Listeners

Listeners' producer Dakota Runyon-Trapp and Daniel Bloomfield spoke with Floyd Aragon of Southern Oregon Public Broadcast  Service in order to figure out what the station is in terms of potential budget cuts. Along with potential roadmaps for the future of the station, what's going in with the station, and what does PBS mean to the public at large and how they can go about supporting it. Show note...

In this episode, host Devon Young talks with first-year educator MJ Poss, who shares an honest reflection on what it's really like to be a teacher in today's public schools. From chronic underfunding to emotional burnout, MJ doesn't hold back about the toll the system takes on its educators—and why, despite it all, they're still committed to showing up. Through their perspective as a queer, nonbin...

Listeners producer Kristen Mico speaks with Fiona Conneely and Shelley Sculer about how food hubbing models offer solutions to small farms, markets and food assistance programs.  At a time when programs that support access to fresh food and livelihoods of small farmers have been dramatically cut, and food assistance benefits like SNAP are also being cut, social service organizations are scrambling...

For this episode, we invite listeners into the realities of rural Oregon, where questions of identity, belonging, and resilience are part of everyday life. In this episode, Kristina Path and Leif Olsen travel to Monmouth to meet Amanda Laister, a longtime high school Spanish teacher, whose classroom reflects the challenges and hopes of a changing community. Through Amanda's story, we explore the c...

Listeners producer Daniel Bloomfield speaks with the Executive Director of the Oregon Humanities about the Trump administration's recent cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities, and how they've impacted the work of the Oregon Humanities. At a time when having respectful and diplomatic conversations is crucial, the cuts have forced Oregon Humanities to cancel many of its programs, includi...

Listeners producer Kaiya Laguardia-Yonamine speaks with Duncan Hwang about the importance of local organizing and turning inward to sustain our communities. In a time where federal cuts, mass political chaos, and daily threats are imposed on marginalized communities, it is more important now than ever to advocate for neighbors and what's happening immediately around us. Duncan reflects on his expe...

In this episode of Mutual Aid, Mutual Love, host Ranya Salvant sits down with partners Cat Parkay and Ryan Stimmel to explore how disaster preparedness and mutual aid shape their relationship to the community. From the hurricanes to the looming Cascadia earthquake, they share stories of finding each other through chance, growing together in crisis, and building resilience through local networks an...

Quarantine has meant that we're having to listen to ourselves and each other as we navigate through new ways of being together for long stretches at a time. It's near impossible to know how this global pandemic is affecting the quality of our relationships. The stories are endless and varied. Listeners producer Cecilia Brown takes us on a journey into one of these stories asking this question: how...

Are you eager to diversify what you're listening to these days? This episode is for you especially if you've been reflecting on and processing what we're all going through these days. Listeners producer Cecilia Brown talks with her friend Andrea Baron about her process of not only making a playlist of sad songs for her dad but also went the extra length to analyze and categorize them. You too can...

Listeners producer Cecilia Brown talks with Cleo Davis and Kayin Talton-Davis about homeschooling during COVID-19 and reimagining education by challenging the Eurocentric ideals most educational institutions are built upon. The Portland-based artists and designers have long been using art to tell stories about the Black experience and their current project aims to "create a cultural space of memor...

With this episode we introduce a new series called Strings. It's all about how issues and individuals string our communities together in surprising ways. Podcast producers Kevin Beasely and Ann Powers take the show on the road starting out in U.S. District Court and sitting down with Judge John V. Acosta's, which leads them to a ridealong with a Trimet bus operator and ultimately lands them in a p...

Last summer, bestselling author and Atlantic magazine contributor Amanda Ripley published an essay, Complicating the Narratives , exploring what journalists could learn from mediators, lawyers, rabbis, and others "who know how to disrupt toxic narratives and get people to reveal deeper truths." Ripley revealed how she discovered her own shortcomings as a journalist and called on reporters to chang...

