The Recombobulation Area is a 19-time 21-TIME! Milwaukee Press Club award-winning opinion column and online publication founded by longtime Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer. The Recombobulation Area is now part of Civic Media.
Our guest for this episode is Angela Lang, the co-executive director of Black Leaders Organizing for Communities and an award-winning contributor here at The Recombobulation Area.
Whenever Angela and I get a chance to catch up, there’s always a lot for us to talk about, so for these episodes, we use a format we call “three headlines.” We’ve done this a couple times before, but if this is your first time hearing one of these episodes, we each bring three headlines or topics to discuss, they can be about anything happening in the news, but at least one of them has to be a Milwaukee story. We don’t show these to each other in advance, so you get some genuine reactions here.
Topics for this episode include:
Recent flooding in Milwaukee and the questions that arise about the city’s infrastructure
The recent candidate announcements for those running for Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2027, including Pedro Colón and Lyndsey Brunette (and Angela’s recent column)
Detained Islamic Society president Salah Sarsour, and Congresswoman Gwen Moore’s recent trip to visit him at the Clay County Jail in Indiana — and free speech issues in the second Trump administration
Milwaukee County’s tremendous success battling opioid overdoses, where the number of deaths have been cut in half since 2022.
The city of Milwaukee’s recent decision to limit operating hours for food trucks downtown past 10 p.m.
Milwaukee Alderman Peter Burgelis running for Congress in the 1st Congressional District — a district he does not live in, and the political fortunes of Republican incumbent Bryan Steil
Watch at the video above, or on our YouTube Channel here:
Angela and I will be part of The Recombobulation Area’s LIVE podcast event next week at Anodyne Coffee in Walker’s Point on Thursday, May 7. The great Kristin Brey will also be joining the event. Find all of the details here:
Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. In 2024, he and the publication joined Civic Media, where he is currently a Contributing Editor. He’s written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 24 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.
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Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer, at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social, and on Threads at @danshafer.
