In The Moment podcast

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It’s no secret that housing costs are climbing and income is struggling to keep up. It’s a complex problem with a lot of loud voices. One of the newest voices, however, is the YIMBY (“Yes In My Backyard”) movement.

This growing number of influential activists are calling for more construction and denser cities in order to increase affordability. Max Holleran’s book, Yes to the City, offers an in-depth look at the movement and how it fits into the larger debate of how we shape where we live.

From YIMBY’s origins in San Francisco to its current group of activists pushing for new apartment towers in places like Boulder, Austin, and London, Holleran explores how changing the way we look at urban density can make an impact. Once blamed for overpopulated slums, urban density has become a rallying cry for millennial activists locked out of housing markets and simultaneously unable to pay high rents. For many, the YIMBY movement has become a way forward. Yet, with many points of view and powers at play in this fast-changing public debate, there is much tension between activists and proponents of other housing movements.

In this installment of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, Marcus Harrison Green talks with Holleran about the current state of the housing movement, the history that got us here, and how both might shape the future of where we live.

Max Holleran is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Melbourne. His work focuses on urban development in Europe and the United States, particularly how cities manage tourism. He has written about gentrification, architectural aesthetics, post-socialist urban planning, and European Union integration for anthropology, sociology, geography, and history journals. His work on cities and politics has also appeared in Australian Book Review, Boston Review, Contexts, Dissent, Slate, and many other publications. He is currently an Urban Studies Foundation research fellow. He is the author of Tourism, Urbanization, and the Evolving Periphery of the European Union.

Marcus Harrison Green is the publisher of the South Seattle Emerald and a columnist with The Seattle Times. Growing up in South Seattle, he experienced first-hand the impact of one-dimensional stories on marginalized communities, which taught him the value of authentic narratives. After an unfulfilling stint in the investment world during his twenties, Marcus returned to his community with a newfound purpose of telling stories with nuance, complexity, and multidimensionality with the hope of advancing social change. This led him to become a writer and found the South Seattle Emerald. He was awarded the Seattle Human Rights Commissions’ Individual Human Rights Leader Award for 2020.

Buy the Book—Yes to the City: Millennials and the Fight for Affordable Housing

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Since it started, Social Security has been a cornerstone for retirement in America. But Americans are living longer and having fewer children, which means that this popular program now pays more in benefits than it collects in revenue. There’s less going into the pot than there is going out. Without reforms, 83 million Americans will face an immediate benefit cut of 20 percent in 2034, just a dozen years away.

What’s more, most future retirees are not participating in employee-sponsored retirement plans outside of Social Security, which could otherwise buffer the impacts of these cuts. Many people are counting on the safety net of Social Security for their future.

How did we get here and what is the solution? In Fixing Social Security, R. Douglas Arnold explores how Social Security has played out in American politics, why Congress struggles to fix its problems, and what legislators can do to save it.

In the 140th episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, Sally James interviews Arnold about whether or not America will be able to fix the future of Social Security and how we might go about doing it.

R. Douglas Arnold is the William Church Osborn Professor of Public Affairs Emeritus at Princeton University. His books include Congress, the Press, and Political Accountability (Princeton), The Logic of Congressional Action, and Framing the Social Security Debate.

Sally James is a writer and journalist who covers science and medical research. She has written for The Seattle Times, South Seattle Emerald, Seattle and UW Magazines, among others. For the Emerald, she has been focusing during the pandemic on stories about health and access for communities of color. In the past, she has been a leader and volunteer for the nonprofit Northwest Science Writers Association. For many years, she was a reviewer for Health News Review, fact-checking national press reporting for accuracy and fairness.

Buy the Book — Fixing Social Security: The Politics of Reform in a Polarized Age

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What is it like to be a young, Black, American woman traveling in Southern and Eastern Africa? In her new novel, No Blame, No Shame, No Guilt, Leoma James explores the profound experience of being surrounded by Africa’s natural beauty and vibrant culture while also realizing the harsh realities of racism and the long-term implications of colonization in Africa. Through short stories and poetry, James exposes readers to the different racial relations present within each story, allowing them to draw their own conclusions about racism and white supremacy.

James only has one request: that readers consider what they know about history and current events and reflect on how they have contributed to the racial relations that exist within society today. Who is to be blamed for the gross discrepancies we see and experience? Who should feel shame for the perpetuation of colonial ideals? Who is guilty for the dramatic and disproportionate physical and mental brutality invoked against Black bodies?

In the 139th episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, Charlie James interviews Leoma James about No Blame, No Shame, No Guilt.

Leoma James is a young Black poet, storyteller, activist, and educator from Seattle, Washington. She primarily writes poetry and short stories that focus on the Black experience, from a global standpoint. Leoma is a world traveler who extended her studies at Washington State University through the Knowledge Exchange Institute in Nairobi, Kenya. Leoma also served in Namibia with the U.S Peace Corps from 2017-2019 as a Secondary English teacher and has traveled extensively through Southern and Eastern Africa. Leoma is currently pursuing her master’s degree in Education at the University of Washington and has the desire to support students who are disadvantaged academically and socially due to race, income, immigration status, and language barriers, as well as people with disabilities.

Charlie James has been an organizer in the Black American community for most of his life, beginning at age five after he led black kindergartners into the Michigan school system in 1956. A leader for Black students throughout his schooling, Charlie became the founder and First President of the Black Student Federation at Lake Michigan Junior College and was named a Ford Foundation Scholar. After receiving death threats due to his community activism, Charlie left Michigan and came to the University of Washington in Seattle, where he became the President of the Black Student Union and an editor for the UW Daily. Today, Charlie is a well-known editorial writer for every major newspaper in the Pacific Northwest, including his own platform, the African American Business and Employment Journal. He is also the founder of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Park in Seattle and one of the founders of Northwest African American Museum. He is currently in the process of writing a book called The Survival of Black America and is a proud father of three daughters.

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Design is more than an aesthetically pleasing logo or banner – it has the power to solve problems in unique ways, cultivate innovation, and anchor multidisciplinary teamwork. In Reimagining Design, Kevin Bethune describes his journey as a Black professional through corporate America, revealing the power of transformative design, multidisciplinary leaps, and diversity. Bethune, who began as an engineer at Westinghouse, moved on to Nike (where he designed Air Jordans), and now works as a sought-after consultant on design and innovation, shows how design can transform individual lives and organizations.

In Bethune’s account, diversity, equity, and inclusion emerge as a recurring theme. He shows how, as we leverage design for innovation, we also need to consider the broader ecological implications of our decisions and acknowledge the threads of systemic injustice in order to realize positive change. He contends that design transformation takes leadership by leaders who do not act as gatekeepers but, with agility and nimbleness, build teams that mirror the marketplace.

Bethune is joined by Beverly Aarons in the 138th episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment Podcast, as they discuss design in harmony with other disciplines.

Design in harmony with other disciplines can be incredibly powerful; multidisciplinary team collaboration is the foundation of future innovation. With insight and compassion, Bethune provides a framework for bringing this about.

Kevin G. Bethune is the Founder and Chief Creative Officer of dreams • design + life, a think tank for design and innovation. Over a career that spans more than twenty years, he has worked in engineering, business, and design.

Beverly Aarons is a writer, artist, and game developer. She works across disciplines exploring the intersections of history, hidden current realities, and imagined future worlds. She specializes in making unseen perspectives visible and aims to infuse all of her creative work with a deep sense of emotionality. She’s won the Guy A. Hanks, Marvin H. Miller Screenwriting Award, Community 4Culture Fellowship, Artist Trust GAP Award, 4Culture Creative Consultancies Award, and the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture smART Ventures grant. She’s currently publishing in-depth artist profiles at Artists Up Close on Substack.

Buy the Book—Reimagining Design: Unlocking Strategic Innovation

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In today’s internet-based world, it’s easy to forget that there was a time before it was mainstream. How is it built? Who decides its content? And how has that content affected our culture? In this episode of In the Moment, author and researcher Alexander Monea takes a close look at this thing we all take for granted and argues that the internet isn’t as open source as one might think.

In his new book, The Digital Closet, Monea explores how heteronormative bias is deeply embedded in the internet, hidden in algorithms, keywords, and content moderation. Monea argues that the internet became straight by suppressing everything that is not, forcing LGBTQIA+ content into increasingly narrow channels — rendering it invisible through opaque algorithms, automated and human content moderation, warped keywords, and other strategies of digital overreach. Monea explains how the United States’ thirty-year “war on porn” has brought about the over-regulation of sexual content, which created censorship of a lot of nonpornographic content, including material on sex education and LGBTQ+ activism.

It turns out that we may take a lot for granted when it comes to the internet. Monea offers a chance to confront its flaws and examine the cultural, technological, and political conditions that put LGBTQIA+ content into the closet.

In the 137th episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, Monea discusses The Digital Closet with Edward Wolcher.

Alexander Monea is Assistant Professor in the English Department and Cultural Studies Program at George Mason University.

Edward Wolcher is a writer, media artist, and cultural organizer based in Seattle. His technology consultancy, cultureindustry.org, helps artists and activists find their digital voice.

Buy the Book—The Digital Closet: How the Internet Became Straight

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As COVID-19 began to spread around the world in 2020, so did a steady stream of information — and disinformation. Running parallel to the pandemic was an “infodemic,” a digital and physical deluge of information that resulted in mass confusion and censorship. In their new book, The Infodemic, authors Joel Simon and Robert Mahoney lay bare the mechanisms of a modern brand of “censorship through noise” that moves beyond traditional means of state control (jailing critics and restricting the flow of information, for example) to open the floodgates of misinformation. The result? A public overwhelmed with lies and half-truths.

Simon and Mahoney have traveled the world for many years defending press freedom and journalists’ rights as the directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists. They’ve charted COVID censorship beginning in China, through Iran, Russia, India, Egypt, Brazil, and inside the Trump White House. They argue that increased surveillance in the name of public health, the collapse of public trust in institutions, and the demise of local news reporting all contributed to help governments hijack the flow of information and usurp power. Through vivid characters and behind-the-scenes accounts, Simon and Mahoney argue that under the cover of a global pandemic, governments have undermined freedom and taken control — and that this new political order may be the legacy of the disease.

Truth may seem like a simple concept, but Simon and Mahoney highlight how complex it really is. What do you consider a fact? How do you know what a fact is? In this installment of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, radio host Katy Sewall interviews Simon and Mahoney about these questions in the context of today’s pandemic and political powers.

Joel Simon is a fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School and formerly the Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Before joining CPJ, he worked as a journalist in Latin America and California. He is the author of three books, including We Want to Negotiate: The Secret World of Hostages, Kidnapping, and Ransom, also from Columbia Global Reports. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Robert Mahoney is Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. He was a Reuters correspondent with postings in Southeast Asia, West Africa, India, Israel, France and Germany. This is Robert’s first book. He lives in New York City.

Katy Sewall is a back-up announcer/host for KUOW and a feature reporter. She’s a PRINDI award-winning producer who trained with Radiolab and toured with A Prairie Home Companion. Her work has appeared on The Takeaway, Here & Now, the BBC, and more. Katy spent nine years as the Senior Producer of Weekday with Steve Scher and is currently the host and creator of the international podcast The Bittersweet Life.

Buy the Book—The Infodemic: How Censorship and Lies Made the World Sicker and Less Free

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Have you ever watched a dog sleep? At times it doesn’t look like sleep at all with their tails thumping, paws padding at an invisible ground, and squeaks, grunts, and growls disrupting an otherwise quiet slumber. We might assume that they’re dreaming about squirrels, or a really good bone. But are they?

What really goes on in the minds of animals when they sleep? Author David Peña-Guzmán brings together behavioral and neuroscientific research on animal sleep with philosophical theories of dreaming in his new book, When Animals Dream. Through his research, Peña-Guzmán builds a convincing case for animals as conscious beings and examines the thorny scientific, philosophical, and ethical questions it raises.

In the 135th episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, senior correspondent Steve Scher and David Peña-Guzmán discuss the cognitive and emotional lives of nonhuman animals, challenging us to regard animals as beings who matter, and for whom things matter.

David M. Peña-Guzmán is associate professor of humanities and liberal studies at San Francisco State University. He specializes in critical animal studies, the history and philosophy of science, and contemporary European philosophy. He is a coauthor of Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosophers’ Brief and cohost of the popular Overthink podcast.

Steve Scher is a podcaster and interviewer and has been a teacher at the University of Washington since 2009. He worked in Seattle public radio for almost 30 years and is Senior Correspondent for Town Hall Seattle’s In The Moment podcast.

Buy the Book: When Animals Dream: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness

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The Tirukkuṟaḷ, or Kural, for short, is considered a masterpiece of universal philosophy, ethics, and morality. Traditionally attributed to Thiruvalluvar, also known as Valluvar, the original text has been dated from 300 BCE to 5th century CE. The classic Tamil work is one of the most cited and translated ancient texts in existence; it has been translated into over 40 Indian and non-Indian languages and has never been out of print since its first publication in 1812.

In a new translation of the Kural, Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma brings English readers closer than ever to the brilliant inner and outer music of Tiruvalluvar’s work and ideas. The work consists of 1,330 short philosophical verses, or kurals, that together cover a wide range of personal and cosmic experiences, such as —

Politics:

Harsh rule that brings idiots together—nothing

Burdens the earth more

Friendship:

Friendship is not a face smiling—friendship

Is a heart that smiles

Greed:

Those who won’t give and enjoy—even with billions

They have nothing

Drawing on the poetic tradition of W. S. Merwin, Wendell Berry, and William Carlos Williams, and nurtured by two decades of study under Tamil scholar Dr. K. V. Ramakoti, Pruiksma’s translation transforms the barrier of language into a bridge, bringing the fullness of Tiruvalluvar’s poetic intensity to a new generation.

In the 134th episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, Pruiksma discusses his translation of the Kural with poet, editor, and translator, Dr. Ruben Quesada.

Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma is an author, poet, performer, and teacher. His books include The Safety of Edges and Give, Eat, and Live: Poems of Avvaiyar. Pruiksma teaches writing for Cozy Grammar and has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, 4Culture, Artist Trust, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, the US Fulbright Program, the American Literary Translators Association, and Oberlin Shansi.

Ruben Quesada, Ph.D. is editor of Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry (University of New Mexico Press, 2022) and author of Revelations (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2018), Next Extinct Mammal (Greenhouse Review Press, 2011), and translator of Selected Translations of Luis Cernuda (Aureole Press, 2008).

Dr. Quesada has served as an editor for AGNI, Pleiades, and The Kenyon Review. His writing appears in Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, and Harvard Review. He is an Associate Teaching Fellow at The Attic Institute and teaches for the UCLA Writers’ Program. He lives in Chicago.

Buy the Book: The Kural—Tiruvalluvar’s Tirukkural: A New Translation of the Classical Tamil Masterpiece on Ethics, Power and Love

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As Curator-in-Residence for Town Hall, Linda Lee has been working with Town Hall Seattle since October 2021 to better interpret and display our permanent art collections, as well as develop a longer-term exhibition plan including artwork from the community.

In the 133rd episode of Town Hall’sIn the Moment podcast, Program Director Shin Yu Pai interviews Lee about her work as Curator-in-Residence, her collaboration with Urban Artworks to put art on our walls, and exciting opportunities for the public to get hands-on and make murals with us this June.

Linda Lee is a Museology graduate student at the University of Washington and aspires to pursue a Ph.D. in Paleobiology after graduation in 2022. Her fields of interest are in Curatorial and Collections Management, with a particular proclivity towards Natural History, Heritage and History museums.

Shin Yu Paiis Program Director for Town Hall. She hosts the Lyric World podcast for In The Moment and is developing a podcast with KUOW Public Radio that will launch in June 2022. She’s the author of 11 books and a 2022 Artist Trust Fellow.

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Studies clearly indicate that Black women, girls, and non-binary people face disproportionately high rates of physical and sexual violence, and face a greater risk of death by homicide than women and non-binary people of white, Latinx, and Asian/Pacific Islander descent. What forces have contributed to a legacy of violence, and is justice possible?

In America, Goddam, Black feminist historian Dr. Treva B. Lindsey explores the combined force of anti-Blackness, misogyny, patriarchy, and capitalism in the lives of Black women and girls in the United States today. Dr. Lindsey explains that the struggle for justice begins with a reckoning of the pervasiveness of violence against Black women and girls in the United States. Through a combination of history, theory, and memoir, Dr. Lindsey highlights the gender dynamics of anti-Black violence and addresses how the circumstances of this violence remain underreported and understudied.

Dr. Lindsey also shows that the sanctity of life and liberty for Black men has been a rallying cry within Black freedom movements – movements that Black women are rarely the focus of despite their lived experiences, frontline participation, and leadership in demanding justice. Across generations and centuries, their refusal to remain silent about violence against them led many to envision and build toward Black liberation through organizing and radical politics.

