The Rational Revolution

I've recently had the honor to cohost "The Rational Revolution," a weekly public affairs radio program created by city of Appleton Alderperson Kristin Alfheim and community activist Emily Tseffos. Kris and Emily launched the program in August of 2023 for Civic Media, a new radio/podcasting effort with an expressed mission to "champion the practice of democracy through the power of honest and informative local voices." Rational Revolution airs live every Thursday from 7-8 p.m. CST on WGBW 97.9 FM, The Talk of Green Bay, and WISS 98.3 FM, Oshkosh Air Support. All shows are recorded and available as a podcast, both at civicmedia.us and on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts. 

Kris Alfheim 

I'll get into why Kris and Emily created the show in the first place and how I got involved, but first a little more about Civic Media. The brainchild of talk-show veteran Mike Crute and software engineer/entrepreneur Sage Weil (pronounced "while"), Civic Media is conceived of as an alternative to the glut of right-wing programming available across the radio spectrum and in digital spaces. But instead of just being a left-wing version of right-wing media, Civic Media brands itself as pro-democracy and pro-local communities. Crute and Weil see Civic Media as "Hometown Radio Refreshed." 

Can Civic Media succeed in the current radio marketplace and political climate? According to UW Madison Journalism professor Mike Wagner: “There is a lot of conservative talk available, and there is less middle-of-the-road and liberal talk available. So, there’s an opportunity for Civic Media to reach a potentially untapped market. I think Civic Media’s model of being less ideologically extreme and having hosts who are more center, center-left is a novel take on an untapped market.”

That leads us back to Kris, Emily, and the Rational Revolution. In addition to serving on the Appleton City Council, Kris grew up on a Wisconsin beef farm, works in the Financial Services industry, and ran for the District 19 State Senate seat in 2022. When launching Rational Revolution, she said, "The people of the Fox Valley are craving rational conversations about topics that affect their families. No yelling, no belittling, just discussion in order to build understanding and empathy on issues." 

Emily is a native of Slinger, WI who moved to Tennessee and while there became active in a number of causes. She came back to Wisconsin and lives in rural Outagamie County, where she is forceful advocate for children in need, women's rights, and much else. Upon the creation of Rational Revolution, she said, "Too often politics today is performative, distilled into clickbait headlines and sound bites. Wisconsinites deserve better." She added that the goal of the show is to "break down issues piece by piece, discussing the sometimes well-intentioned visions of legislation in Madison and Washington and the real life impacts of legislation in our communities." 

Emily Tseffos

In their first episode on August 4th, they talked about Wisconsin's gerrymandered legislative maps and role of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in that area: 

During the rest of the summer the two invited a number of enlightening guests to join the conversation, including: 

*Corrine Hendrickson, owner of Corrine's Little Explorer Family Childcare 

*Libby Jacobs, Project Manager of Equity Programming at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College

*Dean Raasch, City of DePere Alderperson

*Former 8th District Congressman Reid Ribble

*Linda Bjella, President of the League of Women Voters Appleton-Fox Cities

In late September Emily left the program to announce that she would be running for the 56th District State Assembly seat. That's when I was invited to cohost some programs. 

Why me? For one thing, I become acquainted with Kris Alfheim during her run for the state Senate in 2022. I was impressed by her eloquence and sincere belief that politics at its best is inclusive and works toward rational solutions to pressing problems. Even though Kris was running in a gerrymandered district favoring the Republican, she put an enormous amount of effort into the campaign, knocking on tons of doors while also finding time to inspire candidates and voters in surrounding districts. 

Secondly, I met Civic Media production specialist Todd Michaels at an open house at the WISS station on South Main Street in Oshkosh, and told him that I supported the Civic Media mission statement and core values (democracy, honesty, transparency, community, prosperity, people), and would be willing to help promote the station in whatever way I could. When Emily stepped down, Todd thought I might be a decent replacement, at least in the short term. 

I've cohosted about a half-dozen shows so far, and what's striking to me is how much the mission of Civic Media is very much in sync with what I used to do in the 1990s and 2000s while co-producing and/or co-hosting a number of cable access public access shows like "Commentary" with former Oshkosh Mayor James Mather, "Eye on Oshkosh" with Fox Valley journalist Cheryl Hentz, "Battleground" with former Winnebago County Board Supervisor Ron Montgomery, and "Radio Commentary" with Oshkosh activist Bob Knudsen. In those shows everyone knew that I was on the "left" (whatever that means), but I cultivated a reputation for being respectful of all viewpoints, and trying to have civil discussions even with guests whose views I found to be seriously wrong-headed. 

 

That kind of programming is much more difficult to do now, for a number of reasons. Mainstream cable tv, right wing talk radio, and clickbait social media shows have conditioned people to the idea of "argument as war." Consequently, discussions that do not have some kind of ugly clash that can go viral on the Internet tend to get ignored. The argument as war mentality has also conditioned people to think that all political discussants are bad faith actors, manipulators, or otherwise full-of-shit. That is, it is hard for people these days to accept that there really, really are people in the public sphere whose primary agenda is to raise the quality of discourse in the political arena. 

Take a listen to some of the Rational Revolution episodes. Go to the App Store or wherever you get your apps and download Civic Media. If you have the Civic Media app, you can text message Rational Revolution during the live show on Thursdays from 7-8 p.m.  

Thanks for listening! 

Here is our most recent episode: