Category: Retired

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Burn Wild - Episode 4: Ghosts and myths

In 2005 Joe Dibee fled America – leaving everything behind.

Speaking in Summer 2021, as he awaits what he hopes will be a trial date, Joe tells Leah and Georgia about life out of reach of the FBI, and his eventual capture in Cuba.

As they faced - or face - years behind bars, Leah Sottile explores what that word, terrorist, meant for the environmentalists who had become a ‘domestic terror priority’.

CREDITS Presenter: Leah Sottile Producer: Georgia Catt Written by: Leah Sottile and Georgia Catt Fact Checking: Rob Byrne Music and Sound Design: Phil Channell Music including theme music by Echo Collective, composed performed and produced by Neil Leiter & Margaret Hermant; recorded, mixed and produced by Fabien Leseure Artwork by Danny Crossley with Art Direction by Amy Fullalove Script recorded and mixed by Slater Swan at Anjuna Recording Studio Series Mixing and Studio Engineer: Sarah Hockley Series Editor: Philip Sellars Assistant Commissioner: Natasha Johansson Commissioner: Dylan Haskins Includes archive from GB News, The Hill, America’s Most Wanted Burn Wild is a BBC Audio Documentaries Production for BBC Sounds and Radio 5 Live.

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Gatecrashers - Ep. 4: Yale and the Slow Death of Quotas

It’s accepted as gospel—or at least reliable urban legend—that at nearly every Ivy League school in the mid-20th century, there were limits on the number of Jews admitted each year. The Jewish population, it was said, was capped at 10 percent of the student body. But was that true?


Episode 4 of Gatecrashers investigates the real story of Jewish quotas, examining the practice at Yale University. You’ll hear reflections from Sen. Joe Lieberman (Yale ‘64), Benjamin Zucker (Yale ‘58), and Tim Oppenheimer (Yale ‘67, and father of Gatecrashers host Mark Oppenheimer). You’ll also hear from former Yale admissions director Henry “Sam” Chauncey, who shares what he was told when he started his job in 1957, and Dan Oren, author of Joining the Club: A History of Jews at Yale. 


How did Jewish quotas start at Yale, and how did they finally end? Listen and find out:

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In God We Lust - Introducing: The Great Creators with Guy Raz

The Great Creators with Guy Raz premieres on September 20th, featuring conversations about creativity with some of the most celebrated actors, musicians and performers of our time. Each week, Guy sits down with notable and beloved entertainers to trace their life’s journey, dive deep into their work, and illuminate the source of their creativity. With each episode you’ll have a true appreciation for how your favorite creators found greatness, and might even feel inspired to ignite your own creativity.

In an upcoming episode, Guy interviews actor and theater legend Audra McDonald. She’s won six Tony Awards for her performances, more than any actor ever. They talk about how each new role scares her, and why that fear is actually essential to her work. And they discuss the exhaustive and extensive research she brings to each role, like jazz singer Billie Holiday, or Bess in George Gershwin’s musical Porgy and Bess.

Listen to The Great Creators with Guy Raz: wondery.fm/tgc-ingodwelust

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Burn Wild - Episode 3: The case of Sunshine

More than fifteen years ago a woman, authorities call an eco-terrorist, slipped through the fingers of the FBI and vanished. Leah Sottile meets the agent she evaded, who’s made it his mission to see her caught before he retires.

CREDITS Presenter: Leah Sottile Producer: Georgia Catt Written by: Leah Sottile and Georgia Catt Fact Checking: Rob Byrne Music and Sound Design: Phil Channell Music including theme music by Echo Collective, composed performed and produced by Neil Leiter & Margaret Hermant; recorded, mixed and produced by Fabien Leseure Artwork by Danny Crossley with Art Direction by Amy Fullalove Script recorded and mixed by Slater Swan at Anjuna Recording Studio Series Mixing and Studio Engineer: Sarah Hockley Editor: Philip Sellars Assistant Commissioner: Natasha Johansson Commissioner: Dylan Haskins

Featuring footage from the FBI

Burn Wild is a BBC Audio Documentaries Production for BBC Sounds and Radio 5 Live.

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Gatecrashers - Ep. 3: Dartmouth and the Jews who Loved it

On the surface, all-male Dartmouth in the 1940s and 1950s seems like it would be deeply unappealing to Jews: rural New Hampshire campus, no Jewish girls within miles, a history of antisemitic fraternities. But Jewish alumni from that era seemed to love Dartmouth. Why?

Something about Dartmouth—maybe it was the bucolic campus, the mountains, all that fresh air—made for a more laid-back environment than at the other Ivies.

In Episode 3 of Gatecrashers, you’ll hear from Dartmouth alumni including journalist David Shribman, actor Stephen Macht, screenwriter Steven Geller, and Richard Press, Jewish scion of the preppy clothier J. Press, about how Jewish students embraced the great outdoors—and learned to love Dartmouth College.

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Burn Wild - Episode 2: The Family

For over a decade, Joseph Dibee’s mugshot stared out from the FBI’s Most Wanted Domestic Terrorists list. He’s charged with crimes in connection to an underground cell that was known as The Family, whose actions committed in the name of the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front would see them called terrorists. In 2005 the then Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI called the eco-terrorist movement they were said to be a part of the number one domestic terror threat in America.

And since that year, Joseph Dibee has been a fugitive.

Now, he’s been caught.

For the first time in what would be more than eighteen months of recording, journalist Leah Sottile and producer Georgia Catt get to talk to him.

CREDITS Presenter: Leah Sottile Producer: Georgia Catt Written by: Leah Sottile and Georgia Catt Fact Checking: Rob Byrne Music and Sound Design: Phil Channell Music including theme music by Echo Collective, composed performed and produced by Neil Leiter & Margaret Hermant; recorded, mixed and produced by Fabien Leseure Artwork by Danny Crossley with Art Direction by Amy Fullalove Script recorded and mixed by Slater Swan at Anjuna Recording Studio Series Mixing and Studio Engineer: Sarah Hockley Editor: Philip Sellars Assistant Commissioner: Natasha Johansson Commissioner: Dylan Haskins Featuring footage from the FBI. Burn Wild is a BBC Audio Documentaries Production for BBC Sounds and Radio 5 Live.

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Gatecrashers - Ep. 2: Princeton and the ‘Dirty Bicker’ of 1958

Back in the 1950s, the Princeton eating clubs were essential. The dining hall was only meant for freshmen and sophomores. The club you joined as a sophomore became not just a place to eat but the center of your Princeton social life, a place to hang out, nurture friendships, and make connections. 

According to one estimate, by the late 1950s, the school was about one seventh Jewish. But the Jewish students were about to find out that just because you’re admitted doesn’t mean you’re accepted. In February 1958, at the end of the bicker process—like fraternity rush, but for eating clubs—there were 35 sophomores who got no bids at all. And most of them were Jewish. The scandal was immediately dubbed “the dirty bicker” by the national press; it was reported in the New York Times, the New York Post, Newsweek, and more. It nearly caused the downfall of the eating clubs.

In Episode 2 of Gatecrashers, you’ll hear about the dirty bicker from students who were there, and learn what it tells us about class, acceptance, and belonging. You’ll hear from best-selling author Michael Lewis, Steven C. Rockefeller, novelist Geoffrey Wolff, Abby Klionsky, who wrote her senior thesis about the development of Jewish life at Princeton, Joel Davidow, Paul Rochmis, Jerry Spivak, and more.

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Gatecrashers - Ep. 1: Columbia and Its Forgotten Jewish Campus

Isaac Asimov was one of the most prolific authors in history. He was best known as a pathbreaking sci-fi writer, but his more than 500 books also included volumes on the Greeks, the Romans, Shakespeare, the Bible, and much more. He was one of the most learned men in history. 


But in 1935, 15-year-old Asimov was rejected by Columbia University. Admissions officials instead directed him to Seth Low Junior College, a separate campus in Brooklyn, 11 miles from Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus. 


What was Seth Low Junior College, and why was the brilliant Isaac Asimov sent there instead? Seth Low Junior College, which existed from 1928 to 1938, was one of Columbia’s many attempts to deal with a changing student population that they felt was contaminating its pristine, Protestant campus. And it’s part of the bigger story of how the Ivy League resistance to outsiders shaped all of higher education as we know it. 


In the first episode of Gatecrashers, a new podcast from Tablet Studios, you’ll hear about the lengths Columbia went to in order to limit the number of Jewish students. The invention of the college application itself, the admissions interview, the push for geographical diversity, and more—all elements of the college admissions process as we know it today—trace back to Columbia’s effort to keep out the Jews. You’ll hear from NPR’s Robert Siegel, former Columbia College Dean Robert Pollack, historian Robert McCaughey, sci-fi scholar Alfred Guy, and Dr. Leeza Hirt, whose undergraduate reporting unearthed the history of Seth Low Junior College.

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The Disconnect: Power, Politics and the Texas Blackout - The Midnight Connection

We’ve already learned how Texas (or at least most of it) is an energy island — mostly cut off from grids in other states.

In this episode, we’ll hear about the time when one power company went rogue and threw a transmission line across the Oklahoma border.

This is the story of why they tried and how they failed to build a bridge off the island — and how it shaped the Texas grid today.

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Burn Wild - Episode 1: The Elves are watching

An underground group of radical environmentalists become a domestic terror priority. Then two go on the run. And this series goes in an unexpected direction.

CREDITS Presenter: Leah Sottile Producer: Georgia Catt Written by: Leah Sottile and Georgia Catt Fact Checking: Rob Byrne Music and Sound Design: Phil Channell Music including theme music by Echo Collective, composed performed and produced by Neil Leiter & Margaret Hermant; recorded, mixed and produced by Fabien Leseure Artwork by Danny Crossley with Art Direction by Amy Fullalove Script recorded and mixed by Slater Swan at Anjuna Recording Studio Series Mixing and Studio Engineer: Sarah Hockley Editor: Philip Sellars Assistant Commissioner: Natasha Johansson Commissioner: Dylan Haskins Featuring footage from the FBI. Plus news footage from KGW News, 4 News Now, GB News, Energy GOP, The Hill. Burn Wild is a BBC Audio Documentaries Production for BBC Sounds and Radio 5 Live.