In the 132nd episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, Dr. Lindsey and Leoma James discuss the collective journey toward just futures for Black women.

Dr. Treva B. Lindsey is Associate Professor in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department at Ohio State University and founder of the Transformative Black Feminism(s) Initiative in Columbus, Ohio.

Leoma James is a writer, activist, political science and communication broadcasting Alum at Washington State University and Peace Corps Namibia 2017-2019. Buy the Book—America, Goddam: Violence, Black Women and the Struggle for Justice Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation click here.

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Spend any amount of time with young children, and there’s a good chance of finding yourself on the receiving end of a barrage of questions. How do clocks work? Where do fish go in winter? Why isn’t the oldest person in the world also the tallest person in the world? And on and on. But it makes sense; children are new here, relatively speaking, and are constantly trying to figure out their big, beautiful, confusing world. But where does that sense of wonder go when people become adults?

In his book Wonder: Childhood and the Lifelong Love of Science, psychology professor Frank C. Keil examines the inner workings of children’s minds and how people can regain and retain a sense of wonder and discovery. Keil writes that children are naturally curious young scientists with a strong desire to learn. But over time, that sense of wonder can become stifled, and adults gradually lose interest in thinking about the world scientifically. Keil argues that when we stop questioning how things work — and why — we can become more vulnerable to misinformation and manipulation.

In the 131st episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, researcher Halli Benasutti joins Kiel to discuss ways to stay curious and exercise our minds to engage with the world like a scientist.

Frank C. Keil is Charles C. & Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Psychology at Yale University, where he is also a member of the Cognition and Development Lab. He is the author of Developmental Psychology: The Growth of Mind and Behavior and other books.

Halli Benasutti is a PhD candidate in the Chamberlain Lab at UW and a member of the board of directors of ENGAGE, a program to train graduate students in public science communication skills.

Buy the Book—Wonder: Childhood and the Lifelong Love of Science from MIT Press

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Poet Lorna Dee Cervantes is considered one of the major voices in contemporary Chicana literature. Growing up, she was encouraged to only speak English in order to avoid racism in her California community. As a writer, her experiences as a woman of Mexican and Indigenous American descent fuel her work, which often explores loss of language, questions of identity, and dichotomies of acceptance and resistance.

In this installment of Lyric World for Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, Program Director Shin Yu Pai interviews Cervantes about her newest collection of poetry, April on Olympia.

Lorna Dee Cervantes is a XicanIndx (Chumash/Purepacha) author of five award-winning books of poetry: Emplumada (Pitt Poetry Series 1981); From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger (Arte Publico Press 1991); Ciento: 100 100-Word Love Poems (Wings Press 2011); Drive: The First Quartet (Wings Press 2005); and Sueño (Wings Press 2013). The founder of MANGO Publications (first to publish Sandra Cisneros), Cervantes is also the recipient of two NEA grants, two Pushcart Prizes, a Lila Wallace Readers Digest grant, and three state arts poetry fellowships. She presented twice at the Library of Congress as well as hundreds of universities, colleges, and other venues. The former Director of Creative Writing at CU Boulder, where she was a professor for 20 years, she moved to Olympia, WA in 2014 and now lives and writes in Seattle.

Shin Yu Pai is Program Director for Town Hall. She is the author of eleven books of poetry. From 2015 to 2017, she served as the fourth poet laureate of the City of Redmond. Her work has appeared in publications throughout the U.S., Japan, China, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

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You are surrounded by stickiness. With every step you take, air molecules cling to you and slow you down; the effect is harder to ignore in water. When you hit the road, whether powered by pedal or engine, you rely on grip to keep you safe. The Post-it note and glue in your desk drawer. The non-stick pan on your stove. The fingerprints linked to your identity. The rumbling of the Earth deep beneath your feet, and the ice that transforms waterways each winter. All of these things are controlled by tiny forces that operate on and between surfaces, with friction playing the leading role.

In her new book, Sticky: The Secret Science of Surfaces, physicist Laurie Winkless explores some of the ways that friction shapes both the manufactured and natural worlds, and describes how our understanding of surface science has given us an ability to manipulate stickiness, down to the level of a single atom. But this apparent success doesn’t tell the whole story. Each time humanity has pushed the boundaries of science and engineering, we’ve discovered that friction still has a few surprises up its sleeve.

Steve Scher and Laurie Winkless discuss sticky situations of all kinds in the 129th episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast.

Laurie Winkless is an Irish physicist-turned-science-writer, currently based in New Zealand. After her post-grad, she joined the U.K.’s National Physical Laboratory as a research scientist, where she specialized in functional materials. Since leaving the lab, Laurie has worked with scientific organizations, engineering companies, universities, and astronauts, amongst others. Her writing has featured in outlets including Forbes, Wired, Esquire, and The Economist. Her first book, Science and the City, was published by Bloomsbury Sigma in 2016.

Buy the Book: Sticky: The Secret Science of Surfaces from Bloomsbury

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Are we all, quite literally, out of touch? According to behavioral scientist Michelle Drouin, millions of people worldwide are not getting the physical, emotional, and intellectual intimacy they crave. Pandemic isolation has undoubtedly played a role, but the wonders of modern technology are connecting us with more people more often than ever before. But are these connections what we long for?

Drouin’s new book, Out of Touch, explores what she calls an intimacy famine and considers why relationships carried out on technological platforms may leave us starving for physical connection. Drouin puts it this way: when most of our interactions are through social media, we take tiny hits of dopamine rather than the big shots of oxytocin that an intimate, in-person relationship would typically provide. Covering everything from pandemic puppies and professional cuddlers to the roles of sexual relationships, Drouin discusses the many pathways to intimacy and how technology can be both a help and a hindrance.

In the 128th episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, Dr. Margaret Morris and Michelle Drouin discuss technology, intimacy, and what it means to find belonging and fulfillment.

Michelle Drouin is a behavioral scientist and expert on technology, relationships, couples, and sexuality whose work has been featured or cited in the New York Times, CBS News, CNN, NPR, and other media outlets. She is Professor of Psychology at Purdue University–Fort Wayne and Senior Research Scientist at the Parkview Mirro Center for Research and Innovation.

Dr. Margaret Morris is a clinical psychologist focused on how technology can support wellbeing. She is an affiliate faculty member in the Information School at the University of Washington, as well as a research consultant. Morris is the author ofLeft to Our Own Devices: Outsmarting Smart Technology to Reclaim Our Relationships, Health and Focus.

Buy the Book — Out of Touch: How to Survive an Intimacy Famine

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Most Americans can pinpoint the moment, back in March of 2020, when COVID-19 changed everything in the United States. Lockdown measures reshaped the daily lives of millions. Work changed. School changed. The experiences of going to the grocery store, doctor’s office, or meeting up with friends changed. And let’s be honest, two years into the pandemic, our lives are still changing as we grapple with variants, shifting guidelines, and the continued loss of loved ones. It has been a long season of hardship, but amidst the heartache are glimmers of hope fueled by human kindness and collaboration.

Journalist Kathy Gilsinan brings such stories to light in her book, The Helpers. She profiles eight individuals on the front lines of the coronavirus battle: a devoted son caring for his family in the San Francisco Bay Area; a not-quite-retired paramedic from Colorado; an ICU nurse in the Bronx; the CEO of a Seattle-based ventilator company; a vaccine researcher at Moderna in Boston; a young chef and culinary teacher in Louisville, Kentucky; a physician in Chicago; and a funeral home director in Seattle and Los Angeles.

In the 127th Episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, Steve Scher interviews Gilsinan about the people across the country — and the socioeconomic spectrum — who took action to help others in the face of the pandemic.

Kathy Gilsinan is a contributing writer at the Atlantic, where she has reported on national security and contributed to its extensive and acclaimed coronavirus coverage. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Buy the Book—The Helpers: Profiles from the Front Lines of the Pandemic Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation click here.

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When Vanessa Chakour was growing up, she experienced a series of physical traumas — chronic asthma, a car accident that fractured her back and neck, and sexual trauma. On her path to recovery, she pursued various approaches to therapeutic movement from martial arts to yoga, exploring the traditions that honor mind-body connection.

Now twenty years into her journey to reconcile her daily routines with a yearning for a greater purpose, Chakour shares her learnings in her new book, Awakening Artemis. She combines the story of her own healing journey with practical, plant-based knowledge, and remains rooted in the belief that healing can happen through connection to ourselves and to the natural world. In the 126th episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, Vanessa Chakour talks with writer Amanda Carter Gomes about finding self-awareness, confidence, and forging true connections with loved ones.

Vanessa Chakour is an herbalist, visual artist, rewilding educator, former pro-boxer, environmental activist, and founder of Sacred Warrior — a multi-disciplinary and experiential “school” offering plant medicine, wildlife conservation, and meditation through courses, workshops, and retreats with a diverse group of teachers. Sacred Warrior’s Rewilding Retreats are in partnership with the Wolf Conservation Center in New York, The Jaguar Rescue Center in Costa Rica, and Alladale Wilderness Reserve in the Scottish Highlands. Vanessa has shared her work as a speaker at the United Nations, Brown University, and the Muhammad Ali Center, and as a visual artist, in galleries from Tribeca to Chelsea. She lives in Western Massachusetts and teaches around the world.

Amanda Carter Gomes is an editor, writer, producer and the founder of online publication, The Fold. Amanda spent much of her early career working in marketing, event management, video and photo production for clients in the private and non-profit sectors.

Buy the Book: Awakening Artemis: Deepening Intimacy with the Living Earth and Reclaiming our Wild Nature

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Mental health professionals are in high demand now more than ever. In the U.S. alone, around a third of the population sought therapy services in 2020. But mental health practitioners aren’t immune to issues of deep structural racism and white supremacy; if they aren’t recognized and consciously dismantled, the potential for further harm to Black people persists, and mental, physical, and emotional wellness remain out of reach.

Over the past 15 years, radical psychologist Guilaine Kinouani has focused her research, writing, and workshops on how racism affects physical and mental health. Her new book Living While Black —recently nameda Guardian Book of the Year — brings personal stories, case studies, and research together to give voice to the diverse, global experiences of Black people. Kinouani offers expert guidance on how to set boundaries and process micro-aggressions, protect children from racism, handle difficult race-based conversations, navigate the complexities of Black love, and identify and celebrate the wins.

In the 125th episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, writer and educator Anastacia-Reneé talks to Kinouani about her guide for radical self-care and coping.

Guilaine Kinouani is a UK-based French radical and critical psychologist of Congolese descent. She is a feminist, a therapist, and an equality consultant, as well as the founder, leader, and award-nominated writer for RaceReflections.co.uk. Kinouani is a senior psychologist and an adjunct professor of Black and Africana studies at Syracuse University, London. Kinouani heads Race Reflections and its academy, providing workshops on anti-racism, racial trauma, and self-care.

Anastacia-Reneé is an award-winning cross-genre writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, TEDX speaker, and podcaster. Reneé is the author of (v.), (Black Ocean Press), Forget It (Black Radish Press) and Answer(Me), (Winged City Chapbook Press). She has received fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, VONA, Artist Trust, Jack Straw, Ragdale, Mineral School, Hypatia in the Woods and The New Orleans Writers Residency. Anastacia-Renee’s writing has been included in numerous anthologies, literary journals, and magazines.

Buy the Book: Living While Black: Using Joy, Beauty and Connection to Heal Racial Trauma Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation click here.

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Tsuru for Solidarity is a nonviolent, direct action project of Japanese American social justice advocates working to end detention sites and support front-line immigrant and refugee communities that are being targeted by racist, inhumane immigration policies. In the 124th episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, Jasmine Pulido interviews writer and community activist Stanley Shikuma about Tsuru for Solidarity’s work and advocacy to close all U.S. concentration camps.

The release of this episode is close to The Day of Remembrance (DOR), a day of commemoration of the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which gave the U.S. Army the authority to remove and incarcerate approximately 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry from the “military areas” established in West Coast states during WWII. On or around February 19, events are held in numerous U.S. states, especially in California, Oregon, and Washington, to remember the impact of the experience on communities and educate others about civil liberties — and their fragility.

Stan Shikuma is a social activist, community organizer, writer, and retired nurse. He grew up in Watsonville, CA, and studied at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and the University of Washington. He currently serves as Co-President of the Seattle Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League and is actively involved in Tsuru for Solidarity, Tule Lake Pilgrimage, From Hiroshima to Hope, Tech Equity Coalition, and the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance. As a longtime taiko (Japanese drum) player, he also performs, writes, and lectures on the history, teaching, and performance of taiko in North America.

Jasmine M. Pulido is a Filipino American writer-activist and community journalist living in Seattle, WA. She is currently pursuing her Master’s of Arts in Social Change with an emphasis on transformative justice.

Learn more about Tsuru for Solidarity.

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Puerto Rico has faced challenge after challenge in recent years, from economic crises and political upheaval to the aftermath of two consecutive and powerful hurricanes — Irma and María — in 2017. The devastation caused by the storms was widespread, destroying the already-fragile power grid, making most roads impassable, and costing thousands of people their lives.

Years later, as rebuilding continues with ongoing struggles, an often-overlooked population of Afro-Puerto Rican women are drawing from a well of cultural knowledge to enable their communities to survive and thrive. In her new book, Making Livable Worlds, anthropology professor Hilda Lloréns describes the everyday acts of resistance maintained and passed on through generations of Black Puerto Rican women. Despite oppressive narratives that attempt to erase them, Lloréns contends that these women are the central agents of social change in their communities. The restorative changemakers. The true heartbeats. Llorens brings the histories of these marginalized women to life in their continued fight against exploitation, further environmental destruction, and deepening capitalistic roots.

In the 123rd episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, Lola E. Peters and Hilda Lloréns discuss how Afro-Puerto Rican woman are producing good, meaningful lives for their communities through solidarity, reciprocity, and an ethics of care.

Hilda Lloréns is associate professor of anthropology and marine affairs at the University of Rhode Island and author of Imaging the Great Puerto Rican Family: Framing Nation, Race, and Gender during the American Century. Her latest book, Making Livable Worlds: Afro-Puerto Rican Women Building Environmental Justice,is available now.

Lola E. Peters is an essayist and poet living in Seattle, WA. She serves as Editor-at-large for the South Seattle Emerald and has written articles for several publications including The Seattle Star and Crosscut. Her poems have been published in multiple anthologies as well as her own two collections, Taboos (2013) and The Book of David: A Coming of Age Tale (2015). In addition to her published poems, she has written commentary for and edited several online journals and newsletters and served as managing editor of a national newsletter for social justice activists. She is the author of a book of essays, The Truth About White People (2015).

Buy the Book: Making Livable Worlds :Afro-Puerto Rican Women Building Environmental Justice from University of Washington Press

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Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil), Baudelaire’s best-known and most controversial body of work, was published in 1857. The poems were non-traditional by 19th-century Parisian standards, tracing themes of death, sex, corruption, mental health, and other taboo topics that raised more than a few eyebrows. Declared an offense against public morals, a French court suppressed the publication of six of his poems, a decision that was not reversed until nearly a century later in 1949.

On the 200th anniversary of Baudelaire’s birth, poet and translator Aaron Poochigian shares a landmark translation of Les Fleurs du Mal, with particular respect for the author’s original lyrical innovations and brooding melancholic tones. In the 122nd episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, Poochigian talks with senior correspondent Steve Scher about Baudelaire’s work and the book that launched modern poetry.

Aaron Poochigian has published four books of poetry, including American Divine, which won the 2020 Richard Wilbur Poetry Award, and several translations. He lives in New York.

**Buy the Book**: *Les Fleurs du Mal* (The Flowers of Evil)   Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation **click here**.

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Tacoma local Robert Lashley is known for crafting poems that build a vivid sense of place, rooted in deep, beautiful, yet often haunting memories. In his recently published third collection of poetry, Green River Valley, Lashley shares an unapologetic and harrowing look at gentrification, racism, and personal and collective loss in his hometown. With each poem, Lashley asks readers to bear witness to his lived experiences in Tacoma and to honor the people, places, and memories that shaped him — and the city we know today. Green River Valley showcases his signature rhythmic eloquence and acuity, building narrative threads that expose hidden intimacies amid trauma and ambivalence in the face of institutionalized racism.

Abby E. Murray, Tacoma Poet Laureate (2019-2021) and author of Hail and Farewell, describes Lashley’s work, “A nation, a myth, a beat, and a revolution walk into a bar. What happens next is extraordinary. Seriously, Green River Valley is a confrontation of powers and the result is a poet on real terms with what it means to love in times of violence and loss, what it means to write in times of silence. These poems aren’t read so much as thumped into the chest, and its truths are unhidden, unmasked. When Lashley writes, ‘To see is too much. / To not see is much more’ I feel like the past and future of any city, but especially Tacoma, make sense.”

In this installment of Lyric World for Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, Town Hall Program Director Shin Yu Pai interviews Robert Lashley about his newest collection of poetry and the legacy of his city.

