On the show today, long time-host Esty Dinur celebrates 30 years on A Public Affair. We flip the script and instead of Esty sitting in the host chair, she sits in the guest’s seat to be interviewed about her time on the air by Norman Stockwell. She says her driving motivation has always been to focus on issues that aren’t covered by mainstream media and to cover issues from the perspective of the folks most impacted. 

In 1984, Dinur arrived in Madison with a love of short-wave radio having listened to Radio Moscow, Radio Havana Cuba, FMLN, the BBC as well as Australian and German stations. She would transcribe these news shows and publish them in a newsletter that she distributed in Madison. And Esty got her start at WORT by calling in to share what she heard on other radio programs with WORT listeners. She had her first feature during the Gulf War, and WORT would tape her shows and send them through the mail to Radio for Peace International in San Jose, Costa Rica.

In 1995, Esty hosted her first show on A Public Affair, a show with Joel Beinin on the assassination of P.M. Rabin. In the years since she’s spoken with such esteemed guests as Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness, Earth First! and IWW activist Judi Bari on her bombing and trial, novelist Richard Powers, Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News, Vojislav Stojkovic on the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War, Noam Chomsky, and so many more!

You can listen to Esty’s shows on our website and listen to a roundup of her first 25 years at the station here. 

Featured image of Esty Dinur and Norm Stockwell via Sara Gabler/WORT.

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