This Person I Met

Hello, and welcome back to This Person I Met! In today’s episode, Lindsay Calka will be talking about something that you might’ve seen in action for yourself in the streets of downtown Ann Arbor. Groundcover News, the newspaper that she has managed for the past three years, works to provide a source of income for hundreds of low-income or homeless individuals in our community. As Lindsay explained...

Welcome back to This Person I Met! As this podcast approaches its 40th episode (this being the 38th), I only get more and more amazed by all the incredible people I’m able to talk to. On June 26th, 2015, the US Supreme court struck down all state bans on same-sex marriage, which legalized it in all fifty states. This was a massive win for Jason – the University of Michigan Professor that I had the...

Welcome back to This Person I Met, and if you celebrate, Happy Thanksgiving! Now a physician scientist with a focus in breast cancer and women affected with aggressive breast cancer phenotypes, Sofia Merajver was once the only female out of 52 in her science class. But since then, she has become a pioneering Argentinian woman in academia, making breakthroughs in research and guiding younger genera...

Hello! It's around the two year anniversary of This Person I Met now, and I just wanted to take some time to thank you for all your support, discuss some things we've been working on the past few months, and also introduce a new member to our team! We hope to keep doing this podcast for many years to come :) The link to the GoFundMe I mentioned is linked below! https://www.gofundme.com/f/raising-m...

Welcome back to This Person I Met! I’ve known Ari for quite a while now, but a few years ago, they moved to Indiana, while I stayed back here in Michigan. Ari is an amazing person and incredible artist, and has known that art is what they want to pursue since elementary school, which is something obviously quite unique. They have spent years creating a fictional world, complete with vibrant charac...

Welcome back to This Person I Met! If there’s anything I’ve learned while doing this podcast, it’s that preconceptions are almost always wrong, and this interview was no exception. Cindy Zheng, an advanced lung cancer patient for the past decade, was nothing like I’d imagined. Despite the brutal truths about her cancer, which steals the lives of over 130,000 people in the US, and only has a surviv...

Welcome back to This Person I Met! This episode will be part two of our conversation with Ms. Anna Krushelnitskaya, a teacher, translator, blogger, and author. She has written three books, including one called Cold War Casual, a compilation of interviews translated from Russian to English, regarding the effects of the events of the Cold War. This fascinating book will be referred to several times...

Welcome back to This Person I Met! Did you know that out of the more than 650,000 ex-offenders in the US who are released from prison every year, almost 44 percent return to prison within their first year out, and approximately two-thirds will likely be rearrested within three years of release? These statistics shocked us, but we were able to find answers to our questions in this final episode wit...

Welcome back to This Person I Met! We are so honored to have Mr. Grant back for a second interview sharing his loving relationship with his wife, Katie. If you were with us for the first episode, you know that Mr. Grant served a jail sentence for 27 years for an armed bank robbery. And now he is the director of "A Brighter Way," an organization in Washtenaw County, serving to help people who were...

Last summer, as we were planning our podcast for the new school year, an organization called “A Brighter Way” caught our attention. This organization provides help to individuals who were formerly incarcerated in Washtenaw County. As our podcast grew, we became more and more interested in underrepresented communities, and a few months later, we finally had the courage to contact their director, Mr...

November 8th, 2022, We met Ms. Anna Krushelnitskaya in the Ann Arbor Public Library. It was the election day. Ann Arbor Public Library was full of voters casting ballots for all the issues and concerns in people’s minds- inflation, abortion rights, student debt, you name it. On the other side of the globe, in Ukraine, Nov 8th was another day in the war. Fierce fighting continued in the Donetsk and...

Each year, about 13.6 million units of whole blood are donated in the U.S. Another 53.5 million units are collected in the form of plasma — a liquid element in human blood containing vital antibodies and proteins. Through some privately owned manufacturers, American donors provide 94% of the plasma used around the world. The reason is simple: unlike whole blood donors, the majority of plasma donor...