Robert Lashley is a writer and activist. He was a 2016 Jack Straw Fellow, Artist Trust Fellow, and a nominee for a Stranger Genius Award. He has had work published in The Seattle Review of Books, NAILED, Poetry Northwest, McSweeney’s, and The Cascadia Review. His poetry was also featured in such anthologies as Many Trails to the Summit, Foot Bridge Above the Falls, Get Lit, Make It True, and It Was Written. His previous books include The Homeboy Songs (Small Doggies Press, 2014), and Up South (Small Doggies Press, 2017). In 2019, Entropy magazine named The Homeboy Songs one of the 25 most essential books to come out of the Seattle area.

Buy the Book: Green River Valley, Poems by Robert Lashley

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In May of 1935, nine-year-old George Weyerhaeuser, heir to one of the wealthiest families in America, disappeared on his way home from school. Snatched off the streets just two blocks from his home in Tacoma, the kidnapping plays out with the twists and turns of a Hollywood movie, complete with ransom notes, a bizarre scavenger hunt of sorts, and demands for massive sums of money. While young George endured a harrowing experience, he was never physically harmed by the perpetrators — a career bank robber, a petty thief, and his nineteen-year-old Mormon wife — who became targets of the biggest manhunt in Northwest history.

Local author Bryan R. Johnston details the infamous Weyerhaeuser kidnapping and its astonishing ending in his new book, Deep in the Woods. For the 120th episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment Podcast, Senior correspondent Steve Scher and Johnston untangle the improbable chain of events that played out in the forests of western Washington.

Bryan R. Johnston was born and raised in Seattle and is currently the Creative Director for a creative agency. He worked for network affiliate television for twenty-five years, earning eleven regional Emmy awards as a writer and producer. He is the author of several Northwest-centric books, including J.P. Patches: Northwest Icon and Almost Live: The Show That Wouldn’t Die, and has written for numerous magazines and websites.

Buy the Book: Deep in the Woods: The 1935 Kidnapping of Nine-Year-Old George Weyerhaeuser, Heir to America's Mightiest Timber Dynasty from Simon & Schuster

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From 1937 to 1954, renowned Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini led weekly radio performances of the NBC Symphony Orchestra, broadcasting the music of legendary composers across the airwaves. Violinist Samuel Antek played in the orchestra during its 17-year lifespan, experiencing Toscanini’s relentless dedication to music firsthand.

In This Was Toscanini: The Maestro, My Father, and Me, Samuel’s daughter Lucy Antek Johnson shares personal stories of Toscanini’s impact on her father and her family. Town Hall’s Artist-in-Residence, cellist Gretchen Yanover, talks about the book with Johnson in the 119th episode of the In the Moment podcast.

About the book

A Musician’s Insight, a Daughter’s Reflections, and a New Perspective on the Legendary Conductor.

Arturo Toscanini, widely considered the great est conductor of the modern age, remains a towering figure in the world of classical music. His explosive passions, dynamic music making, and legendary leadership continue to inspire and influence today’s musicians while still captivating new generations of enthusiastic fans as well.

This Was Toscanini: The Maestro, My Father, and Me is an intimate, firsthand, behind-the-scenes portrait of the Maestro, told from the unique perspective of conductor and first violinist Samuel Antek, who was fortunate to play under Toscanini’s baton for seventeen years in the famed NBC Symphony Orchestra.

In this expanded second edition, Samuel Antek’s reflections on playing with the Maestro gain sparkling new facets of insight from his daughter, Lucy Antek Johnson, as she enlightens readers with vivid recollections about her father and his most memorable musical partnership.

With a foreword from acclaimed author and music historian Harvey Sachs and featuring Robert Hupka’s iconic photographs throughout, this shining new edition will bring back the wonder of Toscanini’s powerful style and his singular pursuit to make beautiful music.

Lucy Antek Johnson, Samuel Antek’s daughter, was born and raised in New York City. After studying music, fine art, and ballet, she was drawn to the world of television production and spent her entire career in the entertainment industry, working with such producers as Martin Charnin, Harry Belafonte, David Susskind, and Roone Arledge. When she moved to Los Angeles in 1978, she produced movies for television, then joined the ranks of NBC as a network executive. She soon worked her way up to senior vice president of daytime and children’s programs for CBS, a position she held for fourteen years. Lucy and her husband, Bill Klein, live in Connecticut, where she has served on the Westport Library’s board of trustees and continues to work with the library on special programming projects. She paints, writes, and-every so often-gets up the nerve to sit at the piano and play a favorite Bach or Chopin prelude.

Gretchen Yanover is a Seattle cellist who performs as a soloist on electric cello and looping pedal — a tool that changed her musical life and inspired her to improvise and compose — in addition to her acoustic cello performance and recording work. Yanover has performed for Earshot Jazz Festival and TEDx Seattle, has had compositions commissioned by Seattle Pacific University and University of Oregon, and has created music for and performed with LeVar Burton for LeVar Burton Reads live. She is a member of Northwest Sinfonietta orchestra and serves on their DEI task force. In addition to being the Town Hall Seattle 2021 Fall Artist-in-Residence, Yanover was the recipient of a Shunpike Artist residency. She has four solo albums to date.

**Buy the Book**: https://www.lucyantekjohnson.com/   Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation **click here**.

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All the observable stuff of the universe — the stars, planets, and other bits of so-called “normal matter” that we can see with various instruments — make up less than 5% of the universe. What about all the other…stuff? The remainder, a mix of dark energy and dark matter, is undetectable by even the most powerful telescopes. The acceptance of the possible existence of dark matter and dark energy in the early 1980s signaled an astronomical revolution, one that wouldn’t have been possible without the work and findings of Astronomer Vera Rubin (1928–2016).

In Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter, and Beyond, author Ashley Jean Yeager explores the life and work of Vera Rubin as a woman scientist in the middle of the 20th century. In the 1960s, Rubin encountered widespread sexism and dismissal of her work; at the time, women were not even permitted to enter some American observatories, much less use the large telescopes housed there. Rubin herself couldn’t collect data until earning her Ph.D., and even then, her research wasn’t taken seriously. With perseverance, her work continued and ultimately showed that some astronomical objects seem to defy the grip of gravity, critical findings that lead to eventual acceptance that dark matter could exist. Where would we be without her? No doubt, fumbling around in the dark.

In the 118th episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, Dr. Anand Thirumalai andYeager discuss Vera Rubin and her contributions to our understanding of the universe.

Ashley Yeager is the associate news editor at Science News. Previously, she worked at The Scientist, where she was an associate editor for nearly three years. She has also worked as a freelance editor and writer, and as a writer at the Simons Foundation, Duke University, and the W.M. Keck Observatory. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a master’s degree in science writing from MIT.

Anand Thirumalai, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of physics at DigiPen Institute of Technology. He is a computational astrophysicist and his research interests are in the late stages of stellar evolution. He has developed a model that helps explain the mass-loss process of certain late-type stars at the end of their lives. He also studies the structure of atoms in the strongest magnetic fields in the observable universe;, i.e, in compact objects. His research focuses on the development of fast and accurate computational quantum mechanical methods for atoms in intense magnetic fields.

Buy the Book: Bright Galaxies, Dark Matter, and Beyond: The Live of Astronomer Vera Rubin from MIT Press.

Support Town Hall Seattle's year-end campaign: https://secure.givelively.org/donate/town-hall-seattle/2021-year-end-giving

Presented by Town Hall Seattle.

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Humans navigate death in very different ways. Dying is a natural and inevitable part of the cycle of life; however, the process looks very different depending on geographic location, cultural traditions, access to and type of medical care, and myriad other factors. Dr. Nicole Piemonte argues that Western Medicine often views death as a medical failure or something biologically wrong that needs fixing. Is doing everything possible to “fix” death the correct approach, or might we start to look at death differently?

Dr. Piemonte addresses this and other questions in her new book, Death and Dying — part of The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series. Somewhere along the way, has dying become a business? Does a cascade of medical interventions temporarily prevent death but ultimately prolong suffering? In the 117th Episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment Podcast, Dr. Piemonte joins Senior Correspondent Steve Scher to discuss how we might shift from an attitude focused on biological dysfunction to one that embraces personal values and respects the emotional realities of death.

Nicole M. Piemonte, Ph.D., is the Assistant Dean for Student Affairs and a faculty member in the Department of Medical Humanities at Creighton University School of Medicine, Phoenix Regional Campus. She also holds the Peekie Nash Carpenter Endowed Chair in Medicine at Creighton University. At Creighton, she designed and leads the medical humanities curriculum in the School of Medicine, and she also co-directs and teaches in the Masters of Medical Humanities program. In addition to Death and Dying, she is the author of  Afflicted: How Vulnerability Can Heal Medical Education and Practice, was published in January 2018 with The MIT Press.

Buy the Book: Death and Dying from The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series

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Oceans cover about 71% of the earth’s surface. Can something so vast and fluid be governed? Humanity has long attempted to create rules for the oceans of the world while honoring the “freedom of the seas” — a maritime principle first introduced in 1609 that stresses the freedom to navigate the oceans in times of peace. But as David Bosco describes in his latest book, The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans, building effective ocean rules while preserving maritime freedoms remains a daunting task.

Bosco addresses past and present maritime disputes and developing tensions around ocean governance. Past wars, new environmental concerns, and the expanded reach of national governments into oceans have all contributed to the erosion of freedom of the seas. In the 116th Episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, Chief Correspondent Steve Scher talks with David Bosco about the controversies surrounding control of the world’s oceans.

David Bosco is Associate Professor of International Studies at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of previous books on the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court, Rough Justice and Five to Rule Them All. He also writes the Multilateralist blog. Previously, he served as a senior editor at Foreign Policy magazine and worked in post-war Bosnia on refugee issues.

Buy the book: The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans

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Like it or not, crows are our neighbors. Whether you’ve been dive-bombed by one, heard them swarming in the trees at sunset, or watched them gather ominously on the power lines à la The Birds, everyone in Seattle has a corvid story— often in the form of a complaint. But crows are remarkable, highly intelligent creatures who have much to teach us about both the animal world and ourselves.

In this special and final live episode of the Beast of Seattle podcastseries, recorded on November 17, 2021, Town Hall’s Podcast Artist-in-Residence Samantha Allen interviews University of Washington professor and world-renowned crow expert, Dr. John Marzluff, about our constantly cawing cohabitants. Why do so many live among us? And what can we learn from watching their behaviors?

Samantha Allen is the author of Patricia Wants to Cuddle and the Lambda Literary Award finalist, Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States. A GLAAD Award-winning journalist, Samantha’s writing has been published by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, CNN, and more.

The music for this podcast was written and performed by John Gould. You can find more of John’s music at johngould.bandcamp.com.

The art for this podcast was made by Sadie Collins.

You can view the video shown during this program at the start of Dr. Marzluff's TEDx talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fiAoqwsc9g

Dr. Marzluff's books are available for sale here:
https://bookshop.org/contributors/john-m-marzluff

This podcast is presented by Town Hall Seattle and it was produced as part of Town Hall Seattle’s Podcast Artist-in-Residence Program.

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American football emerged in the last decades of the 19th century; today it is the most popular sport in the country, watched and played by millions of people — and at the professional level, generating billions of dollars in revenue — each year. While women’s involvement in football has grown in more recent years, it is historically a sport played almost exclusively by men. But in 1967, a Cleveland businessman had an idea to start an American football league for women. Was it a publicity stunt to garner attention and entertain folks, much in the vein of the Harlem Globetrotters? Or was it something more?

In their book Hail Mary, authors Britni de la Cretaz & Lyndsey D’Arcangelo share the little-known story of the players behind the National Women’s Football League that had a brief but bright life in the early 1970s. Hail Mary introduces us to the hard-playing, passionate women athletes who comprised teams like the L.A. Dandelions and the Toledo Troopers, names that most of us have never heard before. In the 115th episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, Maggie Mertens interviews de la Cretaz and D’Arcangelo about the players who transcended a gimmick with grit, tenacity, and pure athleticism.

Britni de la Cretaz is a freelance writer who focuses on the intersection of sports and gender. They are the former sports columnist for Longreads and for Bitch Media. Their work has appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, espnW, Vogue, The Washington Post, Teen Vogue, The Ringer, Bleacher Report, The Atlantic, and more. Their work on racism in Boston sports media received the 2017 Nellie Bly Award for Investigative Journalism from the Transformative Culture Project, and that story was also a Notable Story in the 2018 Best American Sports Writing. Their writing on the queer history of women’s baseball for Narratively was nominated for a prestigious baseball writing award, the 2019 SABR Analytics Research Award.

Lyndsey D’Arcangelo writes about women’s college basketball and the WNBA forThe Athletic. Her articles, columns, and profiles on female/LGBTQ+ athletes have previously appeared in The Ringer, Deadspin, espnW/ESPN, TeenVogue, The Buffalo News, The Huffington Post, NBC OUT, and more. She received a Notable Mention in the 2018 Best American Sports Writing anthology for her story, “My Father, Trump and The Buffalo Bills.”

Maggie Mertens is a writer, journalist, and editor located in Seattle. Her essays and reporting have appeared in The Atlantic, NPR, ESPNw, The Guardian, Deadspin, VICE, Glamour, and others. Her work has been anthologized in Women and Sports in the United States, and is forthcoming in The Year’s Best Sportswriting 2021. She edits and writes a regular column on sports and gender for The South Seattle Emerald.

Buy the Book—Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League from Bold Type Books

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Visual art holds the extraordinary power to connect the dots between ideas or emotions, the person thinking or feeling them, and the outside viewer; but how might the viewer go beyond simply looking to experiencing art, in all its joys and especially in its challenges and discomforts?

In the 114th episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, Elisheba Johnson interviews Tina Campt about her latest book, A Black Gaze. In the book, Campt explores the work of eight contemporary Black artists who are shifting the nature of visual interactions with art and demanding that Blackness be seen anew. She considers, “Rather than looking at Black people, rather than simply multiplying the representation of Black folks, what would it mean to see oneself through the complex positionality that is Blackness — and work through its implications on and for oneself?”

The featured artists’ work includes the portraiture of Deana Lawson, the video of Arthur Jafa, the film of Khalil Joseph, the photography of Dawoud Bey, and the multimedia practices of Okwui Okpokwasili, Simone Leigh, and Luke Willis Thompson. Through their work, Campt discusses how seeing — especially seeing Blackness — cannot be the passive act of simply looking; it must be actively felt with, through, and alongside the experiences of the Black artist.

Tina M. Campt, a Black feminist theorist of visual culture and contemporary art, is Owen F. Walker Professor of Humanities and Modern Culture and Media at Brown University and a Research Associate at the VIAD (Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre) at the University of Johannesburg. She is the author of Image Matters: Archive, Photography, and the African Diaspora in Europe, Listening to Images, and other books.

Elisheba Johnson Elisheba Johnson is a multimedia artist, curator, and organizer based in Seattle. Along with her father, Charles Johnson, she created the young adult science-fiction series, The Adventures of Emery Jones, Boy Science Wonder. She is also one of the co-founders of Wa Na Wari a Black arts center in Seattle’s Central District that uses art to fight displacement.

Buy the Book: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/black-gaze

Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation click here.

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Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Harry. Whatever name you know him by, he is ubiquitous in the greater Seattle area, spotted everywhere from bumper stickers to roadside landmarks. In an otherwise skeptical city replete with “science is real” lawn signs, it seems that many of us believe— or at least want to believe— in Bigfoot. As part of the Beasts of Seattle podcast series, Town Hall’s Podcast Artist-in-Residence Samantha Allen interviews Finding Bigfoot co-host Ranae Holland, local journalist Knute Berger, and Bigfoot researcher Mel Skahan about why the ape-like hominid continues to captivate us today.

The music for this podcast was written and performed by John Gould. You can find more of John’s music at johngould.bandcamp.com.

The art for this podcast was made by Sadie Collins.

Finding Bigfoot is streaming on Discovery+.

Sources:
https://www.seattlemag.com/news-and-features/its-too-soon-close-door-bigfoots-existence-hear-us-out

https://1889mag.com/explore/mel-shahan/

Presented by Town Hall Seattle. Beasts of Seattle is part of Town Hall’s Artist-in-Residence program.

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Vietnamese American musician Julian Saporiti grew up in Nashville, surrounded by music made by people who didn’t look like him. Determined to dig deeper into the definition of American Folk music as part of his extensive doctoral studies, Saporiti began to explore his own family’s history, pore over archival material, and conduct interviews; what he found were the untold musical stories of Asian American artists like himself. He transformed his research into concerts, albums, and films to create the immersive multimedia experience known as No-No Boy.

In Town Hall’s 113th episode of the In the Moment podcast, musician and former Town Hall Artist-in-Resident Tomo Nakayama talks with Saporiti about lyric writing, inspiration, and the art of making music not only as Asian Americans, but also as Americans.

