand's career has been bookended by two "strange moments," with the power of the 70s women's movement at one end and the fight against authoritarianism on the other.

BABBLERY.com: What does it take for an independent filmmaker to shoot a film in a country that lacks a functional government? Haitian filmmaker Alexandrine Benjamin speaks about the difficulty of shooting her short film, N Ap Boule, which is a fictional exploration of the crisis of maternity care in Haiti.

BABBLERY.com: Haitian filmmaker Alexandrine Benjamin is on a mission to make films that tell important stories for her people. But how can she help a country where she can no longer live?

Early in the 20th century, in which has been named the Great Migration, millions of Black southerners moved North, looking for opportunity and an escape from Jim Crow. The vibrant....

Sometimes all it takes is one question to spur a revelation that inspires a movement. The African American Composer Initiative started with a question and has become a thriving nonprofit, discovering, performing, and recording underappreciated concert music by Black composers.

Interviewing a doula about natural childbirth was an intensely personal experience for Babblery host Suki Wessling. She’d planned on natural birth—twice. But the American system of birth isn’t set up....