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Welcome to the EPPiC Broadcast: Empowering Parents and Protecting Children. Featuring personal stories, breaking news, and insightful commentary, we’ll encourage and inform you on the issue of family and parental rights as you guide and protect that child who is your world.

The views and opinions expressed by our podcast guests are not necessarily those of the EPPiC Broadcast or the Parental Rights Foundation. In the interest of furthering our nonpartisan mission of educating the public about parental rights, we seek to feature a broad diversity of views and opinions relating to parental rights. If you have thoughts about our podcast or a particular podcast guest, we welcome your feedback at foundation@parentalrights.org.

Recent Episodes

All Episodes

Advocating for Parents’ Rights with Erin Phillips

By Sheila Roberts | September 12, 2023

This week, we talk with Erin Phillips, president of Power2Parent, an organization uniting parents who want to advocate for their children’s education. Power2Parent is based in Nevada, but maintains chapters in many states. Erin tells us about recent challenges to parents rights in Nevada that her organization has faced, plus victories in Nevada and across…

Preserving Family Connections, with Vivek Sankaren

By Sheila Roberts | September 5, 2023

Vivek Sankaren is a clinical professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School, and director of their Child Advocacy Law Clinic and the Child Welfare Appellate Clinic. He’s authored over three dozen journal and law review articles, including “The Ties That Bind Us: an Empirical, Clinical, and Constitutional Argument Against Terminating Parental Rights”.…

Reforming the Child Welfare System from the Inside, with Jerry Milner

By Sheila Roberts | August 29, 2023

This week, we talk with Jerry Milner, former Associate Commissioner of the Children’s Bureau in the US Department of Health and Human Services. Far too often, the US child welfare system creates incentives to unnecessarily separate families, harming the children it tries to protect. During his tenure with the Children’s Bureau, Jerry worked to create…

The World of Hidden Foster Care, with Josh Gupta-Kagan

By Sheila Roberts | August 22, 2023

This week, we talk with Dr. Josh Gupta-Kagan, Professor at Columbia University School of Law and author of “The Hidden Foster Care System.” Josh explains how many parents in child welfare investigations find their children placed with relatives, completely off the official record. While placing children with relatives, sometimes called kinship care, is not an…

What Medical Child Abuse Is – and Isn’t, with Maxine Eichner 

By Sheila Roberts | August 15, 2023

This week, we talk with Maxine Eichner. Maxine is a Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina, and she writes on legal issues surrounding families and social welfare law and policy. In this episode, Eichner explains the history of a concept called “medical child abuse” and how innocent parents of medically complex…

Reforming the Texas Foster Care System, with Andrew Brown

By Sheila Roberts | August 8, 2023

Welcome back to the EPPiC Broadcast! We’re kicking off season 7 with Andrew Brown, Associate Vice President of Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. As an attorney, Andrew has represented children in the child welfare system, advocated for the rights of parents, and helped build families through domestic and international adoption. Andrew breaks down…

Adoption and Foster Family Advocacy with Laura Adams

By Sheila Roberts | May 23, 2023

This week, we talk with Laura Adams, founder of FACTS4safefamilies.com, which provides education, support, and advocacy to improve understanding of adoptive and foster children and complex trauma. Laura explains how through her work with international adoption and parenting her own adopted children with special needs, she saw firsthand the challenges that exist in getting the proper…

Advocating for Parents with Erin Phillips

By Sheila Roberts | May 16, 2023

This week, we talk with Erin Phillips, president of Power2Parent, an organization uniting parents who want to advocate for their children’s education. Erin discusses her journey in advocating for her parental rights in her own children’s education and how Power2Parent was formed to give parents in her home state of Nevada and across the country…

Challenging CPS Overreach with Peter Kamakawiwoole

By Sheila Roberts | May 9, 2023

This week, Homeschool Legal Defense Association staff attorney Peter Kamakawiwoole returns to the Eppic Broadcast. Peter tells us about a case that he litigated on behalf of a mom who found herself dealing with an invasive CPS investigation including strip searches of her young children – all because she left her children in the car…

Fighting for Reasonable Childhood Independence, with Diane Redleaf

By Sheila Roberts | May 2, 2023

This week, we welcome Diane Redleaf back to the Eppic Broadcast. Diane is the author of They Took the Kids Last Night and founder of the Family Defense Center. Diane is working with Let Grow to pass legislation in Virginia and Utah that protects reasonable childhood independence, the idea that children should be able to pursue age-appropriate activities on their…

Parental Rights and Strict Scrutiny with Hugh Phillips

By Sheila Roberts | April 12, 2023

This week, we talk with Hugh Phillips, a constitutional litigator at Liberty Counsel. Hugh has also served as a judicial law clerk for the Supreme Court of Alabama and he’s the author of a law review article entitled “Liberating Liberty: How the Glucksberg Test Can Solve the Supreme Court’s Confusing Jurisprudence on Parental Rights”. Hugh…

Better Outcomes for Families with Ernestine Gray

By Sheila Roberts | April 4, 2023

This week, we talk with former judge Ernestine Gray, who served for 35 years in the Orleans Parish Juvenile Court in Louisiana. During her tenure, the Orleans Juvenile Court went from what the New York Times described as “the worst juvenile court in the nation” to a model that other juvenile courts looked to for…