Bonus: Radical Family Histories (A Crossover with I Was Never There)

Bonus: Radical Family Histories (A Crossover with I Was Never There)

Author: Crooked Media November 17, 2022 Duration: 39:18
Zayd sits down with his mom, Bernardine Dohrn, along with Jamie and Karen Zelermyer of Wonder Media Network’s I Was Never There to look back at the process of making a show so deeply rooted in personal family history. Jamie and Zayd interview their mothers to learn how they felt reliving their radical pasts and what it was like to make a podcast with their children. And in a time that feels so similar politically to the turbulent decades Karen and Bernardine lived through - how do they find hope?

There’s a story Zayd Dohrn grew up hearing, but never the whole thing. Mother Country Radicals is that story, told from the inside. Born while his parents were fugitives, Dohrn guides us into the turbulent reality of the 1970s Weather Underground, not as a distant history lesson, but as a personal excavation. This Crooked Media podcast moves beyond the headlines of bombings and confrontations at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol to explore the intimate human costs and convictions that fueled a movement. We hear about the chaotic street fights in Chicago, the perilous prison breaks, and the fraught alliances with Black militant groups, all through the lens of a family living on the run. It’s a narrative pieced together from fragmented memories and declassified files, asking what it means to inherit a legacy of rebellion and what was truly left behind in the smoke. Each episode builds a complex portrait of idealism, violence, and consequence, making this far more than a true-crime tale-it’s a deeply personal account of a chapter in American history that continues to echo, examining how the radical choices of a few young people aimed to shake a nation and what that struggle ultimately meant for their lives and for ours.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 14

Mother Country Radicals
Podcast Episodes
Chapter 2: Days of Rage [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 46:53
Zayd’s father Bill Ayers joins the Weathermen, and he and his friends teach themselves to be revolutionaries, gearing up to build bombs and brawl with police on the streets of Chicago.For more of the story, check out: Gi…
Chapter 1: The Most Dangerous Woman in America [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:30
In 1970, a former law student named Bernardine Dohrn declared war on the United States government. Decades later, her son Zayd Ayers Dohrn tells the story of how his mother was radicalized, and became the most wanted wom…
Introducing Mother Country Radicals [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 3:21
Zayd Dohrn was born underground - his parents were founders of the Weather Underground organization, and on the run from the FBI. Now Zayd takes us back to the 1970s, when his parents and their young friends brawled with…