Julian Saporiti is the Vietnamese American songwriter, scholar, and creator of the multimedia musical experience, No-No Boy. His art and music reflect issues such as race, refugees, and immigration, allowing audience members to sit with complication as music and visuals open doorways to difficult histories. Saporiti has taught courses in songwriting, music, literature, history, Asian American Studies, and ethnic studies at the University of Wyoming, Colorado College, and Brown University and has served as artist/scholar in residence at many universities and high schools across the country. Saporiti holds degrees from Berklee College of Music, University of Wyoming, and Brown University, and has been commissioned by cultural institutions such as Lincoln Center, the LA Philharmonic, the National Parks, and Carnegie Hall. His latest album, 1975, was released by Smithsonian Folkways earlier this year.

Tomo Nakayama is an artist whose melodic, complex, and emotionally compelling music has been praised by NPR, New York Times, and The Stranger. His albums include Fog on the Lens, Pieces of Sky (named “Best Folk Act” by Seattle Weekly), and Melonday, which was named one of the Top Albums of 2020 by Seattle Times, KEXP, and Seattle Met.

**No-No Boy**: https://www.nonoboyproject.com/   No-No Boy performs live at Town Hall Seattle on November 12, 2021. Learn more and get tickets to this exciting multimedia concert, presented in partnership with the Wing Luke Museum and the *International Examiner*.

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The orca is an apex predator, and yet, without Chinook salmon to feed on and silent waters to hunt in, Seattle’s most famous animal cannot survive. There are only 73 Southern Resident killer whales remaining, and the population will have a hard time growing unless we change our behavior to accommodate them. As part of the Beasts of Seattle podcast series, Town Hall’s Podcast Artist-in-Residence Samantha Allen talks with The Seattle Times environmental reporter and Orca: Shared Waters, Shared Home author Lynda V. Mapes about what we need to do for the orca to come home.

The music for this podcast was written and performed by John Gould. You can find more of John’s music at johngould.bandcamp.com.
The art for this podcast was made by Sadie Collins.
“The Great Salish Sea” provided courtesy of Dana Lyons. You can hear more of Dana’s music at cowswithguns.com.
Orca: Shared Waters, Shared Home by Lynda V. Mapes and published by Braided River is available from local booksellers.
Orca: How We Came to Know and Love the Ocean’s Greatest Predator is available from Oxford University Press.

Sources:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/the-orca-and-the-orca-catcher-how-a-generation-of-killer-whales-was-taken-from-puget-sound/
https://seaworld.com/san-diego/commitment/killer-whales/
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-2010-03-07-os-seaworld-killer-whale-brains-20100302-story.html
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/31/634314741/after-calfs-death-orca-mother-carries-it-for-days-in-tragic-tour-of-grief
https://www.npr.org/2018/08/12/638047095/after-17-days-and-1-000-miles-a-mother-orcas-tour-of-grief-is-over
https://orcaconservancy.networkforgood.com/projects/129224-hydrophone-project
https://killerwhale.org/biggs-transient-killer-whales/
http://orcazine.com/granny-j2/
https://ptmsc.org/programs/investigate/citizen-science/completed-projects/orca-project/resident-and-transient-orcas
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/understanding-orca-culture-12494696/
https://e360.yale.edu/features/on-the-northwests-snake-river-the-case-for-dam-removal-grows
https://www.salmonrecovery.gov/home/lower-snake-river-dams-power-benefits

Presented by Town Hall Seattle. Beasts of Seattle is part of Town Hall’s Artist-in-Residence program.

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What might a post-capitalistic world look like? Can money, jobs, and politics be truly democratized? Will banks cease to exist? Globally recognized economist Yanis Varoufakis dreams up an alternative reality to give us a glimpse of what such a world might look like in his new work of science fiction, Another Now.

Varoufakis, the former finance minister of Greece, has spent a lifetime immersed in issues of the global economy. In Another Now, his unique economic expertise and deep understanding of debt crises are woven into a narrative filled with all the stuff of sci-fi dreams: a parallel universe; cosmic wormholes; secret technology; and DNA doubles. However speculative the fiction, none of it is as far-fetched as it might seem. In the 112th episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, Steve Scher talks with Varoufakis about how a realistic, democratic alternative to our present reality is already taking shape all around us.

Yanis Varoufakis was born in Athens in 1962, and is former finance minister of Greece; he is currently Professor of Economics at the University of Athens. Prior to entering the government, Varoufakis was a professor of economics in Britain, Australia, and the U.S. for many years. Since resigning from Greece’s finance ministry, he has co-founded an international grassroots movement, DiEM25, campaigning for the revival of democracy in Europe and speaking to audiences of thousands worldwide. He is the author of several international bestselling books, including Talking to My Daughter: A Brief History of Capitalism.

Buy the Book: https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/another-now/

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There are famously more dogs in Seattle than there are children—a function of the city’s high cost of living, perhaps, or a sign that our transient tech workforce craves furry friendship. But canines are so much more than modern-day apartment-dwelling companions; long ago, the Salish Wool Dog provided blankets for Coast Salish peoples and today, working dogs keep our ferries running, among other essential jobs. As part of the Beasts of Seattle podcast series, Town Hall’s Podcast Artist-in-Residence Samantha Allen interviews photographer Holly Cook, Museum of the American Indian technician Pat Jollie, and more about our best friends.

Credits:
The music for this podcast was written and performed by John Gould. You can find more of John’s music at johngould.bandcamp.com.
The art for this podcast was made by Sadie Collins.
Shey Ruud's art account is @twocats_art on Instagram.
Send Me: Working Dogs of the Pacific Northwest is available on hollyccook.com.

Sources:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/kids-making-a-comeback-more-than-100000-under-18-in-seattle-for-the-first-time-in-50-years/
https://www.americanindianmagazine.org/story/a-woolly-tale
https://www.rover.com/blog/insiders-guide-seattle-dog-owners/
https://seattle.curbed.com/maps/best-off-leash-dog-parks-seattle

Presented by Town Hall Seattle. Beasts of Seattle is part of Town Hall’s Artist-in-Residence program.

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Nearly one in five people in the U.S. are Latinx, and they make up the second-largest ethnic and racial group in the country. Despite such a large and growing population, the community remains misunderstood and underrecognized.

Editor Diana Campoamor addresses areas of inequity and brings readers messages of hope and compassion in If We Want to Win: A Latine Vision for a New American Democracy. She gathers personal stories from twenty leaders and activists who share what it means to be Latinx and American; collaboratively, their narratives lay the foundation for a more inclusive and just future that extends beyond stereotypes. In the 111th episode of Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast, Campoamor discusses the voices, the vision, and the future of American democracy with journalist Agueda Pacheco Flores.

Diana Campoamor is the founder of Nuestra America Fund (NAF), an initiative focused on documenting Latino leadership and best practices in philanthropy. Prior to NAF, she served as president of Hispanics in Philanthropy (HIP) for nearly twenty-seven years.

Agueda Pacheco Flores is a journalist in Seattle with a focus on Latinx culture and Mexican American identity. She was previously an arts and culture writer at Crosscut where she enjoyed writing about Chicano galleries, Cumbia in the Pacific Northwest as well as shining a light on emerging Latinx artists. Originally from Queretaro, Mexico, Pacheco Flores is inspired by her own bicultural upbringing as an undocumented immigrant and proud Washingtonian. Her work has appeared in The Seattle Globalist, Seattle Weekly, and The Daily.

Buy the Book: https://thenewpress.com/books/if-we-want-win

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Only the occasional sea otter swims in Puget Sound, yet the adorable marine mammal is a local mascot. Cuddly cartoon otters appear on posters lining our waterfront and appear on their fair share of “Greetings from Seattle” postcards. Meanwhile, on Washington’s outer coast, a recently reintroduced population of sea otters is on the rise. As part of the Beasts of Seattle podcast series, Town Hall’s Podcast Artist-in-Residence Samantha Allen interviews Return of the Sea Otter author Todd McLeish, Dr. Shawn Larson of the Seattle Aquarium, and other experts about what the sea otter means to Seattle.

Credits:
The music for this podcast was written and performed by John Gould. You can find more of John’s music at johngould.bandcamp.com.
The art for this podcast was made by Sadie Collins.
Return of the Sea Otter is available from Penguin Random House.

Sources:
https://wdfw.wa.gov/publications/00314
https://www.seattleaquarium.org/
https://products.kitsapsun.com/archive/2001/06-07/0013_sea_otter_found_way_off_track.html
https://www.vox.com/2014/4/24/5640890/otters-rape-baby-seals-monsters-bad
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210914-how-sea-otters-help-fight-climate-change
https://www.aquariumofpacific.org/blogs/comments/chloe_the_sea_otter_demonstrates_otter_pockets
https://www.seattleaquarium.org/blog/how-low-can-you-go-puget-sound-edition
https://usa.fishermap.org/depth-map/puget-sound-wa/
https://www.nps.gov/olym/planyourvisit/wilderness-coast.htm
https://www.nwnewsnetwork.org/environment-and-planning/2021-01-06/sea-otter-reintroduction-to-more-of-the-pacific-coast-gets-a-nudge-from-congress
https://www.ktoo.org/2018/12/24/alaska-made-sea-otter-pelts-are-highly-prized-tightly-regulated/
http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wildlifenews.view_article&articles_id=637

Presented by Town Hall Seattle. Beasts of Seattle is part of Town Hall’s Artist-in-Residence program.

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Can there ever be reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in a nation rooted in a legacy of violence and systemic racism? In Town Hall’s 110th Episode of the In the Moment podcast, Steve Scher interviews Margaret D. Jacobs, who explores such questions in her book After One Hundred Winters: In Search of Reconciliation on America’s Stolen Lands.

Jacobs’ book confronts the painful foundation of the United States through stories of the individuals and communities who are trying to work together by healing historical wounds. But healing doesn’t come through denying history; it comes through listening, learning, and putting Indigenous land rights, sovereignty, and values at the forefront of the discussion.

Margaret D. Jacobs is professor of history and director of the Center for Great Plains Studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Her books include White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880–1940.

Buy the Book: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691224336/after-one-hundred-winters

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From Pike Place Market to the Ballard Locks, Salmon are stalwart icons of Seattle. But as they face warming waters and stormwater runoff, their future is threatened and uncertain. As part of the Beasts of Seattle Series, Town Hall’s Podcast Artist-in-Residence Samantha Allen interviews artist and American Indian Studies instructor Joe Seymour, Pike Place Fish Market co-owner Jaison Scott, Chef Shota Nakajima of Taku, and salmon stewards Jeff and Allison Lilly.

Credits:
The music for this podcast was written and performed by John Gould. You can find more of John’s music at johngould.bandcamp.com.
The art for this podcast was made by Sadie Collins.

Sources:
https://www.npr.org/2012/08/28/160129982/parks-vie-for-space-in-miamis-forest-of-condos
https://www.tpl.org/city/seattle-washington
https://www.theolympian.com/entertainment/arts-culture/article249610718.html
https://www.carkeekwatershed.org/annual-salmon-spawning-survey-kicks-off-at-carkeek-park/
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/the-elwha-dams-are-gone-and-chinook-are-surging-back-but-why-are-so-few-reaching-the-upper-river/
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/chum-salmon
https://www.theolympian.com/news/local/article253404075.html
https://www.seattleaquarium.org/blog/seattle-aquarium-salutes-pike-place-fish
https://www.pikeplacefish.com/about
https://seattle.eater.com/2021/7/2/22560835/shota-nakajima-season-finale-of-top-chef-recap
https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-do-salmon-know-where-their-home-when-they-return-ocean-1?qt-news_science_products=0#qt-news_science_products

Presented by Town Hall Seattle. Beasts of Seattle is part of Town Hall’s Artist-in-Residence program.

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In May of 2008, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck Sichuan, China in the middle of the afternoon. Entire towns were destroyed, schools collapsed, and over 80,000 people died — many of them schoolchildren. When grief-stricken families were denied information about exactly who and how many children died, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei initiated a critical and controversial response by compiling their names and expressing a region’s collective grief through art.

Enter Ian Boyden, who first encountered the thousands of names while curating Ai’s 2016 exhibition, Ai Weiwei: Fault Line, at the San Juan Islands Museum of Art. Over the course of a year, Boyden read and translated the poetic essence of the children’s names and composed heartbreaking, elegiac verses in response. The resulting work, A Forest of Names, meditates on humanity, memory, and language. In our 109th episode of In the Moment, Shin Yu Pai and Boyden explore his haunting and healing tribute of the thousands of lives lost.

Ian Boyden is a visual artist, translator, writer, and curator whose work holds a deep awareness of East Asian aesthetics. He studied for several years in China and Japan and holds degrees in Art History from Wesleyan University and Yale University. His art and published work are found in many public collections including Reed College, Stanford University, the Portland Art Museum, and the Victoria & Albert Museum. His work is interdisciplinary, and past collaborations have involved scientists, poets, composers, and visual artists.

Shin Yu Pai is Program Director for Town Hall. She is the author of eleven books of poetry. Her work has appeared in publications throughout the U.S., Japan, China, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Her essays and nonfiction writing have appeared in Tricycle, YES! Magazine, The Rumpus, City Arts, The Stranger, Medium, and others.

Buy the Book: A Forest of Names: 108 Meditations

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The Pacific Northwest is proud of its wildlife. Here in Seattle, certain creatures have become local mascots, like the salmon swimming up Pipers Creek, the ever adorable sea otters at the aquarium, and the endangered Southern Resident Orca struggling to survive in our waters. But what can our shared history with these animals tell us about our regional identity? What do they have to say about our past, our present, and our uncertain future? Beasts of Seattle examines the intertwined human-animal history of our area through the lens of six wondrous, wild things. From the extinct Salish Wool Dog to the Sasquatch who may still be wandering our woods, Beasts of Seattle takes the listener on a journey through time and across species, interviewing artists, ecologists, chefs, historians, and more. If these animals can teach us who Seattleites are, they also hold the keys to who we could become.

Samantha Allen is the author of Patricia Wants to Cuddle and the Lambda Literary Award finalist Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States. A GLAAD Award-winning journalist, Samantha’s writing has been published by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, CNN, and more.

Click here to view the Beasts of Seattle podcast residency page.

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“Gender is queer for everyone,” Kathryn Bond Stockton claims in her newest book with MIT Press, Gender(s). And no matter how “normal” people try to make it, it’s just strange, from the words people use to the clothes they wear. With hefty doses of wit and humor, Stockton takes readers on a fascinating, sometimes absurd journey through topics like transgender soldiers in the military, the complications of language, gender-neutral children’s dolls, and even Lil Nas X. What does “opposite sex” even mean? And how do things like race and money shape gender in huge, often surprising ways? Town Hall’s In the Moment podcast digs into gender, in all its puzzling glory, in our 108th Episode.

Kathryn Bond Stockton is the author of many books including Beautiful Bottom, Beautiful Shame: Where “Black” Meets “Queer,” and The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century, both finalists for the Lambda Literary Award in LGBT Studies, and Making Out, a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Award for memoir. She is also a Distinguished Professor of English and the inaugural Dean of the School for Cultural and Social Transformation at the University of Utah.

Megan Burbank is a writer and features reporter at The Seattle Times. She was previously arts editor & senior editor at the Portland Mercury, where she specialized in politics, culture, and gender. Her writing has also appeared in The Stranger, Teen Vogue, Dance Magazine, and the Billfold, among many others.

Buy the Book: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/genders

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Lately, the words of Greek Philosopher Heraclitus seem to ring truer than ever: Change really is the only constant. As societies grapple with COVID-19, racial justice, environmental crises, and rapidly shifting technology, it’s become clear that the current political-economic framework is fraying. Is it time to make new moral and political choices about our future? How can we revamp current frameworks to fit an ever-changing set of needs?

Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) hosts an entire program dedicated to just that question. The “Creating a New Moral Political Economy” program comprises over 100 academics, journalists, politicians, civil society activists, and technologists concerned with the future of capitalist democracies, all led by political scientist Margaret Levi. Levi’s work with CASBS, along with former director Federica Carugati, led to the publication of their new book, A Moral Political Economy: Present, Past, and Future.

In Town Hall’s107th episode of the In the Moment podcast, Steve Scher talks with Levi about the book and how economies reflect the moral and political choices that are forever made and remade, over and over again.

Margaret Levi is the Sara Miller McCune Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS), Professor of Political Science, and Senior Fellow of the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. She is the recipient of a vast array of honors and achievements, including the 2019 Johan Skytte Prize and the 2014 William H. Ryker Prize for Political Science. She has also been awarded several fellowships from major institutions including the National Academy of Sciences in 2015, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001, the American Academy of Political and Social Science in 2017, and the American Philosophical Society in 2018, among others. She was a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow in 2002.

Levi is the author or coauthor of numerous articles and six books. Her research continues to focus on how to improve the quality of government and how to generate a better political-economic framework. She is also committed to understanding and improving supply chains so that the goods we consume are produced in a manner that sustains both the workers and the environment.

