Crude Conversations

In this one, Cody talks to brothers Garrett and Jake Swenson of the hip hop group Brother Buffalo. They’re of Eyak heritage, with roots in Cordova, Alaska, but they grew up in Anchorage. As far as their understanding of their heritage goes, they didn’t have much to go on because so much of the culture was taken from their people and documentation of it was either destroyed or spread across a numbe...

In this one, Cody talks to former homicide detective Glen Klinkhart. In 1981, Glen’s older sister was sexually assaulted and murdered at their home in Anchorage, Alaska. She had thrown a party at her house and after everyone left, a nineteen year old classmate returned. To cover up his crime, he burned down their house. He was later caught and sentenced to 75 years in prison. Glen says that we can...

In this one, Cody talks to Tim Weisser. Like so many people, he came to Alaska to chase a dream. It was 1993 and he was a young snowboarder who wanted to ride the drastic and iconic mountains Alaska is known for. He had visions of bluebird days and big pow turns. So, with a few hundred bucks and his snowboard gear, he moved to Girdwood. There, he got a dishwashing job at Chair 5, but it wasn’t lon...

In this episode, Cody talks to musician Ed Washington. He says that a lot of his music comes from a cathartic place — not necessarily from a need to be heard, but a need to express. He’s been that way since he was a child. In fact, there’s this video his dad took of him when he was a baby and he’s singing to himself. It was an early moment of something he would continue to do throughout his life,...

In this one, Cody talks to Rick DeVoe. From 1994 to 2018, he promoted and managed bands like Pennywise, Unwritten Law, The Offspring and Blink 182. The bands weren’t the ubiquitous names they are today, they were local bands. Punk rockers from California, still trying to make a name for themselves. Until Rick had an idea: What if he got their music into surf videos? They could play at video premie...

In this one, Cody talks to actor Martin Sensmeier. As a kid, he would daydream about being an actor. His older brother helped influence that dream. He had the first laserdisc player and the first flat screen TV in Yakutat, Alaska. So, Martin would go to his house to watch movies with him. He remembers it being such a special event. It was also special to see movies in the theater, but there wasn’t...

Lily Hope is a traditional Chilkat Weaver from Juneau, Alaska. Both of her parents worked as full-time artists, so she grew up around the hustle of entrepreneurship and the responsibility of carrying on tradition. Her mom, Clarissa Rizal, learned how to weave from the late Master Chilkat Weaver, Jennie Thlunaut. Lily says that her mom probably felt the urgency of her own mortality, that it was imp...

In this episode, Cody talks to O’Hara Shipe. She’s a former professional hockey player and a journalist. She started playing hockey at 5 years old after she was told she couldn’t because she’s a girl. So, the next thing she did was go to her parents and tell them that’s what she was gonna to do. They signed her up that fall and she walked over to the coach and said she was gonna be their next goal...

In this episode, Cody talks to Nick Carpenter of Medium Build. He grew up in a religious household, so the church and its teachings ruled everything. Money was important too, but he says it was always just out of their reach. So, in many ways, that resulted in them idolizing it because so many emotions were attached to it. Obsession, fear, paranoia, shame. It influenced their perception of themsel...

Nyla Innuksuk is an Indigenous director from Canada and she recently released Slash/Back, a horror / sci-fi movie about a group of Inuit girls who save their remote arctic community from an alien invasion. She says that the horror genre has always been a big part of her life. Her mom — being a fan as well — introduced it to her, actually. One day when Nyla and a friend were having a sleep over, he...

In this episode, Cody talks to pianist Michele McLaughlin. She says that she’s always been musical. When she was in kindergarten, she learned to play the piano. Whatever songs they were singing in class, she would go home and learn them by ear and then play them for her class, almost as a form of show and tell. She remembers Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Mary Had a Little Lamb. Then, when she wa...

Mossy Kilcher is a homesteader, a musician and an ornithologist. When she was young, she was afraid of nature. It was just so big and there were so many ways to die. But the more time she spent outdoors, the better she understood it. Making music and recording bird songs helped. She realized that it wasn’t about taming the wilderness or dominating nature — like her father believed — it was about l...

