Full Expression

From the revolutionary ideals of the Bauhaus to a remote mountaintop pottery studio in Northern California, the legacy of Marguerite Wildenhain continues to shape artists generations later. In this episode of Full Expression , host Dan Imhoff travels to Pond Farm Pottery—a National Historic Landmark tucked into the redwood-covered hills of Sonoma County—to explore one of the most remarkable artist...

In this episode of Full Expression, host Dan Imhoff sits down with naturalist, artist, educator, and lifelong journaler John Muir Laws for a conversation about attention, creativity, and the transformative power of keeping a journal. They explore journaling as more than a record of experience, but as an essential tool for observation, reflection, and deeper engagement with the world. Drawing...

In this episode of Full Expression, host Dan Imhoff sits down with actresses Ava Mingo and Royer Bockus from the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon, one of the largest and longest-running repertory theater companies in the United States. Eva and Royer take us behind the scenes of life at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, from building characters and mastering Shakespeare's lang...

In this episode of Full Expression , host Dan Imhoff sits down with Cathy Bailey and Robin Petravic, the owners of Heath Ceramics, for a conversation about craft, California design, and the art of making things built to last. They reflect on discovering the struggling Sausalito factory in the early 2000s, rebuilding an iconic American ceramics company, and balancing creativity with the realities o...

In this episode of Full Expression, host Dan Imhoff sits down with Amy Bowers Cordalis—Yurok attorney, activist, and author of The Water Remembers —for a conversation about storytelling, sovereignty, and the long fight to restore a river. Amy traces her journey from growing up between Ashland and the Klamath River to becoming a leading legal voice in one of the largest dam removal and salmon resto...

In this episode of Full Expression , host Dan Imhoff sits down with filmmakers Charles Loi and Hannah Lee to explore storytelling, the climate climate, and the creative process. Both trace their paths from early experiments with film to collaborating on Climate California , a documentary series that reimagines how we tell stories about the climate crisis from NorCal Public Media. The series shifts...

In this episode of Full Expression , host Dan Imhoff sits down with artist Narsiso Martinez for a conversation about labor, migration, and the creative process. Narsiso traces his journey from a rural town in Oaxaca, Mexico—where he worked in the fields as a child—to immigrating to Los Angeles in search of opportunity and education. What began as a pursuit of stability gradually evolved into a dee...

Craft lives in the hands. And in a world increasingly shaped by speed, automation, and abstraction, what does it mean to dedicate your life to making things slowly, by hand? In this episode of Full Expression , host Dan Imhoff sits down with Angelo Garro, Sicilian-born blacksmith, sculptor, forager, and founder of Omnivore Salt, for a conversation about craft, culture, food, and the creative life....

Behind Pink Martini's unmistakable sound is a simple idea: music can bring people together across cultures. In this episode of Full Expression, host Dan Imhoff sits down with Thomas Lauderdale—pianist, bandleader, and artistic director of Pink Martini, the "little orchestra" that blends classical, jazz, pop, and world music into a style that feels both timeless and global. Thomas traces the unlike...

Behind every unforgettable performance is great casting. Today, we explore this often invisible process that's part intuition, part logistics, and part relentless creative problem-solving. In this episode of Full Expression , host Dan Imhoff talks with legendary casting director Mindy Marin, whose career spans four decades and more than a hundred films, including Juno , Drive , Nightcrawler , the...

Sparkling wine is one of humanity's most enduring creative rituals. In this episode of Full Expression , host Dan Imhoff travels to California's Anderson Valley to sit down with Arnaud Weyrich, the French-born winemaker behind the méthode champenoise wines at Roederer Estate. Arnaud brings a rare, ground-up perspective: trained in agronomy, viticulture, and enology in France, and shaped by three d...

#36: Artificial intelligence is here, whether we're ready or not. In this episode of Full Expression, host Dan Imhoff sits down with UCLA professor and Utopias podcast host Ramesh Srinivasan to ask what that reality means for creativity, culture, and everyday life. Ramesh brings a rare perspective: he's lived inside the tech world as an engineer and AI developer (including time at the MIT Media La...