Buy the Book: A Moral Political Economy: Present, Past and Future

Learn more about the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

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Have you ever wished you could know what’s going on inside your body, or at least have a better way to monitor its well-being? What if you knew the precise kind of diet that works best for your unique microbiome? The body can be a mysterious vessel, a strange feeling considering how much time we spend inside of them. But in his new book, The Secret Body, Daniel M. Davis reveals new discoveries that have the potential to uncover the secret universe within each of us.

The Secret Body focuses on six areas of human biology that are usually understood in isolation— fetal development, the immune system, the brain, the microbiome, and the genome— and brings them together to shift the way we think about the body as a functioning unit. In our 106th episode of In The Moment, Dr. Michael McCarthy and Megan Clark talk with Davis about new breakthroughs in technology and how we can better protect our bodies in the future.

Daniel M. Davis is Professor of Immunology at the University of Manchester and author of two previous books: The Beautiful Cure and The Compatibility Gene. His research, which uses super-resolution microscopy to study the immune system, was listed in Discover magazine as one of the top 100 breakthroughs of the year. He is also the author of over 140 academic papers, collectively cited over 13,000 times, including articles in Nature, Science, and Scientific American.

Michael McCarthy, MD, is an editor, medical journalist, and a cofounder of the Northwest Science Media Workshop. His news reporting has appeared in a variety of media outlets, including the British Medical Journal, the Washington Post’s health section, and local public radio affiliates. He was trained in internal medicine and is the former North American Editor of The Lancet. He edits LocalHealthGuide, a health news website serving the Puget Sound region.

Megan Clark is cofounder of the Northwest Science Media Workshop. She has more than 20 years of national field and story producing for ABC and CBS network news shows. Her experience includes producing entertainment, business and political stories, award-winning investigative news segments, and consumer-oriented health and science content featured on WebMD, Everyday Health and Medpage Today.

Buy the Book:

The Secret Body: How the New Science of the Human Body Is Changing the Way We Live by Daniel M. Davis

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For over 30 years, the Pomegranate Center was an organizational force that helped convene communities and build over 60 art-filled gathering spaces across the globe. Beyond helping communities imagine and build physical spaces, the Seattle-area organization developed a tried-and-true process for collaboration: the Pomegranate Method became a teachable, step-by-step structure for any kind of collaborative process. And it was all born from founder Milenko Matanovič’s vision to strengthen human bonds and build trust through positive shared energy.

Milenko says, “Our method was to work with community members throughout the entire journey. In the end, not only did we create a project where many people said ‘I did this,’ but we also changed habits, where community members asked more of one another.” In our 105th episode of In the Moment, Steve Scher talks with Milenko about his experiences working beyond the narrow definition of art, bringing neighbors of all ages and backgrounds together toward a common goal, and empowering communities as a means to improve society.

Milenko Matanovič is an artist and musician with a life-long practice of collaboration. Born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, he is an internationally known convener of public processes, a social innovator, public speaker, and educator who believes that empowering communities is the most efficient, foundational way for us to improve society. He is the author of four books and has received numerous awards and honors for his work.

Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation online click here.

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Pacific Northwesterners love to camp. Chances are, at this very moment, someone you know is packing away an impossibly tiny stove and donning a puffy jacket for a weekend away in the mountains. But why— and how— did camping become a recreational pastime? Kicking off a new season of the In the Moment podcast, Erika Lundahl interviews Camping Grounds author Phoebe S.K. Young to explore how camping reflects core American ideals like nature, the nation, and democracy. Young traces camping from the Civil War to modern times, examining how we relate to nature, the nation, and to each other.

Phoebe S.K. Young is an associate professor of history at the University of Colorado Boulder where she teaches and writes about the cultural and environmental history of the modern United States and the American West. She is the author of California Vieja: Culture and Memory in a Modern American Place.

Erika Lundahl (she/they) is an independent journalist, musician and multimedia creator living on traditional Duwamish Land in Seattle, WA. In her writing and music she explores issues of environmental justice, new economy, and human rights. Her work has been featured in publications such as YES! Magazine, Truth-out, occupy.com, and Humanosphere. She works as a producer of environmental justice impact media campaigns at nonprofit publisher Mountaineers Books and its conservation imprint, Braided River. She also serves on the board of Salish Sea Cooperative Finance, a co-op that refinances student loans. She loves to ride her bicycle. Reach her at www.erikalundahl.com.

Buy the Book: Camping Grounds: Public Nature in American Life from the Civil War to the Occupy Movement by Phoebe S.K. Young

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The 1970s were as turbulent as the 1960s were radical. In David Laskin’s new novel, What Sammy Knew, this is the historical backdrop in which we find 17-year-old Sam Stein, a Long Island native raised in a cushy suburban life of live-in housekeepers and insular wealth. On New Year’s Eve 1969, Sam is forced to come face to face with the uncomfortable truths about his place and privilege in the world.

In conversation with Chief Correspondent Steve Scher, Laskin discusses his debut novel and the connections that can be made to the time we’re living through now.

David Laskin is a freelance writer who has contributed to the New York Times Travel Section, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian Magazine, American Ancestors, the Seattle Times, and Seattle Metropolitan.

Steve Scher is a podcaster, interviewer, and teacher. He worked in Seattle public radio for almost 30 years. He has taught at the University of Washington since 2009. He is Senior Correspondent for Town Hall Seattle’s In The Moment podcast.

Buy the Book or visit DavidLaskin.com

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For some it seems that most of the news about academic social sciences—anthropology, economics, political science, etc—is negative. But in response to the criticism he’s seen, political science professor Matt Grossman argues that, far from crisis, social science is undergoing an unparalleled renaissance of ever-broader understanding and application.

In this week’s episode, Senior Correspondent Steve Scher talks with Grossman about his defense of the current state of social sciences, captured in his book How Social Science Got Better: Overcoming Bias with More Evidence, Diversity, and Self-Reflection. Grossman shares why he believes that social science research today has never been more relevant, rigorous, or self-reflective—he says scholars have a better idea of their blind spots and biases. With insights from the philosophy, history, and sociology of science, he provides new data on research trends and scholarly views, providing a wide-ranging account that asks us to rethink the critiques and acknowledge the path-breaking advances occurring in the social sciences today.

Matt Grossmann is Director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research and Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University. He is also Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center and a Contributor at FiveThirtyEight. He has published analysis in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Politico and hosts the Science of Politics podcast. He is the author or coauthor of many books, including Asymmetric Politics, Red State Blues, The Not-So-Special Interests, Artists of the Possible, and Campaigns & Elections, as well as dozens of journal articles.

Buy the Book: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/how-social-science-got-better-9780197518977?cc=us⟨=en&

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Join us for a spotlight on one of our partner bookstores, Estelita’s Library, a “justice-focused community library and bookstore” originally located in the Beacon Hill neighborhood. Local Journalist Mike Davis chats with Estelita’s co-founder Edwin Lindo about the history and founding of the bookstore and considers the impact the Library has on the Seattle community as they prepare to open a second location in the International District.

Edwin Lindo, JD, is a critical race theory scholar and educator who is faculty within the Department of Family medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine; and Associate Director for Equity and Critical Teaching in the Center for Leadership and Innovation in Medical Education. Edwin teaches, presents, and writes on issues of race and racism within Medicine and society. He is also the creator of The Praxis Podcast. You can reach Edwin via Twitter @edwinlindo.

Mike Davis is a local journalist covering arts, culture, and politics for the South Seattle Emerald. Davis is also co-host of “Clap Back Culture” on Converge Media.

Estelita's Library: http://estelitaslibrary.com/

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Since our 2017 season, hosts Jini Palmer, Steve Scher, and local correspondents have interviewed hundreds of luminaries, local officials, and national and international thought leaders as part of our In The Moment podcast. This month, we celebrate the series’ 100th edition with a special introspective episode that reflects on how Town Hall faced the challenges (and celebrated the successes) of the past year. Hear from Town Hall staff and insiders about work-from-home life, learning how to produce virtual events on the fly, and the challenge of staying healthy and connected during a year of physical isolation.

Town Hall staff

Amanda Winterhalter—Institutional Giving Manager

Anthony Canape—Membership Manager

Bruno L'Ecuyer—Technical Lead

Candace Wilkinson-Davis—Event Manager & Volunteer Coordinator

Laurel Taylor—Senior Database Administrator

Megan Castillo—Program Manager

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In what ways can words reach across time and distance, to speak with the dead, the unborn, past selves, and future possibilities? How do poets engage in conversations that can animate and embody what is not yet or no longer here? In this episode, correspondent and Lyric World host Shin Yu Pai talks to poet Meredith Clark about her lyric book-length exploration of miscarriage, memory, and continuity.

Meredith Clark is a poet and writer whose work has received Black Warrior Review’s nonfiction prize and the Sonora Review nonfiction prize. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Phoebe, Gigantic Sequins, Denver Quarterly, Berkeley Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a B.A. in creative writing from Oberlin College, and is the recipient of grants and residencies from Artist Trust, Art Farm Nebraska, Jack Straw, and the Vermont Studio Center. Her book, Lyrebird, is out now with Platypus Press.

Shin Yu Pai is the author of ten books of poetry. Her work has appeared in publications throughout the U.S., Japan, China, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Her essays and nonfiction writing have appeared in Tricycle, YES! Magazine, The Rumpus, City Arts, The Stranger, Medium, and others.

Lyric World: Conversations with Contemporary Poets is fiscally sponsored by Shunpike. The series is supported by a grant from the Windrose Fund.

Music was created by David Ian Bickley in collaboration with musician Enrico Cogniglio.

Buy the Book: https://platypuspress.co.uk/lyrebird

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Sandy Hook Elementary. Las Vegas. Pulse nightclub. Virginia Tech. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Sometimes it seems as though time is measured by the distance between mass shootings. But how did we get here?

In this week’s episode, correspondent Agueda Pacheco Flores talks with journalist Seamus McGraw about his book From a Taller Tower: The Rise of the American Mass Shooter, which chronicles the answer to that question. He shares how the first mass shooting took place from atop the University of Texas tower in 1966, unleashing a new reality: the fear that any of us may be targeted by a killer. Addressing individual cases, he explores how we as a nation have become desensitized to the shock and pain, allowing political statements guaranteeing inaction to go unchecked. McGraw asks us to confront our obsession with the shooters—and explores the isolation, narcissism, and sense of victimhood that fan their obsessions. Drawing on the experiences of survivors and first responders, as well as the knowledge of mental health experts, he challenges our notion of the “good guy with a gun,” the idolization of guns (including his own), and the reliability of traumatized memory. Ultimately, McGraw invites us to remember that we can make a change. Don’t miss this urgent and timely conversation—and stay in the know about what’s happening in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Seamus McGraw is a journalist and frequent contributor to the New York Times op-ed page, as well as to the Huffington Post, Playboy, Popular Mechanics, and Fox Latino. He is the author of Country: Dispatches from the Frack Zone, Betting the Farm on a Drought: Stories from the Front Lines of Climate Change, and A Thirsty Land: The Fight for Water in Texas.

Buy the Book: https://bookshop.org/books/from-a-taller-tower-the-rise-of-the-american-mass-shooter/9781477317181

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For hundreds of years, trees have lived side by side, evolving, perceiving one another, learning and adapting their behaviors, recognizing neighbors, and remembering the past. They compete and cooperate with one another with sophistication, eliciting warnings and mounting defenses. And at the center of it all are the Mother Trees, mysterious, powerful forces that connect and sustain the others that surround them. So Suzanne Simard, plant communication expert, contends, and she joins us for this episode to talk with Senior Correspondent Steve Scher about discovering this tree communication and its intersection with her own story of family and grief. In a personal and revealing conversation, Simard shares tales of her early days as a child cataloging the trees in the rain forests of British Columbia, chronicling her story of love and loss, observation and change, risk and reward. Through Simard’s personal experiences and connectedness to the Mother Tree, they invite us to explore our understanding of who we are and our place in the world.

Dr. Suzanne Simard is a Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia, where she currently leads The Mother Tree Project and co-directs the Belowground Ecosystem Group. Dr. Simard has earned a global reputation for pioneering research on tree connectivity and community, and studying the impact on the productivity, health, and biodiversity of forests. Her work has been published widely, with over 170 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Nature, Ecology, and Global Biology, and she has co-authored the book Climate Change and Variability.Her research has been communicated broadly through three TED Talks, as well as articles and interviews in The New Yorker, National Geographic, and more.

Buy the Book: https://www.thirdplacebooks.com/book/9780525656098

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On January 1, 2014, Rwanda’s former head of external intelligence Patrick Karegeya was found murdered in the bed of his upscale Johannesburg, South Africa hotel room. His nephew David Batenga became concerned after it had been several days since anyone had heard from him, and demanded the hotel open the door, despite the “do not disturb” sign on the handle.

This murder is the entry point for a startling and powerful investigation from veteran journalist Michela Wrong, captured in her book Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and An African Regime Gone Bad. In this week’s episode, Wrong joins us in conversation with In The Moment correspondent Chamidae Ford and explores how the murder was actually part of a grisly political plot. Following the Rwandan genocide, Wrong says, an idealistic group of young rebels overthrew the brutal regime, allegedly ushering in an era of peace and stability that garnered extremely positive attention from Western countries. But the truth is considerably more sinister, she argues. With direct testimony from key participants, she uses the story of Karegeya’s murder to paint the portrait of a modern African dictatorship created in the chilling likeness of Paul Kagame, the president who sanctioned the assassination of his former friend. This disquieting tale will have you on the edge of your seat, so listen in with Wrong and Ford—and stay in the know about what’s happening in this moment at Town Hall.

Michela Wrong is a writer and journalist with more than 20 years’ experience of covering Africa. She joined Reuters news agency in the early 1980s and was posted as a foreign correspondent to Italy, France, and Ivory Coast. In 1994, she became a freelance journalist, covering the genocide in Rwanda and the final days of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko for the BBC and REuters. She is the author of three books of non-fiction and a novel, and her opinion pieces and book reviews have been featured in the Observer, Guardian, Financial Times, New York Times, and more.

Chamidae Ford is currently a senior journalism major at the University of Washington. Born and raised in Western Washington, she has a passion for providing a voice to the communities around her. She is a contributing writer at the South Seattle Emerald and is an editor at The Daily.

Buy the Book: https://www.thirdplacebooks.com/book/9781610398428

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What would it look like if we vowed to protect 50 percent of the earth’s land by 2050? Award-winning author and veteran New Yorker staff writer Tony Hiss believes it could be the key to saving millions of species and conserving the planet. Hiss talks with Senior Correspondent Steve Scher in this week’s episode to discuss Rescuing the Planet: Protecting Half the Land to Heal the Earth, where he presents an urgent, resounding call and makes the case for why protecting half the land is the way to fix the threats we’re currently facing. Hiss highlights the important work of the many groups already involved in this fight, such as the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, and the global animal tracking project ICARUS. With Scher, he explores the conversations he had with engineers, geologists, biologists, botanists, oceanographers, ecologists, and other “Half Earthers” about their unifying mission. Tune in for this impassioned, curious, and inspiring talk about being better citizens of the earth —and stay in the know about what’s happening in the moment at Town Hall.

Tony Hiss is the author of fifteen books, including the award-winning The Experience of Place. He was a staff writer at The New Yorker for more than 30 years, was a visiting scholar at New York University for 25 years, and has lectured around the world.

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Will pandemic, protest, economic instability, and social distance lead to deeper inequalities, more nationalism, and further erosion of democracies around the world? Or are we moving toward a global re-awakening to the importance of community, mutual support, and the natural world? The New Possible: Visions of Our World Beyond Crisis argues that the future has never been so up for grabs in our lifetime, with unique visions from 28 global leaders. In this week’s episode, contributor Riane Eisler joins us to share her own vision of what can be in conversation with C.E. Bick, presenting not just an inspiration for the future but a potential roadmap for action.

Dr. Riane Eisler is a social systems scientist, cultural historian, and attorney. Dr. Eisler is president of the Center for Partnership Studies dedicated to research and education, and Editor-in-Chief of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies. Her books include The Chalice and the Blade, The Real Wealth of Nations, and most recently Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future.

C.E. Bick is a reporter and visual journalist for the South Seattle Emerald, covering police accountability and COVID-19.

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Not far from Seattle skyscrapers live 150-year-old clams, more than 250 species of fish, and underwater kelp forests as complex as any terrestrial ecosystem. For millennia, vibrant Coast Salish communities have lived beside these waters dense with nutrient-rich foods, with cultures intertwined through exchanges across the waterways. Transformed by settlement and resource extraction, Puget Sound and its future health now depend on a better understanding of the region’s ecological complexities.