In the mid-90s and early 2000s, Josh Medsker documented the Alaska punk scene. He started out as a fan, attending as many shows as he could, and then he began documenting the scene. For about three years, he wrote for the University of Alaska Anchorage student paper, “The Northern Light,” the city’s alt-weekly, “The Anchorage Press,” and for his own publication, “Noise, Noise, Noise.” Articles, in...

Crystal Worl is fresh off of two big projects. A mural in downtown Anchorage and a commission for Google. The mural depicts and applies traditional Alaska Native traditions and symbols — the formline art of the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian, for example. It’s 120-feet long, the largest thing she’s ever designed. The Google skin, titled “Primary Ravens,” depicts ravens, which represent the Creator a...

In this one, Cody talks to professional snowboarder Sammy Luebke. Snowboarding has been part of Sammy’s life for 25 years. He grew up in it. His first board was a 111 Burton Air — it was about 3 and a half feet tall — and he rode it at Alyeska, when he and his family lived in Girdwood, Alaska in an A-frame nicknamed Twin Peaks. There, at Alyeska, was where he laid the groundwork for the rider he w...

In this one, Cody talks to big mountain snowboarder Ashley Call. As a kid, he was familiar with his home mountain, Eaglecrest, because he’d be there pretty much every day from 6:30 in the morning to 6:30 in the evening. For over 20 years, his dad was the director of ski patrol. So, while he helped ready the mountain for the day, Ashley ran around the lodge and caused trouble. Until the mountain op...

Priscilla Hensley is a writer and a documentarian. Before she started working on documentaries, her job history was varied — she had worked in communications and, having made a few short films herself, had some prior knowledge of filmmaking. There was also a period of time when she considered herself a poet. All these jobs have helped her to become a jack-of-all-trades. Her time in communications...

Melissa Chimera creates mixed media paintings and installations that are research-based investigations into species extinction, globalization and human migration. Her portraits are fictional, but they’re based in empirical fact. She combs through the public record of peoples’ lives, collecting information to better understand them beyond what DNA can tell us. She includes elements and details of w...

In this one, Cody talks to Pete Iversen. Pete’s a dentist now, but back in the late 1990s, he was on his way to becoming a top name in snowboarding — he was winning heavy competitions and he was filming with big snowboard videos and local ones too. He had shots in a Mack Dawg video and a Straight Jacket Films video and parts in the legendary JB Deuce videos. Things were looking pretty good, until...

In this one, Cody talks to Brock Lindow of 36 Crazyfists. For 25 years, he was the vocalist of the band and, along with his bandmates, he wrote albums and performed songs, toured, connected with people at shows on a nightly basis and then repeated the cycle. He was 18 years old when 36 started — a founding member — and at that age, young bravado and vitality helped them be, as Brock puts it, a ban...

In this one, Cody talks to Tlingit artist James Johnson. Before he got to the level he’s at now, James taught himself the fundamentals of the Tlingit artform — he taught himself how to draw, how to carve, how to sharpen his knives. He taught himself the fundamentals of formline. His dad taught him the importance of traditional knowledge — that when you create a piece, you create it for your clan....

In this one, Cody talks to dog musher Aliy Zirkle. She’s always felt a strong connection to animals, dogs in particular. She tells this story about how when she was a kid and lived in Puerto Rico, there were a couple of stray dogs that pulled her around on a skateboard. Mushing was in her blood, even then.   For 30 years, mushing has been everything to Aliy. It’s been her passion and her career. A...

In this one, Cody talks to videographer Gary Milton. He describes himself as a snowboarder, through and through — one who, every year, has a best day ever. A day spent with old friends and new friends and riding powder. It’s reminiscent of his upbringing in Palmer, Alaska, where he and his buddies would explore the surrounding woods and mountains. They’d snowboard 16 mile and, for their age and th...

Rob Kinneen has been an ambassador for Alaskan cuisine through his guest chef appearances, speaking engagements, cooking demonstrations and private caterings. His work has revolutionized how people see and understand the state’s traditional foods. His understanding of traditional foods goes back to growing up in Petersburg, Alaska, where he remembers clamming with his uncles, fishing with his dad...

In this one, Cody talks to Matt Eastman, an entrepreneur and a businessman. Over the years, he’s founded a number of companies — an inflatable party rental business called Tons of Fun Entertainment, a hockey blade protector business called Hockey Wraparound , and a sunglasses business called Teamclix . But before all that, he was the most business-minded manager at the Dimond Center Boarderline, a...