I can’t say I’m sad to see 2024 come to a close, and I’m not thrilled about what’s in store for us in 2025. But it is what it is and we’ll get through it. I am so grateful for the listeners and supporters who keep this show going. Thank you for hanging with me through the ups and the downs.

I faced a few health challenges this year – getting old sucks, but it beats the alternative, I guess. So I’m following doctors and your orders and taking some time off to rest, recuperate and regroup to come back in 2025.

But the show still runs on the Progressive Voices Network, Netroots Radio and a number of other online stations. So I put together a group of shows to run over the holidays. You can listen at those usual places, but the YouTube channel and podcast will be quiet these two weeks. And I’ll link to the original show posts where you can watch and listen in any order at any time you choose.

Thanks again for helping to keep my work going. You can add your support here – every dollar helps.

So Merry and Happy Chrismakwannzukkah or whatever you celebrate this time of the year, and best wishes to us all for a very happy New Year!

Here are this week’s shows:

Monday, Dec 23 

Today we’ll go back to Dec 24, 2021 for Christmas Eve with the Marsh Family. It was the first time we got together on the show with this incredibly talented family from the UK.  And they just keep getting better!

 

 

Tuesday, Dec 24 & Wednesday Dec 25

Each year I put together a non-traditional musical Christmas soundtrack good for your festivities… Today we’ll go back to 2022 for this two-parter.

Part 1

Download here or click below to play

      Part 2:

Download here or click below to play

 

 

Thursday, Dec 26

In light of the attack on trans rights from the incoming administration, today we’ll go back to a program that originally aired on Jan 16, 2024, Trans Rights are Human Rights  featuring Erin Reed, aka Erin in the Morning, whose substack of the same name reports on trans and queer news and legislation so that we’re all aware of what is going on.
Erin and I will be joined by our old friend ‘Boca’ Britany Somers, host of The Brit Somers Show, a trans woman trying to live her life in Floriduh.

Friday, Dec 27

2024 was a difficult year all around the world, and especially in the middle East. Today, we’ll hear the show originally broadcast April 30, A Palestinan-American and an American Jew Talk Sense.

If you’ve listened to my show, you know that I often refer to myself as an “atheist Jew”. My Judaism comes by way of heritage, family, generational stories and history. I have real disdain for organized religion of every stripe, and have often commented about how virtually every war ever fought had its basis somewhere in religion.

I’ve been struggling since the news broke of the Oct 7 attack by Hamas terrorists with the images that play on a loop in my mind. Making it worse is the reception I’ve gotten from some listeners, former friends and former political allies, and complete strangers who think that, because I believe that Israel has a right to exist and defend itself, that I am a “Zionist who loves genocide.”

I do my best to explain my feelings, but these people who resort to calling me names and worse don’t want to listen, they want to tell me how I feel. They have no clue.

I hope they’re listening today.

I happened upon a thread on Threads.net from a man named Mo Husseini that captured my attention through all 55 parts. I immediately identified with him when he described himself:

“I am a proud Palestinian-American. I care deeply about Palestinian rights to freedom, security, and self-determination.

But I am also profoundly aware that true long-term freedom, security, and self-determination for Palestinians cannot exist without creating a reciprocal reality for Israelis.

There is no path to freedom that begins with oppression of the other.

That is not freedom.

That is a Pyrrhic victory that will turn to ashes in your mouth.

We are, both peoples, stuck on the world’s worst fucking amusement park ride, an eternally shitty and utterly predictable carousel of suffering.”

 

I’ll post next week’s shows next week. In the meantime, enjoy the holidays.

Peace out.