At Length with Steve Scher

At Length Interviews with visiting artists, authors and scholars to Town Hall Seattle

Journalist and interviewer Steve Scher talks with authors, thinkers and artists about social, scientific and cultural issues.

Rethinking Gender

Scher

Over the last few years, the debate in America over the rights of people of different gender identities has become a key civil rights issue.

Professor Marieka Klawitter is the final speaker in the UW’s Equity and Difference series . Her widely published research, focuses on poverty , family savings and the economic impact of public policies on sexual orientation.

Her May 18th lecture, “I’m Coming Out: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the U.S.” looked at the ways acceptance and changes to the law have affected LGBTQ equality since the 1969 stonewall riots.

We met at her UW office to talk about the social and economic realities for members of the LGBTQ community.

Professor Marieka Klawitter was the final speaker for the Equity and Difference series at the UW.

Support for At length comes from the Office of the President of the University of Washington .

You can hear all the interviews from this lecture series, and previous series. Our homepage is At Length with Steve Scher . Hear the interviews on Itunes , and Stitcher .

Thank you for listening.

Toure was at the University of Washington talking about Microaggresion, power and privelege

Scholar Charles M. Payne argues that the realities of race should return to the forefront of this discussion- not to be seen as a problem to overcome, but as a dynamic for empowerment.

What does U.S. citizenship mean to Native Americans? What does American Indian citizenship mean to the U.S. government? It’s a complex set of questions we take up with UW guest scholar Tsianina Lomawaima.

I-depth interviews with scholars visiting the University of Washington

Welcome to At Length, our second season of conversations where we take a little more time and delve a little deeper into the profound issues of our era.

As part of the UW Graduate School’s Equity and Difference Series , Associate Professor Ralina Joseph has a public lecture, “What’s the Difference with ‘Difference’?”

Her talk is about the power of language to open or close doors to equity and opportunity.

On the mission statement page of the website of the Center For Communication Difference and Equity is a quote from American scholar and poet Audre Lorde , “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” Professor Joseph and I took that as the starting point of our conversation.

Ralina Joseph

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You can find out more about the work of the Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity at their website . Professor Joseph is working on her second book, Speaking Back to Screens: How Black Women on Television Resist PostIdentity Culture , an examination of African American women in modern television. For more about the work Professor Ralina Joseph is doing, go to her website .

Our next interview, scheduled to coincide another upcoming lecture that is part of the UW’ Equity and Difference Series, will be with Professor Mehnaz Afridi of Manhattan College. She will be talking about Freedom, Religion and Racism in Jewish-Muslim Encounters.

Hope you attend the lecture on February 4th and listen to our podcast

Steve Scher talks to producer, actor and activist Kathy Najimy about women and body image .

Kathy Najimy on Women and Body Image

Powerful forces are at work shaping our body image . Self-esteem, family norms, peer group pressures and the media all influence our feelings about our own bodies.

Actor, activist and producer Kathy Najimy wrapped up the UW’s Weight and Wellness lecture series with a talk on “Women and Body Image,” based on her personal stor y and her years working in Hollywood .

Named one of Ms. Magazine's 'Women of the Year’ in 2004, she is producing a new HBO series based on Ms. Magazine and the work of Gloria Steinem and the feminists of the 70’s.

In the 80’s, she co-wrote and co-starred with Mo Gaffney in the Obie award winning feminist comedy hit, “The Kathy and Mo Show.” Two productions were later broadcast on HBO.

Kathy Najimy’s breakthrough role was as Sister Mary Patrick in the 1992 Whoopi Goldberg film, “Sister Act.” She has gone on to a highly successful career on stage, screen and television in a wide variety of roles. For 14 seasons she was the voice of Peggy Hill on the award winning animated series “King of The Hill.” She co-starred with her idol Bette Midler in the movie “Hocus Pocus.” She was back on the New York stage in 2014 with her one-woman show, “Lift Up Your Skirt.” She is currently on HBO's "Veep," and has been cast in a new TV series as a police chief.

She has spoken around the world on issues affecting girls, women, LGBTQ, as well as animal rights and AIDS prevention. She has won numerous awards and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. She earned some of the money as a formidable TV game show player and as a poker champion .

Support for the lecture series comes from the University of Washington Alumni Association , The Graduate School of Public Health,

Support for At Length with Steve Scher comes from the UWAA .

Tony Angell brings the wild world alive. His latest book is The House of Owls. For more than two decades, he and his family have had the remarkable fortune to observe the lives of owls up close. In late 1969, a pair of Western Screech Owls set up housekeeping in a nest box he built for them, in a cedar just off his back porch. He kept notes on the owls' activities and drew them in flight, at rest, eating, and just watching. Recorded in 2015.