The My American Meltingpot Podcast features interviews and commentary focused on pop culture, parenting, and identity politics, from a multicultural perspective. The show is hosted by Lori L. Tharps, associate professor of journalism at Temple University, a former staff writer for Vibe and Entertainment Weekly, and author of several non-fiction books and one novel. She […]
Blog
Temporary Protected Status (WPPM’s The Philly Breakdown)
Hundreds of thousands of people are living in the United States with Temporary Protected Status, also known as TPS. That means they’re allowed to live and work in the US without fear of deportation. TPS was first created by an act of Congress in 1990, and it’s been granted to individuals who have come to the […]
The Loving Project (podcast)
The Loving Project is a podcast featuring the stories of interracial married couples 50 years of the Supreme Court ruling that struck down anti-miscegenation laws across the United States. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Court’s decision in the case of Loving v. Virginia, Brad Linder and Farrah Parkes interviewed 25 couples about their […]
LPX (podcast)
LPX is a podcast series featuring interviews with experts in their fields. Topics covered on the show include a discussion of fake news and fact checking with the managing editor of Snopes, an interview with the founder of a project to create an open source MS-DOS compatible operating system decades after Microsoft retired its first […]
Laney (1999 – 2018)
This has been a rough year. In January we said goodbye to Puck and Uncle Bobby. Last week we had to say goodbye to Laney. She’d been a constant in my life for the past 19 years. When I first moved to Philadelphia, I was ready to get a new pet so my friend Erin […]
Bob Greenbaum
As I mentioned recently, my uncle Bob Greenbaum passed away in January. This past weekend friends and family came together to celebrate his life. We heard from friends, family members, and activists who had worked with him during his many years with the Northeast Ohio Sierra Club and many other organizations. We heard about how […]
Puck (2010 – 2018)
Puck went to sleep yesterday and didn’t wake up. He was the sweetest, goofiest, most annoying, and most loving cat I’ve ever known. Puck brought so much joy (and so much frustration) to our household and it’s still hard to believe he’s gone. But he crammed a lot of life into 7 and a half […]
The Loving Project, or what I did during 2017
The last regularly scheduled episode of the Loving Project podcast has been released. For the past 12 months, we’ve been conducting interviews with couples in interracial marriages and turning those stories into podcast episodes that illuminate a bit of what it’s like to be in a mulitracial family 5 decades after the Supreme Court struck […]
On bigotry, racism, and love in a time of hate
Originally posted to Facebook… but some things should be said publicly: I’ve been writing and rewriting this post trying to find words strong enough to condemn the violence that cost lives in Charlottesville yesterday, the growing realization that racism and bigotry aren’t ever going to just die out as an older generation gives way to […]
50 years of Loving
June 12th marks the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that legalized interracial marriage across the country and paved the way for the much more recent (and long overdue) decision that also made same sex marriage legal. The case of Loving v. Virginia involved a black woman and her white husband who were married […]
How we make The Loving Project podcast (recording gear, audio editing software)
It’s been 50 years since the Supreme Court issued a ruling that overturned state laws banning marriages between people of different races. On June 12th, 1967 the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the case of Loving v. Virginia, and my wife and I are marking the anniversary by interviewing people in interracial marriages today […]
Saving an audio mixer after spilling water on it
I record interviews, voice tracks, and occasionally some music for the Loving Project and LPX Show podcasts from my home office. And after ten years of use, my aging Alesis audio mixer was starting to go on the fritz, so I picked up a $200 Yamaha MG10XU mixer in December. It has cleaner preamps than my […]
Letter to Senator Pat Toomey expressing disappointment on his stance on Trump’s Muslim Ban
The following is a message I sent to US Senator Pat Toomey this afternoon after trying to call his district office in Philadelphia and getting a busy signal… again. I am extremely disappointed with your statement on Trump’s immigration order. Donald Trump’s decision to immediately prohibit travelers from 7 countries from entering the United States, […]
Contacting my Senators to support the Affordable Care Act (and urge for a suitable replacement if it’s repealed)
Well this is new (for me). I just contacted Pennsylvania’s two Senators to let them know my thoughts on the Affordable Care Act and the Republican effort to repeal it, which is moving forward in the Senate. Healthcare.gov At this point it seems highly unlikely that the move to repeal the law that’s widely known as […]