Kaitlin Prest is an award-winning podcast artist whose keen ability to blend intricate sound design and distinct narrative storytelling into one-of-a-kind sensory experiences has earned her high acclaim at audio festivals and conferences worldwide. She got her start as a puppeteer, moved onto launch a Canadian radio show called Audio Smut , directed The Shadows for CBC Podcasts and is the co-found...

The August Wilson Red Door Project strives to change Portland's racial ecology through the arts. It started with a play called Hands Up: 7 Playwrights, 7 Testaments that showcases a powerful set of monologues commissioned by The New Black Fest in response to police shootings and institutional profiling. Then came Cop Out: Beyond Black, White & Blue. This series of monologues portray police of vari...

Research shows that developing empathy, connection and compassion is crucial to a sustainable and humane society. But, in order to do that we must first admit our own biases, overcome them and step outside of our bubbles - or comfort zones.   So, how do we do that?  Claire Cain Miller is a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist who covers gender, work, family and the way technology changes our lives. S...

What happens when we change the narrative of the classic American Dream mantra - that our position in life depends on more than just pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps? How does this impact reaching our personal and professional goals, helping others reach theirs and how public policy and resources are developed? Bob McKinnon is an author and founder of GALEWiLL, an organization that desig...

Kara Moore is the lead facilitator at Kickstand Comedy Space in Portland, OR.  Having studied, performed, and coached improv and sketch comedy since 2001. She says improv is more about being a hardcore listener than it is about trying to be funny. We had a fun conversation with Kara about being present, genuinely portraying subjects, and how the best improvisers listen for cues to further the narr...

Eli Saslow is an award-winning journalist and a staff writer for The Washington Post. In 2014, he received a Pulitzer Prize Award for his work on food stamps in post-recession America. His most recent book, Rising Out of Hatred tells the story of Derek Black's transition from an emerging white supremacist leader, to an outspoken opposer of the white nationalist movement. Show notes & links: Rising...

Gabe Howe is the Executive Director of the Siskiyou Mountain Club. The group works to maintain and promote remote trail systems in southwest Oregon. Gabe finds that when volunteers from different walks of life and diverse backgrounds come together in the wilderness, they're able connect in special ways over a literal common ground. Show notes & links: Conservation Groups Must Listen to Oregon's Ru...

What happens to journalism when the public gets to choose the topics they're curious about? "Public powered journalism" is the ongoing experiment the co-founder and CEO of Hearken Jennifer Brandel is working on to make journalism more responsive and useful to the public's needs. Also check out Curious City https://curiouscity.wbez.org https://www.wearehearken.com  

When writer and pastor Chris Nye moved from an affluent Oregon suburb to San Francisco's Tenderloin district, his work as a pastor was turned upside down.   Chris Nye is the author of Distant God , and his new book Less of More is due in spring of 2019. 

Gary Noesner was the FBI negotiator at Waco in 1993, where David Koresh and the Branch Davidians waged a 51-day siege against authorities. This is just one of the many high-profile cases Gary has worked on, and we wondered what a career in negotiating life-or-death situations teaches you about listening.  His new memoir is called Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator

Being in the hosting chair of public radio for almost 20 years made Celeste Headlee discover how bad most of our conversations are. What are we doing wrong? And how can we make it right? Show notes & links: https://www.celesteheadlee.com Celeste's TED Talk 10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation Celeste's book We Need To Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter

In an era of angry pundits, attack journalism, and click-bait, how can we re-train ourselves to listen consciously and embrace healthy disagreement? https://www.juliantreasure.com/ Julian's book How To Be Heard: Secrets for Powerful Speaking & Listening

Seven years after starting the Arizona Storyteller's project, Megan Finnerty has watched her project expand to 22 cities across the United States. We talk about why people are drawn to live storytelling events, what goes into putting them on, and how Megan uses her expertise to help participants get the most out of the experience of telling their stories on stage.