At Length with Steve Scher

Steve Scher talks with renowned choreographer Mark Morris, who was raised in Seattle and returns in March presenting a performance with his dance group and a talk at the UW.

Mark Morris

Mark Morris is one of the most highly regarded arists of our era. The Macarthur fellow is an innovator, a satirist and a romantic. He is most of all, a choreographer suffused with music.

Steve Scher talks to former SETI DirectorJill Tarter about the search for life in the universe.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Steve Scher

Are we alone in the universe? That question drives SETI , the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Jill Tarter has been on the hunt for decades. She currently holds the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI Research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. She is speaking at the University of Washington March 3rd.

Humans have been wondering about other life in the universe for millennia. Scientists can actually seek the answer now. New tools have given astronomers, astrophysicists, exo-biologists the opportunity to scan the heavens for a signal from out there.

At Length is supported by the UW Alumni Association

Steve Scher talks to Christoph Bode about future narratives.

Story with Christoph Bode

steve scher, uwaa

Story creates culture, illuminates morality and explores mortality. Stories have rules that transcend different societies and languages. Christoph Bode is a scholar of the story and a student of the emerging changes in narrative structure.

Christoph Bode is focused on story. Not necessarily any one story in particular, but rather how stories are created and constructed- by storytellers, by writers, filmmakers, even politicians. Bode is a professor of Modern English Literature at LMU Munich, one of Europe’s leading universities. How important is the study of story? He recently received a grant from the EU to explore how stories shape social and even political thinking.

Christoph Bode was a guest of the University of Washington where he spoke on the emergence of digital, multi-player and other new approaches to storytelling.

If you mention 1125 Harvard East to politicians, musicians, poets, and activists, you will get a knowing nod and probably a smile. In Seattle, the house on Harvard has been a locus of activism for decades. Longtime journalist Sam Sperry has written 1125 Harvard East: Kay Bullitt's Gathering Place. Steve Scher talked with Sperry about Kay Bullitt, the Bullitt family, and the role a welcoming place can play in shaping the history of a region. Recorded in 2015.

What do Disneyland, LA Freeways and Film Noir have in common? According to historian Eric Avila, they all represent aspects of America’s racial divide.

Chocolate Cities

Eric Avila is a professor of history at UCLA. He examines the built environment for clues to American values, prejudice and racial discrimination. His work takes him from Coney Island to the Freeway boom of the 60’s and on to Disneyland.

Avila is in Seattle for a talk at UW titled, “ Chocolate Cities and Vanilla Suburbs: Race, Space and American Culture After World War II ” January 27th at 6:30 at Kane Hall, room 120.

Eric Avila is author of Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles . His latest is The Folklore of the Freeway : Race and Revolt in the Modernist City

At Length is supported by the UW Alumni Association .

Populations of a great variety of birds are finding homes in our suburbs by adapting to the changes we are bringing to the world. Our actions shape bird success and failure. Steve Scher talks with John Marzluff, wildlife scientist, about his new book, Welcome to Subirdia: Sharing Our Neighborhoods with Wrens, Robins, Woodpeckers, and Other Wildlife. Recorded in 2015.

50 years ago, American citizens were being killed in the fight for the right to vote. During three marches in March of 1965, civil rights activists seeking the right to register in Alabama were met by tear gas and Billy clubs. Local police and State troopers beat the non-violent protestors on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. The televised violence galvanized the nation and Congress. President Johnson pushed through the 1965 voting rights act, one of the most significant pieces of legislation in the countries history.

The Legacy of Selma, UW's David Domke

Steve Scher

Today, the courts have removed pieces of that legislation and some states are restricting access to the ballot box. The streets of the nation are filled with protestors challenging the police shootings of young black men.

Over the next few weeks, the University of Washington’s Chair of the Communication Department, David Domke, will examine the history and it’s importance today in a series of lectures, Marching to Selma: How MLK, LBJ & The Civil Rights Movement Changed The World.

We met to discuss the legacy of Selma at the NE Branch of the Seattle Public Library. (Hence the slightly hushed tones.)

David Domke says his meetings with the still living foot soldiers of those marches have profoundly changed him. He has traveled to the south three times with groups from the northwest. In March, he is taking another group of adults and college students to follow the path from Atlanta, through Memphis and on to Selma.

I will be on that journey and sharing stories with you about the legacy of the civil rights era and the emergence of a new activism.

2013 Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry Michael Levitt talks about biological structures, the future of molecular modeling and why it helps the research when scientists are kind and good. Join Steve Scher for this wide ranging conversation with a remarkable scientist.

Michael Levitt on Biology and Computing

Turns out on-call car service Uber compiles a lot of data about its customers. They can get a pretty good idea of what you are up to just by the way you use their service. Are you surprised? How much privacy is there in the age of the internet?

Marc Rotenberg is a lawyer specializing in privacy and civil rights. He is president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest research group involved in privacy litigation and public policy. He also teaches about these issues at Georgetown University Law School in Washington D.C.

Rotenberg says he doesn't use the word fear when discussing civil liberties in the information age. It is disempowering, he feels. Rather, there are challenges to be met, problems to solve. Rotenberg sat down with Steve Scher in late November, 2014, to discuss those challenges.

The Right To Privacy is Social Issue-Marc Rotenberg on Civil LIberty in the Internet Age

Dolores Huerta still fights for farmworker families. Well into her 8th decade, she is training the next generation of leaders to carry the cause forward. The former teacher and long time community organizer was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor awarded in the United States, by another community organizer, President Obama.

Huerta and Cesar Chavez were co-founders of the United Farm Workers. Dolores Huerta has pushed and prodded mayors, governors, senators, even presidents for new laws, but her focus remains on the grassroots. She is re- energized each time she can get new street lights for a neighborhood, more people registered to vote, better representation on schools boards.

Support for At Length is provided by the University of Washington Alumni Association.

Dolores Huerta