After two years, Thistle Pettersen ventured back into WORT studios in Madison to record a music show with her friend, Lucy Kilpatrick.

From beginning to end, this musical hour features the powerful voice of Thistle and her stories of bicycle adventuring. Thistle’s music is available for purchase here: www.thistlepettersen.com.

It was tough getting approval from the station to allow Thiste’s music to air due to trans activists complaining that Ms. Pettersen is “transphobic” and “hateful and bigoted.”

Because of these accusations, WORT leadership would not allow Thistle to do the program live from the studio for fear that she may say something “hateful” or “discriminatory towards marginalized groups.”

Thistle, knowing she was perfectly capable of not “spewing hate” as she is accused of, agreed to this restriction and recorded her show in the studio on December 28th, 2019 with no incident.

Even though the news director told her immediately that she had passed the test and had uttered no wrongspeak during the recording, she also said that the entire board of directors, staff, and volunteers at the station needed to have the opportunity to review the recording before it would be approved.

Finally, by the end of January, the news director at WORT, Chali Pittman, told Thistle her show had been approved and would likely be airing sometime in February. She also told Thistle that there would be no promo ad for the show leading up to it.

The final date for the airing was Monday, March 16th, 2020, almost exactly two years after Thistle aired her news program interviewing Meghan Murphy and Julie Bindel about gender identity, pornography and prostitution.

You can listen to that program here: Wlrn-media – Interviews-with-julie-bindel-meghan-murphy-on-wort-899-fm-in-madison

The night the music show aired, right afterward, Thistle called the station and Chali Pittman answered, reporting that there were an equal number of favorable and unfavorable calls to the station.

After two years! When will Madison trans activists stop harassing Thistle? When asked if the unfavorable calls were claiming Thistle should not be on the air because she is “hateful and bigoted”, the news director replied “basically, yeah. That’s it in a nutshell.”

It is not too late to write to Chali after listening to this show to let her know that you appreciate Thistle and her music and that you hope to hear more of it at the station. You can also thank her for allowing the music show to air. Please send an email to Chali Pittman at chali@wortfm.org.

Thanks for staying tuned!