In this week’s episode, Senior Correspondent Steve Scher talks with naturalist and educator David B. Williams about his book Homewaters: A Human and Natural History of Puget Sound. Williams uncovers human and natural histories in, on, and around the Sound, sharing from conversations he conducted with archeologists, biologists, and tribal authorities. He traces how generations of humans have interacted with species like geoducks, salmon, orcas, rockfish, and herring. He also presents an unflinching look at how the Sound’s ecosystems have suffered from human behavior, including pollution, habitat destruction, and the effects of climate change. With wit, grace, and a depth of information, Williams introduces newcomers to the astonishing life that inhabits the Sound and offers lifetime residents new insight into and appreciation of the waters they call home. With the 51st annual Earth Day in sight, join Williams and Scher as they offer a poignant reminder that, as life returns to “normal,” business cannot go back to normal when it comes to restoring our planet.

David B. Williams is a naturalist, author, and educator. His many books include the award-winning Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle’s Topography and Seattle Walks: Discovering History and Nature in the City.

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How does being othered in America impact our awareness of difference, and how does that lens affect our lived experience? In this episode of Lyric World, host Shin Yu Pai talks with poet Brian Komei Dempster, whose work explores this othered space both through a national and personal history of anti-Asian bigotry, and his own experiences as a parent of a disabled child. They reflect on Dempster’s work exploring histories of Japanese internment and the lasting legacy on subsequent generations, a topic that is close to him as his maternal grandfather, a Buddhist priest, was held in various internment camps while the rest of the family was imprisoned in the concentration camp Topaz. While also considering his parenting experiences, they discuss what it means to engage with the trauma of public history, and to turn towards that grief and suffering as a commitment to reality, and the times within which we live. Tune in for this vital and deeply personal conversation.

Brian Komei Dempster’s debut book of poems, Topaz, received the 15 Bytes 2014 Book Award in Poetry. His second poetry collection, Seize was published in 2020. Dempster is editor of From Our Side of the Fence: Growing Up in America’s Concentration Camps and Making Home from War: Stories of Japanese American Exile and Resettlement. He is a professor of rhetoric and language at the University of San Francisco, where he serves as Director of Administration for the Master of Arts in Asia Pacific Studies program.

Lyric World: Conversations with Contemporary Poets is fiscally sponsored by Shunpike. The series is supported by grants from the City of Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture, Windrose Fund, and The Satterberg Foundation.

Music for this episode is provided by Loren Kiyoshi Dempster.

Brian Komei Dempster's poetry collections: https://briankomeidempster.com/

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In cities large and small across America, universities have become the dominant companies—and our cities their company towns. But Davarian L. Baldwin argues there is a cost to those who live in their shadow. In this week’s episode, Baldwin talks with Senior Correspondent Steve Scher about the ever-expanding campuses in America. Drawing upon his book In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities, Baldwin explores his journey of conversations with city leaders, low-wage workers tending to students’ needs, and local activists about seemingly unchecked power. They discuss Baldwin’s investigation of how urban universities play an outsized role in American cities: gentrifying neighborhoods and exacerbating housing inequality, maintaining large private police forces that target predominantly Black and Latinx neighborhoods nearby, and becoming primary employers, dictating labor practices and suppressing wages. Don’t miss this wake-up call to the reality that higher education is no longer the ubiquitous public good, and an invitation to an alternative vision for campus and urban life–and stay in the know about what’s happening in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Davarian L. Baldwin is a leading urbanist, historian, and cultural critic. The Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies and founding director of the Smart Cities Lab at Trinity College, Baldwin is the author of Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life and co-editor with Minkah Makalani of the essay collection Escape from New York! The New Negro Renaissance Beyond Harlem.

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In this week’s episode, writer Maria Reva joins Senior Correspondent Steve Scher to discuss her bitingly funny, satirical collection of stories, Good Citizens Need Not Fear, which unites around a single crumbling apartment building in Ukraine where a bureaucratic glitch omits the entire building and its residents from municipal records. Together, they investigate how the stories, which span the chaotic years leading up to and immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union, explore what it is to be an individual amid the roiling forces of history. Mark your calendars for this one—and stay in the know about what’s happening in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Maria Reva was born in Ukraine and grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her work has appeared in Best American Short Stories, McSweeney’s, and Granta. She currently lives in Vancouver and also works as an opera librettist.

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In 1965, a new act transformed the American immigration system by abolishing national quotas in favor of a seemingly egalitarian approach. But the intended effect and the actual result were worlds apart. In this week’s episode, historian Sarah R. Coleman talks with local journalist and correspondent Lilly Fowler about her book The Walls Within: The Politics of Immigration in Modern America, her exploration of immigration policy since that 1965 act. Coleman examines the shift in focus, away from attempts to stop immigration at the border towards efforts to limit immigrants’ rights within the United States through domestic policy. With material from the Carter, Reagan, and Clinton administrations, she shares with Fowler how anti-immigrant groups achieved strength at the local level—and reveals the roots behind much of today’s nativist sentiment. Don’t miss this vital conversation that considers debates about who is entitled to the American dream, and how such dreams can be subverted for those already calling the country home—and stay in the know about what’s happening in the moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Sarah R. Coleman is assistant professor of history at Texas State University.

Lilly Fowler is currently a staff writer in Seattle for the online news organization Crosscut — a partner of local PBS station KCTS9. She was previously a producer with the national PBS show Religion & Ethics Newsweekly and a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Mother Jones, The Washington Post,and the Los Angeles Times. She was born in Mexico and grew up in a border town.

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In 2016, Treaty tribes from across the Puget Sound region came together on March 9 to celebrate the first Billy Frank Jr. Day. The annual environmental day honors the work of Nisqually tribal member Billy Frank Jr., who was a lifelong environmental leader and treaty rights activist, especially tribal fishing rights. Now, JJ, Lailani, and Kayla—members of the Urban Native Education Alliance’s Clear Sky Youth Leadership Council—talk with Town Hall Program Manager Megan Castillo about their efforts to have the day officially recognized by Seattle Public Schools as Billy Frank Jr. Day. Their proposal asks SPS to formally set aside the day for all SPS students and staff to learn, celebrate, and engage in civic service to commemorate the life, legacy, and enduring spirit of the inspirational Billy Frank Jr. Join us for this important episode—and stay in the know about what’s happening in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Jazell Jenkins (JJ) is a descendant from the Unangax̂ tribe and uses she/her pronouns. Jenkins is a sophomore and honors student at Ingraham High School. She strives to become a stronger advocate and activist for victims of sexual harassment and assault. Some of her hobbies include meditation, reading, crystals, spiritual practices, and outdoor activities. She has been an intern with UNEA since October 2020.

Kayla Harstad is Turtle Mountain Chippewa and Assiniboine Sioux. Harstad is a junior at Ingraham High School and a Running Start student at North Seattle College. She plans to attend college in California to become either a life coach or a body positivity activist. Some of Harstad’s hobbies include playing basketball, painting, and baking. She has been an intern with UNEA since August 2020.

Lailani Norman is Blackfeet, Chippewa, Iroquois, Matis, and Cree. Norman is passionate about participating in traditional and cultural events and learning traditional teachings. She feels it is critical for Indigenous youth, especially those living in an urban setting, to learn their cultural traditions so that they are able to carry on these teachings to the generations to come. Some of Norman’s hobbies include playing volleyball and making art. She has been an intern with UNEA since September 2020.

Clear Sky is a Native youth-centered and directed program designed to empower students through education, culture, and tradition. Clear Sky student intern leaders serve as a strong voice advocating for social justice and equity in education. Clear Sky’s efforts to amplify Native youth visibility, voice, and vision is a powerful example of success when Indigenous students lead the way.

Sarah Sense-Wilson (Oglala) serves as the elected Chair for the Urban Native Education Alliance (UNEA). Sense-Wilson is committed to strengthening the urban Native community through tireless advocacy, organizing, and networking both within the Native community and greater King County area. She is a Washington State licensed Mental Health Counselor, and has worked in the chemical dependency field for over 17 years.

Megan Castillo (Tlingit) joined the Town Hall team in 2017 as Social Media Coordinator, later becoming Community Engagement Manager and in 2020 took on the role of Program Manager. From 2017 -2019, Castillo co-produced, with partner April Jingco, two seasons of the Growing Girls podcast—a chat show covering a wide range of topics from house plants to holistic care. Originally from Lihue, Hawaii, Castillo graduated from Seattle University with a degree in Digital Design and Art History. In addition to working for Town Hall, Castillo is a miniature artist and dollhouse historian.

Urban Native Education Alliance (UNEA) website: https://urbannativeeducation.org/

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What strategies have worked to build lasting peace in conflict zones, particularly for ordinary citizens on the ground? Researcher and peacebuilder Séverine Autesserre joins Senior Correspondent Steve Scher to share stories of ordinary yet extraordinary individuals and organizations who are confronting violence in their communities effectively. She examines the well-intentioned but inherently flawed peace industry, and argues against the commonly held belief that building peace requires billions in aid or massive international interventions. Real, lasting peace, she explains, requires giving power to local citizens. With success stories from her book The Frontlines of Peace: An Insider’s Guide to Changing the World, you won’t want to miss this riveting conversation. Catch this enlightening episode—and stay in the know about what’s happening in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Séverine Autesserre is an award-winning author, peacebuilder, and researcher, as well as a Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of The Trouble with the Congo and Peaceland, in addition to articles for publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy. Twitter @SeverineAR

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In the mid 2010s, the Ebola outbreak devastated West Africa, sending a message that diseases recognize no borders, political parties, or faiths. In this week’s episode, correspondent Kevin Kibet sits in conversation with poet and novelist Veronique Tadjo about her novel In the Company of Men, which presents a timely fable that illustrates the terrible extent of the Ebola epidemic, through the eyes of those affected in myriad ways. Beginning with two boys who venture from their village to hunt in a nearby forest and unwittingly return with the insidious disease, she explores the experiences of the doctor, the student who works as a volunteer gravedigger, the grandmother, and more in a series of moving snapshots. Tune in for this conversation, acutely relevant to our times in light of the coronavirus pandemic, that explores critical questions about how we cope with a global crisis and how we can combat fear and prejudice.

Véronique Tadjo is a poet, novelist, academic, and artist from Côte d’Ivoire. She earned a doctorate in Black American Literature and Civilization from the Sorbonne, Paris IV, and went to the United States as a Fulbright scholar at Howard University in Washington, DC. She headed the French Department of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg until 2015. Her books have been translated into several languages, from The Blind Kingdom (1991) to The Shadow of Imana: Travels in the Heart of Rwanda (2001) and Queen Pokou: Concerto for a Sacrifice (2005), which was awarded the Grand Prix de Littérature d’Afrique Noire in 2005.

Kevin Kibet is a global villager, with Nandi, Kenyan, PanAfrican, and American influence. A curious soul, forever endeared by and applying self to justice.

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In this week’s episode, correspondent and poet Shin Yu Pai shares another installment of Lyric World, now in its second year of programming. Lyric World engages poets in conversations about the concerns and themes that preoccupy their work. As part of Black History Month, Pai hosts poet and musician Gary Copeland Lilley in a dialogue about the creative and intellectual influences that have shaped his work.

Gary Copeland Lilley is the author of eight books of poetry, the most recent being The Bushman’s Medicine Show, from Lost Horse Press (2017), and a chapbook, The Hog Killing, from Blue Horse Press (2018). He is originally from North Carolina and now lives in the Pacific Northwest. He has received the Washington DC Commission on the Arts Fellowship for Poetry. He is published in numerous anthologies and journals. Lilley is a Cave Canem Fellow.

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The civil rights movement was among the most important historical developments of the twentieth century and one of the most remarkable mass movements in American history. Yet, despite a vague, sometimes begrudging recognition of its immense import, historian Thomas C. Holt contends, more often than not the movement has been misrepresented and misunderstood. In this week’s episode, Holt talks about his book The Movement: The African American Struggle for Civil Rights with correspondent Mike Davis. Holt presents a primer that provides an informed and nuanced understanding of the origins, character, and objectives of the freedom struggle, with an especial focus on the ordinary, grassroots people who made it. Don’t miss this crucial conversation that reinserts the critical concept of “movement” back into the civil rights fight—and stay in the know about what’s happening in this moment at Town Hall.

Thomas C. Holt is James Westfall Thompson Professor Emeritus of American and African American History at the University of Chicago and the author of Children of Fire: A History of African Americans and The Problem of Race in the Twenty-First Century.

Mike Davis is a local journalist covering arts, culture, and politics for the South Seattle Emerald. Davis is also co-host of “Clap Back Culture” on Converge Media.

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Four decades ago, the areas around Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks sheltered the last few hundred surviving grizzlies in the Lower 48 states. Their population has surged to more than 1,500 under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, and this burgeoning number of grizzlies now collides with the increasingly populated landscape. In this week’s episode, Senior Correspondent Steve Scher is joined by Montana journalist Rob Chaney as he chronicles the resurgence of this charismatic species against the backdrop of America’s long history with the grizzly. Chaney explores how humans and bears have long shared space, but how that relationship has changed in light of cars whizzing through bear habitats, tourists checking Facebook for photo ops, and hunters seeking trophy prey. Join them for this conversation that captures the clash between groups with radically different visions—and stay in the know about what’s happening in this moment at Town Hall.

Rob Chaney is a report for the Missoulian. A lifelong Montanan, he covers science and the environment.

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For decades, the conflict between Israel and Palestine has been one that has crossed borders and become of international interest. In this week’s episode, professors Jeremy Pressman and Mira Sucharov share, with singular knowledge, their point of view on the conflict—and the way forward. In conversation with Daniel C. Kurtzer, they examine the default use of military force on both sides. Pressman contends that this force has prevented peaceful resolutions in the past, and asserts that diplomacy is the only way forward, as he argues in his book The Sword Is Not Enough: Arabs, Israelis, and the Limits of Military Force. Sucharov brings personal experience from her book Borders and Belonging: A Memoir, vulnerably relating her search for a political and emotional home, one that led her to live in Israel for three years in her twenties. Join them for a raw and poignant conversation about conflict, diplomacy, and resolution—and stay in the know about what’s happening in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Jeremy Pressman is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of Middle East Studies at the University of Connecticut. He is author of Warring Friends: Alliance Restraint in International Politics and co-author of Point of No Return: The Deadly Struggle for Middle East Peace.

Mira Sucharov is Professor of Political Science and University Chair of Teaching Innovation at Carleton University, Canada. She is author of Public Influence: A Guide to Op-Ed Writing and Social Media Engagement and The International Self: Psychoanalysis and the Search for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, and co-editor of Social Justice and Israel/Palestine: Foundational and Contemporary Debates and Methodology and Emotion in International Relations: Parsing the Passions.

Daniel C. Kurtzer is Lecturer and the S. Daniel Abraham Professor of Middle East Policy Studies at Princeton University, and former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt. He is co-author of Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East and The Peace Puzzle: America’s quest for Arab Israeli Peace, 1989–2011, and editor of Pathways To Peace: America and The Arab Israeli Conflict.

Buy the Books: Borders and Belonging: A Memoir by Mira Sucharov and The Sword Is Not Enough: Arabs, Israelis and the Limits of Military Force by Jeremy Pressman

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The rules of business are changing dramatically, says the Aspen Institute’s Judy Samuelson, and that means profound shifts in attitudes and mindsets that are redefining our notions of what constitutes business success. In this week’s episode with Senior Correspondent Steve Scher, she shares takeaways contained in her book The Six New Rules of Business: Creating Real Value in a Changing World.

Based on her unique knowledge and insight, Samuelson lays out how hard-to-measure intangibles like reputation, trust, and loyalty are imposing new ways to assess risk and opportunity in investment and asset management. In our globalized era, she demonstrates how expectations of corporations are set far beyond the company gates–and why employees are both the best allies of the business and the new accountability mechanism, more so than consumers or investors. Don’t miss this powerful guide on how businesses are changing and what is needed to succeed in tomorrow’s economy—and stay in the know about what’s happening in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Judy Samuelson is founder and executive director of the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program and a vice president at the Aspen Institute. She previously worked in legislative affairs in California and banking in New York’s garment center and ran the Ford Foundation’s office of Program-Related Investments. Samuelson writes regularly for Quartz@Work, is a Bellagio Fellow, and a director of Financial Health Network.

Steve Scher is a podcaster, interviewer, and teacher. He worked in Seattle public radio fro almost 30 years. He has taught at the University of Washington since 2009. He is Senior Correspondent for Town Hall Seattle’s In The Moment podcast.

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The number of Americans arrested, brought to court, and incarcerated has skyrocketed in recent decades. Criminal defendants come from all races and economic walks of life, but they experience punishment in vastly different ways.

In this week’s episode, correspondent Marcus Harrison Green talks with sociologist Matthew Clair about his fieldwork in the Boston court system, uncovering how privilege and inequality play out in criminal court interactions. Clair’s book Privilege and Punishment: How Race and Class Matter in Criminal Court gathers his findings and conclusions, and shows how attempts to exercise legal rights often backfire on the poor and on working-class people of color. Stay in the know about what’s going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle with this urgent conversation about the injustices perpetuated by the attorney-client relationship, and the reforms that are needed to correct them.

