Crude Conversations

Rico Worl owns a business in Juneau that aims to distribute money spent on Alaska Native art back into Alaska Native communities. His business is called Trickster for the raven in Alaska Native culture that represents the Creator and is always playing tricks. Trickster began as a skateboard company, so there’s that association too. In fact, the idea for it started when Rico painted his clan crest...

In this one, Cody talks to snowmachiner Dane Ferguson. Dane started sledding in 2003 and almost immediately began hitting jumps. Before he even really knew how to ride, he would double up the mountain with filmers and then they would go back down to retrieve his snowmachine for him. Once he and his snowmachine were reunited, all he had to do was point it at the jump and hit the throttle. Dane is a...

Cal Williams is an activist and community archivist. He sees his involvement in activism as more of a pull than a draw. He didn’t plan it, it just happened. Seven days after he was born, Pearl Harbor was bombed and most of the men in his life went to war. So, the influences he had at those early ages came from the women in his life. He saw how they did what they could to help the war effort. He’s...

Ben Huff believes that photography is gloriously incomplete, that it has the potential to start a conversation, but it takes the viewer to finish it — to bring their own history and their own knowledge to the table and fill in the blanks. That’s one of the things that’s wonderful about photography, he says, it prompts a narrative. It introduces a concept or an idea for further examination. Much of...

In this one, Cody talks to musician and storyteller James Dommek, Jr. Growing up in Kotzebue, James played basketball. Most kids did — it was and still is a big part of the rural Alaska experience. In the summertime, they played all night because the sun was out. And in the wintertime — despite the cold and ball going flat — they would still play. In 1996, James moved to Anchorage, where he contin...

Jennifer Loofbourrow is the owner of Alpine Fit, an Alaska-based outdoor clothing company that specializes in offering a variety of fit options for different body types. Jennifer’s active, outdoor lifestyle influenced her decision to start the brand. From 2004 to 2009, she kayaked the outer islands of Alaska's southeast coastline. In that time, she gained an intimate understanding of what basic ge...

In this episode, Cody talks to long-time Alaska sports journalist Doyle Woody. Doyle got his start at the Anchorage Daily News (ADN) in 1983 covering high school sports. From there, he moved on to covering college basketball for a short period of time before he began covering hockey. And that’s where he stayed for the rest of his journalism career.   For 34 years, Doyle reported on and built relat...

Julie Varee is the Community Outreach Archivist at the Anchorage Museum. So much of her life has been dedicated to helping others. She grew up in a household — back in Gary, Indiana — that put a lot of energy into philanthropy. In fact, her earliest memory is of tagging along with her mom and her grandmother to help the elderly people in her neighborhood. That sense of purpose and charity would de...

In this episode, Cody talks with rapper Julian Lillie, better known as Bishop Slice. Bishop says that music has been part of his life since before he was even born. When his mom was pregnant, she would always have headphones on her stomach. After he was born, he’d watch MTV, back when they played music videos. But Bishop’s childhood was often tumultuous. His mom struggled with addiction and his da...

In this one, Cody talks with Giles and Sebastian Landry, the founders of Turnagain Hardcore, a video production crew that produced Alaska-based snowmachine videos throughout the early 2000s. From 2001 to 2009, Turnagain Hardcore, or THC, released eight videos that helped nurture some of the best snowmachiners in the world. These riders were setting records and going bigger than anyone else in the...

Chloe Ivanoff is new to the kelp farming industry in Kodiak. She says that because it’s such a new industry in the United States, there’s always something to learn or something to innovate. The process of kelp farming, for instance, is still being tweaked. Kelp spores are gathered locally and brought to a lab where they’re grown. When they’re ready for a larger grow environment, the kelp is set in...

In this episode of Chatter Marks, Cody talks with three fellow podcasters about what it's like creating podcasts about Alaskans. Alice Qannik Glenn hosts “ Coffee & Quaq ,” a show that celebrates and explores contemporary Native life in urban Alaska. In it, Alice sits down with Alaska Native thinkers, doers and changemakers to discuss issues that affect Alaska Native people, their culture and thei...

