The Lowdown with Ira Wood on WOMR-FM

A Most Unlikely Family

Brad Gooch is an award winning biographer of such gay iconic gay artists as Keith Haring and Frank O'Hara. Having lost his first love to the AIDs epidemic, he was lucky to fall in love again, with a guy who desperately wanted kids and a family. His new book Good Morning Moon tells the story of their quest, in late middle age, to make two kids through in vitro fertilization and his own discovery that, like his own kids, his own parentage is not what is considered 'normal' in our society.

The Secret War Against Hate in America

After World War Two, 'The Greatest Generation' returned to America determined to enjoy the freedoms of a world liberated from fascism but another group of Americans were equally determined to finish the job Hitler started by annihilating Jews and relocating Blacks to Africa. In his book The Secret War Against Hate, USC Professor of History tells the largely hidden story of those who risked their lives to fight homegrown fascism in America and how its roots still flourish today.

On Grief What to Expect When the Unthinkable Happens

Journalist Danielle Crittenden lost her 32 year-old daughter to a sudden brain tumor and with that death life as she knew it. She talks with Ira about her new book, Dispatches from Grief, in which she describes how she, and all those who lose a loved one, are dropped into a unfamiliar new landscape without a map.

Body Politics and Reproductive Justice

Two pioneers of the Reproductive Rights movement, Byllye Avery and Loretta Ross, talk about transforming the landscape of reproductive care in the United States and ensuring three core human rights: to have a child, to not have a child, and to parent children in safe and healthy environments.

How to Disagree Better

Do you hate to disagree with people? Avoid arguments? Shy away from conversations with anyone who is likely to contradict your ideas? It's understandable why many of us in today's contentious society try to minimize discord. But it comes at the cost of friendship, information, and connection. Harvard social psychologist Julia Minson talks about science -backed research that teach you How to Disagree Better so that debating may broaden rather than shrink your life.