Thanks for coming back for the 2nd part of Mr. Zach Damon’s story. I first learned about cerebral palsy through reading a book in elementary school, called Out of my Mind. The main character was a little girl who was born with the disorder and was also incredibly bright, most likely a genius. The book has stuck with me all these years, although it was fiction. Our guest today Mr. Zach Damon is a p...

To start our new season, we invited a very special guest. He is a broadcaster, actor, public speaker, media project manager, supervisor, director, filmmaker, and producer. He hosts “Ann Arbor Tonight”, Michigan's first late-night live audience, televised show. Born with Cerebral Palsy, he is also a lifelong activist for the local disability community. It was a little nerve-wracking to talk with so...

To start our new season, we invited a very special guest. He is a broadcaster, actor, public speaker, media project manager, supervisor, director, filmmaker, and producer. He hosts “Ann Arbor Tonight”, Michigan's first late-night live audience, televised show. Born with Cerebral Palsy, he is also a lifelong activist for the local disability community. It was a little nerve-wracking to talk with so...

Our podcast is one year old! We are thankful for our wonderful guest interviewees to share their stories, and each one of our listeners and every download that makes our work so worthwhile! Special thanks go to the Fifth Ave Studio from Ann Arbor District Library for being our backbone. Mrs. Baker, our first interviewee/long-term supporter is back with us today to celebrate this small milestone an...

Do you know July of each year is Disability pride month? 32 years ago, on July 26th, the Americans With Disability Act was signed into law, and since then, discrimination against people with disability was prohibited, and more and more people with disability find advocacy and support from society. To celebrate this important month in the history of disabled rights, we are honored to have a very sp...

Half of the summer is over. We had so much planned, but so far nothing has been accomplished. Our friend Victoria sure had a better summer. She spent three weeks in Germany as an exchange student, with host parents and host siblings. Right after she landed back in Ann Arbor, we kidnapped her to share her adventures.

Have you ever wondered: what exactly makes me a person? We’d never questioned this before we came in contact with Professor Peterson, who introduced the concept of personhood to us. Not until June 24, 2022, when Roe Vs. Wade was overturned, did we start to realize how the concept of personhood lays the groundwork for debate about women’s and fetus rights, and its significance to this country in th...

I hope you were with us two weeks ago and heard this voice from Melania. Melania is a Huron High School student in Ann Arbor, who came from Ukraine two years ago. On February 28th, 2022, war suddenly broke out in her hometown, and her life was turned upside down. Everything changed. From afar, Melania spends a lot of time communicating with her family and friends and following all news about the w...

Her name is Melania, and she came from Ukraine. Melania is a junior at Ann Arbor Huron High School. Recently, she wrote an article for the school’s newspaper about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Later she was told to remove a portion of her writing due to the censorship policies that the school enforces. But, Melania had words to say. Likewise, we wanted to hear. So, on a beautiful sunny day, Malan...

Do you still remember the 2020 lockdown? Masking and social distancing policies became the norm while businesses, schools, and offices went quiet…more than two years into COVID, we have now learned to live with the virus, somewhat. However, in the Chinese city of Shanghai, the definition of “lockdown” is brought to a new level by people in power. In March of 2022, Omicron sneaked into Shanghai, th...

In the last two episodes, we had a special guest sharing some of his past, difficult experiences, as he left home and landed in the UK all by himself at age 17. He spoke no English at the time. We wish we were able to give you a brief recap, but his story is so captivating and beautifully told. Please listen to the previous two episodes we have dedicated to him. We start today’s episode with his r...

In the last episode, you heard the monologue of a young man, who left home at the age of 17 and had struggled and survived alone in foreign countries ever since. Not only are we fascinated by his story, but many audiences also contacted us to express their compassion and inquire about his current condition. If you missed the last episode, we highly encourage you to visit it before coming back here...

Our guest today is a young man who went to the UK, as a high schooler, without speaking any English, and later came to the states for college. We interviewed him to explore what it was like to grow up alone without parents by his side, and his relationship with them. But his story was so complicated that we realized the interview was not able to present the things that he experienced. His journey...