Matthew Clair is assistant professor of sociology at Stanford University, where he holds a courtesy appointment at Stanford Law School. His research has been published in Criminology, Law & Social Inquiry, Social Science & Medicine, and Social Forces.

Marcus Harrison Green is the publisher of the South Seattle Emerald, and a columnist with Crosscut. After an unfulfilling stint working for a Los Angeles based hedge-fund in his twenties, Green returned to his community determined to tell its true story, which led him to found the South Seattle Emerald. He was named one of Seattle’s most influential people by Seattle Magazine in 2016.

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In this week’s episode, correspondent and poet Shin Yu Pai shares the fifth installment of Lyric World, featuring poet Arthur Sze in a conversation about Sze’s forthcoming new and collected poems volume, The Glass Constellation. Fusing elements of Chinese, Japanese, Native American, and various Western experimental traditions, Sze explores experience in all its multiplicities. The Glass Constellation is an invitation to immerse in a visionary body of work, mapping the evolution of one of our finest American poets.

Arthur Sze has published ten books of poetry, including Sight Lines, which won the National Book Award. His new and collected poems, The Glass Constellation, will be published by Copper Canyon Press in April 2021. He has also published one book of Chinese poetry translations, The Silk Dragon. He is the recipient of many honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and was the first poet laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico

Shin Yu Pai is the author of ten books of poetry. Her work has appeared in publications throughout the U.S., Japan, China, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Her essays and nonfiction writing have appeared in Tricycle, YES! Magazine, The Rumpus, City Arts, The Stranger, Medium, and others.

Music for today’s program was provided by Gao Ping. As a leading member of the “sixth generation” of Chinese composers, Gao Ping’s compositions, which fuse Western and Eastern idioms, have won wide acclaim throughout the world. His albums are available through the Naxos label.

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Medina Tenour Whiteman stands at the margins of whiteness and Islam. An Anglo-American born to Sufi converts, she feels perennially out of place—not fully at home in Western or Muslim cultures. In this week’s episode, Rabbi Elana Zaiman talks with writer and poet Medina Tenour Whiteman about her searingly honest memoir, The Invisible Muslim: Journeys Through Whiteness and Islam. They discuss being religious women, and Whiteman contemplates what it means to be an invisible Muslim, examining the pernicious effects of white Muslim privilege. They explore what Muslim identity can mean the world over. They invite us to a conversation about a life-long search for belonging, and the joys and crises of inhabiting more than one identity. Catch this nuanced episode—and stay in the know about what’s going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Medina Tenour Whiteman is a writer, poet, translator, and musician. She is the author of a collection of poetry, Love is a Traveller and We Are It’s Path, and Huma’s Travel Guide to Islamic Spain. She lives near Granada, Spain with her husband and three children.

Elana Zaiman is a rabbi, chaplain, and author, the first woman rabbi from a family spanning six generations of rabbis. Her book, The Forever Letter: Writing What We Believe for Those We Love, was published in 2017. Her essays, nonfictions, and fictions have been published in numerous publications, and served for nine years as the Ethics and Spirituality columnist for Liv Fun magazine.

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In this week’s episode, Senior Correspondent Steve Scher talks with historian Ruth Goodman, who joins us with a fascinating micro-history of how English women sparked a worldwide revolution from their kitchens. With support from her book The Domestic Revolution: How the Introduction of Coal Into Victorian Homes Changed Everything, Goodman argues that the transition to coal might have kick-started the Industrial Revolution. She traces the move from wood to coal in the mid-sixteenth century—from sooty trials and errors during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I to the totally smog-clouded reign of Queen Victoria—and presents a pattern of innovation that emerged as women stoking the fires also stoked new global industries. With anecdotes from her own experiences managing a coal-fired household, Goodman shines a light on the power of domestic necessity. Don’t miss this engrossing conversation—and stay in the know about what’s going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Ruth Goodman is the author of multiple books on English domestic history, among them How to Be a Victorian. An historian of British life, she has presented a number of BBC television series, including Tudor Monastery Farm. She lives in the United Kingdom.

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In this week’s episode, Correspondent Sally James talks with Behavioral Insights Team members Michael Hallsworth and Elspeth Kirkman, who present a definitive introduction to the behavioral insights approach, which applies evidence about human behavior to practical problems.

With support from their book, Behavioral Insights, Hallsworth and Kirkman describe core features, origins, and practical examples of this particular approach to problem solving. They examine how the approach is grounded in the use of evidence about human behavior to address problems, and experimentation to evaluate the impact of the solutions. They also take a look at the limitations and ethical implications of the approach, and consider what the future holds for this fast-moving area. Don’t miss this fascinating conversation—and stay in the know about what’s going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Michael Hallsworth is Managing Director, North America at the Behavioral Insights Team (BIT) and an Assistant Professor (Adjunct) at Columbia University. He has been a leading figure in developing the field of applying behavioral science to government, having authored several influential frameworks such as the MINDSPACE report. His work has been published in the Journal of Public Economics, The Lancet, The Oxford Review of Economic Policy, and others.

Elspeth Kirkman is a long-standing member of the Behavioral Insights Team (BIT). In her most recent role, Elspeth led BIT’s work on health, education, and local government. Before that she led the North American office between 2015 and 2018. She is currently on a secondment to the innovation charity, Nesta. She has published in academic journals and taught at a variety of institutions, most notably Harvard University and the University of Warwick. She is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at King’s College London.

Sally James is a science writer in Seattle. She has talked her way into autopsies, murder scenes, surgeries and medical research labs. She’s been writing for the South Seattle Emerald about the intersection of the pandemic and racism. She is past president of the nonprofit Northwest Science Writers Association, and volunteer in health literacy. Find her at www.seattlesciencewriter.com.

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In this week’s episode, Senior Correspondent Steve Scher talks with journalist Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, who joins us with a sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying tale of the Free Town Project, a town in New Hampshire, and bears. In A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears), Hongoltz-Hetling weaves a tale of the small town of Grafton, New Hampshire, and a group of libertarians’ plan to take Grafton over and completely eliminate its government. Unfortunately, the anything-goes atmosphere soon caught the attention of Grafton’s neighbors: the bears. Complete with gunplay, adventure, and backstabbing politicians, don’t miss this riveting conversation about what happens when a government disappears into the woods—and stay in the know about what’s going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling is a freelance journalist specializing in narrative features and investigative reporting. He was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, won a George Polk Award, and has been voted Journalist of the Year by the Maine Press Association, among numerous other honors. His work has appeared in Foreign Policy, USA Today, Popular Science, Atavist Magazine, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Associated Press, and elsewhere.

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In this week’s episode, Correspondent and Town Hall Digital Media Manager Jini Palmer talks with Puget Sound Energy’s Tyler O’Farrell about renewable energy. Town Hall is a PSE Powerful Partner, so for Energy Awareness Month in October, O’Farrell discusses the renewable energy programs at PSE that are designed to keep sustainability within reach. For those with electric power, he explores the solar choice, green power, and customer connected solar options; and for those with gas, he shares about the carbon balance option. Learn more about PSE and energy awareness—and stay in the know about what’s going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Tyler O’Farrell has been with Puget Sound Energy for more than 15 years with experience in Renewable Energy, Energy Efficiency, Performance Management, and Regulatory Affairs. Currently, as Product Manager for Voluntary Renewables, he oversees PSE’s Green Power, Solar Choice, and Carbon Balance programs with over 80,000 total customers participating and consistently ranks in the NREL’s top ten renewable energy programs in the country. O’Farrell is a graduate of Washington State University with a BA in Communications.

Preserving the beautiful natural spaces and vibrant communities in our area are top priorities for Puget Sound Energy, which is why they created their PSE Powerful Partnerships. PSE realized that there are local nonprofits—like Town Hall—working towards similar goals, and they wanted to help with those efforts. Click here to find out more about PSE Powerful Partnerships.

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In this week’s episode, Senior Correspondent Steve Scher talks with journalist and scholar Kevin C. O’Leary, who argues that the contemporary Republican Party is waging a counterrevolution against the core beliefs of the nation. With insights from his book Madison’s Sorrows: Today’s War on the Founders and America’s Liberal Ideal, he presents an extensive cultural history of the political revolution that he believes has surfaced alarming impulses to embrace exclusion and inequality. He harkens to the essence of America’s liberal heritage, which he submits has been destroyed by the Republican Party and unleashed an illiberal crusade against the ideals of the Founding Fathers. Don’t miss this lively conversation—and stay in the know about what’s going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Kevin C. O’Leary is a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of California, Irvine and teaches in the political science department at Chapman University. A contributor to The American Prospect, he was the lead West Coast reporter for TIME, as well as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. His previous book, Saving Democracy: A Plan for Real Representation in America, was a finalist for the American Political Science Association’s Michael Harrington Award.

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In this week’s episode, correspondent and poet Shin Yu Pai shares the fourth installment of Lyric World, featuring poet Yona Harvey in a conversation about Harvey’s newest book, You Don’t Have to Go to Mars for Love. Grounded deeply in the resistance of Black women, Harvey writes of ancestry, inheritance, and loss. Of Yona’s work, poet Afaa M. Weaver says, “Her voice is essential to making a cultural wholeness that would otherwise be impossible. This lyric, this unique, multimedia gift is evidence of an awakening only a few poets ever approach.”

Yona Harvey is an American poet, professor, and Marvel Comics writer. Her first poetry collection, Hemming the Water, garnered Harvey the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Her work has been published and anthologized in numerous places, including Letters to the Future: Black WOMEN / Radical WRITING. She contributed to Marvel’s World of Wakanda with Ta-Nehisi Coates and Roxane Gay.

Shin Yu Pai is the author of ten books of poetry. Her work has appeared in publications throughout the U.S., Japan, China, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Her essays and nonfiction writing have appeared in Tricycle, YES! Magazine, The Rumpus, City Arts, The Stranger, Medium, and others.

Lyric World: Conversations with Contemporary Poets is fiscally sponsored by Shunpike. The series is supported by grants from the City of Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture, Windrose Fund, Poets & Writers, and The Satterberg Foundation.

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In this week’s episode, Correspondent Venice Buhain talks with Ambassador Wendy R. Sherman about her book Not for the Faint of Heart: Lessons in Courage, Power, and Persistence. Sherman brings listeners inside the negotiating room to show how to put diplomatic values to work in their own lives. With personal experiences, from her own life—from growing up in civil-rights-era Baltimore, to stints as a social worker, campaign manager, and business owner, to advising multiple presidents—she shares how she has relied on values like authenticity, acceptance of change, and commitment to the team. Join Wendy and Venice as they take us inside the world of international diplomacy—and stay in the know about what’s going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Ambassador Wendy R. Sherman is Senior Counselor at Albright Stonebridge Group and former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. She led the negotiating team that reached agreement on a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between the P5+1, the European Union, and Iran for which, among other diplomatic accomplishments, she was awarded the National Security Medal by President Barack Obama. You can follow her on Twitter @wendyrsherman.

Venice Buhain has been a journalist based in Washington State for two decades. Her work has appeared on KING5.com, The Seattle Globalist, TVW News, AOL’s Patch, The Olympian, The Daily News in Longview, and the Eastside Journal in Bellevue.

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In this week’s episode, Senior Correspondent Steve Scher talks with Michael Schuman, who has been a foreign news correspondent in Asia for over two decades, to gain insight on the answer to a common question: What does China want? With insight from his book Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World, Schuman shares his expert opinion of how the Chinese view their own history, and posits that what China wants is a return to the superpower status it always had, but briefly lost. Catch this essential conversation—and stay in the know about what’s going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Michael Schuman has been a foreign correspondent in Asia for 23 years, first with The Wall Street Journal, and then as Time magazine’s international business correspondent based in Hong Kong and Beijing. He currently writes on a freelance basis for several publications: Bloomberg View, BusinessWeek, New York Times, and Forbes. You can follow him on Twitter @MichaelSchuman.

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In this week’s episode, correspondent Shaun Scott talks with acclaimed writer Calvin Baker about his new book A More Perfect Reunion: Race, Integration, and the Future of America. In this conversation about the bracing, necessary book, Baker argues that the only meaningful remedy to our civil rights efforts is integration: the full self-determination and participation of all African-Americans, and all other oppressed groups, in every facet of national life. Don’t miss this call to action in our revolutionary democracy—and stay in the know about what’s going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Calvin Baker is the author of four novels, including Grace and Dominion, which was a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Award. He teaches in Columbia University’s Graduate School of the Arts, and has also taught in the English Department at Yale University, the University of Leipzig, Long Island University, and more. His nonfiction work has appeared in Harper’s and the New York Times Magazine.

Shaun Scott is a Seattle-based writer and historian whose reflections on race, cinema, and American spectacle have appeared in The Monarch Review and New Worker Magazine. He is the author of Something Better: Millennials and Late Capitalism at the Movies and Millennials and the Moments that Made Us: A Cultural History of the US from 1982-Present.

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In this week’s episode, Senior Correspondent Steve Scher talks with poet and fellow correspondent Shin Yu Pai about her new book of poetry, ENSŌ. In this tenth collection, Pai presents a hybrid book and digital experience with insights on cultural hybridity, exchange, and appropriation; motherhood; and personal reflections on how systemic racism and misogyny have shaped her practice. Take a look inside the creative process of “one of the most thoughtful poets in the Northwest”—and stay in the know about what’s going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Shin Yu Pai is the author of ten books of poetry. Her work has appeared in publications throughout the U.S., Japan, China, Taiwan, Romania, the United Kingdom, and Canada. In 2014, she was shortlisted for a Stranger Genius Award in Literature. She served as the fourth Poet Laureate of The City of Redmond from 2015 to 2017. She curates the Lyric World series for Town Hall.

Steve Scher is a podcaster, broadcaster, writer, interviewer, and teacher. He is the former host of KUOW-FM’s Weekday and has taught interviewing at the University of Washington since 2009. Scher is also the host of the podcast series At Length with Steve Scher.

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In this week’s episode, correspondent and poet Shin Yu Pai shares the third installment of Lyric World, featuring poet Koon Woon. Koon explores the topic of displacement and the role that poetry can have in creating a sense of belonging and home. He reads from his book Water Chasing Water and speaks on his family’s history of immigration to the United States, as well as those who had to be left behind. He reflects on cultural identity and how he and family members adjusted to life in another country. Koon also talks about his experiences of living for decades in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District.

Born in a village near Canton, China, Koon Woon immigrated to Washington State in 1960. He earned a BA from Antioch University Seattle and studied at Fort Hays State University. He is the author of The Truth in Rented Rooms, winner of a Josephine Miles Award from PEN Oakland, and Water Chasing Water, winner of the 2014 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. His poetry appears in Premonitions: The Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry, among others. Woon is the publisher of Goldfish Press and the literary magazine Chrysanthemum.

Shin Yu Paiis the author of nine books of poetry. Her work has appeared in publications throughout the U.S., Japan, China, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Her essays and nonfiction writing have appeared in Tricycle, YES! Magazine, The Rumpus, City Arts, The Stranger, Medium, and others.

Lyric World: Conversations with Contemporary Poets is fiscally sponsored by Shunpike. The series is supported by grants from the City of Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture, Windrose Fund, Poets & Writers, and The Satterberg Foundation. Lyric World is fiscally sponsored by Shunpike.

Music for this episode is provided by composer Paul Kikuchi. Additional music credits: Paul Kikuchi (compositions, field recordings, percussion); Rob Millis (electronics); Tari Nelson-Zagar (violin); Eyvind Kang (viola); Maria Scherer Wilson (cello).

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In this week’s episode, correspondent and poet Shin Yu Pai introduces a second installment of Lyric World, featuring fellow poets Prageeta Sharma and afrose fatima ahmed. By sharing her own work on grief and grieving, Sharma explores the idea of imagined futures cut short and how a particular loss can awaken memories of previous grief. Sharma delves deeper in conversation with ahmed and Pai about the role of poetry in articulating and transcending complex grief. As our world cries out in grief, begin to process it with Pai, Sharma, and ahmed—and get an insider’s look and stay in the know about what’s going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Prageeta Sharma is the author of the poetry collections Grief Sequence, Undergloom, Infamous Landscapes, The Opening Question, and Bliss to Fill. She is the founder of the conference Thinking Its Presence: Race, Creative Writing, Literary Studies and Art. A recipient of the 2010 Howard Foundation Award, she has taught at the University of Montana and now teaches at Pomona College.

afrose fatima ahmed is a hybrid Texan-Washingtonian raised in the Tri-Cities who provides poetic soul guidance with her oracle deck “blood gold and honey.” She was a 2017 Jack Straw Writer and a 2018 GAP award recipient from Artist Trust. afrose comes to poetry as just one avenue for creating experiences of beauty and communion for herself and other people. Visit her website at www.afrosefatimaahmed.com.

