Crude Conversations

In this one, Cody talks to journalist and author Kim Rich. She wrote the classic memoir “ Johnny’s Girl ,” it’s about her tumultuous upbringing in Anchorage’s underworld. Back in the 1960s, her dad, Johnny, worked Anchorage’s nightlife — gambling houses, prostitution and get-rich-quick schemes. Her mom, Ginger, was an exotic dancer. She had mental health issues and spent years of her life in a num...

Jimmy Riordan is a multidisciplinary artist and educator who’s currently in-residence at the Anchorage Museum, digitizing and archiving the work of Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta musicians, as well as all the other Alaska music he’s collected over the years. He spends a lot of time in thrift stores and going through junk bins and scouring the internet — anywhere old records might exist. When he first start...

In this one, Cody talks to Andre Spinelli, better known as Dre. In snowboarding, Dre is known for going big — off jumps, off cornices, even a lot of the handrails he used to hit were big. It’s probably because he started riding with old school Alaskan heavies like Dan Coffey and Kovi Linden. They might not have been as technical as other riders, but they were always charging down the mountain and...

Nyabony Gat says that her immigrant story started 22 years ago. In 1992, when her parents and older siblings fled from South Sudan and found refuge in Ethiopia — the Second Sudanese civil war was going on between the central Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army. It was a long and bloody war and it caused four million people to be displaced.  Nyabony doesn’t remember much from...

When interdisciplinary artist LaMont Hamilton was young, he drew portraits of figures that he admired — Jimmy Hendrix, Che Guevara, Malcom X. He called it “scribble art,” a term he invented to describe abstract art that, the longer you look at it, the more it reveals. Then, as he got older, he became interested in photography. But he says that his first love, the one that he considers to be the fo...

Charles J. Tice is a visual and literary creative in Anchorage, Alaska with an emphasis on photography and gonzo journalism. He's currently in-residence, at the Anchorage Museum, working on a project called Artist Proof #6. It’s a book that’ll feature 100 photographs of strangers, assisted by a narrative. The writing is important, he says, probably the most important part of the project. So, he wo...

In this one, Cody talks with Elishaba Doerksen, the oldest daughter of fundamentalist Robert Hale, better known as Papa Pilgrim. In 2000, the Hale family — consisting of Papa Pilgrim, his wife and 15 kids — moved from the Rocky Mountains of New Mexico to a homestead in the Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve in Alaska. It's the largest area managed by the National Park Service, with over...

Photographer Young Kim says that it’s weird to live in a place that’s so big and so busy that people aren’t checking up on each other. He prefers smaller communities where everyone knows each other. His longing to be part of something tight-knit might come from his early childhood, when he and his family lived in Sand Point, a town of about 600 located along the Aleutian Islands.  Young’s sense of...

In this episode, Cody talks with battle rapper Sydney Eubanks, better known as Phonetic. He’s been in the Alaska hip-hop scene now for over 20 years. He started making music in Sitka and then doing live shows in Juneau. He says that being from Sitka — a small town in Alaska — he understood that battle rapping was the fastest way to build his name and get respect. So, in 2002, he went to Seattle to...

Rico Worl owns a business in Juneau that aims to distribute money spent on Alaska Native art back into Alaska Native communities. His business is called Trickster for the raven in Alaska Native culture that represents the Creator and is always playing tricks. Trickster began as a skateboard company, so there’s that association too. In fact, the idea for it started when Rico painted his clan crest...

In this one, Cody talks to snowmachiner Dane Ferguson. Dane started sledding in 2003 and almost immediately began hitting jumps. Before he even really knew how to ride, he would double up the mountain with filmers and then they would go back down to retrieve his snowmachine for him. Once he and his snowmachine were reunited, all he had to do was point it at the jump and hit the throttle. Dane is a...

Cal Williams is an activist and community archivist. He sees his involvement in activism as more of a pull than a draw. He didn’t plan it, it just happened. Seven days after he was born, Pearl Harbor was bombed and most of the men in his life went to war. So, the influences he had at those early ages came from the women in his life. He saw how they did what they could to help the war effort. He’s...

Ben Huff believes that photography is gloriously incomplete, that it has the potential to start a conversation, but it takes the viewer to finish it — to bring their own history and their own knowledge to the table and fill in the blanks. That’s one of the things that’s wonderful about photography, he says, it prompts a narrative. It introduces a concept or an idea for further examination. Much of...

