Alaska Teen Media Institute

Dante Medema is the author of the young adult fiction novels The Truth Project and Message Not Found. A former board member for the Alaska Writers Guild, she has presented at the Alaska Writers Conference and sat as the Writer in Residence at Alaska Pacific University. Her first book The Truth Project is about 17 year old Cordelia who discovers a hidden family secret while working on a genealogy p...

There are numerous different ways in which infectious diseases are tracked to give us an understanding of how they affect our community. One of those ways is something called Syndromic Surveillance. It’s a system that allows public health officials to keep an eye on what’s going on in emergency departments and urgent cares around the state. Alaska has been using syndromic surveillance since 2014 t...

In this episode our ATMI film critics discuss the new Marvel movie Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and directed by Sam Raimi in his return to the MCU since 2007’s Spider Man 3. They talk about the movie’s twists and turns, the horror elements that Raimi brings to it, and how it fits into Marvel’s phase four of its cinematic universe. Roundtable discussion...

Life during this pandemic has weighed heavily on our individual and collective mental health. For youth, things like isolation, anxiety, and grief have added to an already increasing list of risk factors. And Alaska has long since had some of the highest adolescent suicide rates in the country.  So for this episode we’re going to talk about suicide prevention. Our guest is Leah Van Kirk, the suici...

For this episode we’re talking about the new movie Everything Everywhere All At Once, directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, also known as Daniels.  When it premiered at the South By Southwest Festival this spring, it was described as “a hilarious and big-hearted sci-fi action-adventure about an exhausted Chinese American woman who can’t seem to finish her taxes.” Hong-Kong action star Mich...

After her husband was stationed in Poznan, Poland, Delaney Clodfelter and their son moved there in 2021. They had no idea that they’d be moving to a country just next door to a brutal war. When Ukrainian refugees began pouring into Poland, fleeing the Russian invasion, Clodfelter knew she had to help out. She began raising money to provide displaced Ukrainians with basic needs. Gaining funds local...

For this episode we’re talking about the movie tick, tick... BOOM! It is based on a stage musical of the same name, written by Jonathan Larsen. In the movie, directed by Lin Manuel-Miranda, Andrew Garfield plays Larsen as he attempts to break into the musical theater industry.  Garfield was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in the film, but when ATMI producers Madison Knutson and...

Chloe Miguel is a psychic medium living in Anchorage, Alaska. Her mission is to lovingly and compassionately meet people’s spiritual needs through psychic readings. ATMI producers Quinn White, Daisy Carter, and AJ Yambao all spoke with Miguel about her work. She talks about how she got into psychic mediumship, how the Covid-19 pandemic really didn’t affect her work all that much, and how we all ha...

Sisters Keara and Keziah Anderson are from Healy, Alaska. Last year they entered into a film competition called “The Great Untold” put on by Netflix and Adobe. They submitted a trailer and were one of three finalists who were granted prize money, funding, equipment, and mentorship to create a short film. At the time, the Anderson sisters were living in New Mexico, so they flew home to create their...

Jackie Schaeffer is a community development manager with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. She also serves as a board director of the NANA Regional Corporation.  So she has been deeply involved in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic in rural, Alaska Native communities. ATMI producer Roey McCowan talked with Schaeffer about her work during the pandemic, how storytelling has helped Native...

Last episode we talked about the nominees for the 2022 Academy Awards, so it’s only fitting we get the team back together to discuss who walked away with Oscar statues.  And yes, they chat about the slap.  Roundtable led by Zinn Rogers. Hosted by Jack Robbins. Music by Kendrick Whiteman. Alaska Teen Media Institute is based in Anchorage, Alaska. We would like to acknowledge the Dena’ina people, wh...

For many people, the constant changes of recommendations for staying safe and healthy during this pandemic has been a lot. So to hopefully bring some clarity and comfort, we spoke with Alaska’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Anne Zink. ATMI senior producer Quinn White talked to Dr. Zink about the ever-changing mitigation strategies around Covid, this new BA.2 variant, and how we might get out of this...

