Lives Radio Show & Podcast with Stuart Chittenden

Susan Thomas talks about leaving small town Nebraska, for a much wider world, only to find that the road out eventually looped back. Her story carries her from Decatur to Harvard, Wall Street to China, and eventually back to Omaha. We talk about ambition, travel, adoption, and family, and what it means to choose a place again after leaving it behind. Susan Thomas grew up in Decatur, Nebraska, and...

Julie Masters is a professor at the University of Nebraska and her work centers on gerontology, caregiving, and death education. We talk about why aging is not someone else’s story, but the human story waiting for all of us. Her perspective helps us think more honestly about time, dependence, wisdom, and the communities we need as we grow older. Julie Masters, PhD is a professor of gerontology at...

Anastasiia Solianyk, a refugee from Ukraine, talks about the grief of losing the life she imagined, and the courage of building a new one with her family in Nebraska. Hers is a story not only of survival, but of how people carry memory, protect hope, and look for steadiness and community when the ground keeps shifting. Solianyk was born and raised in Ukraine and moved to the United States with her...

Artist Laurie Victor Kay talks about her art and the life behind the work. Laurie has built a remarkable career as a photographer and multidisciplinary artist, but her work has turned toward the more personal terrain of anxiety, medication, surgery, grief, healing, and the courage to explore these deeply human experiences. Laurie Victor Kay is a multidisciplinary artist based in Omaha whose work m...

Omaha-based artist Susan Knight's paper works and installations move through science, data, memory, and feeling. Her intricate cut-paper works are inspired by water and explore the deep currents of nature and the emotional force of environmental change. A painter, paper, and installation artist, Knight's work explores the intersections of art, science, nature, and environmental change. A Michigan...

Becky Korinek is a former teacher, patient advocate, writer, and lifelong learner whose life has been shaped by resilience, humor, and curiosity. In the show, Korinek talks about life as a teacher and what chronic illness and recovery taught her, and why creativity, play, and new beginnings matter in every season of life. After a thirty-year career in education, Korinek now serves as Director of B...

Carla Gornall, a cofounder of TakeRoot Farm Stop in Omaha, has spent years working to connect local producers with local consumers, and in the show we explore food not just as commerce, but as relationship, connection, and a way of strengthening the life of a community. TakeRoot Farm Stop in Omaha’s Dundee neighborhood is a year-round indoor market designed to connect local growers and makers with...

Maria Torres is a community advocate and founder of the CommUnity Project. Born in El Salvador and now living in Council Bluffs, her story spans migration and motherhood, trauma and healing, and the discovery of a public voice turning her lived experience into advocacy for belonging, community, and care for others. Torres came as a child to the United States. She now lives in Council Bluffs with h...

Paul Weishapl is the director of the Nebraska Harm Reduction Program at UNMC. In the show, we ask what it means when someone once written off returns as a witness to suffering and a voice for a more humane response and we talk about addiction, recovery, policy, mortality, and the hard, necessary work of repair in both individual lives and public life. Paul Weishapl teaches overdose response, harm...

Dean Jacobs is a traveler, photographer, speaker, and educator from Nebraska who left a secure corporate career to follow a more uncertain and expansive calling. In today’s show, Jacobs reflects on what he learned by stepping outside the usual script of success and traveling through more than 50 countries. We talk about courage, wonder, and what makes a life feel truly alive. *********************...

Dr. AnnMarie Marlier, the executive director of the Business Ethics Alliance, reflects on the life experiences that shaped her, from early personal loss and the demands of living with difference. She explores how those experiences inform her work in education, leadership, and ethics, and what it means to remain humane in a complicated world. Dr. AnnMarie Marlier has more than 20 years of experienc...

Joshua Foo is a photographer and director whose work fuses a chef’s sensibility with a filmmaker’s eye, grounded in his perspective as a queer Asian-American immigrant. We talk about “ways of seeing,” the craft behind his images, identity and heritage, and how life experience, not least a recent heart attack, shapes the stories he chooses to tell. Based in the Midwest, Foo draws on his experience...

