Lives Radio Show & Podcast with Stuart Chittenden

Artist Lee Emma Running talks about her childhood independence and an insatiable curiosity underpinning a lifetime dedicated to making art. Together with iron, glass, paper or bone, Running illuminates our human intersection with the world’s edge spaces and its cabinets of curiosities. Running engages audiences in conversations about the impact of human-built systems on the natural world through t...

Luke Jensen is a veteran, neuroscience researcher, and plant medicine practitioner. Returning disenchanted and lost after a deployment to Afghanistan, Jensen shares how his search for healing led to him living in Peru’s beautiful Sacred Valley and now offering retreats rooted in indigenous spiritual wisdom, the healing properties of ayahuasca and other plant medicines, and the modern science of br...

Gold medal paralympian, Jeromie Meyer, shares how he adapted to life using a wheelchair after being paralyzed as a child by a drunk driver and, more than adapted, developed his athletic skills to earn the call to represent his country in wheelchair basketball, culminating in the exhilaration of wining gold at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. Iowa native Meyer is a member of the TeamUSA wheelchair...

Carol Horner shares how her decades long career and idiosyncratic approach to being an organization development consultant culminated in the Spiral of Accountability ™, her model guiding personal growth and professional success. Horner also talks about her life below water - being an avid scuba diver whose spiritual experiences beneath the waves shape her landside perspectives on life. Horner...

Chef Djamil Djibril Bah-Traore talks about a passion for cooking beginning in his childhood home in Togo, honoring a long if counter-cultural tradition in his family. Immigrating to America Bah-Traore has founded a family of culinary organizations furthering his belief that you can’t hate someone whose food you love. Chef Djamil Djibril Bah-Traore is a West African immigrant from Togo. He is a che...

Philosophy professor Joe McCaffrey – in our conversation recorded in May at the end of the academic year – guides us through that broad labyrinth of meaning and purpose by sharing his students responses to the question: How might we lead good lives. McCaffrey also shares what it is to be a philosopher and how he came to be one. Joe McCaffrey is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Universit...

Firefighter, cancer survivor and advocate Nick Howe shares his experiences of surviving cancer with an experimental treatment, only a few years later to require a new heart during which time a spinal stroke left him paralyzed from the waist down. Howe talks about a desire to dedicate his life in service to others initially taking the form of being a firefighter, as well as a spouse and father...

Leslie Smith candidly shares her journey from an abusive childhood to college and to a professional career, currently as the leader of the Omaha Municipal Land Bank, a quasi-public nonprofit organization that transforms vacant and abandoned properties into community assets, manifesting Smith’s passion for improving the quality of life for all people. Leslie Smith, a native Mississippian, serves as...

Musician and producer Laura Bird Burhenn talks about the changes in her vocation and life since we last spoke in 2018, including shifting more to work with her production company, Our Secret Handshake. Burhenn also shares how her commitment to a more loving, inclusive world, expressed through her art, has evolved and been re-imagined in her latest intimate tour across America. As a musician, Laura...

Artist Bart Vargas talks candidly about a chaotic childhood, which found expression in drawing. After military service, Vargas turned full-time to art. He shares his love for color theory and the use of salvaged materials in his craft, his exploration of themes of identity, consumerism, abundance and waste, and the unexpected discovering of his personal voice and purpose. Bart Vargas is a Visual A...

Melissa Breazile, a mindful outdoor guide and master naturalist, shares those early experiences of nature that inspired her creation of Wild Tree Collaborative , which offers outdoor experiences that reconnect people with themselves, each other, and the living earth. Breazile also talks about the wonder inherent in our natural world, including its spiritual and intimately healing effects in her ow...

International health professional, Ruth Stark, talks about a life in global health, training local health workers and developing nursing programs, eventually being appointed by the World Health Organization as its representative to Papua New Guinea. Stark shares the origins of this calling in her grandmother's stories of exploration, which inspired Stark - as a young single mother - to sell everyt...

Carol Russell, a community advocate and civic leader, talks about the events and experiences that have shaped her life vocation. Russell shares her early career as a medical technologist involved in cancer research studies, and, with more than 80 causes and organizations over many years, shares her passion for philanthropy and for Omaha’s collaborative philanthropic community. Carol Russell has be...

Maggie Wood, executive director of Film Streams , talks about working in the nonprofit world, especially in building welcoming communities and elevating the arts and cultural landscape. wood shares the evolution of her leadership, influenced not only by her work experience but also insights revealed during international travel and a recent career break. Born and raised around Bloomington/Normal, I...

Demetrius “Dee Dee” Gatson, the founder of Q.U.E.E.N.S. Butterfly House , talks about the many challenges that face formerly incarcerated people as they return to their communities and, drawing from her own experiences with incarceration, how she was inspired to create the nonprofit Q.U.E.E.N.S. Butterfly House a safe and supportive place for women to call home while navigating their reentry into...

Mindy Rush Chipman, the Executive Director of the ACLU of Nebraska , talks about difficult experiences in her early life and shares her personal story of seeking an abortion. She talks too about the stigma and the difficulties of telling that story. We’ll also hear Rush Chipman on the work of the ACLU and her path from working at a correctional facility library to legal practice. The ACLU of Nebra...

Professor of medical anthropology and ordained priest, Alexander Rödlach , talks about his early awareness of his calling to religion and to education, his vocational endeavors ministering around the world, a commitment to the intersections of health, service, and faith, and where his journey is leading him now. Alexander Rödlach was born in Innsbruck, Austria. He was ordained after completin...

Kevin Mahler, a nonprofit fundraising consultant, talks about the thoughtfulness required in effective fundraising, how he helps nonprofits to be responsive, and his own inexorable draw to entrepreneurship in service to the needs of philanthropic organizations. Mahler also talks about the influences in his life, from diabetes, art to astrology and faith. Kevin Mahler is the founder and owner of Co...

Native-American spiritual and cultural consultant Renee Sans Souci talks about being a lost and confused child living between indigenous and white American culture and her awakening to a Native spiritual tradition and wisdom. Sans Souci also talks about the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement and her own traumatic encounters. With a degree in education from the University of Nebraska-Li...

Musician, author, and Jungian Depth Coach Orenda Fink talks about her forthcoming memoir The Witch’s Daughter: My Mother, Her Magic, and the Madness that Bound Us , which recounts life dominated by an abusive, mentally ill mother; seeking to make sense of magic and faith; and Fink’s escape through music and into Jungian therapy and her Last Eden in the Mojave Desert, from where she joined me remot...

Angela Cooper, an organization culture consultant and founder of Mindpower Strategic , talks about her passion for and the pressures of being a business leader responsible for thousands of employees and the physical and mental toll of the burn out she experienced. Cooper also talks candidly about the lived experiences and the evolution of beliefs from faith to humanism that have shaped her work an...

Media producer Paul B. Allen IV talks about the multi-generational cultural legacy of his family in north Omaha and beyond, his own international journeys exploring media and culture, and the focus of his media entity 1st Sky Omaha on news dissemination, community outreach, and citizen journalism. Being the same age as hip hop, Paul B. Allen IV was raised in Southern California in a life of music,...

Librarian Amy Mather talks about how libraries reflect and respond to their communities  and her own passion for all things library. Mather also shares how creativity offers shape and satisfaction to her life and to the creative capital of the world around her. Amy Mather is the Partnerships Manager at Omaha Public Library and believes in connecting the community through information, sto...

Drew Davies, the founder of Oxide , a civic-minded brand and design consultancy, talks about the practical and creative side of his years as a designer and a business founder, his work on election and civic engagement materials, and his recent co-authorship of Creative Genius: The Art of the Nebraska Capitol , a book about the Nebraska Capitol’s art. Davies established Oxide in 2001. He is a natio...

The Reverend Heidi McGinness talks about her journey from the rubble of post-World War II Germany, to a life in faithful service to the poor, the persecuted, the oppressed, and the enslaved, including her work with the South Sudanese Underground Railroad in retrieving citizens from the North and returning them to the South. Reverend McGinness has, with unflinching zeal and hope, dedicated her life...