We’re doing something a little different for this episode. Rather than diving deep on a specific movie, we’re going to be discussing the films nominated for Academy Awards this year.  Our ATMI crew got together to chat about the Oscar noms, what they think will win versus what they hope will win. They also discuss what movies they think should have been nominated and which awards they are most per...

Alice Qannik Glenn is an Inupiaq woman and podcaster from Utqiagvic, Alaska. Among her many projects, she is the host and producer for Coffee and Quaq, a series exploring the collective experience of contemporary Native life in urban Alaska.  She also serves as host and producer for Resolve, a series about missing and murdered Indigenous women in Alaska.  In this extended episode, ATMI producer Ro...

For two years now, we’ve been living through the Covid-19 pandemic. A century ago the world was consumed by another deadly virus, commonly known as The Spanish Influenza.  Spreading worldwide mainly in 1918 and 1919, it is estimated that one third of the world’s population became infected with the virus. Approximately 50 million people died, and in the U.S. the death toll was around 675,000.  Davi...

Ruplai Limaye is an associate scientist in the departments of international health, epidemiology, and health behavior in society at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She primarily studies vaccine behaviors and has been researching vaccine hesitancy for over eight years.  ATMI producer Zinn Rogers spoke with Limaye about her research, including how to have conversations with those...

Back in 1999, American pop culture was forever changed with the release of The Matrix. Since then countless references to the movie have been made in other films, TV shows, and day-to-day conversations. The two sequels that came out in 2003 were less impactful, but didn’t disrupt The Matrix’s influence. Now, almost twenty years later, the franchise continues with The Matrix Resurrections, bringing...

This January, Alaska saw its highest spike in Covid cases due to the Omicron variant. Testing facilities were overwhelmed and hospitals remained strained. To learn more about Omicron, ATMI producer Grady Cutchins sought out a clinical pharmacist. And he didn’t have to go far. His father, Coleman Cutchins, is a board-certified clinical pharmacist working with the Alaska Department of Health and Soc...

Sierra Fischer has been a flight attendant for a major airline for nine years. So she was working when Covid-19 first hit the United States. ATMI producer Madison Knutson spoke with Fischer about her experiences as a flight attendant during the pandemic, working with noncompliant passengers, and the recent holiday travel season that had thousands of flight cancellations and delays worldwide. They...

Joshua Meals is a clinical nurse manager at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage. He oversees an acute care nursing floor with a staff of over 60 nurses. While they don’t treat patients with Covid, they still feel the ripple effects of how the pandemic disrupts the hospital. ATMI producer Ada Bjorkman spoke with Meals about managing the acute care unit during the pandemic, how staffing sh...

Maps are a fundamental part of our daily lives. From GPS apps, to tracking the weather, to keeping up with the spread of Covid-19 around the world. So for this episode we’re going to talk about cartography and how it is deeply entwined with our lives and our history. Our guest is John Cloud, a historian of cartography working for the Arctic Studies Center of the Anthropology Department at the Smit...

If you went to the movies this past holiday season, odds are you saw the movie we’re talking about today: Spider-Man: No Way Home. In its opening weekend it grossed two hundred and sixty million dollars. That’s the second highest debut in history.  For this episode our ATMI film critics discuss this movie phenomenon starring Tom Hollands as your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. And more so than o...

David Reamer is a historian whose focus in recent years has been unearthing Alaska’s complicated and curious past. He writes a weekly column for the Anchorage Daily News about the state’s history, covering a wide range of topics that include landmark restaurants, unsolved crimes, and Anchorage’s most famous horse. ATMI senior producer Quinn White spoke with Reamer about his work. He talks about An...

It’s the winter holidays, and for some people that means it’s time for Christmas movies. So we thought we’d have a Film Club holiday special and talk about one of the most divisive Christmas movies of them all: Die Hard. Our youth producers got together on Zoom to talk about the Bruce Willis-starring action movie, some of them having only just seen it for the first time. They debate the age-old qu...

When the Pfizer vaccine was approved for children ages 5 and older, Laura Norton-Cruz was relieved to be able to get her two young kids vaccinated. And she knew the perfect place to take them; her mother’s birthing center where they were holding vaccine clinics. To make the experience even more comfortable for the kids, Laura’s father, a retired pediatric radiologist, administered the shots. ATMI...