In this one, Cody talks to musician and storyteller James Dommek, Jr. Growing up in Kotzebue, James played basketball. Most kids did — it was and still is a big part of the rural Alaska experience. In the summertime, they played all night because the sun was out. And in the wintertime — despite the cold and ball going flat — they would still play. In 1996, James moved to Anchorage, where he contin...

Jennifer Loofbourrow is the owner of Alpine Fit, an Alaska-based outdoor clothing company that specializes in offering a variety of fit options for different body types. Jennifer’s active, outdoor lifestyle influenced her decision to start the brand. From 2004 to 2009, she kayaked the outer islands of Alaska's southeast coastline. In that time, she gained an intimate understanding of what basic ge...

In this episode, Cody talks to long-time Alaska sports journalist Doyle Woody. Doyle got his start at the Anchorage Daily News (ADN) in 1983 covering high school sports. From there, he moved on to covering college basketball for a short period of time before he began covering hockey. And that’s where he stayed for the rest of his journalism career.   For 34 years, Doyle reported on and built relat...

Julie Varee is the Community Outreach Archivist at the Anchorage Museum. So much of her life has been dedicated to helping others. She grew up in a household — back in Gary, Indiana — that put a lot of energy into philanthropy. In fact, her earliest memory is of tagging along with her mom and her grandmother to help the elderly people in her neighborhood. That sense of purpose and charity would de...

In this episode, Cody talks with rapper Julian Lillie, better known as Bishop Slice. Bishop says that music has been part of his life since before he was even born. When his mom was pregnant, she would always have headphones on her stomach. After he was born, he’d watch MTV, back when they played music videos. But Bishop’s childhood was often tumultuous. His mom struggled with addiction and his da...

In this one, Cody talks with Giles and Sebastian Landry, the founders of Turnagain Hardcore, a video production crew that produced Alaska-based snowmachine videos throughout the early 2000s. From 2001 to 2009, Turnagain Hardcore, or THC, released eight videos that helped nurture some of the best snowmachiners in the world. These riders were setting records and going bigger than anyone else in the...

Chloe Ivanoff is new to the kelp farming industry in Kodiak. She says that because it’s such a new industry in the United States, there’s always something to learn or something to innovate. The process of kelp farming, for instance, is still being tweaked. Kelp spores are gathered locally and brought to a lab where they’re grown. When they’re ready for a larger grow environment, the kelp is set in...

In this episode of Chatter Marks, Cody talks with three fellow podcasters about what it's like creating podcasts about Alaskans. Alice Qannik Glenn hosts “ Coffee & Quaq ,” a show that celebrates and explores contemporary Native life in urban Alaska. In it, Alice sits down with Alaska Native thinkers, doers and changemakers to discuss issues that affect Alaska Native people, their culture and thei...

In this one, I talk with Ralph Sara, the host of the Anonymous Eskimo Recovery Podcast, a show that features conversations with guests who are working through alcohol and drug addiction, many of which are Indigenous People.  Ralph’s heritage and his past informs many of these discussions. He grew up in Bethel, where he says that almost every household on his street was affected by alcoholism,  inc...

This week, Crude will be revisiting the top 5 most popular episodes of 2021. Number 1 on the list is with Preston Pollard, a motivational speaker and celebrity interviewer. Preston grew up skateboarding in Anchorage, Alaska, and aided by the unwavering optimism he learned from family and loved ones, he pursued it in the same way he pursues everything in his life—with curiosity and passion. Talk to...

This week, Crude will be revisiting the top 5 most popular episodes of 2021. Number 2 on the list is with Pika Burtner. Pika grew up watching and studying snowboard videos with the technical eye of an auteur. At 14, she started renting snowboard videos from Fairhaven Bike and Ski in Bellingham, Washington. She would always rewind the videos and return them on time. Fairhaven eventually offered her...

This week, Crude will be revisiting the top 5 most popular episodes of 2021. Number 3 on the list is with Nick Perata. He worked at and helped create King of the Hill, a legendary snowboard competition held in Thompson Pass back in the 1990s. Perata talks about what it was like being the director and event promoter and how the event came to be. Before King of the Hill, he was a professional snowbo...