Adam Wilson Talks to Everyone

Send us Fan Mail Two nights under the stars, a series of unfortunate events, and a bill that could’ve sent us to Europe. This is the story of a 'budget' family weekender became a financial thriller. 

Send us Fan Mail Ben, a life-long friend, and I talk about a few minor issues, such as the LA wildfires, roof sprinklers, solar power, rolling blackouts, alternative energy, political polarization, the Gulf of Mexico/America, sky-high childcare costs and his very favorite spatula. Also, Kanye West. I mention the Media Bias chart, which is totally worth looking at:   Media-Bias-Chart-13.0_Jan-2025-...

Send us Fan Mail My father, Charles Wilson, is a lifelong, amateur philosopher. In this episode, I sat down with him to talk about why he got his degree in philosophy, which leads quickly to tales of barber shops, bad haircuts and the gangs in Spokane, where he grew up in the 50s and 60s. We talk cars and home ownership.  It's a winding tour through the study of wisdom, sometimes with actual...

Send us Fan Mail Christy McCay and I are cousins who didn’t know one another existed until we were adults, when our parents, full-blooded siblings, met for the first time. We talk about finding new family, the surprising role of genetics in shaping personality, and the importance of staying open and staying connected with family. We talk about adoption, about having kids and about losing our mothe...

Send us Fan Mail Melvin "Mel Brooks" Kaminsky is America's greatest director, screenwriter, actor, composer and comedian. Now, after 40 years, his "History of the World, Part I," is getting a sequel. This is just the latest cinematic event for Mel, 96, who also wrote/directed "Blazing Saddles," "Young Frankenstein" and "The Producers."  He&apo...

Send us Fan Mail With one voice, the governors of Oregon, Washington and California condemned the recent US Supreme Court ruling overturning the right to abortion created in Roe v. Wade. This isn't the first time the West Coast has locked together on political matters. All three states ended their coronavirus restrictions at the same time earlier this year, and they were among the last states...

Send us Fan Mail Jan Jutte steered the Washington State Auditor's Office through a major crisis when the then-elected State Auditor Troy Kelley was charged with federal financial crimes. Jan was about to retire from her long career in public service, but instead stepped up as acting state auditor.  We talk about the bizarre situation of telling your boss that they don't get to make the d...

Send us Fan Mail Today we're talking to Kevin Mayer, a long-time, great, friend of mine who has taken up smoking. And I don't mean of the nicotine variety, but smoking all variety of foods. And it's really amazing, the repertoire he's built up, from bacon-wrapped Oreos to making jalapeno cheese. He talks about the delicacy of trying to smoke cheese -- which I hadn't though...

Send us Fan Mail With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I turned to a Ukrainian friend to ask her what we, the Americans, need to understand about the conflict. Olha's response came down to this: Ukrainians are not Russians. They have their own history, their own language, their own culture, their own country. But Russian leader Vladimir Putin has predicated his war on a rewritten history, in...

Send us Fan Mail Is America in a new civil war?  Are we headed there? In this episode, I take on the question posed by Politico recently: "We are in a new civil war ... about what, exactly?" I propose the Compass of Power, a theory that holds the center of power in a democracy moves with the people. And Americans have been moving South for decades, tilting the center of national power aw...

Send us Fan Mail Contrary to what you may have heard, women are not poorly designed for childbirth. Jessica Wilson talks about why we fear mothers will die in childbirth in the United States, starting with her own terrible experience having her first child. We talk about the cascade of interventions, America's dismal statistics of maternal mortality, and what we know about childbirth in the o...

Send us Fan Mail Longview, Washington resident Melinda McCrady spent 20 years working for Democrats in the state Legislature, and for that entire time, her blue-collar, timber-industry hometown elected Democratic representatives to the Legislature, to local office, even to Congress. But by 2016 Democrats were losing ground there, and certainly they lost big in 2021. Republicans now represent Longv...

Send us Fan Mail Earl Adsley spends his time measuring snow in the mountains of Idaho and guess what? More than half of the water consumed in the West started as snow in the mountains. I talk to Earl about drought, about snow pack, about forest fires, and what all these things mean for the future of the place we call home. I learned a lot about how we get our water,  how difficult it is to predict...

Send us Fan Mail Ever think about moving to a small town? Having your kids play every sport in high school? What if you got paid to go to their games and announce them over the radio? How about you run for city council and help your neighbors improve the community? Ian Cope lives that life. I ask him about it all -- including what makes sports so great for a community, what makes a good sports ann...

Send us Fan Mail Chuck  Pfeil is a master of knowing what he can change, and what he cannot. You might meet him as a handyman, a mushroom hunter, a fly fisher or an auditor. Chuck does all those things, but he tries to approach all of them as the same version of himself.  It's something he's learned over decades of self-examination, thought and study of New Age texts like Black Elk Speak...

Send us Fan Mail In that strange time called midlife, Krista Goldstine-Cole was turned down for graduate school by a local university. She decided she should go to Harvard University instead. She not only got in, she moved into the dorms at 47 years old. We talk to her about going back to school, rubbing shoulders with the nation's (and the world's) elite, what she learned, and how to sa...

Send us Fan Mail I talk to Beth Babin about what makes Texas Texas, and why Austin is such a different part of Texas.  We talk about the massive snowstorms this spring that exposed deep flaws in Texas' energy grid. We talk about Life Straws. We talk about serious injury, which Beth unfortunately experienced recently, and how you navigate through recovery.  And we talk about her deep loathing...

Send us Fan Mail You may be a Big Lebowski fan, but have you considered the role of late stage capitalism in the film?  What about the twists it takes every time one character's name is used? John Hagemann has not just noticed these things, but writing extensively about them. He spent a semester in grad school analyzing the film through a dozen different lenses, and in this episode he takes u...

Send us Fan Mail We talk to Laura Cameron of Art for Art's Sake Press about how you step into the world of political activism. Laura shares how a deep personal loss led her to weigh in more often online.  She found talking to folks of another political bent was fraught with misunderstandings, and literally signed up to take a class on how to reach out effectively (Braver Angels ran the class)...