-
I believe we are better off when we can understand an opposing point of view and absorb new information. It’s also better radio in my view. Interviews are usually more engaging when guests have to field tough questions. It gives them – and listeners - a chance to justify and perhaps clarify their beliefs. -
I stand for a world where we do not have to build up a callous just to survive the day. I play these records to soften the edges, to bridge the gap between our history and our healing, and to remind us that we do not have to be hard to be whole. -
Before podcasts, it was rare on broadcast radio to hear long form conversations that dug deep into a single topic. NPR listeners in particular were accustomed to the 8-minute conversations of the national magazine shows. But Philosophy Talk provided a space to just… think. We stood for providing a space on the radio to indulge the life of the mind. -
People are more than their worst bad decision. That’s something I had to learn the hard way, and it’s something I still carry with me today. Because once I understood what it felt like to have my identity stripped away, I couldn’t ignore it when it happened to other people.
-
The People’s Studio is a dream come to life, not by magic and not by corporate interests, but by all of us, you and me. It’s why I immediately got out my credit card last year when I saw an email asking for donations to support KALW’s People’s Studio. -
For decades, political communication and mainstream media trained themselves to sound reasonable, disciplined, and safe. In the process, they hollowed out large portions of public language. When institutions consistently refuse to name what people are actually experiencing, they create a vacuum. Trump filled that vacuum not with truth, but with the feeling of honesty. And in moments of deep distrust, feeling can outweigh fact. -
As Middle Easterners, we know all too well how the media weaponizes our peoples’ suffering as political rhetoric for government interest. Our grief is exploited for talking points or leveraged for foreign military intervention—or utter inaction in the face of a humanitarian crisis. -
I came home from Vietnam to an America whose mainstream media said people like me—a US citizen, born, raised, and educated here—did not belong. I came home to stories of warrantless home invasions of US citizens and the labeling of peaceful protesters as domestic terrorists. During this divisive time in our country, who gets to decide who is an American? Who gets to shape culture? -
There are always decisions to make when in a leadership role, and not all of them are obvious. For me, one of these decisions involved my joining the KALW Board last Fall. It was a full-circle moment. -
Junk media thrives on outrage, repetition, and distraction. It feeds us what we already believe, exasperates what we already fear. It is easy to consume, hard to digest, and ultimately corrosive to our capacity to connect with each other. It has no allegiance to the truth at all. -
Chaos on its own can exhaust us, but chaos combined with organizing can transform us. -
Before there was PBS or NPR, before the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, there were national education networks for radio and television. -
In a media landscape driven by clickbait, it’s public media that highlights humanity — especially when it comes to schools, which can be the first building blocks of a more equitable society. -
The distance between power and precarity in this field is not just unjust, it is unsustainable. Those of us with connections and resources have to help close it. We need to radically expand who gets to tell the stories that define us, and where those stories come from.