Karalee Picard, a Navy veteran and former defense intelligence analyst turned leadership consultant, shares experiences and lessons from her service, what leadership looks like, and how she is charting a new empty nest chapter of life, personally and professionally. Dr. Karalee Picard is an organizational and leadership expert with a deep background in defense intelligence, where she built her cra...

Levelle Wells shares his journey from incarceration, addiction, and gang life to sobriety, healing, and a life of service, and what the “Red Road” has meant in rebuilding his own life and in helping others find their way forward. Wells is an Omaha-based Afro-Indigenous community leader (Elk Clan of the Omaha Tribe) whose life story spans incarceration, gang involvement, addiction, and a hard-won r...

In my conversation with reporter and news anchor Melissa Wright we trace the roots of her calling, what she’s learned along the way, and what it takes to be the “face” of the news in a world of mistrust, misinformation, and algorithms. It’s a wide-ranging talk about journalism, neighborhoods, identity, and the kinds of questions that don’t just inform us, but help us live. Melissa Wright is a jour...

Mohammad Sahil, executive director of the Nebraska Afghan Community Center, shares a journey that moves from refugee beginnings and work as an interpreter for the US military to life in America, ultimately building community infrastructure for Afghan and other immigrant families in Nebraska. It’s a conversation about home, dignity, moral responsibility, and what it looks like to pursue the America...

Nebraska State Poet, Jewel Rodgers, talks about how her poems arrive, and how they land; the possibilities of writing and performing to make sense of herself and for community, and what it takes to step fully into an artistic life when your creativity and work become public and the stakes feel real. Jewel Rodgers is the 2025–2029 Nebraska State Poet, a 2025 Academy of American Poets Fellow, and a...

This end of year show features a curated selection of guest conversations from 2025, plus a couple of teaser snippets from shows coming in 2026. The end of the year is a time for reflection. In today’s show, I look back on conversations with some guests this year that illuminate what it is to be human. In fact, I look back in astonishment at the sheer privilege afforded to me to be an intimate wit...

Community activist and organizer Leo Louis II has spent nearly two decades turning pain into purpose. From roles leading the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation and in the documentary film “My Omaha” he shares why, after decades of struggle and service, he is doing the work he was born to do. Louis has experience in various disciplines including gang intervention, urban farming, entrepreneurship, public...

Intuitive communications coach Tina Be Bakehouse shares how, drawing on theatre, storytelling, and a spiritual lens, she helps people speak in ways that truly resonate and connect. Bakehouse also shares coming into her own truths around sexual identity, faith, and personal healing that has transformed the way she works, lives, and shows up in the world. Bakehouse helps heart-centered leaders move...

Public health expert Dr. Athena Ramos shares her commitment to public health and justice, such as tobacco prevention efforts and improving farmworker health, safety, and equity in the Midwest. Dr. Ramos talks about the cultural, health, and lived experiences influencing this award-winning passion and that are reshaping her life and her work, including becoming a cowgirl. Dr. Athena Ramos is an Ass...

Omaha-based artist and web developer Brian Wetjen recounts a childhood programming the family’s first computer to make it funnier, leading to the heady early days of web-based businesses and entrepreneurship. Wetjen also shares his transformative plant-medicine journeys that have quieted his anxiety and OCD, and sharpened his attention, presence, and being in the world. Brian Wetjen is an Omaha-ba...

Organizational and community development consultant Sarah Phelps recognized early in life that she was neurodivergent and very very smart. Influenced by her experiences from the rural midwestern town of her upbringing to time in France, India, China and more, Phelps has become a champion for people thriving, bringing a deep care for community at every opportunity. With an IQ over 160, Sarah Phelps...

Shelby Seier , a multi-disciplinary and disabled artist, transforms the idea of accessibility into an expressive art form—one that invites care, creativity, and community. She reflects on her artistic journey through chronic illness, with improvised quilting, drawing everyday objects of accommodation, and the political power of play. Seier envisions how rest, imagination, and relational design can...

James Eagle Feather is a formerly incarcerated individual returned to the community as a mentor and entrepreneur. Surrounded by gangs and violence in north Omaha, Eagle Feather was incarcerated at 18 and spent nearly two decades behind bars. From those years emerged a story of resilience and redemption in a calling to mentor youth on the same problematic paths. Now a motivational speaker and...