Full Expression

Conservation biologist Dr. Astrid Vargas has helped bring black-footed ferrets and Iberian lynx back from the brink of extinction. Her experience has taught her that species recovery depends as much on human relationships as it does on science...and that joy, creativity, and balance are essential to sustaining the work. Born in Puerto Rico and raised in Madrid, Astrid joins Dan Imhoff in Valencia,...

From the summit of K2 to the wild landscapes of Antarctica, Rick Ridgeway has spent a lifetime exploring some of the most remote places on Earth. A legendary mountaineer, adventurer, filmmaker, author, and conservationist, Ridgeway has transformed his early pursuit of adventure into a lifelong mission to protect the natural world. In this episode of Full Expression , Dan Imhoff visits Ridgeway at...

Lebanese-born artist and architect Jessy Slim turns an everyday ingredient into an unexpected medium: chickpeas. Working with fabric, rope, and metal, she transforms this staple of Lebanese cooking into flowing sculptures that give shape to memory and her connection to home. In this episode of Full Expression , Jessy joins Dan Imhoff to trace her journey from childhood in Lebanon to architecture a...

Few people have had a greater influence on the way the world thinks about food than Alice Waters. A chef, author, activist, and founder of the legendary Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse, Alice has spent more than five decades advocating for local, seasonal, organically grown food and a closer relationship between farmers, cooks, and the people they feed. In this episode, Host Dan Imhoff speaks wit...

Wendell Berry spent more than half a century challenging Americans to reconsider our relationship with the land, our food, our communities, and one another. The celebrated author, poet, farmer, and activist died on August 31, 2026, leaving behind more than 50 books of poetry, fiction, and essays, including The Unsettling of America , Jayber Crow , and his beloved Mad Farmer poems. In this special...

Rebecca Tickell has spent more than two decades using filmmaking to tell stories about the environment, agriculture, and our relationship with the natural world. A filmmaker, producer, author, farmer, and environmental advocate, Rebecca began her career as a child actor opposite Sam Elliott in Prancer before leaving Hollywood acting behind and finding a new purpose behind the camera. She went on t...

For the first time on Full Expression , we turn the microphone around. Dan Imhoff has spent his life moving between creative forms—as a writer, musician, songwriter, visual artist, journalist, and, most recently, the host of this podcast. In this episode, Full Expression producer Megan Botel sits down with Dan to explore the creative life behind the conversations he's been having with artists, mus...

Mike Crutcher has spent a lifetime fixing things. A mechanic, handyman, sculptor, and longtime hardware store counselor in California's Anderson Valley, Mike has become the person generations of neighbors call when a pump fails, an engine won't start, or a machine everyone else has given up on deserves one more chance. In this episode, Mike shares how a childhood fascination with taking apart toys...

In this episode of Full Expression , journalist and biographer Jon Lee Anderson reflects on the experiences that shaped one of the most extraordinary reporting careers of our time. Raised across Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe, Anderson developed an early fascination with people living at the center of political upheaval and cultural transformation—a curiosity that would eventually take hi...

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...