In this one, I talk with Ralph Sara, the host of the Anonymous Eskimo Recovery Podcast, a show that features conversations with guests who are working through alcohol and drug addiction, many of which are Indigenous People.  Ralph’s heritage and his past informs many of these discussions. He grew up in Bethel, where he says that almost every household on his street was affected by alcoholism,  inc...

This week, Crude will be revisiting the top 5 most popular episodes of 2021. Number 1 on the list is with Preston Pollard, a motivational speaker and celebrity interviewer. Preston grew up skateboarding in Anchorage, Alaska, and aided by the unwavering optimism he learned from family and loved ones, he pursued it in the same way he pursues everything in his life—with curiosity and passion. Talk to...

This week, Crude will be revisiting the top 5 most popular episodes of 2021. Number 2 on the list is with Pika Burtner. Pika grew up watching and studying snowboard videos with the technical eye of an auteur. At 14, she started renting snowboard videos from Fairhaven Bike and Ski in Bellingham, Washington. She would always rewind the videos and return them on time. Fairhaven eventually offered her...

This week, Crude will be revisiting the top 5 most popular episodes of 2021. Number 3 on the list is with Nick Perata. He worked at and helped create King of the Hill, a legendary snowboard competition held in Thompson Pass back in the 1990s. Perata talks about what it was like being the director and event promoter and how the event came to be. Before King of the Hill, he was a professional snowbo...

This week, Crude will be revisiting the top 5 most popular episodes of 2021. Number 4 on the list is with Dan Coffey, one of the youngest competitors at King of the Hill. Coffey’s experience and recollection of King of the Hill is unique, in that he was just a teenager when he went. He was a senior in high school when he first competed in the event. He says it was surreal, he was up there in the C...

This week, Crude will be revisiting the top 5 most popular episodes of 2021. Number 5 on the list is with Brooke Geery. In 1997, Brooke started an online snowboard publication called YoBeat. It began on an AOL message board with 2 megabytes of free space and grew into an internationally recognized website. She says that it was a satirical site that gave a voice to people who snowboarded rather tha...

The Teen Climate Communicators program is hosted by the Anchorage Museum and offers activities and conversations around the past, present and future relationships between people and the land. Those involved, learn about how climate change is affecting Alaska’s diverse landscapes by hearing from Museum and community experts. Climate change is an ongoing conversation—one that is constantly evolving....

In this episode, Cody talks to Alaskan author Seth Kantner. Seth was born and raised in Alaska, among the animals and the wilderness, and his writing reflects that. It draws from personal experience, often dealing with themes that involve animals, the environment and living off the land. He says that when he was a kid, his family was entirely attached to the seasons and food from the land. Both de...

In this episode, Cody talks with three Alaskan comedians: Matt Collins, Kass Smiley and Dayman Wright. Dayman is still pretty fresh, with three years in the Alaska stand-up scene, while Matt and Kass have been doing it for over a decade. Doing anything for that long, you gain knowledge and experience. Like knowing that comedy in Alaska—and live entertainment in general—mimics the city’s economy. I...

Joining this conversation are artists Stuart Hyatt, Dan Mills and Christina Seely. Stuart uses sound to understand our relationship with the natural world. Dan uses maps in paintings and collages as a way to explore ideas of historic and current events, including issues like colonialism. Christina uses photography to address the complexities of both built and natural global systems. All of their w...

Brian Brettschneider is a climatologist and a research scientist. He collects data and analyzes it. And within that mountain of data, he believes many of the secrets of the world exist. But extracting meaning from all that information is a big challenge. It takes time, education and technology.  With its many research institutions located in arctic environments—including universities and weather s...

In this one, I talk to veterinarian Dr. Michelle Oakley, who stars in the National Geographic reality television show “ Dr. Oakley, Yukon Vet .” The show follows her and her family around as they administer veterinary care to domestic and wild animals. Many of Dr. Oakley’s most memorable moments have involved her family. From close encounters with a massive Kodiak brown bear to a rotting rumen in...

In this episode of Chatter Marks, Aaron Leggett explains the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, or ANCSA. ANCSA was established on December 18, 1971, and is a landmark policy for many reasons. As a result of the act, Alaska Natives retained 44 million acres of land and about 1 billion dollars to settle Indigenous land claims in Alaska. It also divided the state into 12 regional corporations and...