Shin Yu Pai is the author of eight books of poetry. Her work has appeared in publications throughout the U.S., Japan, China, Taiwan, The United Kingdom, and Canada. Her essays and nonfiction writing have appeared in Tricycle, YES! Magazine, The Rumpus, City Arts, The Stranger, Medium, and others.

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In this week’s interview, correspondent Shin Yu Pai talks with Arabic language and literature scholar Michael Cooperson about his translation of Iraqi author al-Harīrī’s collection of fifty tales—an essential work of Arabic literature and a masterpiece of wit and wordplay. Often declared to be “untranslatable,” the eleventh-century text follows the roguish wordsmith Abū Zayd al-Sarūjī in his adventures around the medieval Middle East. Cooperson shares deft translations of astoundingly complex expressions of the Arabic language using fifty different registers of English—from the distinctive literary styles of Geoffrey Chaucer, Mark Twain, and Virginia Woolf, to global varieties of English including Cockney rhyming slang, Nigerian English, and Singaporean English. Get an insider’s look and stay in the know about what’s going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Michael Cooperson is Professor of Arabic in the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures at UCLA. His translations include The Life of Ibn Ḥanbal by Ibn al-Jawzī for the Library of Arabic Literature, and The Author and His Doubles by the eminent Moroccan literary critic Abdelfattah Kilito.

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In this week’s interview, Chief Correspondent Steve Scher talks with cartoonist Tom Gauld as he engages everyone with a rudimentary recall of their old science classes as well as those who consider themselves buffs of the contemporary physical and natural world. Breaking his pattern of lampooning writers, poets, and literary classics, Gauld skewers hapless scientists, nanobots, and puzzling theorems. Take an uproarious look at the world of science and tech through Gauld’s comics—and get an insider’s look and stay in the know about what’s going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Tom Gauld is a cartoonist and illustrator. He has weekly comic strips in The Guardian and New Scientist and his comics have been published in The New York Times and The Believer, and on the cover of The New Yorker. His graphic novels include Baking with Kafka, Goliath, Mooncop, and You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack.

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In this week’s interview, correspondent Katy Sewall talks with digital security trainer Gillian “Gus” Andrews, who aims to help us relax and overcome our digital helplessness to achieve online mindfulness and escape the feeling that technology is out of our control. Andrews outlines online stressors, from the proliferation of fake news to the threat of identity theft to the overwhelming avalanche of online content. She delves into the reasons media and technology stress us out in the first place, and grants us empowering tools so we can conserve our attention, take charge of our security and privacy, and live our best lives online. Get an insider’s look and stay in the know about what’s going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Gillian “Gus” Andrews, EdD, is a public educator, researcher, and digital security trainer. Andrews performs user experience work on technology, helping ensure people’s everyday tech lives are smooth, productive, and happy. She produced The Media Show, a media literacy series on YouTube.

Katy Sewall is a radio host, writer, podcast consultant, and storyteller. She is the Senior Producer and co-host of The Bittersweet Life podcast, and was the senior producer of KUOW’s “Weekday” with Steve Scher.

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In this week’s interview, correspondent Anastacia Renee talks with Author Frank B. Wilderson III about Afro-pessimism—an intellectual movement that theorizes blackness through the lens of perpetual slavery. Wilderson contends that Black struggles cannot be conflated with the experiences of any other oppressed group. Rather than interpreting slavery through a Marxist framework of class oppression,

He asserts that the social construct of slavery—as seen through pervasive, anti-black subjugation and violence—is hardly a relic of the past, but an almost necessary force in modern civilization. Wilderson illustrates the theories of Afro-pessimism through his own lived experience, echoing the works of powerful civil rights advocates through a combination of groundbreaking philosophy and striking personal memoir. Get an insider’s look and stay in the know about what’s going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Frank B. Wilderson III is the professor and chair of African American studies at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid. Visit Frank's website for scholarly articles and more information about Afropessimism: https://www.frankbwildersoniii.com/

Anastacia Renee is a multigenre writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist and Deep End Podcast co-host. She is a 2020 Arc Fellow(4Culture) recipient of the 2018 James W. Ray Distinguished Artist Award for Washington Artist (Literary), Seattle Civic Poet (2017-2019), Poet-in-Residence at Hugo House (2015-2017), and Jack Straw Curator (2020). Renee has received fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, VONA, Artist Trust, Jack Straw, Ragdale, Mineral School, Hypatia in the Woods and The New Orleans Writers Residency. Anastacia-Renee's work has been published in, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, Spirited Stone, Foglifter, Cascadia Magazine, Pinwheel, The Fight and the Fiddle, Glow, The A-Line, Ms. Magazine and many more. Visit Anastacia's website: https://www.anastacia-renee.com/

Buy The Book Afropessimism: https://www.elliottbaybook.com/book/9781631496141

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In this week’s interview, Chief Correspondent Steve Scher talks with bestselling author and skeptic Michael Shermer, exploring a simple question: Who is the Devil, and what is he due? For Shermer, the Devil is anyone who disagrees with you, and his due is the right to speak his mind. Shermer explores the need for unrestricted discourse for the sake of sustaining our freedom of speech, asserting that our own freedom of speech is inextricably linked to that of the “Devils” in our society. In a full-throated defense of free speech, Shermer contends that we cannot condone the censorship of ideas we find disagreeable or offensive without inviting the possibility for the censorship of ourselves. After all, he asks, if we put barriers up to silence “unpleasant” ideas, what’s to stop the silencing of any discussion? Get an insider’s look and stay in the know about what’s going on in this moment at Town Hall.

Michael Shermer is Presidential Fellow at Chapman University, California, the Publisher of Skeptic magazine, and the host of the Science Salon podcast, and for eighteen years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He is the author of a number of New York Times bestselling books, including Heavens on Earth, The Moral Arc, The Believing Brain, and Why People Believe Weird Things.

Steve Scher is a podcaster, broadcaster, writer, interviewer, and teacher. He is the former host of KUOW-FM’s “Weekday” and has taught interviewing at the University of Washington since 2009.

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In this week’s interview, In the Moment Chief Correspondent Steve Scher talks with Kevin Hand—one of today’s leading NASA scientists—about the modern scientific quest to delve beneath the surface of the ice-covered moons of Jupiter and Saturn and search for life in vast oceans that may be as old as the Earth itself. Hand reveals the latest in planetary science, biology, and the adventures of scientists like himself to explain how we know that oceans exist on moons like Europa, Titan, and Enceladus. He shows how the exploration of Earth’s oceans is informing our understanding of the potential habitability of these icy moons, and draws lessons from what we have learned about the origins of life on our own planet to consider how life could arise on these distant worlds. Get an insider’s look and stay in the know about what’s going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Kevin Hand is a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he has served as deputy chief scientist for solar system exploration and is leading an effort to land a spacecraft on the surface of Europa. He has helped lead expeditions to the glaciers of Kilimanjaro, the Dry Valleys of Antarctica, and the sea ice of the North Pole.

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In this week's interview, Chief Correspondent Steve Scher talks with evolutionary biologist Neil Shubin about the impact of viruses on our genetic makeup, and the hidden universes inside our DNA. Shubin unpacks the properties of viruses, and the ways they can disrupt our world while simultaneously setting the stage for evolutionary change. With examples of ancient viruses that attacked the human genome and were then repurposed, Shubin delves into the essential role that repurposing has played in our evolution and the story of life on Earth. He highlights how the dynamic nature of genetic mutation continues to confound and intrigue researchers today. Get an insider's look and stay in the know about what's going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle. Widespread event cancellations due to COVID-19 have put a strain on nonprofits throughout our community, including Town Hall. We hope you'll consider supporting us during this difficult time by making a donation or becoming a member. Help us keep producing In The Moment—along with even more digital-first content!

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In this week's interview, former WA Governor Gary Locke spoke with correspondent Rick Smith about the history and importance of the US Census. He traces the origins of the Census back to 1790, to the Constitution itself, and identifies ways the Census affects our nation—such as granting Washington a new congressional seat in 2010, as well as impacting distribution of federal funds. Smith addresses modern factors discouraging Americans from participating in the Census and underscores the protections and privacy measures in place to keep respondents safe. Get an insider's look and stay in the know about what's going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

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In this week's interview, correspondent Tom Teicher talks with Justin Farrell about environmentalism and region-based wealth inequality. Farrell explores the case of Teton county, Wyoming, the richest county per capita in the US, and the place with the largest gap between rich and poor. Recalling interviews with the ultra-wealthy and the working poor of the region, Farrell examines the efficacy of environmental philanthropy and explores how the rich see themselves—how they respond to social stigmas, anxiety of social status, inauthenticity, and guilt. Farrell investigates the psychology of the ultra-wealthy in rural America, delving into questions of equality, opportunity, ethical charity, and social obligation. Get an insider's look and stay in the know about what's going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

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In this week's interview, Chief Correspondent Steve Scher talks with Dr. Nathan Price of the Institute for Systems Biology. They outline the science behind systems biology, exploring it as an attempt to quantify the components that make up a biological system and then work together in concert to achieve life. Price delves into "P4" medication—medicine that is predictive, preventive, personalized, and participatory—as a way to encourage wellness and prevent disease before it starts. Price speaks to genomics as a key to understanding our health, and highlights the possibility of expanding and redefining human senses. Get an insider's look and stay in the know about what's going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

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In this week's interview, Chief Correspondent Steve Scher talks with Conor Dougherty about the fight for housing in America. Dougherty outlines why developers aren't building homes for millennials the way they did for baby boomers, and explains the factors that led to this decline. He discusses the rise of Nimbys ("not in my backyard") and the growing movement against gentrification. Dougherty encourages us to ask ourselves which outcomes we want when it comes to housing, and encourages us to petition for big-picture solutions like rehabilitating affordable housing, increased density, and lower cost housing production. Get an insider's look and stay in the know about what's going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

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In this week's interview, correspondent Venice Buhain talks with Thom Hartmann about the war on voting. Hartman compares voting systems in other countries to those in the United States, and discusses exit polling as a method of determining the winner of an election, both in the US and abroad. Buhain and Hartman reveal the mechanisms and justifications behind voter suppression, and the possibilities for changing our voting process or implementing policies to counteract voter suppression strategies. Get an insider's look and stay in the know about what's going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

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In this week's interview, Chief Correspondent Steve Scher talks with Dan Esty about solutions to big problems like climate change. Esty outlines ways to bridge political perspectives in order to approach climate change as a serious issue while maintaining flexibility when it comes to policy. He advocates for a structure of environmental protection policymaking that is more careful about balancing costs against benefits and adjusting the nature of the burdens placed upon businesses. Citing America as a nation that promotes innovation, Esty contends that we should overcome partisan hangups and present big ideas to combat climate change long-term. Get an insider's look and stay in the know about what's going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

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In this week's interview, correspondent Elizabeth Ralston talks with Bob Redmond and Anne Biklé about the complexities of the microbiome. They highlight how microscopic organisms are essential to the health of its host—whether that's our soil or our own bodies. Biklé likens the gut to a garden, encouraging us to recontextualize ourselves as part of an ecosystem and exploring ways to keep that system healthy. They dive into discussions of cancer, mental health, inflammation, and the steps we can take to cultivate a healthy microbiome. Get an insider's look and stay in the know about what's going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

To read the full transcript of this episode click here.

SPONSORSHIP CREDITS

The event is co-produced by Survivor Bee and co-sponsored by Big Dipper Waxworks, King County LOOP® Biosolids, the Center for Microbiome Sciences and Therapeutics at the University of Washington, The Common Acre and Rainbow Natural Remedies.

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In this week's interview, Chief Correspondent Steve Scher talks with biologist Samuel Wasser about the illegal ivory trade and the threat it poses to the endangered elephant population. Wasser outlines scientific tools being developed to track poachers and determine the locations and regions where they're getting their ivory. They discuss the tactics used for combating poachers, such as reducing demand for ivory and tracking the locations of ivory supplies before they've been confiscated or shipped. Wasser expresses his faith in the diversity of people's interests, and the need for everyone to pursue those interests in order to combat the innumerable issues of the world—everything from ivory poaching to cancer to climate change. Get an insider's look and stay in the know about what's going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

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In this week's interview, former Town Hall Artist-In-Residence Erik Molano talks with Peggy Orenstein about the fraught emotional landscape and difficulties faced by modern adolescent boys. Orenstein outlines the harm our society does to teenage boys by pressuring them to suppress their emotions, cultivate aggression and dominance, and glorify sexual conquest. Molano and Orenstein delve into the complications of pornography, and how the images and narratives it presents are skewing young men's understanding of sex and teaching them to model relationships that are unhealthy and emotionally toxic. Orenstein calls for a collective cultural shift to help young men break down these social constructs and reconnect with sensitivity, emotion, and healthy sexuality. Get an insider's look and stay in the know about what's going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

EPISODE LINKS

Peggy Orenstein's resources page https://www.peggyorenstein.com/positive-sexuality Consent Academy http://www.consent.academy/ Wholehearted Masculine https://wholeheartedmasculine.org/ Coaching Boys Into Men https://www.coachescorner.org/

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In this week's interview, Robert Frank talks with Chief Correspondent Steve Scher about the power of peer pressure. Robert provides examples of how social influence effects our health, consumerism and our perception of government. Robert and Steve talk about the weight that high positions of power have on our cultural morality, as well as the impact that our neighbors and friends have on our decision-making and general well being. Get an insider's look and stay in the know about what's going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

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In this week's interview, Chief Correspondent Steve Scher talks with César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández about the problems with our nation's immigration prison system. Hernández outlines the financial incentives for private prisons to keep their cells filled in order to receive money from the government, and identifies similarities between immigration prisons and the mass incarceration of the 1980's Reagan-era war on drugs. Hernández and Scher discuss the stigmas migrants face, as well as the factors perpetuating this prison system and what it would take to dismantle the immigration prison system. Get an insider's look and stay in the know about what's going on in this moment at Town Hall.

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In this week's interview, Chief Correspondent Steve Scher talks with H.W. Brands about the American West. Brands outlines what we think of today as the West, and highlights the dreams of wealth that inspired American settlers. He discusses the struggles between the white settlers and indigenous peoples and widens our perspective to 30,000 years ago when settlers from Asia came across the Bering Strait. Brands and Scher delve into the iconography of the West and the way these images have shaped our society—the cowboy as the American knight, the association of gold digging with luck as a metaphor for wealth and success in America, and the irony of a "lawless" West depending on the government and being widely comprised of federal land. Get an insider's look and stay in the know about what's going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle. Please note: due to unforeseen circumstances the H.W. Brands event on 11/21 was cancelled.

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In this week's interview, Chief Correspondent Steve Scher talked with Northwest Harvest CEO Thomas Reynolds about food security in WA. Reynolds outlines the complexities in approaching and unpacking issues of food justice in our region, breaking the issue down past policies and programs and asserting that solutions to food inequality aren't technical alone. Scher and Reynolds look at the future of food in WA, exploring the growing efforts of local farmers, free community markets, and food pantries. Reynolds highlights food sustainability models at work around the globe, and encourages large action through small scale change in our region. Get an insider's look and stay in the know about what's going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

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In this week's interview, Chief Correspondent Steve Scher talks with Dan Hooper about particles, relativity, and the origins of our universe. Hooper outlines our growing understanding of the conditions in which our universe began, highlighting what we know about the first few seconds after the Big Bang and how several astronomers and mathematicians throughout history helped us determine that the universe was expanding. He discusses the limitations of language in explaining mathematical equations, and the value of explaining scientific research to people who don't know much science, a practice which he says helps him better understand his work and can even lead to breakthroughs. Get an insider's look and stay in the know about what's going on in this moment at Town Hall.

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In this week's interview, Town Hall's own Haley Fenton talks with Timothy Wise about agribusiness and the future of food. Wise outlines the control that corporations like Monsanto have over small-scale farms worldwide. He delves into the profit-motivated decisions that don't coincide with the needs of farmers or consumers, and highlights the fact that foreign governments are attempting to partner with Monsanto due to funding, which has resulted in the company exerting control over their nation's crops and production of fertilizers—a direction which Wise asserts is the wrong ecological choice on a global scale. Wise and Fenton examine agroecology and explore strategies for disrupting these harmful patterns. Get an insider's look and stay in the know about what's going on inthis moment at Town Hall.

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In this week's interview, Chief Correspondent Steve Scher talks with Melanie Mitchell about Artificial Intelligence. Scher and Mitchell delve into the state of AI today, exploring the classifications that make something "intelligent" and the ways in which AI and humans process information differently. Mitchell highlights the complexities of human language as a particular area of difficulty for AI, and expresses the importance of developing machine intelligences with effective communication skills in order to help imbue them with an understanding of human values and consciousness. Together Scher and Mitchell examine the future of AI—how far the field has advanced and how far it still has to go. Get an insider's look and stay in the know about what's going on in this moment at Town Hall.

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In The Moment podcast: Recent Episodes

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