#35: An epic wolf journey becomes a lens on everything from ecology to migration, borders, and what it means to coexist with the wild in modern Europe. In this episode, writer and adventurer Adam Weymouth joins us to talk about his book Lone Wolf: Walking the Line Between Civilization and Wilderness. Weymouth retraces the thousand-mile path of an iconic wolf named Slavc, tracked by GPS as he trave...

REDUX: Photographer Roman Cho shares his journey from percussion student to portrait photographer, documenting musicians, the Good Food Movement, and a 1700-mile bicycle adventure along Chilean Patagonia's Route of the Parks. Check out some of his stunning photos on his Instagram: @romanchophoto Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

#34: Before The French Laundry became a culinary landmark, there was Sally Schmitt, a quietly radical cook whose life helped shape what we now call California cuisine. In this episode, Sally's daughter Karen Bates and grandson Byron Hoffman join us to tell that story through their book Six California Kitchens. Part family history, part cookbook, Six California Kitchens traces Sally's journey from...

#33: Nick Casey is a staff reporter for the New York Times Magazine based in Europe. He writes about geopolitics, threats against democracy and armed conflict. Raised in California by a single mother, Nick earned a degree in anthropology from Stanford University and started his journalism career as a cub reporter for the Half Moon Bay Review in Northern California. A few years later he was recruit...

#32: Mary Gabriel is an American author and biographer whose books include Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution , which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She worked in Washington and London as a Reuters editor for nearly two decades and currently lives in Ireland. Her book Ninth Street Women is a deep exploration of the mid-20th century Abstract Expressionist in...

#31: Few guitarists have shaped the emotional landscape of modern music the way Bill Frisell has. Across five decades, his playing has stretched the boundaries of jazz, Americana, folk, film scoring, and improvisation. In this episode, we trace the artistic philosophy behind one of the most quietly revolutionary careers in contemporary music. Frisell reflects on his formative years at Berklee in t...

#30: Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska stands as one of the starkest, most haunting records in American music—a raw home recording that reshaped how we think about artistry, fame, and solitude. In this episode, author and musician Dr. Warren Zanes joins us to unpack how he captured story behind it. Zanes' book, Deliver Me From Nowhere , chronicles the winter of 1982, when Springsteen retreated to a cre...

#29: American democracy is in trouble. In this episode, constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of UC Berkeley School of Law, joins us for a sobering conversation about the structural flaws embedded in the U.S. Constitution—and how they're driving today's political polarization to the brink. Chemerinsky's latest book, No Democracy Lasts Forever , argues that the compromises made more than t...

On October 8, Full Expression goes deeper. In its third season, Host Dan Imhoff will interview artists, musicians, winemakers, writers, filmmakers and civic leaders on the edge of discovery. Tune in every other Wednesday for new episodes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Roman Cho is a Los Angeles-based photographer who specializes in portraiture. Born in Korea, Roman immigrated with his family at a young to Richmond, Virginia. He studied percussion at Cal Arts in Southern California and later transitioned to a career in photography. In addition to a career at Apple, he has initiated numerous projects: documenting The Good Food Movement, photographing legendary Am...

Heidi Gustafson is an artist and writer, but is perhaps best known as an ochre whisperer. Based in the Pacific Northwest, she curates the Early Futures Ochre Archive , a growing collection of over 600 samples of ochre from around the world. Her debut book, Book of Earth: A Guide to Ochre, Pigment, and Raw Color , explores our ancient relationship with color, creativity, and the land. Heidi is dial...

Marina Krut is a Ukrainian born composer, poet and singer who also plays the bandura, a 64-string instrument, weighing 15 pounds. Marina's story is one that everyone needs to hear. These days, the 28-year-old leads a double life. From her temporary home in the west of Ukraine, she travels to the front lines of the war to perform for soldiers. She spends much of her time abroad, performing and rela...

Jaqueline Baylon is a journalist and filmmaker. As a young child she crossed into Texas across the Rio Grande river, and was deported several times before earning her dual U.S. citizenship at the age of 9. She attended Texas State University, as well as the School of Visual Arts in New York. Jaqueline has worked at the New York Times and other newspapers covering healthcare, criminal justice and i...